Technicolor has hired Patrick Smith to head its visualization department.
Reporting to Kerry Shea, head of Technicolor’s Pre-Production Studio, Smith will partner closely with filmmakers to help them perfect their visions in a digital environment long before they hit the set. By helping clients define lensing, set dimensions, asset placement, and even precise on-set camera moves, Smith and his team will play a vital role in helping clients plan their shoots in the virtual environment in ways that feel completely natural and intuitive to them.
“By enabling clients to leverage the latest visualization technologies and techniques while using hardware similar to what they are already familiar with, Patrick and his team will empower filmmakers by ensuring their creative visions are clearly defined at the very start of their projects–and remain at the heart of everything they do from their first day on set to take their stories to the next level,” stated Shea. “Bringing visualization and the other areas of pre-production together under one roof removes redundancy from the filmmaking process which, in turn, reduces stress on the storyteller and allows them as much time as possible to focus on telling their story. Until now, the process of pre-production has been a divided and inefficient process involving different vendors and repeated steps. Bringing those worlds together and making it a seamless, start-to-finish process is a game changer.”
Smith has held a number of senior positions within the industry, including most recently as creative director/sr. visualization supervisor at The Third Floor Visualization. For over a decade, Smith has brought a love of storytelling and vast film and artistic skillsets to titles such as Bumblebee, Avengers: Infinity War, Spider-Man: Homecoming, Guardians of The Galaxy Vol. 2, and The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.
“Visualization used to involve deciding roughly what you plan to do on set. Today, you can plan out precisely how to achieve your vision on set down to the inch–from the exact camera lens to use, to exactly how much dolly track you’ll need, to precisely where to place your actors,” stated Smith. “Visualization should be viewed as the director’s paint brush. It’s through the process of visualization that directors can visually explore and design their characters and breathe life into their story. It’s a sandbox where they can experiment, play and perfect their vision before the pressure of being on set.”
Review: Malcolm Washington Makes His Feature Directing Debut With “The Piano Lesson”
An heirloom piano takes on immense significance for one family in 1936 Pittsburgh in August Wilson's "The Piano Lesson." Generational ties also permeate the film adaptation, in which Malcolm Washington follows in his father Denzel Washington's footsteps in helping to bring the entirety of The Pittsburgh Cycle — a series of 10 plays — to the screen.
Malcolm Washington did not start from scratch in his accomplished feature filmmaking debut. He enlisted much of the cast from the recent Broadway revival with Samuel L. Jackson (Doaker Charles), his brother, John David Washington (Boy Willie), Ray Fisher (Lymon) and Michael Potts (Whining Boy). Berniece, played by Danielle Brooks in the play, is now beautifully portrayed by Danielle Deadwyler. With such rich material and a cast for whom it's second nature, it would be hard, one imagines, to go wrong. Jackson's own history with the play goes back to its original run in 1987 when he was Boy Willie.
It's not the simplest thing to make a play feel cinematic, but Malcolm Washington was up to the task. His film opens up the world of the Charles family beyond the living room. In fact, this adaptation, which Washington co-wrote with "Mudbound" screenwriter Virgil Williams, goes beyond Wilson's text and shows us the past and the origins of the intricately engraved piano that's central to all the fuss. It even opens on a big, action-filled set piece in 1911, during which the piano is stolen from a white family's home. Another fleshes out Doaker's monologue in which he explains to the uninitiated, Fisher's Lymon, and the audience, the tortured history of the thing. While it might have been nice to keep the camera on Jackson, such a great, grounding presence throughout, the good news is that he really makes... Read More