Introduction Visual effects companies have a long history of struggling for solvency, but the dramatic bankruptcies of Digital Domain and Rhythm & Hues in 2012 and 2013 have brought the VFX industry’s business model into public debate. Without getting into issues of tax subsidies and cheap overseas labor, I wanted to explore ways that a [...]
Photo courtesy of Paul Debevec On Thursday, September 27th, 2012, I received the Visual Effects Society's Founders Award. The award was presented at the Annual Membership Meeting, and included a great video produced by Van Ling, and a wonderful introduction from my buddy and VES Chair, Jeff Okun. I then had the floor for [...]
Photo courtesy of Paul Debevec Writing is a very painful thing for me. I fret over words and structure, over ways to express my ideas clearly. The speech I gave accepting the Visual Effects Society’s Founders Award was particularly challenging, it was important, deeply personal, and directed towards potentially 3,000 of the most [...]
AnimFX was held at Te Papa Tongarewa Museum in Wellington, NZ (Note: My wife and I spent two weeks in New Zealand, with AnimFX making up the first five days. This post is mostly excepted from our travelog for the whole trip which can be found here.) I was invited to speak at [...]
In the class I’m teaching at CMU on entrepreneurship we talked about setting a long term vision for your company. I used Jim Collin’s research as a framework for the discussion, in particular setting a Big Hairy Audacious Goal (BHAG) and having a vivid description of what life will be like when that goal is [...]
First view of Korea I just returned from the ICON2008 International Content Creator's Conference in Busan, Korea, which I was invited to attend as a keynote speaker. I was busy enough that I didn't post while on the trip, but I'm going to break the trip down into a few different posts here. This was [...]