the fxphd deans blog

We’ve got an explosive new term at fxphd in January, with 15 new courses and even more returning favorites. We just posted our preview video of the term and you can download it here. It’s a 30 minute overview of the new courses which we’ll be offering, as well as some general insights into our curriculum.

Mike and I always seem to get a bit nervous at the start of the term, wondering if we’ve got the right mix of courses….and hoping that people will sign up. But I have to say that while I still have a bit of trepidation — it’s natural, after all, especially with the current economic situation — I think we’ve got a killer lineup which really speaks to the strength of our site. When things are tough, one of the best things to do is brush up on your skills and make yourself invaluable, so we’ve put courses in place to help you do this.

The term includes our first ever offering of Houdini and Massive courses, editing theory and workflow, a new Nuke course, and even Mike and I returning to our roots to teach new flame courses. Mike’s course is gonna be a blast (sorry, another bad pun) when he uses some explosion footage we shot when I was in Australia in November. Check it out!

Starting with our Sydney offices… Happy New Year. This was taken on fully manual tonight on a DSLR down by the water at Sydney Harbour.

We are really looking forward to 2009 - we have some amazing courses and some new cool productions planned. We will be once again aiming to be global so we have plans for Europe, as well as Asia and the USA.

Keep an eye on fxguide.com now in its 10th Yyear ! Yes, it is 10 years since we started our little web site. In 2008, we provided over 37 terabytes of new, tips, information and news on the fxguide.com site alone, and many times that via fxphd.com (which does about 9 Terrabytes a month). We have some amazing things planned for this year !!!

But all of that can wait - for tonight we just want to wish you a very Happy New Year.

We just wanted to wish you all the very best for the holidays. It has been a great year for us and we feel truly blessed by all the response and support we have had both here at fxphd and at fxguide. This year saw both sites significantly grow in size and we hope in quality. We would like to thank the huge team behind the screens who do so much work - literally around the clock. We also want to thank our brilliant Profs who so honestly and openly share their knowledge with the community - they are inspiring.

And finally thank you — our readers and members - for making this all possible. We love being able to do this work. We think it lifts us all professionally and enables better quality work and more inspired visuals. Please travel safely these holidays and we look forward to seeing you back in 2009.

- John, Dave, Mike, and Jeff and all the team at both fxguide and fxphd.

I have just spent the week at Siggraph Asia in Singapore. We have posted some stories on fxguide and more coming. We interviewed some great people - sitting down with Rob Cook of Pixar was a personal highlight for me, but so too was having time to attend papers. You can get too busy and forget the heart of the conference which is the papers and classes. Without full crew and our usually crammed schedule I got to do things like study Mental Ray Shaders for 3.5 hours with Master Zap - (very cool) and hear some really inspiring papers from researchers from all over the world. The other inspiring event was the Electronic Theatre and it only served as a reminder of how much we lost when they stopped the ET this year in LA. So John, Jeff and I have started a petition for the return for the ET in New Orleans. Please if you love Siggraph like we do - take a moment to sign it . You can find details at
http://www.fxguide.com/qt/550/bring-back-the-siggraph-electronic-theater

And spread the word - we are counting on you guys. People often thank us for fxguide and fxphd - but we are asking for something back for Xmas - please sign the petition!

The flame/smoke master class in Seoul went really well last week — CE Raum had some awesome smoke tips and tricks to along with the flame examples I showed. What’s interesting is that now with the cross pollination between smoke and flame, there was a lot of stuff in our individual presentations that was incredibly applicable to both packages.

It’s always great meeting other artists in the field, and our visit to Korea was no exception. There is a lot of great work being done in the country by hard working artists. We had the opportunity to visit three post houses one evening: Independence Creative, Pan Dora, and Mercury Post. In the “it’s a small world” category, Mercury Post actually had one of our old Onyx2 infernos from Avenue Edit in Chicago.

fxphd members get a tour of a couple of the facilities as well as clips from the facility demo reels in our weekly update “this week @ fxphd”.

I was working on doing some lens flare tests. We did an Anamorphic Lens test a month or so back. Both Jason and I were also invited on a set which was great shooting anamorphic, which we discussed on our Red Centre podcast. We set to filming some of our own tests for a new project we want to do and then Jason found Claudio Miranda’s web site. Claudio is the DOP on the upcoming Curious Case of Benjamin Button, having previously been second unit on Zodiac. In addition to this brilliant lens flare page he has another sort of ‘test bed’ area that includes tests for David Fincher and Nike. It is so great to see professionals sharing such professional stuff. I just love his work, - his TVC work is amazing and so inspiring.
Click here for his lens flares pages or click here for his main test area
See his work in the trailer for the upcoming masterpiece Benjamin Button
This is why I love the net! So thanks so much Claudio for sharing - plus now I really don’t need to complete my own tests, I have Claudio Miranda doing them for me!

Just back from a shoot that doubled as a bit of a holiday in Northern Queensland. We were shooting a bunch of stuff but we are also preparing for a underwater project with underwater housings. I guess that bit was a pre-pre-production test shoot. I learnt a lot - I have never done an underwater blue screen but I am keen to work out the issues - one of the interesting things is the white balance. We discovered it was hard to get the same white balance to work above and below the water - as I guess you’d expect. We are keen to also test the RED underwater - but that will be for another post !

We have started filming for next term’s fxphd. The problem I have in writing this blog is which pun to use.. we had a blast, it was the bomb, what a ripper, but you know the truth is - it is kind of stressful. It is stressful as we had just two takes. It is stressful making sure the crew is safe, the camera is not destroyed (it survived under 2 layers of bulletproof polycarbonate Lexan), it is stressful rigging hugely complex rigs, it is a bit stressful re calculating the maths of timing, framerates and explosives, or making sure the towers are high enough and secure enough and then fighting to get the shot before the sun goes down, and we loose the light, but not wanting to rush the guy with the C4, gasoline and gunpowder…. Did it work? Did we get the killer shot that will can now distribute to all the members of fxphd.com as part of a really great complex effects shot sequence? … the new term starts in Jan, find out then.

We had a brilliant time interviewing director George Miller for next week’s Background Fundamentals class at fxphd.com. Miller is an Oscar winner for his work on Happy Feet, but what makes him so interesting is that he is equally known for his action packed Mad Max films, or just as equally known for his family effects films such as Babe, or his serious dramatic pieces like Lorenzo’s Oil. I have to say we have interviewed a lot of people, and a lot of really great inspirational figures in vfx. Many of these interviews have been a joy to do, but this one really was one of the best we have ever done. Miller was thoughtful, generous and funny. He really is an exceptional creative and it was one of this countries most successful film makers ever. While the majority of the interview was for fxphd, we think we have enough good material to also do an fxguidetv episode.
For those of you in fxphd - I am really proud of the effort the team did on this class, and actually for this whole term. One not to be missed !

As part of this term’s ever popular Background Fundamentals course, we recently got to interview Ross Emery ACS DOP. Ross is a specialist second unit DOP who has worked with 35mm film on such great films as Dark City, and all of the Matrix films. On Superman Returns he shot flying sequences and green screen with the Genesis Camera and on his most recent feature he shot with the RED ONE Camera on one of the first major Hollywood RED productions the Knowing starring Nicolas Cage and directed by Alex Proyas. We speak to Ross about how he works with visual effects supervisors on set, and the relationship between the DOP and the key heads of department.