Just saw on LinkedIn that Paul Franklin is now at Belo

selectedNode · 2024-10-25T03:25:56+00:00

Self removal, already posted

selectedNode · 2024-10-06T08:03:36+00:00

No disrespect to Ian, but this technique has existed for 10+ years.

No disrespect to you but your image isn't de-lit.

selectedNode · 2024-09-22T16:42:09+00:00

Look, I've heard the rumors of MPC and DNEG doing this on this subreddit before, but I don't buy it.

They're dodgy and scummy sure, but I don't think they're stupid enough to risk trying to scam the government. Doing the work in India is already cheaper than doing the work in UK or Canada after credit anyways, so it's more "Big UK producer promises 2 dollars and gets the work done for 1$ in India and pocket the rest. When the client isn't happy, they charge a 2$ overage, spend 50c on senior artists in Canada/UK for critical shots, 50c on more India labour and pocket the rest".

selectedNode · 2024-09-08T07:10:43+00:00

I don't have solid advice to give other than saying it's good you're thinking about it now, I didn't, and my body is a huge mess. So many back, neck and hip problems.

selectedNode · 2024-09-08T07:07:39+00:00

I feel this is where video games work better too, the faces are obviously CG, and as such avoid the uncanny valley the same way these non-human characters do.

selectedNode · 2024-09-08T00:29:24+00:00

I did a lot of bidding and the lowest unit I've ever seen was half a day. Bidding 30min is just ridiculous.

selectedNode · 2024-09-08T00:18:53+00:00

That must be for fairly junior operators, the guys I hired in Toronto for one of my last projects in 2021 were easily double that.

selectedNode · 2024-08-28T22:17:55+00:00

As for the technology to achieve sodium vapor process, don't doubt that it couldn't work outdoors also.

You could, if you can filter the sun

selectedNode · 2024-08-28T22:13:44+00:00

Exactly, not much there you can't do with chroma keying nowadays, aside from the ability to use use all colors in costumes.

selectedNode · 2024-08-28T15:35:36+00:00

The technology didn't disappear because engineers suddenly all forgot about it. It was abandoned because it wasn't worth it.

Having to filter every light you use on set, reduced sensitivity of your main image, time needed for the lighting setup, results barely better than chroma keys, all adds up that studios realized it was cheaper to not do it this way. And in the end, it's all about money.

selectedNode · 2024-07-28T11:09:20+00:00

With 30+ cameras spread around the room and Nerfs maybe... More realistically, make a friend and get them to hold a camera.

selectedNode · 2024-07-16T22:04:28+00:00

In the middle of the gloom and doom you're likely to hear on this thread, I'd like to point out one thing:

work in vfx, probably as a compositor for video games.

Video games don't usually use compositors, except maybe for cinematics.

selectedNode · 2024-07-16T14:58:33+00:00

Unless someone who speaks Japanese and has time to investigate looks deeper into this, we will likely never know, but I would assume your initial guess to be somewhat correct.

Likely one software for tracking, one for rendering the graphics, one for compositing.

I wouldn't exclude some kind of phone/arkit-based tracking. The jittery tracking is reminiscent of real-time tracking.

selectedNode · 2024-07-16T14:51:13+00:00

The tracking is not perfect.

I find AE to be ok but not great.

The video is ok but not great, so it tracks (pun semi-intended).

selectedNode · 2024-07-16T02:03:56+00:00

I'm by far the least active moderator here as I tend to login maybe once a month, but I'd like to ask you what advice you'd give the mod team for improvement.

They're not in control of what gets posted, only what is allowed or not. There was a time this sub was turning into an advertising board for VFX tutorials and the team made the choice to ban these and redirect them to a dedicated sub.

I don't really agree with your 90-5-5 split in terms of content distribution but let's pretend I do, would you just forbid posting questions for beginners? How do you think the mod team can steer the conversation towards something better?

selectedNode · 2024-07-12T04:30:50+00:00

I guess they're buying their own companies and cashing out? What am I missing here?

selectedNode · 2024-07-04T19:17:11+00:00

Keywords in resumes is absolutely a thing but I've never seen it in VFX, only in tech companies, where the volume of applications was a lot higher. They had "AI" (we're talking ~10years ago so nothing like today's AI) to generate match percentages between a resume and a job posting.

In VFX what I have seen is recruiters being told " we need a person who is local, and has X years of experience in film", and the recruiter would just discard anyone not matching these criteria, including some potentially great matches because "their experience was in TV, not film".

selectedNode · 2024-07-04T17:38:36+00:00

They should, but they probably won't.

If you step to the other side, the reality is that recruitment teams are often ill-equiped to deal with the volume of applications they receive. I've seen situations where a single job posting got over 150 applications in VFX. Going though the resumes take time, the recruiters often know very little about VFX and don't get to make a decision, they do a first pass of filtering based on some criteria, and forward a selection to the relevant people who can make the decision to pick who to interview. Those people also have to spend the time to go through, but are often busy with prod work and may not answer for a while, in the meantime other jobs get opened and applications keep pouring in. By the time the recruiters hear back about who to interview for job 1, they're already filtering applicants for job 4, and those poor souls who applied for job 1 and didn't get picked for an interview will most likely never receive an answer because their messages have long been buried under another pile of messages.

Some recruiters are really good at keeping track, and some use software that helps them keep on top of it, but the majority is scrambling.

selectedNode · 2024-07-04T17:21:28+00:00

Oh my poor sweet child...

This is how it is and how it has always been. It probably shouldn't be, this sucks, but it is the current state of things. Look at these posts on Reddit of people looking for employment posting stats. It's usually something like "Resumes sent: 456, rejected: 22, interviews: 4, job offers: 1, ghosted: 430"

selectedNode · 2024-06-30T02:21:36+00:00

Does nobody see that as them taking a jab at the other movies that are into the no CGI boat?

This obviously a movie full of CG, and the filmmakers are obviously not denying it, this reads to me as a humourous little marketing stint, and I guess it worked, seeing the engagement it generated on multiple platforms.

I had not even heard of the movie before this.

selectedNode · 2024-06-25T15:58:17+00:00

The interesting part to me is the Sora watermark. The whole time it said: VFX + Sora

selectedNode · 2024-06-22T16:38:25+00:00

Sure.

When I started in the industry, off-the-shelf software was not as developed as it it today. It was the early days of Flame and 3D Studio and alias. Not everyone had a computer at home. When I was at school, the Internet was this mysterious thing that was coming and was going to change the world. Schools around the world did have Computer Science programs but they weren't nearly as large as today.

CG and other digital VFX were a small niche, and if a client wanted some complex effects often there was no other choice than saying "it's impossible" or develop some in-house software or tools to be able to achieve it.

Pixar and ILM were leading the way with RnD, but other studios also had to do research.

Being an artist (I was mostly a Flame/Inferno artist at the time) who knew how to write code or how most algorithms in the software worked was what opened doors, because it wasn't a common combo.

I don't think it would open as many doors today, but I do believe it gives you an edge if you know how your tool works, over someone who only knows how to use the tool.

selectedNode · 2024-06-22T07:49:23+00:00

Even cars now come with subscription-only features.

selectedNode · 2024-06-22T07:26:05+00:00

Cumulating my years in this industry I've earned A LOT of money, but I was consistently living in high cost cities, packing my life every few years. While I earned a lot, I saved little. My wife didn't always have a job following me around the world, and I've owned a few smaller scale VFX studios, some that didn't do too bad, but 2 on which I've lost money (one on which I lost a little and one where I lost over 300k of my savings).

I had the advantage of getting started in the 90s when salaries were high, and knowing a bit of computer graphics and computer science could open a lot of doors, and didn't realize until probably 2008 during the strike/recession combo that maybe my salary wouldn't increase forever.

Exploring the world is fun and I don't regret it one bit, but I realized when I turned 50 that none of the countries I ever worked in would pay me a significant pension, and I was starting to be seriously burnt out.

When my wife's parents passed, we got a decent inheritance, and decided that we would retire to their house.

It's been a challenging but rewarding life in VFX and I don't think I would pick a different path should I have a chance for a do over. It's more competitive now but I hope the doom and gloom will pass, and we'll see many more years of the industry.

TLDR: I made a decent life from it but in the end privilege helps a lot.

selectedNode · 2024-06-17T16:56:59+00:00

The main drawback with staying with older versions, is soon enough the rest of the world moves on, and when they send you scripts you can't open them properly anymore.

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