Based on a true story, “The Heart of the Earth” is an epic film that takes place in a late 1800´s mining town at the edge of the world’s biggest open air mine. This film didn’t come without its challenges. The first was that the town ceased to exist in 1923, the solution was of course visual effects, done in Madrid headed by Alex Ortoll.

Fox presents a new TV show “Drive” featuring visual effects by Zoic Studios. We spoke to co-founder Loni Peristere about work on this and the companies amazing run in cutting edge episodic television effects from CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, Buffy to Battlestar Gallactica, 24 and now Drive.

“All the characters in this book are fictitious, and anyone finding a resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, should proceed no further…” that’s the disclaimer from the novel The Number 23, the centerpiece of the movie from Director Joel Schumacher. We talk with Raymond Gieringer at Intelligent Creatures to discuss the film.

We have all the news on the new CS3 Adobe news including: Public Betas of Premiere CS3 and After Effects CS3 at NAB, pricing, and film and production implications and improvement. John Montgomery takes a first look at CS3 Production Premium Bundle, going behind and beyond today’s Press Releases.

With the announcement of the price list and the looming release of the first RED cameras, we speak to Ted Schilowitz, Leader of the Rebellion at the RED Digital Cinema Company about NAB, RED CODE RAW, the various options you can buy for the camera as you start planning for a 4k workflow.

Far from being muddy, Mudbox 3D organic modeling software is clear crisp, and snappy to use. Released in Dec 06, Mudbox is already experiencing enormous respect from facilities worldwide for its intuitive UI and approach to organic modeling. If you’ve ever used Photoshop layers, you’ll love Mudbox and its natural way of building natural models.

In the 2nd part of our series on 300 we speak to Hydraulx co-founder Greg Strause about their amazing 3D work on 300. In the podcast we also get his first impressions of Alien vs Predator 2, having just come off set from co-directing the film. Our online article also features Grant Freckelton, Visual Effects Art Director.

fxguide has learned that The Foundry has acquired Nuke from Digital Domain. We speak exclusively to Foundry R&D Head, Bill Collis, from his home in the UK. Updated with information from The Foundry. (Story updated Mar 12 22:10 GMT)

In this podcast we talk to two of the companies behind some of the shots in Night at the Museum. When we heard that Dick Van Dyke was a not only a fan but VFX hobbyist, we could not resist asking the guys about what it was like to work with someone who started by dancing through a cartoon with Walt, and recently diced with death with a T REX, we also cover bubble gum rocks and ‘real’ miniatures !