thanx
its kinda like a sonic wave
Volcom Embraces Creativity of Young Filmmakers with Sponsorship of Youth Film Event
The Festival is currently accepting film submissions from student filmmakers for its annual spring youth cinema celebration. The free event will spotlight films produced by filmmakers 18 years old and younger. Through the exhibition of youth produced media, the event will provide young people a forum for creativity and freedom of expression. In the past, the Festival has welcomed notable celebrity chairs to host the event.
The event will be sponsored by Volcom, one of Orange Countys hottest action sports brands and maker of cutting edge surf, skate and snow clothing, accessories, Volcom Entertainment and Veeco Productions. As presenters of the showcase, Volcom will present filmmaker awards recognizing artistic excellence in filmmaking.
The competition is open to U.S. and international filmmakers 18 years and younger. Filmmakers can submit live action or animated short films of all genres, including drama, romance, comedy, documentary, action sports, experimental, musical and science fiction. Individual filmmakers, film groups or school classes may enter their films. Filmmakers can submit through www.withoutabox.com or by downloading an entry form on the Festivals web site.
The 2009 Newport Beach Film Festival will run April 23 through April 30, 2009 and will spotlight over 350 films from over 35 countries. Visit: www.NewportBeachFilmFest.com
for information.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lee-st…_b_158834.html
If you haven’t seen Benjamin Button and hate spoilers, stop reading now.
Still here? Okay…
The Holy Grail of computer animation has long been to create a computer generated human character that fools the viewer into thinking they are watching a real person. I’ve been an animation and visual effects professional for about twenty years, I’ve seen David Fincher’s film The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and I’ll tell you this; the effects team at Digital Domain did it.
They get the Grail and very possibly this year’s Academy Award for visual effects.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not dumb. I KNEW I was looking at visual effects. A bunch of them. I figured there was some 3D animation, some bits with Brad Pitt in makeup and some composite shots that combined different elements. I was wrong.
Until I spoke to the film’s Character Supervisor – Digital Domain’s Steve Preeg – I had no idea that after a small piece at the beginning, the entire first section of the film had zero real Brad. That’s 0.0% percent real Pitt for an incredible 52 minutes. No Pitt in makeup, no 2D compositing of real footage. All computer generated performance while Pitt’s Benjamin Button character appears to be in his 80s, 70s and 60s.
Preeg is a vet of films with pretty impressive character CGI work, like Lord Of The Rings parts II and III, Final Fantasy and King Kong. Preeg, Visual Effects Supervisor Eric Barba, and a few others at DD worked with director Fincher for a couple of years before the film started shooting to develop the techniques used in the final movie.
After I’d realized I’d been tricked by Button’s digital performance, I spoke to a number of other working visual effects people and almost all of them were fooled, too. The ones that weren’t fooled personally knew people who’d worked on the production, so they went into the movie knowing the trick they were seeing.
And so that’s why I gave the spoiler warning. Once you know it’s computer generated, you’ll watch the film with different eyes. Maybe you’re the kind of person who loudly brags to their friends, "See that?!? He twitched a little weird there and the head movement didn’t exactly match the shoulder! OBVIOUSLY all CGI. Big whoop, I could do it on my laptop!"
But if you do that, then you’re probably the kind of person who makes kids cry in the line for Santa with ‘the truth’ or who bugs their pals with theories about how Penn and Teller do their ‘Bullet Catch’. In other words, your friends secretly hate you and you’re going to hell or being reincarnated as a bug or whatever negative long term fate your spiritual system allows.
But for the rest of us who like to suspend our disbelief, the Digital Domain team may have pulled off the film illusion of the year in Benjamin Button.
For a technical article that goes into the specifics of how the effects in the film were done, read this excellent interview with Eric Barba by FXGuide.com
I’m a college student who is having an extremely hard time getting any meaningful information on how the vfx industry works. I’m trying to put together a paper on how well the big name studios do (profit, bargaining power with clients, etc.), while also talking to the rise of outsourcing of vfx/animation work to India.
For India, I am wondering how they price the contracts, ie. how much below US market price do they have to go to get the work. Can they make money just doing a lot of the fairly unsophisticated work? Are directors open to working with Indian firms? Are there sucess stories? I can find a little information about some Indian firms and US firms that now have a back office in India, but information on how these companies function is very hard to find. I can understand what the Indian vfx companies do as far as projects, but I have not understood how the business/relationships are run.
Any help would be tremendously appreciated. I am barely treading water with what is accessible on the internet.
I am wondering which On-Air graphics software is regarded as the most popular one in the TV industry. I only know Avid’s Deko …
Thanks.
The final submission deadline for the tenth annual Newport Beach Film Festival is January 30, 2009.
Be part of an amazing line-up of films Dont miss the opportunity to meet other filmmakers, industry professionals and distributors.
Entry Fees are:
Feature length: $75
Short: $60
Youth: $25
Check out some of the highlights from previous years at the Festival:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2iPH8M3Zuw
For more information and to submit to the Festival visit our website at: www.NewportBeachFilmFest.com
Thank you for your consideration of the Newport Beach Film Festival
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A. during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
