Durban FilmMart 2012 gets out of this world visual effects

Steve MacPherson

MacPherson will participate in two sessions specialising in digital focus during the event; The Digital Media Frontier: Straight Talk on Defining the Digital Media Opportunities in Africa and Pre-visualisation to Virtual Production: Technologies Revolutionising the Way Films Get Made.

His experience in science and technology over the last two decades has taken him from the California research labs of NASA Ames and Lawrence Livermore National Labs (LLNL) to London and the leading film and advertising visual effects powerhouse Framestore. With a wealth of knowledge and experience, he has also held the senior film technology role for three of London's top facilities; twice at MPC, as a founder member of Double Negative Visual Effects and for the past two years at Framestore. In his current position as Global CTO for the Framestore group, his specialties are digital film workflows, film pre-visualisation, VFX pipeline optimisation, digital intermediate/colour management, technology planning and implementation.

His visit is facilitated through a new partnership between the Durban FilmMart, an annual finance and coproduction market for the African film industry and COA, a South African IT and Digital Content Creation Solution Specialist with strong ties in international companies such as Adobe, Autodesk, AxizWorkgroup, HP, Intel, Microsoft and Nokia.

"Aligning with key partners"

"Durban FilmMart strives to be at the forefront of cutting-edge technology and the development of African Cinema, and this means aligning ourselves with key partners and leading experts such as Steve MacPherson who boasts impressive credentials and noteworthy contributions to the industry," said Durban Film Office head, Toni Monty.

The show, which takes place on 20-23 July 2012, provides filmmakers from across Africa an opportunity to pitch projects to financiers, distributors, sales agents and potential co-producers, and participate in meetings, project presentations and a series of master classes and workshops on latest industry trends.

The event will be held in three phases; the development platform finance forum, which is open to selected documentary and feature film projects and the Master-classes and Africa in Focus range of panel discussions and seminars which are both open to all delegates of the event.

For more, go to www.durbanfilmmart.com.