Industrial Light & Magic has announced the next phase of its global expansion plan for the company’s virtual production and StageCraft LED volume services. This expansion of services is tied to a proactive initiative for increasing diversity in the industry by combining ILM’s growth in this innovative methodology with a global trainee program geared for underrepresented VFX talent.
Rising Sun Pictures served as a principal visual effects provider for The Eight Hundred, the epic war film from director Guan Hu and Huayi Brothers Media and Haining Seventh Image Movie & Media Company. To date, the film has already earned more than $200 million in Chinese theatres alone. The film centers on the true story of the 1937 Battle of Shanghai where a Chinese battalion mounted a determined defense of the Sihang Warehouse from the invasion of the Japanese army. Working in collaboration with BangBang Pictures, Beijing, and overall VFX supervisor RSP’s Tim Crosbie, RSP contributed scores of richly detailed, seamless visual effects to support the film’s riveting combat scenes, all set around a massive warehouse complex near the city center.
VFX Legion, a remote boutique-style global company, has announced the opening of a full-scale division in British Columbia. An early proponent of the virtualization of visual effects, industry veteran James David Hattin launched the company in 2013, introducing a groundbreaking collaborative work-from-home business model almost a decade before COVID-19 made social distancing essential. Headquartered in Los Angeles, the company’s new Kelowna-based division takes its road-tested remote visual effect services to the next level.
With film and television production starting to resume, visual effects companies in New York State are gearing up to capitalize on a projected boom in demand. Eager to get back to work but wanting to do so safely, producers are expected to rely more on virtual production and other visual effects techniques to reduce the need for travel, locations shoots and crowd scenes.
The White Wall has been called one of the most exciting scripted television series to come out of Scandinavia in recent years with its unique storyline, high production value and superb cast. It was primarily shot in a remote village in northern Finland and set in the present time with science fiction elements. The story was based on an unusual white wall discovered deep underground at a mining site of one of the world’s largest nuclear waste depositories.
Rising Sun Pictures is celebrating its 25th anniversary this month, another milestone for the visual effects studio which, from humble beginnings, has gone on to produce ground breaking work for more than 150 motion picture and series productions, including some of the most popular and critically-acclaimed films of the past two decades.
The corona virus pandemic has impacted people and businesses worldwide. The strict quarantine restrictions have made it difficult for educational institutions to continue to operate. However, Rising Sun Pictures, whose core business is to problem-solve and find creative solutions, devised a plan to continue the delivery of their education program with little disruption.
The film and television industry's top priority since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic has been the health of its employees. Companies have moved quickly to find ways to adapt in-house staff to work-from-home scenarios that minimize health risks. But that’s how VFX Legion has worked since 2013.
As head of business development and a member of the executive management team at Rising Sun Pictures, Jennie Zeiher leads the team responsible for the visual effects studio’s forward slate of high-quality film and series projects. Zeiher considers staying abreast of the development schedule and saying yes to opportunities as they arise to be key to her company’s success, which is not an easy feat being half a world away from Hollywood. “Over the past several years RSP’s relationships have broadened and through consistent high quality delivery we’re developing new ones,” she says. “It's a virtuous cycle.”
DP Nicolaj Bruel and director Matteo Garrone, who first worked together on the award-winning 2018 feature film Dogman, recently repeated their collaboration on the live action Italian language feature film Pinocchio, starring Oscar winner Roberto Benigni. A live action adaptation of the classic fairy tale about a wooden puppet that is brought to life, the production had to be right on many levels.
