News Stories

‘Star Wars: Episode I’ 3D Gets Theatrical Release Date From Lucasfilm, Fox

Lucasfilm Ltd. and 20th Century Fox will release the 3D version of Star Wars: Episode I:The Phantom Menace on Feb. 10, 2012.

George Lucas’ Industrial Light & Magic is supervising the 3D conversion, with an eye for both technological considerations and artistic intentions.

Lucasfilm believes Star Wars is perfectly suited to be seen in 3D.

The Hollywood Reporter first reported that Star Wars: Episode I: The Phantom Menace would be converted to 3D.

Lucas hopes that releasing the film early in the year, outside of summer blockbuster season, will give it an open run at the box office and also set up the opportunity to sell merchandise through the balance of the year. The plan under discussion would make the release of the subsequent films in the series an annual event on the film calendar.

If the first in the series meets with success, the remaining five films would follow a year apart on comparable dates. However, depending on how the first release performs, the companies could also decide to open the subsequent entries in different spots on the calendar.

When the new special-edition version of the original three Star Wars movies were re-released in 1997, that cycle began with a re-release of Episode IV: A New Hope on Jan. 31, followed byEpisode V: The Empire Strikes Back on Feb. 21 and Episode VI: Return of the Jedi on March 14.

Launching the movies during the first quarter of the year would also give Lucas Licensing the opportunity to launch new licensing programs that could run throughout the course of the year.

12:33 PM 3/3/2011 by Pamela McClintock

See the original post here: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/lucasfilm-fox-set-release-date-163858

 

 

 

Conference: The Influence of Attention, Learning, and Motivation on Visual Search

(Philip Lelyveld comment: stereographers and cinematographers might be interested to know that this type of conference exists.)

April 7-8, 2011, University of Nebraska, Lincoln campus.

The University of Nebraska Lincoln is pleased to announce our annual

symposium which will take place April 7-8, 2011 at the UNL City Campus

Union in Lincoln, Nebraska.  This year the topic is focused on visual

search. This Symposium will bring together distinguished speakers who are

conducting cutting edge research on the many factors that influence search

behavior. These factors will include low-level feature detection;

statistical learning; scene perception; neural mechanisms of attention;

and applied research in real world settings.

The speakers will be:

Andrew Hollingworth, Ph.D. (University of Iowa): Interactions

between visual memory and saccade target selection during search

Raymond Klein, Ph.D. (Dalhousie University) : Searching in space

and time

Steve Mitroff, Ph.D. (Duke University): Examining influences on

applied visual search performance

Jan Theeuwes, Ph.D. (Vrije University): Automatic control of visual

attention

Nick Turk-Browne, Ph.D. (Princeton University): Statistical

learning and it’s consequences

Jeremy Wolfe, Ph.D. (Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s

Hospital): What’s my motivation in this scene? Visual search when it

really counts

Steven Yantis, Ph.D. (Johns Hopkins University): Reward and

attentional control in visual search

The Symposium will include a poster session and will be followed by a

published volume.  For information on registering for the symposium,

submitting a poster (due date: March 15) and more, please visit

http://www.unl.edu/psypage/symposium/index.shtml

Please contact the symposium co-organizers, Mike Dodd (mdodd2@unl.edu) or John

Flowers (jflowers1@unl.edu) if you have any questions or require

additional information.  We hope to see you in Lincoln in April!

—–

To successfully navigate and interact with our visual world, one must efficiently direct attention to important features in the environment while simultaneously ignoring unimportant or distracting stimuli. As a consequence, one of the most studied aspects of cognition is visual search. Everyone can relate to the example of searching for one’s car in a parking lot or a friend in a crowd, but the importance of search actually extends beyond these examples to even the most basic behaviors. Watching television, reading, and walking down a city street all require continuous shifts of attention throughout the environment to extract meaningful target information. In a sense then, almost everything we do in life is a form of search task.

Given the importance of the search process to everyday behavior, countless studies have been conducted to determine the behavioral, cognitive, and neurological factors that influence how we attend to our surroundings. What has emerged is a complex picture in which this seemingly simple process is influenced by both bottom-up (e.g. features, luminance) and top-down (e.g. motivation, expertise) factors of which an individual may or may not be consciously aware. As a consequence, a complete understanding of search can only be obtained by considering the research from a number of different paradigms and domains. This Symposium will bring together distinguished speakers who are conducting cutting edge research on the many factors that influence search behavior. These factors will include low-level feature detection; statistical learning; scene perception; neural mechanisms of attention; and applied research in real world settings.

See the original post here: http://www.unl.edu/psypage/symposium/index.shtml

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Specification for Naming VFX Image Sequences Released

ETC’s VFX Working Group has published a specification for best practices naming image sequences such as plates and comps. File naming is an essential tool for organizing the multitude of frames that are inputs and outputs from the VFX process. Prior to the publication of this specification, each organization had its own naming scheme, requiring custom processes for each partner, which often resulted in confusion and miscommunication.

The new ETC@USC specification focuses primarily on sequences of individual images. The initial use case was VFX plates, typically delivered as OpenEXR or DPX files. However, the team soon realized that the same naming conventions can apply to virtually any image sequence. Consequently, the specification was written to handle a wide array of assets and use cases.

To ensure all requirements are represented, the working group included over 2 dozen participants representing studios, VFX houses, tool creators, creatives and others.  The ETC@USC also worked closely with MovieLabs to ensure that the specification could be integrated as part of their 2030 Vision.

A key design criteria for this specification is compatibility with existing practices.  Chair of the VFX working group, Horst Sarubin of Universal Pictures, said: “Our studio is committed to being at the forefront of designing best industry practices to modernize and simplify workflows, and we believe this white paper succeeded in building a new foundation for tools to transfer files in the most efficient manner.”

This specification is compatible with other initiatives such as the Visual Effects Society (VES) Transfer Specifications. “We wanted to make it as seamless as possible for everyone to adopt this specification,” said working group co-chair and ETC@USC’s Erik Weaver. “To ensure all perspectives were represented we created a team of industry experts familiar with the handling of these materials and collaborated with a number of industry groups.”

“Collaboration between MovieLabs and important industry groups like the ETC is critical to implementing the 2030 Vision,” said Craig Seidel, SVP of MovieLabs. “This specification is a key step in defining the foundations for better software-defined workflows. We look forward to continued partnership with the ETC on implementing other critical elements of the 2030 Vision.”

The specification is available online for anyone to use.

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