Time: 7:00pm to approx 8:00pm

Venue: EGO2 Auditorium (CoFA), Selwyn St, Paddington

Speaker: TBA

What’s it all about?
Straight from the 2008 conference this is a Chapter screening open to all. The event will begin with a brief Chapter Annual General Meeting, followed by the screening of the highlights of the Electronic Theatre presentation from the US ACM Siggraph 2008 Conference.

Click here to see a PDF (~40KB) containing this years agenda, the financial report for 2007-2008, and minutes from the previous AGM.

Cost: FREE to all members and their guests, as well as members of the public. Members and guests can purchase food and refreshments from the COFA canteen adjacent to the Auditorium prior to the event. (Attendees can sign up as a new member on the night. Annual Membership fees are $40 for professionals and $20 for students)

Probably best known for the annual SIGGRAPH International conference on computer graphics for film, televisions and new media industries, ACM SIGGRAPH also puts on a variety of programs year-round and worldwide to benefit the SIGGRAPH community. The event listed above is hosted by our local chapter and is free for all chapter members.

Date: Monday 28th July 2008

Time: 6:00pm till 8:00pm

Venue: Theatre 1, AFTRS Sydney (More on getting to AFTRS >)

Speakers: Paul Debevec

What’s it all about?
Paul Debevec has developed many of the technologies used to create photorealistic virtual characters and environments for feature films and games. He is the associate director of graphics research at the University of Southern California’s
Institute for Creative Technologies (USC ICT) and a research associate professor in USC’s Department of Computer Science. He Paul will present a TALK at AFTRS on Monday July 28 on 
New Techniques for Acquiring, Rendering, and Displaying Human Performances which will include:

• acquiring, rendering, and displaying photoreal models of people, objects, and dynamic performances
• image-based lighting techniques for photorealistic compositing and reflectance acquisition techniques (which have been used to create realistic digital actors in films such as “Spider Man 2″ and “Superman Returns”.
• describing image-based relighting with free-viewpoint video to capture and render full-body performances and new 3D face scanning processes that captures high-resolution skin detail
• investigating new 3D display that leverages 5,000 frames per second video projection to show autostereoscopic, interactive 3D imagery to any number of viewers simultaneously

Cost: Free

RSVP essential
To secure your place for this FREE talk email your name and phone number to Cassandra at: rsvpdigi@aftrs.edu.au
AFTRS is NOW located at 130 Bent St, inside The Entertainment Quarter.

Public Vehicle and pedestrian entrance to the Entertainment Quarter is via the main entrance on Lang Rd.
The Entertainment Quarter is serviced by buses and Central railway station is a short bus ride away.

Paul led the design of HDR Shop, the first widely used high dynamic range image editing program and co-authored the recent book High Dynamic Range Imaging. He received ACM SIGGRAPH’s Significant New Researcher Award in 2001 and recently chaired the SIGGRAPH 2007 Computer Animation Festival. He is also involved in the inaugural SIGGRAPH Asia 2008 conference as one of the Computer Animation Festival jury members. More information on SIGGRAPH Asia 2008 can be found here: www.siggraph.org/asia2008.

http://www.debevec.org/Bio/bio-short.html (Bio)

http://www.debevec.org/

Time: 6:45pm to approx 9:00pm

Venue: Elwynn Lynn Conference Centre, College of Fine Arts (CoFA), Selwyn St, Paddington

Speakers: Andrew Hellen and Jason Bath

What’s it all about?
Previz is one of the director’s most powerful and efficient ways to work through the action and dramatic pace of visual story. The previz sequences for ‘Rogue’ were an invaluable way for director Greg McLean to ensure that on-set time and CG elements were perfectly matched and that the action sequences had great impact. Andrew Hellen and Jason Bath will discuss the process they went through to build these sequences and then the membership will be able to stay on after the Q&A to see the film.

Cost: Free for Siggraph members. $5 cover charge for refreshments for guests and non-members.
(Attendees can sign up as a new member on the night. Annual Membership fees are $40 for professionals and $20 for students)

Probably best known for the annual SIGGRAPH International conference on computer graphics for film, televisions and new media industries, ACM SIGGRAPH also puts on a variety of programs year-round and worldwide to benefit the SIGGRAPH community. The event listed above is hosted by our local chapter and is free for all chapter members.

Time: 7:00pm to approx 8:00pm

Venue: Elwynn Lynn Conference Centre, College of Fine Arts (CoFA), Selwyn St, Paddington

Speaker: Catherine Gleeson (AFTRS) and Tracey Sernack Chee-Quee (TAFE, Sydgraph Board)

What’s it all about?
Talent is only one portion of the formula needed for success; working well with clients is another. Judging by recent posts on the DLF and feedback from members, one of the hardest things about being a freelancer or moving up the career ladder is knowing how to deal with things like:

pitching, taking a brief, the protocol of how to handle details like getting paid, follow-ups, relationships, and problems – like not getting paid.

So this session brings together two people who have worked extensively in industry and who can cover these topics and field a Q&A that should help members whether those just starting out or colleagues who are always open to new ideas about how to handle the eternal challenges of working with clients successfully.

Cost: Free for Siggraph members. $5 cover charge for refreshments for guests and non-members.
(Attendees can sign up as a new member on the night. Annual Membership fees are $40 for professionals and $20 for students)

Probably best known for the annual SIGGRAPH International conference on computer graphics for film, televisions and new media industries, ACM SIGGRAPH also puts on a variety of programs year-round and worldwide to benefit the SIGGRAPH community. The event listed above is hosted by our local chapter and is free for all chapter members.

• updated vc blog
• updated events

Our session this month was by Anthos Simon and Rebecca Dunn from Efilm. We had a request from industry to cover more technical areas, especially for compositors so I asked Anthos (who is just THE guy to talk to about these things) to give us a session that covered everything from film stock, aspect ratios, colour space to D/Is. They were very generous with their time and experience and brought excellent handouts (PDFs attached here) for reference.

(download PDF)

(download PDF)

As you might have noticed, the events calendar has shifted a bit. This is in part due to my being in Oslo for their film industry’s big conference in digital visual effects (www.digistorytelling.com). In my absence Nick Hore (Animal Logic) and Peter Giles (AFTRS) have very kindly agreed to step in and run the 02 April session on showreels. They will be bringing example reels to provoke discussion and inspire but we recommend also that members step up and offer their own reels for feedback. As I have said before at other sessions on reels, feedback is your friend but your friend is not always the best place to get feedback. So if you are keen to get comments please contact Nick (nickh@al.com.au) or Peter (Peter.Giles@aftrs.edu.au) and let them know that you are planning to bring your reel. DVD only, thanks.

The other reason we have moved the events schedule a bit is so that the April session ties in very nicely with the New South Wales Film & TV office’s DVFx Placement Scheme deadline of 12 May. (www.fto.nsw.gov.au) This scheme is an excellent opportunity to work at feature film standard with some of the world’s top DVFx studios (which, happily, we have based here in NSW!). So check out the guidelines and put in an application.

In May we will be fortunate to have Mike Seymour presenting the Red camera. I am sure you have all been reading about this and Peter Jackson’s and Alex Proyas’ plans to use the Red for their next projects. Mike runs VFXPhD and writes extensively for DMW. He is a strong advocate for the Red and we are very lucky indeed to have him join us on 07 May.

I’m hoping to have a good panel together to do a session in June about working with clients and then the rest of the year should unfold as per the updated events calendar.

We look forward to seeing you on The First Wednesdays and in closing I am very sorry to let you all know about the passing of a friend of SIGGRAPH’s, Peter Rasmussen. As many of you will recall, Peter and Jackie Turnure were the creators of Stolen Life, Australia’s first feature length machinima which we screened with a Q&A session late last year. Peter was the writer on the feature films Mad Bomber in Love and In The Winter Dark. I first met Peter when I invited Stolen Life to premier at the 2007 Sydney Film Festival’s digital strand and was grateful that he and Jackie were able to participate in the AFTRS Digital Factor Seminar last August. We became friends through this series of events and I must say that I found Peter to be one of those true gems; always generous with his time and deeply insightful about storycraft and filmmaking. He passed away on Saturday, 8 March 2008 and we are all the poorer for his leaving. On behalf of the membership, I thank Peter for giving us his time and the benefit of his experience in a session for us.

On that sad note, goodbye for now. I look forward to seeing you all in May for the session on the Red camera and hope you all get a fabulous amount of inspiration to re-do your showreels and submit them for the FTO’s DVFx scheme on 12 May!

All the best,

Shilo