Archive for January 8th, 2008

Boris FX Releases Boris Title Toolkit for Adobe After Effects CS3
Marlborough MA – January 8, 2008, 2007 - Boris FX, the leading developer of integrated effects technology for video and film, today made available Boris Title Toolkit 1.1. Boris Title Toolkit is a high-quality, titling plug-in for Adobe’s After Effects application. The new Boris point release enables Adobe After Effects (Adobe CS 3) artists to use the Boris Title Toolkit plug-in with new operating systems from Apple (Leopard) and Microsoft (Windows Vista). The update is offered as a free electronic download for existing Boris Title Toolkit 1.0 customers (www.borisfx.com). more

Today, Blackmagic Design announced the appointment of SVGA as a new joint distribution partner for the Russian Federation.

In line with the increasing demand for Blackmagic’s ever expanding product range, Blackmagic has appointed SVGA to supply products to the Russian Federation. SVGA is a well established company and will complement Blackmagic’s other partner in the region, ProVideo Systems (Provis). This will enable Blackmagic to provide increased customer support and sales assistance to broadcasters, editors, compositors and videographers within the Russian Federation. more

Park City, UT—The 2008 Sundance Film Festival announced today the members of the six juries awarding prizes at the Festival, which runs January 17-27, 2008 in Park City, Salt Lake City, Ogden and Sundance, Utah. The juries collectively are comprised of twenty-four individuals from the global film community, each of whom brings unique perspective and range of experience. Award-winning directors, screenwriters, actors and cinematographers in the Competition categories will be announced on the evening of January 26 at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival Awards Ceremony at the Park City Racquet Club. more

HOLLYWOOD and NEW YORK — Bicoastal creative production company Stardust Studios recently produced a dynamic :15 video installation piece for a Zune account creative team from newly established shop, T.A.G., San Francisco, which included group creative directors Scott Duchon and Geoff Edwards, art director Rey Andrade, copywriter Joe Rose, director of broadcast production Jan O’Malley and agency producer Lee Anne Weldon. The finished piece entitled “Zune Tron” ran on the famous 20-foot LED “GeoffreyTron” video billboard located above Toys”R”Us in New York City’s Times Square throughout the recent holiday season, and Stardust’s artwork created for the project has also been used in the agency’s campaign print and online banner ads. more

Ever want to make an animated movie? Cascade ACM SIGGRAPH, Oregon and Southwest Washington’s local SIGGRAPH chapter, today announced in partnership with Frederator Studios “Drinking and Drawing,� scheduled to take place Wednesday, Jan. 23 at 8 p.m. at Someday Lounge located at 125 NW 5 Avenue in downtown Portland, Ore.

This event brings together a multitude of Portland’s creative minds and cartoon enthusiasts for a night of collective animation that culminates in an animated movie. Participants will be broken up into teams as the first set of six animators race to create eight frames in ten minutes, leaving their last frame on their light box. Starting with the previous artist’s last frame, the next set of people will produce another eight frames, and so on. Each animator will only see the frames he or she is currently drawing. At the end of the evening, six different collaborative films will be projected on the big screen for everyone to enjoy. more

mocha Tackles Complex Roto and Tracking Jobs for Janimation Artists in Fraction of the Time; Accelerated VFX Workflow Transforms Tedium into Profit

GUILDFORD, UK (January 8, 2008) When the VFX artists of Janimation, Inc. (www.janimation.com) were approached by a client to complete a highly complex television commercial spot, with “Pleasantville-esque� color and visual effects requirements, they turned to their internal IT manager for some suggestions. A recently launched rotoscoping and planar tracking tool from Imagineer Systems (www.imagineersystems.com) called mocha was at the top of the list. more

Roger Deakins, ASC, BSC (THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD and NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN), Robert Elswit, ASC (THERE WILL BE BLOOD), Janusz Kaminski (THE DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY) and Seamus McGarvey, BSC (ATONEMENT) are the nominees for top honors in the Feature Film category in the 22nd Annual American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) Outstanding Achievement Awards competition. The winner will be announced here during the awards celebration on January 26, at the Hollywood and Highland Grand Ballroom. more

For the fourth consecutive year, large projection specialists ETC London projected a series of giant sporting images and related inspirational text messages onto London’s 352 ft high Shell Tower as the metropolis rocked in to 2008.

As in previous years ETC was appointed by event producers Jack Morton Worldwide. more

Show Support is supplying video and sound for the current CBeeBies Live UK arena tour produced by BBC Worldwide. It’s the second year that the West Midlands based company has supplied sound, and this year, production values have been upped with the addition of projection.

Show Support’s Rich Rowley says, “It has been great this year to get involved in both Sound and Video on a grand scale. The sound design was not over complex but the need was to design an ‘in the round system’ to fit with the lighting rig. On the video front – it was nice to get our Pandora’s Box Media System controlling not only video playback but an element of audio too.â€? more

Gannett-Owned Newspaper More Than Doubles Its Video Content Production in Past Year and Plans Further Expansion

Tewksbury, MA – January 8, 2008 – Avid Technology, Inc. (NASDAQ: AVID) today announced that The Cincinnati Enquirer – a Gannett Company-owned newspaper with print, online and rich-media content – is aiming to double its video content production to more than 150 video segments per month with an Avid® digital video production environment. In an effort to expand the channels through which its readers consume news and to stay competitive in the changing world of content distribution, The Enquirer is working with Avid to create a streamlined and more collaborative process for publishing video content on the Web. The newspaper currently has a team of 40 video producers and online editors trained to generate news stories with video elements – up from eight this time last year.
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