Dragon*Con is the largest multi-media, popular culture convention focusing on science fiction and fantasy, gaming, comics, literature, art, music, and film in the universe!Film festival info can be found here: http://filmfest.dragoncon.org/ We'll post the screening schedule for "Melvin" as soon as it becomes available!
This year, Dragon*Con will be held Labor Day weekend (August 31 - September 3, 2012) in Atlanta, GA.
The first diffusion I go to time and time again, whether it is film or HD, is smoke. This is a very powerful tool. Having the patience to use the right smoke to get your levels consistent can infuse a mood, transport you back in time, create style, and a cream effect on a woman’s skin. One tool.
In a business where much of the deal-making and negotiations are verbal, your word and your reputation is EVERYTHING. The film industry is small. Everyone who is established can easily make contact with anyone else or can get the straight scoop by making a few calls. How much you are paid, your title on a project, how hard you work, how honest you are, how you treat people— there are no secrets.Read the entire post here, bookmark it, re-read it, commit it to memory, live it!
Geeks are really important to Tempe. About 20 percent of the jobs in our city are tech-related. We are, perhaps, the most tech-heavy town in Arizona, depending on how you slice it. We love geeks. They're smart, fun and want to change the world for the better. They've cured diseases, built robots, and yes, even helped us get to Mars. (Source)The students involved in this project were: Alexander Broderick, Evanne Carter, Clayton Dowell, David Ford, Anthony Guilkey, Reginald Riley, and Vanessa Schell. Here's the playlist on YouTube, over two hours of engaging talks and high-tech product pitches. Watch it all here, or bounce over to YouTube to pick and choose which talks to watch.
The first tutorial comes courtesy of stillmotion, the folks behind SMAPP (which looks like a pretty useful filmmaking app for folks learning the ropes). Not only does this tutorial do a great job of illustrating a general lighting set-up, it does so while jam-packing key terms and concepts. It’s a solid introduction to lighting in general — from key lights to fill lights, to lighting ratios, you get a lot of great information:
The second tutorial is from Eve Hazelton and the folks at Realm Pictures (who are developing what looks like a really cool underwater fantasy project). What I like about this tutorial in particular is how it shows the many ways you can spice up the image with well placed lights in the background, and that 3-point lighting isn’t some hard and fast rule — you light to your tastes:
Many people argue that if you want a film in stereo you should shoot it in stereo. Yet many filmmakers do not want the physical size of an on set stereo rig, or they prefer to shoot film (ruling out stereo in camera, effectively) or want to use anamorphic lenses which are extremely difficult for stereo native capture. Even on a stereo film, lenses and situations often times render a single camera the only viable solution. Thus, even on films shot in stereo there may well be a need to convert some footage and that high quality conversion is an important tool in the box of any effects house.As a number of our alumni are currently working in the 2D-to-3D conversion specialty, and there are no signs of 3D disappearing from cinemas anytime soon, chances are high that you'll at some point be involved in this sort of work. Read the rest of this invaluable article here.
On the heels of our successful inaugural VFX Career Fair & Technology Expo last year, the Visual Effects Society presents our Worldwide VFX Career Fair. This will be a daylong event where the very best practitioners in the Visual Effects industry and the top companies in entertainment from around the world converge on Los Angeles, New York, Montreal, & San Francisco on Saturday, June 16, 2012 to employ, educate and inform the Visual Effects Community.
The VES VFX Global Career Fair & Technology Expo has the distinction of being the world’s largest Visual Effects specific Career Fair and Technology Expo dedicated solely to the Visual Effects professional. Exhibitions, Career Fair, Technology Showcases, and Software Master classes, all set the stage for the 2nd VES Career Fair and Technology Expo.If you are interested, email ngraves@uat.edu. The entrance fee is $15 dollars and you must provide your own hotel room, but UAT will drive anyone interested there in the UAT Van!
Gen Con Indy is the original, longest running, best attended, gaming convention in the world. For over 44 years, Gen Con Indy has been setting the trend and breaking records. Last year, more than 120,103 turnstile and 36,106 unique attendees experienced Gen Con Indy. The biggest complaint we hear is that there is simply too much to do, see, and experience. Get lost in a phantasm of art exhibits. Stare at jaw-dropping costumes, or better yet, wear one of your own. Meet the movers and the shakers in the gaming industry. Check out the newest games and get a sneak peek at the latest editions.Learn more about Gen Con at their website!
The reason why I’m so fascinated by Camera Mapping is the way it enables, in a sense, rebuilding physically long-gone spaces and situations by using relatively simple geometry coupled with a little bit of photoshopping. And the ultimate pay-off that comes with it, if done right, is the possibility for near photorealistic, but more or less limited, interaction. The most obvious interaction, of course, is dollying the camera into the frame, which creates something of an elaborate Ken Burns effect, if you will.
Pulling focus is hard. Really hard. It’s certainly no walk in the park.Read Evan's list of three essential skills, and how you can practice to improve them over at The Black and Blue.
In fact, it’s one of the most stressful, pressure-filled, ridiculously tough tasks that you can shoulder on a set and the consequences are as simple as they are brutal: miss the focus, ruin the take.
Sounds like fun, doesn’t it?
For those who are good at it, it is. Nothing is more satisfying than keeping an actor’s eyes in sharp focus throughout the entirety of a 30-foot-dolly shot.
But that kind of skill has to be earned — forged in the fires of experience by tapping into and improving certain qualities necessary to pull focus in a seamless way.
So today I want to talk about three of these must-have skills for focus pullers and show you practical methods to improve them so you can panic a little bit less when the DP sets the stop to T 1.8.
The credits are often the first thing we see when we watch a great film or TV show, but the complexity and artistry of title design is rarely discussed. Creators of title sequences are tasked to invent concepts that evoke the core story and themes of the production, and to create a powerful visual experience that pulls the viewer into the film's world. In this episode we hear the stories of some of the most inventive people working in the field, including the creators of the iconic Mad Men sequence, the hilarious Zombieland opening and "rules" sequences, and the stirring end credits from Blue Valentine.
