the fxphd deans blog

[image title="img_2841" size="medium" id="571" align="right" linkto="http://www.fxphd.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/img_2841.jpg" ]One of the areas that we offer courses on this term at fxphd is Red in Production. One interesting aspect of this course for me personally was comparing notes with the Knowing team at Animal Logic about keying and tracking the Red footage. On Red Dwarf we had more green screen than AL did on Knowing, but boy AL had harder tracking shots – especially the 3 min plane crash continuous shot.

For all the discussion about the internet re: rolling shutter and the problems for 3D tracking, we managed to track our various shots without problems. The tracking team on Red Dwarf was headed up by Yannick Meillier – who did an outstanding job for our team.

When it came to greenscreen – Red Dwarf had a fair amount it must be said. There are some 262 effects shots in the three shows that air this weekend – but the shows are only 23- 24 mins long so that is an average of 262 shots over 71 minutes or more than 3.5 effects shots a minute for the whole show – excluding titles. Certainly not all, but many of these featured green screen. (more…)

Well what’s been happening in and around our various fx offices ?

John’s been installing flames, Mike’s been in New Zealand training and photographing (thanks to PostGrad Brenton Cumberpatch), Jeff’s been at music festivals and doing some VERY cool music videos. While around the rest of fxphd, the Profs have been getting ahead, while Post-grads have been playing catch up. At fxguide we have been working on a range of stories from a variety of post houses and sources.

But in travelling around you get a chance to look at different post communities and you get time to ‘ponder’, especially on a long flight like the one I am on now. Without internet access to interrupt you, one gets a chance to put on some really good blues on your headphones and formulate trends you notice globally. Actually, with the limited access one has to the internet in hotels – you get a lot of time to think on business trips !

I was thinking about content and us making it – as an industry and I started to wonder: how do we fund quality journalism? How do we fund quality drama? Why does this matter? Because a lot of us make TVCs that get played in those shows, and still more of us make work on those big budget episodic shows. As I travel around and talk to post houses it sounds like money continues to move from TV spots to other indirect and online places, making TVC budgets tighter, all while the quality levels get raised and the schedules get shorter. In short it is harder to make a buck in Post.
(more…)

Production continues with fxguidetv – Ep 18 is out and we record Ep 19 on Monday. The next ep will cover Beowulf. We had a great chat the other day with Barry from DVXUser. We both use the P2 in vastly different ways – but I think it is safe to say we are both big fans of the format.Actually the main difference in how we use them is in post. We use the Firestore drive to allow a really clean and easy FCP workflow. It is also safe to say this works brilliantly for us. Barry pointed out that for more general P2 card use, he thinks users should demand more from Apple, but we’ll let Barry articulate his point. We really respect Barry, and so while we might have a great Apple workflow the point he makes about demanding more from key manufacturers is a good one. (more…)