Annie Chang, VP of technology for Marvel Studios, has accepted an invitation to join the Science and Technology Council of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, bringing the Council’s 2016–2017 membership roster to 25.
During Chang’s 11 years at Disney, Marvel’s parent company, she has shaped technology standards and strategies, helped research and implement new technologies into feature postproduction and mastering pipelines, and helped the studio transition from tapes to files and launch consumer distribution platforms. A fellow of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE), Chang also is the co-chair of SMPTE’s 10E Essence Technology Committee and was a five-year chair of SMPTE’s Interoperable Master Format (IMF) standardization project. Chang joined the Academy as a member-at-large earlier this year.
The returning Council co-chairs for 2016–2017 are two members of the Academy’s Visual Effects Branch: Academy governor Craig Barron, an Oscar®-winning visual effects supervisor; and Paul Debevec, a sr. staff engineer at Google VR, adjunct professor at the USC Institute for Creative Technologies and a lead developer of the Light Stage image capture and rendering technology, for which he received a Scientific and Engineering Award in 2009.
The Council’s 22 other returning members are Wendy Aylsworth, Academy vice president John Bailey, Rob Bredow, Lisa Zeno Churgin, Elizabeth Cohen, Douglas Greenfield, Don Hall, John Hora, Jim Houston, Rob Hummel, Randal Kleiser, Academy governor John Knoll, Beverly Pasterczyk, Cary Phillips, Joshua Pines, Douglas Roble, Milt Shefter, David Stump, Steve Sullivan, Academy governor Bill Taylor, Academy governor Michael Tronick and Beverly Wood.
Established in 2003 by the Academy’s Board of Governors, the Science and Technology Council provides a forum for the exchange of information, promotes cooperation among diverse technological interests within the industry, sponsors publications, fosters educational activities, and preserves the history of the science and technology of motion pictures.
Review: Director John Crowley’s “We Live In Time”
It's not hard to spend a few hours watching Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield fall and be in love. In "We Live In Time," filmmaker John Crowley puts the audience up close and personal with this photogenic British couple through the highs and lows of a relationships in their 30s.
Everyone starts to think about the idea of time, and not having enough of it to do everything they want, at some point. But it seems to hit a lot of us very acutely in that tricky, lovely third decade. There's that cruel biological clock, of course, but also careers and homes and families getting older. Throw a cancer diagnosis in there and that timer gets ever more aggressive.
While we, and Tobias (Garfield) and Almut (Pugh), do indeed live in time, as we're constantly reminded in big and small ways — clocks and stopwatches are ever-present, literally and metaphorically — the movie hovers above it. The storytelling jumps back and forth through time like a scattershot memory as we piece together these lives that intersect in an elaborate, mystical and darkly comedic way: Almut runs into Tobias with her car. Their first chat is in a hospital hallway, with those glaring fluorescent lights and him bruised and cut all over. But he's so struck by this beautiful woman in front of him, he barely seems to care.
I suppose this could be considered a Lubitschian "meet-cute" even if it knowingly pushes the boundaries of our understanding of that romance trope. Before the hit, Tobias was in a hotel, attempting to sign divorce papers and his pens were out of ink and pencils kept breaking. In a fit of near-mania he leaves, wearing only his bathrobe, to go to a corner store and buy more. Walking back, he drops something in the street and bang: A new relationship is born. It's the... Read More