As I’ve mentioned a few times in this blog, VIEW is one of my most-loved VFX conferences. It’s staged in Torino Italy, and it’s coming up 22-26 October. The full program has now been released as a PDF on the site. This map of creativity shows how much you can cram into a week. This is going to be amazing!
I’ve come to call VIEW the ‘boutique’ VFX conference. Small enough to enjoy the company of the like-minded VFX people up close, and concentrated enough with really pertinent speakers and compelling content, all day every day. It’s cosy enough and open enough to make you feel you could go up to anyone, even the keynote speakers, and introduce yourself. Just walk up and say hi. I know I’ll be doing exactly that. To the old faces, and the new.
On the first day, there are masterclasses and coursework. Some pretty meaty content to get the brain going from the fields of animation, visual storytelling and storyboarding. These are run by a few of the masters of animation, including Marino Guarnieri from Mad Studio, and Bill Watral out from Pixar.
From Tuesday onwards, the keynotes begin and you could sit in Sala Facine and soak up the content right there from one seat if you wanted to. All week, the line up is pretty amazing, really a testament to the effort put in by Dr. Maria Elena Gutierrez, director of the curated conference, and her very small team of helpers you’ll meet during the week in Torino.
“I’m extremely excited to present the full program for VIEW 2018,” says Maria Elena. “We have Oscar, BAFTA, VES, Emmy, Golden Globe, Grammy, Annecy, and Annie winners coming to Torino to join the VIEW family and share their knowledge and amazing artistry with our attendees. I’m telling everyone: Don’t miss this year’s conference!”
From the world of animation, VIEW speakers include Emmy award winning Director Vincent Morisset at Studio AATOAA; Marino Guarieri who directed Gatta Cenerentola; Simone Giampaolo, director of animation at Aardman Animation; Alex Williams, head of animation at Escape Studios; Troy Saliba, director of animation at Double Negative; Ronald Kurniawan, production designer for Smallfoot, and Annie Award winner Danielle Feinberg, director of photography for Coco at Pixar Animation Studios.
Storytellers at VIEW this year include Daytime Emmy award winner Kan Lee, head of story at Baobab Studios; David Misch, producer, stand-up comedian, and screenwriter; and Emanuela Cozzi, storyboard artist at Laika.
Art Directors at VIEW: Peter Ellis, art director, Epic Games; VES award winner Nathan Phail-Liff, art director, Ready At Dawn; BAFTA winner Jan-Bart Van Beek, art director, Guerilla Games; BAFTA winner Henry LaBounta, senior art director at Electronic Arts.
Creative Directors at VIEW include Nathan Fox, creative director at Sucker Punch Productions; Veselin Efremov, creative director at Unity Technologies; Marco Ivancich, multimedia design manager at Pininfarina;
And, rounding out the program, are Gianni Ricciardi, audio director and music producer at WANT Musik and Matteo Milani, sound designer at Unidentified Sound Object.
As well as this extraordinary list of people coming to present, the VIEW Conference has a new bigger venue, known as the OCG (Officine Grandi Riparazioni). This will allow a more spacious ambiance to the keynotes, and bring more people into the area.
From the official press release, which I helped to write, there are so many others appearing at the show:
Visual effects supervisors showing their work on major feature films and other projects include Dan Glass (Deadpool 2), Geoffrey Baumann (Black Panther), Bill Watral (Incredibles 2), Matt Aitken (Avengers: Infinity War),Dadi Einarsson (Adrift), Mike Ford (Hotel Transylvania 3), Jaoa Sita (Image Engine) Jay Worth (HBO), Juri Stanosske (Mackevision), and Karl Herbst (Smallfoot).
Industry leaders presenting at VIEW include Glenn Entis, co-founder PDI and currently part-time consultant and advisor to animation, video game, and digital media companies; Aaron Allport, vice president, Art-King; Milan Jovovic, co-founder and chief creative officer at Nordeus, Wieke Schrakamp, communication manager, IJsfontein; Heiko Burkardsmaier, executive producer, Mackevision.
John Gaeta is the SVP of Creative Strategy at Magic Leap and will present a talk about a ‘Magicverse’ project, intrinsically in the Augmented and Mixed reality space. While that sinks in, I’ll remind you that John’s history rings loudly with the ‘bullet-time’ effect in the Matrix movies, among others, and in-between then and now, he’s been driving projects as co-founder of Lucasfilm’s Immersive Entertainment division at ILMxLAB.
Dennis Muren, Creative Director, Industrial Light & Magic and legendary senior visual effects supervisor, will be rounding out the show with his talk about ‘VFX and defining the critical, elusive and final 5%’. He’s writing a book right now about this exact subject.
I love it when conferences deliver what they promise. Come along and say hi.
Related links:
VFX SCIENCE 