Autodesk Congratulates Visual Effects Oscar Winner King Kong

Eleventh Consecutive Year that Autodesk Clients Win Best Visual Effects Academy Award

7 March 2006 — Autodesk, Inc. (NASDAQ: ADSK) congratulates visual effects facility Weta Digital, which crafted champion visual effects for the Oscar-winning film King Kong. Autodesk also congratulates Industrial Light & Magic and Sony Pictures Imageworks for shaping the Visual Effects category nominated films The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and War of the Worlds. For the eleventh consecutive year, Autodesk technology was used to realise winning visual effect ideas for films in this category. In addition, Autodesk’s Discreet Lustre system was used to digitally colour grade Oscar-winning films in the Visual Effects, Documentary Feature and Foreign Film categories.

Weta Digital used the Discreet Lustre system to help create the distinctive look and feel of King Kong. "Autodesk’s Discreet Lustre system was part of the entire visual effects colour grading process while making King Kong. We used it to grade at the front end before the computer-generated elements were added, and also at the very end of our pipeline to grade the final images,” explained Joe Letteri, senior visual effects supervisor at Weta Digital. “As the elements came in, the Discreet Lustre system helped us work out the look for complex environments like Skull Island and 1933 New York." Digital colour grading is the process of altering or enhancing the colours in a movie using scanned copies of the original film.

For War of the Worlds, Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) used Autodesk Maya 3D animation software, Autodesk’s Discreet Inferno and Discreet Flame visual effects systems, and Autodesk Burn background processing solution as part of ILM’s proprietary SABRE visual effects system. ILM used the SABRE system to realise various concept-based effects in War of the Worlds, including the warring aliens and their Tripods - which were crafted using Autodesk Maya software, as well as the Tripods’ organic heat ray - created in the Discreet Inferno system’s 3D environment. The Discreet Inferno system was also used on the film’s “Fleeing the Neighbourhood” scene, in which Tom Cruise attempts to drive his family out of the city while destruction looms around them.

Sony Pictures Imageworks used Autodesk Maya software, as well as the Discreet Flame system and Autodesk Burn software, to reach new creative heights for The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Autodesk Maya software was used to craft many of the film’s talking animals, such as 3D wolves, beavers and foxes, as well as some of the film’s mythical creatures such as Mr. Tumnus, a faun (half man, half goat). The Discreet Flame system was also used to create the right look for other magical elements in the film such as the White Witch’s stone victims.

Furthermore, Autodesk’s Discreet Inferno and Discreet Flame systems were used on the film as part of ILM’s proprietary SABRE visual effects system. For the coronation sequence, in which Aslan and the children walked down an ornate hall lined with crowds of creatures, the SABRE system was instrumental in creating a believable scene involving the compositing of several hundred character layers.

Autodesk technology was also used to shape Oscar-winning and Oscar-nominated films in the following categories:

* Animated Short Film: Autodesk products touched three of the five nominated films. Shane Acker used Autodesk Maya 3D animation software for modelling, lighting and rendering work on his film 9. Anthony Lucas of 3-D Films used Autodesk 3ds Max, Autodesk Maya and Autodesk Combustion software to create the nominated film The Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper and Morello. Two-dimensional film Badgered was conformed and onlined by John Rowe, head of digital post-production at the National Film and Television School in London, using Autodesk’s Discreet Flame system.
* Documentary Feature: Autodesk’s Discreet Lustre system was used by Éclair Laboratoires to digitally colour grade the Oscar-winning documentary feature March of the Penguins
* Foreign Film: Post-production facility The Video Lab used Autodesk’s Discreet Lustre system to digitally colour grade the Oscar-winning film Tsotsi.

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Video Games are as Important as Film and Television

Video Game Awards become BAFTA’s ‘third arm’

The growing importance of video games to entertainment culture has been recognised by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA), which has elevated the sector to become an equal to those for Film and Television. Champions of the moving image, BAFTA seeks to reward artistic and creative innovation within video games, as one of the principle contemporary art forms.

This newly defined status means The British Academy Video Games Awards are set to confirm their position as the most independent and valued awards in this arena. The British Academy Video Games Awards move to October to be positioned as the climax to London Games Week, a new set of major industry and consumer events set to be a highlight of the European gaming calendar.

The changes have been driven by a newly formed BAFTA Games committee of high-level representatives from the largest and most influential publishers, developers, middleware companies and trade associations, including ELSPA; TIGA and Sony Computer Entertainment Europe.*

The committee is led by Paul Jackson, VP & Managing Director Northern Region, Electronic Arts, who comments that ‘BAFTA’s move to give video games equal status with film and television reflects games’ contribution to artistic innovation and new forms of story-telling. The organisation is perfectly positioned to cross- fertilise opportunities, set benchmarks for measurement and champion creative standards to encourage new and compelling interactive experiences.’

Ray Maguire, senior vice president of Sony Computer Entertainment, echoed his sentiments, "It is great to be associated with a body that has been rewarding creative excellence for decades. For the creativity and artistry that is so prevalent in our business to be recognised in parity with other more accepted visual arts, says to me that interactivity has finally come of age"'

BAFTA’s chairman, Duncan Kenworthy, says ‘Video games constitute a hugely significant new, moving image art form that sits alongside film and television in its power to entertain and educate, and the Academy is determined to encourage its development. The British Academy Video Games Awards are a key part of our strategy to define, articulate and reward excellence in the sector, to the benefit of those who create games and those who play them.’

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Roaming Mobile Phone Charges Could Spoil Your World Cup

Football fans travelling to the World Cup in Germany this summer could get unlimited free incoming calls and texts by using a local SIM card instead of their UK number.

If you take your UK mobile to Germany you would typically be charged £0.75 pence to receive a call, £0.50 pence to send a text and £1.20 a minute to make a call to a local landline by your current network operator. Compare this to the savings of using a local German prepaid card, where it costs nothing to receive calls or texts, and outgoing calls to local numbers are only £0.27 per minute. Texts to the UK cost just 20p.

David Agar, Managing Director, of http://www.gosim.com, a provider of local prepaid SIM cards to people travelling abroad, says: “Using a UK mobile phone abroad is very convenient but charges are incredibly expensive. The smart solution is to buy a prepaid card before you travel, which we estimate will reduce your costs by up to 72%. If you don't, you could be paying off a large bill long after your memory of the matches has faded.”

www.go-sim has a special World Cup package costing £24.99, which includes a German prepaid SIM card, 10 Euros of calls plus a free ringtone and ‘Three Lions’ screensaver.

The SIM cards can be topped up on the www.gosim.com site or at a local shop.

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UK FILM COUNCIL - HEADLINE SPONSOR OF RIMA 2006

The UK Film Council is sponsoring the film category for the CRE's Race in the Media Awards (RIMA). Now in its second year, the film category is hoping to attract entries from the widest possible talent spectrum. Applicants have until the 17 March to submit their work.

Winners of last year's film award were Paul Morrison's Wondrous Oblivion (Apt Films) for best film feature; Jonathan Jones's 'Who Killed PC Blakelock' (Films of Record Ltd) for best film documentary and Martin Friend's ' Other' (Screen East) for film shorts. All, in the opinion of independent judges*, made a significant contribution to raising our collective understanding of the many communities that now make up our nation.

Trevor Phillips, Chair of the CRE said:

"I'm delighted that the UK Film Council has joined forces with RIMA for this year's event. RIMA's goal is to make integration in our society a reality. The film industry has a leading role to play in helping us achieve this by challenging old stereotypes about race, ethnicity and culture and in some cases increasing understanding to huge audiences about extremely complex issues. The more voices from more diverse backgrounds we have contributing to these debates, the better. Last year, the judges of the film category said that the quality of all the submissions was extremely high - but without these awards, it's questionable whether those entering would ever receive recognition for their work."

Marcia Williams, Head of Diversity at the UK Film Council added:

"Film is an immensely popular activity for people and contributes to our enjoyment and understanding of the world and different communities. Supporting the development a more diverse cinema that reflects the UK's population and rich culture is one of the UK Film Council's key priorities and encouraging filmmaking talent with new and different stories to tell is key to achieving that aim. We look to RIMA for film as a celebration of diversity in both the stories that are being told and the portrayal of our culture on film."


The RIMA awards ceremony will be held on 14 June 2006 at the Royal Opera House, London.


Notes For Applicants:

*The closing date for entries is 17 March 2006 and applications can be made online at www.rima.org.uk. (Please note that materials cannot be returned)

*All entries must have been published in a recognized national, regional or local publication, or broadcast or intended for theatrical screening in the UK between 1 January and 31 December 2005 (with the exception of the international category).

**Last year's judges included Michael Deeley who produced film greats including 'The Deer Hunter' and 'Blade Runner'; Marcia Williams, head of diversity at the UK Film Council; and June Givanni, programme executive at OFCOM and previously at ITC and British Film Institute.

*The RIMA awards will be presented on 14 June at The Royal Opera House.

*For more information about RIMA visit the RIMA website at www.rima.org.uk or contact the RIMA team on 0845 363 1478 or email rima@rslive.co.uk ( All international calls + 44 121 510 1478)

The RIMA 2005 winners were:

Media Personality
Thierry Henry
Media Organisation
BBC
TV Soap
Coronation Street, Maya's Revenge - Granada Television, ITV
TV Drama
The Bill - Thames Television, ITV
TV News
Various reports - Tim Samuels, BBC News
TV Factual
What Ron Said, Aspect Television Ltd, BBC1
Film - Feature
Wondrous Oblivion - Apt Films
Film - Documentary
Who Killed PC Blakelock - Films of Record Ltd
Film - Shorts
Other - Screen East
National Newspapers
Young, Muslim and British - Madeleine Bunting, The Guardian
Local Newspapers
Various reports - Yorkshire Evening Post
Radio News
Ursula's Story - BBC Radio Wales
Radio Drama
Something Dark - BBC Radio Drama
Radio Factual
Golly in the Cupboard - BBC Radio Merseyside
Youth
Kerching! - CBBC Drama
Specialist Magazine
Various reports - Vic Motune, The Voice
Consumer magazine
Variety of work - Good Housekeeping
New Media
Where I Live, Romany Voices - BBC Radio Kent