During the summer of 2009, while in the midst of post-production on his Warner Bros. picture, Invictus, Clint Eastwood approached the film’s visual effects supervisor Michael Owens about creating an even more gritty and realistic look for the rugby players in the film. CIS Vancouver, under the direction of visual effects supervisor Geoffrey Hancock, was already well into visual effects work on the virtual crowds and stadiums for the rugby matches when they were also tasked with creating the digital make-up and costume enhancement effects for the film.
CIS Vancouver - Clint Eastwood’s “Invictus”
Jake Morrison - VFX Supervisor, Goat Visual Effects Ltd.
VFX supervisor, Jake Morrison, is a perfectionist. He’s also developed a reputation in the industry for delivering highest quality, feature film effects and supervising teams of compositors and artists.
With such blockbusters as '300', 'The Rise of the Silver Surfer' and 'Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers' under his belt, every new release raises the bar and pushes his crew to set new standards for immersive, stunning visual effects. But these days, Jake is not only a perfectionist, he’s a pragmatist as well. He has to be. It’s the same story; demands on the crew are rising, but budgets are tighter than ever.
Rob Legato - Martin Scorsese's “Shutter Island”
Rob Legato is perhaps one of the most well known and respected VFX artist in Hollywood today, with a resume that looks more like the previews of the Oscars than a CV. He’s the visual effects visionary behind some of the most talked about, award winning films in Hollywood, and in the past decade alone has left his mark on such blockbusters as Avatar, Standard Operating Procedure, The Nanny Diaries, The Good Shephard and Martin Scorsese’s Oscar-winning drama, The Departed.
Ralph Scaglione - FLYfx
How impossible is your next VFX project? So common a question for Ralph Scaglione, he’s made it the tag line of his NYC-based visual effects design studio, FLYfx (www.flyfx.net). It’s also the founding principle on which he’s built FLYfx. With over 25 years experience, Scaglione applies the most powerful tools in the industry to tackle some of the most vexing projects for clients. “We deliver rock solid results every time, so feel free to bring your highest expectations,” he adds confidently. He’s seen it all, and with his arsenal of tools and breadth of experience, there’s no project too complex.
Remote Access Post
Chad Smith of Remote Access Post, a full spectrum video post production house located just outside New York City, is a long time Avid and Final Cut Pro editor. Having worked in broadcast for nearly 20 years, Smith has been witness to the ever changing requirements and demands on his skill set -- and as requirements change, so has his workflow and technique evolved.
Aerial Video Production
David Price owns an aerial photography business in southern California. For the past couple of years, Price has been providing his clients with high quality, digital format aerial photography for multiple applications and requirements, including construction, commercial, litigation, residential and presentation purposes. However, recently, Price decided to add a valuable new service -- a service that brings exponential value to clients, but some unexpected challenges for Price. High definition aerial video!
Area 51 Music Video by Nick Guth
Nick Guth, compositor, motion graphics and visual effects artist was recently challenged with a particularly vexing project; 7 days to track 165 shots on a student-produced music video featuring a fast-moving, rapping alien. As in most student films, budgets and resources are tight, so the production had certain issues that could not be avoided, but the entire team pulled through it.
TIM Music Festival by Thomas Egger
Maccann Erikson contacted Jarbas Agnelli and Tomas Egger of AD Studio to produce a promotional spot advertising the TIM Music Festival in Brazil. TIM, Telecom Italia Mobile, is a division of Telecom Italia that offers cell phone services in Brazil. The premise of the spot was to highlight festival goers on their way to the event, while integrating the names and logos of bands performing at the festival into the backgrounds and within the surrounding environment. Another objective of the spot was to creatively blend the names of the performing bands into the environment so that viewers watching the spot could look for the names and phone or email them in to the Festival to try to win tickets.
mocha helps transform Nosferatu in 3D!
mocha artist, Chris Heuer used mocha to help breathe new life into this classic of world cinema.
For more details please go here
Jason Knight, Independent VFX Artist
Independent VFX artist, Jason Knight, has a number of Hollywood credits on his distinguished resume. But what that really means is, he’s seen it all. Over the years, Knight has expanded his VFX tool kit and is proficient with the multitude of apps on the market; as a compositor, Shake has become a tool he relies on most for much of his work. But it wasn’t until a couple of years ago, when he was hired on to do the effects for the Wayans Brothers movie, “Little Man,” did he start to see the limitations in his current workflow.
How’d They Do That?!
The assignment: a banking commercial. The objective: promote the bank’s new premiere services and refinancing services. Seems pretty straightforward. In fact, given that most banking or financial services commercials on television today seem just that; the challenges for this project were not obvious -- at first. Shoot it, edit it and get it out to air. But this particular ad for Webster Bank was in no way straightforward. Which is why renown editor and VFX artist, and owner of New York City’s Formation an Editing Laboratory, Sasa Jokic was called in.
The Most Impressive VFX You’ll Never See
Sometimes the most impressive, technically challenging VFX are the ones you never see. There’s no question, Hollywood has dazzled us with some of the most astonishingly realistic and mind-blowing visual effects in the endless stream of block buster films coming out of tinsel town. But there’s a rising tide of visual effects artists redefining a rapidly growing segment of television production — the automobile commercial.
Time-Slice Films
Artists at UK-based Time-Slice Films have perfected the technique of rotoscoping some of the most challenging archival footage using Imagineer’s motor on two recent high profile television broadcasts. On the BBC TV show “Duet Impossible”, today’s pop stars digitally perform duets with some of the biggest names in music history. The results have created unique new musical collaborations such as: Roy Orbison & Westlife, Dusty Springfield & Sugababes and Lulu & McFly.
Peerless
Peerless Camera Company, the London based post production house, purchased mokey in August 2006 for use in the 21st James Bond movie “Casino Royale”. An important part of London’s Peerless Camera visual effects workflow, mokey allows operators to perform undetectable wire and rig removals with accuracy and speed that would be difficult or even impossible by hand.
CIS Hollywood
Hollywood-based facility, CIS Hollywood, purchased monet late 2005. At the time, Visual Effects Supervisors Bryan Hirota and Patrick Kavanaugh were in the middle of overseeing an aerial shot for Eight Below that needed the path of the dogs removed in the snow in front of them so it looked like untouched snow rather than the path that had been worn from take after take.
Duckling
Copenhagen-based facility, Duckling, purchased monet early 2005 and have since used the tool on around 80% of all their commercials projects.
Most recently monet was used in a project for Friendly Films to track elements into screens in a 45 second commercial for "Expert". The commercial consisted of around 20 scenes, all with one or more screens into which elements had to be tracked and monet reduced the tracking time from an estimated 2 days to half a day, allowing the project to be completed in 1.5 days, according to compositor Per Mørk-Jensen at Duckling.
Paprika
Belgium-based facility, Paprika, purchased monet when it was first introduced in 2004 and have since used it on numerous projects. When mofex for Shake started shipping in September 2005 they immediately bought into this solution as a way of bridging the power of monet and Apple's Shake. They put their new toolset to the test straight away on three Kellogg's All-Bran commercials requiring package replacements. To no surprise, the mesh warper in mofex came in handy!
ACHT Frankfurt
Frankfurt-based facility, ACHT Frankfurt, is the latest German customer to purchase monet. Within a short period of having installed the software it was used for two jobs to produce stunning results.
LAB 601
Atlanta-based facility, LAB 601, purchased monet and mokey in 2005 and have since used the products on more than 70 shots.
In a recent project for Nice Hat Productions, monet was used to composite almost 60 DVCProHD originated handheld shots totalling 2.5 minutes of challenging tracking. The shots were edited and finished in SD on Avid DS 7.6. LAB 601 hit the delivery time for the project by completing the shots in less than three eight-hour days. The results were perfect for the client and this would not have been possible without monet according to President and Creative Director Dave Ballard at LAB 601.
The Post Production Office
The Post Production Office, a Hong Kong-based full service facility, is running monet software alongside its existing Avid DS Nitris. As with many monet customers, the company bought the software for a specific job when it found its existing tracker of choice was under-performing, and is now using and benefiting from monet's many features on a regular basis.
The first job, for multinational American company York International, required air-conditioning units to be tracked into frames hanging on a wall. Normally this would be a fairly simple task for any software, but the way the sequence had been shot made it tricky.
Mac Million
The feature film "Room 36" was shot on 35mm but the negative was damaged in the scanning process. This lead the producers to look to the Digital Intermediary route and as a result signed up Mac Million of London for the editing and repair work that was needed. Mac Million were set to edit the job on their Sony Xpri system but knew they needed additional tools for the repair work, so they turned to Imagineer Systems and mokey.
The Moving Picture Company
When producing the Tetrapak "Forests" commercial in November 2003, The Moving Picture Company's highly regarded commercials division relied on mokey for some particularly tough cleanup jobs.
PSYOP
PSYOP Creative Collective New York used mokey to remove tracking markers and mokey:grainsurgery to complete the look of these difficult shots.
Ascent Media
Ascent Media Management services in London have been using mokey for its restoration projects for the past 6 months and according to Chris Watson, Ascent's Technical Manager "it has become an essential tool in our ever growing restoration business."
Subvoyant
Subvoyant, the New York based post production house were working on the latest Sunkist campaign for Young & Rubicam, when they came across mokey. The tracking software was used in the advert to solve a particular problematic shot where a character needed removing and mokey saved them from having to create a clean plate by hand saving valuable time and money. "We were talking to our reseller Tekserve who told us about mokey and after downloading the Learning Edition we soon realised we knew immediately that this was a new and unique tool," said Jason Cacioppo, owner of Subvoyant.
VillageFX
Deon was asked to do the near-impossible task of removing the beads of sweat from the forehead and face of the talent.
