Our 2nd In-Person Event Was a Success!

Thanks to Marc of Autodesk and Tom of Click 3X for their great job presenting Smoke 2013!

Attendees at Tuesday’s July NYCPPNEWS In-Person Event got the low down on Autodesk’s Smoke 2013 in a casual but entertaining evening presentation at Showbiz Software Café.

Click 3X’s Tom Matheu & Autodesk’s Marc Hamaker rocked our July In Person Event.

Gathering near the large monitor at this very cool spot on West 21^st Street, we first heard Autodesk’s Marc Hamaker, senior product marketing manager, creative finishing, take us on an overview of this top edit/effects/compositing app. We learned that Autodesk—after over two years into a full redesign of this Mac-only program—has decided to push back the launch until December. Why? Enthusiastic beta users are coming up with so much useful feedback that the coders are doing double duty to keep up with all the suggestions. (Interested in taking Smoke 2013 out for a spin? Download the free beta here.)

Next, Tom Matheu, VFX Editor/Supervisor at Click 3X New York, took attendees on a detailed post session using a recent commercial for his example. Tom showed how the new integrated UI enabled him to quickly move among tracking, 3D compositing and cleanup tools to ‘save’ an actor’s performance in a commercial.

After Tom finished, attendees and presenters spent the time until the café’s closing discussing the app along with a range of other talk about postproduction in New York.

Our suggestion? Don’t miss the next of these fun, informative events! While the next event doesn’t fall on our usual date of the last Tuesday of the month (it’s on Tuesday, August 14th instead), you’ll still want to turn out for a live demo of the latest update to iPi Soft’s breakthrough mo cap system. (Joe Herman reviewed the first version of the system here.)

Want to reserve your spot at our August 14th iPi Soft event? Start here.

About Dan Ochiva

New York City-based journalist and NYCPPNEWS founder Dan Ochiva writes and consults on film, video, and digital media technology.

Kami Asgar and Jessica Parks are post-production heavyweights who work with major studios, namely Sony. As a sound designer (Asgar) and as a post executive (Parks), their collective resume touches on everything from Apocalypto to Grandma’s Boy to Venom.

Parks has recently shifted her focus from supervisor to hands-on sound design, and we talk about how it’s never too late to pivot on your career path and find the thing you love doing wherever you are in life.

Click on this link to read the rest of the article on No Film School’s site.

The coronavirus relief package that Congressional leaders agreed to this week includes grant money that many small proprietors described as a last hope for survival.

For the music venue owners, theater producers and cultural institutions that have suffered through the pandemic with no business, the coronavirus relief package that Congress passed on Monday night offers the prospect of aid at last.

To read the full article on The New York Times’ site, click here.

Phase 4 production guidance is available on the Film Permit website. All production activity, whether it requires a Film Permit or not, must comply with New York Forward Industry Guidance.

For more information see, please refer to the State Department of Health’s Interim Guidance for Media Production During the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency. Please review the guidelines and FAQ before submitting permit applications. The Film Office is operating remotely, so please allow additional time for Film Permit processing.

The above paragraphs contain links to the various FAQ – just mouse over the relevant words.

NVIDIA Research has invented a way to use AI to dramatically reduce video call bandwidth while simultaneously improving quality

What the researchers have achieved has remarkable results: by replacing the traditional h.264 video codec with a neural network, they have managed to reduce the required bandwidth for a video call by an order of magnitude. In one example, the required data rate fell from 97.28 KB/frame to a measly 0.1165 KB/frame – a reduction to 0.1% of required bandwidth.

To read the rest of this article on Petapixel, click this link.

Law360 (October 9, 2020, 5:22 PM EDT) — The Motion Picture Industry Health Plan’s board can’t be sued under ERISA for allegedly flouting its duties when it relaxed plan rules in response to COVID-19, a California federal judge has ruled, nixing a proposed class action filed by two cinematographers who still couldn’t qualify for benefits.

In an order entered Thursday, U.S. District Judge R. Gary Klausner granted the board of directors’ motion to dismiss Greg Endries and Dee Nichols’ Employee Retirement Income Security Act suit accusing board members of breaching their duty to treat all plan participants fairly.

Endries and Nichols, members of Local 600 of the International Cinematographers Guild, said in July that the board left them and others “out in the cold” in its attempts to address the problems COVID-19 caused for plan participants.

But Judge Klausner agreed with the board’s contention that the case, which alleged a fiduciary breach, should be tossed because plan administrators don’t act as fiduciaries when they amend health care plans.

Read the full article on the Law360 site by clicking here.

Anthony Russo and Joseph Russo photographed at the PMC Studio in Los Angeles for the Variety Playback Podcast.

The Russo brothers, directors of the all-time top grossing film “Avengers: Endgame,” quietly secured a roughly $50 million cash infusion for their production company AGBO from Saudi Arabia earlier this year, multiple sources tell Variety.

In a deal brokered and closed at the beginning of the pandemic, the Russos received the investment from an undisclosed Saudi bank in exchange for a minority stake in the brothers’ Los Angeles-based shop.