VFX Beat: Most Read Posts

California Visual Effects Industry Gets Weaker Every Day

rkerrigan — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 10:31:28 -0800

Several years ago an article in the Los Angeles Times an unnamed producer was quoted as saying “If I don’t put a visual effects house out of business, I haven’t done my job.” Visual effects folks all over the business found themselves searching for the name of this offender and a rope.

Some Inconvenient VFX Industry Truths

rkerrigan — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 13:12:09 -0800

The major hurdle with the unionization of visual effects artists is that we would need to gain support within the walls of the studios. Unfortunately the studios have long since written off our welfare.

How Do You Define an Artist?

rkerrigan — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 11:33:23 -0800

I recently witnessed a conversation where a young fine artist told a Flame artist to his face that he did not consider him an “artist.” Obviously things heated up. As films employ hundreds of creative contributors, who among them do we really consider an “Artist?”

Crab Cakes and 3D Glasses on Menu at VFX Bake-off

rkerrigan — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 16:15:03 -0800

Last Thursday night was the annual Visual Effects Bake-off held at the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences Theater in Beverly Hills. For your ninety bucks you could attend the pre-event party at Kate Mantellini and get packed together in what was called by my drill instructor during boot camp as “balls to butts.” Plus eat crab cakes.

Dimensionalizing Conventional 2D into Stereoscopic 3D

rkerrigan — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 09:42:48 -0800

Currently a lot of our colleagues are involved with “dimensionalizing” conventional 2D films into being stereoscopic or so called 3D movies. While most of the artists I spoke with tended to mumble something about “colorizing Shirley Temple” all are glad to have the work.

The Going Stays Rough for California VFX Houses

rkerrigan — Mon, 17 May 2010 09:32:59 -0700

CafeFX going on hiatus is just another example of how the state of California sits by and watches a great and green business fade into the sunset.

True Grit Review

rkerrigan — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 10:50:53 -0800

True Grit fits into the Coen Brother’s expanding body of work. Their scripts are not scripts of painful labor, deadlines, script-writing programs or marketing demands but of self-amusement. At the end of their day, they can be satisfied not only with the product but the process undergone. To sit and watch one of their films is to lean forward with a combination of bemusement and apprehension. True Grit does not disappoint. It’s a lot of fun.

Kiss Your Hard Work Goodbye – Learn To Abandon Your Art

rkerrigan — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 16:23:31 -0700

Film and television particularly are the paramount mediums of abandonment. Despite our best efforts sometimes our work is connected to a film or show that sinks like a bag of kittens. It’s all part of the whole picture. Blessed is he who goes unscathed. You have to just learn to let it go…

What To Do Until The Cavalry Arrives...? Follow Your Bliss...

rkerrigan — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 08:51:46 -0700

A discussion of some of the ways various visual effects artists fill their time and their wallets while waiting for the current shortage of entertainment jobs to be over.

TRON: Legacy Review

rkerrigan — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 14:52:47 -0800

The first imperative for a producing company is that a film be profitable, preferably obscenely profitable, but for a viewer and lover of films the most important criteria of a movie is to transport us to other worlds and into the lives of other people in an entertaining fashion. An American film director once said: “a film is an immensely likable group of people doing an impossible task”. The producers of TRON: Legacy failed to embrace any element of this quote.