“Digital Storytelling: World Building in a Digital Universe” is the sixth annual seminar on the creative use of technology in film, television and games, focusing on how visual effects and digital set design are used to advance storytelling and world building in feature film, television and games. Speakers from the Norwegian, Nordic and International film and games community gather in Oslo to present their work.

The keynote presentation will be on photoreal digital actors, presented by Associate Director of Graphics Research Paul Debevec of the University of Southern California's Institute for Creative Technologies. His pioneer work in image-based lighting, and later development of a series of Light Stage devices for digitizing the shape and appearance of human faces, has been instrumental for the VFX of films such as "The Matrx", "Spider Man 2", "King Kong", "Superman Returns", "Spiderman 3", "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" and "Avatar" to name a few. In 2010 he received a Scientific and Engineering Academy Award with Tim Hawkins, John Monos, and Mark Sagar.

New of this year are presentations from European game industry professionals, from motion capture actor Pascal Langlois (Ethan Mars in “Heavy Rain”), to film director working with motion capture John Dower (Xbox 360 “Milo & Kate”),  Matt Woodward from CCP Games (Eve Online) and Owen O’Brien from DICE (Mirror’s Edge). Norwegian character animator Arne Kaupang will present work on the sci-fi movie “Paul” on behalf of Double Negative, and the usual suspects from the top Norwegian and Swedish VFX studios are making a big VFX Omelette: Camera Magica, Gimpville, Storm Studios, Storyline Studios, Hocus Focus, Fido (Sweden), Qvisten Animation and Rune Spaans.

Digital Storytelling is arranged in cooperation with the Norwegian Film Institute and will take place in the Tancred Cinema at Filmens Hus, Oslo Norway on April 13th. The seminar is followed by the opening of “Visions for a Story World 2011″ an exhibition of concept art and design in film and games in collaboration with Grafill Animasjon. On April 14 and 15 two VFX workshops on NukeX for Norwegian visual effects and film professionals will be led by Matt Leonard of Sphere VFX. At the close of the seminar the Norwegian Society of Visual Effects (NFX) will present the 2011 Best Visual Effects Awards.