Imaging the future symposium 2011 conference report

Yesterday I attended the imaging the future symposium 2011 that ran beside the NIFFF Festival (Neuchatel International Fantastic Film Festival). I had the chance to test my french speaking and undestanding again, most of the symposium was held in french, lucky that we had french in school :)

Theatre du Passage, where the symposium was held

During the morning there was a presentation fo the main sponsor, Autodesk. I was not there since I know the talk already from a sales point of view.

Then Swisscom and SSR/SRG, the Swiss public broadcasting organisation showed their view on the future of television. It was about how mobile devices will be connected with your daily TV experience, what happens to remote controls, video on demand, product placement and shopping the stuff actors are wearing while watching a show.

Then in the afternoon the interesting conference part started :)

Nicolas Aithadi

Nicolas Aithadi, VFX supervisor, The Moving Picture, GB - X-Men: First Class (Vaughn, 2011), Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 (Yates, 2010)
www.moving-picture.com

 Nicolas Aithadi gave a fantastic overview on his daily job and how he deals with different departments. We got nice making of and problem solutions on Harry Potter and X-Men First Class.

Ending in a stop motion solution when other methods fail. Harry Potter's gutter scene needed multiple characters melting and separating. 

Nice namegiving, hehe

Inside view to preproduction. Mixing different character attributes to come closer to the wanted look. This was the Polyjuice transformation scene of the last Harry Potter.

Shot breakdown to see how to film  the Polyjuice transformation effect.

We got some amazing shot breakdowns of X-Men: First Class. A lot was moving picture, so not good to photograph.

Marc Umé

Marc Umé, VFX supervisor, Digital Graphics, BE - The Secret of Kells (Moore & Twomey, 2009), Home (Meier, 2008), Mr. Nobody www.digitalgraphics.be

Marc Umé had a talk on how only to use VFX when it is really necessairy. His Studio uses Blender for a lot of 3D effects since 2003! I had a talk with him and we discussed if they use a modified version of Blender.. They use the standard version and do inhouse python scripting if they need to for a project. He said that in the beginning when Clients asked what kind of 3D software they use, and they said Blender, the customers needed a lot of convincing that it does not matter with what you work as long the final image looks good. After showing the clients what they have already done with Blender, they were convinced fast :) His studio does not only work with Blender, since a long time they are in business and have strong knowledge in stop motion, traditional 2D animation and compositing.

Set extension (Ship) with Blender and the various Open Source Software they use in their Pipeline

Blender in extensive usage

Z-Brush for Ghost modeling

Their Inhouse tool renders Watercolor using GPU power.

Hugues Martin

Hugues Martin, VFX supervisor, Independent, FR - Mirages (Selhami, 2010), Djinns (H. & S. Martin, 2009)

Hugues Martin talked about creating a feature film (Mirage by Talal Selhami) with a real low budget. What happens when you have to work in the desert and how good teamwork in a team of 2 works.
They had always to make fast decisions, not fiddle around only on a single problem but tackle what is important first.

Fast decisions and a good planing

How to enhance scenes with simple effects and methods in After Effect

 After that the three got a little bar-talk on what it means to work in big sized companies or in small sized teams.

Karen Goulekas

Karen Goulekas, independent VFX supervisor, US - Green Lantern (Campbell, 2011), 10'000 BC (Emmerich, 2008), The Day After Tomorrow (Emmerich, 2004), The Fifth Element (Besson, 1997)
www.kegfx.com

Karen Goulekas works in the CG Instustry since 1984 and shared tons of detailed information on VFX Prep and Data Acquisition. Her knowledge and passion resulted in a super interesting speech. She showed us her way of dealing with large projects on the example of the Green Lantern and 10'000 BC.
From the start she breaks the script down into VFX scenes to find out where FX are involved, how complicated they are and derives the costs out of this data. She has got her own way to manage all the data in vi (I like the old school approach).

We got insight on how on set data is captured and processed from tracking markers, HDRI sampling and cyberscanning to the data processing and organizing behind the scene.

Breaking down the shots begining with the script

Decisions when to use CG characters and when to shoot on film

Showcase Swiss VFX

David François and Miklos Kozary

David François and Miklos Kozary, founders of swissmadevfx ended the conference by explaining the target of their assosiation and showing a reel of swiss made VFX.


I have also met Olivier Amrein, another Blender Artist that I only know by surfing the internet. I hope we can get together for a beer sometime, Blender is growing in Switzerland, amazing!
 
After all the information I got a bit tired and went home with a lot of inspiration, see you next year in Neuchatel.

Riding home