We begin today’s selection with a look at the Government Debts around the world, provided by Graphic.is. After that, Career Explorer helps us visualize the 2012 U.S. budget, and Mint shows us the States with the biggest budget problems. The last two picks of the day come from the folks at BillShrink: the winners And losers of the Financial Legislation, and everything about the Card Act.
Here’s a shocker, Barclays Private Equity now owns a majority stake in The Mill, the Oscar-winning studio behind several of the biggest commercials and movies of recent years.
Barclays Private Equity bought a majority stake in visual effects company The Mill, attracted by its exposure to the advertising market and rapidly growing emerging markets.
The stake, bought from U.S private equity firm Carlyle Group [CYL.UL], values Oscar-winning The Mill at 119 million pounds ($193.1 million), Barclays PE, part of Barclays Plc (BARC.L), said on Tuesday.
The co-founders are expected to remain after the deal, and I can’t find any details on exactly how much cash they laid out for this. Anyone have the details?
via Barclays PE buys into Oscar-winning effects firm | Reuters.
Speaking of savings in this times of economical difficulties can be hard. However, today we bring some recent infographics that illustrate the “art” of saving money, from BillShrink, Credit Sesame and Savings.com. The current Middle Class meltdown in America is analyzed by BillShrink again, and an interesting way of understanding how the money life cycle works comes from Confused.
I should really get out more.: Star Wars Episode V Retold in Iconoscope.
Click for Fullsize
Click for Fullsize
Matt Toder has a piece up at Gizmodo on the new Final Cut Pro X, and how in spite of all the new features, he’s dumping it for Avid. Mostly, the entire review is summed up in this one sentence:
And now we’ve been given a glimpse of FCPX, a massive, from-the-ground-up revision of Final Cut Pro which proves one thing definitively: that Apple understood many of the problems that were inherent to Final Cut Pro. But, instead of fixing them, they just decided to change everything.
He does break it down into more details tho, particularly in how the new interface seems to go a little too far towards automation, taking away some valuable controls.
The biggest, most apparent change is the absence of the source monitor: it’s the iMovie-ing of non-linear editing. Of all the people watching the preview, applauding wildly and yelling out “I want it!” and “thank you,” I can’t believe that one person didn’t scream, “where’s the freaking source monitor?” This represents a gigantic change in the way non-linear editing occurs, a nearly unfathomable one. Since non-linear editing was invented, the mainstays have been the source monitor, the record monitor, the browser and the timeline. To take one of these away means that non-linear editing has to be rethought entirely. I’m not quite sure how you can set an exact in point without it, especially when you’re forced into using the iMovie yellow selection brackets.
What do you think? Has Apple embraced the consumer, in lieu of the professional?
When I first saw the new promo for the newest season of Mythbusters on the Discovery Channel, I knew it wouldn’t be long before someone broke it down and told us how they did it. FXGuide came through with the details, including the involvement of one Eric Alba.
We then took the 30 objects out of the mix that would be shot practically. That left about 90 objects, of which we agreed we would be happy to do 30. It was then a painstaking set of choices that the guys at Discovery had to whittle down from the list. Pretty much a day before we had to shoot we had a definitive list of the objects we would be creating in 3D.
Of course the next bit of fun was deciding where these objects were going to go. In the previs, Ceri put circles and arrows across everything and told us where he’d like specific objects – it just evolved from there. It was a good flexible way of working. It certainly grew totally beyond all the realms we envisaged, once we knew how good it would look. I mean, at one point we said we would absolutely not be doing CG liquid out of the fish bowl and no flames on the matches or foam coming out of the fire extinguisher. You can take a look at the spot and you’ll see all those things are in there.\
via Busted! How The Mill helped Mythbusters blow stuff up | fxguide.
At a recent BAFTA meeting, several experts in various VFX fields got together for a series of “Master Classes” on stage, covering things from low-budget VFX tricks to case studies of some big projects.
Organised by Directors Guild, funded by Skillset Film Skills Fund as part of “A Bigger Future 2″ and in partnership with BAFTA, this event incorporated a day’s worth of inspirational masterclasses presented by leading figures in the visual effects industry.
In this series of videos and podcasts recorded on the day, experts in the VFX field reveal the creative and budgetary opportunities that become available when using visual effects in film. Choose from the range of sessions below covering all aspects of visual effects creation including creative development, 2D to 3D conversion, the impact on filming and budget considerations.
Audio and Video is available on their site.
The VFX Advantage – Videos – Access All Areas – The BAFTA site.
Chaos Group has updated their website with some amazing new examples of what their Phoenix FD package is capable of, primarily in the fields of Fire and Smoke.
New videos and Phoenix FD General Overview by Michael McCarthy are now available for all of you interested in the simulation of smoke, fire, explosions, event fluid simulation. Enjoy a full set of videos on the great functionally this grid based simulator has to offer you.
Several videos, showcasing several of the best features of the tools like fluid maps, flame start, and more.
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