Academy invites 178 to Membership

June 17, 2011

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced the list of people invited to join as Academy Members for 2011. The list includes thirteen animators, two art directors, nine cinematographers, nine editors and twelve people in the visual effects category.

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Retro spotlight: A.I. Artificial Intelligence

June 16, 2011

Tony Hudson, who worked at ILM as the CG Model and Creature Supervisor on A.I. Artificial Intelligence, outlines some of his favorite memories from the experience.

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VES 2.0 is here and ready to lead

May 25, 2011

The Visual Effects Society (VES) today released an open letter to “VFX Artists And The Entertainment Industry At Large” announcing VES 2.0, we talk with Jeffrey A. Okun, Chair of VES.

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Dutch Tilt – how much should you be paid?

May 25, 2011

We spoke to Jules van Den Steenhoven of the NSC about their new iPhone & iPad app that maps global salaries for production and post professionals. Some things like this have been tried in the past, none it would seem as successfully as the NSC’s app is proving to be. But what was their approach to gathering this information and how current is it? Does it take into account month to month currency fluctuation? And just why is this being done by the NSC anyway?

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Bear of a time at Cannes

May 23, 2011

Director Nash Edgerton along with producer Lauren Edwards have just completed a week at Cannes with the short film Bear.

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Digital Domain buys site license of KATANA

May 19, 2011

The Foundry announced today that Digital Domain has purchased a site license for KATANA, making them the first customer of the product. We caught up with Bill Collis for an update on this news as well as more info about open source and support of the recent deep compositing spec that’s part of OpenEXR 2.0

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Pixar’s Chris Ford on RenderMan Pro Server 16.0

May 19, 2011

We talk to RenderMan Business Director Chris Ford about some of the key features of the new RenderMan Pro Server 16.0 release.

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Mirada dreams of black for ROME

May 18, 2011

We thought we’d point you to some of the latest work from Mirada, the new studio collaboration between director Guillermo del Toro, director Mathew Cullen, cinematographer Guillermo Navarro and executive producer Javier Jimenez.

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Kessler Motion control slider : the rc bonus extra

May 11, 2011

In this bonus RC video, we speak to Eric Kessler about the new Motion Control Slider – first shown at NAB 2011.

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Cooke Panchros: the rc bonus extra

May 9, 2011

We caught up with Les Zellan from Cooke Lens. Cooke recently we introduced the Panchros (or Mini-S4s as Les jokes). We talk to Les and test drove the lens.

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FMX 2011 – Day Four

May 9, 2011

The final day of FMX 2011 included a Harry Potter VFX tribute and presentations on animated films and games. We also talk to Proof’s Ron Frankel about the concept of stereo previs.

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FMX 2011 – Day Three

May 6, 2011

More impressive talks punctuated day three at FMX 2011. We take a look at some of the highlights and sit down with ILM’s Tim Alexander and Patrick Cohen to discuss Rango.

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FMX 2011 – Day Two

May 5, 2011

Day two at FMX 2011 brought a major announcement from Weta Digital and The Foundry, along with some great presentations on virtual characters. We also speak to Molinare’s Dayne Cowan about The King’s Speech.

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FMX 2011 – Day One

May 4, 2011

A round up of our first day at FMX 2011 in Stuttgart.

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Congrats to our HP EliteBook Winner

April 22, 2011

We got some great entries for our HP EliteBook giveaway, but there can only be one winner. And that winner is Chris Hocking, whose “server room shower” took top place with an inventive install to get the job done in pinch. Click through for more images as well as some impressions of running The Foundry’s Mari on the EliteBook.

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Q&A with Ross Shain from Imagineer

April 6, 2011

As NAB approaches, we’re starting to mark the showfloor map of products we’d like to check out. We’ve always been big fans of the tech behind Imagineer’s products over the years, so we thought we’d get a bit of an update from Imagineer’s Ross Shain. We chat about how the company started, the expanding user base, and how the development of the never-released mogul effected the company.

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Rob Legato Special Edition

March 25, 2011

We had such a wonderful time interviewing Rob Legato for fxguidetv that we filmed a lot more than we could possibly use in fxguidetv alone. So here for fxinsider members only, we have an additional “part 2” of that interview (with some real treats). Rob discusses shot design on Apollo 13, use of stereo on […]

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Storm & Nuke on set with Space Digital

March 17, 2011

The Foundry released STORM 1.0 recently, but it’s already been widely in use in production during the beta process. Manchester-based Space Digital utilized the app along with Nuke, some Apple TVs, and Dropbox to create a useful on-set workflow for a recent Castrol engine oil project.

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Introducing Silverdraft Mobileviz

March 17, 2011

Silverdraft invited fxguide to tour Mobileviz, a 53 foot trailer with some serious and unique tech on board. Join us as we find out what users plan to do with 30 teraflops, 1536 cores and 20TB of SSD storage in a mobile configuration.

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Carlyle Group acquires stake in The Foundry

March 15, 2011

The Carlyle Group announced that it has acquired a significant majority stake in The Foundry, from Advent Venture Partners and other stakeholders. What does this mean for facilities and artists using the company’s software? In an fxguide exclusive, Mike Seymour caught up with Foundry CEO Bill Collis to get the scoop.

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Storm Launch

March 11, 2011

Last night The Foundry hosted a launch event for STORM at RED Studios in Hollywood. STORM is a software solution aimed at improving RED workflow for on set, review and finish. The event focused on people who have been using the beta version in production sharing their real world experience. No event at RED would […]

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Flame 2012 New Feature Videos

March 2, 2011

fxguidetv covers the new 2012 Flame Premium release from Autodesk. But there’s way more in the new releases than we had time to show.. We have over two hours of additional and unedited overview videos with Product Designer Philippe Soeiro from Autodesk.

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STORM 1.0 Now Shipping

March 1, 2011

After a winter of beta testing, The Foundry have released the first version of STORM, their digital workflow app for RED files. It’s now available for purchase on The Foundry’s web site for 375USD/250GBP/300EUR. Click through for the full press release.

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Today was EPIC

March 1, 2011

Today the rollout for the new RED EPIC-M continued and fxphd was there to get one of the very few cameras now out in the wild. Jeff Heusser and Mike Seymour spent the day at RED, not only running through the new 5K EPIC and it’s advanced new features, but also looking at a few new features still in development.

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Life with the EliteBook: DreamColor Calibration

February 28, 2011

The previous “life with” article was an overview of the DreamColor display and why it’s especially suited for our field. In this installment, we examine the HP-branded software and hardware used to calibrate the monitor and ensure the colors you’re viewing are accurate.

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Luma shows True Grit with the Coen Brothers

February 22, 2011

With over 350 visual effects shots, True Grit represents the fourth collaboration between Luma Pictures and directors Joel and Ethan Coen. We take a look at some of Luma’s key invisible effects for the film.

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The future of Furnace on Flame

February 14, 2011

Recently on Flame-news it was reported that the Foundry would no longer fix bugs or develop for Furnace on Flame.

We spoke exclusively to the Foundry to find out if Furnace was “end of life” on Flame

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Skulley Effects freezes fire for Stone Sour

February 14, 2011

Skulley Effects was behind the frozen moment work in ‘Hesitate’, a music video for Stone Sour that caught our eye. We talk to senior visual effects artist and Skulley owner Culley Bunker.

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Life with the EliteBook: DreamColor Overview

February 10, 2011

One of the attractive aspects of the EliteBook is its DreamColor display, which provides outstanding color response and calibration capabilities which are suited towards film and video pros. In the second of our multi-part series, we take a look at DreamColor and review some of the tech details behind it.

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Stargate crashes The Event

February 10, 2011

In the second episode of NBC series The Event, a plane once headed to kill the President mysteriously emerges from a wormhole only to crash-land in the desert, care of VFX from Stargate Studios. Lead compositor Diego Galtieri discusses the crash seen in the episode, which received a VES Award nom in the Outstanding Visual Effects in a Broadcast Series category.

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