Visual Effects

Digital Domain Productions Inc., a leading visual effects house partly owned by director Michael Bay, is bulking up ? but not in California. The parent company of the Venice-based studio said Thursday that it was acquiring Westlake Village-based In-Three Inc. and that it planned to move most of the 3-D conversion company's 70 employees to Florida. Founded in 1999, In-Three has been a pioneer in the field of converting movies into 3-D, a business that has taken off since the success of James Cameron's blockbuster "Avatar.

They called it the zombie walk. After midnight, when the coffee and Red Bull had worn off, Sari Gennis and her co-workers would take a brisk stroll to make it through their graveyard shift. For four months straight, often seven days a week, a team of visual effects artists worked 12-hour shifts to complete the 3-D conversion of movie blockbuster "Titanic. " Gennis said the long hours aggravated a severe arthritis condition. She'd already had both knees replaced, and needed a third surgery, but couldn't afford to take time off for the operation.

Digital Domain, the award-winning effects company behind such movies as "Tron: Legacy" and the "Transformers" films, recently touted its new animation and digital arts institute as a "pioneering public-private partnership" with Florida State University's College of Motion Picture Arts. The project has created an uproar among visual effects artists in Hollywood, who fear it will encourage students to work for free at Digital Domain's planned visual effects studio in West Palm Beach, Fla. The Digital Domain Institute, which offers a three-year diploma in digital arts along with a bachelor of fine arts from Florida State University, enables students to gain real world experience by working for college credit on some of Hollywood's top films.

Digital Domain, the award-winning effects company behind such movies as "Tron: Legacy" and the "Transformers" films, recently touted its new animation and digital arts institute as a "pioneering public-private partnership" with Florida State University's College of Motion Picture Arts. The project has created an uproar among visual effects artists in Hollywood, who fear it will encourage students to work for free at Digital Domain's planned visual effects studio in West Palm Beach, Fla. The Digital Domain Institute, which offers a three-year diploma in digital arts along with a bachelor of fine arts from Florida State University, enables students to gain real world experience by working for college credit on some of Hollywood's top films.

Hollywood is becoming even more reliant on one of India's biggest media companies. Reliance MediaWorks, a division of Indian conglomerate Reliance ADA Group, said late Monday that it has partnered with the Venice visual effects house Digital Domain Productions Inc. to open studios in London and Mumbai, underscoring the increasingly global nature of California's visual effects industry. The new studios will provide a variety of postproduction services for movies, TV shows and commercials.

They called it the zombie walk. After midnight, when the coffee and Red Bull had worn off, Sari Gennis and her co-workers would take a brisk stroll to make it through their graveyard shift. For four months straight, often seven days a week, a team of visual effects artists worked 12-hour shifts to complete the 3-D conversion of movie blockbuster "Titanic. " Gennis said the long hours aggravated a severe arthritis condition. She'd already had both knees replaced, and needed a third surgery, but couldn't afford to take time off for the operation.

"The Lord of the Rings," the franchise that took home the visual-effects Academy Award for 2001, is in the running for that category again this year with six other films. Besides "The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers," eligible films announced Wednesday for the visual- effects nominations were "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets," "Men in Black II," "Minority Report," "Spider-Man," "Star Wars: Episode II -- Attack of the Clones" and "XXX."

As part of a streamlining of its feature animation division, Walt Disney Co. is shuttering its visual effects Secret Lab. Secret Lab provided digital effects for a range of animation and live-action films, such as "Dinosaur" and "Pearl Harbor." A Disney spokeswoman said that the closing was part of a previously announced cost-cutting effort in the animation division and that up to 350 workers would lose their jobs. The company would not say when Secret Lab was closing.

Do bugs make your skin crawl? It might crawl right off your bones with director Paul Verhoeven's "Starship Troopers"-- thanks to Phil Tippett's Berkeley-based visual effects studio. The film's giant battlin' bugs are the latest from Tippett, 46, whose resume includes the "Star Wars" trilogy, "RoboCop" and the raptors of "Jurassic Park." Next up: horror in "Virus" --and the huggable "My Favorite Martian."

Visual effects artists Colin and Greg Strause have toppled digital elephants in "300," aged Brad Pitt backward for "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" and cloned one actor into identical twins for "The Social Network. " The brothers' task on "Skyline" is perhaps more daunting: proving themselves as full-fledged independent filmmakers. Visual effects designers occasionally graduate into directing jobs ? Eric Brevig ("Journey to the Center of the Earth") and Stefen Fangmeier ("Eragon")

For a moment, it looked as though "Hugo"could sweep this year's Academy Awards. Martin Scorsese's 3-D family film snapped up five trophies in technical categories, including surprise wins for cinematography and visual effects. But as the more prestigious prizes were handed out later in the night, momentum shifted to the expected favorite,"The Artist,"which won for best picture, director and lead actor among its five awards. PHOTOS: Red carpet | Quotes | Show | Winners The only upset in the highest-profile categories came near the end of the show, when Meryl Streep won the lead actress statue for her portrayal of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in "The Iron Lady," beating out Viola Davis for "The Help.

"The Artist," the black-and-white silent film about Hollywood's rocky transition to the “talkies,” took the biggest honors at the 84th Academy Awards on Sunday night, including best picture, director and lead actor. It was a night filled with firsts - and an especially good night for the French. “The Artist” was the first silent film to nab best picture honors since the first Academy Awards were held in 1929, when “Wings” took the top prize. And for the first time in Academy Awards history, a French actor (Jean Dujardin)

Visual effects visionary, director and producer Douglas Trumbull has a "broad" philosophy of film. He believes that everything in a movie is, in essence, a special effect. "Movies are all about illusions, whether it is makeup or wardrobe or some location or being in a period of time or being on an alien planet," says Trumbull, 69. Trumbull has created some of the screen's greatest illusions in such seminal sci-fi films as Stanley Kubrick's 1968 masterwork "2001: A Space Odyssey," his own 1972 cult classic "Silent Running" and Steven Spielberg's 1977 "Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

Digital effects in the movies have become so pervasive and so sophisticated that audiences can easily accept an actor who ages decades before their eyes or even morphs into a different species. But digital effects also have made it tougher for Motion Picture Academy members to decide which movies get nominated for the Oscar for best makeup — meaning the old-fashioned kind applied with a brush or attached to a wig or false nose. "As computer images are getting better and better, it's very difficult for us to tell" what is makeup and what is a computer effect, says special makeup effects designer Matthew W. Mungle, who used makeup and prosthetics to help make Glenn Close look like a woman who could pass for a man in this year's "Albert Nobbs.

The New York Philharmonic has named a new executive director to tackle huge financial shortfalls at the nation's oldest orchestra. Orchestra officials announced Wednesday that Matthew VanBesien will succeed Zarin Mehta as the Philharmonic's top administrator. Mehta, brother of conductor Zubin Mehta, is retiring. VanBesien, a 42-year-old Missouri native, is currently the managing director of Australia's Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. He started his music career as a French horn player for the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra.

Four-time Oscar winner Joe Letteri is used to transporting viewers into strange new worlds in such films as "Avatar," "King Kong" and the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy. The task was especially challenging in his latest film, "Rise of the Planet of the Apes," the reboot of the classic 1968 science-fiction film based on French author Pierre Boulle's 1963 novel. Letteri, senior visual effects supervisor at New Zealand-based Weta Digital, recently spoke to the Envelope about his work on the film during a break from working on Peter Jackson's "The Hobbit.

In what cinematic world do "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," "Cloverfield," "Iron Man" and "Hellboy II: The Golden Army" earn equal attention? Well, they are all among the nominees for the Visual Effects Society Awards announced Monday.

SERIES CNBC Titans: Herb Kelleher, founder and former chief executive of Southwest Airlines, is profiled (6, 7, 9 and 10 p.m. CNBC). Wipeout: Former contestants return on a new edition of the wet-and-wild reality competition (8 p.m. ABC). So You Think You Can Dance: Nicole Scherzinger performs on the results show (8 p.m. Fox). The First 48: Missing Persons: Detectives search for a man who disappeared while on a bike ride as the docu-series ends its season (10 p.m. A&E)

Hollywood is becoming even more reliant on one of India's biggest media companies. Reliance MediaWorks, a division of Indian conglomerate Reliance ADA Group, said late Monday that it has partnered with the Venice visual effects house Digital Domain Productions Inc. to open studios in London and Mumbai, underscoring the increasingly global nature of California's visual effects industry. The new studios will provide a variety of postproduction services for movies, TV shows and commercials.