MONTREAL SCHOOL OF VISUAL EFFECTS

Mark and Ria Bénard

Lost Boys Studios’ Montreal School of Visual Effects – Campus D’Effets Visuels – just marked its first full year in operation, and has successfully placed its initial students who have completed classes there into positions within the VFX industry. Co-Owners and Directors: Mark Bénard (VFX Supervisor) and Ria Bénard (Senior Educational Administrator) note that The Lost Boys Studios School of Visual Effects has been ranked the # 1 school for VFX training in Canada – and as the # 2 best VFX school in the world (as voted upon by the Rookies VFX industry group). Lost Boys has also been cited as one of the Top Ten schools in the world for Visual Effects training by The Hollywood Reporter.

The Montreal School’s first group of students – those who graduated in October 2018 – are now working, at Meduzart, Mill Film, and MPC. The School’s second group of students – those who began their training in November 2018 – will be graduating on May 2, 2019.

The school currently offers an Effects Artist (FX Artist) Certificate course through an accelerated, five-month program. The course specializes in the craft of simulated phenomena and effects for the film, animation, and gaming industries, while also training students in highly advanced Houdini workflows. Effects taught within this program include digital destruction, creating environmental phenomena, particles, pyro and fluid simulation, and other creative combinations of the arts and sciences that comprise this field in visual effects.

Left-to-Right Montreal Teacher Sean Lewkiw, student Jhih Yuan Lin, winner of 2018 Cinesite Scholarship, and Ria Bénard

The Montreal School’s first program was spearheaded by instructor Sean Lewkiw, who brings over 20 years of VFX production experience to the role through his past work as an artist, manager, and VFX Supervisor. Lewkiw’s impressive credits include VFX work on huge blockbuster movies such as: The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, X-Men: The Last Stand, The Golden Compass, and Transformers: Age of Extinction, to name a few. His strong knowledge of SideFX’s Houdini is highly beneficial to Lost Boys’ students, as he’s used this software since its inception, and has worked closely with Side Effects in demonstrating the power of Houdini within emerging VFX markets around the world.

The Montreal School is planning to offer an accelerated Compositing program in the very near future as well. This course will be led by Fortunato Frattasio, formerly Head of Learning and Compositing Instructor at Technicolour; former Compositing Instructor with Montreal’s NAD; and previously the Owner and VFX Supervisor of Wesley Studios in Culver City, CA. He has numerous compositing production credits that include The Hunger Games, Oz the Great and Powerful, Spider-Man, Terminator 3, and many more.

 

 

TV at RBV

In Vista, California, just “down the road a piece” from the Markee offices, the school district received a California Career Technical Education Incentive Grant of $3.5 million for various projects.  One of three high schools in the Vista Unified School District, Rancho Buena Vista (RBV), has used a portion of that grant to become the only one with a TV studio. The production space, which students began using last November, was built in three adjoining classrooms, allowing space for a studio, NLE computer lab, and control room with enough space to accommodate an entire class.

JVC Professional Video, a division of JVCKENWOOD USA, supplied three ProHD GY-HM890 shoulder-mount camcorders as studio cameras for the new TV/film studio, as well as three JVC GY-HM170 4KCAM compact handheld camcorders for field productions. The three GY-HM890 studio cameras are equipped with ProHD monitors and studio controls, Fujinon 20x lenses, and Prompter People prompters.

Three days per week, students produce a live-to-tape news program, RBVTV, which is posted to YouTube. Plus, through a pilot internship program, 10 students are producing almost two dozen promotional videos for the Vista Chamber of Commerce this year.

With no lighting grid in the converted classroom, there has been extensive experimentation with lighting in the studio space. Chris Tompkins, career technical education (CTE) instructor who teaches TV and film classes, said the JVC cameras have “worked really well, regardless of the lighting situation.”

Beyond the studio, RBV students use the new GY-HM170s for ENG and multi-camera productions. When used as part of the school’s new mobile production unit, the cameras are connected to a NewTek TriCaster Mini via HDMI, and students use monopods for stability.

Craig Claytor of PAC Engineering, a design engineering firm in San Diego, recommended the JVC cameras for the RBV project. He praised JVC’s service, pre-sales support, and value. “No other manufacturer offers the picture quality, features, and signal output options as the JVC cameras in the same price range,” he noted.

RBV’s first remote setup was at last year’s homecoming game, where students focused on the halftime show and homecoming court. Since then, students have produced multi-camera, live-to-tape coverage of two fundraisers, a staff/student basketball game fundraiser, and a talent show. Highlights were also shared on RBVTV. Tompkins said more remote shoots are planned for the 2019-2020 school year.

“We really like how light it is,” Tompkins said of the GY-HM170. “We love the option of live streaming and we like the multiple recording formats. It gives us a lot of versatility – and to get an image of that quality for that price, you can’t beat it.”

According to Kelly McKinney, CTE coordinator, the TV/film program already has maximum enrollment across all five sections.

Both sets of JVC cameras – along with NewTek switchers, Yamaha audio mixers, and Adobe Studio and Final Cut Pro NLE software – are part of an overall strategy to provide real-world production experience for students. “Our students are supposed to use industry standard equipment,” Tompkins explained. “Once they graduate, they have all this experience using professional tools. Our alumni were so excited to see the equipment that we’re using and were really impressed with the quality.”

BYUtv Resolves to do better

Founded in 2001, BYUtv, part of Brigham Young University, has grown from a relatively unknown cable channel on a single satellite TV provider to coverage in more than 54 million households on Dish Network, DirecTV, and 152 cable systems in the United States. BYUtv also offers live HD TV and on demand programming via its digital platform, which includes apps for iOS, Android, Roku, Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, Chromecast, Xbox One, and Windows Mobile. 

Each month, BYUtv’s Post Production and Graphics Manager, Todd Bowen, is faced with providing a full post production workflow for a huge number of shows and promos. These shows include the global hit sketch comedy show “Studio C,” which has more than 1.7 Billion YouTube views, the popular “Relative Race” reality show, and more than 150 live sports events every year, including a daily sport show, BYU Sports Nation. 

“Our post production team includes 16 full time employees and up to 80 student employees. BYUtv’s post production workflow is built so that we can put out a huge amount of high quality, family friendly content every month. There is a level of expectation that a BYUtv show will look as good as anything you can see on the highest budget TV show, and DaVinci Resolve Studio, DaVinci Resolve Advanced Panel and Resolve Mini Panels for color correcting and grading are a core part of making that happen,” Bowen said. 

Bowen uses dozens of seats of DaVinci Resolve in the studio’s three 4K color rooms, with a DaVinci Resolve Advanced Panel for grading, and also uses DaVinci Resolve Studio as part of a conforming stations. Each room provides color, LUT building for the various shows, creating proxies and the ability to match cameras and dial up looks for the huge number of different cameras and sources. The software is also used in a DIT kit for ingesting on many of the station’s remote productions. 

“Our Resolve workflow is used for a little bit of everything. One station could be grading a trailer for a new scripted fantasy TV series “Dwight in Shining Armor”, while another is grading promos for a reality show such as Relative. Each have distinctly different looks and footage types. Resolve is able to handle it all, and its ability to retain meta data when creating proxies makes everything much easier to manage,” Bowen continued. 

“A great example of how we use Resolve is with our sketch show Studio C. That show has tens of millions of followers, and we have to deal with finishing from a variety of different sources. And within the show itself, we have completely different looks with each sketch. The Harry Potter sketches are completely different looking than the Raiders of the Lost Ark ones, etc. Resolve lets us easily build and manage the various LUTs so we are quickly ready for whatever sketch we have to jump into, which is a huge advantage since at any given time we will be jumping from one project to another,” he said. 


BFA Program Integrates VFX Technology

Columbia College Hollywood’s new BFA program in Visual Effects (VFX), which was introduced in the fall 2018 semester, is the first in the country to integrate four of the VFX industry’s most widely used technologies into its curriculum. According to Peter Gend, Interim Dean at the school, “To get hired as a VFX professional, it’s important to have expertise with the tools that are used by the top production houses and studios. CCH’s new VFX BFA degree prepares our students by combining those in-demand skills with a robust liberal arts curriculum that’s taught by our world class faculty.”

The technologies that Columbia College Hollywood has introduced into its VFX B.F.A. program are:

·         Perception Neuron motion capture system – Columbia College Hollywood’s VFX B.F.A. students are working with Perception Neuron’s motion capture suites, which aren’t tied to the studio environment and can be used indoors, outdoors, or on location.  “While other schools may have motion capture available for their VFX students, they most likely aren’t integrating them into both their cinema and their VFX departments,” says Gend.

·         MakerBot and Formlabs rapid 3D prototyping – Students are using MakerBot brand printers for fused filament printing and Formlabs printers for resin-based stereolithography printing.  VFX students use the printers for character design courses and product design in order to learn toy design, puppet construction, digitally designed makeup prosthetics, and more.

·         Houdini 3D animation software – Houdini is heavily integrated into Columbia College Hollywood’s VFX curriculum.  “Houdini is used by the largest VFX houses across the globe and is taught at very few schools,” says Gend.  “Our students are gaining tremendous experience with Houdini, and this will open many job possibilities for them.”

Graduates of Columbia College Hollywood’s VFX program will have a significant competitive advantage in the marketplace. “By gaining mastery of the latest VFX technology tools and solutions, our grads will be able to seek out job opportunities that many of their peers from other schools aren’t qualified to pursue,” says Gend.  “They’ll have the insights, knowledge, and employment-ready capabilities that today’s top VFX companies are looking for.”

Columbia College Hollywood is a nonprofit, regionally accredited liberal arts college with a focus on creative media. Founded in 1952, it is ranked as the #8 Best College for Film and Photography in America by Niche.

Columbia College Hollywood educates students in the art and science of communications and the diverse media of contemporary storytelling within an exploration of the liberal arts.

The school is accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges Senior College and University Commission (WSCUC) to offer Bachelor of Fine Arts and Associate of Fine Arts degree programs in Cinema with an emphasis in acting, cinematography, directing, editing and visual effects, new media, producing, sound, and writing.