Pop Culture at the Speed of Light
The new Star Wars Teaser made most people happy just by containing scenery that looked like the original trilogy.
Not even two days later there’s a pretty well-composited spoof of a “George Lucas special edition” that reminds you of how cluttered Episode 1 to 3 looked like:
And the only thing that was actually new in that teaser? A ridiculous light saber design reminiscent of a medieval sword (interesting trivia: in German, the light saber had always been called a “laser sword”). And of course, mere days after the trailer, this gets its own spoof as well…
source: unknown
I love the evolution of pop culture in the internet age 🙂
Reconciling Job and Family
Reconciling a job in the media or vfx industry with a family can be a tough task. I hope more companies follow the lead of Canadian ad agency Union. Once a year, on employee appreciation day, their employees are rewarded for their hard work by being allowed to see their families 🙂
(found via pixelsham)
Ok, that’s a joke. Obviously. But it coincides with another blog post from vfxsoldier about an article in ‘Variety’ where the frustration about the working conditions at MPC boils over in the comments section. The title of that article? Moving Picture Co. Finds Valuing Artists is the Best Effect.
Disclaimer: personally, I can’t judge any of this since I have never worked at MPC nor in the UK for that matter.
The Great Martian War
Man, World War 1 was apparently greater (and more awesome) than I’ve been told in school.
The video above, which seems to be a compilation from a mockumentary on History Channel, is so funny it makes you forget the horrors of WW1 as shown in that real documentary on ARTE (IMDB page – unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be much info in English).
The shot of horses grazing in front of broken Martian machinery reminds me of the art of Simon Stålenhag.
MinutePhysics Explains Star Shapes
Most lens flares, especially artificial ones in VFX, have a star-shaped thingy around bright light sources. And every comp software has its own tool for this, whether it’s called glint, glare, highlight and so forth. This video explains the physics behind these star shapes and the correct chromatic aberration if you fake them (spoilers: red is diffracted the most).
With the knowledge from this video, you can make your own star-shaped diffraction patterns using a fourier transformation. Nuke has a tool for this.
Fake Wide Aperture
Took 10 seconds of video with a gentle camera motion, stabilized and averaged 400 frames. If I’ve applied the formula correctly, this should be about f/0.04 (about 100mm diameter for the iPhone’s 3.85mm focal length). But due to rolling shutter and motion blur, the bokeh is ugly.
Fresh ’14: A New Fusion Skin
I’ve written a number of scripts and macros for Fusion, but I’ve never dealt with its theme/skin engine. Since Fusion 7 is about to be released and totally looks like Fusion 6 I’ve drawn a custom skin (or theme) to freshen up the GUI a bit.
updated 2014-11-12: for Blackmagic Fusion 7.5 see paragraph at the end!
Fusion’s skin engine is quite flexible but not everything can be fully themed and customized. I’ve documented the skin file format while building my skin in case other people are interested in delving into this.
So, without further ado, here’s the skin:
Download Fresh14.fuskin and place it into your Fusion\Skins directory. Then go to Preferences → Global → Appearance and move “Fresh14” from the left list to the right one (below the Fusion 6.1 entry that is already there).
Credits for the icons: http://www.icons8.com
The skin contains:
- new tool controls that change the glossy look with one that is consistent and much flatter but still uses bevels and highlights to indicate widgets that you can push or drag.
- a color scheme that is as desaturated as possible to not be distracting but doesn’t look dull or monochrome.
- consistent icon style, including new ones for the tracker, the file dialog and the main tool bar. Moreover, many icons in Fusion’s default skin had the wrong size and were being scaled down to fit onto buttons. Not anymore.
- wider input fields so decimals don’t get cut off all the time.
- wider margins between certain controls to make the GUI look less cramped.
update 2014-11-12:
Blackmagic Design’s new Fusion 7.5 (free) no longer supports skin preferences. This might hint at a GUI update in the near future but if you want to continue to use Fresh 14 now you need to replace the Fu61.fuskin file in the Fusion\Skins directory manually with a patched version. Read all about it on steakunderwater.com!
The Broken VFX Business Model
Scott Squires has a good article about how the VFX business model is getting distorted by film subsidies.
Companies and workers will continue to be forced to move to the place on earth that offers the largest (tax-payer funded) film subsidies.
As far as I know, here in Germany, the Stuttgart area (or the state it’s the capital of) has recently increased subsidies. Companies like Pixomondo or Mackevision (think “Game of Thrones”) surely benefit in the sense that they can get some shots from overseas shows.
Update
Oh look! LookFX, which had opened an office in Stuttgart, maybe unrelated to said subsidies but maybe just because of them (I have no idea)Â has gone tits up.
In Munich I’ve immediately heard people ask for further tax breaks for post-production work. But would that really benefit local vendors or just big film studios? And wouldn’t it be a bubble that’s gonna burst when another state takes the lead in a “race towards the bottom”?
You could certainly design subsidies that can’t simply be exploited by overseas studios as a way to reduce their costs while not actually increasing profits of local vendors. Attach limits or thresholds, coupled to the amount of money that’s spent on local actors or other crafts. Whatever. But will those subsidies be effective in attracting shows when the producers of said shows wouldn’t profit as much as from Vancover’s or New York’s taxpayers?
Another blog that’s constantly covering the issue of film subsidies is VFX Soldier.
