If you haven't seen it yet, you'll have to take our word for it — U23D is something special. Debra Kaufman visited 3ality in Burbank to get insight into why this digital-3D concert film is a unique experience. She's got the story on the challenges of the shoot itself, as well as the special sauce that went into post-production.... »
For “Car in Motion,” a new :60 Pontiac spot that aims to dramatize the connection felt between a man and the cars he has driven, Brickyard VFX CG Supervisor and Lead CG Artist Robert Sethi worked with director Filip Engstrom to flesh out a barebones treatment. The previs process — where decisions were made about how the spot should flow from idea to idea — was key to ensuring a smooth shoot on a tight deadline. F&V talked to Sethi about the advantages of advance planning.... »
The massive number of tapes resulting from multiple 18-camera shoots of U2’s 3-hour "Vertigo" concert tour was just the beginning. The production attempted to clone the original tapes as quickly as possible. Then the edit began. And 3ality Digital Systems got into gear to solve some of stereo filmmaking's most persistent problems.... »
Rock groups don't get any bigger than U2, which brings along a thunderously entertaining stage show wherever it goes. Stereoscopic 3D production company 3ality traveled with the Dublin lads to several concert dates in Mexico and South America. What was the big idea? To make a 3D concert movie as intense and explosive as the band's performance.... »
Creating the visual effects for the feature film Tales of the Riverbank, based off the popular 1960s British television series, required complex compositing of furry puppets shot on bluescreen, some CG set extension and characters and an intensive DI, all coordinated by Prime Focus London and its Indian sister companies in Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad and Parel.... »
With one film headed to Sundance and the other in wide release this month, filmmaker Alex Gibney considers the price of objectivity, the burden of technology and the demand for documentaries in such politically charged times.... »
Co-directors Andrew Hunt and Jason Lausche finished sixth in the reality-show film contest On The Lot. Before joining the show they had been producing promos for the Home Shopping Network (SjopNBC). For these national spots on a tight budget they developed a formula for getting a film look with HD cameras. When applying to be on the reality show On The Lot, they used the same technique to shoot their shorts that eventually got them on the show. We spoke with Hunt about this formula and the experience ob being on the reality show. ... »
For the launch of Honda’s Aquatrax F-15X, Robb Hart and Martin Brinkerhoff were charged with conceiving and co-directing a two-minute piece that would be projected on multiple large screens to show off the thrill and excitement of the craft. What they came up with was shooting super-slow motion with camera movement. ... »
Jerry Bruckheimer likes ‘em big and loud. Movies, that is, and National Treasure: Book of Secrets is expected to meet expectations in terms of dB and SPL. But within that cacophonous jungle of sound is plenty of room for nuance, says George Watters II, supervising sound editor at Buena Vista Studios, where the film was edited.
The setting of the $250 million The Golden Compass, based on a novel by Philip Pullman, is an alternate world where humans’ spirits are embodied in animals — talking “daemons” that follow them everywhere — and polar bears are ferocious armored creatures with a kingdom of their own in the arctic north.
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The word on the street is: see Beowulf in 3D. So F&V talked with two of the people responsible: Sony Pictures Imageworks’ 3D mavens, Buzz Hayes, senior visual effects producer, and Rob Engle, stereographer and digital fx supervisor.... »
As cable channels get more adventurous with original programming, the scope of VFX jobs for TV is expanding dramatically. For the recent six-hour Sci-Fi Channel miniseries Tin Man — a loose contemporary adaptation of L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz — Vancouver VFX shop Anthem FX ramped up production to crank out no fewer than 1500 FX shots for delivery in the HDCAM SR 4:4:4 format.... »
Generally, when an Internet site dedicated to information on "scene releases" (read: pirated material being widely distributed online) receives email from someone involved in the movie industry, it's a lawyer sending a cease-and-desist notice or worse. But when the administrator of one such site got an email from producer Eric D. Wilkinson, it was full of sincere, if grudging, gratitude for the role of "the scene" in raising awareness of his movie.... »
For Scourge, a low-budget horror film with the tag line “you are what it eats,” cinematographer Corey Robson employed a pair of JVC ProHD camcorders to capture high-quality, high-definition images — his producer's GY-HD250 was the main camera, and his own HDV GY-HD100 served as B camera — and then broke out a copy of Apple’s Final Cut Studio and Color to edit and finish the movie. We talked to him about the good, the bad, and the buggy.... »
Todd Haynes' I'm Not There is no ordinary biopic. Inspired by the life and music of Bob Dylan, it uses six different actors, including Cate Blanchett and an 11-year-old African-American boy, to portray him at various stages of his life. Brilliantly edited, I'm Not There adds up to more than the sum of its parts — it honors Dylan's legacy while suggesting the flaws of rock music's myths of sincerity and authenticity.... »
