Pirates Plunders VES Awards, Cars Wins Annies, Digital Domain Owner Proud...

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/

Visual Effects Experts Salute Their Own

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

Academy Hands Out Tech Achievements 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.