the fxphd deans blog

[image title="macbook3" size="medium" id="647" align="right" linkto="http://www.fxphd.com/blog/632/thoughts-from-a-single-digiter/macbook3" ]Yesterday’s announcement of new MacBook Pros from Apple was not-so-warmly received by the post production community. The general specs were improved with more RAM, larger hard drives, and better quality displays. However, one big change in the 15″ flavor was the removal of the Express Card/34 slot, replacing it with an SD card slot. Phil Schiller mentioned that the reason for its removal was that the number of users who took advantage of the slot was in the single digits.

As one of those single digit users, I was looking to upgrade with the refresh of the MacBook Pro line. I won’t be now. I certainly understand their decision to cut costs by getting rid of something that wasn’t used by a vast number of their customers. But as one of their pro users, I’m on a 12 to 16 month upgrade cycle on hardware, so I would hazard a guess that I upgrade more often than many users. Isn’t that worth something?

In fairness, they did leave the slot on the 17″ MacBook Pro. On top of that, in the past Apple has certainly added back ports based upon feeback from users (hello, FW800). But for me personally, the lack of an Express Card/34 slot is a deal killer because I need it to do “pro” production in the field. Why is this and why am I ok to wait? Click through for more…

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The latest Wall-E trailer is up from Pixar. And just as fans we cant wait. Pixar is still head and shoulders above anyone else in 3D features and this alone will make this year’s Siggraph worth attending. Judging by the trailers – Andrew Stanton (writer and director) has succeeded in his aim of capturing the look and feel of the 70mm sci-fi films from his youth. The camera style of Wall-E seems intriguing and very fresh, they have even used new approaches to emulate things like barrel distortion and lens flare of 70mm.

http://disney.go.com/disneypictures/wall-e/

At Pixar HQ animation has wrapped, the Pixar guys are in the last 2 months of re-takes and fixes right now, with the wrap party slated for May 31 in San Francisco (no, we weren’t invited either … sorry). World Wide release is 27th June, and expect to see Buy-N-Large Corporation merchadising in cubicles worldwide after that.

UP (Pete Docter & Bob Peterson co-directing) is next year’s release (May 29th), and then Toy Story3 is 2010 and 2011 is Cars 2. Interestingly, in light of my last post, in 2009/2010 you will see not only Pixar’s UP, but Toy Story1-3D, Toy Story2-3D, and Toy Story3-3D, with the dates staggered. These will be using the Real-D projection technology, that one insider referred to ” technology that appears to becoming the standard for digital stereoscopic projection”. Interestingly the House of Mouse also plans a sequel to Tron also in 3D for 2011, Joseph Kosinski in talks to direct. (all subject to change of course)

Next stop on the flame+smoke masterclass tour: Beijing.

Great turnout on this stop — really amazing.The audience was filled with note-taking artists. We provided course notes to all the participants — but also gave them a download link to get setup files and more enhanced notes. This was the first consecutive translation (speak in English…pause… translate to Chinese) session that CE has done so it was good I went first to give him an idea of pacing. I try to be as relaxed and comfortable and have as much fun as possible during the events, but the timing does make this a bit more difficult. Especially jokes — though my humor is based upon poking fun at myself and admittedly not that refined.:)

Interesting to both CE and myself was that a great number of artists in the room were women. Now its not uncommon to see female artists at the NAB events. It’s simply that in Beijing they made up such a larger percentage of attendees than at other events I’ve done — especially the ones here in Asia. I’m excited about that, because it’s great to see this in such a male-dominated industry. Rick Ledyard, owner of Avenue Edit in Chicago where I used to work full time, was one of the first owners in Chicago to actively promote women editors in town when it was quite unusual. Now, high billing female artists and editors are common…but at the time it was truly a new thing. Good to see the percentages evening out.

And now the obligatory tour photo — CE and I at the Great Wall of China. I’m not normally into posing for photos, but hey — one of the wonders of the world and it really was truly amazing. Took about an hour to hike up this section outside Beijing…I was dripping wet from the humid air here in the city. It’s incredibly steep as well…couldn’t believe it actually. Thinking about when it was built and how they could do it without technology is crazy. Our tour guide mentioned that they say the wall is the largest cemetary in China, due to the number of people killed when building it and buried underneath the wall.

We also visited the Forbidden City, which was amazing. The city of Beijing is going under incredibly rapid change with cranes building new towers all over the place. Preparation for the Olympics next year is in full gear and everyone we spoke to was incredibly proud and excited about the upcoming event. But they’ll really have to do something about the pollution in the city since the games will be held about this time next year. Currently, the skies are yellow from the smog and won’t be condusive to competition. They plan on stopping/banning all construction at the end of the year to help with this…but they have a ways to go. I was amazed how polluted the air was….