Hasta La Motion!

I frequently receive calls from artists and students wondering about the stability of the visual effects industry during global economic change. A quick internet search for “vfx layoffs” turns up documents from 1997, 2001, 2003 and so on, indicating a predictable flow of company-specific downsizing and regrowth that is natural for this industry, considering the scale and ambition of most visual effects projects and the shift in the last 10 years to contract positions.

People can’t get enough of movies and television, especially in a recession. In North America during the Great Depression, film production was strong, not only due to advances in technology such as “the talkies” and color film along with widespread distribution, but also due to the underlying urge during tough times for people to escape through entertainment.

"The content of the motion picture was designed for escape, the majority reflecting the tastes of tired or jaded adults seeking a never-never land of luxury and melodrama, sex and sentiment." (1)

In 2008, in the top 20 domestic (US) box office statistics, the clear winners were VFX-driven movies Iron Man and The Dark Knight, and animated features Wall-E and Kung Fu Panda. (2) The tired and jaded have spoken.

Ticket sales went up last year; Variety reports that the "Box Office Resists Recession" with domestic ticket sales rising to $9.63 billion US between Jan. 2, 2008 and Jan. 2, 2009, just edging out the previous year’s total of $9.62 billion. (3)

The Vancouver Sun reports that “North Americans will drink, dance and distract themselves through the worst of it.“ Any way people can escape, they will,” says Gerald Celente CEO of The Trends Research Institute.” (4)

In Vancouver in the last few years, we’ve seen international companies Deluxe and Technicolor invest in Rainmaker and Command Post; Frantic Films of Winnipeg partnering with Prime Focus and opening offices in Vancouver and LA. We’ve also seen an influx of companies from the US, London or Toronto opening a branch in Vancouver, such as MPC, Stargate Digital, Zoic Studios, Entity VFX, Spin VFX and Gray Matter VFX.

Ivan Hayden, VFX Supervisor for Supernatural Season IV and President of the Visual Effects Association of BC, comments, "With over 30 local VFX Houses offering up the full amenities for Visual Effects between them, and a healthy freelance talent pool that can augment any production’s needs, BC is stepping onto the global VFX stage. We are seeing more and more big budget projects looking North to take advantage of our cooperative community, skilled talent pool and tax incentives. Our VFX community is as healthy as ever, in this regard."

Vancouver VFX shops are now becoming first-string or lead VFX houses on films, a new trend that validates the talent and positive economic results of producing VFX in Vancouver. Image Engine worked on The Hulk last year, and along with Orphan and New in Town has a major Peter Jackson produced film in production (District 9); CIS Vancouver has recent credits on Changeling and Twilight and just received the "Outstanding Supporting Visual Effects in a Motion Picture" award for Changeling from the Visual Effects Society.

Says CIS Digital Effects Supervisor Geoffrey Hancock, "We’re working on an exciting project that pushes our past crowd work to new heights. For this we are expanding into another building nearby to meet the demands of artist workspace and render farm expansion. CIS has a couple of other projects in house like Angels & Demons, Tooth Fairy, G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra. It’s bound to be a busy year."

The Embassy added feature VFX to their strong commercial practice by providing VFX shots for Iron Man; Frantic Films completed Stereo VFX on Journey to the Centre of the Earth and worked on The X Files: I Want to Believe and The Forbidden Kingdom, Artifex is busy with Defendor and Spin VFX is working on Psych and gearing up for another feature this spring.

VFX Supervisor & Director John Gajdecki comments, "We’re working on The Hole, a psychological suspense feature that is shooting in Stereo in Vancouver and LA. The VFX are being completed both in Vancouver and in LA; I’m heading up the Vancouver half and Robert Skotak (Titanic and Aliens) heading up the LA half. We are moving away from our long-standing relationship with Digital Fusion and moving to NUKE for 2D and sticking with Maya for 3D. Also, we are the first to use the REVIEW features of Frame Cycler in Stereo Mode and are Alpha testing a new stereo projection system that is very slick indeed. The economic recession is not felt as heavily in Canada as in other countries due in large part to sound government policies, and as always we are as busy as we need to be."

The next few years will prove to be very interesting in all aspects of the economy and filmmaking. Ground-breaking new technologies continue to develop, creative boundaries continue to get pushed. No matter what the economy, a talented, committed artist can find a way to contribute. Keep going to the movies!

Sources:

1.http://xroads.virginia.edu/~ug02/FIL…epression.html
2.http://www.boxofficereport.com/ybon/2008gross.shtml
3.http://www.variety.com/article/VR111…ryid=1082&cs=1
4.http://www.vancouversun.com/Entertai…178/story.html

February 09 topic – The Global Warming

Win d’artiste Matte Painting book by http://www.ballisticpublishing.com/, NVIDIA Quadro, Magazine Subscriptions, TShirts and more.

Judged by – Tiberius Viris , Frederic St-Arnaud, Christian Kesler, Christer Wibert, Sedevcic Leonardo & David Luong

http://www.cgtantra.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=164

Bud Light Lime, Denny’s and Cash4Gold Tap VFX Facility for CG, Compositing and Color Grading

Artist owned-and-operated bi-coastal effects boutique Brickyard VFX contributed visual effects, including CG and compositing work, for three ads that aired during Sunday’s Super Bowl XLIII Game. Brickyard’s talented Santa Monica-based effects team worked on “Sphere of Summer” for Bud Light Lime directed by Smuggler’s Stylewar via DDB Chicago, “One Up” for Cash4Gold directed by Hungry Man’s Bryan Buckley via Euro RSCG Edge and Arnold Worldwide and “Thugs” for Denny’s directed by Biscuit Filmworks’ Perlorian Brothers via Goodby, Silverstein & Partners.

In the :30 “Sphere of Summer” for Bud Light Lime, a young guy toting a six-pack exits his apartment onto a blustery, snowy street. Everything in frame is cold and snowed over until he walks past, surrounded by a sphere of warm sunny summer hues. He approaches a man scraping snow off his car, which seamlessly turns into an opening convertible top. As he moves along, colorful flowers bloom from seemingly dormant planter boxes, a snow blower turns into a lawnmower and a snowman becomes a woman cooking at a bar-b-q. Finally, the fellow steps into a backyard party surrounded by the sunny sphere. He looks across the party at a girl bundled head to toe in winter garb, hands her a Bud Light Lime and she miraculously changes into a summery outfit as the voice over reveals, “Bud Light Lime, it’s a summer state of mind.”

Brickyard completed complex multi-layer composites to transition the winter and summer plates, and inserted swirling CG snow into almost every shot. “Our creative team worked around the clock to change the seasons around the calendar from winter to summer and back again,” explained Steve Michaels, Partner, Brickyard VFX.

Cash4Gold’s Super Bowl spot, “One Up,” features Ed McMahon and MC Hammer hawking Cash4Gold’s service of converting precious metals to cash. The spot opens on the Cash4Gold logo and a “Heeeere’s money!” from McMahon, who demonstrates how easy Cash4Gold’s “satisfaction-guaranteed” service is by placing a pair of unwanted gold cufflinks into the Cash4Gold bag. McMahon and Hammer each show increasingly ludicrous items that can be traded in for cash, such as a gold medallion of Hammer wearing a gold medallion, McMahon’s gold golf clubs, gold microphone and gold hip replacement, and Hammer’s gold sledge hammer and gold parachute pants. The spot closes with a shot of McMahon saying “Goodbye, old friend” to a gold toilet and the Cash4Gold.com URL. Brickyard VFX performed color correction and online editing for the spot, along with adding bling on the gold elements throughout.

Denny’s first-ever Super Bowl ad, “Thugs,” features voiceover narration from Burt Reynolds. The ad pokes fun at competitors’ frilly breakfasts while promoting the Denny’s Grand Slam. The :30 spot opens on a booth filled with three gangsters having a serious conversation about “taking care” of a man named Benny who may or may not be a snitch. The conversation is interrupted as a waitress using a noisy can of whipped cream draws a happy face on one thug’s silly dessert disguised as a pancake breakfast. The commercial closes on the Denny’s logo and the tagline “Isn’t it time for a serious breakfast?” as Denny’s offers a free Grand Slam breakfast to the entire country. Brickyard VFX completed finishing, beauty work and color correction for the spot.

About Brickyard VFX
Located in Boston and Santa Monica, Brickyard VFX is an independent visual effects boutique specializing in top quality visual effects from 3D characters through to compositing. Completely artist owned and operated, the company was founded in 1999 to bring clients a level of customer service, craftsmanship and focus difficult to find at facilities today. Brickyard’s creative expertise on set and in the studio has been applied to model, animate, light, texture, track, color correct and render seamless digital effects for Pontiac, Bud Light, T-Mobile, NBA and many other accounts. For more information, please call Brickyard VFX Pacific at (310) 453-5722, Brickyard VFX Atlantic at (617) 262-3220, or visit www.brickyardvfx.com.

CREDITS

Client: Bud Light Lime
Title: “Sphere of Summer”

VFX Facility: Brickyard VFX
Shoot Supervision: Mandy Sorenson, Robert Sethi, Sam Kao
Lead 2D Artist: Mandy Sorenson
Lead 3D Artist: Robert Sethi, Sam Kao
2D Artists: Patrick Poulatian, Gavin Miljkovich, Narbeh Mardirossian, Christel Hazard, Cathy Gochnour
3D Artists: Dan Guiterrez, David Blumenfeld, TV Tran, Carl Harders
VFX Executive Producer: Sue Troyan
Visual Effects Producer: Amy Russo

Agency: DDB Chicago
Sr. VP Creative Director: Mark Gross
VP Creative Director: Chris Roe, Chuck Rachford
Assoc. CD, Art Director: Chris Carraway
Assoc. CD, Copywriter: Pat Burke
Agency Executive Producer: Will St. Clair
Agency Producer: Kate Hildebrant

Production Company: Smuggler
Director: Stylewar
Director of Photography: Crille Forsberg
Live Action Exec. Producer: Patrick Milling Smith, Brian Carmody, Lisa Rich, Allison Kunzman
Live Action Producer: Tim Kerrison
Production Design/Art Direction: Steve Sumney

Editorial Company: Whitehouse Post
Editor: Carlos Lowenstein

Telecine Company: Filmworkers Club
Colorist: Michael Mazur

Audio Post: Another Country
Audio Mixer: John Binder

Music: High Decibels “That Dude”

Graphics/Animation: Lift

Client: Cash for Gold/Euro RSCG Edge
Title: “One Up”

Agency: Euro RSCG Edge

CEO: Steve Netzley
President: Greg Johnson
Managing Partner: Jack Kirby
SVP Direct Marketing: Marc Kravets
VP, Agency Services: Mary Thonrnby
Account Supervisor: Ashley Eveland
Account Executive: Hannah Whitney

Agency: Arnold Worldwide, Boston
Chief Creative Officer: Pete Favat
EVP, Group Creative Director: Mary Webb
ACD, Writer: Sean McBride
ACD, Art Director: Josh Tetrault
Art Director: Jack Miller
EVP, Director of Integrated Production: Bill Goodell

Production Company: Hungry Man Bi-Coastal & International
Director: Bryan Buckley
Line Producer: Mino Jarjoura
Managing Partner/Executive Producer: Kevin Byrne
Executive Producer: Dan Duffy

Executive Producer: Cindy Becker
Director of Photography: Adam Beckman

Editorial: Cosmo Street Editorial
Editor: Tom Sherma
Producer: Amy Febinger
Producer: Jerry Sukys

Post Production: Brickyard VFX
Flame Artist: George Fitz
Producer: Diana Young

Audio: Lime Studios
Audio Engineer: Mark Meyuhas

Client: Denny’s
Title: “Thugs”

Agency: Goodby Silverstein & Partners
Executive Creative Director: Jeff Goodby
Creative Director: Jim Elliott
Associate Creative Director: Chris Toland
Art Director: Mike Coyne, Croix Gagnon & David Kolbusz
Agency Producer: Jon Drawbaugh & Rob Sondik
Copywriter: Brian Ahern, Will Elliott & David Kolbusz

Production Company: Furlined
Director: The Perlorian Brothers
Director of Photography: Robert Yeoman
Executive Producer: David Thorne
Producer: Jay Shapiro

Visual Effects: Brickyard VFX
Lead 2D Artist: Patrick Poulatian
Executive Producer: Diana Young

Editorial Company: HutchCo Technologies
Editor: Jim Hutchins

Telecine Company: Co3
Coloris: Stefan Sonnenfeld

Graphic: Brand New School

Sound Design: Eddy Kim & Andrew Tracy/740 Sound Design
Audio Mixer: Rohan Young/Lime Studios
Music: Human Worldwide Music

School of Engineering Taps Into the Power of VICON for Projects in Cognitive Science, Virtual Reality, Biomechanics and Robotics

VICON, developer of Academy Award®-winning motion capture systems, today announced the adoption of its F40 motion capture system at University of California, Merced’s School of Engineering for research projects in cognitive science, virtual reality, biomechanics and robotics.

Funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation, UC Merced’s School of Engineering began construction on a “Cognitive Sensorium” in spring 2008, with plans for completion in early 2009. The project is in collaboration with the Cognitive Science Program at the UC Merced School of Social Sciences, Humanities and the Arts. The Sensorium is a 28 1/2’ X 18’ room equipped with state-of-the-art technology for 3D visualization and tracking and recording human behaviors that includes the VICON F40 motion capture system. The 10-camera mocap system will be set up on rails mounted in front of a large multi-tile visualization wall inside the Sensorium to create a full motion capture volume. The mocap system can also be configured with freestanding tripods to capture larger movements such as running and jumping outside the Sensorium environment.

Marcelo Kallmann, Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the UC Merced School of Engineering, described the school’s plans for using motion capture technology in robotics. “Our robotics groups are involved in projects for controlling humanoid robots,” Kallmann said. “Some people use motion capture trackers to teleoperate robots, but that’s not the purpose here. Our group is using the VICON motion capture system to learn about human motion from captured data so that humanoid robots can perform more human-like motions and better operate in human environments.”

“Another thing we’re using the VICON system for is to learn human stepping patterns,” Kallmann continued. “We’ll capture movements of a person walking and stepping around within a proscribed area with the goal being to reuse those captured motions for automatically generating the animation of autonomous characters in constrained spaces. For instance, think about which movements you choose when you have to move around furniture in a small room. We are collecting all of this data using motion capture—pieces of information describing strategies which can be selected for use in different situations.”

In addition to robotics and projects for the Cognitive Science Program, the VICON motion capture system at UC Merced is also being utilized for studies in biomechanics, including capturing karate moves of both experts and beginners in order to compare them and use them for teaching and demonstrating purposes. Another project being initiated is for full-body interaction with virtual environments, in particular supporting the creation of a Virtual Heritage Center at UC Merced.

“We were certain that we wanted to use VICON equipment at UC Merced,” concluded Kallmann. “We sought out recommendations from other researchers, and all of them told us that VICON provides the best in motion capture technology. The system is very flexible and can be used in a variety of configurations, which is perfect for our projects. We definitely plan on expanding the system with additional cameras in the future.”

About VICON
Academy Award®-winning VICON is the world’s largest supplier of precision motion tracking systems, serving customers and CG animation applications in film, visual effects, computer games, and broadcast television, as well as engineering and life science industries. VICON operates in four offices worldwide, including its Los Angeles-based Entertainment headquarters, a 26,000 square-foot facility equipped with three performance capture stages for VICON’s service company House of Moves as well as over 250 VICON F40 cameras.

VICON is the largest holding of OMG (Oxford Metrics Group – LSE: OMG), plc., a group of technology companies that produces image understanding solutions for the entertainment, defense, life science and engineering markets. Other holdings include Emmy Award®-winning 2d3 and newly founded Geospatial Vision Ltd.

VICON’s and OMG’s global clients include: life science leaders University of Pennsylvania, the VA Hospitals, Shriners Hospitals for Children, Titleist Golf, The Andrews Institute; engineering industry leaders Ford, BMW, Airbus, Lockheed, Pratt-Whitney, NASA, Caterpillar, International Truck, and Toyota; and entertainment companies Sony Pictures Imageworks, Sony Computer Entertainment, Industrial Light and Magic, Sega, Nintendo, Ubisoft, Vivendi, Electronic Arts, Square Enix and many others. For more information about OMG and its subsidiaries, visit www.omg3d.com, www.vicon.com, or www.2d3.com.

VICON and VICON MX are trademarks of OMG plc. Academy Award is a trade or servicemark of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

Leading post-production facility Post Logic Studios, a division of Prime Focus Group, announced today the hire of colorist Craig Budrick. Budrick is an industry veteran with nearly two decades’ experience as a colorist. He joins Post Logic from Technicolor, where for the last two years he worked on remastering feature film projects for BluRay, including “Airplane,” “Wayne’s World” and “Planes, Trains & Automobiles.”

“We are extremely pleased to have Craig come on board,” said Larry Birstock, CEO, Post Logic Studios. “We have a relationship that goes back almost 20 years. He’s an incredible talent with a wealth of knowledge and expertise, and will be an enormous asset to our mastering clients.”

Budrick began his career as a colorist at Sunset Digital, formerly Sunset Post, where in 1987 he was first hired as a tape operator and vault supervisor before moving on in 1991 to become a telecine and edit assistant. Budrick remained with Sunset Digital for the next eight years mastering television series such as “Frasier” and “Almost Perfect,” and remastering features including “The Crow” and “The Nightmare Before Christmas.” In 1999 Budrick worked with both Matchframe and Complete Post, mastering dailies for a number of movie projects. In 2000, Budrick rejoined Sunset Digital, where he worked as a colorist until 2006, when he signed on with Technicolor, retransferring such television projects as “Cheers,” “Hawaii Five-O” and the original “Star Trek” series for BluRay and DVD.

“I’m very excited to be joining Post Logic,” said Budrick. “The people here are fantastic to work with, and the technology at the facility is first-rate. I’m already hard at work, and am looking forward to upcoming projects.”

About Post Logic Studios
A leader in digital intermediate and feature film restoration, Post Logic Studios is a part of the Prime Focus Group family, an integrated global network of visual effects and post-production companies servicing clientele around the world with technologically advanced facilities in Hollywood, New York, London and India. With access to hundreds of talented visual effects and 3D artists from within Prime Focus Group, Post Logic has continued to expand into new and emerging arenas within the post-production realm, providing unmatched digital intermediate, digital mastering, editorial assembly, restoration, visual effects and audio post production services to feature film and television clients from its flagship Hollywood facility and Manhattan-based satellite, Post Logic Studios N.Y. For more information, please visit www.postlogic.com or call 323-461-7887.