Pixomondo London has launched its first wave of pre-production creative services for feature film and high-end TV projects spearheaded by PXO’s UK head of studio Alex Webster and previs supervisor Matt Perrin.
The move follows the company’s strategic push into virtual production, which has seen PXO build a portfolio of state-of-the-art LED sound stages in Vancouver and Toronto with plans for a first stage in London.
Webster joined PXO last year and has put together a specialist visualization team creatively led by Perrin, who has supervised previs for such tent pole titles as Spiderman: Far From Home, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, and Aladdin.
Webster said that PXO is “combining pre-production, virtual art department (VAD), virtual production, and in-camera VFX (ICVFX) into one cohesive ecosystem. Along with our creative tools built in Unreal Engine, we can begin collaborating on a project at its inception and work with filmmakers to world build and visualize sequences that carry through to ICVFX shot on PXO’s own LED volumes.”
Perrin got his start on the James Bond film Skyfall and World War Z. His forthcoming titles include Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, The School for Good and Evil, The Little Mermaid, and Wonka.
At PXO, Perrin is supported by a team of hand-picked visualization artists, creative technologists, and producers who work across all aspects of the pre-production process. Among them are lead VAD artist and layout supervisor Russell Tickner, VAD and virtual production producer Andy Jamison, virtual production supervisor Samat Algozhin, asset builder Laura Frasnelli and agile virtual production supervisor James Thompson.
“PXO is creating a pipeline and toolset from scratch, which merges the traditional with the new to provide interactivity in the early creative process,” said Perrin. “We’re using the latest real-time tech to improve the creative process and drive production values beyond anything we’ve seen before. Set this in the context of our work in virtual production and ICVFX, and we’ve got something quite special brewing.”
PXO’s virtual production work includes Star Trek: Discovery Season Four and the inaugural Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, debuting on May 5. PXO’s Vancouver stage–billed as the largest LED stage globally–is currently in production on Netflix’s upcoming Avatar: The Last Airbender. The Canadian virtual production stages are built in conjunction with production equipment rental specialist William F. White International.
PXO London is taking previs bookings starting in May.
Austrian activist wins privacy/targeted advertising case against Meta over personal data on sexual orientation
The European Union's top court said Friday that social media company Meta can't use public information about a user's sexual orientation obtained outside its platforms for personalized advertising under the bloc's strict data privacy rules.
The decision from the Court of Justice of the European Union in Luxembourg is a victory for Austrian privacy activist Max Schrems, who has been a thorn in the side of Big Tech companies over their compliance with 27-nation bloc's data privacy rules.
The EU court issued its ruling after Austria's supreme court asked for guidance in Schrems' case on how to apply the privacy rules, known as the General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR.
Schrems had complained that Facebook had processed personal data including information about his sexual orientation to target him with online advertising, even though he had never disclosed on his account that he was gay. The only time he had publicly revealed this fact was during a panel discussion.
"An online social network such as Facebook cannot use all of the personal data obtained for the purposes of targeted advertising, without restriction as to time and without distinction as to type of data," the court said in a press release summarizing its decision.
Even though Schrems revealed he was gay in the panel discussion, that "does not authorise the operator of an online social network platform to process other data relating to his sexual orientation, obtained, as the case may be, outside that platform, with a view to aggregating and analysing those data, in order to offer him personalised advertising."
Meta said it was awaiting publication of the court's full judgment and that it "takes privacy very seriously."
"Everyone using Facebook has... Read More