Archive for December 2012

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Tips for Demo Reels

Whether you call it a demo reel, show reel or just a reel, the purpose remains the same: to showcase your best work. It is perhaps the most important thing that will be reviewed by a potential employer, so it's vital that you take the time to make your demo reel the best that it can possibly be. With the possibility of landing your dream job or your first job in the industry, cutting corners is something that you can't afford to do. And remember that you are, hopefully, doing this work because you love it, so enjoy the process and let it help you push your capabilities.

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Cinesite’s VFX Add Finesse to Practical Special Effects in Skyfall

"We started taking reference pictures of the set while they were building it," Neill recalls. "When they started shooting, they had 10 cameras locked off, hanging from the ceiling and coming up from the floor. They shot the actors in the scene one day and the train crash the next day, and the cameras didn't move. The idea was to comp them both together." Green screens were a no-go, because any screen that was hung would get in the way of the view from at least one of the cameras. So Cinesite simply had to roto Bond into the shot. Fortunately, James Bond has short hair and the scene was pretty fast-moving, so the roto job wasn't as demanding as it could have been.
.. HA! I hate roto, read the whole article here , and there's a dope video too!

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Episode 4 : Matt Conway

Matt Conway is a Matt Painter in LA involved in many productions for leading studios including Prime Focus, Frantic Films, Scanline VFX, Rhythm & Hues, Zoic, Psyop and the list goes on. Matt’s background stems from both 3D and traditional painting, he’s worked on dozens of kickass films including Avengers, Super 8, Shutter Island, Snow White & The Huntsman, Battleship, Hunger Games and many more!

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Episode 3: Ben Liu for Pixomondo

Ben Liu is a Lead FX Technical Director for Pixomondo Santa Monica, at the time of this interview (2010) Ben was just about to start working on Green Lantern for Sony Imageworks. Ben’s an experienced traditional artist as well as technical artist in Houdini, Maya and Max. He’s worked on dozens of high profile feature films including Blade Trinity, The Last Airbender, Green Lantern, Rise of the planet of the apes, Red Tails and many more! Ben discusses how he started out in the industry, as well as his experience within the industry, and various subjects technical and creative subjects related to his field. (This was shot over several days, so location changes from Vegas to Santa Monica).

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Episode 2: Paul Hormis

Many people are well aware who Paul Hormis is, as an experienced Creature & FX Technical Director working for many of the major studios, Paul’s background dates back to the early 90′s, working for many major studios including Blizzard Cinematics on some of the various Diablo and Warcraft series’ cinematics, as well as for Blur Studio, Frantic Films and many other major studios. Being heavily involved in the industry both on the production side, as well as creating loads of training material, tutorials and releasing hundreds of Maxscripts over the past two decades.

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Episode 1 : Kris from Blur Studios

Introducing Kris Kaufman, a lead scene assembler at Blur Studio in Venica, CA. Kris has worked with Blur Studio for the past 7 years working on many many high profile game cinematics and other kick ass projects! Kris talks about Blur’s pipeline and a bit of the workflow there as well as projects he’s worked on and how he got started in the industry, as well as a lot of the technical aspects of lighting and 3D in general. Really cool stuff!