This week I’ve delved further into Vue, figured out how to undistort and redistort my plates properly in NukeX and chosen and cut together the takes I’ll be using for the final scene. The cut can be seen above.

To be able to get a good 3D track and also making the CG environment look correct, it is important to undistort the plate before tracking and redistort the CG plate before compositing. As the camera lens is curved and the image rectangular, all lenses produce distortion where what in reality are straight lines become curved to some degree. The amount of distortion varies with the field of view of the lens and also focus if the lens is breathing while focusing.

To figure out the amount of distortion I shot a lens grid for each and every one of the shots in the scene, making sure the lens properties were exactly the same as when filming the corresponding shot. This way, I was able to use the new LensDistortion node in NukeX to analyse the grid and produce a slightly larger, undistorted image; basically by pulling at the corners. I then plugged the actual plate into the node, undistorting the plate itself.

Now that this is done, I can render the undistorted plate and get a better 3D track in PFTrack. This undistorted plate is also the one I’ll be using as a background image in 3d studio max to match my CG environment to the plate. Then, when the CG is rendered, I’ll use the LensDistortion node in NukeX in reverse to distort the CG render; thus shrinking the CG down to the right size and making it look more believable due to slightly curved lines.

It must be noted that in this case, the distortion is relatively insignificant, meaning I could probably do the shot without bothering about it. However, as the distortion can be a lot worse, I feel it is good to get into the habit of doing the thing properly so I know how to do it in the future.

1 Business Summary

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1.1 Business Overview

• freelancer providing services as roto/compositing artist to vfx facilities
• industry: visual effects
• key benefit: flexible, both regarding working hours and the ability to relocate
• no plan on growth, will either continue freelancing or find a job

1.2 Service Features

• mainly do roto/compositing for vfx facilities
• might expand to matchmoving and some 3D work as well if requested
• flexibility and delivering consistently and within deadlines will give an edge

1.3 Market Analysis

• targeted market: vfx facilities and other companies in need of vfx artists
• business model proven to work by other artists in the same field and by Hans Rijpkema at Rhythm & Hues

1.4 Marketing Strategy

• showreel
• web site
• facebook/twitter/linkedin
• business cards

1.5 Key Objectives and Financial Overview

• Being able to scrape a living from year one

2 Detailed Plan

This is the detailed version of the Lorem ipsum dolor…

2.1 Market Analysis

• Clients: Vfx facilities, ArchVis companies etc.
• Geographical area: Europe, US and Australia. English-speaking countries
• Market is growing
• Main market – vfx facilities – somewhat segmented into specializations such as environments, creatures, photo realism and fantasy
• Market influences: economy, tax regulations, some times strikes
• Reach customers either by applying, like for a job, word of mouth or possibly agencies
• Seasonal trends: Summer blockbusters and Christmas movies makes the months leading up to these the most busy
• Pricing sensitivity: Depends on location, but will charge roughly the going rate, which at this time is approximately £3000 a month for a person in a beginners position
• Competitive edge: Can work “anywhere” & any time, quick delivery, high quality work
• Sources: fxphd.com, fxguide.com, Animex speakers
• Benefits: Can work “anywhere” & any time, quick delivery, high quality work

In the past two weeks I’ve been looking closer at Vue 8 xStream to see whether it can help me create the vegetation I need for the ICA. I’ve had a closer look at how good Vue is integrated with 3ds max, how easy it is to use and how well it copes when rendering out passes in 3ds max with Vue elements thrown in. Though I can’t say I know the application that well yet, I’m pleasantly surprised with what I’ve found so far. The 3ds max integration works really well and my biggest fear – that ambient occlusion passes and z-depth passes would fail because the tree leaves are just textured cards with opacity maps is put to rest:

This is a simple tree from Vue, rendered with Mental Ray in 3ds max. As you can see, the z-depth map works very well. The exaggerated zblur test done with Nuke underneath shows how this might help me apply depth of field during compositing.

All I really need to find out now is how I can customise trees to convert them into branches and that sort of thing. I’ll ask Chris about that next week.

I also had a quick look at FPHoe this past week as an easier and cheaper alternative to PFTrack, but found it to be too simple. PFHoe has no built-in tool for masking and the lens distortion tool feels very crude. I think I’ll stick with PFTrack.

Finally, because my Windows 7 RC installation was about to expire, I had to reformat a perfectly good system and install a fresh copy of Windows 7 this week. This turned out to be quite a hassle as the new Windows 7 drivers provided by the computer manufacturer caused the system to crash every 30 seconds or so. I’ve got everything running again now, but it took me almost 16 hours to get things back to how they were. Next up, now that the computer is all sorted is to create the final 3D scene. I have a fairly good idea of how to do this now, given my tests during the previs and poking about in Vue, so I hope to get that done fairly quickly.

I made this business card to have something to hand out on Animex if needed. Thought it might be used for the Studio Practice & Business module as well.

The press release can be downloaded as a PDF or viewed below. Edit: Press release now updated to version 2.

Download Press Release Version 2 PDF (28 KB)

Download Press Release Version 1 PDF (26 KB)

Michael Thingnes
+44 7717 454408 / +47 482 31 245
michael@thimic.net
www.thimic.net

PRESS RELEASE

PROMISING GRADUATE STUDENT NOW TAKING ON CLIENT WORK

Middlesbrough, 15 June 2010 — Michael Thingnes is a fresh graduate student out of the Digital Visual Effects course at Teesside University. His primary skills are rotoscoping and compositing, but he also feels comfortable as a 3D modeller, render artist and matchmover. Michael has now set up a sole trader company in his name, which will aim to offer these services to visual effects facilities of all sizes, although he will happily consider working for other clients as well.

In addition to his Teesside University bachelor degree, Michael has taken courses at fxphd.com involving compositing theory, Nuke, After Effects and Maya. He is planning on continuing taking courses to gain more experience and stay updated on software.

Experience wise, Michael considers himself fairly skilled in the use of Nuke, Photoshop, 3d studio max, Final Cut Pro and PFTrack. In addition, he has some experience using After Effects, Maya, Realflow and Massive.

Currently, Michael is based in London, UK although relocation nationwide or worldwide is definitely a possibility given that the client can guarantee six months of work or more. If you believe Michaels’ services can be of use to your company, don’t hesitate to email him or give him a ring. He will be only too happy to talk to you.

FOR RELEASE 9AM 16 JUNE 2010

As I attended my first Animex ever this week and I wanted to see everything, this was a bad week as far as productivity is concerned. On Wednesday however, I attended a workshop with Pete Draper, the author of the Deconstructing the Elements books for 3ds max, and asked him his opinion on how to best implement realistic-looking foliage into my scene.

He recommended going to http://seek.autodesk.com/, find some foliage I like and then put it into my scene, either by hand or by using particles.

I’ve had a quick look at the Autodesk site and found some models I like so if they work well when I import them to 3ds max, this will probably be my approach for creating that part of the environment. If they don’t, I’ll look into Vue and some other foliage generators out there, or as a last resort, simply create the geometry myself.

Strengths

• Specialising in one particular field to become as good as possible, but have some secondary fields to fall back on if need be
• Location not an issue, I’ll move
• Relatively few expenses
• Saving the client paperwork involved in hiring someone

Weaknesses

• Business relies heavily on one persons ability to produce good work
• Might need to move/travel a lot
• Can be exhausting
• Irregular income

Opportunities

• Becoming a better roto artist/compositor
• Learn new software
• Producing a better show reel
• Finding clients
• Different clients (hopefully) means diversity in work

Threats

• Competition
• “Dry spells”
• Software I’m not trained on
• Lack of experience and clients when starting out

As mentioned in my last post, I shot the footage for my AVE ICA this past Wednesday. That was the plan anyway. Turned out we overshot on time with a lot and only got three out of five shots before the day was over. Might have been the workshop we had on lighting a couple of weeks ago. We seemed to spend an awful amount of time on it. Whether the lighting actually is any good I’ll leave for others to decide. Fortunately, Mark was very kind to me and freed up the Thursday so we could leave everything as it was and come back and finish the next day.

Apart from taking a very long time the shoot went smoothly enough. I think I got all the measurements I needed, I shot lens distortion grids for every shot and photographed the settings on the lens after every shot for good measure.

A big thanks to Thomas Utbjoa who agreed to be the actor and all the other guys who took a couple of days off to help me out.

After the shoot, I keyed and tracked the first shot and must say I am reasonably happy with the result. Next up is creating the scene in 3D which needs to be finished by  26 February if I wish to keep on schedule.

As I really want to find employment in a visual effects facility as a roto artist or compositor, the chance of this business idea being more than hypothetical is very slim. To get the most out of the module however, I’ll choose a business that will allow me to mimic being employed in a visual effects facility as closely as possible.

According to Hans Rijpkema at Rhythm & Hues in California, only a little under half of the Rhythm & Hues staff is currently employed on a permanent basis. The rest are brought in depending on the need for people and skills on each individual project. This, from what I’ve heard, is quite common in the visual effects industry today.

The natural choice for me would therefore be to set up as a freelancer and target client companies such as the ones I hope to be employed by in the future. By billing them instead of receiving salaries, I can work for them as a freelance artist while using their offices and equipment.

This is quite good the way I see it as it will reduce expenses at my end. I will have to get some basic equipment for use at home and other than thatI can leave most of what’s left to salary, taxes, pensions and whatever else. I don’t see the real need for an office space in this scenario. If I’m working at a visual effects facility, I’ll have my office there and if I were to go without studio work for a while and having to resort to smaller jobs, I think I’ll be just fine with working from home. Given that I don’t foresee very big expenses in such a freelance business, I will probably be fine as a sole trader.

As of yet I’m not too tied down to any location in particular so I am free to move all over the world for jobs should I wish to. At the moment I would prefer feature film work in an english speaking country which means that the UK, the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand are highest on my list. Of course, I might have to aim a lot lower than feature film at first to get clients.

Regarding finding a name for the business I think I’ll make it as simple as just going with my actual name. With the kind of work I expect to be doing, all clients will know I am a single person anyway. Given that I also want to seek employment some day, it would be good (hopefully) to have people associating the business with my name.

Not much to report in AVE this week. After finishing the presentation I booked the green screen stage so I can shoot the footage I need for the ICA. The shoot will be on Wednesday this week. I’ve also found an actor.

To prepare for the shot I’ll have to print some A3 size lens distortion grids today or tomorrow. The reason for the A3 size is that the grid needs to fill the frame and that a smaller size will have to be too close to the camera to keep it in focus.

As I had some slight issues with sharpness on my test shoot, I want to spend half an hour shooting a test scene and doing a quick keying test to make sure the footage is nice and soft.

Given that everything goes according to plan on Wednesday I’ll be on schedule with the project. Next up will be creating the final environment, produce good keys for the shots and matchmove them.

Christmas is long gone and I’m back in Middlesbrough after a refreshing break. The first thing I had to focus on when I got back was to create a presentation for Advanced Visual Effects where we were to present a storyboard, previs, schedule and a couple of other things regarding the ICA. As I still didn’t have a previs because of work on my Practical Project, this became my main priority.

This is the first project I’m doing which combines CG and live action, green screen removal and 3D tracking. Because of this, I decided to make life a little more difficult for myself than was strictly required by doing all aspects of the work I’m supposed to do in the final shots right in the previs. I did this in the hope that I would gain experience which might help me when doing the real effects shots later.

Basically, I tracked all five shots in PFTrack, modelled and rendered a fairly simple scene in 3D Studio Max, quickly keyed the footage and composited it together using Nuke. As this is just a previs there is still a ton of errors and problems with almost everything. I have continuity errors, issues of scale, existence of contact lighting and shadows in odd places, lack of contact lighting and shadows in others, horrible keying/roto, no colour and grain consistency between shots and so on and so forth. There are also two different actors as I was shooting on two separate days and didn’t have the same people available.

The process of creating the previs took about three days and in hindsight I’m very glad I did it. As a result I will at least do these things differently when creating the final piece:

• Shooting in 1080p instead of 720p to get a better resolution for keying
• Make very sure all forms of sharpening in the camera are turned off
• Shoot a lens distortion grid for every shot to make sure I can accurately get rid of lens distortion (I actually went back and shot grids for the previs, but as the distortion changed quite dramatically with focus and I only had notes for focal length it didn’t help much)
• Be more relaxed about the subject being partly outside the green screen here and there or a cable/tripod being behind the subject as those things can be easily rotoscoped, but making all the more sure the green screen is evenly lit and that shadows are reduced to a minimum
• Adding less contact lighting on set and more in post as the light I got on set was generally too harsh
• Create and import a simple proxy scene of the CG environment to the matchmoving application to avoid scaling issues
• Make sure of continuity between shots – both in the studio and in the CG environment
• Read up on colour grading

Finally, after the previs was finished and the presentation was done, I opened Photoshop and have played around with ways of making the finished shots more interesting. Underneath is one version where I’ve added more glowing things and a slight spotlight on the apple, but I might dial things back a bit if this turns out to be too much.

This Thursday I headed over to the green screen studio in the Phoenix building to finish my test shooting for the Advanced Visual Effects ICA. The person I used as an actor on the first shoot couldn’t be there, so I’ll have two actors playing the same role in my previs.

This doesn’t matter much as the previs is meant for working out camera angles, timing, technical solutions, etc. and isn’t much about the performance. This time around I used Erlend which I might ask to be in the final shoot as well.

While on the shoot, I forgot to shoot test charts for lens distortion so I’ve booked an hour in the studio this Monday to get those. I’ve noted down focal lengths on all of the shots so it shouldn’t take long. Getting test charts for the test shoot might not be that important, but I’ve never tried undistorting footage in order to get a better track and better results in compositing with CG elements before so thought I’d try.

Here are some reference images I’ve gathered.

What I think I’ll do is to create a few trees in 3D, or rather just one tree and create some variations for it. Somewhere between six and nine trees should be enough. In the foreground I’ll use the 3D trees. Further back I’ll either find images of trees or render my 3D trees to 2D images and stick them on cards in 3D space. In the far background I’ll use a matte painting of some sort, mapped to the inside of a 3D cylinder or sphere. Hopefully, that should be enough to create an illusion of depth and keep the amount of work manageable.

What worries me most at the moment is the creation of the leaves. I think I’ll make some in 3D and use them sparingly in the foreground. Further back I’m hoping the depth of field will blur them quite a lot, so I’m thinking of either creating random particle clusters of them in 3D without actually sticking them on branches or alternatively extract them from images and stick those up on planes in 3D space.

I write this on a Sunday and I’ll be leaving Teesside early Wednesday to go home to Norway for the holidays. This, therefore, is likely be my last blog post for a while, but that doesn’t mean I won’t be working on the ICA. As I’ve been spending most of my time on Practical Project 60 and Studio Practice & Business lately, I’m planning on finishing most of the AVE previs and presentation over the holidays.

After the holidays I’m planning on approaching the Teesside Drama Society to see whether I can get an actor for my shot from there. If that falls through, I’ll probably use Erlend as mentioned earlier. As soon as I have an actor, I’ll book another shoot in the green screen studio to get that out of the way as soon as possible.

I had the presentation in Studio Practice & Business this Wednesday. As I don’t particularly enjoy being the centre of attention, holding presentations isn’t exactly a favourite of mine, though I believe it went reasonably well.

You can download the presentation as a QuickTime file or as a PDF below.

Download SPB Research Presentation QuickTime (65.3 MB)

Download SPB Research Presentation PDF (5.0 MB)

While researching, I came across more information than what I could fit in the presentation itself. If you’re particularly interested, I’ve posted some notes here.

• Vfx shots in Jurassic Park in 1993: 60. Jurassic Park The Lost World in 1997: 78. Fellowship of the Ring in 2001: 650 Normal vfx shot count in 2005: 1000ish. Today (2009): over 2000.
• not a very good business model. tiny profit margins and high overhead
  • more about the love for the craft than the money – paying artists and affording to keep upgrading equipment
  • needs to be constantly on the alert – always have the facility ready – expensive
  • needs to keep staff and hardware between projects
  • might burn profits from 3 projects in a row in 6 months, waiting for the next big job
  • many have gone bankrupt when the investors wanted their money back
  • “Anybody who is connected into putting their money into a visual effects company as an investment will always lose it” – Kevin Tod Haug, Visual Effects Supervisor
• constant struggle, finding and keeping talent.
  • often spends time and money training people only to see them leave for another company
  • artists are getting bored between big jobs, even though they are still payed
  • keeps a core group at the facility. hires the rest as freelancers or from other facilities as needed
  • “We have people that we work with often and as much as possible; but between projects, it there’s not much work going on, we let people go” – Gray Marshall, Visual Effects Supervisor
• keeping the pipeline full at all times is the most important thing for a facility
  • most big films come out in the spring/summer. therefore most work in the months leading up to that. not enough big features coming out the rest of the year, making it difficult to keep the pipeline full
  • need to be diverse, work in other fields than just film and TV (design, ads, live action effects, miniatures, sets, props, makeup, etc.). Larger facilities might start production companies where they can create their own content without having to deal with studios
  • important to maintain relationships with directors and producers
• many companies prefers to be under or round 100 employees by choice
  • don’t want to change their working dynamic
• smaller companies have to make sure they don’t take on too big projects
  • will be gone from the rest of the market for maybe a year, making everyone else forget you, and if the project goes badly, it often ends badly for the company
• companies tended to be either large or small – very few medium sized ones as they couldn’t compete with the bigger companies on price and speed and were generally to big to take on work smaller companies usually did - better now
• small startups might do very well
  • advantages: can adopt new software/hardware quicker because of less complex pipelines, offer more hands-on interaction (more personal contact), cheaper
  • disadvantages: everyone doing everything – might end in poorer management, usually don’t have the power required for heavy stuff such as volumetric rendering, sss, and global illumination – might already have changed though, due to advances in technology, often don’t have the resources to develop software if needed, don’t have the same amount of experience, not the same security) will they deliver on time?), big company names might actually help selling the film to the public
• up to 2005 and maybe still(?) it was a trend that one production got split between different vfx facilities
  • many productions got too big for one company
  • the studio might have an unrealistic idea of the amount of vfx shots they need. a film that was supposed to have 25 shots might end up with 300 in extreme cases.
  • “So you start to rely upon specialists who can do certain kinds of things for you” – Kevin Tod Haug, Visual Effects Supervisor
  • budget – maybe the studio can’t afford to have all shots done at a bigger, more expensive facility
  • in earlier times facilities prided themselves on proprietary software/hardware. Because work is more split up between a lot of facilities, the studios has to be a lot more compatible than they used to.
  • “More and more , we’re looking to form collaborations with other companies that have different specialities… The producer gets the very best assembly of companies for his project, and we get to work on larger visual effects pictures that might not have been interested in us before” – Craig Barron, Visual Effects Superviser
• future: companies that manage smaller facilities and thus making things easier for the studios
  • “I firmly believe that all the bigger companies will mutate into brokers in the future. The big facilities of the future won’t even be facilities. They will be people with Macs or PCs at home, a loose affiliation of people that you cal a company” – Jeffrey A. Okun, Visual Effects Supervisor
• vfx industry locations: Canada, Engalnd, New Zealand, Australia, France, US

Is visual effects a growing or a declining industry and how has this changed over the past 5-10 years?

It’s hard to say. In the past 18 months a lot of places have closed. Especially smaller facilities. The economic situation has hit the US very strongly and some big long term providers have fallen over as well. I think the industry is consolidating. Less companies, stronger large players.

Which cities worldwide would you consider to be the most important from a visual effects point of view today compared to 5-10 years ago?

I can only speak about large budget film VFX. But in that sector it has always been LA, San Francisco and in the past 10 years London. Sydney and Vancouver are secondary players, Wellington is the exception but really there is only one big studio there. Wellington, Sydney and Vancouver (and a little bit Toronto) have become more important. I know that Mumbai and Shanghai are also beginning to feature in their own market but they are not very significant in Hollywood vfx yet.

On average how many visual effects shots would be normal in a film today and how does that compare to 5-10 years ago?

Its hard to make an accurate estimate as there is no ‘normal’. I will say that When Star Wars Episode 1 was done I think they did over 1000 shots and that was a milestone. Now films like Avatar and some of the others have well over 2000. Lucas and ILM really lead the way on large number of shots and big sequences, they have always had the highest shot counts in the past.

Roughly how many artists are employed by each of the bigger visual effects facilities?

This is hard to discuss. People don’t like publishing these figures for a lot of reasons. I cannot accurately answer. I know that Disney is probably still the biggest or Sony, as they have a feature animation dept, visual effects dept and a few other things all in one place. Sony and SPI and Sony Feature Animation together must be over 1000. Very few places are anywhere near that. Pixar is very big as is Rhythm & Hues.

I believe I heard that visual effects facilities nowadays are more involved in the pre-production process and that’s how the post-production on some films are finished in a very short amount of time. Is this the case and do you think we’ll see more or less of it in the future?

Large key players are involved in really groundbreaking stuff. But many facilities still just get to bid after the fact. Its easy for a PR to talk about how they managed to get work done because of this, but often this is actually just marketing after the fact. Vfx companies have mainly gotten better at doing what they do. This means that they can do more work faster. As someone involved in making the effects, the real situation is just the people are having to work faster and harder to more unrealistic deadlines to appease the studios.

Has the price drop on hardware/software over the past few years resulted in a more fragmented industry? Can for instance a small facility with only a handful artists specialise in one particular field and actually compete with much bigger facilities for shots within that field?

In the high end I do not believe so. I think this has has a big impact on smaller facilities and those servicing the motion graphics and broadcast market and the smaller commercial markets. For large VFX facilities the main cost is always staff. Software and hardware fluctuations are not that important. Most large facilities, if they specialise at all, most don’t, do so because they have invested money in R&D and building pipelines that are better at one thing than another and then can outdo someone else on a specific thing, i.e. water or characters. Most big places need the range of work a large sequence or show will bring to them and cannot afford to be seen as a specialist house.

On a related note, would you agree that while bigger facilities to a larger extent bid on whole films in the past, it is more common these days that studios divide work between many facilities, big or small?

It is becoming more common to see some places bid on whole films. Previously only ILM and maybe some of the other LA houses could take a whole large 600+ shot show. Now a lot more can but it is always hard for anyone. Still there are only maybe 5-6 places in the world that can carry 1000 shots. Most of the big shows of recent times, Harry Potter or 2012 or whatever, still use multiple vendors.

Are there any differences to how the visual effects facilities operates in the UK compared to other countries?

The only difference I see is in the labour laws. UK companies don’t pay overtime or time-and-half or whatever. They still only pay pro rata for a day or do Time Off In Lieu (TOIL). Some US places have a unionised/guild approach and have better worker entitlements. Apart from that it seems the same.

In terms of locations, where do you believe it will be easiest to find work in the next year or two?

I think right now it’s London. It will stay that way till at least 2012 when some of the big shows are done. In two years the tax laws will swing back and maybe things will change again. I think things will either shift back to California by 2012-2013.

Are the traditional positions such as roto artist, matchmover and runner still the most normal way of getting a first job in the industry?

In a big studio yes. Unless you are coming in to do R&D programming. In smaller places there is always a chance to skip that phase.

What, in your opinion, will the industry look like in a couple of years (will stereoscopic still be big, will we still be shooting on film or just digital etc.)?

I have no idea. I hope stereo is just a phase that will go away. It’s not doing much good for film making. Chances are Avatar will come out and make a billion dollars and then the Studios will want everything in Stereo for a few years until the public gets bored of it. In my opinion its a gimmick that lets people make bad films because it is flashy. I know Disney are really big behind stereo and that a lot of weak films will get made just because they are going to be stereo. It was a fad in the 50’s when they invented it and it is a fad now. I think good stories and good ideas never go out of fashion but they get overshadowed by the ‘next big thing’. That is what is happening now.

Film is long since past its used by date. Digital is the way forward. Everything is scanned and run through DI now. Digital Acquisition is totally up to the task but the DOPs and Directors are mainly in the 40s or older and come from a time when shooting on real film was more prestigious so they insist on it. So that will shift sooner or later.

I like studio films so I hope they never go away. 5-10 years ago everyone was saying that some kid with a DV cam would be the next Spielberg and we would all be watching their films by now. It hasn’t happened yet. Mainly because making a good film is hard. Everyone thinks that they can do better but the proof is on Youtube, Vimeo and a million other sites…. Lots of one trick pony shows and no really good dramas.

Good drama is really hard to make and most people just do not have the skills or the understanding. It has nothing to do with technology or budgets. It’s all about the skill and hard work of the people doing it.

I must say I am truly grateful to the person who answered my questions. From having very little information due to the secretive nature of the industry, I now feel I have the information I need to put together a decent presentation.

So I’m back from London and as it turned out, I actually found out a thing or two that might be useful for my research presentation this coming Wednesday(!). While there, I picked up Cinefex issue 100 from a place called “The Cinema Store” near Leicester Square, but unfortunately they didn’t have 101.

Later the same day I met up with people I mentioned earlier. One guy I talked to might just give me that interview I desperately need (crossing fingers).

On the train back home today, I started reading Cinefex 100. The article in there was quite useful, but as it turns out, the part that talks about the business of visual effects in particular is actually in issue 101, the one The Cinema Store didn’t have in stock. 101 is supposed to be in the library though, so I’ll be heading there in an hour or two to read it.

Not much happening in AVE this week as I’m working towards two other deadlines: Digital doubles for a short film made by fxphd.com and a presentation for the Studio Practice & Business module. I booked another session in the green screen studio November 10th to finish the test shoot. I’ll be using that footage to create a previs for the presentation after Christmas.

I’ll probably be posting references for my 3D scene when the deadlines in the coming week are behind me.

This Monday, Andreas and I went to the green screen studio in the Phoenix building to shoot some tests for our projects. This was basically to work out setups and camera angles before we do the real thing. We will be using the footage to do some quick keying, tracking, compositing and maybe 3D to see what works and what needs to be changed. In theory, this will make for a quicker shoot and less problems when we come back for the main shoot later. Andreas beat me to booking an appointment, so I only had 3 hours at the end of the day in which to do my shots. As a result I didn’t quite finish and need to go back to get the last two.

As I’m currently working on a short film over at fxphd.com, the “pickup shoot” will probably have to wait for a week or two. At the moment I’m thinking of the 10th of December. I will ask Mark about it on Monday.

As soon as I have all the test shots, the plan is to create a simple version of the 3D environment for the scene, track and composite Bjørne, the guy nice enough to be my test actor, into the scene and use that as a previs which is to be presented the first week back at the uni after Christmas.

Right after my last update I suffered a setback as the article I found and hoped I would be able to base the presentation on turned out to be more than 11 years old, and therefore isn’t very relevant anymore. To take my mind off the research for a little while, I tried to transform my notes and scribbles into an actual presentation. I believe I have the slides I want now, however some of them are still very empty and others are filled with my own notes due to lack of proper sources.

As a new measure of trying to dig up some more information I went to a site called fxphd.com which I know is frequented by industry people and asked whether some people on that site might either be able to point me in the direction of some good sources or answer some questions for my primary research. The forum post has only been up this weekend, but so far I’ve gotten at least one person recommending a rather long article about the industry in Cinefex issues 100 and 101. Luckily, this issue exists in the library so I’m planning on reading it come monday. While I’m there, I’ll also make sure to check whether I’ll be able to find more books or journals of interest. I actually looked at a few today: Special Effects – an oral history and Special Effects – The history and technique. Mainly, those turned out to be about the craft and not the business, but there might be something in the early chapters I can use.

As I wanted a bit more background knowledge before interviewing people and as that knowledge has been a little bit hard to come by, I still haven’t contacted anyone I wish to interview. This has me a little stressed at the moment, so questions or no questions, I’ll be sending out a few emails during the weekend or monday and pray it is not too late.

Finally, I might ask Siobhan, the module leader, for another meeting this week to go over my slides, just to make sure I haven’t missed anything important or am planning on rambling about something I really shouldn’t