Veteran location manager Aine Furey will receive this year’s Lifetime Achievement Award from the Location Managers Guild International (LMGI) at the 8th Annual LMGI Awards. With a career spanning almost four decades and over 400 hours of screen time, Furey can easily be called a pioneer who was instrumental in establishing Ontario as an attractive production environment for film and television production. The LMGI Awards “Celebrate the Where” gala will be held on Saturday, October 23, at 2 p.m. PT, presented, via a digital ceremony on YouTube.
LMGI Awards chair John Rakich noted, “Aine was a mainstay in local production from its early days of small local productions to the thriving global production center Ontario is today. The Location Managers Guild International is proud to have Aine Furey accept our Lifetime Achievement Award.”
Furey’s many credits include Canadian Bacon, Relic Hunter, Lost Girl, Mutant X, The Littlest Hobo, Night Heat and Due South. She helped established a path for location professionalism in not just establishing industry practices and standards but in the legacy of dozens of careers she trained and mentored. Even now in her retirement, she still does the occasional bit of location scouting for productions in need and is always helping the local film commissions in creating image packages.
Furey grew up in Dublin at a time before television existed in Ireland so going to “the films” was a big deal and it became a lifelong fascination. Her family moved to Los Angeles in 1959 where her first step into “showbiz” was working at the Mission Playhouse while in high school. After graduation, she returned to London and began to get work as an actress. That came to an abrupt end when she was injured in a car accident, which led to her lifelong career in location work.
The LMGI Awards honor the outstanding and creative visual contributions by location professionals in film, television and commercials from around the globe. The LMGI Awards also recognize outstanding service by film commissions for their support “above and beyond” during the production process.
This year, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the 8th Annual LMGI Awards will, once again, be presented on a digital platform, streaming to a worldwide and more inclusive audience.
Ex-OpenAI engineer who raised legal concerns about the technology he helped build has died
Suchir Balaji, a former OpenAI engineer and whistleblower who helped train the artificial intelligence systems behind ChatGPT and later said he believed those practices violated copyright law, has died, according to his parents and San Francisco officials. He was 26.
Balaji worked at OpenAI for nearly four years before quitting in August. He was well-regarded by colleagues at the San Francisco company, where a co-founder this week called him one of OpenAI's strongest contributors who was essential to developing some of its products.
"We are devastated to learn of this incredibly sad news and our hearts go out to Suchir's loved ones during this difficult time," said a statement from OpenAI.
Balaji was found dead in his San Francisco apartment on Nov. 26 in what police said "appeared to be a suicide. No evidence of foul play was found during the initial investigation." The city's chief medical examiner's office confirmed the manner of death to be suicide.
His parents Poornima Ramarao and Balaji Ramamurthy said they are still seeking answers, describing their son as a "happy, smart and brave young man" who loved to hike and recently returned from a trip with friends.
Balaji grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and first arrived at the fledgling AI research lab for a 2018 summer internship while studying computer science at the University of California, Berkeley. He returned a few years later to work at OpenAI, where one of his first projects, called WebGPT, helped pave the way for ChatGPT.
"Suchir's contributions to this project were essential, and it wouldn't have succeeded without him," said OpenAI co-founder John Schulman in a social media post memorializing Balaji. Schulman, who recruited Balaji to his team, said what... Read More