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Film History & Appreciation
VFX Titans Remember Ray Harryhausen
"When we grieve Ray Harryhausen's passing, we are at least in part grieving perhaps the last living link to the earliest days of movie visual effects," says Creative COW's Debra Kaufman. She spoke to many of today's VFX giants who were inspired by Ray, including Phil Tippett, Richard Edlund, Jeffrey A. Okun and ILM Animation Director Hal Hickel, who says, "Ray Harryhausen's impact on an entire generation (several actually) of filmmakers cannot be overstated, each of them trying again and again to reproduce the wonder they first felt as a child watching Jason fight those skeletons."
Editorial, Feature, People / Interview
Debra Kaufman |
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Film History & Appreciation
Iron Man 3, Marvel & The Future of the Superhero
Victoria Alonso, Marvel Studios Executive Vice President of Visual Effects and Post Production, began her career in the early days of the digital visual effects industry. We had the wonderful opportunity to speak with Victoria about the Iron Man movies, post production's evolution, remote dailies and coloring on set, 4K & HFR, and keeping the modern superhero movie fresh.
Editorial, Feature, People / Interview
Debra Kaufman |
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MAYA
Iron Man 3: The Trixters Behind Tony Stark's Shiny New Armor
Seventy artists from Trixter worked an entire year to create a formidable 208 VFX shots for Marvel's Iron Man 3. Each new episode in the Iron Man saga details a slick new technology created by the ingenious Tony Stark, and the new installment does not disappoint! Combining the hard surface geometry of the Iron Man suit auto-assembly with the flexibility of the human body was one of the challenges that Trixter brought from previs to believable screen reality.
Editorial, Feature, People / Interview
Alessandro Cioffi |
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Cinematography
PREVISUALIZATION Part FOUR: When to Use Previs
In this fourth chapter of Gare Cline's tutorial series on Previsualization, we focus on when is the best time to hire a previsualization artist. We begin by looking at the various stages of filmmaking and then concluding with making the decision as when is the best time to hire a previs artist.
Editorial, Feature
Gare Cline |
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NewTek TriCaster
NAB 2013: NewTek
At NAB 2013, NewTek unveiled 3Play 4800, a multi-camera server for live sports production that features real-time uses, redundant capture, high-end visual effects and slo-mo, as well as live replay switching and social media publishing. 3Play 4800 is the latest in the 3Play series of replay server technology and intended to provide affordable access to more sports broadcasters. NewTek also showcased the latest products benefitting the TriCaster 8000 from companies in the NewTek Developer Network, in categories ranging from content to controllers.
Editorial, Feature
Debra Kaufman |
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NAB Expo
NAB 2013: Day Four With Ryan Salazar
Only Ryan's own words suffice, "WOW! Has this been a SPECTACULAR Show or what?!?! It was intense... I interviewed Vince Pace of the Cameron | Pace Group and Marc Hamaker of Autodesk, among many others during the Show! I feasted my eyes upon so many wonderful innovations that I can't wait for them to be released throughout the coming year! I had my own TV Crew, courtesy of NAB LIVE! 2013, and I came face-to-face with a shark! It was all I had hoped for and definitely MORE!"
Editorial, Feature
Ryan Salazar |
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NAB Expo
NAB 2013: Day Two With Ryan Salazar
Ryan Salazar fills Day Two of NAB Show with interviews. Ryan spoke with Marc Hamaker, Senior Product Marketing Manager of Creative Finishing at Autodesk, with Vince Pace, co-founder of the Cameron | Pace Group, and stopped by the Panasonic, Canon, GoPro and Camera Corps booths.
Editorial, Feature
Ryan Salazar |
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Art of the Edit
Sony Launches Media Cloud Service Company
Sony Corporation unveiled a new subsidiary - Sony Media Cloud Services - which brings Ci, a new platform and tools to collect, produce, share, manipulate and archive content. This brings Sony not just into the cloud but also into the Software as a Service business model. NBCUniversal is an alpha customer for the Ci MasterSuite tools, which enters beta today.
Editorial, Feature, People / Interview
Debra Kaufman |
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Film History & Appreciation
VFX Crossroads Pt. 2: Can The VFX Business Be Saved?
In VFX Crossroads, Part 1, we took a close look at how the seeds of the VFX industry’s dysfunctional business model were planted in its earliest days. Although outsourcing and tax incentives/subsidies are the culprits most often cited in today’s news, we saw that the financial picture for VFX houses is far more complex than that. Here in Part 2, we look at some of the solutions proposed by leading voices in the VFX industry, including a VFX facility trade associations, a union or guild, and ending subsidies. The question is, is it all too little too late?
Editorial, Feature
Debra Kaufman |
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Film History & Appreciation
VFX Crossroads: Causes & Effects Of An Industry Crisis
The VFX industry is in a crisis. As Life of Pi won the Oscar for Best Visual Effects, the venerable facility that created those effects - Rhythm & Hues - declared bankruptcy, and they're hardly the first to close their doors due to financial problems. Debra Kaufman pulls from her 25 years of experience covering the industry to take a close look at how the creators of some of cinema's indelible images are falling prey to dysfunctional business models. Their deep historical roots have also led to visual effects becoming one of the least-profitable areas of film and TV production. How did we get here?
Editorial, Feature
Debra Kaufman |
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NAB Expo
Tips for Attending NAB 2013 From A Convention Veteran
Walter Biscardi tells us, "Once again, springtime is upon us, so of course, it's time for the annual National Association of Broadcasters convention. Last year y'all seemed to like the before you go tips, so may I present the 2013 edition of 'Tips from an NAB Veteran to make the best use of your time'."
Editorial, Feature
Walter Biscardi |
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Art of the Edit
TouchEdit App Brings Pro Editing to the iPad
Do you miss the tactile aspect of editing film? Or are you a big fan of the iPad? Or would you just love a way to have a super-portable professional editing system? If you've answered "yes" to any of these three questions, you're a potential customer of editor Dan Lebental ACE's new app TouchEdit. TouchEdit is available in the iTunes store for $50.
Editorial, Feature, People / Interview
Debra Kaufman |
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Art of the Edit
Zombies Brought to Life For Warm Bodies
VFX company LOOK Effects ramped up a studio in Vancouver and created a new pipeline for character animation, to produce 85 shots of the Boneys - the most decayed, menacing zombies - in Warm Bodies, the new zom-rom-com based on the book of the same name. In addition to character animation, the company created a CG fly-through of a wasted city, blending with live action plates at each end of the sequence.
Editorial, Feature, People / Interview
Debra Kaufman |
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Stereoscopic 3D
Tim Squyres Edits Life of Pi
Tim Squyres, who was nominated for an Academy Award for his work on Life of Pi, got hooked on film when he took an introductory film course at Cornell University in upstate New York. Squyres talks to Creative COW about the challenges of editing Ang Lee's first digitally shot feature film, which was also a stereoscopic 3D release.
Feature, People / Interview
Tim Squyres |
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Business & Marketing
Suck It Up, Buttercup
The Best Excuses from New or Underemployed Filmmakers and Freelancers: "You've really really got to stop being lazy and making excuses for not getting what you want," says Creative COW Contributing Editor Kylee Wall. "Seriously. It's sad and it makes me sad for you. So sad in fact, that I've created this BEST OF compilation of stupid excuses. It's perhaps a little more brash than my usual fare. Don't mistake this for arrogance. I'm young and stupid too, but I'm still allowed to almost rant. Pseudo-rant. Pretend I made you cookies and you're eating them as you read this."
Editorial, Feature
Kylee Wall |
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Art of the Edit
Unique VFX Challenges for Live One-take Shooting on Les Miz
Les Misérables, based on Victor Hugo's novel of crime and redemption in 19th Century France, has been a huge hit in theatres. Though it's gained acclaim for director Tom Hooper's technique of one-take shots of actors singing the songs, digital visual effects have provided many key elements. Les Miz represents a unique combination of in-camera effects, 2D and 3D compositing, adding elements, removing elements -- and not a single green screen shot.
Editorial, Feature
Debra Kaufman |
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Cinematography
The Hobbit & The Dawn of High Frame Rate Cinema
The technology wizards of the film/TV industry have been talking about High Frame Rate cinema for a long time; indeed, Douglas Trumbull's Showscan at 60 fps presaged the current interest over 30 years ago. But it took director Peter Jackson to take the plunge for mainstream cinema, declaring he would shoot The Hobbit in 48 fps to get momentum going. In about a year's time, manufacturers made the gear, theater exhibitors updated their movie theaters, and the studios prepared for one of the most audacious technology debuts that cinema has seen. Creative COW goes behind the scenes to see what it took for you to see The Hobbit in 48 fps.
Editorial, Feature, People / Interview
Debra Kaufman |
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Cinematography
Jacob Rosenberg Directs Waiting for Lightning
Waiting for Lightning is the tragic and triumphant story of legendary skateboarder Danny Way, following him from his chaotic childhood to his early talent with a skateboard through to his many professional successes. With a combination of archival footage, interviews and skateboard action, Waiting for Lightning also takes us on Danny's journey to China to jump the Great Wall on a skateboard.
Feature, People / Interview
Jacob Rosenberg |
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Broadcasting
Ryan Salazar & Pixar Discuss Render Farms
Teaming clusters of systems together to generate frames of videos is an amazing time-saver, especially when there are heavy scenes that need lots of processing power. Imagine now an animation that could take millions of hours to render, and one computer is no longer an option. With an in-house system, or a render farm using the latest Cloud Technology, speed and optimum results are what it's all about.
Feature, People / Interview
Ryan Salazar |
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