Even as he enters his fourth consecutive season as a regular on the Vancouver-based television series The Dead Zone, Acting instructor Jim Bates is constantly honing his skills.
Starring Anthony Michael Hall, The Dead Zone is based on the characters and story from the best-selling novel by Stephen King. The show, which airs on the USA Network, crosses over several genres including psychological thriller, action, romance, and the paranormal. Bates plays Sonny Elliman, top henchman to the leading villain.
“I appreciate being a regular guest on The Dead Zone because I’m given that comfort on set that I normally wouldn’t get if I were there for only one day,” says Bates. “This lets me learn from co-stars and directors on a different level.”
Walt Disney Feature Animation has been in the business of producing quality animated films for over seventy years. It’s responsible for creating some of the most memorable characters in film history, starting from their very first animated feature, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1934.
Today, Disney has put more traditional animation aside, choosing to work completely in computer animation. 2005’s Chicken Little marks the studio’s first all computer-animated feature. At the helm is 3D grad, and Chicken Little Animator, Lino DiSalvo.
Daniel Leone and Drew Bieneman are two sides of the same coin. They’re also the duo behind one of the most successful films made in the VFS Foundation program.
Drew and Dan created the 45-minute “short” film The Brilliance of Arthur Jam. When Dan originally wrote the film, he was worried it was too self-indulgent and eccentric. He gave it to Drew for criticism. Unlike Dan, Drew was attracted to the self-indulgent and eccentric qualities of the screenplay and convinced Dan to use the script for their final project.
A year later, Drew and Daniel’s little-big film – one of the longest ever made behind VFS walls – is touring the festival circuit. VFS caught up with Drew and Dan during work on yet another project.
Scott Dewis’s wrinkled neighbors are enjoying their retirement. They drink hot, medicinal tea and recline in hammocks. They also ignore the occasional explosions that emanate from Scott’s house.
Those explosions are just another part of Scot Dewis’s day job - blowing stuff up for such famous television shows as Alias and Lost - for which his team was recently awarded an Emmy for Outstanding Special Effects in a Series.
The world is filled with infinite possibilities that, for the most part, human beings ignore. It’s Game Design grad Brandon Van Slyke’s job to think about all of those possibilities and bundle them up into game-playing fun. Brandon is a game designer at Gameloft in New York City. His company specializes in making games for your mobile phone.
A partner with Ubisoft, Gameloft gets to make exciting games like King Kong and War of the Worlds, but Brandon is just happy living his dream. Brandon sat down with VFS to discuss his philosophies, goals, and his new favourite city, New York.
It has been said that the secret recipe for a successful film is an infinite amount of patience, a handful of contacts, and just a pinch of talent. It would seem that Derek Milton, a recent VFS grad, has read the filmmaking cookbook.
He’s the director and writer of The Black Prayer, his first film after graduating from the VFS Film Production program. “I knew that I would see the film to fruition. I was bound and determined to do so because that was the reason that I attended VFS in the first place.”
The Black Prayer has been screened at The Hollywood Underground Film Festival, The New York International Independent Film Festival , and the Vancouver Film School Alumni Festival. “Having one’s film being screened at a festival is something I believe that every filmmaker should experience.” Milton exclaims, “All it takes is to be at the right place at the right moment and the next level of one’s career can suddenly vault forward.”
The winner of 2006’s year’s Animex Student Animation Award for Visualization was VFS graduate Chung-Hao Tung for his phenomenal short film The Barometz. The award was announced during the Animex Festival on February 10th 2006 by Shelley Page, European Representative for Feature Animation DreamWorks, David Sproxton, co founder of Aardman Animation, and Philip Hunt, director at Studio AKA.
For aspiring writers and actors the word agent is tossed about routinely, but it can still be a pretty vague concept for somebody just starting out in the entertainment industry. Agent. Talent agent. Agent 007. Agent Orange. With all the other things to think about, it is worth spending some time figuring out whether securing an agent is something that ought to be a top priority.
While the role of any agent is ultimately to find work for clients, in fact there are many types of agents and what they do varies depending on the market or the medium. Screenwriters, for instance, are represented by literary agents who deal with both the film and television industries. The scenario for actors is often more complex. Some talent agents cover everything relevant to Film and Television. Others concentrate on specific markets such as commercials, voice-over, or the background roles.
So the question remains: Do actors and writers actually need agents?
After the quick realization that the only true rock stars left are in their eighties, Tony Prescesky decided to take a career turn – into Sound Design. Many years later, Tony now works for Ubisoft Entertainment as a game sound designer.
VFS:
Why design sounds for games? Why not movies?
TP:
With games, you need to deal with a huge amount of technical limitations and problems. You’ve really got to think about how much number crunching you’re asking the CPU to do. You’ve got to know how many sounds your system can play at once. You’ve got to know how your audio will sound in every situation, since it’s interactive. You’ve got to know what kind of bandwidth you can get from your media, and most importantly, how much memory you have to work with, which directly correlates to your audio quality. Sounds like a headache for sure, but when it works, it’s incredibly rewarding. I would like to play with sound for [movies] for sure, but I can’t see myself getting as excited about it. What does a film sound designer get paid?
My favourite project is the one I’m working on right now, but it’s top secret. I can say that I’ve got a great team working for me and we’re all sold on making this the best sounding PSP game on the market.
VFS:
So you’re happy not being a rock star?
TP:
Being able to scream ‘Hello Wembley Stadium!’ was not putting food on the table. I’m an artist at heart, so the thought of devoting my life to working at a job where I couldn’t be creative really depressed me - not that being a rock star isn’t creative. Long story short, I’m not depressed. In fact, I’m pretty fricken’ happy.
Huhu Studios in New Zealand is a computer animation company known for producing high quality animation in the children’s television and direct-to-video market. Huhu offers everything from first draft to final layback, including scripting, storyboarding, music and animation. Right there at the centre of it is digital character animator and Digital Character Animation grad, Pritish Dogra.
Children’s animation is different from other forms of storytelling. The nature of the audience demands that the story comes across clearly, and as an animator, this is Pritish’s chief responsibility. In order to communicate the story to young viewers, the animated character’s acting must be clear and to the point.
But don’t let the fact that these are children’s shows fool you into believing this somehow affects quality. Huhu expects high quality product from its animators, and Pritish feels the same way about his work. “Although we are making shows for TV, we still need to maintain a decent standard,” he says. “My goal is that people should be entertained when they watch the show.”
Even as he enters his fourth consecutive season as a regular on the Vancouver-based television series The Dead Zone, Acting instructor Jim Bates is constantly honing his skills.
Walt Disney Feature Animation has been in the business of producing quality animated films for over seventy years. It’s responsible for creating some of the most memorable characters in film history, starting from their very first animated feature, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1934.
The world is filled with infinite possibilities that, for the most part, human beings ignore. It’s 
It has been said that the secret recipe for a successful film is an infinite amount of patience, a handful of contacts, and just a pinch of talent. It would seem that Derek Milton, a recent VFS grad, has read the filmmaking cookbook.
For aspiring writers and actors the word agent is tossed about routinely, but it can still be a pretty vague concept for somebody just starting out in the entertainment industry. Agent. Talent agent. Agent 007. Agent Orange. With all the other things to think about, it is worth spending some time figuring out whether securing an agent is something that ought to be a top priority.
After the quick realization that the only true rock stars left are in their eighties, Tony Prescesky decided to take a career turn – into Sound Design. Many years later, Tony now works for Ubisoft Entertainment as a game sound designer.
Huhu Studios in New Zealand is a computer animation company known for producing high quality animation in the children’s television and direct-to-video market. Huhu offers everything from first draft to final layback, including scripting, storyboarding, music and animation. Right there at the centre of it is digital character animator and