Increasingly there is a move from shooting mirror balls to shooting wide angle lens shots for both texture reflection maps and HDRs. In this exclusive interview we explore the new Stitcher 5.5 and hear about the new plans for an HDR pipeline, from the team at REALVIZ headquaters in France.

Last night Hunt Angels won 3 Australian Film Institute awards including Best Visual Effects. On the podium to receive the award was fxphd Professor Rose Draper and fxguide co-founder Mike Seymour.

SWAY Studio has just contributed to the new U2 and Green Day music video entitled “The Saints are Coming.” SWAY integrated many photo-real CG elements including Harrier jets, Apache helicopters, Stealth Bombers and tanks into existing news footage from Hurricane Katrina. The result is a thought-provoking and emotional video that shows what it might have looked like had the government responded differently to the disaster.

fxguide (well 2/3 of it) are on the road this month, talking in London at CVMP and in India at CGtantra 3Dec.
John Montgomery and Mike Seymour will be in Europe and India in the coming weeks – and we’d love to met up with fxguide readers and share a beer or two.

xyz studios recently needed to paint the town yellow for a Sensis yellow pages ad. Miniature motor bikes drive down the gutter and footpaths of an inner-city street, and in so doing, painting the world a handdrawn yellow. The spot is interesting for the 3D overlay and the need to often rebuild all the live action in 3D. The workflow highlights the recent move towards both shortrun freelance teams and the use of Shake since its price drop.

The first major motion picture created without using film or tape. Andreas Wacker was the tech guru and Angus Wall the editor on the David Fincher film “Zodiac”. In this podcast we talk with them about the innovative process used to create this feature.

Sure…IBC was several weeks ago, but we’ve got some more stuff we found interesting in the show. We cover items such as the RED camera, Gridiron Software’s AE plugin Nucleo Pro, announcements from The Foundry, as well as a few more bits on wiretap apps for Autodesk products. This week’s podcast contains interviews with RED camera principals as well as Blackmagic Design’s Grant Petty.

Double Negative has just completed Flyboys. Shot on Genesis – Double Negative managed to pull off an astonishing schedule to deliver some amazing digital environments, air to air combat and period drama for the first World War I aviation film in over 40 years.

In light of Ascent Media’s decision to only buy da Vinci colour correctors, for transfering and DI – this week we speak to Erik Rogers at Company 3 in LA.