Shotgun Software, developer of the cloud-based collaboration platform for creative companies (recently acquired by Autodesk), was integral to the production of over a dozen of this summer’s tentpole films. Used by visual effects studios worldwide, Shotgun played a key role in keeping artists and shots on track at facilities such as Digital Domain, Milk VFX, Framestore, Method Studios, Double Negative, Atomic Fiction, Image Engine, Rodeo FX and Factory VFX for films including X-Men: Days of Future Past, Transformers: Age of Extinction, Guardians of the Galaxy, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, The Giver, Hercules, Lucy and The Maze Runner.
Digital Domain has been using Shotgun for more than five years, relying on it recently to manage VFX workflows on features including X-Men: Days of Future Past, Maleficent and Into the Storm, releasing this August. Kevin VanderJagt was the company's digital producer on X-Men: Days of Future Past, on which Digital Domain completed more than 430 shots ranging from the 1970s Sentinels to Mystique’s shape-shifting transformations.
“Shotgun was vital to our workflow on X-Men,” said VanderJagt. “It's the backbone of our production and daily communication structure and is especially important when we have artists at multiple locations working together as one team. We rely heavily on Shotgun as the central database for all shot information — everything we ingest from our clients, from our set survey, camera reports, lens information and plate data to our turnover notes and editorial counts all live in Shotgun. Our review notes, both internal and external, as well as our shot status and client reporting are all driven directly from Shotgun as well.”
Shotgun is also at the heart of Milk VFX’s state-of-the-art pipeline, which was custom built to leverage specific Shotgun features including the Pipeline Toolkit. For this summer’s Hercules, Milk VFX depended on Shotgun to track artist progress on a demanding range of shots. “With Shotgun we have instant access to every piece of information associated with a given shot and its status. On a massive show like Hercules, we relied heavily on Shotgun to keep our VFX pipeline running smoothly and ensure efficient collaboration across our artist and production teams,” said Will Cohen, Milk co-founder and CEO.
Framestore taps Shotgun for its feature VFX productions, enabling easy collaboration and tracking for hundreds of artists across multiple facilities on features including Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy and Tom Cruise thriller Edge of Tomorrow. Other studios using Shotgun to manage VFX pipelines on the season’s studio features include Method Studios (Transformers: Age of Extinction, The Maze Runner, The Giver), Double Negative (Hercules), Atomic Fiction (Transformers: Age of Extinction), Image Engine (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles), Prime Focus (Sin City: A Dame to Kill For), Rodeo FX (Lucy), and Factory VFX (The Maze Runner).
Review: Writer-Director Coralie Fargeat’s “The Substance”
In its first two hours, "The Substance" is a well-made, entertaining movie. Writer-director Coralie Fargeat treats audiences to a heavy dose of biting social commentary on ageism and sexism in Hollywood, with a spoonful of sugar- and sparkle-doused body horror.
But the film's deliciously unhinged, blood-soaked and inevitably polarizing third act is what makes it unforgettable.
What begins as a dread-inducing but still relatively palatable sci-fi flick spirals deeper into absurdism and violence, eventually erupting — quite literally — into a full-blown monster movie. Let the viewer decide who the monster is.
Fargeat — who won best screenplay at this year's Cannes Film Festival — has been vocal about her reverence for "The Fly" director David Cronenberg, and fans of the godfather of body horror will see his unmistakable influence. But "The Substance" is also wholly unique and benefits from Fargeat's perspective, which, according to the French filmmaker, has involved extensive grappling with her own relationship to her body and society's scrutiny.
"The Substance" tells the story of Elisabeth Sparkle, a famed aerobics instructor with a televised show, played by a powerfully vulnerable Demi Moore. Sparkle is fired on her 50th birthday by a ruthless executive — a perfectly cast Dennis Quaid, who nails sleazy and gross.
Feeling rejected by a town that once loved her and despairing over her bygone star power, Sparkle learns from a handsome young nurse about a black-market drug that promises to create a "younger, more beautiful, more perfect" version of its user. Though she initially tosses the phone number in the trash, she soon fishes it out in a desperate panic and places an order.
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