News

Visual Effects Society Names Director/Producer/Writer Ava DuVernay

A Keynote Speaker at 2017 VES Summit

Los Angeles (SEPTEMBER 6, 2017) – Today, the Visual Effects Society (VES), the industry’s global professional honorary society, announced acclaimed director/producer/writer Ava DuVernay as a Keynote Speaker at its 9th annual Summit, “Inspiring Change: Building on 20 Years of VES Innovation.” The interactive forum on Saturday, October 28th celebrates the Society’s milestone 20th Anniversary and will bring together top creatives, executives, thought leaders and visionaries from diverse disciplines to explore the dynamic evolution of visual imagery and the VFX industry landscape in a TED Talks-like atmosphere. 

Keynote Speaker: Ava DuVernay. Nominated for the Academy Award and eight Emmy Awards, winner of the BAFTA for Best Documentary and The Peabody Award, Ava DuVernay's 13TH is one of the most critically-acclaimed films of 2016. In 2015, DuVernay directed the historical drama Selma, which garnered four Golden Globe nominations and two Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture. Her current directorial work includes the award-winning dramatic television series Queen Sugar; and the upcoming Disney feature film A Wrinkle in Time.

DuVernay previously wrote, produced and directed the dramatic feature, Middle of Nowhere, which earned her the 2012 Sundance Film Festival Best Director Award. In 2010, she wrote, financed, produced and directed her first narrative feature, I Will Follow. The family drama was hailed by critic Roger Ebert as "one of the best films I've seen about the loss of a loved one." DuVernay made her directorial debut with the critically acclaimed 2008 hip hop documentary, This Is The Life and has directed several network documentaries, includingVenus Vs. for ESPN. She has directed significant short form work including August 28: A Day in the Life of a People, commissioned by The Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, as well as acclaimed fashion and beauty films for Prada and Apple.

‎In 2017, DuVernay was named one of Fortune Magazine's 50 Greatest World Leaders and TIME Magazine's 100 Most Influential People.‎  She also distributes and amplifies the work of people of color and women directors through her film collective ARRAY, named one of Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies.

The VES Summit will host a stellar roster of experts and provocateurs.  As previously announced, these include:

• Keynote Speaker Syd Mead, acclaimed visual futurist and conceptual artist
• President of IMAX Home Entertainment Jason Brenek on Evolution in Entertainment: VR, Cinema and Beyond
• CEO of SSP Blue Hemanshu Nigam on When Hackers Attack: How Can Hollywood Fight Back?
• Head of Adobe Research Gavin Miller on Will the Future Look More Like Harry Potter or Star Trek?
• Senior Research Engineer at Autodesk Evan Atherton on The Age of Imagination
• Founder/CEO of the Emblematic Group Nonny de la Peña on Creating for Virtual, Augmented & Mixed Realities.  

Additional speakers and roundtable moderators will be announced soon.

The 2017 VES Summit takes place on Saturday, October 28th at the Sofitel Hotel Beverly Hills, located at 8555 Beverly Blvd. For more information and to purchase tickets, visit https://www.visualeffectssociety.com/news-events/summit. 

Sponsors include Rotomaker and Houdini.  Media partners include Animation Magazine, The Hollywood Reporter, SHOOT Online, Variety and The Wrap.

VIEW Conference 2017 Announces Final Program

Registration Now Open for the October 23-27 Symposium in Turin, Italy

Award Entry deadline: September 15.

 www.viewconference.it

With more than 50 speakers confirmed for the 18th annual confab, Italy’s largest digital media conference promises to offer inspiring and practical content to artists, animators, game developers, storytellers, content creators and other students and professionals who work with computer graphics.

Six visual effects Oscar winners, two Academy Sci-Tech award winners, animated feature film directors, virtual reality pioneers, computer graphics researchers, game developers, photographers, writers, and studio executives will converge in Turin, Italy from October 23-27. 

“One of the special reasons to attend VIEW is that our speakers like to stay for the entire week and attend talks given by the other speakers, so our attendees have many opportunities to interact with them,” says Conference Director Dr. Maria Elena Gutierrez. “Another reason is that I think VIEW might be the only conference at which, in addition to talks, animated film directors and Oscar-winning artists offer small, interactive workshops and master classes.”

All told, VIEW boasts 15 master classes and workshops this year including those from Director Mark Osborne (The Little Prince) and Director Kris Pearn (The Willoughbys)who will offer storytelling and storyboarding tips. Character Artist Jason Bickerstaff (Pixar Animation Studios) and Animation Supervisor Hal Hickel (Industrial Light & Magic) who will delve into the mysteries of character animation; and, Professor Dr. Donald Greenberg (Cornell University) who will lead workshop attendees on an interactive exploration of virtual reality technology and techniques.

Also unique to VIEW is the game developers bootcampand accelerator program during which selected start-ups receive mentoring from industry experts and equity partners leading to the opportunity to pitch their projects to potential investors.

“VIEW brings together the world’s best and brightest minds across multiple disciplines, in a uniquely intimate and collaborative place where creatives can incubate and celebrate,” says Dr. Gutierrez. “I’m as proud as ever of VIEW 2017. I hope you can join the VIEW family in beautiful Torino.”

You can view the final program online at: 

http://www.viewconference.it

In this changing world, ACM SIGGRAPH requires a new and bolder vision. In response to this need, the ACM SIGGRAPH Executive Committee (EC) commissioned a diverse cross-discipline team to develop an overarching five year strategic initiative to ensure our organization and community remain relevant and continues to be recognized as the premier global organization for computer graphics and interactive techniques. The five year vision our strategy team brought forward is "Enabling everyone to tell their stories." As ACM SIGGRAPH is much more than the annual conference, the EC wants this vision to be the guiding light behind a number of tangible benefits that are relevant and tangible to our members throughout the entire year.

During the Keynote Session at SIGGRAPH 2017, our outgoing President, Jeff Jortner, outlined the strategy teams’ vision as centering on five specific areas of focus:

• Establish a 21st-century digital presence
• Grow and develop an active CG community and idea marketplace
• Enable and welcome new technologies and vertical markets
• Streamline our organization
• Develop a strategic marketing plan

A cutting-edge 21st-century digital presence would enable the organization to better focus on education and professional development for its membership year-round, leveraging the many grassroots efforts present in the community and exploring the upcoming digital platforms that will inform and mobilize our community.

One of the many initiatives under the area defined as "grow and develop an active CG community and idea marketplace" is for the organization to create a moderated worldwide graphics listserv where computer graphics researchers and practitioners can learn about graphics-related conferences, exhibitions, submission deadlines, open positions, and news. This listserv has been created. To sign up, please visit http://listserv.siggraph.org/, click on the GRAPHICS-WORLDWIDE link and subscribe. This group is actively working with ACM on creating an ACM SIGGRAPH Proceedings of the ACM (PACM) for the specialized conferences which have stringent review processes comparable to those of journals. In the past, conference-centric publishing put the graphics research community at a disadvantage compared to other scientific disciplines because the significant work produced has not been recognized as such. ACM SIGGRAPH Specialized Conferences have demonstrated high quality and high impact on the field, and PACM will help recognition as such.

The new technologies program is creating a "Talk and a Coffee" program for the first session of each day at SIGGRAPH to provide an opportunity to hear expert researchers and practitioners from adjacent fields as well as graphics. The hope is that these talks will inspire us to think about new problems with applications that go beyond the traditional definition of graphics.

Streamlining the organization has been an active project for the ACM SIGGRAPH Executive Committee for the last year, and has resulted in a set of suggested bylaw changes which after approval by ACM will be presented to the membership in a special election in January. The aim is to get members to engage, participate or contribute, and become part of an elite organization who supports and helps throughout ones career. One way will be to limit the amount of volunteer hours needed to be president of the organization, and to increase the number of volunteers by highlighting opportunities to participate that only require between 40 and 80 hours per year.

More information will be coming out in the coming months as the initial team continues to meet and solidify metrics and plans of action. More information will be coming on these ideas as well as the marketing initiative in the coming months as the team continues to meet and solidify metrics and plans of action.

By Ian Failes. Republished with permission from Spark CG Society.

Perhaps the most talked about sequence in Luc Besson’s Valerian & the City of a Thousand Planets is the interdimensional journey undertaken by the title character through a merchant world. Here, Valerian (Dane DeHaan) dons special goggles that enable him to be in two ‘worlds’ at once — a desert and the market world — as he attempts a secret mission.

ILM led the visual effects effort on the scene, with its Vancouver office the main contributor under visual effects supervisor Philippe Rebours. Hybride also worked on the sequence. Spark CG Society found out more in this Q&A with Rebours.

Watch a portion of the sequence as Valerian stumbles into a toy shop in the merchant world.

This is one of the most stunning scenes in the film, but also one of the most complicated. How was it explained to you, and how was it conceived?

Philippe Rebours: We received the script and then a few of us from ILM went down to LA to meet Scott Stokdyk, the overall visual effects supervisor, and Sophie Leclerc, the visual effects producer, and Luc as well. We saw the sequence the way Luc shot it with his students. He has a school in France next to his stages, and he took his students and for a couple of weeks they shot the entire sequence on the stage. They were just using tables and whatever they could find and would walk around and act it out.

Then Luc took that and edited it and showed that to us. Interestingly, I remember being there and it was a 22-minute sequence, and I was, even then, I was completely into it, even though there was no environment. I was completely into it and it felt like a Luc Besson movie. The position of the camera that he chose, the lenses, the movement. I told him it was very interesting because right away you could feel his signature.

The good thing is, Luc also did his homework. He edited the sequence and then he would say, ‘Okay, that’s what I’m going to shoot,’ and shot by shot we could define and we coloured each shot or we put a dot on it to say, ‘This shot is in the desert,’ and, ‘This is shot in the marketplace,’ because the sequence happens on two worlds, right at the same time.

Or, ‘This shot is a POV,’ which means we’re going to use a third look which is like when the tourists put their goggles on. Then Luc took that and scheduled his shoots based on that, meaning that everything that was in the desert we shot it on a stage where that was the desert world with the sand, and the blue screen all around. Everything that was in the merchant world, or almost everything that was in the merchant world, we would shoot it on the blue stage where we just had markers and poles here and there to define the scale of the street, these kind of things. It was like a real animatic, but actually with shot people.

When it came time to sort of show Valerian in both worlds at the same time, in that sort of virtual reality look, how did you approach that side of things?

Philippe Rebours: So, what is interesting is when you’re in the desert, you see all the tourists and the tourists are in that world. They’re wandering around and they see the other worlds through their goggles. The merchants, they’re in their world but they have to interact with the tourists as well, with the tourists being in the other world. In the merchant world, all the tourists show up as holograms. They have this blue treatment on them, but that’s where the sequence becomes also fun because Laureline (Cara Delevingne), who does not have the googles, is invisible in the merchant world, is never seen in the merchant world. She’s incognito, basically. Valerian at some points becomes invisible because he’s being spread by some technology that makes it that his hologram doesn’t appear in the merchant world, so the merchants cannot see him — he’s sneaking in and he’s using this transmitter box.

When you buy something in one world, the idea is you put on a glove, you see the other world, you walk in the compound, it’s like you’re walking in the other streets. You touch the things, you feel them with the glove and then when you want to buy them you buy them and you go somewhere where those transmitter boxes are and what you bought appears in your world. It’s being transferred from one world to the other one. What Valerian does is he puts his hands with a gun in one of those boxes and transfers his hand and the gun in the other world, so he’s invisible in the merchant world but his hand and gun appears.

Then at some point, he cannot retrieve his hand and so he’s being chased slightly invisible. So you have those shots where you only see the box with his hands running around, and all the other tourists are blue. All the aliens that are in the merchant world are regular merchant world, but that means that those aliens are not seen in the desert world. Interestingly, with the cuts, it all works. You don’t question it, which I think is due to the good editing.

How were you tackling those shots that just showed his hand or the gun?

Philippe Rebours: Well, it depends on the shots. So, you have the shots where we’re on set, let’s say, into Igon Siruss’ store and that was a set. There we shot multiple passes. We would replace the actor that was playing Igon Siruss with our CG creature. Then we had for some shots we had Dane there and the hand holding the gun and we used that as a reference. I mean, we used his take and his hands and the box that he was holding. In some cases, we replaced the box and the hand in CG. When it’s on the blue screen, when we were on the other world where, well, in the streets that were fully CG, we had a pass with Dane walking around so we had a good reference on the movement, and then we would replace it if we needed to. We either painted him out or just picked the hand and the box, or made the box and the hand CG animated. Then the interesting aspect is when he is in the desert, we painted out his hands and the gun because you wouldn’t see it there.

What were some of the visual effects challenges in making the two different environments — the desert and the market?

Philippe Rebours: For the desert, we were on set and it was in this huge stage. The desert world was defined by sand. Those rocks that were tilted in one direction, you imagine that it’s like rocks that had been pushed by the wind in one direction. We had some initial reference for the sky, but then we got a new reference which was from a commercial shown in France and it was basically cumulus clouds stacked on top of each other but all having different colors. That gave the full look of the desert, which was this yellow sand, blue sky, stones with multi-colored clouds.

Now, the other environment, the merchant world, we had tonnes of artwork representing the streets here, a street there, the canyon and all that. What we did in some of the shots is — it’s very subtle — but you could imagine that as the sun is moving, the awnings are moving with it so all the time the streets are in the shadows. We created all those details in a library of elements that we used to dress the set.

Also what Luc gave us was a lot of artwork of very specific stores. It was interesting because he wouldn’t say, ‘I absolutely want this one in this shot.’ He’d just say, ‘These are all the artworks that I like. Please use them. Choose the ones that you feel would work the best,’ and left us a lot of freedom.

Then he did the same thing with the aliens, there was tons of artwork as well, and there was also some that he chose from the comic book. Each time we did a creature, you do one but then you have to do variations as well. He would give us the initial information for the costumes, and then we would go and create variations on the costumes.

It’s interesting because sometimes I would say, ‘No, this is not working because this is not our universe.’ Even though there’s a lot of variations, there is a very specific look to the movie, and if you had too many very strong details everywhere, it might become another sci-fi movie. For example, Luc didn’t want any straight lines. You know when you’re on a street and you see the buildings and everything, it’s straight? He was like, ‘No, no, I don’t want that. I want round. I want them to be tilted, a little bit off,’ and I think that was true with the creatures as well. Most of them would very, fairly round, round shapes, or not too many angles. However, he absolutely wanted as well to have these very simple aliens, let’s say, that are like geometry shapes. A pyramid or a cube or octagon, that were flying around.

In terms of the huge environments and complex world of that market, were there any special tools or approaches that you were using?

Philippe Rebours: Our approach was kind of like LEGO, where you build pieces and assemble it together. Then what our generalist group was working in was Clarisse from Isotropix, and it’s great software because you can have a lot of geometry and a lot of set dressing. The library would be live in the scene in a sense, on the side, and then you could just choose and pick which one you wanted to set dress. For a big fly-through that we did, most of the set dressing was first done procedurally, and then when the camera goes closer, we enter a street, for example, there we went more manual and did a proper set dressing, or adding details here and there.

With the set dressing, you place the object and the object comes with materials and textures that were modeled, some by our generalist department but some by our modeling, digital modeling department, and so they were model and textures before and imported afterward. We had also a library of materials inside Clarisse so we could add more variations by switching these. For example, you have a vase and the vase was made of earth. Then you say, ‘Well, actually let’s switch that to a metal vase,’ and so you could switch the material like that.

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