the fxphd deans blog

We have now left Siggraph and for the first time in several weeks had a moment to catch up. We thought you might like to see a few teaser photos and videos from the DOP211 course with Tyler Ginter.
This course will be exceptional for anyone interested in filming video with the SLR cameras. We have a short behind the scenes video you can also watch Click here to watch the vimeo link and please feel free to share it

The Crew arrived this weekend in LA for Siggraph 2010. We are all fairly exhausted from shooting last week in Yellowstone, which was insanely great, but the fxphd meet up tonight with so many great people turning up certainly helped!

We will be blogging each day from the show, with news, info and reviews of the show. Tomorrow the show starts properly – but today were some initial sessions including a great Avatar first talk. Avatar was first released in cinemas in December last year, but its impact certainly hadn’t been lost on the hundreds who turned up for the first of a several SIGGRAPH 2010 sessions on the film. In fact, it was standing room only.

In ‘A Physically Based Approach to Virtual Character Deformations’, Weta Digital explored the character-simulation toolset used to create the photorealistic characters. The presenters showed how Weta’s existing muscle primitive system was upgraded to one using polygonal meshes. ‘Rendering “Avatar”: Spherical Harmonics in Production’ focused on how the complex forest environments in the film were lit and rendered. The studio looked to a spherical harmonics approach rather than image-based lighting while also moving to a 64 bit workflow and making the scenes work for stereo.

Finally, ‘PantaRay: Directional Occlusion for Fast Cinematic Lighting of Massive Scenes’ dealt with NVIDIA and Weta’s collaboration on a new architecture for the precomputation of ray-traced directional occlusion caches for lighting, particularly on the forest scenes.

Tomorrow will be really busy with Computational Photography, Camera Sensor Calibration, more Avatar, and the best of all – Ed Catmull and the lost lectures in the afternoon – followed by the killer Foundry User group. Big thanks to Zap from Mental Image who sat down with us today – we hope to post that video interview on Tuesday morning.

The fxphd crew landed in Bozeman Montana today to get set for filming in Yellowstone National Park for the DOP211 course. Mike and Mat flew in from Sydney and Tyler Ginter will be joining us later tonight. Our homebase lodge is up in the pine hills at about 5,700ft — we’re expecting to get some beautiful nighttime shots due to the lack of city lights in the area.

Good news is that our gear arrived…and it’s quite a list that we’re gonna have a lot of fun with. From a Kessler CineSlider to the Canon 400mm f2.8 and tilt shift lenses, car mounts, and more. This is all gear we’ll be covering during the term as well as how to get the most out of our footage in post.

Tomorrow…first day of filming in Yellowstone. Word is that the pronghorn, bison, and grizzlies have been pretty visible for the last couple of weeks. If not, the scenery is wonderful in and of itself…

I’ve been a huge fan of Red Giant plugins over the years, frequently turning to Trapcode, Particular, Magic Bullet Looks and now Grinder to help me make great looking imagery. So I’m especially excited to say that we have a new partnership with Red Giant Software as their first Red Giant University training partner. They’ve helped us find a great professor, Simon Walker, for our new Red Giant/Final Cut Pro combo course covering using the plugins to make footage look great. Members who are taking the course will also have access to a special offer to get the plugins into their hands at a great price.

This course is on top of new After Effects, Premiere Pro, Cinema 4D, Nuke, Vue, RealFlow, DOP Grip, DSLR Cinematography, Smoke/Flame, and Lustre courses. We also have over 30 repeat courses, so we have a huge variety of offerings this term. For a full listing of our courses this term, check out our course listing page.

To learn more about how fxphd works, visit our frequently asked questions page for details about our program.

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A quick update: we have been really busy both shooting for this term and next – and also traveling. John is currently on what we call here a “reccie” and I have been in Melbourne for PMA, the Pro photography trade show.

Last week we shot a 3D stereo project which was fun. One of the toys on set – which is far from being in anyway ‘toy-like’ was the DSLR Slate Ap for the ipad that John found and flagged to the rest of us. DSLR Slate is an Ap from Chris at LastShot Aps – Chris is a 3D artist at a major LA effects house. Chris developed the Ap for SLR use but it works really well for RED shoots – or even Red Stereo shoots ! Check it out in the itunes store. We have no involvement with LastShot – other than being on beta and happily working with Chris to make this great tool even more useful. I know a few of these type of apps are not very practical – but this is a really simple and incredibly practical exception to that rule, – so much so that just about everyone on set bought a copy for their iphones or ipad while we were standing around between takes!

Often times we get wrapped up in what we do day to day and forget about some of the opportunities that helped get us started in the field. I can say with total certainty that I’m in the profession today thanks to a program in Bloomington, Indiana where I grew up. As part of the DETA program, I was able to leave elementary school one afternoon a week and spend it at a “real job”. I chose to spend the afternoon at local television station WTTV. It made a big impression on me at a young age….and I was hooked.

Coming up on May 6th in Chicago our partners at Hootenanny are hosting a benefit for Free Spirit Media, a non-profit organization dedicated to giving under-served urban youth an opportunity to gain experience in media production and post production. If you can’t be there, you can still buy a ticket or make a donation to a fantastic organization.

Today, the fxphd and Hootenanny crew joined forces and spent the day working with about a dozen youth to film, edit, and post a short spoken word :30 piece which will premiere at the event on Thursday evening…..
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I’m back in Chicago from NAB and hitting the ground running with course work for the new term. Sunday afternoon, designer Mark Ward visited the fxphd studios to film the first class for our new After Effects project-based course, afx211. He’s a long time friend and incredibly talented designer who came up with the concept boards for the project. The first class examines the design process on jobs such as this.

The goal for this course is to work through a broadcast design project and in our case, it’s the opening of a new mock reality show called “The Next FX Master”. Basically, Top Chef for visual effects artists. We’re going on set later this week to film both the material for the course as well as behind the scenes tutorials on various aspects of being the vfx supervisor. Throughout the term, we’ll be distributing high quality 720P material so that members can make the open their own and have something great for their reel. It’s gonna be a blast!

I am in LA at the moment filming for this new terms Background Fundamentals courses. We had a great day yesterday filming at the ICT research centre with Paul Debevec. We were exploring HDRs to Image probes to Lightstages, – as this term’s ‘theme’ for the Background course is HDRs.

I must say it is always a joy to sit down and talking to Paul – he is a good friend of fxphd and fxguide. I dont think I have ever interviewed him and not walked away richer for the experience and with some new insight into relighting or CG/VFX in some form. It is ironic but not surprising, that being an educator teaches one a lot, and reminds you how much you have to learn !

It is also a bit of relief to not be doing a story that involves 3D stereo – as this NAB every single press release seems to be rigged to stereo production from Features to Sports. On Friday we head to Vegas for NAB proper and to set up the our studio for filming. From my current vantage point, (and with some educated guesses)… some of the highlights look to be (in no order): Storm, Epic, Alexa, New Flame release, Canon cameras and then I hope some surprises. Keep an eye on fxguide all next week for stories, fxguidetv episodes, podcasts and twitters !

We are finishing up the Jan term – we just did our last shoot in the Sydney office for the Jan 2010 term. It was a dual camera shoot, with MX and Red One – filming a serious drama piece. This piece will be used in the DOP lighting course and in next term’s RED course. Tom Gleeson did a great job lighting the piece which also addressed a lot of member questions – such as how to light for wide and closeup, how to cover an actor walking through various lights, and lighting for multiple cameras.

This is why I think fxphd really works – as a term progresses issues come up and points are raised in the forums. With fxphd, unlike a DVD, we can take those points on board and address them inside the course. Hopefully we addressed the majority of member questions – while also having a chance to allow our great actors Joe and Rob some substantive material to act with. Big thanks to the guys for some stelar – hard – acting and some beautiful lighting from the Tom and the crew.

Our new term at fxphd.com starts April 1st.

We just published an episode of fxguidetv showing a quick look at the MX Red One. Some of the shots from the fxguidetv ep came from an over night shoot on Cockatoo Island – a disused ship yard on an island in the middle of Sydney Harbour. (And there is a lot more from that shoot and others coming to fxphd).
On Cockatoo Island we had the Red One MX on a Steadicam shooting a range of shots. We had permission to be filming on the island to test the camera, and we had chosen that particular night as there would be no one else on the Island. What we did not know is that the Army also noticed that the Island would be abandoned. As such they decided to mount tactical training helicopter exercises. So we are alone on a cool industrial site – on an island – with a new 4K MX camera with … Army attack helicopters . I love my job.