Acting for Film & Television Advisory Board Member Matthew Lillard is coming to Vancouver this weekend for another exclusive 3-day workshop with VFS Acting alumni.

It’s the third time Lillard has traveled to Vancouver to lead this intensive scene study course. Under his guidance, Acting grads pair up and delve into a number of pre-selected scenes, coming away with a rejuvenated dedication to their craft.

Click on the banner below to visit vfs.com/matthewlillard where you can learn more about just how deeply connected the veteran actor is to the Acting for Film & Television department at VFS.

“When I was starting out, I really appreciated that I had an opportunity to spend a month in a shop,” says Toby Lindala, owner of Burnaby, BC’s Schminkën Studios, a special makeup effects production house that designs and fabricates pieces for the local film and television industry. “I learned a lot from that.”

An Advisory Board Member of the Makeup Design for Film & Television program, Toby’s now paying that opportunity forward to aspiring makeup artists. Schminkën is one of three makeup studios that regularly provide mentorship placements to select Makeup Design students. Masters FX and WCT Productions also participate.

“We’re always trying to involve the professional community with the program so that students have the advantage of rubbing elbows with professionals and getting different perspectives from that community,” says Head of Makeup Design Stan Edmonds.

These mentorship placements began in 2006, when the Makeup Design program expanded to one full year of intense study and practice. Students, like grad Crissy Renaud, began applying to spend 40 hours-plus volunteering under the local film and television industry’s best. Taking place in the program’s final term, such opportunities couldn’t come at a better time for hungry students preparing to enter a competitive job market.

“I wanted to work in the industry, not hop from set-to-set,” Crissy says. “So I knew this was what I should do.”

The staff at WCT Productions put her to work: “I did everything from assisting life casting, making paint for an artist on set, cleaning molding, and sculpting.” After finishing her placement, Crissy spent a month in contact with her former mentors before they hired her to assist with some work for Reaper, the television series.

Now she’s mentoring WCT’s incoming Makeup Design students.

A New Crop

November 2009′s round of mentorship placements saw four current Makeup Design students getting their hands dirty in the day-to-day operations of a makeup effects studio. Dili Hafezi and Mandy Imeson spent over a week with Lindala at Schminkën, while Jon Berezan and Kate Middleton went to Masters FX.

But, as Stan explains, getting into one of these shops is no easy feat:

“We set up professional interviews where students have a time and place to go… These shops, they don’t treat them like students. This is real.”

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Vancouverites are no strangers to the Twilight phenomenon. Since the sequels began filming here, it’s been the talk of the town.

And now the results are in: The Twilight Saga: New Moon hits theatres this week. A Twi-stravaganza (sorry) of VFS connections on this one: among the alumni who worked on New Moon are Lighting Technical Director Dominic Cheung (3D Animation & Visual Effects) and Assistant Makeup Artist Amy St. Jean (Makeup Design for Film & Television). Makeup Design Advisory Board Member Norma Hill-Patton was Makeup Designer on the film, and was recently profiled by our friends at Make-Up Artist Magazine for her work on star Robert Pattinson.

(You might also remember that Charlie Bewley, who plays Demetri, starred in a Film Production short. Find out more about it here. We knew him when!)

This week’s other release with VFS ties is the animated Planet 51. A trio of 3D grads worked on the film out of the Madrid-based Ilion Animation Studios: Effects Animators Gianfranco Valle and Sandro Di Segni and Modeler Jorge Kirschner Torres. Might be worth checking out for its clever twist on the extraterrestrials-among-us idea, its Giger-esque alien puppies, and as a possible antidote for a case of vampire angst (apply as needed).

“I always found these acting books were taught from a place ‘on high’,” says Matthew Lillard. “It’s not easy to look back and remember the really bleak times and the hard times. And even if you do, there’s a sense of glorification of those times.”

Lillard (Scream, Scooby-Doo) would love to break down the walls between Hollywood success and aspiring young actors.  And, as a new Advisory Board Member for the Acting for Film & Television program, that’s exactly what he’s been doing, brick-by-brick.

Advisory Board Members play a vital role in keeping the curriculum at VFS relevant, helping to ensure that what students are learning in class is directly related to what they’ll encounter in the industry when they graduate.

About a year ago, Lillard gave a special talk at VFS that made such an inspirational impact on Acting students and faculty, that he was soon asked to come aboard and help shape the future of the program through introducing intense Master Acting Classes. Open primarily to alumni as a way to keep them in touch with their craft and each other, Lillard says he’s getting as much out of it as the participants are.

“I’ve never been involved like I am now,” Lillard explains. “I’ve come up now three times – flown up especially to work with the kids, the students, and I love it. I’m just so excited to go up there, and it’s just so fulfilling… It’s an intense weekend. By the end, I’m beat up. But I leave with such a renewed passion for my own career, my own journey in this crazy profession… It’s just been a great experience so far.”

While he believes his relationship with VFS is the “end game”, Lillard hopes to shed a little light on how young actors should approach their careers in the entertainment industry.

“While actors love each other and get along great, there is no ‘how to do’ in this business. There is no ladder to success. There is no direct way. And within that, there’s also nobody saying ‘here’s how I did it’.”

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A tip of our hats to Writing for Film & Television Advisory Board member (and former faculty, until she got all busy writing and producing for a hit cable show) Maria Jacquemetton! Maria’s acclaimed AMC series Mad Men picked up its second Golden Globe last night for Best Television Series – Drama.

And kudos as well to 3D Animation & Visual Effects grad Mark Shirra, Layout Artist on WALL-E, which won for Best Animated Feature Film!

Congratulations to Maria Jacquemetton, writer and producer on Mad Men, which took the home the Outstanding Drama Series Emmy this weekend, beating out Boston Legal, Damages, Dexter, House, and Lost.

Maria is the former Head of Writing for Film & Television, and is now an Advisory Board Member.

If you haven’t checked out Mad Men already, you’re in for a treat! It’s on AMC, and season one is available on DVD.

UPDATE: In case you can’t make out Maria Jacquemetton and her writing partner Andre Jacquemetton in the pic of cast and crew on stage above, here they are again!

Rhythm & Hues Digital Supervisor and VFS Advisory Board member Michael Conelly visited our Animation & Visual Effects programs this week, and yesterday evening hosted a lively presentation in our Main Theatre.

After screening a reel featuring highlights from Rhythm & Hues’ film work, including The Golden Compass, The Chronicles of Riddick, and many others, Conelly discussed his own career and gave some hard-won advice to the assembled students from 3D Animation & Visual Effects, Classical Animation, and Digital Character Animation.

He asked for a show of hands to find out the “demographics” of the audience – what disciplines they hoped to pursue, from texturing to compositing to animation to lighting and so on.

Conelly acknowledged the importance of experimentation and a varied skillset (“You have to sample all of these different disciplines”) but above all he stressed the need to specialize: “Make sure you pick at least one thing to really polish when you put your reel together. Don’t let me put out your fire by telling you you can’t be a generalist – it’s just really hard.” And he should know – focusing on lighting helped him get his own foot in the door.

Before heading into a lengthy and candid Q&A period, he showed shot breakdowns to demonstrate the importance of getting real-world reference (and any other inspiration) for one’s work, perfectly illustrated by a clip from Superman Returns, with waves crashing against rock spires: “A lot of these have nothing to do with computational fluid dynamics, but a lot to do with having a camera.”

Digital Kitchen, one of the top production design firms in the world – with studios in Seattle, Chicago, New York, and L.A. – paid a visit to VFS last Friday to speak with Digital Design students, conduct interviews, and tour the school.

Naturally, when you have DK in the house, you want a little show-’n'-tell, and Creative Director Matt Mulder and Creative Lead Brad Abrahams didn’t disappoint. They presented three case studies out of the Seattle studio – the opening sequence for the TNT miniseries The Company, a promo for Wired Science on PBS, and the hilarious Microsoft Recruiting viral video MindQuest.

The pair talked at length about these projects, delving into the exhaustive and exhausting process on The Company (Matt: “You want a rocket? Here’s 8 rockets”) and the hectic Wired Science shoot (Brad: “You never want to find yourself in a position where you’re on a greenscreen stage, someone says, ‘What’s next?’ and you have no idea”).

The MindQuest project offered a couple of simple lessons to any designer. First, it was put together on a shoestring, and even for a company like DK – who have won Emmys, and got lots of acclaim for the title sequence for Dexter – those jobs are worthwhile. Brad: “We take on [low- or no-budget jobs] occasionally just to keep us sane.”

During the Q&A, Matt, who’s one of the professionals on the Digital Design Advisory Board at VFS, said that there’s no shortage of opportunities out there for designers – “Everybody’s always looking for somebody” – but stressed the importance of being well-rounded and knowing more than just software. “Did they set out to communicate something and communicate it, or did After Effects take over?”

We’ve just gotten word that VFS Makeup Advisory Board Member Gail Kennedy and her team have won the Emmy for Best Makeup for a Miniseries, Movie or Special for their work on HBO‘s acclaimed miniseries Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. The Emmy was awarded as part of this weekend’s ceremony honouring those in the Creative Arts categories.

Gail has been nominated for Emmys before, for her work on Into the West.

Incidentally, 2007′s been a busy year for Gail. Besides Wounded Knee, she also served as Makeup Department Head on The Lookout, Resurrecting the Champ, and Brad Pitt’s new film, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. Congratulations, Gail!

Makeup Design Advisory Board member Leonard Engelman Elected as Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Makeup Branch Governor!

And for those of us who may not know exactly what that means?

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS, aka the guys who give out the Oscars every February) have a board of governors representing the various arts and trades in the film industry as they come together to promote their crafts and recognize outstanding achievements. Until recently, there was no official Makeup Branch, and so, no governor to officially represent trends and excellence in Makeup.

All that has changed, as AMPAS has created a Makeup branch, and the 120 makeup and hairstyle artists the branch comprises have elected Leonard Engelman — Makeup Artist for movies like How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Batman & Robin, Moonstruck, and Ghostbusters – as their governor.

The newly-overhauled Makeup Design program at VFS is proud to have the distinguished Mr. Engelman on their Advisory Board, which helps keep programs current and relevant in terms of industry practices and needs.