For those who don’t know the event: FMX is a production conference for animation and Visual Effects, mixing craft talks with pipeline sessions. It touches audio post, cinematography, and realtime tools such as Unreal.
Sound design: not an afterthought
Sound Design at FMX lands as a full track, built around immersive, interactive, and animated work where audio carries story weight. The track description positions sound as half the experience, then drills into fundamentals, standout projects, and where AI can help in early creative phases and where it fails.
The program brings in Supervising Sound Editor Nina Hartstone of Cinphonic, with a session on storytelling with sound that centers on recording, design, and editorial choices for film. Her listed credits include Bohemian Rhapsody, Moonage Daydream, Saltburn, and Wuthering Heights. She also teaches masterclasses at Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg during the On Campus day, with limited participation and registration handled via program@fmx.de.
Supervising Re Recording Mixer David Fluhr brings a workflow talk tied to Walt Disney Animation Studios and the realities of modern delivery. The session covers sound, music, and mixing workflows that support storytelling, plus worldwide deliveries, language versioning, and the path from temp to final mix using sequences from Vaiana 2 and Zoomania 2.
A third session attacks the handoff between picture and audio. Christoph Groß-Fengels demonstrates an AI driven workflow that watches an edit, extracts key frames, sends them to a vision system via the Google Cloud Vision API, then searches a local sound effects library and assembles a first pass sound bed. The pipeline uses a Python workflow designed to slot into existing post pipelines. Try it, break it, then try it again before you trust it with a worklfow that ships.
Cinematography: where VFX changes the job
The Cinematography track adds Paul Cameron for a career conversation about the influence of VFX on visual design, in conversation with Jordan Thistlewood of Cooke Optics. Cameron’s credits include Westworld, Collateral, and Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Men Tell no Tales, and the talk is supposed to circle around collaboration from on set through post.
Spatial Storytelling: XR wants story first
A first time Spatial Storytelling track focuses on XR narrative craft across film, theater, and games, with an explicit mandate to keep story ahead of shiny tech.
Alex Coulombe of Agile Lens and director David Gochfeld present virtual production workflows behind A Christmas Carol VR and R and D with the Royal Shakespeare Company. Their talk “Live to Media framework” that captures live performance motion capture and preserves it via the Unreal Engine 5 Replay System, aiming for scalable, repeatable immersive content.
Andreea Ion Cojocaru of NUMENA argues for space as the medium in VR, contrasting references ranging from the Acropolis to Half Life’s City 17, and exploring scale transitions as narrative devices with examples including Mamoru Oshii’s Angel’s Egg and the Venice Biennale project titled Dear Mother.
Balthazar Auxietre of InnerspaceVR focuses on environmental narrative in immersive experiences and outlines practical design techniques and workflows, including use of Gravity Sketch, with an emphasis on balancing cinematic direction and user agency.
Robyn Winfield-Smith discusses narrative work in Apple’s 180 degree immersive format using the Blackmagic Design URSA Cine Immersive camera developed specifically for Apple Vision Pro. The session description covers story development and previsualisation, stereoscopic workflows, scenic elements to guide attention, spatial audio considerations, and the future of spatial entertainment. The supplied details do not provide technical camera specifications.
Dates, formats, and what you can actually watch
FMX runs On Site May 5 to May 7, with Online and On Campus on May 8, and On Demand from May 9 through June 9. The ticket page has all kinds of pass types including Conference Pass, Business Pass, Combi Pass, Day Pass, Experience Pass, Online Pass, and Press Pass.
Two evening get togethers round out the schedule. Tuesday, May 5 runs 19:00 to 21:00 and is powered by Houdini (Meet your favourite Digital Production Editor there). Wednesday May 6 runs 19:00 to 21:00 and is powered by ROE Visual.
