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May 23, 2006
2006 Festival of Visual Effects
The 2006 Festival of Visual Effects has been set for July 6 - 8, 2006 at the famed Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood, California
Dag'nabbit, since I'm getting hitched the following week, I won't get to head on down to LA for this years festivities... but I'm sure I'll hear about it from other folks able to attend, should be a solid festival. Details are below from Visual Effects Society
Summer blockbusters such as Superman Returns and Poseidon; Cars, the latest animated feature from Pixar; and television fan favorite Smallville will all be the subjects of presentations at the 2006 Festival of Visual Effects. Panels, special screenings and other events are in the planning phase and a full line-up of activities and participants is expected to be announced by May 15.
The 2006 Festival of Visual Effects will be open to the public. Information on buying festival passes or tickets to individual events will soon be available on this website or by contacting the VES office at (310) 822-9181 or info@visualeffectssociety.com.
Thursday July 6th 2006
1-Visual Effects and Production Design 12:00 noon – 1:30 pm
Not Just a Can of Blue or Green Paint (Yet): Production Design and Visual Effects or To Build or Not to Build: Production Design and Visual Effects or Is the Building of Sets Virtually Extinct? Production Design and Visual Effects.
Some branches of visual effects are direct offshoots from the Art Department. From the earliest Norman Dawn matte paintings and the first movie miniatures, effects artists realized those visions of the Production Designer that were too difficult to shoot on location (if they existed at all) , or were too large in scale, or too expensive or impractical to build. Our panel of distinguished production designers will discuss and demonstrate the evolving, overlapping (and occasionally conflicting) relationship between designers and effects artists in their own films and in movies generally.
2- International Visual Effects 2:30 pm – 4:00 pm
Visual effects are an international art form because imagination is a global trait. All around the world, artists are not only harnessing the power of state-of-the-art digital technologies, but embracing the time-honored techniques of miniatures, puppetry and painting and creating dynamic effects for their local markets -- be it film, broadcast, music videos, commercials or games. The Visual Effects Society exists to serve and celebrate visual effects from around the world, and as such, will feature a panel of international practitioners, and will invite international artists and effects facilities to submit samples of their work. The emphasis will be on local (i.e. national) work and exploring the challenges, unique perspectives and techniques that individual markets engender.
3- Technology 5:00 pm – 6:30 pm
This panel will take a look at what is expected to change in the technology landscape in the next five years.
4- Kick Off Party 7:00 pm – 10 pm - Pass Holders and Invitation Only
Friday July 7th, 2006
5- Invisible Effects 12:00 noon – 1:30 pm
How does a filmmaker capture a location that is inaccessible or one that hasn't existed for hundreds/thousands of years?
Invisible effects in films have been around for as long as filmmakers' have had imagination. And now with digital technologies, it's often hard for even seasoned veterans to decipher what is real and what is not. This panel will take an in-depth look at two recent films that have recreated eras and locales not accessible to their filmmakers. Many of 'The Da Vinci Code's' historical and contemporary locales were innovatively re-created by 'invisible' wizards from the UK and 'Casanova's' romantic time period set in Venice created its own series of challenges for its artists. Join us in examining a 'behind-the-scenes' of the latest in state-of-the-art seamless effects.
6- X-Men The Last Stand 2:30 pm – 4:00 pm
The VFX team on the latest X-Men franchise discuss the challenges of working on a tight schedule and the various vfx houses in three different continents.
7- Poseidon 5:00 pm – 6:30 pm
More than thirty years after it was fashionable to be seen in a disaster film, Warner Bros. will return this summer to a world turned upside down with Wolfgang Peterson's POSEIDON. Following the tradition of casting a who's who of actors in the film, Visual Effects Supervisor Boyd Shermis turned to multiple sources on two continents including ILM, Motion Picture Company, CIS, and Giant Killer Robots to produce over 500 shots. Bring your snorkel and swim fins as we go off the deep end with the summer's biggest disaster (....film, that is).
8- Aliens Retrospective 7:30 pm – 10:00 pm
"Is this gonna be a stand up fight or a bug hunt?" - ALIENS 20th Anniversary Retrospective.
In recognition of the 20th anniversary of the release of the science fiction action classic ALIENS, this retrospective panel will look back at the ground breaking visual effects and animatronic creations for the James Cameron sequel to Ridley Scott's ALIEN.
The unique look and style of the film's creations are even more astonishing when you consider the limited budget and resources the artists were given. Undaunted, Cameron's team created some of the most startling imagery seen in a genre film in the last 20 years. The visual effects team, headed by Robert and Dennis Skotak and creature supervisor Stan Winston (all James Cameron alumni) received an Academy Award for their work on the film in 1987.
Saturday July 8th 2006
9- Animation and Visual Effects 10:00 am -11:30 am
Creating Life One Frame at a Time: The Art of VFX Animation
Digital techniques have overtaken the roles once played by cell and stop motion animation as visual effects tools, though they continue to flourish as film-making techniques. To a lesser degree, animated digital models have supplanted traditional miniatures. An all-star panel of prominent animators and effects supervisors with decades of experience on both sides of the digital revolution will talk about their own work then and now, and the sometimes-unexpected consequences. A special demonstration will complement the discussion.
10- Cars 12:30 pm- 2:00 pm
The animators and story tellers from Pixar Animation unravel how they created the animation for their latest opus.
11- Smallville 3:00 pm – 4:30 pm
With over 100 episodes aired over 5 seasons, the Warner Bros. television series, Smallville, has achieved a remarkably mature status for an episodic drama based on the teenage adventures of Clark Kent, before he assumes the alter ego of Superman. During the past four seasons, Entity FX created the visual effects that in a large part drive the show. Join the producers of Smallville and the staff of Entity, as they explore what makes visual effects production of a weekly network series a unique challenge and show how it is done. The panel will focus on how the Entity team developed a strategy to achieve economic production, and spur creative evolution during its long-term work on the show, and how that strategy helped to overcome the artistic, budgetary and time limitations common to television production.
12- Superman Returns 5:30 pm – 7:00 pm
Academy Award Winning VFX Supervisor Mark Stetson and his vfx team discuss the 1000 plus shots in the latest Superman saga.
Posted by dschnee at May 23, 2006 7:13 PM
