All eyes will be on Avatar for its technological paradigm shift and audacious use of 3-D. © Twentieth Century Fox.

In an effort to become more vital and relevant -- especially during the recession and at a crucial juncture when the industry is undergoing a technological paradigm shift -- the VES is reaching out to the industry at large to start a conversation at this Saturday's Production Summit 09 at the Ritz Carlton Hotel, Marina del Rey. For more info, go to: https://www.visualeffectssociety.com/productionSummit2009.

"With the Production Summit, VES is taking the lead in bringing together all aspects of the production process -- from directors, producers, cinematographers, editors, art directors as well as key players in visual effects -- in order to create a more collaborative process for how all the creative crafts will work with each other not only tomorrow, but also, far into the future, " says Eric Roth, VES executive director.

The Production Summit will consist of three sessions: "Through the Kaleidoscope," an interactive conversation about the changing rules for pre-production, production and post-production; "X-Ray: Decoding and Thriving in the 21st Century Post-Production Pipeline"; and "Hot, Flat and (Getting) Crowded: The Business of Production and the New Global Economy."

"The idea was to get all these incredible people in a room and have a very unscripted, unprepared conversation about those things that affect them," explains Jill Smolin, co-chair of the Summit with Bob Coleman. "Things like a DP needing to be on a production during the post process; or an editor coming on during pre-production. Technically, we wanted to dive into the fact that we have all these origination, distribution and projection formats, and how do we reconcile those? How do we deal with color? Can we come to an agreement? Or do we really have to define these issues on a show-by-show basis? Globally, we know the world is much bigger and much smaller, meaning we have studios that originated in Los Angeles, that now have branches in India. There are companies that started in India that now have facilities in London and Los Angeles. Vancouver is practically a suburb....we wanted to create a day where all we did was talk about all of these elements in an attempt to chart a path, start a dialogue that will allow us to create a future with intention and purpose, rather than just by solving problems as they arise.

ILM/Lucasfilm took a new approach by integrating NVIDIA GPUs in the process of creating a fire sim tool on Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince that has industry-wide implications. © Warner Bros.

"I think it's really awesome that the VES is helming this, as we're an industry that's been affected by so many of these conversations. We have come so far since the 'fix it in post' days, to the point that it's routine to include the vfx practitioners in pre-production meetings. But we are so very not alone. All of us -- every piece of the production puzzle -- is affected by every other piece.