Sarah Baisley's Recent Posts

It seems many of the winners at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences 2002 Scientific and Technical Awards are jumping onto other teams. The first Oscars of the season were given out, three weeks before the televised Oscar ceremony on Saturday, March 1, 2003 at the Regent Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills.

R!OT Santa Monica has promoted Diana Young from associate producer to visual effects producer for commercials and music videos. Young, a 10-year post-production vet, joined R!OT in 1999. Previously she worked at 525 Post Production, the Post Group in Hollywood and Pascal Video. Her credits at R!OT include spots for Skittles, Hamburger Helper, Suzuki and Skyy Blue and she co-produced a two-minute montage that kicked off THE X-FILES final season.

Warner Bros.' hip hop King Fu actioner CRADLE 2 THE GRAVE (Bryan Hirota was vfx supervisor) debuted at the top of the weekend box office in North America, taking in $17.1M, followed by OLD SCHOOL, vfx by Gray Matter FX, holding at second place at $13.8M and a cume of $37.2M. DAREDEVIL, with primary vfx by Rhythm & Hues, Pixel Magic and Digital Domain, dropped to third pulling in an estimated gross of $11M, and a total of $84.1M. HOW TO LOSE A GUY IN 10 DAYS, with visual effects by Pixel Magic, dropped to fourth place taking in $10.1M and a $77.5M total.

Vicon, a leading developer in motion-capture, announced a new optical motion-capture solution for smaller production facilities and independent game developers via the new Vcam Optical Motion Capture Solution. It combines Vicon's newest camera, the VCam, with the Vicon 6 system and Vicon iQ software to users who need to deliver large quantities of character animation without a dedicated motion capture team or large studio space. Prices for Vicon V6 VCam systems start at $60,000.

Constantin Film in Germany is driving the latest game-to-screen crossover, optioning the film and television rights to Infogrames' DRIVER video game franchise. Impact Pictures, a subsidiary of Constantin, is slated to start shooting the motion picture later this year. "This is a great opportunity to develop the extremely cool game character of Tanner into a very believable and iconic action movie hero," said Jeremy Bolt, the movie's producer. Tanner is an undercover policeman hired by the mob as a getaway driver. Bolt set up Impact Pictures with writer/director Paul W.S. Anderson.

Scooby-Doo and his famous gang of mystery-solving sleuths are on the trail of a Australian vampire in SCOOBY-DOO AND THE LEGEND OF THE VAMPIRE released on DVD and home video on Tuesday, March 4, 2003 by Warner Home Video. The direct-to-video 80-minute feature was produced by Warner Bros. Animation. On vacation in Australia, Scooby-Doo and the Mystery Inc. gang attend a music festival held at Vampire Rock. But the music goes flat when the gang learns that a legendary Australian creature called the Yowie Yahoo is kidnapping the musical acts and turning them into vampires.

Mattel is consolidating its girls and boys/entertainment business units into one divison renamed Mattel Brands. The new global group includes the Barbie and Hot Wheels mega brands. Chairman/CEO of Mattel Robert Eckert said the move to reduce redundancies was consistent with "our 'one Mattel' approach to doing business," he said. Former boys/entertainment division president Matt Bousquette is promoted to president of Mattel Brands, with the elimination of approximately 5% of the executive level positions, with Adrienne Fontanella exiting as president of the girls division.

Steven Andrew has been chosen to replace exiting controller of children's and youth programming Janie Grace at ITV. He will report to ITV director of programs, Nigel Pickard. Andrew spent five years at Granada Kids, one of the largest producers of kids programming in the U.K., and was responsible for many programs broadcast on CiTV (the children's segment of ITV). This is Pickard's first appointment since he rejoined the British broadcaster after a recent stint at the BBC.

3Dlabs is adding PCI Express to its Wildcat graphics accelerators to help users take advantage of the improved CPU processing power and interconnect bandwidth of the new industry interconnect standard. "PCI Express is enabling us to design VPUs [visual processor units] that complement the enhanced system capabilities to raise the bar for workstation productivity," said Neil Trevett, SVP of market development for 3Dlabs. He said his company will be working closely with Intel on its PCI Express enabled adapters.