xBlog: The visual thinking weblog » Movies/TV

Inside Pixar’s Leadership

Bill — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 19:21:53 +0000

Haven’t watched this yet but very much looking forward to it after reading some excerpts over at Scott Berkun’s blog.

There were plenty of high profile people at the Economist event in March, but hands down the best session was a simple interview with Ed Catmull, the president of Pixar.

Martin Giles from the Economist did the interview, and did an excellent job letting Catmull cover some excellent territory…

Interesting, related to the talk I gave on The Myths of Innovation at the same event, how little he used the word innovation (I don’t think he says it once).

“Different” by Youngme Moon

Bill — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 14:16:58 +0000

Youngme Moon of the Harvard Business School collaborated with XPLANE to create this video introducing her new book, DIFFERENT, an intimately drawn meditation on the meaning of business differentiation.

New project: The Carbon Economy

Bill — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 15:16:06 +0000

For the second time in recent months XPLANE has partnered with The Economist to create a compelling video on a topic of global importance. After working together on “Did You Know? 4.0”, The Economist enlisted XPLANE’s visual communication expertise to develop “The Carbon Economy” about the growing importance of climate change and green technologies and solutions.

“The Carbon Economy” will be shown at The Economist’s upcoming Carbon Economy Summit on November 17 and 18, 2009 in Washington, D.C. The video is three minutes in length and includes simple visuals and a moving soundtrack to clearly convey the troubled state of global climate change and what steps must be taken to reach a positive outcome. The production was created using Apple’s Keynote software.

For more information on The Carbon Economy Summit, visit http://carboneconomy.economist.com.

Lou Romano: The art of UP

Bill — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 18:06:47 +0000

Have a look at this amazing work:

Here is some of the development & production work I did on UP (2005-2008). Similar to the work from The Incredibles, (production paintings, color/lighting design and artistic direction) this was done to help inspire the look of the film… A challenge in film is conveying how something feels, not how it exists in reality. Research trips can be a blessing and a curse: the blessing in that visiting an actual place surpasses what you can get from video and photos alone, the curse in being too much a slave to the actual place. Imagination and feeling should dictate everything, not reality.

(Thanks Waxy!)

Painting, Film, and Color: An Annotated List

Bill — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 17:05:40 +0000

“Painting’s influence on film has been remarked upon in film scholarship and criticism for at least half a century. Lots of ink has been spilled, for instance, on the impact that German expressionism had on the work of Murnau and Lang, not to mention the aesthetic of American film noir; Dali’s collaboration with Hitchcock on the set design for Spellbound’s lurid dream sequence is now part of the lore of art and popular culture. Filmmakers often arrive at the visual look, compositional style, and color temperature of their moving images by sourcing them in the work of master painters. Rembrandt and Edward Hopper have been important touchstones for any number of cinematographers, past and present. And many world-class directors (Raoul Ruiz, Peter Greenaway, David Lynch, Youssef Chahine, Derek Jarman, Mario Bava, and Walerian Borowczyk) trained as painters before devoting themselves to narrative film.” (Thanks Coudal Partners!)

40 Inspirational Speeches in 2 Minutes

Bill — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 17:24:29 +0000

“So way back in April, I first had the idea of editing together inspirational speeches. Since then, the Dow has dropped 3,000 points and one million jobs have been lost. The people of the United States are now a ragtag bunch of scruffy underdogs, down by three touchdowns at halftime, with a whole horde of orcs waiting for us right outside those locker room doors. Inspiration has become something we need. (By the way, you couldn’t tell because it started the sentence, but ‘Inspiration’ was capitalized.)

What I’m trying to say is, I may have just single-handedly saved the economy with this montage…”

Say No to 72 dpi

Bill — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 17:22:17 +0000

“We still frequently hear the very bad advice: ‘Computer video screens show images at 72 dpi, so scan all your images for the screen at 72 dpi’. This is incredibly wrong; it simply doesn’t work that way.

Regardless what you may have heard almost everywhere, there is no purpose or reason for 72 dpi images on computer video screens or web pages. As a concept, 72 dpi is simply a false notion. It is a myth. It is NOT how video works, and it is detrimental to understanding how things really do work. It is very easy to show proof of this here.”

Toshiba Advances Bullet-Time to Next Level In Ad Filmed By 200 Camcorders

Bill — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 21:07:51 +0000

“Toshiba’s new ‘timesculpture’ advert takes The Matrix’s Bullet Time film technique one bizarrely cool step forward by animating within the freeze-frame. It was filmed with 200 Gigashot camcorders arranged on a special rig, recording a mahoosive 20 terabytes of data from which the ad was composed. Check it out—it’s like a weird moving Bullet-Time ballet, and then check out the making of clip to learn how it was made.”

Early Star Wars Storyboards

Bill — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 21:13:42 +0000

“These are early storyboards from Star Wars, from before the Falcon was changed to its current design. I took them from Hyperspace’s Insider supplement, which means there’s more to be had in Insider. I’ll try and pick them up and see what this is about… To my knowledge, the majority of these storyboards were done by Joe Johnston.”

Conversation with Michael B. Johnson of Pixar (Part 1)

Bill — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 14:13:33 +0000

Peter Merholz: “At UX Week 2008, our Day 4 keynoter is Dr. Michael B. Johnson, who runs the Moving Pictures Group at Pixar. He’s been gracious enough to engage in an email conversation with me, which I’ll be sharing here.”