Recently in Television Category

Holy.. No sooner than FXGuide does some cool features on Real Steel, but the first commercial I helped out with at DD is online and there's a making of. I was only on the show for the last two or three weeks helping the team out on this stereo commercial (is this the first stereo commercial out there?). Here's the commercial from Vimeo:

And here's the six minute making of.

Over the weekend the Creative Arts Emmys were held here in Los Angeles. Like last year, Battlestar Galactica took the Emmy. This time around, it was not the local Vancouver team that won. Here were the nominees.

Battlestar Galactica • He That Believeth In Me
Heroes • Four Months Ago
Human Body: Pushing The Limits • Strength
Jericho • Patriots And Tyrants
Stargate Atlantis • Adrift
Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles • Pilot

Congratulations to all the nominees and winners! For the category of Outstanding Special Visual Effects for a Movie, Miniseries or Special, the team that completed John Adams won. Here were the nominees.

John Adams • Join Or Die
Comanche Moon • Part 1
Life After People • History Channel
The Company • Part 2
Tin Man • Part 1

Unfortunately this year I was not able to help narrow down the selection nor choose a winner from the final five! Hopefully next year I will be available.

Over the weekend I received the first batch of Emmy goodies! It was a small container of only about three DVDs, with select episodes from their line-up which included, Dexter, Weeds, The L Word, and The Tudors, to name a few. It wasn't as jam packed as it has been in the past, but it was a good little thing to receive. There has been a big change this year for Showtime. They are no longer sending out full seasons of their shows! Instead, to save on shipping and expenses, they've decided to put all the seasons' episodes online for every show so that we can watch them without DVDs! Tis a shame on one side, but great on another. I usually love to get the DVDs, so we can watch the episodes over and over again. However, it's much nicer to use the streaming videos of all the episodes. The quality is very good, and there's virtually no buffering, save for starting a clip or fastforwarding to a different part of a show. They're using Brightcove streaming. Not too bad. Luckily we have an HTPC hooked up to the TV, so we can watch them properly in the living room.

Let's see how the rest of the studios react to this, and whether they'll spend the money on shipping DVDs to every member or set up their own streaming video server.

Last night was the 59th Annual Emmy Awards. While I could not find it televised anywhere, I was waiting in anticipation to see who would win our categories.

Lo and behold, the team for Battlestar Galactica wins! Congratulations guys, it's well deserved after more than a decade of hard work. The winners are below:

Gary Hutzel, Visual Effects Supervisor
Michael Gibson, Senior VFX Coordinator
Doug Drexler, CG Supervisor
Adam 'Mojo' Lebowitz, CGI Sequence Designer
Jeremy Hoey, Lead Matte Painter
Tom Archer, Lead Compositor
Andrew Karr, CGI Supervisor
Alec McClymont, Lead CGI Artist/ Animator
Brenda Campbell, Lead Compositor

I've worked with roughly half these bozos, so they're pretty good. If I remember correctly, this is the first Emmy to go to predominately Vancouver-based artists. Awesome work, and way to raise the bar!

It's about to hit 8am on on a Thursday here, and we've got about 24 hours to finish up a massive amount of shots. I arrived at work about a half hour ago, and have already got jobs on the farm. I'm the only one on the show so far that's here, but I'm an early bird. I figure the other artists work late into the night, even if I was here with them until 10:30! I had foregone my usual gym ritual this morning in order to get a headstart today, as it's going ot be jam packed. Similar to my very last day of Pirates, but hopefully not too crazy! That day was getting into the office at 6am, and working till 1am. But at least all the shots got approved.

I, and most of the crew, worked the long Labor Day weekend. Over that weekend I ended up finalling my shots, which was great news, so I got handed another shot to help out on. On Tuesday a couple became unfinalled for small notes. But now they're fixed again, and I'm back on yet another shot! Two more shots to go, to finish today! They also have a new poster. The title of the project is now The Seeker: The Dark Is Rising. The hope is that this will do well, and the next couple of books in the trilogy will be made. Time will tell.

This upcoming weekend is the VFXTalk Usergroup Meeting! I'll be there, along with a host of other industry folk, hanging out and talking about the world of vfx. It's a very informal gathering, but we've managed to obtain several presentations for our inaugural meeting. The companies are Method Studios, Luma Pictures, and Digital Domain. You'll get a chance to see their compositing reels, and hear directly from the artists about the creation of the effects of their shots!

Also in two days is the Creative Arts awards ceremony for the Emmys! On Tuesday there was a TD&SVE voting session which narrowed down the top five to the final winner. We find out who that winner is on Saturday evening. I have a couple friends who were again nominated this year for their work on Battlestar Galactica and Eureka, here's to hoping they win this year! Good luck everyone!