Dead Man's Chest Wins 6 VES Awards
(hollywoodreporter.com) "Pirates of the
Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest" dominated Sunday's fifth annual Visual
Effects Society awards, winning six trophies including the top prize
for outstanding visual effects in a visual effects-driven film.
"Pirates" also picked up prizes for single visual effect of the year,
created environment in a live-action film, compositing in a film,
models and miniatures in a film and animated character in a live-action
film.
In the top category, "Pirates" bested competition from "Charlotte's
Web" and "The Fountain." While the nominees do not mirror this year's
Academy Award noms for VFX -- "Pirates," "Superman Returns" and
"Poseidon" -- it should be noted that in three of the past four
years the winner of the VES' top prize did go on to win the Oscar.
The exception was in 2004 when the VES recognized "Harry Potter and the
Prisoner of Azkaban" and the Academy honored "Spider-Man 2."
An Oscar win for "Pirates" would end a dry spell for pioneering VFX
house Industrial Light + Magic. The company last brought home a VFX
Academy Award when "Forrest Gump" won the category in 1994. In recent
years, the category has been competitive with the emergence of such
companies as Digital Domain, Sony Pictures Imageworks and WETA Digital.
ILM visual effects supervisor John Knoll -- who was honored with the
"Pirates" VES win for VFX along with Jill Brooks, Hal Hickel and
Charlie Gibson -- said that central to the success of the VFX in
"Pirates" was the performance of the CG Davy Jones and crew. ILM used a
new technique -- iMoCap -- that allows the effects team to shoot the
actors' performances for the CG characters on set during the actual
shoot, rather than separately on a motion-capture stage.
In other categories, "Cars" took home the trophy for animated character
in an animated motion picture, "Casino Royale" was recognized for
special effects in a motion picture and "Flags of Our Fathers" was
honored for supporting visual effects in a motion picture.
In television, an episode of Sci Fi Channel's "Battlestar Galactica"
was honored for visual effects in a broadcast series, and TNT's
"Nightmares & Dreamscapes: Battleground" was recognized for visual
effects in a broadcast miniseries, movie or special. An episode of
NBC's "ER" topped the category for supporting visual effects in a
broadcast program.
The VES presented 21 awards for work in features, television,
commercials, music videos and video games on Sunday at the Kodak Grand
Ballroom at Hollywood & Highland. The society presented its
Lifetime Achievement Award to VFX pioneer Dennis Muren.
A complete list of winners follows:
http://www.vesawards.com/5thvesannounced.pdf
Arad Aannounces Ghost Rider 2
(moviehole.net) Nicolas Cage and Eva Mendes don’t
seem
to know anything about it – when both asked last week whether they have
signed on for sequels she’d heard nothing about one, and wasn’t
contracted to do one, whilst he wasn’t keen on even thinking about
doing another one until he saw how the public takes to this one – but
the studio sure seems to be convinced there’s a “Ghost Rider 2” in
their future.
MovieWeb reports that a press-event for the film, producer Avi Arad
announced
that talks are already underway to do the sequel. According to Arad,
make no buts about it, Nicolas Cage will definitely be back onboard to
reprise his role as Johnny Blaze.
Yeah… Ok… lets see those reviews and returns first.
Meanwhile, check out this good little article at CHUD, which tackles
the prickly subject of whether or not Sony has been
trying to prevent the press from seeing ‘Ghost Rider’ – which, if you
ask me, it sounds like they are (Wednesday night screening here; film
opens on the Thursday). Anyway, give it a read.
Experimental Chip A Model For Future
(iht.com) Intel on Monday was to demonstrate an
experimental computer chip
with 80 separate processing engines, or cores, that company executives
say provides a model for commercial chips that will be used widely in
standard desktop, laptop and server computers within five years.
The new processor, which the company first described as a teraflop
chip at a conference last year, was to be detailed in a technical paper
on the opening day of the International Solid States Circuits
Conference.
While the chip is not compatible with Intel's current chips, the
company said it had already begun design work on a commercial version
that would essentially have dozens or even hundreds of Intel-compatible
microprocessors laid out in a tiled pattern on a single chip.
The chip's design is meant to exploit a new generation of
manufacturing technology the company introduced last month. Intel said
it had changed the basic design of transistors in such a way that it
would be able to continue to shrink them to smaller sizes — offering
lower power and higher speeds — for at least a half-decade or more.
During a briefing last week, Nitin Borkar, one of the chip's
designers, showed an air-cooled computer based on the chip running a
simple scientific calculation at speeds above 1 trillion mathematical
calculations a second.
Such computing power matches the performance speed of the world's
fastest supercomputer of just a decade ago. However, Intel acknowledged
that the experimental chip was not a complete system necessary to do
real computing work.
During the demonstration, Justin Rattner, the company's chief
technology officer, showed several futuristic computing applications
that he said the new chip design would help make possible.
One of the applications was an automated video editing tool that
would, for example, allow a computer to create a digital sports
highlights video featuring a user's favorite players.
A second demonstration showed motion capture technology — a
technique widely used by the videogame industry to reproduce human
forms in action — relying only on digital video cameras and computers.
Conventional motion-capture technology requires a complex array of
sensors pinned to an actor's body and face to record a digital video
that can be used interactively.
In the future, Rattner said, it will be possible to blend
synthesized and real- time video.
"Imagine learning to dance with a virtual instructor," he said.
In leaping beyond the two- and four- core microprocessors that are
being manufactured by Intel and its chief PC industry competitor,
Advanced Micro Devices, Intel is following a design trend that is
sweeping the computing world.
Already, computer networking companies and the makers of PC graphics
cards are moving to processor designs that have hundreds of computing
engines, but only for special applications.
For example, Cisco Systems now uses a chip called Metro with 192
cores in its high-end network routers. Last November, Nvidia introduced
its most powerful graphics processor, the GeForce 8800, which has 128
cores. The Intel demonstration suggests that the technology may come to
dominate mainstream computing in the future.
The shift toward systems with hundreds or even thousands of
computing cores is both an opportunity and a potential crisis, computer
scientists said, because no one has proved how to program such chips
for many applications.
"If we can figure out how to program thousands of cores on a chip,
the future looks rosy," said David Patterson, a University of
California, Berkeley, computer scientist who is a co-author of one of
the standard textbooks on microprocessor design. "If we can't figure it
out, then things look dark."
Patterson is one of a group of Berkeley computer scientists who
recently issued a challenge to the chip industry, demanding that
companies like Intel begin designing processors with thousands of cores
per chip.
In an industry paper published last December, the scientists said
that without a software breakthrough to take advantage of hundreds of
cores, the industry, which is now pursuing a more incremental approach
of increasing the number of cores on a computer chip, is likely to hit
a wall of diminishing returns — where adding more cores does not offer
a significant increase in performance.
In the briefing last week, Rattner essentially endorsed the Berkeley
view, saying that the company believed that its teraflop chip was the
best way to solve a set of computing problems he described as
"recognition, mining and synthesis," computing techniques that use
artificial intelligence.
In addition to new kinds of computing applications, Rattner said,
the so- called network-on-chip teraflop processor would be ideal for
the kind of heterogeneous computing that is increasingly common in the
corporate world.
n addition to Jobs' role in granting options
at Pixar, federal
authorities are probing option practices at Apple, which has
acknowledged making two grants to him improperly dated.
Disney
disclosed in November that it had received inquiries from federal
regulators about possible option backdating at Pixar. The Burbank-based
entertainment giant has launched a probe of the issue.
A Disney spokesman didn't respond to questions Friday about the
investigation. Apple would not comment.
More than 180 companies are under investigation by the Securities and
Exchange Commission for questionable option-backdating practices. More
than a dozen CEOs have lost their jobs, including Bruce Karatz, former
head of Los Angeles-based builder KB Home.
A couple of executives have been hit with criminal charges related to
the scandal.
Options are rights to buy stock at a set price within a certain time
period. The price of stock to be bought using an option is generally
the stock's market price on the day the option is granted by the
company's board.
In their probes, regulators want to know
whether option grant dates were changed after the fact to make them
coincide with a stock's lowest price in a particular period. Doing so
could give executives instant paper gains on their options. It also
could inflate a company's earnings by understating
employee-compensation costs.
Backdating isn't necessarily illegal, but failing to disclose the
practice in a timely manner is.
Pixar is an unusual case because the company no longer exists. That
would make government or private lawsuits more complicated. No such
claims appear to have been filed.
Any cases would be weakened
by a jump in Disney shares since the Pixar deal, in part because of
Disney's aggressive Internet strategy. That would make it difficult for
Pixar shareholders who held their Disney stock to prove they had been
damaged by an overstatement of earnings.
Another complication
is the widely held belief that Disney overpaid for Pixar to shore up
its own weak animation unit and that the price was not based on Pixar's
reported earnings.
Pixar asserted in its sale documents to Disney that the option dates
were accurate.
As of late last month, Disney's investigators hadn't questioned several
Pixar directors who voted to approve the option grants, according to
people familiar with the inquiry and who asked not to be named because
of the confidential nature of the probe.
If they did talk to
the former Pixar directors, they might not have learned much. The board
didn't discuss the dates of the options and took minutes to approve the
grants, according to two people knowledgeable of the board discussions.
Instead, the directors relied on dates that appear to have been picked
by Pixar's management. Top executives such as Jobs might have relied on
financial and legal executives to choose those dates.
The
bottom line at Pixar, said attorney Claudia Allen, who advises
corporate boards on options matters, is that "the income was
overstated," through such option grants to the likes of Ed Catmull, the
former Pixar chief technology officer and now president of feature
animation at Disney, and John Lasseter, Pixar vice president for
creative development, who is chief creative officer at Disney's
animation and theme-park-design units.
BAFTA Winners: Pan's
Labyrinth, Happy Feet, Pirates 2
(forums.cgsociety.org)
-Pan's Labyrinth took 3 BAFTAs for best foreign language film, costume
design, and Make-up.
-Pirates of the Caribbean took the award for achievement in special
effects.
-Best animated feature film went to Happy Feet.
-Best animated short went to Ian Gouldstone's Guy 101
Venture Capitalist Strikes Gold With Digital
Domain
(palmbeachdailynews.com) If former Palm Beacher
John Textor is a bit "animated" this weekend, chalk it up to black-tie
festivities in Hollywood, where Wyndcrest Holdings LLC is basking in
the glow of pre-Academy Award kudos for digital wizardry.
Founder of Jupiter-based Wyndcrest, Textor is there to share
accolades for its subsidiary, Digital Domain, which created the special
effects for Flags of Our Fathers, and its companion Clint Eastwood
film, the Oscar-nominated Letters from Iwo Jima.
For Textor, it validates a decade of venture capital gambles with
fellow Wyndcrest principal Michael Bay, director of many Hollywood
box-office hits. Bad Boys and its sequel were partially shot in Palm
Beach County.
"I love shooting in Florida, and I would definitely shoot another
one. The (film) crews are quite strong," said Bay, who fondly recalled
staying at The Breakers during Bad Boys II.
Last year, Wyndcrest Holdings paid about $35 million to buy Digital
Domain based in Venice, Calif. Tonight, its artists will receive an
award for Outstanding Supporting Visual Effects in a Motion Picture.
The Visual Effects Society will salute work on Flags of Our Fathers by
Matthew Butler, a supervisor at Digital Domain.
Digital Domain was "a very smart buy. John found it. My hat's off to
him," said Bay, who has known Textor since they attended Wesleyan
University in Middletown, Conn. "My college roommate. Who'd 'a thunk
it? Digital Domain was an awesome acquisition," said Bay, who studied
film while Textor majored in economics.
It also was "a fast acquisition," because director Jim Cameron and
other sellers of Digital Domain had different priorities after Titanic,
said Bay, now co-chairman of the company with Textor. "We took
advantage of that and bought at a very good price."
Ex-Microsoft Corp. exec Carl Stork, a principal of Wyndcrest and a
former director of Lydian Trust Co., is CEO of Digital Domain.
"At a time when every top-grossing motion picture is relying on
digital visual effects to help tell compelling and entertaining stories
... Digital Domain represented a unique opportunity to invest," Stork
said in May.
Last fall, Textor recruited three veterans from Industrial Light
& Magic, an entity of mega-producer George Lucas. Mark Miller,
president of Digital Domain, was at ILM for 22 years, overseeing work
on Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest and two installments of
Jurassic Park. Cliff Plumer, once chief technology officer of Lucas
Films, now has that job at Digital Domain. Kim Libreri, vice president
of advanced strategy, was a key force behind all three Matrix films and
Poseidon.
Digital Domain is currently working on water effects for the next
Pirates of the Caribbean. And Plumer will lead Digital Domain's planned
expansion of its own tech resources, and for the convergence of films
and video games, Bay's priority.
"Digital Domain is a launching ground, a software company ... a game
platform. It is a huge market to get into, and it is eclipsing the film
industry," Bay said. "Some of these game companies have copied my
shots, shamelessly, from Pearl Harbor, to make games better
storytellers."
Bay would segue into games, because the profit is "billions and
billions."
Wyndcrest has The Foundry, based in the United Kingdom, under
contract. Its software creates finished visual effects for film. Textor
also attended a black-tie dinner Saturday where The Foundry received a
Scientific and Technical Achievement Award from the Academy of Motion
Picture Arts and Sciences.
The Oscar is for "design and development of the Furnace integrated
suite of software tools ... "
Eastwood chose Iceland to film much of Flags and Letters, an
advantage because Digital Domain did not have to work so hard to
"digitally remove reality ... there was nothing there," said Textor,
citing a scene in Letters where a Japanese commander peers from an
airplane window over the island of Iwo Jima.
The "before sequence" shows him inside a stationary plane on a
field. Digital Domain built a three-dimensional environment, "as
opposed to a background matte painting." The camera perspective moves
past the soldier and "through the window to the outside view ... with
moving ocean, island and mountain," Textor said. "A big reason for (the
award) was the water work. It's very difficult to get water moving in
different directions ... shore break with opposing backwash, and boat
wakes that run opposite waves."
Boats and soldiers in the film backgrounds are "motion-capable
animated objects," Textor said, citing a scene where American
"soldiers" run onto the beach. A few actors traveled to Iceland for the
shoot, but "we added thousands ... individually programmed so they had
'awareness' of their surroundings and did not run into each other."
Even in a rapid-action scene that races by a viewer, "The
subconscious of the untrained eye is still able to sense that something
doesn't look right ... so the coordination of these soldiers was really
important to prevent moviegoers from saying, 'That seemed really fake.'
Obviously, I think (Digital Domain) pulled it off," Textor said.
It also pulled off another first during the recent Golden Globe
Awards broadcast, introducing TV viewers to a fully digitized Orville
Redenbacher, the late popcorn guru. The resources used to achieve it
are usually reserved for movies, Digital Domain said.
Artists rendered a clay sculpture of Redenbacher's head from
existing footage, then scanned it to make a 3-D computer model. After
an actor in a ski mask created movements for "Orville," the actor's
head was erased, replaced by the model. The composite was 22 seconds of
animation in a 30-second spot.
Bay's time these days is all about Transformers: The Movie:
"The robots are so real, it's mind-blowing. The way they interact
with humans. You haven't seen anything like this in a movie. You've
seen dinosaurs, ships blowing up. But robots with eyes that glow? Their
eyes don't get moist, but they emote." It will be "a big movie this
summer," already the most downloaded trailer in movie history.
Having the emerging hub of the digital universe owned by a company
in Jupiter isn't far-fetched, Bay said.
"It doesn't matter where it's based in America. Everything is a few
hours away."
Looking down the road, Textor foresees building a screening room in
Jupiter for Wyndcrest's Digital Domain, "because we work on films that
everyone sees."
Source:
http://www.palmbeachdailynews.com/biz/content/business/bizWYNDCREST0211.html
Stan Winston Book Drops Animatronic Jaws
(spielbergfilms.com) If you’re a fan of the “Jurassic
Park” films, “A.I. Artificial
Intelligence,” or non-Spielberg films such as “The Terminator,"
“Aliens,” or “Predator” series, I urge you to avoid your local
bookstore. If you have to frequent a bookseller, by all costs, please
avoid the film section. In particular, be wary of a new hardcover tome
called “The Winston Effect: The Art and History of Stan Winston
Studio.” Should a fan of your interests get this book in your hands, I guarantee you
will not want to leave the bookstore without it, but you will be
leaving at least a few sawbucks lighter.
It is inevitable.
More: http://www.spielbergfilms.com/dreamworks/1306
What is the connection between Rakesh Roshan's "Krrish,"
last summer's big Bollywood hit, and Lucasfilm?
Both have taken advantage of the financial incentives offered by
to help it build a world-class media hub.
Highly developed
certainly does not have the lowest labor costs in ,
but it managed to attract Lucasfilm's first non-U.S. production
facility.
The branch is
now in production on several shows including
"Clone Wars." Both sides are looking for a transfer of skills --
Lucasfilm sees a motivated workforce with good generalist skills, while
Singapore is counting on the U.S. firm to provide film know-how and a
halo
effect, which brings in other foreign content players.
's first superhero movie, "Krrish," was brought to the
by a movie and TV fund backed by the Singapore Tourist Board.
Although
the plot was distinctly silly, "Krrish" did boast hunky Hrithik
Roshan and former Miss World Priyanka Chopra prancing around a downtown
that looked more modern and cleaner than ever. With
less than four hours'
flying time from Mumbai, the city-state is on the radar and within
reach of
millions of increasingly cosmopolitan middle-class Indian families.
The
difference between
and some other principalities and micro-states around the globe that
seek the
reflected glory of becoming a 21st-century communications hub is that
has a big plan. Its agencies are joined up and its ambitions are
founded on
more than casinos and oil -- though it has also greenlighted plans for
two of
the former and, surprisingly, has plenty of the latter.
"
has no oil of its own, but has become one of the world's leading
refiners," says the Media Development Authority's deputy director
Michael
Yap, who spearheads plans to build a leading gaming industry. "What we
are
good at is process control and management. And we are good at finding
business
niches -- competitive advantages in places where they should not be."
So
much for the philosophy. What the MDA, the STB and the Singapore Film
Commission do is develop layer upon layer of support mechanisms that
encourage
creativity in ,
if not by locals, then by foreign companies and foreign talent.
Significantly,
MDA chief Christopher Chia uses the phrase "made by "
not "made by
Singaporeans."
The
MDA was founded only four years ago, but already has seven initiatives
for the
movie industry. These are carefully stepped up from two script and
project
development programs through a couple of skills development schemes to
the
Scheme for Co-investment in Exportable Content (known by the
semi-acronym
SCREEN). Additionally, there are subsidies for use of state properties
and for
film talent on overseas promotional travel.
The
MDA's July announcement of a loan guarantee system around a slate of
films
packaged by Australian talent management company RGM had producers in
other
countries drooling.
With
Singaporean shingles as co-producers, RGM extended MDA's guarantee to
two films
that were already in advanced stages of production: Kate Bosworth and
Sigourney
Weaver starrer "The Girl in the Park" and 's "Pushing Up
Daisies," with Rose Byrne and Jay Baruchel. Intended dividend for
is development of production skills and legal structures.
Man
Shu Sum, the MDA's director of broadcast and film development, rules
out any
notion that his agency is too generous or that is a soft touch.
"We
invest small amounts of money, we do so on commercial terms and we take
equity," he says. "We are a nonprofit organization, but we expect to
be repaid in order to fund future projects."
Man
says that
is a very young country and its movie industry is in the early stages
of
growth. MDA is bankrolling close to 100 short films per year, and the
country
is making seven or eight features a year. It aims to build a
sustainable
industry producing 10-15 movies per annum, in three to five years'
time.
"What
you are seeing is a short-term push. Longer-term, nonstop funding would
be very
unhealthy," Man says.
Message
to other foreigners wanting to emulate Lucasfilm,
RGM or Roshan? Come and participate in 's movie
development while
MDA is still oiling the wheels.
Hollywood Special Effects Artist Convicted
(2fwww.cinematical.com) For those of you looking to hire
Alan Hedgcock to work on your film, you might notice his websites are
down (bandwith exceeded). This is either because all of Hollywood is
trying to access the pages, or because the authorities have taken them
down due to the fact that he has just been found guilty of conspiring
to rape two children. Hedgcock, along with two other men, were
sentenced to a total of 27 years in prison (Hedgcock's sentence is 8
years) for their plot to kidnap and rape two teenage sisters, as well
as for possession of child pornography.
Hedgcock's special effects makeup work can be seen in 28 Days Later
..., Kingdom of Heaven, First Knight, Black Hawk Down and The Upside of
Anger, among other films. He also apparently co-wrote the book Behind
the Mask: The Secrets of Hollywood's Monster Makers. Evidence
introduced at trial showed that it was Hedgcock who first suggested the
plan -- to abduct the two girls, aged 13 and 14 -- to his partner.
Together with this partner, he then detailed a plan to rape the girls
in a nearby woods. Hedgcock's partner broke down and alerted police of
the plans before they could be carried out. The two men were cleared on
charges of conspiracy to commit murder.
Source:
http://2fwww.cinematical.com/2007/02/05/hollywood-special-effects-artist-convicted-on-pedophile-charges/
(weblogs.variety.com) It was a happy night for
George Lucas and his Industrial Light & Magic crew at the 5th
annual Visual Effects Society Awards
at the Kodak Grand Ballroom. Not only did "Pirates of the Caribbean"
sweep six awards, and ILM's eight-time Oscar winner Dennis Muren get
the VES's lifetime achievement award, but the final awards were
presented by a former ILM hand, "Heroes" star Masi Oka, who thanked ILM
"for not letting me be a starving actor." Oka said afterwards that when
he worked in vfx, he used to get very excited when an actor would come
to see a shot, and now that he's on a show, even the old hands at ILM
treat him a little differently. "I wanted things to stay the same,
but..." he said.
The gathering included Lucas himself, who presented Muren's lifetime
kudo. Lucas said that he considers Muren a peer but that Muren's hair
had grown white from all the times Lucas had beaten him up to get what
he wanted. On which movie did he beat him up the worst? "The first
'Star Wars,'" said Lucas after a pause. "I beat him up pretty bad on
that one."
Also in attendance were "Pirates" helmer Gore Verbinski, vfx legend
Phil Tippett, Pixar's Andrew Stanton, JibJab's Evan Spiridellis and
even Apple computer co-founder Steve Wozniak. "Pirates" vfx supervisor
John Knoll talked Macintoshes with Woz, and later told Variety
that "(Wozniak) is a hero of mine from way back. My first exposure to a
real live computer was in 1978. My Dad bought an Apple II and it
changed my life." Woz, for his part, said "I'm almost trembling" to
meet so many vfx pros. "Their movies have affected my life more than
the computer has affected theirs," he said.
Muren and the older presenters, including Lucas and Landis, noted
how different the huge and elegant gathering was from their early days,
when there was no visual effects industry, only a handful of "special
effects" people who shared their work in hole-in-the-wall theaters.
Presenter Landis got perhaps the biggest reaction of the night,
noting
that when he started in movies, most exploitation films were pretty
good until the monster or spaceship showed up. Now, he said, the
effects are brilliant; "the difference is the movies are shit."
Afterward Tippett sought out Landis to call the speech "music to my
heart." Landis, tongue firmly in cheek, said of Tippett "This guy's an
asshole, but he's one of the most brilliant guys I know. It doesn't
make up for him being an asshole, but he truly is extraordinary."
Source:
http://weblogs.variety.com/variety_on_the_town/2007/02/effects_experts.html
Ubisoft Tries CGI Films - 2000 New Hires Expected
(psp.ign.com) Ubisoft today
announced a significant expansion of its operations in
Quebec, Canada. The company is looking to boost the number of team
members in the province from 1,600 to 3,000 over the next six
years,
exceeding previous objectives by an additional 1,000 jobs.
Where will all this new talent be used? There are two main objectives.
Firstly, the company is looking to create 500 new videogame related
positions by 2013, and secondly, Ubisoft will create a new production
centre that will focus on CGI cinema content. The new studio will
produce short films based on games in Ubisoft's portfolio, including an
eight minute Assassin's Creed short. The CGI studio should have 500
staff members by 2013.
Ubisoft's Chief Executive Officer Yves Guillemot commented that "Video
game production has progressively moved closer and closer to film and
television production and this convergence will only intensify in the
coming years. This natural evolution is accompanied by revolutionary
changes in online distribution channels via the explosion of free and
paid-for digital content. Today's launch of a studio specializing in
digital film creation will allow Ubisoft to be a pioneer in the domain
for the years to come."
This is an aggressive move by Ubisoft, further underlining their
commitment to videogames and producing cutting edge content in the
region, a commitment that has born plenty of fruit over the last
decade, with Ubisoft Montreal now regarded as one of the top
development studios in the world. Yannis Mallat, the CEO of Ubisosoft
Montreal, commented that "With this announcement, we are one step
closer to reaching our goal of making Ubsisoft's Montreal studio the
most important center for video game development in the world, and
especially to reinforce Quebec's position as a reference in the
creation of digital entertainment".
The expansion will also be strongly supported by both the Quebec and
Canadian governments.
VFX Success Has "Snowball" Effect on
Australia & New Zealand
(shootonline.com) A steady stream of feature film
and
commercial-related production developments continues to keep Australia
and New Zealand in the spotlight. Notably these gorgeous regions have
been making news in the visual effects arena, most recently with the
nominations announcement for the 5th Annual Visual Effects Society
(VES) Awards, which will be presented Feb. 11 at the Kodak Grand
Ballroom in Hollywood.
More:
http://www.shootonline.com/go/news-view.ev-web2-289062-1170860466-2.Border-Watch--Australia-and-New-Zealand.html
Awards
(variety.com) The film biz's
tech community saluted an important
environmental initiative and heard the promise of major changes to come
Saturday night at the Academy's Scientific and Technical Awards at the
Beverly Wilshire.
Maggie Gyllenhaal hosted, and the thesp struggled
with the technical jargon and her too-weak contact lenses but won over
the crowd anyway, finishing up by saying "I suspect this is a joke you
sci-tech guys play on an unsuspecting actress."
Ray Feeney, a
much-honored visual effects and technology specialist who took home the
sole Oscar statuette of the evening, the Gordon E. Sawyer award, told
the gathering that now that most post-production has gone digital, the
next step is digital production.
That transition, he said, will
be "as important a change as the introduction of sound or the shift
from black-and-white to color cinematography."
A special award
saluted the industrywide effort to shift from silver-based to cyan-dye
analog sound tracks on release prints, a change that had an important
environmental impact.
Speaking for the 12 honorees, Ioan Allen of
Dolby told the group that the new process saved 40 million gallons of
water a year and prevented the use of 750 tons of chemicals annually.
"Our industry has achieved something significant for the good of the
earth," he said. "Be proud."
Longtime
vfx branch chief Richard Edlund was saluted with the John A. Bonner
medal for service to the Academy.
Edlund said that except for those
times when he's won Oscars (He's won two for visual effects), he's
enjoyed the Sci-Tech Awards better.
"I think we have more fun
with our friends," he said. But on reflecting on the press, the
photographers, and the beautiful actresses on the red carpet, he said
"Come to think of it, the Oscars aren't so bad after all."
There
were three notable themes for the awards. Kudos were presented to
several teams working on archival solutions for digital post-production
and to several wireless lens control systems. In CGI visual effects,
there were awards for 3-D modeling
Acad prexy Sid Ganis
complimented the kudofest's new digs at the Beverly Wilshire and put in
a plug for the Acad's museum, which is still on the drawing board.