the fxphd deans blog

Back from a weeklong holiday — where for the first time since starting fxphd I didn’t post in the forums for the duration — things are hitting high gear here in Chicago. Next week, we move into our beautiful new offices in the heart of downtown Chicago (entry lobby pictured) where I will be sharing space with a new editorial company. I’ll be providing both technical and creative help to some friends who are starting up this facility. We’ll be documenting the buildout for fxphd members, so you can see the many issues that come up when starting a new place…should be quite interesting. More details to come….

If that wasn’t enough cool stuff happening, on March 31st (stateside) we announce the new term of courses for the April08 term at fxphd — and registration will be open for the term immediately. This actually takes a tremendous amount of effort behind the scenes, with the entire fxphd staff from Jimmy to Mark to Mat to Mike and myself working to tie things up. We work hard to get new professors involved in the mix — and then get them up to speed on both the technical and philosophical aspects of our courses at fxphd. Once again — we’re really really excited about the new term….

Filming started on material for next term (Full details March 31st). This shoot was for the new AE course, and we were organized and was pulled together by our new producer Mat. So welcome to the team Mat. Judging by the look on his face in this shot - he is happy to be part of the team, certainly we are really happy to have him.

One interesting thing is that we got to run the new build 15 on our RED so we could film a bunch of shots at 120 fps, and record audio fully on the RED itself. It was great to have these improvements and we are certainly looking forward to the next build 16 - with its promise of improved latitude. While we love the current improvements - we are hanging out for the i/tech data to be enabled fully and allow improved image tracking and meta data workflows.

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)

There are some great debates that rage in technical post circles - a good one is shooting stereo parallel or convergent. We have been researching 3D for some time at fxphd, and more recently for an up coming “Art of Digital 3D’ story. As I have often said “my father once said to me (and he really did) Son, you can read the entire works of Sigmund Freud - but sooner or later you have to take a girl on a date !”

So we decided to shoot some stereo 3D. And we’ll post the results in fxphd (our research findings on fxguide). The debate on the possible success or not of 3D at the ticket office is really interesting: no sooner had people pointed to the breakout success of Hanna Montana in 3D - then U2-3D flopped. But either way there are some really interesting technical issues - and we love complex technical issues.

We have also been really lucky to have Jeff Olm join us in the Sydney office to start work on what will be some great Scratch training for fxphd. Jeff joins the team for next term and we will be covering not only 3D workflow and RED workflow but also creative color grading in general. The new Scratch course will be out in about a month - but look for the Art of Digital 3D next week on fxguide. The “Art of” series are some of our most popular stories historically - they also take the longest to write.