[TV Technology]

It was one of the most riveting keynote speeches I had ever heard. 

“Who are the real Hollywood stars?” Scott Ross asked the packed crowd filling Salon 1 of the Renaissance Hollywood Hotel during October’s annual SMPTE Technical Conference.

Then he put a list of the top 20 highest-grossing box office films of all time on the screen in front of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers audience.

“Notice that, in this whole list, only one franchise featured an established star,” Ross said. “But all of them, without exception, were powered either by massive digital visual effects or computer-generated animation.”

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The demand for visual effects will not go away, of course. So Ross envisions a future VFX industry built around a hub-and-spoke paradigm, which is being accelerated by broadband Internet connections.

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“We need a major change in the industry,” Ross finished up. “The people who own and operate visual effects facilities have to understand that they are not the tail that wags the dog. They are the dog!”

After all, as Ross told the SMPTE audience, “It don’t mean a thing if it can’t go ka-ching!”

Read the full article here: http://www.tvtechnology.com/article/just-who-are-the-real-hollywood-stars/211050