"Logan's Run" Finds Driven Director

(BBC News)            Nicolas Winding Refn Nicolas Winding Refn won the best director prize at Cannes for Drive

Director Nicolas Winding Refn has revealed he is hard at work on a new film version of sci-fi classic Logan's Run.

The project would reunite the Danish director with Ryan Gosling, the star of Refn's latest film - Drive.

"I really want to make Logan's Run, and I'm working on it very hard and I have to deliver a script by Christmas," Refn told the BBC News website.

The 1976 movie version of Logan's Run starred Michael York and Jenny Agutter.

Based on a 1967 novel of the same name, it told the story of a future society where the citizens are killed off at the age of 30.

The film won an Oscar for special achievement in special effects.

Refn's next film project after Drive is Only God Forgives, a revenge thriller set in Thailand with Ryan Gosling and Kristin Scott Thomas in the cast. It is due to shoot at Christmas.

"Logan's Run is a bigger thing," explained Refn, "because it's so expensive, it's Warner Bros and it's got more people involved."

In Drive, Gosling plays a Hollywood stuntman who moonlights as a getaway driver for Los Angeles mobsters.

The story sees him embroiled in a heist gone wrong, as well as a romance with a character played by British actress Carey Mulligan.

Refn is also planning another film with Mulligan called I Walk With The Dead. "I have to write it first, but she and I had a very good partnership," he said.

Refn's previous credits include the Pusher crime trilogy, violent biopic Bronson and Valhalla Rising.

Another unconfirmed Refn project that has gained much internet buzz is Wonder Woman, with Mad Men star Christina Hendricks - who also appears in Drive - as the super-heroine.
The cast includes Mad Men star Christina Hendricks Christina Hendricks has a small role in Drive. But will she be Wonder Woman?

Asked about the rumours, Refn explained: "I was asked what would be my dream project, so I said Wonder Woman, and it built up from there.

"Then people asked who I would cast and I said Christina Hendricks, because she's the perfect woman, she's a great actress and she looks like a woman should look."

But Refn didn't rule out the film getting the go-ahead.

"There were some people saying, 'let's see how Logan's Run goes and we'll take Wonder Woman from there'. It's Hollywood - you never know."




Avatar Heads to Walt Disney Parks

(Walt Disney Parks)                Fans looking forward to a return visit to Pandora now have something else to anticipate beyond the December, 2014 release of of Avatar 2. Walt Disney Parks and Resorts Worldwide has announced a new deal with Fox Film Entertainment and James Cameron that will bring his sci-fi world to Walt Disney theme parks, beginning with Disney World's Animal Kingdom.

"James Cameron is a groundbreaking filmmaker and gifted storyteller who shares our passion for creativity, technological innovation and delivering the best experience possible," said Robert A. Iger, President and CEO of The Walt Disney Company. "With this agreement, we have the extraordinary opportunity to combine James' talent and vision with the imagination and expertise of Disney."

Cameron himself is said to be heavily involved (alongside producing partner Jon Landau) and construction is eyed to begin in 2013 with Avatar attractions at other Disney parks to follow.

"'Avatar' created a world which audiences can discover again and again and now, through this incredible partnership with Disney, we'll be able to bring Pandora to life like never before," said Cameron, "With two new 'Avatar' films currently in development, we'll have even more locations, characters and stories to explore. I'm chomping at the bit to start work with Disney's legendary Imagineers to bring our 'Avatar' universe to life. Our goal is to go beyond current boundaries of technical innovation and experiential storytelling, and give park goers the chance to see, hear, and touch the world of 'Avatar' with an unprecedented sense of reality."




Roland Emmerich Set to Direct a Sci-fi Movie, and It Isn’t Asteroids

(denofgeek.com)                 Roland Emmerich is no stranger to sci-fi. Since Moon 44 in 1990, a low-budget feature about ex-convict helicopter pilots in space, Emmerich has brought us his own, slightly peculiar brand of genre fare, which usually sees entire continents crumble in huge balls of flame - the defining aspect of Emmerich's CV, in fact, is that he's responsible for the destruction of more cities than Godzilla.

That pyrotechnic excess has been temporarily quelled for the director’s digression into period drama, Anonymous, which has something to do with Shakespeare. It was widely thought that, within the next few months or so, Emmerich would head back to the sci-fi genre with Asteroids, an adaptation of everyone’s favourite 80s rock-shooting arcade game. But speaking at the Toronto Film Festival, Emmerich has nipped those Asteroid rumours in the bud – when asked if he really was attached to the film by Collider, his response was an immediate “No.”

Instead, Emmerich’s set to embark on a sci-fi project of an altogether different variety, called Singularity. It’s a script he’s co-written with Harald Kloser, with whom he previously collaborated on 10,000 BC and 2012. And, Emmerich says, the film’s pre-production phase is quite far along, with shooting likely to begin next March.

“We’re in pre-production and we probably will shoot end of March as it looks right now, and it takes place in the future 40 years from now,” Emmerich said. “It’s like kind of this moment where computer technology is so advanced that we kind of—It’s the danger of losing control.”

Thankfully, Emmerich will be exploring rather different sci-fi avenues from the more bombastic, disaster-filled films that he’s become associated with. In the film 2012, he effectively destroyed the entire planet, so it’s perhaps understandable that he wants “to stay a little bit away from disaster”.

Emmerich won’t be drawn on exactly what we can expect from Singularity, since he wants to retain a “certain mystery” around the film.

Confusingly, director Roland Joffé has directed his own sci-fi film called Singularity, due out next year. This one stars Josh Hartnett and Neve Campbell, and has a time-travelling plot that sounds like an odd mix of Jeannot Szwarc’s Somewhere In Time and a Hollywood historical epic.




"Wolfman" 2nd Reboot Moves Forward

(darkhorizons.com)                  Stephen Rea ("V for Vendetta"), Ed Quinn ("Eureka") and Steven Bauer ("Scarface") have all joined the cast of Universal's direct-to-DVD second reboot of "The Wolfman" at Universal Pictures reports Moviehole.

Bauer let slip the info in a recent interview promoting the Blu-ray release of "Scarface". Bauer says he has five weeks of filming on the project and will play a 'hunter', and NOT a werewolf.

Louis Morneau helms this entry which begins filming shortly in Romania.




Iloura Wins VFX Work on Seth Macfarlane's "Ted"

(if.com.au)                    VFX company Iloura will create complex character animation work on over 250 shots for Seth MacFarlane's feature comedy Ted.

MacFarlane (Family Guy) will direct the film, which revolves around a man (played by Mark Wahlberg) whose childhood teddy bear (also played by McFarlane) comes to life.

MacFarlane gave some insight, according to media reports, about the film's visual effects earlier this year. “I’m doing that whole motion-capture thing where they put me in a suit with a lot of electrodes on it and I’m playing a teddy bear,” he said.

Iloura creative director, Glenn Melenhorst, said the company's early R&D was instrumental in establishing the overall look and nuances of the character.

"This included development and testing of facial expressions and body movement, all the way down to the matted and worn texture of his fur. All this work formulated our pitch which assisted us to win a significant package of shots on the film," he said in a statement.

Iloura has built a reputation around its character animation work and counts upcoming films such as Don't Be Afriad of the Dark and Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengence among its work.

Ted will receive the government’s 30 per cent Post Digital and Visual Effects (PDV) offset and Film Victoria’s Production Investment Attraction Fund (PIAF).

The film, due for a July 2012 release, also stars Mila Kunis and comedian Joel McHale. MacFarlane voices the bear on top of writing the screenplay alongside Family Guy co-writers Alec Sulkin and Wellesley Wild.



30 Pixar Facts

(thefancarpet.com)                  

1. Pixar’s full name is Pixar Animation Studios, but was originally founded as Graphics Group in 1979.

2. The Pixar moniker was born on February 3rd, 1986 when the company was incorporated by Ed Catmull, Alvy Ray Smith and Steve Jobs (of Apple fame).

3. The Graphics Group was actually started under the umbrella of Lucasfilm, before Steve Jobs bought the company in 1986, which subsequently got taken over by The Walt Disney Company 20 years later for $7.4 billion.

4. Pixar’s 12 feature films and numerous shorts have won the company 26 Oscars, seven Golden Globes and three Grammys!

5. Toy Story, released in 1995 was Pixar’s first feature, and won director John Lasseter a Special Achievement Academy Award. This was not the company’s first Oscar, however, that went to Tin Toy for Best Animated Short in 1989.

6. Since AMPAS started awarding Best Animated Feature in 2001, all eight eligible Pixar films have been nominated, and six have won the Oscar.

7. Only three films have ever been nominated for a Best Picture Oscar: Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, and Pixar’s Up and Toy Story 3.

8. Andr and Wally B., Lasseter’s first 3-D short, while not under the name ‘Pixar’ is considered the spiritual first step of the now world famous studio.

9. Pixar was set up to develop and market computer hardware for graphics and animation generation. Andr and Wally B. were made by Lasseter to show off their systems’ capabilities, and were welcomed with high acclaim.

10. Steve Jobs considered selling the ailing Pixar to Microsoft in 1994, and only decided to keep it when Disney agreed to distribute Toy Story.

11. Toy Story was the first feature film to have been made using 100% CGI. CGI had only been used before to embellish VFX in live action and some normal animation films.

12. The $361 million+ worldwide that Toy Story took placed it firmly within the top 50 highest grossing animated films of all time. In fact, all of Pixar’s feature productions are on that list, with Up, Finding Nemo and Toy Story 3 making it onto the top 50 highest grossing films of all time. The latter in a staggering 7th place!

13. On the technical side, Pixar’s PhotoRealistic RenderMan rendering software is used by all of the major studios to generate digital visual effects. It has been used in films from Titanic to The Lord of The Rings.

14. In 2001 RenderMan became the first software package to earn a technical Oscar for its outstanding contributions to the field of CGI.

15. A relatively mysterious suite of software called Marionette is used exclusively by PIxar, and is said to aid animation by artists with traditional cel experience.

16. Toy Story, although animated by an unproven method for a feature film, attracted a very impressive voice cast. Tom Hanks, Tom Allen, John Ratzenberger and Laurie Metcalf all signed up.

17. A Bug’s Life was released in 1998, and was Pixar’s second feature. The story is based on Akira Kurosawa’s epic Seven Samurai and Aesop’s The Ant and the Grasshopper.

18. Toy Story 2 was initially slated as a straight to home video release by Disney, but upon seeing the quality of the early animation upgraded the film to a theatrical release which subsequently pulled in $485,015,179 worldwide!

19. There are a number of things that appear in all or most of Pixar’s feature films. One is the Pizza Planet delivery truck, in every film except The Incredibles. Another is John Ratzenburger who has leant his voice to every one!

20. Toy Story 2 introduced the female lead character of Jessie, a sprightly cowgirl from Woody’s Roundup, the fictional TV show from which Sheriff Woody also comes.

21. Monstropolis is the name of the city inhabited entirely by monsters, and one cheeky little girl the monster’s christen ‘Boo’, in Pixar’s fourth feature: Monsters, Inc.

22. Laughter really is the best medicine in Monsters, Inc., as Boo’s laughter is found to generate more energy than the screams the monsters had been harvesting.

23. Just Keep Swimming... was the catchphrase on everyone’s lips with the 2003 release of Finding Nemo. But did you know Nemo was the second highest grossing film of that year? Losing out only to The Lord of the Ring: The Return of the King?

24. The undersea adventure Finding Nemo uses real marine biology for all of its underwater characters. Nemo and his father are clownfish, Dory is regal tang, and Crush is a sea turtle.

25. The Incredibles was the first Pixar film to feature humans as the primary characters. Up is the only other. In the Incredibles the Parr family are ‘Supers’, humans with special gifts once seen as heroes. In a Watchman style crackdown on heroes, they are forced to hide their powers until needs must.

26. The Incredibles was the last Pixar film to have a VHS release. All subsequent films were only released on DVD and Blu-ray, and to stream online.

27. Pixar’s ninth feature, WALL-E, was released in 2008 with important messages on the environment and consumerism. Did you know that WALL-E himself can actually be seen sitting on a shelf four years earlier in The Incredibles?

28. Up was Pixar’s first film to be released in 3-D, and the first animated and the first 3-D film to open the Cannes Film Festival. All Pixar films following Up have been released in 3-D, including some older films re-released.

29. The most recent Pixar feature, Cars 2, continues the high calibre of animation and voice acting – enlisting Owen Wilson, Michael Caine, Jason Isaacs, Emily Mortimer and John Turturro among a host of cameo voices such as Lewis Hamilton and Jeff Gordon!

30. Pixar’s future looks very bright, with upcoming titles including the mysterious Brave, set in the Scottish Highlands, the much anticipated sequel to Monsters, Inc.: Monsters University, and untitled projects; one about dinosaurs, and another that will take you inside the mind! We can’t wait! 




Flying Monsters Reborn in 3-D

(cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com)                 The way David Attenborough sees it, pterosaurs and 3-D documentaries were made for each other, even though they're separated by 65 million years.

"You want to have something that moves not just in 2-D across the ground, but goes up as well," he said. That makes the flying reptiles an "obvious subject" for a 3-D movie, Attenborough added.

He should know: The 85-year-old British broadcaster and naturalist has been doing nature documentaries for the BBC for more than 50 years — and what's more, he's the brother of Richard Attenborough, the actor who welcomed scientists to "Jurassic Park" in that classic 1993 dino-flick.

So it's hard to think of anyone better-suited to be the writer and narrator of "Flying Monsters 3D," a big-screen documentary due for its North American opening on Oct. 7.

The movie, which had its British theatrical release earlier this year, blends computer-generated graphics with field trips to fossil beds and laboratories. In the process, a wide variety of pterosaur breeds are virtually resurrected.

Paleontologists say the creatures came to dominate the skies of the Cretaceous era, just as dinosaurs dominated the land below. "The story of how that came about, and why eventually they died out, is what the film is about," David Attenborough told journalists during a Monday teleconference.

The 3-D special effects in "Flying Monsters" take their cue from "Avatar," but there's much more mixing of the Cretaceous and the modern world. At one point, pterosaur bones laid out on a table assemble themselves and take off. And during one of the movie's concluding scenes, a Quetzalcoatlus with a 40-foot wingspan pulls alongside Attenborough as he's sitting in the cockpit of a glider.

A long-extinct pterosaur known as Quetzalcoatlus seems to fly alongside host David Attenborough in a digitally created scene from "Flying Monsters 3D."

"I originally thought I might do that in a hang glider. ... Unfortunately, the insurers wouldn't let me do that, so I had to do it in the glider," he quipped.

Attenborough said one of the challenges of the project was to make sure the movie stuck to the scientific story instead of turning into a 3-D monster chiller horrorfest. "It's no good just doing a film to say, 'Oh, yes, it's wonderful in 3-D,' but have no story behind it," he said.

The scientific story
Pterosaurs have been the subject of scientific debate for decades: Paleontologists have argued over whether they were cold-blooded or warm-blooded, whether they bore feathers or fur, whether they could take off from a runway or had to jump off a cliff in order to take flight. (One of the places Attenborough visited during the making of the movie was the famed "pterosaur landing strip" in southern France, which he compared to "a prehistoric Heathrow" airport.)

The creatures shown in "Flying Dinosaurs 3D" aren't your father's pterosaurs: They use their folded wings as forelimbs when they walk around on all fours — or when they launch into the air. Some have a coat of fine hairs known as pycnofibers, which serve as evidence that they were warm-blooded. And most of them sport colorful crests, which Attenborough considers a "reasonable" hypothesis.

"They were almost certainly colored, and they had structures on their heads which can best be explained as being like the crest of a bird, and were used in courtship," he said.

Atlantic Productions / ZOO

A crested pterosaur known as a Tapejara uses its folded forelimbs as it prepares for take-off in a scene from "Flying Monsters 3D."

Were pterosaurs actually birds? Pterosaurs had wings. (Check, although their wings could spread wider than bird wings.) They laid eggs. (Check, although their eggs were more like those of reptiles than modern-day birds.) They tended to group in colonies, as many species of birds do today. Pterosaurs and early birds co-existed during the Cretaceous ... but the mainstream view is that they came from different lines of the evolutionary tree.

Why did birds survive while pterosaurs die out? That's the 65 million-year question.

"Birds had feathers, stiff quills, but pterosaurs didn't have feathers," Attenborough said. "They didn't evolve feathers."

Instead, pterosaurs got their lift from membranes that were attached to their limbs and spread out during flight. Those membranes made it "very difficult to move around on the ground in a nimble sort of way," while birds "were able to run on the ground very well," Attenborough said. The way he sees it, that was a "crucial element" in the fight for survival when the era of the dinosaurs ended.

The rest of the story
Is that the way paleontologists see it? Mark Witton, a pterosaur expert at the University of Portsmouth, was one of the scientists who served as consultants for the film — and he was invited to a screening when the British version was ready for its release. "My hopes were high that everyone's favourite leathery-winged beasties were about to get their moment in the media sun," he wrote on the Pterosaur.net blog.

Dimorphodon flies through a jungle setting in a scene from "Flying Monsters 3D."

He came away impressed by the film's technical fireworks, but not so much impressed by the scientific claims. "Take, for instance, the way that we're explicitly told that pterosaurs were out-competed by birds and their ability to adapt to new ecologies, thus sealing the extinction of the more evolutionary-stagnant pterosaurs," he wrote. "Detailed analyses of bird and pterosaur diversity have either proved inconclusive on this issue ... or categorically stated that there's no evidence for bird-driven pterosaur extinction. ..."

Witton catalogs the movie's other scientific sins with the rigor that only a dedicated specialist could muster. "It really seems that, with a bit more care, this could've been as much of an achievement for effective scientific communication as it has been for 3-D technology, but it's really an enormous missed opportunity," he wrote.

Other pterosaur experts have provided more positive reviews. The University of Leicester's David Unwin, who was also a consultant for the film, praised the results in a video clip. "Films like this do a tremendous job of actually communicating in a really exciting way, and one that grabs your attention, the kinds of things that we've found out about pterosaurs," he said. "And what I really love is being able to see the animation and being involved in the process of trying to produce the best possible and most accurate animations."

What's a pterosaur fan to do? If you go see "Flying Monsters 3D," you'll want to sit back and enjoy the 3-D effects ... and then get the rest of the story from online resources such Pterosaur.net, or Dave Hone's Archosaur Musings, or John Conway's Palaeontography, or Pterosauria at the University of California Museum of Paleontology.

VIDEO:  http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/09/19/7844412-flying-monsters-reborn-in-3-d




How The NBN Will Effect The Australian Visual F/X Industry

(bhatt.id.au)                            The proposed National Broadband Network (NBN) will have an impact on many parts of our lives at work and home. I spoke with a variety of people in the Australian visual effects (VFX) industry about how the NBN could effect their industry.

Phil Sullivan is a classic example of how talented Australians in the VFX industry travel the world like a wandering albatross from project to project.

As a Motion Capture TD (Technical Director) and Animator his specialty is “synthesising life” and he’s applied this skill to movies and computer games such as Happy Feet 1 and 2, Heavenly Sword and LA Noire.

As much as he’d like to live in Australia near his family, the boom and bust nature of the VFX industry means he has to follow projects to the country they’re based in. So after completing his current contract working on Happy Feet 2 in Sydney who knows where he could be next, perhaps Wellington, Los Angeles, Vancouver or London.

Adelaide based Rising Sun Pictures (RSP) has recently finished work on the Green Lantern and Harry Potter 7 Part 2. Their previous success stories include blockbusters like Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, Batman Begins and Watchmen.

RSP co-founder Tony Clark told me that the NBN will not substantially change what Rising Sun Pictures does in the beginning but once the network has been rolled out across a substantial part of Australia it could have an important impact on how people in the Australian VFX industry collaborate on projects.

Clark’s description of how the VFX industry worked historically, presently and potentially in the future made it clear how the NBN is one of the progressions required to try and stay competitive with overseas rivals.

In the past big film studios such as Disney had their own VFX department, then they started outsourcing parts of films and by 1990 movies like Terminator II had their VFX done almost solely by one company, in this case George Lucas’ Industrial Light and Magic. Today VFX work for movies is often shared across many companies, with each winning 5-10% of the budget.

Clark harked back to a time when he had to arrange data tapes for work in progress to be shipped overseas. The week long “lag time” between “packets” of a project was very frustrating as the VFX industry is all about creativity and it’s hard to be creative with such communication delays.

From 2000 onwards RSP sent Quicktime movies back and forth to customers. Files steadily grew larger in size and quality in parallel with the customer film studios expectations of creative communications moving to a practically immediate timeframe.

Even the fastest ADSL transfer speeds became too constraining so RSP setup a private high speed network called Cinenet with the financial assistance of the South Australian Government, using the services of Agile Communications (sister company to ISP Internode).

The launch of Cinenet in mid-2004 had played a critical role in RSP winning the contract for Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire according to Clark.

“The speed of Cinenet, combined with Rising Sun Pictures’ sister company Rising Sun Research’s client review software cineSync, allowed our work to be reviewed in Los Angeles and London faster than work from suppliers based in those cities” he said. Cinesync won the Academy award for Technical Achievement in early 2011.

What Clark envisages is a future world where he can assemble best of breed group of VFX artists in small teams of individuals working from home. To enable that he needs these talented people to have access to highly reliable NBN type ultra-fast broadband internet speeds. This would be “revolutionary for distributed film making workflows” he said.

Even if it could be done at a cost premium to ADSL2+ of several hundred dollars per connection it would enable VFX talent outside the big cities to participate in RSP projects, for example a cluster of people who live on the north coast of NSW. At the moment they are willing and available but lack the necessary connectivity.

Clark said that “looking at the NBN wholesale price list it’s very much within the reach of a professional worker to have the kinds of speeds at their home office to compete with big companies on a level playing field”.

Animal Logic (AL) is another prominent Australian VFX company, working on projects such as The Matrix trilogy, 300 and Australia. AL recently won the lead role in a big 2 year project, the $65 million Walking with Dinosaurs 3D feature film which means a large portion of that production money will be spent in Australia.

Guy Griffiths Director of Research & Development at AL notes that a key characteristic of VFX digital animation is that it’s almost all in front of a computer. Specialist programs like Maya are used to make files that are handed on to the next person in the production chain.

The amounts of computer data generated during work on projects such as the recent Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole movie require backing up colossal amounts. It’s not surprising that VFX files are delivered to the customer at present via packing cases of hard disk drives as well as by network file transfers.

VFX work is project based and requires flexibility to scale up access to specialists in different areas at short notice. Ubiquitous consistent speed network file transfer capability would allow new ways to tap into VFX talent regardless of their location. Once there’s a distributed workforce Griffiths wonders how they can be managed, it’s not just about fast file transfers he said.

He told me that AL would need new innovative services to utilise the NBN in order to work and communicate more effectively. Perhaps by looking at an adjacent telepresence wall (immersive video conferencing) in order to talk to a remote colleague rather than initiating a cumbersome video chat through a computer program.

Griffiths is certain that when the NBN is in place imaginative solutions which we can’t imagine now will be created, however there is a fair way to go yet. The NBN could allow innovation and experimentation but companies like AL can’t make business decisions around it until it has a critical mass of availability.

If Australian VFX companies can leapfrog their overseas rivals by using the NBN to connect to talented staff offsite, it could be a factor that allows more projects to be won. These could employ talent within the industry like Phil Sullivan so they can spend more time living, working and spending their income in Australia.

AL Creative Director Bruce Carter told me that “talented people in the VFX industry are mobile nomadic artists who go from project to project around the world, balanced by a core group of older staff who stay put as they have families here … so clearly if there’s a deep talent pool nearby that’s good for AL” and by extension for the rest of the Australian VFX industry.

However it will take more than the NBN to do this because at present the high value of the Australian dollar and more generous tax breaks offered overseas are making it relatively expensive for big film studios to create movies in Australia.




Fantastic Model Miniatures Exhibit 2011

Figure Painters, Model Builders and Collectors come out on Oct. 1st and 2nd 2011 and support our hobby as The East Coast Figure Artists and the IPMS Patriot Chapter present the "Fantastic Model Miniatures" Exhibit at The National Heritage Museum in historic Lexington, MA.

This public exhibition will include: 300 miniatures , Historical and Fantasy Figures and Dioramas by Shep Payne, Bill Horan, Mike Blank, Steve Riojas, John Rosengrandt and works from five NewEngland area model clubs. ( If you or your club can make it, please contact me. ) Seminars on painting , sculpting and molding/casting will run both days.

This non-profit, educational event will present what we do as true artwork in a museum setting to the public who might never attend one of our regular model shows. With our hobby getting a bit smaller with each coming year, exhibits like this one are a solid step toward involving new people. For complete details the museaum will post a page as the date draws nearer. www.nationalheritagemuseum.org





GenArts, PixelFish Release Visual Effects to Engage Shoppers

(bizreport.com)                   As more people turn to online video to watch Primetime television, original programming and news clips advertisers are following. A new development in the video space may improve some advertisers' video results. From PixelFish and GenArts, the solution will use visual effects to scale video advertising.

by Kristina Knight

GenArts will power the PixelFish solution, offering better performance for local advertisers hoping to engage through video.

"Visual effects have been shown to increase audience engagement and purchase intent by up to 12% for advertisement spots on TV versus the same exact spot without the visual effects," said Katherine Hays, CEO of GenArts. "Traditionally, that level of engagement with video due to the targeted use of visual effects has been limited to blue-chip brands with large production and distribution budgets. Now, through the GenArts Solution, we are able to bring Madison Avenue results to everyone from an independently-run business to your local pizza shop."

Video ads now account for about 14% of the content in the online video space, but that isn't slowing consumer adoption of the medium. According to the latest data from comScore Americans watched nearly 7 billion video clips in July; 180 million Americans are now watching online video. Most clips are still viewed through Google's YouTube, but a growing number of viewers are going direct to sites like Hulu or network websites to find video content, including full-length television episodes and streaming entire movies.

Hulu continues to reach the most consumers with video ads (409 million ad minutes, 7.9% reach) followed by Adap.tv (396 million ad minutes, 20% reach) and Tremor Video (347 million ad minutes, 19% reach).