The Art of the Trailer: Two Years in 30 Seconds
The trailer plays a major role in the marketing and ultimate success of a feature motion picture. This on-screen advertisement is so engrained in popular culture that most of the time it is taken for granted by movie goers. But industry marketing veterans know the trailer is the first and last chance to create a lasting impression on an audience. Most trailers range in length between 30 seconds and two minutes. It's within that short time span that the viewer will pick up on hundreds of cues about the movie. In the blink of an eye he will determine the genre, the gist of the story, the aesthetic and level of production. By the end of the trailer the viewer might well determine the fate of the movie. Is it a must-see or to-be-avoided?
...Read More »
Coca-Cola's 2012 Euro Cup "Spirit of the Euro" Commercial Rockets to Life with DaVinci Resolve
Coca-Cola's 2012 Euro Cup "Spirit of the Euro" commercial is an animated wild ride that captures the excitement, fun and craziness of the soccer tournament and its fans. In the spot, a very passionate fan zooms through the sky in a Coca-Cola powered soccer boot, releasing soccer ball bubbles in its wake that turn all they touch into deliriously enthusiastic soccer fans. Produced by Portland, Oregon based BENT IMAGE LAB and directed by Carlos Lascano, "Spirit of the Euro" is a highly creative and exciting commercial that required equally intense and vibrant color to bring it to life, which was achieved thanks to Jalal Jemison, BENT's lead colorist, and Blackmagic Design's DaVinci Resolve color correction software.
...Read More »
Pogo Connect By Ko Maruyama
The Pogo Connect is the first stylus that allows its user to use pressure sensitivity with a touch screen device. Previously code-named Blue Tiger, the pen promises to change the way artists interact with their portable devices.
...Read More »
Wacom's Bamboo Pocket Stylus By Ko Maruyama
Today, Wacom introduced a brand new way to be creative on the go. The Bamboo Pocket Stylus is small enough to take with you everywhere, but has enough volume to feel like your professional stylus. The Bamboo Pocket Stylus fits your creativity wherever you are.
...Read More »
Q&A with Creative Supervisor of Replacement Animation & Engineering Brian McLean
With ParaNorman, we have made the first stop-motion movie that uses a 3D Color Printer. The technique is similar, but what the 3D Color Printer affords you to do is to build color into the model. ParaNorman is not only a wonderful story but it is the most advanced stop motion film of all time. I think the audience members will ultimately get so involved in the story that the will forget that they are actually watching a hand crafted stop motion movie. Only after the movie is over do they have time to think "whoa how in the world did they do that?"
...Read More »
Q&A with Animation Supervisor Brad Schiff
I have many proud moments from this film. Most of them revolve around the success of the animation team. While it seems like it's all fun and games, what we do is incredibly difficult and taxing...mentally and physically. It takes great skill, concentration and confidence to animate at this level. Witnessing the animators on this film shoot the greatest shots of their careers on ParaNorman has proven to be most rewarding to me.
...Read More »
Q&A with Visual Effects Supervisor Brian Van't Hul
In Part 2 of our PARANORMAN interview series we talk with Brian Van't Hul who works at animation studio LAIKA, and was also the visual effects supervisor on the company's Oscar-nominated 2009 feature "Coraline." His previous stop-motion credits include Tim Burton's "The Nightmare Before Christmas" and "James & the Giant Peach."
...Read More »
Q&A with Director of Photography Tristan Oliver
A cinematographer for over 20 years, Tristan Oliver's stop-motion animation credits as cinematographer include the Academy Award-winning short films "The Wrong Trousers" and "A Close Shave," as well as the features "Chicken Run", Wes Anderson's Academy Award-nominated "Fantastic Mr. Fox," and the Academy Award-winning "Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit."
...Read More »
iPiSoft Motion Capture By Ko Maruyama
Many of you at E3 have already started to fill out your shopping list with the newest titles for your gaming time, but there is more software that will let you take advantage of your gaming hardware. Make your own movies with your Microsoft Kinect or multiple Sony PS Eye cameras. iPiSoft makes motion capture software that allows you to translate your acting into a 3D character.
...Read More »
NAB Professional Gear: Wacom By Ko Maruyama
For years, Wacom tablets have dominated the professional market; their name synonymous with responsive, accurate results. The new Intuos5 tablet heralds a new definition for what tablets can be. Not only is this pressure sensitive for your designer needs, but it also boasts a touch capability. Now more than ever, you'll find yourself with your Wacom all day long.
...Read More »
iPad2 GripStand 2 Bundle By Ko Maruyama
The Newer Technology company makes a protective back and stand for your iPad 2. The Gripstand and GripBase pairing is a great way to watch your iPad content hands free, or, if you're a teacher, present items on the iPad to students without having to awkwardly holding it.
...Read More »
Exclusive Q&A: A Conversation With Director/Animator Ian Chisholm
What began six years ago as simply a "creative outlet" for filmmaker/animator Ian Chisholm, Clear Skies III, the third film in his machinima series about the space adventures of the crew aboard the battleship Clear Skies, has steadily built a huge online audience thanks to its memorable storyline and characters, and innovative use of the iPi Soft's Desktop Motion Capture system, which played an integral role in bringing Chisholm's vision to life.
...Read More »
Tools and Technologies for Working with 3D on the Set By Tim Dashwood
The nature of how we shoot 3D and monitor it on set has changed as we have learned from our mistakes. Today, I would say 75% of stereographers out there prefer DPs to shoot in parallel. Not necessarily parallel rigs, with cameras side-by-side, since beam-splitter rigs are more flexible and therefore much more common -- but instead, pointing both cameras straight ahead, literally shooting parallel to each other.
...Read More »
GPU Computing Gems Jade Edition By Wen-mei W. Hwu, Mark Harris and Michael Garland
The NVIDIA Fermi GPU architecture introduces new instructions designed to facilitate basic, but important, parallel primitives on per-thread predicates, as well as instructions for manipulating and querying bits within a word. This chapter demonstrates the application of these instructions in the construction of efficient parallel algorithm primitives such as reductions, scans, and segmented scans of binary or Boolean data.
...Read More »
Advanced Technology Succeeds with Tighter Budgets on Real Steel By Glenn Derry
My team created something that we call Simulcam, which provides a sort of augmented reality. We pre-record CG characters and backgrounds, and feed them into a camera playback system on set. The director can then see CG elements, motion-captured characters and live actors composited together in the viewfinder or the monitor, using a real time chroma key.
...Read More »
MLAA: Efficiently Moving Antialiasing from the GPU to the CPU By Alexandre De Pereyra, Graphics Software Engineer, Intel Visual Computing
Efficient antialiasing techniques are an important tool of high-quality, real-time rendering. MSAA (Multisample Antialiasing) is the standard technique in use today, but comes with some serious disadvantages. new technique developed by Intel Labs called Morphological Antialiasing (MLAA) [Reshetov 2009] addresses these limitations. MLAA is an image-based, post-process filtering technique which identifies discontinuity patterns and blends colors in the neighborhood of these patterns to perform effective antialiasing. It is the precursor of a new generation of real-time antialiasing techniques that rival MSAA [Jimenez et al., 2011] [SIGGRAPH 2011].
...Read More »
Dynamic Resolution Rendering By Doug Binks, Senior Application Engineer, Intel Visual Computing
The resolution selection screen has been one of the defining aspects of PC gaming since the birth of 3D games. In this whitepaper and the accompanying sample code, we argue that this no longer needs to be the case; developers can dynamically vary the resolution of their rendering instead of having a static resolution selection.
...Read More »
BACK TO THE GLADES: BIGSMACK Reunites With A&E For Season Two Promo Campaign of Hit Show 'The Glades'
Murder is back in season on A&E and at BIGSMACK, the full-service creative/production/design studio led by Creative Director Andy Hann, thanks to 'The Glades,' the hit crime drama that returns for season two next month. BIGSMACK was called in to build on the effective promo campaign they created and executed last year that helped make the first season premiere of The Glades the most-watched drama series premiere in network history.
...Read More »
Nucoda Film Master turns up the heat on Sky 1 HD's Mad Dogs
Sky 1 and Sky 1HD recently aired four-part drama Mad Dogs with an all-star British male cast including Max Beesley, Philip Glenister, John Simm, Marc Warren and Ben Chaplin. Shot on 35mm on location in Majorca last summer, the 4x60 minute series was written by Cris Cole and produced by BAFTA-winning Left Bank Pictures.
...Read More »
ASSIMILATE Announces SCRATCH Product Family on Mac OS X
NAB 2011: ASSIMILATE (www.assimilateinc.com), the leading provider of powerful post-production tools for digital workflows, announced today that is bringing its next generation of SCRATCH high-performance, data-centric, dailies and DI products to Mac OS(r) X.
...Read More »
The Art of the Trailer: Two Years in 30 Seconds
The trailer plays a major role in the marketing and ultimate success of a feature motion picture. This on-screen advertisement is so engrained in popular culture that most of the time it is taken for granted by movie goers. But industry marketing veterans know the trailer is the first and last chance to create a lasting impression on an audience. Most trailers range in length between 30 seconds and two minutes. It's within that short time span that the viewer will pick up on hundreds of cues about the movie. In the blink of an eye he will determine the genre, the gist of the story, the aesthetic and level of production. By the end of the trailer the viewer might well determine the fate of the movie. Is it a must-see or to-be-avoided?
...Read More »
Coca-Cola's 2012 Euro Cup "Spirit of the Euro" Commercial Rockets to Life with DaVinci Resolve
Coca-Cola's 2012 Euro Cup "Spirit of the Euro" commercial is an animated wild ride that captures the excitement, fun and craziness of the soccer tournament and its fans. In the spot, a very passionate fan zooms through the sky in a Coca-Cola powered soccer boot, releasing soccer ball bubbles in its wake that turn all they touch into deliriously enthusiastic soccer fans. Produced by Portland, Oregon based BENT IMAGE LAB and directed by Carlos Lascano, "Spirit of the Euro" is a highly creative and exciting commercial that required equally intense and vibrant color to bring it to life, which was achieved thanks to Jalal Jemison, BENT's lead colorist, and Blackmagic Design's DaVinci Resolve color correction software.
...Read More »
Pogo Connect
The Pogo Connect is the first stylus that allows its user to use pressure sensitivity with a touch screen device. Previously code-named Blue Tiger, the pen promises to change the way artists interact with their portable devices.
...Read More »
Wacom's Bamboo Pocket Stylus
Today, Wacom introduced a brand new way to be creative on the go. The Bamboo Pocket Stylus is small enough to take with you everywhere, but has enough volume to feel like your professional stylus. The Bamboo Pocket Stylus fits your creativity wherever you are.
...Read More »
Q&A with Creative Supervisor of Replacement Animation & Engineering Brian McLean
With ParaNorman, we have made the first stop-motion movie that uses a 3D Color Printer. The technique is similar, but what the 3D Color Printer affords you to do is to build color into the model. ParaNorman is not only a wonderful story but it is the most advanced stop motion film of all time. I think the audience members will ultimately get so involved in the story that the will forget that they are actually watching a hand crafted stop motion movie. Only after the movie is over do they have time to think "whoa how in the world did they do that?"
...Read More »
Q&A with Animation Supervisor Brad Schiff
I have many proud moments from this film. Most of them revolve around the success of the animation team. While it seems like it's all fun and games, what we do is incredibly difficult and taxing...mentally and physically. It takes great skill, concentration and confidence to animate at this level. Witnessing the animators on this film shoot the greatest shots of their careers on ParaNorman has proven to be most rewarding to me.
...Read More »
Q&A with Visual Effects Supervisor Brian Van't Hul
In Part 2 of our PARANORMAN interview series we talk with Brian Van't Hul who works at animation studio LAIKA, and was also the visual effects supervisor on the company's Oscar-nominated 2009 feature "Coraline." His previous stop-motion credits include Tim Burton's "The Nightmare Before Christmas" and "James & the Giant Peach."
...Read More »
Q&A with Director of Photography Tristan Oliver
A cinematographer for over 20 years, Tristan Oliver's stop-motion animation credits as cinematographer include the Academy Award-winning short films "The Wrong Trousers" and "A Close Shave," as well as the features "Chicken Run", Wes Anderson's Academy Award-nominated "Fantastic Mr. Fox," and the Academy Award-winning "Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit."
...Read More »
iPiSoft Motion Capture
Many of you at E3 have already started to fill out your shopping list with the newest titles for your gaming time, but there is more software that will let you take advantage of your gaming hardware. Make your own movies with your Microsoft Kinect or multiple Sony PS Eye cameras. iPiSoft makes motion capture software that allows you to translate your acting into a 3D character.
...Read More »
NAB Professional Gear: Wacom
For years, Wacom tablets have dominated the professional market; their name synonymous with responsive, accurate results. The new Intuos5 tablet heralds a new definition for what tablets can be. Not only is this pressure sensitive for your designer needs, but it also boasts a touch capability. Now more than ever, you'll find yourself with your Wacom all day long.
...Read More »
iPad2 GripStand 2 Bundle
The Newer Technology company makes a protective back and stand for your iPad 2. The Gripstand and GripBase pairing is a great way to watch your iPad content hands free, or, if you're a teacher, present items on the iPad to students without having to awkwardly holding it.
...Read More »
Exclusive Q&A: A Conversation With Director/Animator Ian Chisholm
What began six years ago as simply a "creative outlet" for filmmaker/animator Ian Chisholm, Clear Skies III, the third film in his machinima series about the space adventures of the crew aboard the battleship Clear Skies, has steadily built a huge online audience thanks to its memorable storyline and characters, and innovative use of the iPi Soft's Desktop Motion Capture system, which played an integral role in bringing Chisholm's vision to life.
...Read More »
Tools and Technologies for Working with 3D on the Set
The nature of how we shoot 3D and monitor it on set has changed as we have learned from our mistakes. Today, I would say 75% of stereographers out there prefer DPs to shoot in parallel. Not necessarily parallel rigs, with cameras side-by-side, since beam-splitter rigs are more flexible and therefore much more common -- but instead, pointing both cameras straight ahead, literally shooting parallel to each other.
...Read More »
GPU Computing Gems Jade Edition
The NVIDIA Fermi GPU architecture introduces new instructions designed to facilitate basic, but important, parallel primitives on per-thread predicates, as well as instructions for manipulating and querying bits within a word. This chapter demonstrates the application of these instructions in the construction of efficient parallel algorithm primitives such as reductions, scans, and segmented scans of binary or Boolean data.
...Read More »
Advanced Technology Succeeds with Tighter Budgets on Real Steel
My team created something that we call Simulcam, which provides a sort of augmented reality. We pre-record CG characters and backgrounds, and feed them into a camera playback system on set. The director can then see CG elements, motion-captured characters and live actors composited together in the viewfinder or the monitor, using a real time chroma key.
...Read More »
MLAA: Efficiently Moving Antialiasing from the GPU to the CPU
Efficient antialiasing techniques are an important tool of high-quality, real-time rendering. MSAA (Multisample Antialiasing) is the standard technique in use today, but comes with some serious disadvantages. new technique developed by Intel Labs called Morphological Antialiasing (MLAA) [Reshetov 2009] addresses these limitations. MLAA is an image-based, post-process filtering technique which identifies discontinuity patterns and blends colors in the neighborhood of these patterns to perform effective antialiasing. It is the precursor of a new generation of real-time antialiasing techniques that rival MSAA [Jimenez et al., 2011] [SIGGRAPH 2011].
...Read More »
Dynamic Resolution Rendering
The resolution selection screen has been one of the defining aspects of PC gaming since the birth of 3D games. In this whitepaper and the accompanying sample code, we argue that this no longer needs to be the case; developers can dynamically vary the resolution of their rendering instead of having a static resolution selection.
...Read More »
BACK TO THE GLADES: BIGSMACK Reunites With A&E For Season Two Promo Campaign of Hit Show 'The Glades'
Murder is back in season on A&E and at BIGSMACK, the full-service creative/production/design studio led by Creative Director Andy Hann, thanks to 'The Glades,' the hit crime drama that returns for season two next month. BIGSMACK was called in to build on the effective promo campaign they created and executed last year that helped make the first season premiere of The Glades the most-watched drama series premiere in network history.
...Read More »
Nucoda Film Master turns up the heat on Sky 1 HD's Mad Dogs
Sky 1 and Sky 1HD recently aired four-part drama Mad Dogs with an all-star British male cast including Max Beesley, Philip Glenister, John Simm, Marc Warren and Ben Chaplin. Shot on 35mm on location in Majorca last summer, the 4x60 minute series was written by Cris Cole and produced by BAFTA-winning Left Bank Pictures.
...Read More »
ASSIMILATE Announces SCRATCH Product Family on Mac OS X
NAB 2011: ASSIMILATE (www.assimilateinc.com), the leading provider of powerful post-production tools for digital workflows, announced today that is bringing its next generation of SCRATCH high-performance, data-centric, dailies and DI products to Mac OS(r) X.
...Read More »
