QUICK TIP: SEEK GOOD PEOPLE OVER GREAT PROJECTS →

Ben Mcewan:

Towards the end of 2016, I had a revelation; I made a conscious decision to seek out people I enjoyed working with in the past, and to do my best to continue working with those people. As it turns out, this was the single-most impactful career decision I’ve made!

Issues →

Todd Vaziri writing at vfxrant:

Today, the visual effects industry has many issues.

▪️uneven market due to film subsidies (free money) to studios

▪️6 major clients (soon to be 5) pits VFX houses against each other

▪️no union, no guild, no trade association

▪️fixed bids

▪️"digital makeup"

1/3 — Todd Vaziri (@tvaziri) January 2, 2018

If the makeup department does a bad job and vfx artists have to fix the problems, shouldn't the money spent to fix it come from the makeup budget, not from the vfx budget? I don't want to single out any of the union backed production departments but this goes for all of you. I have been fixing bad makeup and prosthetics for years. It was a running joke at Pactitle.

Capture →

Carolyn Giardina writing at the Hollywood Reporter

“John Seale, the Mad Max: Fury Road cinematographer (who won an Oscar for The English Patient) isn't convinced. "I don't think we need another category," he says. "I think cinematography should encompass the entire filmmaking process, from negative to post, as a single unit." On Fury Road, he says: "We did a lot of effects in camera. The end result was a lovely combination of live action to post action."

Roger Deakins, who received his 13th nomination this year for Sicario and who has served as visual consultant on such animated movies as How to Train Your Dragon, raises an interesting question: Why don't animated movies qualify for the cinematography prize? "There's some animation that isn't that far from some supposed live-action cinematography," he says. "Where do you put the line? And does it really matter? The Academy Awards is a celebration of film and film craft. We should look at it as a celebration of film and filmmaking.

Maybe we should have two categories for Visual effects. One for shows whose effects where done in the USA, and another category for effects done out of the country. Maybe we should have a category "Biggest Box Office". Here's the thing thou. I doubt the academy wants to get that granular with the categories. Was a camera used yes or no. They do not want water down the Oscar.

I love that Mr. Deakins also serves as a visual consultant on animated feature films. He learns so much from that experience about how a camera behaves in a computer. Working with a good animation sup must be so fun for him. He can place a camera anywhere but he chooses to be more careful. Just because a computer is involved doesn't mean it's easy or right.

To end this with visual effects in mind, in a year when there was Star Wars and Jurassic World. Ex Machina takes the Oscar. Nobody in visual effects saw that coming or asking for a separate category.

I will leave you with this

Yeah, but what can I actually do? →

Mike Seymour:

Professional, innovative, polished and fun: from practical to sims, from NUKE to Maya, here then is some of what you can see inside fxphd, plus work the members have done themselves. The quality is outstanding and we want to congratulate those members whose work made this final edit. But in truth we had way more material than we could have hoped for, so please accept our sincere thanks for all your submissions and accept our apologies that our -very- talented editor could not make all the submissions work in the one edit!

Fxphd is a great resource for visual effects artists around the world. Every term I take away knowledge that I didn't have before. Sometimes I come away with a new thinking on a topic or a different way to tackle a problem. I even learn things I never new was out there. If you are a vfx artist and your not a member shame on you.