fxpodcast: Luma Pictures profile

June 15, 2008

In this fxpodcast we talk with Chris Sage, VP of operations at Luma Pictures, an artist driven facility in Venice California that does high end visual effects. From time to time we like to do facility profiles rather than stories about specific films or techniques. Luma Pictures initially caught our attention because they promoted themselves […]

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Red centre #7 Geoff Boyle, Kino 525, Red Room and more

June 10, 2008

This episode the guys chat with Cinematographer Geoff Boyle, founder of the Cinematography Mailing List, about his recent stereo 3D RED feature film. They also chat about lighting and introduce their first guest into… The RED Room. All this and the winner of last week’s quiz in the “Pimp My RED” competition. If you haven’t […]

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Interview with Autodesk’s Marc Petit About REALVIZ Acquisition

June 7, 2008

REALVIZ was a unique company, one of the first to solve and commercialize a range of outstanding visual effects tools ranging from panoramic Stitching to 3D Tracking. The fxguide founders actually visited REALVIZ about 2 years ago in its location just outside of Cannes, France. This visit cemented our opinion about the quality of the […]

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DroidMAKER fxpodcast

June 5, 2008

This week we talk to Michael Rubin about his book DroidMAKER: George Lucas and the Digital Revolution. While the book is very much the history of Lucasfilm, it doubles as a history of the computer graphics industry. From ILM to Pixar, Alvy Ray Smith to Brad Bird, and from Francis Ford Coppola to Steve Jobs, […]

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Visual Effects Society Publishes Industry Credit Guidelines

June 4, 2008

The Visual Effects Society (VES) has published the first ever set of VES guidelines for titles in the visual effects industry. The list has been vetted by VES members and ratified by the VES Board of Directors. Major studios have reviewed the list as well and are encouraged to utilize it. “Through these collective efforts, […]

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Flame 2009 Benchmarks on the new HP xw8600 System

June 2, 2008

We’ve got one of the new Autodesk HP xw8600 systems fired up at the fxphd loft in Chicago. The new systems started shipping last month and we got it quickly up and running and paying the bills. But before we shut down our old IBM6217 system, we took the time to run our fxguide suite […]

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How to Paint a Digital Car

May 30, 2008

Cars are the backbone of the advertising industry and car finishes are equally important in films. Just this month, new releases Iron Man and Speed Racer needed to produce photorealistic car finishes. In this special technical report, we explore how the best facilities in the world go about creating car finishes that are beyond ‘photoreal’ and are now ‘damn near perfect’.

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red centre episode #006 posted

May 26, 2008

A new redcenter podcast is now live on the site. If you haven’t already, subscribe to the RSS feed or iTunes podcast on our redcenter page.  We also now have downloadable shownotes in pdf format available on the redcentre page.  It’s a big show this week as the guys look at the RED’s new Nikon mount, […]

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Weezer new amazing YouTube video

May 24, 2008

Released today and already with almost a million downloads the new Weezer Pork and Beans video features actual internet ‘celebrities’ in recreations of some of the net’s most famous moments from History of Dance, Britney guy, Mentos guys, Ryan vs Dorkman, Numa Numa Kid, Afroninja, Will it Blend, the list goes on and on. In […]

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Ben Snow ILM fxpodcast

May 23, 2008

In this week’s podcast we have part 2 of our Iron Man coverage, discussing the suit itself. Building on the strong basis of Transformers and digital rigid body ‘car like finishes’ we talk to Ben Snow about ILM’s magnificent near faultless work on the film. As you will hear Mike And Ben Snow get very technical […]

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Money, webcasts, podcasts: A few facts and a few thoughts

May 11, 2008

So in the field of Post – just how viable is online videos, webcasts, vblogs and iTV? Anyone can be famous on the internet (starwars kid, Mentos guys, Free hug guy, etc) but a completely different issue to make money on the net. Just who is making money, how much and exactly how? And – […]

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Iron Man – Rock Solid

May 9, 2008

Iron Man is a blockbuster hit due to a focus on acting, great action sequences and seamless big budget visual effects by lead facility Industrial Light and Magic, steered by visual effects supervisor John Nelson. Alongside ILM was The Orphanage and we drill down on just one aspect of the film – the Heads Up Display – in this week’s fxpodcast with designer Dav Rauch.

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Red Centre #5

May 8, 2008

The new Red Centre #5 is out. In this podcast Jason and Mike discuss offline editing and RED. A key aspect of the RED offline workflow currently is the use of Crimson and the guys talk this week to Crimson founder Ian Bloom about his software and his approach to just solving problems. There is […]

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Keynote Comes of Age

May 8, 2008

We never expected we would be posting about keynote here on fxguide.com but one of the surprising things at the Autodesk User group was the amazingly cool graphic design presentation that the team used. Normally we would run a mile than sit through a Powerpoint presentation but with the new Keynote 2, the product has […]

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Blind wins 2 Telly Awards for Justin Timberlake’s “Lovestoned”

May 8, 2008

After the award-winning success of Gnarls Barkely’s “Crazy”, HSI director Robert Hales and BL:ND creative director Vanessa Marzaroli teamed up again to create Justin Timberlake’s “Lovestoned.” Blind won awards in the 29th Annual Telly Awards. “Lovestoned,” won two Bronze Telly statuettes: one in the Music Video category, and another in the Use of Animation category […]

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Autodesk Acquires Assets of REALVIZ

May 7, 2008

SAN RAFAEL, Calif., May 7 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Autodesk, Inc. (NASDAQ: ADSK) today announced that it has completed the acquisition of substantially all of the assets of REALVIZ S.A., the privately held developer of image-based content creation software. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. REALVIZ was founded in 1998 and is headquartered in Sophia Antipolis, […]

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neo stolen

May 4, 2008

Quantel’s regional office in Burbank was broken into last week, and the company’s brand new Neo control panel for its Pablo color correction system was taken. Quantel introduced Neo at NAB in Las Vegas. The stolen Neo was one of only a few in existence, and was slated for use in a series of upcoming […]

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Red Centre # 4

May 1, 2008

Our latest podcast looks at the RED announcements and includes an in depth technical interview with Graeme Natress CTO of RED. (Yes, it gets very technical) Mike Seymour and Jason Wingrove also discuss the Red Ray, Land Sea and Air Camera options, and more. See the podcast block on the right side of this page […]

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fxguidetv #027 – NAB report #2

April 22, 2008

A new ep of fxguidetv is up, covering da vinci and a new workflow spark called informer. This is our last one from NAB — thanks for all the emails and comments about our efforts from Las Vegas. We appreciate hearing from you. Visit the fxguidetv page for download and iTunes links.

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fxguidetv #026 – NAB report #1

April 16, 2008

fxguidetv #26 is on the air! This episode comes to you from NAB in Las Vegas and features an exclusive interview with Ted Schilowitz from RED, a look a what the wizards at the Foundry are working on to improve stereoscopic workflow and we’ll also explain why Angie suddenly has many tattoos.

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Quick Look: eyeon Generation

April 16, 2008

At NAB 2008 in Las Vegas, eyeon introduced their new conforming and versioning app called eyeon Generation, which has been in development for about two years. The app contains conforming and editing tools, compositing, collaboration with annotation, versioning, as well as render management. The release will bring a new and valuable type of workflow to the desktop compositing market.

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red centre #3 – NAB report

April 15, 2008

Our newest podcast looks in depth at the RED announcements that were made Monday at the National Association of Broadcasters convention in Las Vegas. Mike Seymour and Jason Wingrove discuss the new 5K camera “Epic”, the pocket professional camera “Scarlet”, RED Ray and more. RED is once again the longest line for a booth at […]

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NAB: Flame/Smoke 2009

April 14, 2008

Our first podcast from NAB is up, covering the 2008 Autodesk User Group meeting on Sunday afternoon. The ep was recorded before the start of the show on Sunday evening, so we continued our annual tradition of covering the big meetup. Tomorrow’s podcast will be a roundtable with our industry friends and fxphd postgrads who […]

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red centre ep 2 out

April 11, 2008

Ep 2 of Red Centre is out, with hosts Jason Wingrove and Mike Seymour This week on the show: the guys get ready for NAB and discuss the Nikon mount, the new Red Lenses and more.. Note: Red Centre will be coming from Vegas NEXT MONDAY with all the news from the show floor on […]

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Review of Adobe Photoshop Express

April 10, 2008

Adobe has surprised some by moving towards a web app model for the crown jewel of Adobe: Photoshop. We review the new effort and see how viable it is for serious production.

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fxguided Tour: Getting the Most Out of NAB

April 8, 2008

NAB starts this weekend, so we spoke to the organizers and worked out our fxguided tour to get the most out of NAB. With a massive investment in seminars and events, NAB now provides some really cool content discussions and presentations. Check out the talks, the presentations, events and the key parties.

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NAB announcements start to roll in, DD IPO moves forward

April 8, 2008

As we gear up for NAB the press releases having started rolling in. Here are a few items that caught our interest: Prime Focus Purchases 1000 Seats Of Fusion® That is not a typo… 1000 seats. One thousand seats! Apple ships Final Cut Server! Cine-tal Systems to acquire cineSpace product line from Rising Sun Research. […]

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Premiere of a New fxguide RED Podcast: red centre

April 3, 2008

We had such a good reaction to our fxguidetv eps on the red camera that we have decided to do a RED podcast every 2 weeks. Join Jason Wingrove and Mike Seymour as they look at a summary of what’s happening in and around the RED Camera. We’ll cover updates – news of third party […]

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S4C

April 3, 2008

We are rarely presented with something truly new and inventive, but the work of Minivegas is really worthy of the term ‘groundbreaking’. For client S4C they have created a set of promos that automatically animates in realtime to the exact pitch of the presenter’s voice. Every day each promo is unique. This fully automated solution is both technically and creatively impressive, and also often a load of laughs.

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MPC to open in LA

April 1, 2008

MPC plans to open a Santa Monica-based visual effects facility in late 2008. MPC LA will initially focus on the U.S. commercials VFX market, and it will also provide a front-end presence to MPC’s Los Angeles-based studios features VFX business. MPC LA is to be headed by VFX executive producer Mark Tobin. Tobin was most […]

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