Pixomondo London has launched its first wave of pre-production creative services for feature film and high-end TV projects spearheaded by PXO’s UK head of studio Alex Webster and previs supervisor Matt Perrin.
The move follows the company’s strategic push into virtual production, which has seen PXO build a portfolio of state-of-the-art LED sound stages in Vancouver and Toronto with plans for a first stage in London.
Webster joined PXO last year and has put together a specialist visualization team creatively led by Perrin, who has supervised previs for such tent pole titles as Spiderman: Far From Home, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, and Aladdin.
Webster said that PXO is “combining pre-production, virtual art department (VAD), virtual production, and in-camera VFX (ICVFX) into one cohesive ecosystem. Along with our creative tools built in Unreal Engine, we can begin collaborating on a project at its inception and work with filmmakers to world build and visualize sequences that carry through to ICVFX shot on PXO’s own LED volumes.”
Perrin got his start on the James Bond film Skyfall and World War Z. His forthcoming titles include Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, The School for Good and Evil, The Little Mermaid, and Wonka.
At PXO, Perrin is supported by a team of hand-picked visualization artists, creative technologists, and producers who work across all aspects of the pre-production process. Among them are lead VAD artist and layout supervisor Russell Tickner, VAD and virtual production producer Andy Jamison, virtual production supervisor Samat Algozhin, asset builder Laura Frasnelli and agile virtual production supervisor James Thompson.
“PXO is creating a pipeline and toolset from scratch, which merges the traditional with the new to provide interactivity in the early creative process,” said Perrin. “We’re using the latest real-time tech to improve the creative process and drive production values beyond anything we’ve seen before. Set this in the context of our work in virtual production and ICVFX, and we’ve got something quite special brewing.”
PXO’s virtual production work includes Star Trek: Discovery Season Four and the inaugural Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, debuting on May 5. PXO’s Vancouver stage–billed as the largest LED stage globally–is currently in production on Netflix’s upcoming Avatar: The Last Airbender. The Canadian virtual production stages are built in conjunction with production equipment rental specialist William F. White International.
PXO London is taking previs bookings starting in May.
Harvey Weinstein hit with new sex crime charge in New York
Harvey Weinstein pleaded not guilty Wednesday to a new sex crime charge in New York, as he awaits retrial in his landmark #MeToo case.
Details of the new allegations were not immediately available. He was charged with committing a criminal sex act.
The jailed ex-movie mogul has long maintained that any sexual activity was consensual.
Prosecutors revealed last week that Weinstein had been indicted on additional sex crime charges that weren't part of the case that led to his now-overturned 2020 conviction. But the new indictment was sealed until his arraignment.
Prosecutors have said that the grand jury heard evidence of up to three alleged assaults โ two in hotels in the Tribeca neighborhood and one at a lower Manhattan residential building. The purported incidents took place from the mid-2000s to 2016, prosecutors said.
But it's not clear whether any of those allegations underlie the new indictment.
While bracing for the new charges, Weinstein also is awaiting retrial after New York state's highest court this spring overturned his 2020 conviction on rape and sexual assault charges involving two women. The high court, called the Court of Appeals, ordered a new trial, which is tentatively scheduled to begin Nov. 12.
The Court of Appeals ruled that the then-trial judge unfairly allowed testimony against him based on allegations that were not part of the case. That judge's term expired in 2022, and he is no longer on the bench.
Prosecutors have said they'll seek to fold the new charges into the retrial, but Weinstein's lawyers say it should be a separate case.
Weinstein, who also was convicted in 2022 in a Los Angeles rape case, remains behind bars while awaiting his New York retrial.
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