Robert Stromberg in New Zealand in front of a rare physical set piece for “Avatar.”

Doing Digital Design

Robert Stromberg was understandably emotional for a variety of reasons when he won an Academy Award for Art Direction, along with co-production designer Rick Carter and set designer Kim Sinclair, for their work on “Avatar.” He alluded in his acceptance speech to a serious illness several years ago that almost robbed him of the bright future he is now enjoying. Stromberg has chosen not to detail the illness, but surmounting it has permitted him to continue a decidedly unique career path all the way to Oscar glory. And that path started when he was just a youngster. He grew up learning how to do matte paintings from his father’s friend—a young Phil Tippett—while making little films in his garage. He later became a successful matte painter, working with industry notables like Albert Whitlock and Syd Dutton, among others. But eventually, his professional career moved him toward the world of digital effects for features, and he became a visual effects’ supervisor with his own company, called Digital Backlot. Then, in 2004, Stromberg earned an Academy Award nomination in the visual effects’ category (along with three others) as the visual effects’ designer on Peter Weir’s “Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World.” Still, Stromberg says he “never had production design in mind” all those years,… more »

Is a Visual Effects Guild to Materialize this Decade?

The decade of the twenty-teens is only a couple of months old - or hasn’t started yet - but already, there has been something of a shot heard ‘round the world for VFX artists, particularly those located in the U.S. Lee Stranahan’s Open Letter to James Cameron: Fairness for Visual Effects Artists has become a hot topic of discussion among VFX artists across… more »

Daily Inspiration - Coldplay’s Strawberry Swing

Strawberry Swing is a visually stunning stop-motion video starring Coldplay’s Chris Martin in the lead role as a flying superhero fighting giant squirrels, sea monsters, and ultimately, getting the girl. It was created in collaboration with the group Shynola, and utilizes an overhead stop-motion animation style that has come into vogue in recent years. But this video takes it to a whole new level, using perspective and live elements in a way that hasn’t been done before. You’ll no doubt watch this video a few times over, trying to solve the inevitable “how did they do that?!?” questions. Enough talk, watch below.

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Editing a multicamera concert shot on Canon 5Ds

It’s no secret that Canon 5Ds are everywhere. They’ve shot music videos, short films, commercials and more Vimeo videos than anyone can imagine. One place where I haven’t heard about a lot of usage (as of yet anyway) is in multicamera concert production. There’s very real reasons why you wouldn’t want to use any small-form-factor DSLRs (with no gen lock, timecode input or external monitoring) in a multicam production. But that doesn’t mean that they can’t get the job done.

(19) Comments: • Most recent comments by: donmarconi, Thomas Wong, Randy Lee, Thomas Wong, Scott Simmons, Thomas Wong, Bruce A Johnson, Matt Jeppsen, Scott Simmons, AndrewK,

Editor porn from the Winter Olympics

Here’s a great piece of editor porn that popped up on Twitter from Alan Dennison. Watch only if you’re an editor. Otherwise you probably won’t care.

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Deeper Modes of Expression, Part 3: Deeper Into Arrays

We’re in the process of serializing the Deeper Modes of Expression bonus chapter from our book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects into a set of 12 posts here on PVC. One of the more mystifying areas of expressions - especially for nonprogrammers - is dealing with arrays. Problems with arrays are the cause of a large bulk of the error messages you will encounter with expressions. Here we will recap the basics, dive into performing additional math operations on arrays, and end with a couple of nice expressions that can measure the distance between layers, or cause one layer to automatically face another.

Cineform Neo 3D Tutorial

For a few years now, Cineform has been quietly developing some incredible tools for 3D post-production. We caught up with them last year at NAB 2009 and talked for a solid half hour about their tools and 3D production in general, you can watch those videos here. So I was excited to see that David Newman has also recently posted a video tutorial on how to use Neo 3D to sync and mux multiple 3D footage sources. Watch below.

What about a low rez to hi rez conform option for 7D footage on an Avid?

There’s a forum topic over at Reduser.net that I’ve been following for quite a while. It’s called new Jamfuze info new Jamfuze info and is a discussion about a Macintosh software product, written by a user, that works to process RED .R3D media into mfx files for direct importing into Avid Media Composer. That thread eventually moved into a discussion of a similar product that might include processing of Canon 7D (and I assume 5D, 1D, Rebel T2i) footage as well. What might become 7Dfuze was born.

Canon EOS 5D Mark II Software Update Announcement!

While I haven’t made the leap to SLR-video shooting, I know a lot of you have, and the Canon EOS 5D Mark II is the tool of choice for many.  However, I have read of complaints of 30FPS instead of 29.97and no 24P modes, among others.  Well, it looks like your wishes will be granted, with a FREE firmware upgrade (did I mention it’s FREE?)

I apologize for the size of the picture, but it has to be big to be readable.  Enjoy.

(6) Comments: • Most recent comments by: Bruce A Johnson, Neil @ Hollywood-DI, Phillip Hudson, Mitch Lewis, Bruce A Johnson, Mitch Lewis,

Adobe Creative Suite Buzz Hub

Check out the Creative Suite Buzz Hub where you can glimpse into the future of Adobe Creative Suite Technologies. Watch insider sneak peaks of your favorite products and follow the Creative Suite evangelists as they travel around the world. Stay tuned to the daily buzz to be the first to hear what’s new.

One giga-reasons why your workflow will change

I’ve once heard someone quip that Google is like a kid with a trust fund and no focus. It’s hard to argue with that interpretation. But yesterday, Google struck a chord with me when they announced an ambitious pilot program to provide 1 Gb per second connections to end customers in select communities. I sure hope my neighborhood in Seattle is one of them.

(1) Comments: • Most recent comments by: Bill Nelson,