Streamland has named Kim Spikes senior vice president of culture and engagement. Spikes was formerly senior vice president of post for Sim in New York. In her new role, Spikes will focus on enhancing the Streamland culture by further establishing diversity, equity, and inclusion platforms, amplifying its green initiatives, strengthening the health and wellbeing of team members, and connecting with communities.
In honor of Sequoyah and this year’s bicentennial celebration of the Cherokee syllabary, the Cherokee Nation has become the first Native American tribe to use motion and facial capture technology to help preserve and promote an indigenous language. In collaboration with the tribe’s language program, the Cherokee Nation Film Office and Original Content has released Sequoyah: Voice of the Inventor for the Bicentennial.
The Television Academy has honored Arri for outstanding achievement in engineering development for its Arri SkyPanel family of LED softlights. The Engineering Emmys are presented to individuals, companies, or organizations for engineering developments that are either so extensive an improvement on existing methods or so innovative in nature that they materially affect the recording, transmission, or reception of television.
Christie’s CP4440-RGB projector is being used as the flagship projection technology at the 65th annual British Film Institute’s London Film Festival, running now through October 17. For the first time the event will be held at the prestigious Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall on the south bank of the Thames, where the concert hall will be turned into the main festival gala cinema. With a seating capacity for 2,200 cinema goers, it will become one of the largest cinema experiences in the country.
Arri Rental has introduced two new large-format lens series—Alfa anamorphic lenses and Moviecam spherical lenses. Both series were conceived and constructed by Arri Rental’s global lens development team, which was also responsible for the company’s DNA lenses for full-frame and 65 mm cinematography.
SMPTE, the home of media professionals, technologists, and engineers, today announced that registration is open for its annual technical conference, SMPTE 2021 ATC, a virtual event with daily four-hour sessions offered November 9-11 and November 16-18. The society's annual technical conference is the world's premier peer-reviewed forum for media and entertainment technology, and this year's format and schedule, including a day of sessions presented in APAC-friendly time zones, are designed to make participation more convenient for busy industry professionals everywhere.
With the film and television industry rebounding from the pandemic, now is a great time to begin a career in visual effects. Production activity, in Australia and worldwide, is expanding quickly as studios and streaming services rush to meet pent up consumer demand for new content. That, in turn, has caused a labor shortage, especially for professionals with specialized training, such as visual effects artists. Studios that produce VFX for film and TV can’t hire qualified talent fast enough.
“When you’re preparing a film you can indulge in dreamy conversations –– it’s an essential part of the process that gets infused into the work,” says cinematographer Sam Levy. “But once you’re on set, and the clock is ticking, you find yourself a passenger on a moving train. Sometimes it’s a slow-moving train, but that train is moving. This was very much the case when we shot Karen Cinorre’s new film Mayday.”
Adobe has completed its acquisition of Frame.io, the cloud-based video collaboration platform. The combination of Adobe’s video editing offerings—including Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Premiere Pro and Adobe After Effects—with Frame.io’s cloud-based review and approval functionality will radically accelerate the creative process and deliver an end-to-end video platform, the companies said.
Ghost VFX artists received a 2021 Emmy for Outstanding Visual Effects in a Single Episode for the Star Trek: Discovery installment Su’Kal. Led by supervising producer / lead VFX supervisor Jason Michael Zimmerman, the Emmy-winning Ghost team included VFX supervisor Ivan Kondrup Jensen and VFX producer Kristen Prahl. Also taking home Emmys were VFX supervisor Ante Dekovic, VFX producer Aleksandra Kochoska, lead VFX artist Charles Collyer, and on set VFX supervisor Alexander Wood.
