USC’s Paul Debevec‘s Role in The Matrix, Avatar, Gravity & More

Paul Debevec can rightfully claim that he has helped, in small ways and large, create some of the most technologically groundbreaking films of the last two decades. Debevec leads the graphics laboratory at the University of Southern California's Institute for Creative Technologies, and is a research professor in their computer science department. He is one of the most influential academics in the film world today.

Debevec’s research and technology have been used in The Matrix 

Gravity Shines Light on Future of 3D Filmmaking

How do you create a 3D film that’s truly worth the price of admission? If one lesson can be taken from James Cameron’s Avatar, Martin Scorsese’s Hugo, and Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity, it’s that the extra dimension has to be crucial to the narrative itself. It’s not enough to wow people—you need a good story reason for the technology, which all of the above directors had in spades.

3D Serving the Story

Cuarón’s masterpiece took place in space,

The Future of Film, Television (& More): 5 New Mind Blowing Technologies

There are so many scintillating technologies in the works one imagines looking back on James Cameron’s Avatar as almost quaint. As absurd as that sounds, looking around the technology space is like looking into a future that would have seemed nearly impossibly only a decade ago. With the truly mind blowing speed with which the internet, smart phones and digital cameras have increased in functionality and ubiquity, so to has the ways in which you can shoot,

What’s it Like to be a Science Advisor for Alfonso Cuarón’s Upcoming Gravity?

In Alfonso Cuarón’s upcoming film Gravity (opening Oct. 4), George Clooney and Sandra Bullock play an astronaut and a medical engineer stranded in space.

Cuarón reportedly spent five years perfecting the look of scenes set in zero gravity, but figuring out how to film floating actors was just one of many technical details necessary for a movie set entirely in space. And one key player in the film’s accuracy never stepped foot on the set.

The Art of Animatronics: How Old School Movie Magic Compliments CGI

The release of Jurassic Park 3D earlier this year has people talking about more than just the technological update of a classic. For all of its digital wow when Jurassic Park debuted in 1993, the film employed unmatched animatronics and puppetry as well.

The question is, will that movie prove to be the last hurrah for spectacular practical effects? At least one practitioner of the craft admits to having his moments of doubt,

How’d They Do That? Building 1920s New York in The Great Gatsby

Digital FX firm Animal Logic helped craft the extravagant, hyper-vibrant world of New York in the roaring 20's for Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby. But how?

They lovingly refer to themselves as “animals,” but the staffers at Animal Logic, based at Fox Studios in Sydney, Australia, are really masters in special effects and animation. The company, which derives its name from the two sides of the business (the physical/creative and cerebral/technical),

Chatting With Now You See Me Head Magic Consultant David Kwong

How can a showy magic act known as the Four Horsemen (Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Isla Fisher, Dave Franco) convince a Las Vegas crowd—let alone the FBI and Interpol—that they just teleported a random audience member to a bank in Paris and promptly stole three million Euros? To pull off an illusion that could fool a packed house—plus millions of moviegoers—the producers of Now You See Me turned to head magic consultant David Kwong.

From Minority Report to Iron Man, the Genesis of Gesture Technology

Good sci-fi movies have a way of influencing, if not actually predicting, the future when it comes to technological innovation. Take, for example, gestural interactions with computers — they are the next step after today's virtual keyboards.

One of the most popular movie approximations of this tech is used by Precrime Police Chief John Anderton in the 2002 movie Minority Report. Anderton solves a future murder by shuffling through holographic data with special gloves and a burning intensity.

Where to Watch: New Site Offers Films & Shows, Legally & Seamlessly

Since our launch last September, The Credits has interviewed a diverse group of filmmakers, working our way through all the different jobs one could have  in pre-production, on a film set, and in post. Directors, actors, cinematographers, screenwriters, art directors, costume designers, composers, editors, visual effects supervisors, casting directors, music supervisors, stunt performers and more have told us what it’s like to make a living making movies.

The Sky’s the Limit: Cinematography’s Technological Revolution

Just as smart phones and tablets are changing the way we experience daily life, other technologies are dramatically shifting the cinematic landscape. Directors today can harness these tools in order to express their artistic vision on the screen as never before. We spoke with two of the most significant players in this field in order to find out what’s possible now, and what we can expect to see in the future.

3D moves beyond ‘next big thing’

The 2013 Sci-Tech Awards Honor 25 of Cinema’s Under-the-Radar Geniuses

Oscar night is rife with drama: red-carpet arrivals, teary-eyed acceptance speeches, shocking upsets, and the exultant moment when the team behind the Best Picture of the year rushes the stage. But two weeks before any of this occurs, there is a quieter event—the Academy’s Sci-Tech Awards—where many of the industry’s behind-the-scenes geniuses are recognized for their invaluable contributions to film.

They don’t deliver monologues, cry on command, or gain vast amounts of weight to play against type;

Mommy Issues: Making Monsters with Mama Visual Effects Supervisor Aaron Weintraub

A father kills his wife and brings his two young daughters to a secluded cabin where his would-be murder/suicide attempt is foiled by one very maternal ghost. Years later, the girls are discovered, their feral upbringing posing the second biggest obstacle to a normal life behind a spirit that, to put it mildly, has become a bit possessive.

Mama may not be the feel-good hit of the new movie year, but it may be its most pleasant surprise,

Visionary Filmmaker & Inventor Douglas Trumbull Talks The Hobbit and his Latest Incredible Invention

The frame rate for a film refers to the frequency (or rate) at which a camera creates unique consecutive images (frames). Almost every film you have ever seen has been shot and projected at 24 frames-per-second (FPS). We have become so accustomed to seeing films this way that shooting at any other rate can be potentially jarring. Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit was shot in 3D at 48fps, twice the normal rate. It will be projected at 48fps on 400 of the 10,000 theaters when it opens on tomorrow,

Meet the Team That Gave Tim Burton’s Labor of Love, Frankenweenie, a Third Dimension

Tim Burton’s Frankenweenie, a likely nominee for an Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, is a marvel of filmmaking. It finds Burton at the top of his game, helming a film that clearly was a labor of love. The question we were interested in was: how did Burton get his black-and-white, stop motion comedy horror from 2D to 3D?

So we inquired about the collaboration between Walt Disney Pictures,

Taming the Digital Tiger: An Interview with Oscar-Winning VFX Supervisor Bill Westenhofer About his Work on Life of Pi

The Credits spoke with to visual effects guru, Bill Westenhofer about his work on the acclaimed recent release, Life of Pi. Winner of the 2008 Academy Award for Achievement in Visual Effects for The Golden Compass (also nominated in 2006 for The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe), Westenhofer dished on what it was like working on Pi—from braving real storms at sea for reference points,

Film at the Vatican Without Leaving LA: How Stargate Studios’ Virtual Backlot Is Revolutionizing The Industry

On location shooting is a variable that can make or break a film or television project. It might be the difference between shooting a scene at Westminster Abbey, or at the neighborhood church. So when visual effects house Stargate Studios launched their Virtual Backlot nearly a decade ago, television shows everywhere could hardly wait to use their game-changing library of virtual backdrops. From Vegas casinos to idyllic beaches, producers could finally green-light exotically ambitious scripts,

Making Waves: Meet Scott Anderson, Visual Effects Supervisor and The Man Behind The Mavericks in Chasing Mavericks

Scott Anderson has provided expertise on films such as Steven Spielberg’s The Adventures of Tintin, and through his company Digital Sandbox, a visual effects company, has worked on a bevy of films.  Anderson and his team were brought on board (pun intended) to help directors Curtis Hanson and Michael Apted make the surf scenes in Chasing Mavericks look so realistic that even the legendary surfers who were stunt doubles and stunt performers on the film would be pleased.

The Surfer King: A Conversation With Chasing Mavericks Surf Coordinator and Big Wave Expert Grant Washburn

Making a great biopic can be a high stakes game: How do you do tell an enthralling story about a real person, while keeping the audience entertained and also maintaining authenticity when it comes to the subject in question? For Grant Washburn, the Surf Coordinator on Chasing Mavericks, the story of iconic big wave surfer Jay Moriarty, the stakes were even higher because there was another determining factor —

The Wired Theater: Audiences Get Social At The Cinema

There is a well-known myth of movie audiences in the late 19th century fleeing for the exits at the sight of a train that seemed to be barreling straight toward them. In reality, audiences’ early fascination with motion pictures quickly turned to admiration, a sacred respect for the movie going experience. Talking during movies became, almost instantaneously, strictly verboten. Decades later, other rules reared their heads to stomp out social distractions in the cinema. First it was,

The Return of Smell-O-Vision, the Advent of 4D Cinema, and the Brave New World of Sensory Film

TIME Magazine might have deemed it one of the worst 100 ideas in history, but it’s hard not to harbor a fond nostalgia for the wonderfully bizarre promise Smell-O-Vision once afforded moviegoers. Making movies that smelled was a bold and definitively quirky concept intended to persuade the television-hooked masses of 1950s Americana to migrate from their plastic-covered couches and microwaved TV dinners in order to experience movies in a ‘scent’sational new way. Of course,