LONDON—The AI-powered VFX toolkit Slapshot has launched a professional-grade AI camera tracking tool the company said is designed to deliver “precise camera solves and dimensionally accurate point clouds” in a fraction of the time taken by traditional methods.

Built specifically for VFX artists working in 2D compositing, this new tool offers precise camera tracking that’s fast, simple to use and production-ready, Slapshot said.

“A track that might’ve taken a day or more to do manually can now be done in under ten minutes with Slapshot’s new Camera Tracking tool,” co-founder and CEO Jon Mason said.

Designed for ease of use, the tool makes high-quality camera tracks accessible for all types of creators, regardless of expertise in 3D workflows, the company said.

“For people who don’t routinely work in 3D, camera tracking can be intimidating,” Mason added. “It’s a very technical area, so it was really important for us to make it as simple yet powerful as possible. So we designed the tool to be able to produce a great solve with zero camera information—it’s literally just clicking the ‘Solve Camera’ button and we work out the rest. Alternatively, for people who have camera information, you can also provide it and it will be respected and incorporated into the solve. It’s entirely up to you, but it works great both ways. Outputs are delivered in widely compatible formats—including .abc and .glb camera files, .exr STMaps, undistorted .jpg plates and a .mov playblast—compatible with all major 3D tools.

The solution excels at the kinds of shots that make up the bulk of real-world compositing work: background replacements, screen comps, sky swaps and cleanups where precision matters but speed is everything, the company said.

“Slapshot isn’t intended to replace the need for expert tracking on heavy CG sequences,” Mason said. “But for those medium-difficulty shots where a 2D track isn’t enough, this is going to save artists hours, if not days, on every job. The speed-to-quality ratio is unlike anything else out there.”

Camera Tracking joins Slapshot’s growing suite of AI-powered tools designed to remove friction from the creative process and raise the quality of output across commercial, film, and episodic projects. By making high-quality camera solves accessible on tight timelines and tighter budgets, the tool empowers artists to deliver stronger results without compromise.

Slapshot was created by the team behind Hotspring, a VFX outsourcing platform used by studios around the world. Co-founders Jon Mason and Varun Parange, along with managing director Ben Stallard, have delivered high-end VFX across Oscar-, Emmy-, and VES-winning projects. Drawing on this experience, they built Slapshot to solve the most time-consuming challenges in post, giving studios and artists faster, smarter, production-ready tools that meet the real demands of modern VFX.

For more information about Slapshot and Hotspring, visit slapshot.ai and thehotspring.com.

Netflix has announced that it is merging its Scanline VFX and Eyeline Studios creative companies into one brand called Eyeline.

Netflix acquired Scanline in 2021. In a blog post, Eyeline CEO Jeffrey Shapiro explained: “Three years after joining Netflix, we’re excited to take the next step and bring these two world-class innovators together for the first time under one brand: Eyeline. By combining Scanline’s award-winning visual effects with Eyeline’s cutting-edge production capabilities and innovative lab tools, we’re uniting two industry-leading teams under a single vision: to push the boundaries of what’s possible in production.

“Eyeline combines nearly four decades of visual effects artistry with cutting-edge virtual production, AI-enabled tools, and advanced research,” he added. “Merging Scanline VFX and Eyeline Studios under one brand enables us to pioneer new tools, facilitate creative collaboration, and drive the future of filmmaking for the most ambitious storytellers around the world.”

Both Scanline and Eyeline Studios, which operated as Netflix’s virtual production and research lab prior to the merger, have worked on a host of Netflix productions.

Shapiro noted that Scanline, which was founded 36 years ago, earned a Scientific and Technical Academy Award for its proprietary fluid simulation software, Flowline, and contributed groundbreaking work to global hits such as “Stranger Things,” “Wednesday,” “Avatar: The Last Airbender,” “Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire” and Netflix’s latest film, “The Woman in Cabin 10.” Last month, Scanline won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Special Visual Effects in a Season or Movie for “Andor: Season 2” on Disney+.

Eyeline Studios, founded in 2019, pioneered the use of virtual production and volumetric capture, earning the Visual Effects Society’s inaugural Groundbreaking Technology Award for its stage technology, most recently showcased in the creation of Professor Orloff in “Wednesday: Season 2,” Shapiro said.

Eyeline’s Light Dome—the first-of-its-kind virtual production stage to replicate any real-world lighting condition with exacting realism—was recently used on “Happy Gilmore 2” and the upcoming “A House of Dynamite.” Eyeline Studios has also led the field in applying generative AI to production, most notably in Netflix’s Argentine sci-fi series “The Eternaut,” Shapiro said.

LONDON—Electric Sheep has launched a new AI-powered platform that is designed to provide creators with the hands-on ability to iterate, edit and produce pro-level content all in one place.

Pulling from over a decade of experience in Hollywood’s production pipeline, the Electric Sheep platform is designed to simplify the current video creation process by blending siloed AI solutions and filmed media into one cohesive tool for creators to be able to quickly and easily produce high-end final content, without having to worry about budgetary constraints.

“Anyone with any filmmaking experience will tell you that iterating, editing and producing pro-level video content is challenging, but with available technology, it really shouldn’t be,” said Gary Palmer, co-founder and CEO of Electric Sheep. “GenAI is radically changing production, but the fundamentals of filmmaking, and creativity, are the same. Electric Sheep is the first platform in the space to give storytellers of all kinds everything they need to make their final product the caliber of Hollywood productions. It’s a pinch me moment and we can’t wait to see what the public creates with our tool set.”

The platform allows storytellers start with anything - a media pool, a script, a storyboard or just an idea - and then use a built-in web-based editor to access to video genAI tools. These include Runway, ChatGPT, Kling, Luma, Veo, and more.

From there, Electric Sheep becomes a playground for creators to generate scenes from scratch, create new worlds behind actors, move camera angles, or extend scenes, much like one would approach game design, the company explained.

With all the media created, Electric Sheep’s auto generated metadata - including shot content, type, and style - allows users to reduce repetitive tasks by assembling a fully-editable timeline via prompt, giving users complete control to make any further edits. Fed by simple text to timeline prompts like, “Build me a 30 second recap of my recent trip to Bali,” “I like this, but I want to use a different background here,” or “Change the color of the lady’s hair throughout,” Electric Sheep empowers storytellers to produce a final render in 80% less time than current solutions. As the only platform to offer fine grain control tools for VFX and post production that go down to the pixel level, Electric Sheep has become a standout in the space.

Electric Sheep was founded in 2023 by Gary Palmer, Richie Murray and Jake Laver.

For more information on Electric Sheep, its launch video that showcases how it works, and how to access its new platform, visit: https://electricsheep.tv/.

AUBURN, Wash.—Puget Systems is showcasing desktop and mobile computing solutions custom-tailored for high-end VFX, Virtual Production, AI and LLM workflows as well as for Broadcast at this year’s 2025 NAB Show.

In addition to its booth in the South Hall of the LVCC (Booth #SL5923), Puget Systems is teaming up with several of its strategic partners at NAB to demonstrate its breadth of its solution. Attendees at this year’s conference can expect to see Puget Systems represented with major industry players including Adobe, Form Studios, Corridor Digital, and ASUS Global.

Some highlights of its presence include:

• Teaming up with Corridor Digital: The Corridor Crew will be live at the Puget Systems booth. Historically, Puget Systems has partnered with Corridor Digital to help them push the boundaries of what is possible with high-end VFX. This year at NAB 2025 they’ll be doing just that in the Puget Systems booth. Corridor Digital founder Niko Peuringer, as well as Wren Weichman, Christian Fergerstrom, and Nick Laurant will be showing off some sophisticated and visually stunning interactive AI and VFX demos at the booth on Monday and Tuesday from 1:00 pm - 3:00 pm PT.
• Puget Bench for Creators: Puget Systems will also debut for NAB attendees its newest tools for analyzing and visualizing the hundreds of thousands of results in their public results database for Puget Bench for Creators, which is designed to benchmark professional workloads in the most common video editing, photography, VFX and motion graphics applications. These new tools from Puget Bench for Creators offer business-critical guidance for IT decision makers by providing access to high value, real-word data for making educated decisions about hardware for their creative teams.
• Partnering with Adobe in the NAB 2025 Creator Lab (Booth #SL9823): Puget Systems is teaming up with Adobe at NAB 2025 in support of the Creator Community. With this partnership, Puget Systems will be providing all of the computer hardware necessary to power Adobe’s Creator Training Stations in the NAB 2025 Creator Lab in the South Hall. Throughout the conference, Adobe will be hosting a full schedule of Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects training on 16 individual training stations all powered by Puget Systems new Puget Mobile 16” laptops. Boosted by the Intel® Core™ Ultra processor, and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX™ 5080 Mobile GPU, the new Puget Mobile 16” laptops are the ideal hardware platform for the Creator Community who depend on high performance, reliable and stable hardware solutions for their Adobe Creative Cloud application workflows. As Adobe Creative Cloud applications will be optimized for NVIDIA’s new Blackwell architecture later this year, the combination of these applications with the Puget Mobile 16” laptop will ensure significantly enhanced performance and increased hardware decoding support for 4:2:2 codecs.
• Form Studios and Nikon: In partnership with Form Studios, an innovative virtual production and MOCO-integrated studio, Puget Systems custom rackstations will be powering a number of virtual production cinema and broadcast demonstrations in the Nikon booth #N2038.
• Form Studios, Vive and Aximmetry: A Puget Systems workstation will be powering a virtual production green screen setup - also in partnership with Form Studios - and presented in the Vive Mars Booth in the West Hall, Booth #W4131.
• ASUS Global: Puget Systems is also teaming up with ASUS Global, using a Puget Systems workstation configured with an ASUS motherboard and video card and running NVIDIA’s DLSS demo in the ASUS Booth #SL6823.

The team from Puget Systems will also be participating in informative talks with panels of experts, as well, sponsoring opportunities to network and hang out outside the show floor:

• Join School of Motion, Rive, Puget Systems, and hundreds of artists for the 7th MoGraph Meetup at NAB. (Sunday, April 6th at 8 PM; 3790 South Las Vegas Boulevard, Las Vegas, NV 89109; Free ticket reservation required.)
• Join Matt Bach for an ASUS ProArt Master Talk to hear about the latest GPU technologies, and learn when it is time for an upgrade. (Tuesday, April 8th at 2 PM; ASUS Booth SL6823)

Disney—one of the world’s largest owners of intellectual property—is getting ready to unveil a “major AI initiative” that will focus primarily on post-production and VFX, according to TheWrap.

TheWrap on Thursday reported that, in addition to post and visual effects, the project will also involve parks and experiences, involving “hundreds” of Disney employees.

A source told the media outlet that they didn’t know when the initiative will be announced but added that it is not as expansive as other sources have reported.

The news comes a year and a half after Disney announced the creation of an “AI Task Force” to determine the best ways to implement AI in its production and corporate sectors. The task force was created around the time Disney announced it would lay off around 7,000 workers by the end of the 2023. In the interim, Hollywood endured writers and actors strikes that lasted throughout much of 2023 and were prompted, among other things, by concerns over the future use of AI in film and television.

As the owner of numerous sci-fi properties, the most notable being the “Star Wars” franchise, Disney has long been pushing AI and other tech advances, but announcing plans to incorporate a company-wide policy on the use of the technology in production is “significant,” according to TheWrap.

Observers speculate that Disney will announce a partnership for its AI initiative, much like another Hollywood studio, Lionsgate, which last month unveiled a partnership with Runway Partners to develop a new AI model “designed to help Lionsgate Studios, its filmmakers, directors and other creative talent augment their work.”

Virtual reality and its close relatives, such as extended reality, have been completely accepted into the workflow of high-end productions. Stepping into an LED volume, you can be transported anywhere from Antarctica to a planet embroiled in an imagined science fiction war. All it takes is a lot of pixels and a good imagination.

[Editor’s note: Here are a few of the examples of virtual reality technologies and case studies that were on display during the 2024 NAB Show. This article first appeared in the NAB Daily.]

MO-SYS VFX SOLUTION FOR DR. WHO ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL:

Mo-Sys Engineering recently announced that NearTime, its automated re-rendering service for on-set virtual production, was used to deliver VFX scenes for the “Dr. Who” 60th Anniversary Specials. In 2022, award-winning boutique studio Painting Practice, with CGI, animation and VFX specialists RealTime, approached Mo-Sys to develop a cost-efficient workflow for an episode of “Dr. Who” that required more than 250 VFX shots and was expected to be heavily VFX-dependent. Traditional VFX approaches would have been cost-prohibitive for this episode.

RealTime and Mo-Sys had previously collaborated on a Netflix production called “Dance Monsters,” which involved combining six cameras and eight monster characters in real time using the Unreal Engine and Mo-Sys VP Pro to create a live light-entertainment show. As part of this project, Mo-Sys and RealTime developed a pipeline for transferring precision camera and lens tracking data from Mo-Sys StarTracker through to post production to help automate and dramatically speed up the VFX workload.

By putting pre-visualization, on-set camera tracking, real-time pre-viz, NearTime rendering and automated VFX pipelines together, this VFX-heavy episode of “Dr. Who” was completed with stunning visuals at a fraction of the cost of traditional VFX.

XR STUDIOS “DANCING WITH THE STARS”: 

XR Studios, a Los Angeles-based facility with two LED volume studios, put together the season premiere opening for the Disney+ reality series “Dancing With the Stars” using a science fiction theme. Studio A has a 71-foot wide LED volume that is 20-foot tall and curved to provide a depth of 35 feet. Studio A also has an LED floor and a large movable LED panel that can be used to provide special lighting/background effects.

The overhead lighting grid uses many Kino Flo MIMIK light panels that can provide an LED ceiling. The MIMIK lights can also be put on stands to create lighting effects as needed in the production. For “Dancing With the Stars,” the LED volume was used to create an entirely fictional world, complete with spacecraft and hulking planets. The season premiere opening featured the two hosts of the show traveling in space through disco-themed planets. 

“They really wanted to get people looking as if they’re traveling through hyperspace, so we put two Kino Flo lights on lowboy stands right beneath them tilted up at their faces,” said J. T. Rooney, virtual production supervisor at XR Studios.

“The lights had hyperspace content that the talent could see and react to.” A little bit of realism in an unrealistic environment.

BEHIND THE SCENES OF THE INTEL EXTREME MASTERS — COLOGNE 2023:

In August 2023, the Intel Extreme Masters (IEM) was held in Cologne, Germany. Extreme sports fans filled LANXESS Arena for the final three days of the competition, dubbed “The Cathedral of Counter-Strike.” This event drew a sizable live audience and more than 700,000 fans online to watch the world’s top Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) teams go head-to-head.

IEM entrusted Rocket Surgery Virtual Productions to enhance the video with augmented reality (AR) graphics, immersing the audience and fans at home deeper into the action. Rocket Surgery used a range Ross Video’s augmented-reality technology, including the Voyager Render Platform based on the Unreal Engine, Ultrix hyperconverged routers, a Carbonite Ultra production switcher and an OpenGear frame equipped with a range of signal processing cards. Complementing this array of production room technology was the use of the Spidercam cable-based camera system to provide unique visuals and feed the tracking data required to power the AR images.

To address the challenges presented by the rapid pace of online gameplay, Ross developed a tailored solution combining DashBoard and Datalinq to integrate all their video game APIs and devices directly into the production workflow. Rocket Surgery then programmed a custom DashBoard control panel using the RossTalk protocol, that allowed operators to automatically merge inputs and data with AR graphics in real time.

RESOLUTION STUDIOS IS VIRTUAL THE CENTER OF CHICAGO: 

Resolution Studios is an 86,000-square-foot production complex used for a variety of projects including TV commercials, TV episodes and feature films, located in Chicago’s Near West Side. Planar recently added 400 Planar Venue Pro VX Series indoor LED video wall displays with a 1.9mm pixel pitch that, when fully assembled, form a curved, 80-foot-wide by 14-foot-high LED volume.

Designed for the demands of temporary LED video wall setups, the Planar Venue Pro VX features magnetically attachable cabinets and a quick-lock system for securing cabinets together. The full 80-foot by 14-foot volume can be reasonably reconfigured into an LED video wall that is 60-foot wide and 20-foot tall, or even broken up into multiple formations.

“We definitely have common configurations that we use over and over, but certain shoots require specific layouts,” said Todd Freese, senior vice president and chief technology officer with Resolution Productions Group. “For instance, the way we will set up an LED video wall for a car process shot is completely different than what we would do for a narrative. I don’t ever want to have the conversation of trying to convince a director to shoehorn their creative into a permanent installation that may not be right.”

WHISTLING WOODS EXPLORES INDIA’S CULTURE WITH VIRTUAL REALITY:

Whistling Woods International, a film and creative arts institute nestled in the heart of Bollywood/Mumbai Filmcity in India, is working on projects that combine the country’s rich cultural heritage with immersive storytelling. The Kumbh Mela, occurring every 12 years, is the world’s largest gathering of humanity, where more than 220 million people make their way to a specially constructed city on the banks of the Ganges River. The last Kumbh happened in 2019 and the Whistling Woods crew was there to shoot it.

“Kumbh Mela 2019” will surround viewers in a kaleidoscope of colors, culture and spiritual fervor, as millions of devotees converge for this extraordinary pilgrimage. Through the use of 360 video and virtual reality, this project promises to offer a unique perspective on the Kumbh Mela, highlighting its significance as a symbol of spiritual enlightenment and collective harmony.

With more than 100 hours of content banked, the outlines for what will go on to become the most comprehensive and immersive showcase of the Kumbh are ready and so is a 7-minute trailer. The entire comprehensive docuseries should be completed later this year.

Copyright NAB 2024. 

LONDON—Boutique studio Painting Practice and CGI, animation and VFX specialists RealTime relied upon Mo-Sys Engineering’s NearTime automated re-rendering service on-set virtual production to deliver VFX-heavy scenes for the recently aired “Dr Who” 60th anniversary specials.

“This ambitious diamond anniversary ‘Dr Who’ special was set to have more than 250 VFX shots, meaning traditional VFX approaches would be cost-prohibitive. So, we had to think differently,” said Mo-Sys technical director James Uren. 

“Painting Practice use[s] Unreal Engine to create animated pre-visualizations of complex VFX sequences," he added. "Could this be extended to whole scenes or a whole episode? Could we take those pre-visualizations and bring them onto set with the real camera? Could we use Unreal Engine right up to the Final Pixel, automatically re-rendering what had been filmed on set?”

Prior to the anniversary specials, RealTime and Mo-Sys collaborated on Netflix production “Dance Monsters,” in which six cameras and eight monster characters were combined in real-time to capture the production as a live, light-entertainment show. The production relied upon the Unreal Engine and Mo-Sys VP Pro, Mo-Sys Engineering said.

The approach required the pair to develop a pipeline for transferring the precision camera and lens tracking data from Mo-Sys StarTracker through to post-production, helping to automate and speed up the VFX workload, it said.

Working with Amazon Web Services (AWS), Mo-Sys built and patented the NearTime solution. NearTime offers a dual workflow that enables automated Unreal re-rendering in the cloud. Tracking data is re-rendered with background plates and delivered back with increased quality and resolution in the same VFX delivery window, while making on-set renders available for real-time feedback, it said.

Putting pre-visualization, on-set camera tracking, real-time pre-viz, NearTime rendering and automated VFX pipelines together meant the VFX-heavy special could be completed with stunning visuals at a fraction of the cost of traditional VFX, it said.

More information is available on the company’s website.

Directed by S.S. Rajamouli, RRR (Rise Roar Revolt) is reported to be the most expensive film ever made in Indian cinema. It tells a fictitious story about two legendary revolutionaries and their journey away from home before they started fighting for their country in the 1920s. It stars two of Telugu cinema’s biggest screen idols, Ram Charan and N.T. Rama Rao Jr.

It has become a worldwide sensation, so far making $145m worldwide since its release in March, with great success in North America, Australia, Japan and the UK and Ireland. It’s also competing in various categories at the 95th Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor and Best Visual Effects. The winners will be announced this month. 

A True Collaboration
The film was finished at Annapurna Studios in Hyderabad and graded on Baselight by colourist Shiva Kumar BVR, who worked closely with well-known cinematographer, K.K. Senthil Kumar, to achieve the desired look. The pair have worked together on many occasions, and they have a very similar mindset when it comes to colour. 

“I have worked with Senthil for almost all projects of mine,” comments Shiva. “We both have a similar line of thinking and vision in finding the same color density out of millions of color shades. His vision is so powerful that he can find a minute error and color jump from a micro second timed frame. I get a clear idea of what is expected from a detailed discussion with him. Moreover, he does not compromise at any point on quality.”

Shiva was involved in the film process early on, in the scripting stage, when he began working on the look of the film with Senthil. “Senthil narrated the story before going to shoot and we exchanged some references in relation to color palette, lighting scheme and mood boards to meet the required looks in post,” adds Shiva. 

“The workaholic nature of Senthil is the secret behind getting extensive quality in every frame. His motivation brings us out of the pressure of work and keeps our efficiency healthy throughout.”

Creating an Organic Period Look
The movie is set in the early 1900s and Senthil and Shiva worked closely to achieve a look and tone that suited this period. Shiva would take one close-up shot, one mid and one wide-angle from a particular sequence, and then work to achieve the pre-selected look.  

“I am against the usage of LUTs because it decays the organic feel,” said Shiva. “Using Baselight’s Colour Crosstalk and Colour Mix tools in combination with the Hue Angle tool, we achieved the early 1900s look along with the specified organic feel. And using the Diffuse and Texture features allowed me to create a wonderful, classic and glossy diffused sharpness.”

“For each sequence we would give four to five look options to the cinematographer,” explains Shiva. “Out of those options, he would choose one palette. We would then create a separate new look out of all the other reference layers in which 50-70% would be successful towards getting a new look. Once finalized, we would apply the same look for the entire sequence, and then it would go for final approval.” 

The two main characters in the film represent two opposing elements – Ram Charan’s character represents fire, while N.T. Rama Rao Jr. represents water. 

“In the initial stages, we were successfully able to highlight the separation between fire and water,” recalls Shiva. “Later, we realized that it was going to create confusion for the story and to maintain that separation we highlighted a certain element according to the character's emotion.”

“If I had to fix a particular tone of a character, Senthil would give me the complete detailed narration,” Shiva explains. “Mr. Senthil is hands down a great narrator. The way he explained the details of the characters and the story prevented us from going towards many references allowing us to achieve it with the character emotions and arc.”

VFX Challenges
RRR is in the running for the Best Visual Effects Oscar at the 95th Academy Awards, to be announced in January. Shiva and the team had immense support from the VFX Supervisor, Mr. Srinivasa Mohan, and the rest of the VFX Studios, but – as with any VFX-heavy movie – the film’s effects didn’t come without challenges. 

“Color correcting a normal movie is one challenge, but correcting a CG orientated film is an entirely different ball game,” comments Shiva. “Mr. Srinivasa Mohan always foresees the quality. We consumed approximately 250 hours for the VFX QC. Whenever there were complications, we were able to control the errors by calling the VFX studios and ensuring all were corrected and updated on time.”

One of the key VFX challenges was the climax sequence as, due to temperature conditions on location, it was delivered on unbalanced footage with unmatched lighting and exposure. 

“After placing the VFX on the timeline, we realised the majority of the VFX shots were not matching with the live raw shots,” recalls Shiva. “By then, we had already finalized the look for the sequence. This is when the real challenge began.

“Spending a lot of time tweaking sensitively is too risky, in case of an issue popping up after rendering. I had to maintain both a cool and a golden warm temperature for the entire sequence. With the unbalanced shots, it was very difficult to catch both the blue and the warm tone. Therefore, in order to achieve it successfully, I used a combination of Baselight grading tools to get the exact required look for the entire climax sequence. After repeating the process multiple times, the cinematographer and the VFX supervisor were satisfied.” 

“The cinematography on this film has gained lot of appreciation from the cinema industry all around the world,” concludes Shiva. “This is a rare achievement and I see it as a proud moment for Indian cinema.”

LONDON—Visual effects services (VFX) provider DNEG has announced a new multiyear services agreement with Netflix. 

The non-exclusive agreement covers the provision of visual effects and virtual production services by DNEG for Netflix series and feature programming. The new agreement extends and expands on a previous agreement that the companies signed in September 2020 and creates a pipeline of Netflix programming work for DNEG through 2025.

As part of the agreement, DNEG will build upon its existing award-winning Netflix work with a significant expansion of its premium VFX work, both domestic and abroad. DNEG’s ReDefine division will also supply VFX services and top-end creative supervision for select Netflix programming.

Deadline has valued the deal as being worth $350 million. 

“Netflix is the leader in the field of streaming content, and DNEG is at the forefront of VFX and virtual production services,” said Namit Malhotra, DNEG chairman and CEO. “This agreement is transformative for DNEG and creates the opportunity for further expansion of our global scale and further investment in DNEG’s industry-leading technology. The signing of this multiyear agreement reflects the success of our partnership with Netflix to-date and validates DNEG’s strategic direction and worldwide growth initiatives.”

Malhotra added that “to meet the strong demand for our services and drive even further growth, DNEG is looking to expand our capacity up to 40% by year-end 2022.”

DNEG, which in recent years has won seven Academy Awards for its visual effects work, including six of the last eight awards, is already working with Netflix on a number of projects in its upcoming slate, including the highly anticipated “Stranger Things” Season 4; Rian Johnson’s Knives Out 2; fantasy action-dramas The School for Good and Evil and Avatar: The Last Airbender; origin story The Witcher: Blood Origin; and upcoming fantasy comedy-adventure Slumberland for director Francis Lawrence. DNEG Animation is providing animation services for the much anticipated animated feature film Nimona, which will be released by Netflix in 2023.

DNEG has previously delivered visual effects services for Netflix episodic series including “Locke & Key” Seasons 1 and 2, Shadow & Bone, The Irregulars, Cursed, “Altered Carbon” Seasons 1 and 2, Jupiter’s Legacy, Away, The Letter For The King, “Black Mirror” Seasons 4 and 5, and The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance, as well as a number of Netflix movies. DNEG won a Visual Effects Society Award for its work on “Altered Carbon” and a BAFTA TV Craft Award for its work on Black Mirror. ReDefine has delivered VFX for Netflix movies such as The White Tiger, Mimi and Sweet Girl, and is currently in production on the upcoming Adam Sandler movie, Hustle.

LONDON—Mo-Sys Engineering has announced that its precision camera tracking solution, StarTracker, is now fully supported by Assimilate’s Live FX software. 

The integration between StarTracker and Live FX allows for a faster way to create high end content with green-screen and LED wall-based virtual productions.

The Live FX software, which enables real time, live compositing for green-screen and LED wall-based virtual productions on set, when combined with Mo-Sys StarTracker, delivers a one-stop-shop software solution for all kinds of virtual production workflows, the companies said. 

“We are delighted to give customers access to a complete solution to accurately deliver high quality tracking data and compositing assets directly to VFX/post workflows,” said Michael Geissler, CEO of Mo-Sys. “With demand for virtual production rising rapidly, filmmakers and cinematographers can deliver the best results without the need to learn a totally new way of doing things.”

The integrated solution delivered by Mo-Sys and Assimilate allows users to efficiently and accurately composite 2D and 3D elements into the live camera signal, control (and color grade) LED walls, control stage lighting based on image content, use Live FX as a simple keyer in green-screen scenarios, and link it up with Unreal Engine if needed, the companies said. 

"For Assimilate, it has always been important to create streamlined workflows at the very high end that our users can rely on,” explained Jeff Edson, CEO at Assimilate. “We are proud to offer the best possible camera tracking in Live FX with the Mo-Sys StarTracker; together they create an unbeatable, highly accurate live-compositing system with a streamlined connection to post. The support provided by Mo-Sys to help with the implementation on our side was especially valuable to us.”

Fremont, CA - December 10th, 2019 - Blackmagic Design today announced that Grid VFX relied on Fusion Studio throughout its in house compositing pipeline to deliver newly released children’s animated feature, Latte & The Magic Waterstone.

Directed by Regina Welker, the team’s latest project ‘Latte & The Magic Waterstone’ involved the completion of more than 1,200 visual effects shots, including the complex compositing of background and foreground plates and CG render layers for 3D assets, lighting, procedural effects, and more.

“Latte was a huge project for us. It’s a feature animation with a limited budget, so we knew we had to work as efficiently as possible,” begins compositing supervisor at Grid, Laurens Bekaert.

“Fusion’s GPU accelerated render engine was amazing at being able to handle geometry and 3D space compared to alternative compositors. We could add smoke and particles behind our characters and see a good representation of how they would look in 3D instantly, without needing to re render.”

Using Fusion in conjunction with Grid’s in house pipeline management system, Gclus, the team built several node trees to act as the containers for a base look for all the film’s sequences. CG supervisor Chara Sottou could then set the mood for each scene, including specifying elements such as caustic effects, depth haze, depth grading, volumetrics, digital matte painting spherical projections, motion blur and depth of field.

There were also motion vector tools to allow for the motion blur to be added in post, UV tools to reposition and remap textures, and finally relighting tools that could modify the normals, ambient occlusion and position passes to allow for atmosphere and grading adjustments throughout the compositing process.

“Being able to modify so much of our final render in Fusion, without the need for round tripping, was crucial in allowing us to complete this project on time and on budget,” Chara continues.

“We were able to manually adjust depth of field, stylistically blurring certain areas of the frame to our advantage to guide viewers’ eyes to the action we wanted them to focus on.”

The team were also able to add effects such as glow to key scenes, enhancing the feeling of magical realism the story required. All with less than ten compositors instead of 50 or more.

“I think it's really important to show that this level of production quality and creativity can come from a small team in the European animation industry,” she concludes. “There’s this hesitancy with big productions, because they're worried that the budget won't allow for quality. With tools such as Fusion now becoming more accessible to artists, that’s changing.”

Latte & The Magic Waterstone will be in cinemas in France from December 11 and in Germany from the December 25 with further release dates across Europe in 2020.

Press Photography

Product photos of Fusion Studio and all other Blackmagic Design products are available at www.blackmagicdesign.com/media/images.

About Blackmagic Design

Blackmagic Design creates the world’s highest quality video editing products, digital film cameras, color correctors, video converters, video monitoring, routers, live production switchers, disk recorders, waveform monitors and real time film scanners for the feature film, post production and television broadcast industries. Blackmagic Design’s DeckLink capture cards launched a revolution in quality and affordability in post production, while the company’s Emmy™ award winning DaVinci color correction products have dominated the television and film industry since 1984. Blackmagic Design continues ground breaking innovations including 6G-SDI and 12G-SDI products and stereoscopic 3D and Ultra HD workflows. Founded by world leading post production editors and engineers, Blackmagic Design has offices in the USA, UK, Japan, Singapore and Australia. For more information, please go to www.blackmagicdesign.com.

Portland, OR - December 5, 2019 -Red Giant has released another Cheap Tricks episode: Frozen II VFX, in which Daniel “Hashi” Hashimoto of Action Movie Kid demonstrates how to recreate the magical visual effects from the newest Frozen film. Now available on YouTube for unlimited viewing pleasure, Hashi explains how to use the full arsenal of tools from Red Giant Complete, including Particular, Starglow, Colorista IV, Supercomp and Reflection, to create smokey portals, ice diamonds that float through the sky, and, of course, the enchanting sparkle magic Elsa creates when using her powers.

WATCH NOW:Cheap Tricks Episode 12 - Frozen II VFX

Red Giant Complete is the subscription service that gives editors, motion designers and VFX artists all Red Giant tools at one low price - Trapcode Suite, Magic Bullet Suite, Universe, VFX Suite and Shooter Suite. With Red Giant Complete, annual subscribers will have the most up-to-date versions of all tools, saving thousands of dollars over traditional perpetual licenses.

Red Giant Complete includes:

· Trapcode Suite (reg. $999): The industry’s most essential tools for creating 3D motion graphics and visual effects in Adobe® After Effects®, now with the Dynamic Fluids™ physics engine. Products used in this tutorial: Particular, Form, Mir, Starglow.

· Magic Bullet Suite (reg. $899): Widely-used for color correction, finishing and film looks, Magic Bullet Suite 13 gives editors and filmmakers everything needed to make footage look great, right on editing timelines. Products used in this tutorial: Colorista IV, Looks.

· Universe (reg. $199/year): Red Giant’s collection of over 80 GPU-accelerated plugins for editors and motion graphics artists. Products used in this tutorial: Spot Blur.

· VFX Suite (reg. $999): The all-new suite of keying, tracking, cleanup and visual effects compositing tools, all right inside Adobe After Effects. Products used in this tutorial: Supercomp, Shadow, Reflection.

· Shooter Suite (reg. $399): Shooter Suite 13.0 is a set of purpose-built applications, including the industry-leading PluralEyes, that give directors of photography, videographers, shooters and filmmakers the ability to bring footage from set to post.

To get all these individual tools it would cost $2,190 - but with Red Giant Complete it costs just $599/year ($299 for students and teachers). With the Year End Sale* on Dec. 10 (details below), it will cost $1,533 to get all of the individual tools - but with Red Giant Complete it will cost just $299 ($149 for students and teachers).

* The offer of 50% off Red Giant Complete for individuals, students and teachers is valid for only the first year of an annual subscription.

Upgrade to Red Giant Complete at 50% Off

For a limited time, those who already own any of the Red Giant suites or have a subscription to Universe can get 50% off the first year of Red Giant Complete. That’s $299 for individuals and $149 for students and teachers. Learn more about how to switch over to Red Giant Complete and why now is the best time to make the switch.

The Red Giant Year End Sale Delivers Magical Savings

On Tuesday, December 10th for 24 hours only, Red Giant will be having its annual blowout Year End Sale, where anyone can get 50% off Red Giant Complete or 30% off everything else. Read up for more details and set the alarm for 8:00 a.m. PST (11:00 a.m. EST) on the 10th when the sale kicks off.

The Red Pledge

Red Pledge is Red Giant’s commitment to customer happiness, with no purchasing hassles. Learn about the Red Pledge guarantee at https://www.redgiant.com/company/red-pledge/.

Request a Red Giant Complete Media Review Kit

Members of the media are invited to review Red Giant Complete as well as any individual tools or product suites from Red Giant. For more information or to request a product review kit, please contact Megan Linebarger at megan@zazilmediagroup.com.

About Red Giant

Red Giant is a software company made up of talented artists and technologists who collaborate to create unique tools for filmmakers, editors, VFX artists, and motion designers. Our company culture is focused on finding balance between work and life – we call it “the double bottom line” – this philosophy helps us ignore complexity in favor of building simple tools that yield giant results. Over the last decade, our products (like Magic Bullet, Trapcode, Universe and PluralEyes) have become the standard in film and broadcast post-production. With over 250,000 users, it’s nearly impossible to watch 20 minutes of TV without seeing our software in use. From our experiences as artists and filmmakers, we aspire to not only provide tools for artists, but inspiration as well. Watch our films, learn from over 200 free tutorials, or try our software at www.redgiant.com.

Press Contact

Megan Linebarger

Zazil Media Group

(e) megan@zazilmediagroup.com

(p) +1 (617) 480-3674

Portland, OR – November 25, 2019 –Red Giant today announced the availability of Red Giant Complete for individuals, students and teachers. Expanding its software licensing options, Red Giant Complete is a subscription service that gives editors, motion designers and VFX artists all Red Giant tools at one low price – Trapcode Suite, Magic Bullet Suite, Universe, VFX Suite and Shooter Suite. With Red Giant Complete, annual subscribers will have the most up-to-date versions of all tools, saving thousands of dollars over traditional perpetual licenses.

Watch now:Red Giant Complete

“Red Giant Complete has been available to our volume customers for years, with thousands of licenses in use at broadcast networks, film studios and universities. And now, due to popular demand, we're really excited to offer subscription licensing to all of our customers,” says Chad Bechert, CEO of Red Giant. “At the same time, nothing has changed. While we think Red Giant Complete is an incredible deal, we know some customers are more comfortable buying software the traditional way. We want to make sure our community of talented artists has what it needs, so we’re continuing to offer perpetual licenses at their usual prices.”

Red Giant Complete is $599 a year for individuals or $299 for students and teachers. Check out the Red Giant blog to learn more about how to switch over to Red Giant Complete and why now is the best time to make the switch, with a special, limited-time-only introductory offer for established Suite customers (see more details below).

The Benefits of Red Giant Complete

· All Access – Red Giant Complete gives artists full access to the complete set of Red Giant tools – including all four product suites and Universe.

· Up-to-Date – Red Giant Complete includes free upgrades, so users will always have the latest editing, motion graphics and VFX tools, the moment they are updated.

· Big Savings – With Red Giant Complete, individuals, students and teachers will save thousands of dollars. Buying all Red Giant tools would normally cost $3,495. With subscription pricing it would take over 5 years to pay the same amount for perpetual licenses – and that wouldn’t include upgrade costs.

Red Giant Complete includes:

· Trapcode Suite (reg. $999): The industry’s most essential tools for creating 3D motion graphics and visual effects in Adobe® After Effects®, now with the Dynamic Fluids™ physics engine.

· Magic Bullet Suite (reg. $899): Widely used for color correction, finishing and film looks, Magic Bullet Suite 13 gives editors and filmmakers everything needed to make footage look great, right on editing timelines.

· Universe (reg. $199/year): Red Giant’s collection of over 80 GPU-accelerated plugins for editors and motion graphics artists.

· VFX Suite (reg. $999): The all-new suite of keying, tracking, cleanup and visual effects compositing tools, all right inside Adobe After Effects.

· Shooter Suite (reg. $399): Shooter Suite 13.0 is a set of purpose-built applications, including the industry-leading PluralEyes, that give directors of photography, videographers, shooters and filmmakers the ability to bring footage from set to post.

Total if purchased separately: $3,495

Red Giant Complete: $599/YEAR

Upgrade Now for 50% Off Red Giant Complete

For those with current Red Giant licenses for any product suite, or an active subscription to Universe, Red Giant is offering a special upgrade to Red Giant Complete for just $299 - that’s 50% off the first year of Red Giant Complete*.

· Use Coupon Code: RGC50

· Upgrade Offer Ends: 2/25/20

Students and teachers who own any Red Giant Suite or have an active subscription to Universe, Red Giant is offering a special upgrade to Red Giant Complete for just $149.

· Use Coupon Code: RGC50A

· Upgrade Offer Ends: 2/25/20

* The offer of 50% off Red Giant Complete for individuals, students and teachers is valid for only the first year of an annual subscription.

Red Giant Complete for Volume Customers

If you are a business buying five or more licenses, check out Red Giant’s Volume Program (https://www.redgiant.com/volume/), which includes additional business-focused features such as floating licenses, remote deployment, advanced support, training and more.

Compatibility

Red Giant Complete is made up of several different suites, each with its own set of tools and relative compatibility info. Every tool runs on Mac and Windows and is compatible with Adobe After Effects, while some of the tools also work in additional host-applications. Visit the Red Giant compatibility page to learn more about each product.

The Red Pledge

Red Pledge is Red Giant’s commitment to customer happiness, with no purchasing hassles. Learn about the Red Pledge guarantee at www.redgiant.com/company/red-pledge/.

Request a Red Giant Complete Media Review Kit

Members of the media are invited to review Red Giant Complete as well as any individual tools or product suites from Red Giant. For more information or to request a product review kit, please contact Megan Linebarger at megan@zazilmediagroup.com.

About Red Giant

Red Giant is a software company made up of talented artists and technologists who collaborate to create unique tools for filmmakers, editors, VFX artists, and motion designers. Our company culture is focused on finding balance between work and life – we call it “the double bottom line” – this philosophy helps us ignore complexity in favor of building simple tools that yield giant results. Over the last decade, our products (like Magic Bullet, Trapcode, Universe and PluralEyes) have become the standard in film and broadcast post-production. With over 250,000 users, it’s nearly impossible to watch 20 minutes of TV without seeing our software in use. From our experiences as artists and filmmakers, we aspire to not only provide tools for artists, but inspiration as well. Watch our films, learn from over 200 free tutorials, or try our software at www.redgiant.com.

Press Contact

Megan Linebarger

Zazil Media Group

(e) megan@zazilmediagroup.com

(p) +1 (617) 480-3674

Portland, OR - October 10, 2019 - Red Giant is ready for Halloween with their latest tutorial: The Thing with a Hundred Eyes, a spooky new VFX how-to out now on YouTube. Created by Red Giant’s Lead Designer Leo Hageman, the short video walks viewers through how to use Red Giant’s free digital contact lens project file featuring a hundred different eye presets, based on characters from Hollywood movies and TV shows, including Storm’s changing eyes in X-Men, dead zombie eyes from The Walking Dead, the infamous ice blue eyes of the Night King of Game of Thrones, and more from The Mummy, The Witcher, Dune and plenty of others. Leo covers the tools in VFX Suite, Magic Bullet Suite and Universe, from how to track objects in an instant or add just the right amount of glow for a creepy effect, to renoising footage for the perfect horror movie look.

Watch Now: The Thing with a Hundred Eyes

Grab the project files on the tutorial page here. NOTE: there are two versions of the project file. One that uses only native effects in Adobe AE CC2019, and a much cooler enhanced version that uses VFX Suite and Magic Bullet Suite.

In this tutorial, Leo uses the following tools from Red Giant:

• VFX Spot Clone Tracker: Spot Clone Tracker is a tool for lightning-fast, simple object removal with a built-in tracker for moving footage. Easily fix blemishes or remove small, unwanted items. Spot Clone Tracker is easy to use, and even matches your lighting automatically, with options for how it clones light, color and texture.
• VFX Supercomp: Supercomp is a compositing environment that makes it easy to create complex, seamless composites. In Supercomp, light and atmospheric effects interact with all layers and elements of a scene in a far more natural way, and with far less pre-composing in After Effects than ever before.
• VFX Optical Glow: Optical Glow is a blazing fast, drop-dead gorgeous, photo-realistic glow effect for use in professional visual effects and motion graphics, for use in After Effects and Premiere Pro.
• VFX Primatte Keyer 6: Primatte Keyer is a powerful tool for fast, automatic chroma-keying. Whether using a green screen or blue screen, Primatte Keyer's auto-compute algorithms can often pull a perfect key automatically, with a new user interface and clean up tools that make it easy to select and separate the background and foreground.
• Magic Bullet Colorista IV: Magic Bullet Colorista IV provides professional color correction for filmmakers, turning Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects into a high-speed professional color grading environment.
• Magic Bullet Looks: Magic Bullet Looks is designed to give filmmakers powerful looks and color correction, with over 200 fully-customizable Look presets and over 40 tools to customize or build new Looks. Get the best, most-intuitive color correction experience in the industry.
• Magic Bullet Renoiser: Get cinematic texture and film grain with Magic Bullet Renoiser. Restore texture and noise to overly processed digital video. Give any footage a true-to-life 35mm, 16mm, or Super 8 film grain.
• Red Giant Universe: Red Giant’s collection of GPU-accelerated video effects and transitions plugins for motion graphics artists and editors, Universe boasts over 80 tools supported across eight host-applications.

Request a Media Review Kit or Briefing

Members of the media are invited to review any individual tools or product suites from Red Giant. For more information or to request a product review kit or private press briefing with a Red Giant executive, please contact Nick Govoni at nick@zazilmediagroup.com.

About Red Giant

Red Giant is a software company made up of talented artists and technologists who collaborate to create unique tools for filmmakers, editors, VFX artists, and motion designers. Our company culture is focused on finding balance between work and life – we call it “the double bottom line” – this philosophy helps us ignore complexity in favor of building simple tools that yield giant results. Over the last decade, our products (like Magic Bullet, Trapcode, Universe and PluralEyes) have become the standard in film and broadcast post-production. With over 200,000 users, it’s nearly impossible to watch 20 minutes of TV without seeing our software in use. From our experiences as artists and filmmakers, we aspire to not only provide tools for artists, but inspiration as well. Watch our films, learn from over 200 free tutorials, or try our software at www.redgiant.com.

Press Contact

Nick Govoni

Zazil Media Group

(e) nick@zazilmediagroup.com

(p) +1 978.866.7354

###

Portland, OR – October 3, 2019 – Red Giant has just released the fourth and final installment of its special edition tutorial series for recreating the award-winning visual effects from Game of Thrones. In episode 11 of Cheap Tricks, Hashi shows viewers how to add a dragon into their shot. Using Red Giant tools, Hashi explains how to create two terrifyingly awesome dragon VFX shots - including one featuring dragon fire and the epic destruction of the zombie horde he created in episode 10. Viewers will learn tons of techniques in 3D animation, camera tracking, object replacement, keying, compositing, color correction, and much more.

Watch Now: Add a Dragon to Your Shot - Game of Thrones VFX Part 4

From Red Giant: “Great news! While we’ve been releasing our Cheap Tricks Game of Thrones inspired VFX tutorials a few weeks apart, this week we’re going mad (like Aerys II Targaryen a.k.a. Mad King mad) and we’re giving you a second helping of sweet, sweet learning! So gear up for one last adventure in Westeros. We promise it will end better than the show.”

Don’t forget to check out parts one through three of Cheap Tricks Game of Thrones VFX:

· Part One: How To Cast Firebolt In After Effects

· Part Two: Creating A Zombified Horse

· Part Three: Creating a Zombie Horde Battle Scene

In this tutorial, Hashi uses the following tools from Red Giant:

· VFX Primatte Keyer 6: Primatte Keyer is a powerful tool for fast, automatic chroma-keying. Whether using a green screen or blue screen, Primatte Keyer's auto-compute algorithms can often pull a perfect key automatically, with a new user interface and clean up tools that make it easy to select and separate the background and foreground.

· VFX Supercomp: Supercomp is a compositing environment that makes it easy to create complex, seamless composites. In Supercomp, light and atmospheric effects interact with all layers and elements of a scene in a far more natural way, and with far less pre-composing in After Effects than ever before.

· VFX Shadow: Shadow is a plugin for After Effects that makes it super easy to add a perspective shadow in front of or behind a layer, based on its alpha channel, brightness, and more, with options for softness, bend, length, color and many other properties.

· VFX Reflection: Reflection is a plugin for After Effects that makes it easy to add a reflection to your layers, with controls for softness, distance fade, length and more.

· VFX King Pin Tracker: King Pin Tracker makes it simple to place signs or objects into a shot, even if they aren’t simple rectangles. With powerful “To” and “From” pins, and the ability to offset and rotate in planar space, artists can pin whatever they want, wherever they want it.

· Trapcode Mir 3: Trapcode Mir is a plugin for After Effects that creates flowing surfaces, endless tunnels, terrains and 3D objects for use in your motion graphics. Design flowing surfaces and abstract shapes for motion graphics or import 3D OBJ Models.

· Magic Bullet Looks: Magic Bullet Looks is designed to give filmmakers powerful looks and color correction, with over 200 fully-customizable Look presets and over 40 tools to customize or build new Looks. Get the best, most-intuitive color correction experience in the industry.

· Magic Bullet Colorista IV: Magic Bullet Colorista IV provides professional color correction for filmmakers, turning Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects into a high-speed professional color grading environment.

· Magic Bullet Mojo II: Mojo gives footage a cinematic color grade in seconds. Accentuate and protect skin tones, cool off your backgrounds and more.

· Red Giant Universe: Red Giant’s collection of GPU-accelerated video effects and transitions plugins for motion graphics artists and editors, Universe boasts over 80 tools supported across eight host-applications.

Request a Media Review Kit or Briefing

Members of the media are invited to review any individual tools or product suites from Red Giant. For more information or to request a product review kit or private press briefing with a Red Giant executive, please contact Nick Govoni at nick@zazilmediagroup.com.

About Red Giant

Red Giant is a software company made up of talented artists and technologists who collaborate to create unique tools for filmmakers, editors, VFX artists, and motion designers. Our company culture is focused on finding balance between work and life – we call it “the double bottom line” – this philosophy helps us ignore complexity in favor of building simple tools that yield giant results. Over the last decade, our products (like Magic Bullet, Trapcode, Universe and PluralEyes) have become the standard in film and broadcast post-production. With over 200,000 users, it’s nearly impossible to watch 20 minutes of TV without seeing our software in use. From our experiences as artists and filmmakers, we aspire to not only provide tools for artists, but inspiration as well. Watch our films, learn from over 200 free tutorials, or try our software at www.redgiant.com.

Press Contact

Nick Govoni

Zazil Media Group

(e) nick@zazilmediagroup.com

(p) +1 (978) 866-7354

Portland, OR - October 1, 2019 - Red Giant, creator of filmmaking, visual effects and motion graphics tools, has just released the third installment of its Cheap Tricks special edition Game of Thrones tutorial series. In this latest episode, Action Movie Dad, Hashi, demonstrates how to recreate intense battle scenes between the living and the dead from the Emmy®-award winning television show, including how to animate the zombie horde that would make up the dreaded army of the dead. As part of today’s tutorial release, Red Giant will also be giving away free green screen footage and launching a contest to give folks a chance to win all tools from the Red Giant product family.

Watch Now: Create A Zombie Horde Battle Scene - Game of Thrones VFX Part 3

“The whole point is to show you that attacking a fully CG character doesn’t have to be a big deal, even when it’s got some cool character effects and things associated with it,” Hashi says in the tutorial.

Don’t have Red Giant VFX Suite? Download a fully functioning trial to follow along: https://www.redgiant.com/products/vfx-suite/free-trial-download/.

Get Started with Free Green Screen Footage
Red Giant is offering VFX artists 75 free green screen clips to use in their own VFX shots to get started. Featuring professional stunt artists from the UK’s Independent Drama, the shots can be downloaded now from Digital Pigeon, at http://bit.ly/RG-Warriors.

Win the Complete Red Giant Toolset
Red Giant will be giving away all the tools they make to one grand prize winner, and a single suite each to two additional winners as part of their Red Giant Green Screen Twitter contest. Here are the rules:

1. Follow Red Giant on Twitter @RedGiantNews
2. Post your video entry to Twitter with the hashtag #RGGreenScreen
3. Use Red Giant footage in your entry (does not have to be the main feature)
4. Include the link to this blog post in your entry (redgiant.com/RGgreenscreen)
5. Contest Ends 10/8/2019 at 10AM PDT

Once all the entries are in, the Red Giant team will pick their favorite for the grand prize. Two additional entries will win a single suite of their choice. Winners will be chosen entirely based on a series of complex judging algorithms, or maybe just whatever judges think is cool/funny/epic/awesome looking.

In this tutorial, Hashi uses the following tools from Red Giant:

• VFX Primatte Keyer 6: Primatte Keyer is a powerful tool for fast, automatic chroma-keying. Whether using a green screen or blue screen, Primatte Keyer's auto-compute algorithms can often pull a perfect key automatically, with a new user interface and clean up tools that make it easy to select and separate the background and foreground.
• VFX Supercomp: Supercomp is a compositing environment that makes it easy to create complex, seamless composites. In Supercomp, light and atmospheric effects interact with all layers and elements of a scene in a far more natural way, and with far less pre-composing in After Effects than ever before.
• VFX Shadow: Shadow is a plugin for After Effects that makes it super easy to add a perspective shadow in front of or behind a layer, based on its alpha channel, brightness, and more, with options for softness, bend, length, color and many other properties.
• VFX King Pin Tracker: King Pin Tracker makes it simple to place signs or objects into a shot, even if they aren’t simple rectangles. With powerful “To” and “From” pins, and the ability to offset and rotate in planar space, artists can pin whatever they want, wherever they want it.
• Trapcode Particular: Create organic 3D particle effects, complex motion graphics elements and more After Effects. Now with Fluid Dynamics.
• Magic Bullet Looks: Magic Bullet Looks is designed to give filmmakers powerful looks and color correction, with over 200 fully-customizable Look presets and over 40 tools to customize or build new Looks. Get the best, most-intuitive color correction experience in the industry.
• Magic Bullet Colorista IV: Magic Bullet Colorista IV provides professional color correction for filmmakers, turning Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects into a high-speed professional color grading environment.
• Magic Bullet Mojo II: Mojo gives footage a cinematic color grade in seconds. Accentuate and protect skin tones, cool off your backgrounds and more.
• Red Giant Universe: Red Giant’s collection of GPU-accelerated video effects and transitions plugins for motion graphics artists and editors, Universe boasts over 80 tools supported across eight host-applications.

Request a Media Review Kit or Briefing
Members of the media are invited to review any individual tools or product suites from Red Giant. For more information or to request a product review kit or private press briefing with a Red Giant executive, please contact Nick Govoni at nick@zazilmediagroup.com.

About Red Giant
Red Giant is a software company made up of talented artists and technologists who collaborate to create unique tools for filmmakers, editors, VFX artists, and motion designers. Our company culture is focused on finding balance between work and life – we call it “the double bottom line” – this philosophy helps us ignore complexity in favor of building simple tools that yield giant results. Over the last decade, our products (like Magic Bullet, Trapcode, Universe and PluralEyes) have become the standard in film and broadcast post-production. With over 200,000 users, it’s nearly impossible to watch 20 minutes of TV without seeing our software in use. From our experiences as artists and filmmakers, we aspire to not only provide tools for artists, but inspiration as well. Watch our films, learn from over 200 free tutorials, or try our software at www.redgiant.com.

Press Contact

Nick Govoni

Zazil Media Group

(e) nick@zazilmediagroup.com

(p) +1 ‭(978) 866-7354‬

Portland, OR - August 22, 2019 - Red Giant, creator of filmmaking, visual effects and motion graphics tools, today released the second installment of its multi-part Game of Thrones visual effects tutorial series: how to turn a live horse into a member of the Night King’s undead army. Daniel “Hashi” Hashimoto demonstrates keying and compositing techniques using tools including King Pin Tracker, Spot Clone Tracker and Supercomp from the new Red Giant VFX Suite, to add and track gory effects to a very much alive horse. Watch now and stay tuned for more Cheap Tricks Game of Thrones VFX tutorials.

Two weeks ago Hashi kicked off Red Giant’s Game of Thrones VFX series by showing fans how to recreate Game of Thrones magic fire effects, and then some. In episode nine of Cheap Tricks, he’s taking viewers further into the world of Ice and Fire. You’ll learn some great keying and compositing techniques, not to mention some great info on object removal and tracking. The VFX process is long and full of terrors - but Cheap Tricks is here to help you through it.

In this tutorial, Hashi uses the following tools from Red Giant:

• VFX King Pin Tracker: King Pin Tracker makes it simple to place signs or objects into a shot, even if they aren’t simple rectangles. With powerful “To” and “From” pins, and the ability to offset and rotate in planar space, artists can pin whatever they want, wherever they want it.
• VFX Spot Clone Tracker: Red Giant’s tool for lightning-fast, simple object removal with a built-in tracker for moving footage, Spot Clone Tracker easily fixes blemishes or remove small, unwanted items. Spot Clone Tracker is easy to use, and even matches your lighting automatically, with options for how it clones light, color and texture.
• VFX Primatte Keyer 6: Primatte Keyer is a powerful tool for fast, automatic chroma-keying. Whether using a green screen or blue screen, Primatte Keyer's auto-compute algorithms can often pull a perfect key automatically, with a new user interface and clean up tools that make it easy to select and separate the background and foreground.
• VFX Supercomp: Supercomp is a compositing environment that makes it easy to create complex, seamless composites. In Supercomp, light and atmospheric effects interact with all layers and elements of a scene in a far more natural way, and with far less pre-composing in After Effects than ever before.
• Magic Bullet Looks: Magic Bullet Looks is designed to give filmmakers powerful looks and color correction, with over 200 fully-customizable Look presets and over 40 tools to customize or build new Looks. Get the best, most-intuitive color correction experience in the industry.
• Magic Bullet Mojo II: Mojo gives footage a cinematic color grade in seconds. Accentuate and protect skin tones, cool off your backgrounds and more.

Request a Media Review Kit or Briefing

Members of the media are invited to review any individual tools or product suites from Red Giant. For more information or to request a product review kit or private press briefing with a Red Giant executive, please contact Nick Govoni at nick@zazilmediagroup.com.

About Red Giant

Red Giant is a software company made up of talented artists and technologists who collaborate to create unique tools for filmmakers, editors, VFX artists, and motion designers. Our company culture is focused on finding balance between work and life – we call it “the double bottom line” – this philosophy helps us ignore complexity in favor of building simple tools that yield giant results. Over the last decade, our products (like Magic Bullet, Trapcode, Universe and PluralEyes) have become the standard in film and broadcast post-production. With over 200,000 users, it’s nearly impossible to watch 20 minutes of TV without seeing our software in use. From our experiences as artists and filmmakers, we aspire to not only provide tools for artists, but inspiration as well. Watch our films, learn from over 200 free tutorials, or try our software at www.redgiant.com.

Press Contact

Nick Govoni

Zazil Media Group

(e) nick@zazilmediagroup.com

(p) +1 ‭(978) 866-7354‬

###

How to Create “Game of Thrones” Worthy Fire Effects with Red Giant

Get your cup of Starbucks, mount up, and yell "Dracarys!" with reckless abandon, as we cross the Narrow Sea and explore the VFX of Game of Thrones.

Portland, OR - August 8, 2019 -Red Giant is once again taking on what is arguably one of the greatest TV series ever made with the latest edition of its popular YouTube tutorial series, Cheap Tricks, diving into the mind-blowing visual effects of Game of Thrones. In part one of the series, Action Movie Dad Dan “Hashi” Hashimoto demonstrates how to create magic fire effects like the many seen throughout HBO’s adaptation of “A Song of Ice and Fire,” particularly those created by the Red Priestess, Melisandre. Watch now and stay tuned for more Cheap Tricks Game of Thrones tutorials.

“One of the things I hope you learn from these examples was how quick and intuitive Supercomp can feel when applying to a shot using raw materials like this and outputting a final shot like that,” Hashi says in the YouTube video, as he talks viewers through the Red Giant tools used to create magical fire effects. “Honestly one of the best parts of integrating Supercomp into your workflow is that you can shop through final looks really quickly. You can browse through different presets and get some really wonderful results using super simple ingredients as it were, to go into your shot. You don't have to add a series of six adjustment layers to see what a fire and its compound blur and its distortion map would look like; they’re all applied right here, altogether in one workspace.”

While Game of Thrones has come to its fiery conclusion, the show’s VFX still stand as some of the best stuff ever created for the small screen. Subscribe to the Red Giant YouTube channel now to see it all come together, as Hashi demonstrates how to recreate many of the effects seen on the show using the Red Giant VFX Suite and a ton of great tools and techniques.

In this tutorial, Hashi uses the following tools from Red Giant suites including VFX Suite, Trapcode Suite and Magic Bullet Suite:

• VFX Supercomp: Supercomp is a compositing environment that makes it easy to create complex, seamless composites. In Supercomp, light and atmospheric effects interact with all layers and elements of a scene in a far more natural way, and with far less pre-composing in After Effects than ever before.
• VFX Knoll Light Factory: Create camera-inspired, photo-realistic lens flares with Knoll Light Factory, designed by John Knoll, Chief Creative Officer at Industrial Light and Magic.
• VFX Reflection: Reflection is a plugin for After Effects that makes it easy to add a reflection to your layers, with controls for softness, distance fade, length and more.
• Trapcode Particular: Create organic 3D particle effects, complex motion graphics elements and more in After Effects. Now with Fluid Dynamics.
• Magic Bullet Mojo II: Mojo gives footage a cinematic color grade in seconds. Accentuate and protect skin tones, cool off your backgrounds and more.
• Magic Bullet Renoiser: Add cinematic texture and film grain with Magic Bullet Renoiser. Restore texture and noise to overly processed digital video, and protect footage from color banding and blocky compression artifacts.

Request a Media Review Kit or Briefing

Members of the media are invited to review any individual tools or product suites from Red Giant. For more information or to request a product review kit or private press briefing with a Red Giant executive, please contact Nick Govoni at nick@zazilmediagroup.com.

About Red Giant

Red Giant is a software company made up of talented artists and technologists who collaborate to create unique tools for filmmakers, editors, VFX artists, and motion designers. Our company culture is focused on finding balance between work and life – we call it “the double bottom line” – this philosophy helps us ignore complexity in favor of building simple tools that yield giant results. Over the last decade, our products (like Magic Bullet, Trapcode, Universe and PluralEyes) have become the standard in film and broadcast post-production. With over 200,000 users, it’s nearly impossible to watch 20 minutes of TV without seeing our software in use. From our experiences as artists and filmmakers, we aspire to not only provide tools for artists, but inspiration as well. Watch our films, learn from over 200 free tutorials, or try our software at www.redgiant.com.

Press Contact

Nick Govoni

Zazil Media Group

(e) nick@zazilmediagroup.com

(p) +1 ‭(978) 866-7354‬

‬‬‬

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PORTLAND, ORE. (PRWEB) JUNE 18, 2019

Red Giant today announced VFX Suite, an all-new suite of keying, tracking, cleanup and visual effects compositing tools, all right inside Adobe® After Effects®, part of Adobe Creative Cloud®. Comprised of nine tools in total, Red Giant VFX Suite offers a powerful toolkit for realistic VFX composites, automatic chroma-keying, lightning-fast and accurate planar tracking, object replacement/removal, photo-realistic glow effects, beautiful prismatic displacement effects and camera-inspired lens flares for visual effects and motion graphics.

“The VFX Suite was built from the ground up for visual effects artists in need of powerful, fast and professional tools that they can use without ever leaving Adobe After Effects,” commented Chad Bechert, CEO of Red Giant. “The team at Red Giant is made up of talented artists, filmmakers and developers, with decades of experience in creating great products and great visuals. Over the last couple of years, we’ve been quietly building a cohesive toolkit aimed at solving some of the biggest challenges faced by visual effects artists today. VFX Suite is the culmination of that work, and is packed with tools for keying, compositing, motion tracking and object replacement/removal, plus beautiful glows, distortions and lens flares. We are extremely proud and excited to share it with the visual effects community.”

“Red Giant’s VFX Suite is a fantastic, realistic toolkit to up your VFX game due to its breadth of compositing tools inside After Effects,” said Victoria Nece, Sr. Product Manager of Motion Design and VFX at Adobe. “Supercomp, in particular, is exciting as it streamlines the pre-composing process and makes it simpler to composite elements into atmospheric effects and distortions.”

Meet the Tools of Red Giant VFX Suite
Red Giant VFX Suite is made up of nine powerful tools, all accessible from right within Adobe After Effects. All plugins come with a GPU-accelerated engine, giving artists great results at incredibly fast speeds.

SUPERCOMP: A toolkit for realistic VFX composites in After Effects
Supercomp is a compositing environment that makes it easy to create complex, seamless composites. In Supercomp, light and atmospheric effects interact with all layers and elements of a scene in a far more natural way, and with far less pre-composing in After Effects than ever before. Supercomp includes more than 15 GPU-accelerated context-aware tools for integrating all of your elements into your final shot, such as Light Wrap, Volumetric Fog, Optical Glow, and more.

PRIMATTE KEYER 6: Fast, automatic chroma-keying
Primatte Keyer is a powerful tool for fast, automatic chroma-keying. Whether using a green screen or blue screen, Primatte Keyer's auto-compute algorithms can often pull a perfect key automatically. The new user interface and clean up tools make it easy to select and separate your background and foreground. Brand new to Primatte Keyer is Core Matte, a tool that keeps the inside of the key solid while still preserving fine semi-transparent details on the edges by utilizing the luminance in the foreground, creating an incredibly natural key. And now, with GPU optimization, users will get even more speed, with previews and renders up to 3x faster than in previous versions.

KING PIN TRACKER: The power of planar tracking, directly in After Effects
King Pin Tracker gives you fast, accurate planar tracking, right inside Adobe After Effects.
King Pin makes it simple to place signs or objects into a shot, even if they aren’t simple rectangular shapes. With powerful “To” and “From” pins, and the ability to offset and rotate in planar space, artists can pin whatever they want, wherever they want it. King Pin Tracker is incredibly fast and accurate, and can track surfaces in changing lighting, even as they leave the frame.

SPOT CLONE TRACKER: Fast, simple object removal with a built-in tracker
Spot Clone Tracker is a tool for lightning-fast, simple object removal with a built-in tracker for moving footage. Easily fix blemishes or remove small, unwanted items. Spot Clone Tracker is easy to use, and even matches your lighting automatically, with options for how it clones light, color and texture.

OPTICAL GLOW: The most beautiful glow, ever
Optical Glow is a blazing fast, drop-dead gorgeous, photo-realistic glow effect for use in professional visual effects and motion graphics. It’s easily the most beautiful, highest-quality glow you’ve ever had on your timeline. With built-in gamma management, glows will always look realistic, whether footage is video, log, or even linear. Perfect for professional VFX work, Optical Glow offers tons of control for making lightsabers, starship engines, police lights, neon signs and more with beautiful, photo-realistic results.

CHROMATIC DISPLACEMENT: Force fields, heat ripples, light refractions and more
Chromatic Displacement uses one layer to displace the pixels of another, while smoothly separating out the colors. Unlike the Displacement Map effect in After Effects, Chromatic Displacement uses the displacement image as a height map, which gives you beautiful, organic results. Chromatic Displacement was designed for creating professional visual effects, such as force fields, heat ripples, light refractions, cloaking effects, and much more – but it’s also great for motion graphics.

KNOLL LIGHT FACTORY 3.1: 3D lens flares for motion graphics and VFX
Designed by John Knoll, Chief Creative Officer at Industrial Light and Magic, Knoll Light Factory creates camera-inspired, photo-realistic lens flares that render fast, thanks to new GPU acceleration. Using the intuitive Lens Editor, artists can create their own flares from scratch, or customize one of the 200 included presets inspired by some of the most iconic films of the past few decades.

SHADOW: Go for realism with complex perspective shadows
Shadow is a plugin for After Effects that makes it easy to add a perspective shadow in front of or behind a layer, based on its alpha channel, brightness, and more. With options for softness, bend, length, color and many other properties, the Shadow effect extends the various shadow tools available inside After Effects.

REFLECTION: Add life to your motion graphics
Reflection is a plugin for After Effects that makes it easy to add a reflection to your layers. With controls for softness, distance fade, length and more, this effect goes far beyond the standard methods for creating reflections.

Red Giant VFX Suite Price

• Full: $999
• Academic: $499

Compatibility

• Host-App: All of the tools work in Adobe After Effects CC 2018 and later. Knoll Light Factory, Primatte Keyer, Optical Glow and Chromatic Displacement also work in Adobe Premiere Pro CC 2018 and later.
• OS: All tools work on both Windows and Mac.
• Check the individual product pages for specific host-app and OS compatibility.

The Red Pledge
Red Pledge is Red Giant commitment to customer happiness, with no purchasing hassles. Learn about the Red Pledge guarantee at http://www.redgiant.com/redpledge/.

Request a Red Giant VFX Suite Media Review Kit
Members of the media are invited to review Red Giant VFX Suite as well as any individual tools or product suites from Red Giant. For more information or to request a product review kit, please contact Nick Govoni at nick(at)zazilmediagroup.com.

About Red Giant
Red Giant is a software company made up of talented artists and technologists who collaborate to create unique tools for filmmakers, editors, VFX artists, and motion designers. Our company culture is focused on finding balance between work and life – we call it “the double bottom line” – this philosophy helps us ignore complexity in favor of building simple tools that yield giant results. Over the last decade, our products (like Magic Bullet, Trapcode, Universe and PluralEyes) have become the standard in film and broadcast post-production. With over 200,000 users, it’s nearly impossible to watch 20 minutes of TV without seeing our software in use. From our experiences as artists and filmmakers, we aspire to not only provide tools for artists, but inspiration as well. Watch our films, learn from over 200 free tutorials, or try our software at redgiant.com.

Portland, OR - March 19, 2019 -Red Giant just announced a flash sale for Magic Bullet Suite, its widely-used color correction, finishing and film looks tools for filmmakers. For the next 24 hours, from 10am PT (1pm ET) on Tuesday, March 19th to 10am PT (1pm ET) on Wednesday, March 20th, Magic Bullet Suite will be 50% off in the redgiant.com store. Additionally, individual Magic Bullet Suite tools will be 30% off.

To receive 50% off Magic Bullet Suite, use code MBSUITE50. To receive 30% off individual Magic Bullet Suite tools, use code MBTOOLS30. Discounts are applied to full licenses, upgrades, and academic purchases (already 50% off - be sure to qualify first! For details, visit: https://www.redgiant.com/academic-pricing/).

Shop Magic Bullet Suitehere.

Example Pricing:

● 50% Off

○ Magic Bullet Suite 13: $449 (Reg. $899)

○ Use code: MBSUITE50

● 30% Off

○ Magic Bullet Looks: $279 (Reg. $399)

○ Magic Bullet Denoiser III: $139 (Reg. $199)

○ Magic Bullet Colorista IV: $139 (Reg. $199)

○ Magic Bullet Cosmo: $69 (Reg. $99)

○ Use code: MBSUITE30

Magic Bullet Suite 13: Essential Tools for Color Correction, Finishing and Film Looks

Magic Bullet Suite 13 gives filmmakers everything needed to make footage look great, right on editing timelines. Balance out shots with powerful color adjustments that work the way the human eye expects them to. Go beyond color correction, with accurate simulations of lens filters and film stocks. Magic Bullet Suite delivers powerful real-time color correction thanks to OpenCL support in Adobe® Premiere® Pro CC, enabling filmmakers to improve footage without ever needing to switch to a different app.

Tools included within Magic Bullet 13.0 include:

● Magic Bullet Looks 4.0: Powerful looks and color correction for filmmakers, with over 200 fully-customizable Look presets

● Colorista IV: Professional color correction directly on your editing timeline – no need to switch to a different app to grade footage

● Denoiser III: Quickly remove video noise and grain from footage in one step while preserving detail

● Mojo II: Instantly give footage a cinematic color grade in seconds

● Cosmo II: Balance skin tones, reduce wrinkles and remove blemishes quickly and naturally

● Renoiser: Restore texture and noise to overly processed digital video

● Magic Bullet Film: Emulate the look of real motion picture film with 22 negative stocks and four print stocks

The Red Pledge

Red Pledge is Red Giant commitment to customer happiness, with no purchasing hassles. Learn about the Red Pledge guarantee at www.redgiant.com/redpledge/.

Request a Magic Bullet Suite Media Review Kit

Members of the media are invited to review Red Giant Magic Bullet Suite as well as any individual tools or product suites from Red Giant. For more information or to request a product review kit, please contact Nick Govoni at nick@zazilmediagroup.com.

About Red Giant

Red Giant is a software company made up of talented artists and technologists who collaborate to create unique tools for filmmakers, editors, VFX artists, and motion designers. Our company culture is focused on finding balance between work and life – we call it “the double bottom line” – this philosophy helps us ignore complexity in favor of building simple tools that yield giant results. Over the last decade, our products (like Magic Bullet, Trapcode, Universe and PluralEyes) have become the standard in film and broadcast post-production. With over 200,000 users, it’s nearly impossible to watch 20 minutes of TV without seeing our software in use. From our experiences as artists and filmmakers, we aspire to not only provide tools for artists, but inspiration as well. Watch our films, learn from over 200 free tutorials, or try our software at www.redgiant.com.

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OSLO, Norway—The Future Group has introduced Pixotope, a software suite for commodity hardware that makes it easy and affordable to use 3D, VR, AR and data technology in video productions.

Available as a subscription-only package, Pixotope enables broadcasters and video producers to create real-time, cinematic-quality, cross-reality content, the company said. The new product closely integrates the Epics Games Unreal Engine to make possible creation of real-time graphics.

Pixotope’s real-time graphics processes include reflections, distortion, shadows, lightwrap and virtual camera moves.

The Pixotope software suite includes: Pixotope Director to control all aspects of the system; Pixotope DataHub, which offers an API for easy integration of multi-camera workflows, including MOS, custom control panels, DMX light control and GPI triggers; Pixotope Controller, which allow design and integration of control panels inside browsers on any device; and Pixotope Editor, which supports a WYSIWYG workflow for level layout, lighting, vfx, animation and compositing.

Pixotope tools include the Text3D GG, Pixotope Keyer and Pixotope Studio Creator virtual studio generator.

The software allows users to:

• Create virtual sets and AR with cinema-quality real-time graphics;
• Work with a single camera or multi-camera productions in which everything is synchronized and dynamically linked;
• Make all graphics work, from personalized sets to entire content sequences, data-driven
• Use off-the-shelf hardware and CPUs.

Monthly subscriptions are priced at $2,500 per camera channel.

More information is available on the Future Group website.

Shoot production can be a chaotic beast, no matter how much meticulous planning or pre-visualization goes into a campaign. Creative agencies and studios alike will come face-to-face with all kinds of unexpected variables outside of their control—from disruptive weather to faulty equipment, and awkward logistics. Even the use of visual effects and computer graphics can be unpredictable—push hardware or software too far and you might, very abruptly, hit an undiscovered limit.

As Saddington Baynes has expanded further into on-set shoot production, we've had to adapt to new kinds of challenges. In many cases, merging live-action and CG work is key to maintaining the client's vision when a shoot goes awry, and there are many different techniques that can help maintain standards of quality.

How can creatives best adapt to the behind-the-scenes challenges of live action shooting and CG to utiliZe the myriad benefits both before and after being on-set? Here are five key rules that any shoot production expert worth their salt should be thinking about.

1. CONTROL THE WEATHER

You can plan as much as you'd like, but when Mother Nature is ready to let loose with rain, snow, hail, or worse, all you can really do is react as quickly and safely as possible—and have a backup plan or two ready in your back pocket.

That's where CG can be a life-saver. If your shoot schedule doesn't allow the flexibility to return another day or otherwise find a live-action solution to any weather-related dilemmas, then you can harness the power of CG to complete projects or tweak results. One potential option is to use LIDAR scanning to capture useful location data, in case you need to rebuild assets after the fact.

It happens to everyone. On one shoot, a freak late-season snowfall blanketed the entire set, forcing an early wrap. Another time, while shooting a car campaign in Arizona, we had to deal with a punishing sandstorm. We didn't realize how painful it could be—and that's true for our equipment, too.

Things can get wild out there, but Mother Nature's ill-timed intrusions can be corrected in post, taking all the pressure off after you've evaded any unexpected storms.

2. THE ULTIMATE MAKEOVER

CG can also help overcome a wide array of unexpected location issues. How a location looks in a staged photo may not always be what you see once you arrive. Perhaps it's degraded or in need of upkeep. It could even be an issue of lighting, when time of year or other variables affect what you're able to capture.

You might not have the time to make a location change, or your client might be dead-set on sticking with the locale. When that happens, it's up to you to make it work.

In one case, a home we planned to shoot in had months of overgrown plant life, and didn't look nearly as glamorous as the architectural shots had suggested. Furthermore, a hedge had been visibly munched on by caterpillars; it was a scraggly mess. In the end, we had to do significant work to beautify the location in a hurry.

It's often much easier and even less time-intensive to use CG to fine-tune location shoots after the fact. Whether that's paint clean-up or removing objects, adding CG buildings or other elements to the live-action footage, or changing the lighting conditions, it's all very possible. Digital tinkering can save a whole lot of physical struggle and frustration, and it provides much more flexibility to get the look exactly right.

3. LIGHTS, CAMERA, ACTION

Going into a shoot with an understanding of how CG can help finish a project is key, as you never know when a technological malfunction might derail a perfect shoot plan. Dealing with an unexpected tech headache can eat up your shoot time and limit the amount of workable footage you're able to capture on-set. Troubleshooting may only take you so far.

Whether you need to rebuild an environment from scratch or reframe shots, the power of CG makes it possible to salvage a shoot that's gone awry. Be ready to pivot as needed and integrate a larger share of CG work in post as needed.

4. EXPECT THE UNEXPECTED

No shoot will ever go 100 percent as expected, and if you're lucky, any hurdles will be small ones. If you're not so lucky, then a lack of preparation can prove very costly indeed. Experience will help you navigate many issues, but intelligent pre-shoot planning is invaluable.

Battle-plan for an array of issues like those mentioned earlier, and think about using CG to address potential problems before they happen. For example, you can use CG to engineer camera setups and angles, and prepare for elements like lighting and reflections. With CG always available as a tool, we come into shoots better prepared and leave knowing that we're ready to deliver the client's vision.

5. RETHINK THE BALANCE

As both a VFX supervisor and shoot director, I know well the immense power of CG—how it can fix live-action footage and empower creators. Of course, you always want to capture as much as possible on-set, but integrated production methods allow for so much more flexibility than strictly traditional methods.

Knowing your client and what they're seeking creatively is also essential. You need to engineer an approach that's going to give the maximum amount of flexibility. It's necessary to be able to move camera angles or change lighting, improving on the original deliverables or adjusting to client feedback. That’s something we can excel at by implementing visualization on-set, holding up a consumer-grade tablet to map out elements quickly and accurately, again blending live action and CG to eliminate creative roadblocks before they appear.

Experience is the key to keeping a cool head and finding simple, streamlined solutions to an unpredictable shoot. Integrated, CG-driven techniques are available to solve most potential issues, you can now go into a shoot feeling confident, capable, and ready to execute on your vision.

Andrew White is creative director at Saddington Baynes in London. 

Flame is the core of my personal post boutique, I use it for VFX and compositing, and also as a fully functional NLE. I’ve been in post and VFX for many years, and started using Flame when it became available as a software-only solution. There are several new features in the 2019 release that allow me to complete almost every aspect of post on my commercial and broadcast projects in Flame.

My broadcast work includes many genres and types. I was recently hired to shoot and finish 23 interviews for an international broadcaster that was an in-depth look at the life of a soccer referee. Every interview clip was approximately 2:30 minutes, and was shot in front of a green screen. 

We had about 20 days to edit and finish the 23 clips. Only Flame’s exceptional speed and workflow options made this job possible. The 45 minutes of green screen compositing alone could have been a year-long task. Everything was done in Flame, including sound and broadcast mastering. For another project I had to produce content that had to be delivered across multiple mediums. Flame’s capability to deal with high resolution pictures, and delivery of consistent and predictable results in different color spaces, made this production very easy on the post side.

Before Flame 2019, color grading in Flame was doable and OK but far from what I would consider streamlined. With the Effects Tab and MasterGrade, this changed so much for the better that I now consider Flame as a serious contender in the color correction realm. Because Flame is all about choices, it takes some time to understand how color management is implemented and how to customize it to your needs. Flame’s new color management also allows me to work in ACES. MasterGrade is ACES optimized with log and lin optimized maths. You notice the difference instantly when working with MasterGrade. I get much better results compared to my old workflow in legacy video mode and CC/CW nodes.

The new Timeline to Batch workflow is a huge time saver and the new Connected Conform, an industry first and only, is a god-send to all of us who have to create tons of versions and need a fast way of producing them.

More and more I experience the need to produce high-level video content that must perform consistently across vastly different media platforms. This is a massive challenge for producers, writers and creatives and the postproduction back-end alike. From shooting high-resolution material for HDR productions, to the delivery of square social media in standard-video, to all that must be accomplished and archived for later use in a short time frame.

With the Facebook Logik group, I have access to a very active online community with many seasoned and smart Flame artists who are always helpful and insightful. Newbies are welcome, and the tone is friendly and open-minded. The Autodesk dev. team is also part of this community and has helped navigate how to maximize use of the new 2019 features; Grant Kay’s brilliant tutorials are a gem and a necessity.

The benefit of working with Flame is that you can see it as a fast compositor and finishing tool for client attended sessions that allow conforming timelines and sophisticated project management, or you can see it as an NLE with unbelievable possibilities. I use Flame for both, and I gain a lot with the new features that Flame 2019 is offering.

Hans Von Sonntag has been working as a filmmaker, editor, VFX, compositing and finishing artist for over 20 years. In addition to many awards including the ADE, Spotlight, Eurobest and World Media he has also been a lecturer on the subject of filmmaking. He can be reached at hans@vonsonntag.com

Fremont, CA - August 24, 2018 - Blackmagic Design today announced that post production, including an innovative live visual effects (VFX) workflow, for sci fi adventure, "2036 Origin Unknown," was delivered in DaVinci Resolve Studio by editor Will Steer and Goldcrest Post colorist Maria Chamberlain.

Directed by HaZ Dulull, and starring sci fi veteran Katee Sackhoff (Battlestar Galactica, Riddick and Netflix’s Another Life), "2036 Origin Unknown" tests the relationship between humanity and technology, when an artificial intelligence system, A.R.T.I., assisted on a mission to Mars by Katee’s character, Mack, goes rogue.

Completing the online edit and conform was Will Steer, who adopted a unique, layered approach to his pipeline developed by Dulull and Associate Producer Paula Crickard.“The timeline was naturally VFX heavy, and with such a tight deadline, we needed a workflow that would allow Goldcrest complete flexibility in the grade,” explained Steer.

“Within Resolve, we had separate layers for on screen graphics and visual effects work, as well as for each of the camera packages, which all had different color spaces. When it came to the grade, Maria could turn everything else off and just work within a specific layer.”

Another timesaver, for both Will and Maria, was the ability to manipulate the VFX work themselves. “Adding realistic detail to shots is normally done in compositing software, but we could do this directly in Resolve with built in plugins such as grain, lens flares, camera shake and motion blur. As well as delivering high quality, convincing effects, this workflow meant no time consuming round-tripping with other software packages,” says Will.

Maria adds, “For example, during the grade, we adjusted the timing of the button illumination on Mack’s main control desk to suit the story at any given point, as well as manipulating A.R.T.I.’s responses by refining color and timings that were already mapped out in the layer.

“We also had access to all the assets we needed for screen graphics and monitor UIs on separate layers too, which allowed easy access to color, position and sizing live on the timeline, without having to request new versions or mattes for specific elements from vendors. This afforded HaZ and myself total creative freedom in the grade without compromising delivery time.”

“It’s often the case that last minute VFX changes are attempted in the grade,” concludes Will. “But developing such a flexible, multilayered timeline in DaVinci Resolve elevated the workflow hugely. We were adding deliberate creative, yet very convincing, flourishes to the film as part of our process, and we could do it right in Resolve with extreme ease.”

Press Photography

Product photos of DaVinci Resolve and all other Blackmagic Design products are available at www.blackmagicdesign.com/media/images.

About Blackmagic Design

Blackmagic Design creates the world’s highest quality video editing products, digital film cameras, color correctors, video converters, video monitoring, routers, live production switchers, disk recorders, waveform monitors and real time film scanners for the feature film, post production and television broadcast industries. Blackmagic Design’s DeckLink capture cards launched a revolution in quality and affordability in post production, while the company’s Emmy™ award winning DaVinci color correction products have dominated the television and film industry since 1984. Blackmagic Design continues ground breaking innovations including 6G-SDI and 12G-SDI products and stereoscopic 3D and Ultra HD workflows. Founded by world leading post production editors and engineers, Blackmagic Design has offices in the USA, UK, Japan, Singapore and Australia. For more information, please go to www.blackmagicdesign.com.

The emergence of new content formats in the media and entertainment sector—think 4K Ultra High Definition (UHD), Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR)—has created a deluge of data that needs to be managed, accessed and processed in record time to feed the insatiable appetite of today’s entertainment consumer.

According to Tom Coughlin’s ‘2017 Digital Storage for Media and Entertainment Report’, digital storage capacity used in the entertainment industry will increase by 3.5x between 2016 and 2022. To battle the rapid turnaround times and increasing data volumes that follow as a result of this fast-growing industry, an up-to-date and ever-expanding storage system is not just a recommendation—it is a necessity. Is your storage infrastructure ready for the technology challenges of the modern media workflow? Let’s take a look.

STATE OF THE M&E INDUSTRY

Looking at behavior models in the media and entertainment industry, and specifically the VFX space, we can see that today’s media industry is characterized by spikes, as production requirements and schedules are notoriously fickle. Media studio operations must accommodate for huge data workload spikes caused by unplanned job changes that occur in the middle of planned production schedules. Moreover, tight budgets and high expectations are a main concern. As a result, companies are facing unprecedented cost pressure to support new production and distribution technologies that drive differentiation and enhance productivity.

Inevitably, responding to this imperative requires investing in storage and other infrastructure components, but all too often, the need for investment clashes with an ultra-tight budget which can lead to saving in the wrong places. It’s important not to forget that an inadequate storage infrastructure can not only have an adverse effect on business outcome but may also take a human toll by requiring labor-intensive administration, which not only impacts the bottom-line but also shifts the focus from where it needs to be: on the craft and creativity of your production facility. That’s why it’s important to find storage that offers the right combination of performance, price, flexibility, and manageability.

WHAT ARE WE UP AGAINST?

Data-intensive media rendering and animation jobs in the visual effects (VFX) industry demand powerful processing of complex assets with higher resolution, denser colors and faster frame rates. Also, increased pressure on media production teams to deliver higher quality content faster requires an infrastructure that can support 24/7 activity with unparalleled reliability and the confidence that files are available when needed.

If storage is static, lacking, or outdated, wall-clock time increases and deadlines suffer. You need storage that supports parallel creative activities handles high resource demands from multiple sources and delivers the raw speed and management simplicity required for everyone in the creative value chain to work faster and smarter. As a possible solution, studios are moving to or expanding their network-attached storage (NAS) storage solution.

EVALUATING YOUR STORAGE OPTIONS

Putting an agile and easily manageable storage backbone behind both media production and development is essential. As you evaluate your next storage purchase, ask yourself the following questions: Can investment in new storage technology improve our system architecture in terms of greater flexibility, better scalability, improved reliability, and easier management? How will new storage technology improve my creative workflow? How does my team access and share data? How much data growth do we expect from the increased use of 4K formats, 3-D animation, virtual reality, creative collaboration, and new channels for distribution?

In essence, you want a solution that is affordable, delivers high-performance and is still easy to manage. At the same time, performance for all users must be maintained to keep creatives happy as they perform their valuable tasks to push content through the production pipeline.

THE CASE FOR SCALE-OUT NAS IN VFX

Scale-out NAS, when delivered with parallel processing, packs the punch you need to address the data-intensive media rendering and animation productions in VFX environments. When you need shared-access storage that scales easily and delivers faster rendering times, supports highest data availability, and handles dozens of editorial sessions and high resource demands from multiple creatives, scale-out NAS is the way to go. A scale-out storage infrastructure reduces congestion across multiple “vectors,” including bandwidth and capacity, by supporting small-file I/O requirements across multiple flash-based components, while parallel access to larger files such as IMF containers for DPX or EXR elements improves responsiveness to artists seeking to load and process shots rapidly. Here are a few more points to be made for the advantages of scale-out NAS in VFX production:

Ability to adapt to dynamic business needs: Scale-out storage is well suited to media studio operations looking to expand storage capacity and bandwidth vertically. It’s easy to “turn more on” at the source to expand the scope of the data pipe serving the studio operation. Today’s on-premise scale-out storage solutions are proven effective at delivering the right capacity at the point of need, with the flexibility to grow easily without downtime. Your budget also scales predictably because you pay for what you need when you need it, not for what you think you’ll need tomorrow, making you work faster and more efficiently.

Consistent access to vast amounts of data: A flexible and agile scale-out NAS solution is capable of supporting the highest data transfer requirements in your computing infrastructure while maintaining the highest data availability on a 24/7 basis. Consistent access to vast amounts of data, while also providing reassurances to manage a consistent repository of data that can be deduped, backed up, protected and kept secure, is the cornerstone of a modern storage infrastructure.

Driving a collaborative and connected business operation: Maintaining maximum creativity for artists, streamlining workflows, and delivering projects on time and budget is what it’s all about, and the right scale-out NAS solution makes a difference. Artists being able to focus on their craft instead of wrestling with a complicated storage environment can deliver a higher-quality product. Teams being able to work on media files at full resolution rather than editing a lower resolution and rebuilding are saving valuable time and costs.

THE FUTURE OF STORAGE

Media organizations that embrace technological advances in computing infrastructures can realize incredible benefits. Visual media studios are harnessing the use of scale-out storage technologies to work in new ways that allow them to function as a different kind of collaborative, connected and altogether experimental business operation. There is an extraordinary number of choices when it comes to delivering and consuming media and entertainment production content, and audiences expect a high-quality experience across the board, no matter the channel of delivery.

At the heart of this infrastructure is data storage, and the ability to rationalize and optimize this layer to serve different operational needs is of paramount importance in running an efficient studio.

RW Hawkins is a Storage Systems Engineer at Panasas, a performance scale-out network-attached storage company based in Sunnyvale, Calif.

Basingstoke, UK — June 12, 2018 - EditShare a technology leader in intelligent scale-out storage, AQC and media management solutions, announced today that the international post-production division of Red Chillies Entertainment, redchillies.vfx, has selected the EditShare EFS scale-out storage platform as the base infrastructure for all future projects including its upcoming project titled “ZERO”, starring the world-renowned actor Shah Rukh Khan. “ZERO” is a first-of-its-kind visual effects-based movie. To manage the complexities around the advanced visual effects’ scenes, redchillies.vfx will rely on EditShare Flow media asset management (MAM). Fully integrated with the EFS scale-out storage nodes, Flow provides key ingest, transcode, search and retrieve functions. Flow also provides key automation capabilities, allowing redchilies.vfx to minimize redundant tasks while automating more complicated transactions. “It is important for Red Chillies to be supported with best-of-breed solutions that can manage the challenges of our visual effects-heavy productions,” comments Keitan Yadav, COO of redchillies.vfx. “EditShare was the only vendor to demonstrate support for 66 streams within a single node. This level of performance combined with the ability to easily scale the system and manage the assets in collaboration was key in the decision to make this investment.”

redchillies.vfx was set up in 2006 by Shah Rukh Khan, Keitan Yadav & Haresh Hingorani with an aim to provide a full-fledged post-production service to the fraternity along with international VFX services. EditShare will effectively connect rechillies.vfx and NLE systems via the EFS scale-out storage platform. “EditShare supports industry-standard applications from Adobe, Autodesk, Avid, Blackmagic Design and more,” comments Peter Lambert, APAC sales director, EditShare. “For redchillies.vfx, this means centralizing assets and providing tools to collaborate on building VFX scenes with the capability to play back complex VFX scenes in real time.” For the proof of concept, EditShare supported real-time playback of 24 layers across four machines simultaneously.

Lambert concludes, “EditShare’s presence across the Indian market has grown considerably over the past 24 months. This can be attributed to the investments we have made in sales and support teams in India in addition to a full suite of offerings that work just as well with industry-standard solutions as it does across its own product line, supporting the modern productions that are producing some of the world’s biggest blockbusters.” The workflow implemented at redchillies.vfx along with EditShare’s new automated quality assurance system, QSCAN, can be seen at the upcoming Broadcast Asia exhibition in Singapore from June 26-28 at EditShare stand 6J4-04.

About EditShare

EditShare is a technology leader in networked shared storage and tapeless, end-to-end workflow solutions for the post-production, TV, and film industries. Our ground-breaking products improve efficiency and workflow collaboration every step of the way. They include video capture and playout servers, high-performance central shared storage, AQC, archiving and backup software, media asset management, and Lightworks – the world’s first 3-platform (Windows/OS X/Linux) professional non-linear video editing application.

©2018 EditShare LLC. All rights reserved. EditShare is a registered trademark of EditShare.

Press Contact

Nick Govoni
Zazil Media Group
(e) nick@zazilmediagroup.com
(p) +1 (978) 866 7354

Fremont, CA - May 10, 2018 - Blackmagic Design today announced that the thriller “My Daughter Was Stolen” used a variety of its gear throughout production and post, including URSA Mini Pro, URSA Mini 4.6K and Pocket Cinema Camera digital film cameras, DaVinci Resolve 14 Studio for color grading, editing and sound design and Fusion 9 Studio for visual effects (VFX).

“We did the entire project in Blackmagic Design,” said Ari Golan, producer, camera/MoVI operator, drone pilot, post supervisor and colorist, as well as owner of Golan Studios and Atomic Imaging, the production and post houses behind the film. “Everything was shot on five Blackmagic Design cameras and completely edited, graded and finished in DaVinci Resolve Studio. Even the sound mix was done in DaVinci Resolve Studio, as well as green screen compositing. Fusion Studio was then used for VFX work.”

The film, which premiered internationally in select theaters March 1st and subsequently March 9th on the Lifetime Movie Network, takes place in current day Chicago and follows two actresses competing for the same role. When one doesn't get the role of her dreams, she kidnaps the other actress’ four-year-old daughter. 10 years later the girl escapes, but her captor pursues her and begins a murderous rampage culminating in a final chase sequence and showdown.

During filming, DP Don E. Fauntleroy, ASC, used URSA Mini 4.6K PLs as the A and B cameras, as well as an URSA Mini Pro for all gimbal and drone shots, including overhead tracking shots of cars, establishing shots of locations, and the film’s opening shot approaching the downtown Chicago skyline from over Lake Michigan. An URSA Mini 4.6K EF was also used for splinter units and pickup shots, as well as a Pocket Cinema Camera for select stunt drive overs.

“The only non-Blackmagic Design cameras on set were used for still photography,” Fauntleroy explained. “Going into this project, we had just completed ‘Jeepers Creepers III,’ which also used URSA Mini 4.6Ks. We were so pleased with the look and capabilities of the Blackmagic Design cameras that when we started this production, we didn't even have a conversation regarding which cameras we would use. It was a foregone conclusion that it would be the URSA Mini 4.6K and URSA Mini Pro.”

While Fauntleroy cites the cameras’ form factors, dynamic ranges and affordability as additional factors in why they were chosen, it was the image quality above all else. “Blackmagic Design cameras provide the best image per dollar you can get. Also, the RAW CinemaDNG workflow with DaVinci Resolve Studio is seamless, robust and versatile,” he said.

As Editor Roger Wolski noted, in post, the team was able to switch back and forth for editing and color grading in DaVinci Resolve Studio through the use of collaboration mode. “We used the collaboration mode during the edit because I started editing while the film was being shot. First thing in the morning, the previous day's footage was copied to the server via the clone tool. Then Assistant Editor Nick Scurto would edit the metadata and label the clips by scene and take, all while I was editing clips already finished. This not only allowed the assembly edit to be completed just a day or two after filming wrapped, but also allowed Ari to grade simultaneously,” he explained. “I also found DaVinci Resolve Studio’s trim tool pretty intuitive to use. It made trimming and fine adjustments very quick.”

During grading, Golan was tasked with creating a warm, happy feeling for the beginning of the film; however, as tragedy and drama unfold, the look moves to cooler tones. He relied heavily on several of DaVinci Resolve 14 Studio’s new features throughout his work, including the Match Move filter which allowed him to easily replace pictures and video, for example replacing images on television screens and cell phones.

“It saved us from having to use another program outside of DaVinci Resolve Studio, which on a greater scale, was true for the majority of the post workflow in general,” Golan said. “The only thing not done in DaVinci Resolve Studio was VFX in Fusion Studio, as well as some sound effects and foley editing, but that was brought into DaVinci Resolve Studio as stems.”

VFX Artist Adam Clark relied on Fusion 9 Studio’s planar tracker for a number of shots, including tracking fire to objects and bullet wounds to an actor. “In conjunction with the new powerful planar tracking options, I leveraged Fusion Studio’s superb roto tools to isolate tracking areas,” he said.

Dialogue Editor Terry Shaughnessy was in charge of adding in sound effects, music and creating the final mix. “While my audio editing was done in DaVinci Resolve Studio’s edit page, we used the Fairlight page for setting up sub groups, main outs, dynamic filtration and final delivery stems,” he added.

“With the addition of Fairlight audio to DaVinci Resolve 14, we can deliver projects the way we want without having to send out to other programs,” concluded Golan. “Not only do we have advanced color grading and editing in one program, but we also can set up subs and mains and route everything accordingly, output the master, and separate left, center and right surround channels all in one step.”

Press Photography

Product photos of URSA Mini Pro, URSA Mini 4.6K, Pocket Cinema Camera, DaVinci Resolve Studio, Fusion Studio and all other Blackmagic Design products are available at www.blackmagicdesign.com/media/images

About Blackmagic Design

Blackmagic Design creates the world’s highest quality video editing products, digital film cameras, color correctors, video converters, video monitoring, routers, live production switchers, disk recorders, waveform monitors and real time film scanners for the feature film, post production and television broadcast industries. Blackmagic Design’s DeckLink capture cards launched a revolution in quality and affordability in post production, while the company’s Emmy™ award winning DaVinci color correction products have dominated the television and film industry since 1984. Blackmagic Design continues ground breaking innovations including 6G-SDI and 12G-SDI products and stereoscopic 3D and Ultra HD workflows. Founded by world leading post production editors and engineers, Blackmagic Design has offices in the USA, UK, Japan, Singapore and Australia. For more information, please go to www.blackmagicdesign.com

CULVER CITY, CALIF.—The march toward a multiplatform digital future is well on its way, but what form it will eventually take is still up for debate. VFX Technologies, a provider of computer rentals and tech services, got a peek at one possibilitywhen it was hired by AMV Digital Media, an online broadcast, managed and production services company, to provide a custom solution to capture broadcast feeds at the Emmys.

Sarote Tabcum

The digital side of its Emmy production consisted of providing connectivity help between the production trucks and teams from IMDb, Amazon and the TV Academy to transcode and use fresh media as web content on their sites and social media profiles. With the VFX systems, editors were able to cut together footage from real-time cues and events to keep up with the live broadcast. “Our system tied everything together and provided a high-speed, 10GB fiber backbone between the two locations and to the editing,” said Sarote Tabcum, founder of VFX Technologies.

According to Tabcum, this was VFX’s first project where it provided editing support for a live production. The company has worked with other companies with a more digital focus in recent years, and Tabcum believes that these types of productions are only going to become more frequent.

“I see digital media is taking off at a very fast speed and the demand is there,” he explained. The ability for multiple broadcasters to share the same content instantly among their own social media accounts is a big shift from the past traditions of a single broadcaster having primary access to content. This new accessibility also allows broadcasters to quickly edit and make the content their own.

For VFX, and other companies like it, this means that they will have to quickly adjust to this new capability and others that could emerge down the road. “We’re at the forefront of any new technology and it’s our job to know how best to utilize that for our clients,” said Tabcum. This includes the shift to IP that is underway and will change the infrastructure of how baseband, video and broadcast delivers video signals.

Tabcum found the experience at the Emmy broadcast to be a positive one for his company, because it set them up to be an ally to companies looking to do similar digital experiments in the future. “We want to be a very solid stepping stone for many of these clients that are testing the waters and as these projects come live I hope they will rely on our expertise so they don’t have to be a Guinea pig,” he said.