Character animation has become a specialty for CafeFX. Above is recent work the studio did for Nim's Island. © Fox Walden. Courtesy of CafeFX.

BD: I understand that there won't be a festival this year.

JB: Yes, that's true. We're in the process of planning a new event that I can't talk about yet that we're shooting for in October. This will be more of a business conference dealing with many of the challenges and questions that have been ongoing. We also want to deal with some of the more business-type topics related to visual effects and standardizations… things like color and more discussions about stereo and those kinds of digital workflows. And finding ways for more consistencies and standards and practices. We'd like to get a lot of big minds together in a relaxed environment for a few days to try and work through some of that stuff.

BD: And you're launching a white papers program.

JB: Yes, that's correct. The first one's going to be the state of visual effects. We'll be looking at key issues like the eroding lines of the production phases; some of the demands and new roles of the new production process; some roles may go away and some new roles may form out of this.

BD: Again, the new non-linear digital paradigm, which means new collaborative roles.

JB: Yes. And we're trying to get the industry -- studios, producers and so forth -- to really understand visual effects: that it's not fast, easy and cheap to do. There's a lot of work involved in doing it correctly.

BD: You'd think they'd understand that by now.

JB: Well, you and I understand that but some of our clients may not. So the studios keep pushing and pushing for faster and cheaper, and the concern by many of us is that at some point it's going to backfire on somebody in a pretty big way. We're just trying to educate the [VES] membership and the industry as a whole as to ways that we can still achieve cost savings and some of those speed efficiencies, and also, how to be a little better and more organized in certain ways. That's going to be part of the paper. And we're working fast and furiously to get the first one done very soon.

Bill Desowitz is editor of VFXWorld.