London Sings Along with Michael Gracey and T-mobile
In this week’s fxpodcast we talk to director Michael Gracey about his two amazing spots for T-mobile. These two spots will restore your faith in advertising as a positive force. It is almost impossible to see these spots and not smile. Filmed without tricks and without digital manipulation they show Londoners showing Life is for […]
Wolverine : The Making of an X-man
Wolverine is the 4th of the X-Men films or the first of the spin off Origins series, depending on your point of view. We have a look behind the scenes of this film, talking to artists from Rising Sun Pictures, Luma Pictures and Hatch Productions as well as exclusive crew shots from on-set.
red centre: Anthony Dod Mantle
In this week’s red centre podcast we cover Part 3 of our 4 part series on RED post production (Avid and FCP offline), and interview Oscar winner Anthony Dod Mantle. Anthony is giving a series of talks in Australia and talks very openly and technically about shooting on the RED and on the SI-2K, a […]
A Frantic Evolution of Dragonball
Ian Failes returns to fxguide and in this his first new interview he speaks with co-visual effects supervisors Chad Wiebe and Mike Shand of Frantic films about the lava lake and final battle sequences in the new Dragonball: Evolution.
fxguidetv – Episode #56 NAB 2009 wrap-up
A new episode of fxguidetv is available for downloading. In this episode we talk monitors with a look at Cine-tal and HP DreamColor, discuss RED and 16k with da Vinci, see the latest from Matrox and visit with our friends at Eyeon. We also get an update from Ted Schilowitz at the RED user party. […]
fxguidetv – Episode #55 more from NAB 2009
A new episode of fxguidetv is available for downloading. It features a look at an R&D project from The Foundry that removes rolling shutter artifacts, a preview of Trapcode Particular v2 (you can see a new features list in this PDF), we talk global production and on set data pipeline with Sohonet and a look […]
RED Rocket Announced, update on RED Pro Primes
RED started out announcing they would not have a booth at NAB, then announced an event to be held in Las Vegas, but not on the show floor. That event has grown to an all day affair (REDUSER ’09 NAB PARTY) with various presentations, you can view the schedule here. Jim Jannard posted to REDuser.net […]
The Foundry announces Nuke 5.2 and 6/6x
The Foundry announced new versions of their Nuke compositing software at NAB this week. The first, Nuke 5.2, has workflow improvements with Python scripting, stereo workflow, overhaul of the UI, performance improvements, bug fixes and artist/pipeline efficiency enhancers including disk cache, pre-comp, and 3D LUTs in the GPU. The release is expected to ship in […]
eyeon Unveils Generation 1.1 at NAB
Eyeon announced a new version of Generation at NAB. The release builds upon version 1.0 with tweaks and workflow enhancments including 3D LUT support and more. Click through to read the release from Eyeon.
fxguidetv – Episode #54 Flare and Flame 2010
A new episode of fxguidetv is available for downloading. It features an exclusive and in-depth interview with Autodesk lead product designer Philippe Soeiro, who chats with John Montgomery about the new software only Flare product as well as the new .R3D support, normal mapping and other improvements in Flame 2010. Watch for more fxguidetv eps coming out […]
fxguidetv – Episode #53 Knowing
A new episode of fxguidetv is available for downloading. It features an interview with Animal Logic vfx supervisor Andrew Jackson, who chats with Mike Seymour about the film Knowing shot entirely on the RED One camera. Also, we have a look at the new up coming term of fxphd. Watch for new fxguidetv eps coming […]
Red Dwarf : Red on Red & the vfx
The Red Dwarf: Back to Earth mini-series recently debuted on the UK Dave Channel to a record 2.6 million viewers, almost triple the channels previous highest ratings, placing it as the highest-rated commissioned show on a digital network ever. This week we speak to one of our own as John Montgomery interviews Mike Seymour on fxphd’s involvement with this classic and beloved Sci-fi comedy.
sgi sold to Rackable Systems
Rackable Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:RACK), a leading provider of servers and storage products for medium to large-scale data centers, announced its agreement to acquire substantially all the assets of Silicon Graphics, Inc. (SGI) for approximately $25 million in cash, subject to adjustment in certain circumstances, plus the assumption of certain liabilities associated with the acquired assets. sgi […]
VFXWages.com launches
Back in August we did a podcast and article with Steve Hulett from The Animation Guild where he made the comment “How many visual effects houses do you know say to their top guys “uh, keep it to yourself what you’re making”… it’s against the law.” He went to talk about his feelings that not […]
da Vinci Announces Native .R3D Support
With NAB a month away, add another manufacturer to the list of those natively supporting the .R3D format. Today, da Vinci announced add-ons to their Resolve grading systems which allow varying levels of speed for decoding RED files. The three new products range from a software-only solution which is available for all Resolve systems to […]
New fxpodcast – Showing Film Some Love
We tend to chase the latest technology here at fxguide, but we starting thinking that film is still the dominant media for motion picture photography and projection. So we went to one of the major sources, Kodak, to find out what they have been working on. As you’ll hear when we talked with Gary Einhaus, […]
HD Expo (and Continuing the Image Quality Discussion)
HD Expo has been around since 2001 and holds conferences in Los Angeles, Chicago and New York as well as internationally. Kristin Petrovich, President of HD Expo explained that they are in the process of transitioning the name to “creatasphere”. On March 5th the HD Expo was held at the Hilton at Universal City, featuring […]
VES and ASC Team up for Image Quality
The Visual Effects Society (VES) Technology Committee & American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) held a session this past Tuesday in Hollywood called Image Quality Considerations for Cinematography and Visual Effects. This was a standing room only event at the Academy’s Linwood Dunn Theater, Eric Roth (head of the VES) said in his opening remarks that […]
Autodesk Introduces Softimage 7.5 Software
Autodesk today released an update to SOFTIMAGE|XSI, which it acquired from Avid back in November, and the update renames the product to Autodesk Softimage. Read the press release after the jump
Ed Ulbrich: How Benjamin Button got his face
A talk from the 2009 TED Conference has been posted featuring Ed Ulbrich, from Digital Domain, explaining the Oscar-winning technology that allowed his team to digitally create younger and older versions of Brad Pitt’s face for “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.” Watch the clip here
VES Awards – Report and Photo Gallery
It was a good night for Digital Domain at the 7th Annual Visual Effects Society Awards as “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” took home four awards and a commercial for Bacardi made it five. The HBO series “John Adams”, “The Changeling”, “WALL E”, and “The Dark Knight” all took home multiple awards and New […]
VES Awards – The Winners List
The 7th Annual Visual Effects Society Awards were held tonight at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza in Los Angeles. In addition to the award categories a VES Lifetime Achievement award was presented to Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall and the George Méliès Award for Pioneering was presented to Phil Tippett. The winners in individual categories […]
HPA Technology Retreat 2009
The Hollywood Post Alliance describes their 15th annual technology retreat on their web site with the heading “Now more than ever! Arm your Brain”. In these challenging economic times it is important to be thinking in new directions and looking for all opportunities. We take a trip to the desert for some inspiration and to see what the HPA Technology Retreat has to offer.
Gridiron Flow Beta for Mac Released
One of the more interesting products in development over the last year has been Gridiron Software’s Flow — an asset, versioning, and time tracking package for artists. It works behind the scenes to track what you’re working on and what files were used to create the end result. Just drag a render to the Flow […]
The Foundry: Looking for Showreel Material
It’s that time of year again, when manufacturers are looking for material to add to their tradeshow reels. The Foundry is prepping their reel for NAB and looking for cool stuff that features work done in their products: Nuke, Furnace, Keylight, Ocula, Tinder, and Tinderbox. If you have work that you’d like to have featured […]
And the BAFTA Award goes to…
Starting the award season the British Academy of Film and Television Arts held the BAFTA Awards tonight. The winner for the category Special Visual Effects is: The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button Eric Barba, Craig Barron, Nathan McGuinness, Edson Williams Full list of BAFTA winners can be found here. The VES Awards are next on […]
The Orphanage suspends operations
Late yesterday we got word that The Orphanage in San Francisco was suspending operations. The confirmation came quickly on Orphanage co-founder Stu Maschwitz’s ProLost blog. The company was founded in 1999 by Stu and co-founders Scott Stewart and Jonathan Rothbart and according to The Orphanage website had a staff of more than 160 artists with […]
Imagineer Announces Plans for 2009
We haven’t heard much from the folks at Imagineer since some big changes at the company in the second half of last year. Today they announced that the first half of the year will see significant upgrades to their mocha and mocha for After Effects tracking products. They also plan to announce details on upgrades […]
The Foundry’s 2009 Nuke Roadmap
The first ever Nuke master class in London was held in Soho today and over 200 artists from all around Europe attended the event. The session was definitely geared towards artist-types and started with the Foundry’s Jon Waddleton covering python scripting for artists. There were also a ton of cool tips and tricks shown by […]
fxguidetv – Episode #51 is on the Air
A new episode of fxguidetv is available for your viewing pleasure. It features an interview with vfx supervisor Eric Durst, who chats with Mike Seymour about the craft of turning elements of a script into visual effects which help tell the story. Also, we have a look at a fun Levi’s 501 spec spot helmed by […]