Archive notice: This article was originally published on April 8, 2016. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
As part of the Film Engine Virtual Production Stage, the professional audience can experience real-time film production. For the very first time at FMX, visitors will be given the opportunity to get hands-on with virtual cameras, gain directing experience in VR and be part of a virtual production pipeline – live on stage. The Virtual Production Stage is being realised with support from the partners Ncam, OptiTrack, ARRI, AMD and HP. As a special highlight, two-time Oscar winner Rob Legato (VFX for “Titanic” and “Hugo”) has announced a masterclass taking place on Thursday, April 28, from 3 to 5 pm.
Film Engine is an FMX 2016 Main Partner – as are the Animation Media Cluster Region Stuttgart (AMCRS), AMD, Backstage, CryEngine, Dell, Epic Games, HP, NVIDIA and Intel.
VFX Case Studies
This year there are also numerous talks in the VFX section, including on “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” (more on the film’s concept art in the forthcoming DP on April 15), “Deadpool”, “Batman vs. Superman”, “Captain America: Civil War”, “Ex Machina”, “San Andreas”, “Bridge of Spies” and the Chemical Brother music video “Arms wide open”.
VR for Production
David Morin (Chairman of the Virtual Production Committee) is curating the presentation series “Virtual Reality for Production.” Here VFX Supervisor Rob Legato, Adam Valdez (MPC) and Keith Miller (Weta Digital) discuss the creative and technical processes used in the virtual production of Disney’s “The Jungle Book”. Duncan Burbridge (The Third Floor) shares his view of immersive production possibilities in VR, while Ron Frankel (Proof) examines the virtual production of “Pan” and “Gods of Egypt”. Kevin Margo (Blur Studio) also explains the virtual production pipeline of his own VFX short film “CONSTRUCT”. A panel with selected speakers deepens the discussion about the influence of virtual reality on film production.
Animation
The “The Art of Animation” talk series has gained illustrious additions: a panel of experts from Disney Animation addresses the research and subsequent production of “Zoomania” (Scott Kersavage, Brian Leach, Matthias Lechner, Michelle Robinson). Thomas Meyer-Hermann and Angela Steffen (both Studio Film Bilder) present their international series “Meine Schmusedecke”. The concept art of “Zoomania” is the focus of Matthias Lechner’s presentation. Another case study takes a closer look at “Manou the Swift” (Andrea Block and Christian Haas, LUXX Studios).
Virtual Reality
The VR opening panel “The Present and the Future of Virtual Reality” takes stock of virtual reality – with Neil Schneider (The ITA), Simon Benson (SCE WWS), Daniel O’Brien (HTC), Billy Harrison (Optoma), Alon Melchner (wakingapp) and Dr Michael Madary (Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz). Various speakers discuss their working experiences with VR projects: David Bowman talks about Crytek’s “The Climb” and Nick Whiting (Epic Games) takes a look behind the scenes of “Bullet Train”. Anrick Bregman and Yates Buckley (both UNIT9) also approach virtual reality from the perspectives of filmmakers and neuroscientists. Colin McGreal (Reel FX) defines the dos and don’ts that apply to using VR in advertising. Tristan Salomé contributes his specific perspective as CEO (PresenZ). During the panel discussion “What it Means to Direct & Design for VR”, Andrew Daffy (DAFFY LONDON), Rainer Gombos (REALTRA) and Alex Hessler (Tippett Studio) share their personal experiences.
Games
Kim Libreri, Michael Gay and Haarm-Pieter Duiker (Epic Games) explain their work on theopening sequence of “Paragon”. Tameem Antoniades (Ninja Theory), Steve Caulkin (Cubic Motion), Vladimir Mastilovic (3Lateral) and James Golding (Epic Games) jointly discuss the digital character Senua in “Ninja Theorys Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice” in their case study. The focus is on the artistic ambition and motion-capture technology that made it possible to develop one of the most believable traumatised characters currently playable in video games.
Technology
Technologies in light field, high-dynamic-range imaging and multispectral lighting are the central topics of the “Computational Cinematography,” programme curated by Paul Debevec (USC) (more on Debevec’s research in DP 07 : 14). New insights into light-field technology and the future of film production will be offered by Jon Karafin (Lytro). Gaël Seydoux also presents Technicolor’s R&D work in light field, and Abe Davis (MIT) shows how the amounts of information in data-intensive light-field photographs can be reconstructed from a small subset of those photographs. Paul Debevec himself has devoted himself to practical, multispectral lighting reproduction that can simulate a real setting. Together, all the track’s speakers discuss the current state of computer-based cinematography.
DP will be there; if you would also like to attend, tickets for FMX are still available: www.fmx.de
