Industry Giants - Part 4 - Day 2

Part One Here

The second day was more of keynote addresses versus smaller sessions of the first day. Technically, the second day was "Industry Giants" and the first day was "Master Classes."

Saturday (the second day) was sessions starting with Johnny Gibson (digital effects supervisor for Digital Domain on "Speed Racer"). He spoke on "Speed Racer" some, but then presented nicely on the history of special/visual effects. This was very cool to see the early days and creativity of effects.

David Schaub presented again about the creature development for "I Am Legend." Originally they were going to use actors in makeup for the infected people, but they cdn't get people to be as "all out crazy" as they needed to be. He showed some great material on their development.

Farhez Rayani (senior lighting technical director at Rhythm and Hues for "The Golden Compass") presented on the amazing work they did on the ice scenes for that movie. Again, too great to see the breakdown and build up of those scenes.

Piyush Patel did a brief presentation for Digital-Tutors.

Mike Anderson (supervising director for "The Simpsons") represented the 2D world very nicely with humor, technical perspectives and great insight for his show including their Universal Studio's ride and video game.

At the end they had a panel discussion to talk about how each got into the industry, their inspiration, some favorite work, advice, etc.

For each presentation this day, it was SO cool to see the breakdown of scenes and hear the explanations about how they made their decisions and motivations, etc. It was also cool to see some behind-the-scenes stuff for these movies.

Related info:
The Texas Film Commission presented and gave info on the Dallas Film Commission, Texas Motion Picture Alliance, the Moving Image Incentive, Dallas Producers Association, etc.

It was great that it was local and cheap to attend. I enjoyed seeing the feature film side of things and hear about what's going on. Mike Anderson even draw a picture of Homer for me (he's a director now, but started out as an animator on the show).

I look forward to going again next year and maybe even some events by a bunch of short guys who organized it.