SAPPHIRE PLUG-INS: THE SPARKS THAT KEEP
THE FLAMES BURNING AT BRICKYARD


Brickyard, a leading Boston & Santa Monica-based special effects boutique focusing on national TV commercials, was founded some 4 years ago by veteran editor and visual effects artist Dave Waller. Recently, a number of high-profile projects such as the new 'Pods Unite' spot (a shared marketing effort between VW and Apple) and the monster.com 'Driver' Superbowl spot have been keeping Brickyard's flames and combustion systems burning very late at night.

Turbo-charged with GenArts' Sapphire Plug-ins, Brickyard's effects and compositing systems have helped Waller's ever-growing team produce stunning work that ranges from the spectacular, such as blowing up trucks into gas stations, to the slightly less glamorous removal of unwanted rigs.

"We use Sapphire Plug-ins every day, but they are so integrated into our workflow that we never think about them as a separate set of tools that we need to access in order to perform a specific task. We all have our favorite Sapphire Plug-ins buttons permanently set up on our systems' desktops," explains Dave Waller.

"In the 'Pods Unite' ad for example we used the Glow effect for the dials on the i-pod; it has to be one of my favorite effects. I use it all the time at the edge of a matte for instance, just to get it to bleed a little bit. It also comes in handy when I comp type over a scene - a little bit of glow together with the Layer spark makes the type feel like it's embedded into the scene - sort of like the difference between a cheese sandwich and a grilled cheese. On the Monster spot, we used GlowDarks on every shot as a way to enrich the already beautiful footage and give it a signature look. It allows us to take the blacks and run them down into the picture to create the most amazing expensive look without spending hours and hours on it," he adds.

Waller and his team are always on the look-out for new technology that will foster their creativity and help them produce better work faster.

"We got very excited when we learned that GenArts was releasing Sapphire Plug-ins for burn. To be honest, there aren't that many truly exciting days in the world of flame operation, but every couple of years or so, something truly exciting comes out. The combination of flame, burn, and Sapphire Plug-ins is one of those rare events! It will be a wonderful way to increase the speed of our machines. Some of the Sapphire Plug-ins are very computationally demanding. With burn everything will speed up, which means that we will probably end up using Sapphire even more because we won't even have to think about render times!"

Brickyard is currently in the process of adding an inferno and more flames to its armory

"As we look towards expanding our number of systems, the one thing I know for sure is that every single one will have a copy of Sapphire Plug-ins on it. Sapphire is actually a bargain when you consider how much you end up using them and how different your life would be without them. I've sometimes thought that if I had to rent a flame tomorrow because one of ours was broken and it didn't have Sapphire Plug-ins on it, I just wouldn't know what to do, it would be like having my eye put out," comments Waller.


About Sapphire Plug-ins
Sapphire Plug-ins provide digital artists with a collection of over 200 state-of-the-art image processing and synthesis effects. They fully and seamlessly integrate into a number of editing and compositing systems including: Adobe After Effects and Adobe Premiere; Apple Final Cut Pro and Shake; Avid's DNA family of products, Media Composer, Xpress, Xpress DV, Symphony and Avid DS; Discreet combustion, flint, flame, inferno, fire, smoke, and burn. Sapphire Plug-ins offer a comprehensive suite of tools and effects that can transform any film or video clip. They are resolution-independent, include multi-processor support for faster rendering, and run on Windows, Mac, Linux, and Irix. Effects in the package range from everyday tools such as Glows, EdgeRays, LensFlare, Glint, Blurs and RackDefocus, to more exotic effects like Lightning Zaps, FlysEye, JpegDamage, HalfTone and Textures.

About GenArts, Inc.
Based in Cambridge, Mass., GenArts, Inc. is a premier provider of digital visual effects plug-ins for the film and video industry. Introduced in 1996, Sapphire Plug-ins have become an industry standard for high-end visual effects creation at leading studios, broadcast and post production facilities around the world. They are widely recognized for their unrivaled quality and ease-of-use, and have been used extensively to create an array of feature films such as Terminator 3, The Matrix Reloaded, The Lord of the Rings, X-Men II, Daredevil, Star Wars-Episode I and II, Spider-Man, Ice Age, Pearl Harbor, Final Fantasy, Dinosaur, Titanic, Armageddon, Planet of the Apes, Contact, Star Trek and Godzilla. Additional GenArts product information can be found at http://www.genarts.com.

Contact:
GenArts, Inc.
1-617-492-2888
info@>genarts.com

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