With deadlines for the films worldwide release looming, I, Robot visual effects supervisor John Nelson spoke to Fxguide on a busy Sunday afternoon in Los Angeles. We also caught up with lead visual effects house’s Digital Domains Andy Jones & Erik Nash, and WETA’s Joe Letteri, on the push to finish one of the summers biggest effects films.

They were 18 people, trapped against the odds, with little or no hope of reinforcement. For five months they laboured, with minimal resources, and that’s just the visual effects team! FXG caught up with Visual Effects Supervisor Eric Leven about the new Starship Troopers 2.

Cars don’t tend to be small enough to race around the inside of watch faces, but Jonathan Dearing puts them there anyway. Dearing is a visual effects artist at Digital Pictures Sydney, and he recently road tested boujou bullet.

Van Helsing, directed by Stephen Sommers, spins an amazing tale of adventure and suspense. With help from Vicon motion capture, ILM delivers a stunning set of familiar horror figures and a universe of rich, imaginative visuals including Dracula, Frankenstein and the Wolf Man.

The Fire/Smoke part of the NAB users group showed a lot of cool new features. Similar in flow to the effects demonstration, the editing part of the show was hosted by Discreet’s Stephane Labrie and Brian Reid from TOYBOX Toronto. Find out what’s coming up in the next releases of the discreet editing products.

The Sunday before NAB was a busy one, with fxguide live2 starting out early in the afternoon and followed up by the discreet users group meeting. The fxguide live event was once again a big success and based upon what was shown afterwards at the discreet event, fxguide live3 will be packed with new features to cover. A special thanks goes out to discreet and sgi, who kindly sponsored the event. Without their support, the event would not have been possible.