Working from her New York apartment, Nina Paley expanded the scope of a series of shorts she had been working on (they set stories from an ancient Hindu epic, the Ramayana, to the tunes of early jazz singer Annette Hanshaw) to feature-film length. Talk about a personal film.... »
A major tenet of the production was keeping things real—from the suit to the cameras. By the end of post-production, however, animators at ILM were helping to design shots, including tweaking the camera. “Production drove the bus,” says Academy Award-winning VFX supervisor John Nelson, “but everybody was involved. Jon [Favreau] and I both believe the best idea is going to win, wherever it comes from.”... »
In one key scene, actress Emma Bell gives a terrific performance in a two-minute close-up. The only problem with the shot? No tears. Guava, which was already looking to expand into feature-film work, said it would see what it could do about that.... »
When it comes to monster movies, it's generally the monsters that get all the attention. But in the case of Cloverfield, the creature team at Tippett Studio got a big assist from the crew at Double Negative, which handled more or less every VFX shot in the film that didn't involve the monster itself.... »
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 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.... »
It’s easy to believe that toys in a toy store might come alive, but the store itself? That was the challenge for the visual effects crews who put the magic into writer/director Zach Helm’s fantasy comedy Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium.... »
How much work can a clothing commercial be? A lot, especially if your mandate is to recreate the look and feel of an elaborate pop-up book as a backdrop for clothing models wandering through a catalog. The VFX crew at Zoic Studios found that out as they tackled a series of spots for Sears that involved real people living in a quaint fantasy world apparently made entirely of cardboard cut-outs folded and hinged into the pages of a Sears Book.... »
