News From Here & There

November Videography Magazine Online
You can view the November issue of Videography magazine online: Videography November



Diffusion Panels for Outdoor Lighting
Over at IzzyVideo, a short blog (with video) on using diffusion panels to help control outdoor light.
IzzyVideo: Diffusion Panels for Outdoor Video Lighting



Asylum VFX House Closing Its Doors
Post-production house Asylum is closing it's doors. Bryant Frazer at Studio Daily has an interview with Asylum VFX CEO Nathan McGuinness.

What happened was we couldn’t compete with the rest of the world. We couldn’t compete with the tax incentives from other countries. The work I’ve seen coming from around the world, the U.K. especially, is stellar. Amazing. We could do the same, but we weren’t given the same playing field.

Over at the Animation Guild blog a different perspective on the impact of the closing:

Effects studios are not high-margin businesses. Competition is fierce, and the attrition rate is high. And one of the dirty little secrets attached to that attrition is: if you're a happy employee of Big Fish Visual Effects, Inc. who enjoys a 401(k) and health plan, when Big Fish rolls belly up, your 401(k) is safe (by Federal law) but your health coverage ends.

StudioDaily: Q&A: Asylum VFX CEO Nathan McGuinness
AnimationBlog: Adios Asylum



Adobe Premiere CS5, the Mac, 64-bits and Nvidia cards
Paul Joy has been giving Adobe Premiere CS5 a try on the Mac, and looking into Nvidia cards that work with the Mercury Playback Engine. And if you're running CS5 on the Mac you might be wondering about whether your OS is running in 64-bit; and whether it needs to:

Here’s the one-sentence summary of this post:
You don’t need to run the 64-bit kernel on Mac OS X to run 64-bit applications (like After Effects CS5).

Adobe blogs: 64-bit kernels and After Effects CS5
PaulJoy: More Premiere Pro CS5 trials



Planning a 3D Production
A short article outlining the issues in planning for a 3D production, and why you need to know what you're doing so that you don't make your audience sick!...
RealVision: Sanctioning a Depth Budget for today’s 3D movies