Charlie Cox, the man behind the Daredevil mask and the voice of Gustave in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, has admitted he doesn’t know much about the RPG. He spent about four hours recording his lines, and that was that. He even said he feels like a “t

Christophe Derennes and Charlie Guillemot will act as co-CEOs of the new subsidiary announced in March.

ActuGaming.net Ubisoft nomme Charlie Guillemot et Christophe Derennes à la tête de sa nouvelle filiale stratégique Ubisoft poursuit la structuration de sa nouvelle filiale dédiée à ses licences phares. Ce 16 […] L'article Ubisoft nomme Charlie

Studio CEO Ted Gill, Subnautica game director Charlie Cleveland, and technical director Max McGuire have all departed the company.

I ran into an old episode of Hogan’s Heroes the other day that stuck me as odd. It didn’t have a laugh track. Ironically, the show was one where two pilots …read more

One of the four pillars of good conversation is levity. You needn’t be a comedian, you can but have some funTetra Images, LLC/Alamy Conversation lies at the heart of our relationships – yet many of us find it surprisingly hard to talk to others. We may feel anxious at the thought of making small talk with strangers and struggle to connect with the people who are closest to us. If that sounds familiar, Alison Wood Brooks hopes to help. She is a professor at Harvard Business School, where she teaches an oversubscribed course called “TALK: How to talk gooder in business and life”, and the author of a new book, Talk: The science of conversation and the art of being ourselves. Both offer four key principles for more meaningful exchanges. Conversations are inherently unpredictable, says Wood Brooks, but they follow certain rules – and knowing their architecture makes us more comfortable with what is outside of our control. New Scientist asked her about the best ways to apply this research to our own chats. David Robson: Talking about talking feels quite meta. Do you ever find yourself critiquing your own performance? Alison Wood Brooks: There are so many levels of “meta-ness”. I have often felt like I’m floating over the room, watching conversations unfold, even as I’m involved in them myself. I teach a course at Harvard, and [my students] all get to experience this feeling as well. There can be an uncomfortable period of hypervigilance, but I hope that dissipates over time as they develop better habits. There is a famous quote from Charlie Parker, who was a jazz saxophonist. He said something like, “Practise, practise, practise, and then when you get on stage, let it all go and just wail.” I think that’s my approach to conversation. Even when you’re hyper-aware of conversation dynamics, you have to remember the true delight of being with another human mind, and never lose the magic of being together. Think ahead, but once you’re talking, let it all go and just wail. Reading your book, I learned that a good way to enliven a conversation is to ask someone why they are passionate about what they do. So, where does your passion for conversation come from? I have two answers to this question. One is professional. Early in my professorship at Harvard, I had been studying emotions by exploring how people talk about their feelings and the balance between what we feel inside and how we express that to others. And I realised I just had this deep, profound interest in figuring out how people talk to each other about everything, not just their feelings. We now have scientific tools that allow us to capture conversations and analyse them at large scale. Natural language processing, machine learning, the advent of AI – all this allows us to take huge swathes of transcript data and process it much more efficiently. Receive a weekly dose of discovery in your inbox. Sign up to newsletter The personal answer is that I’m an identical twin, and I spent my whole life, from the moment I opened my newborn eyes, existing next to a person who’s an exact copy of myself. It was like observing myself at very close range, interacting with the world, interacting with other people. I could see when she said and did things well, and I could try to do that myself. And I saw when her jokes failed, or she stumbled over her words – I tried to avoid those mistakes. It was a very fortunate form of feedback that not a lot of people get. And then, as a twin, you’ve got this person sharing a bedroom, sharing all your clothes, going to all the same parties and playing on the same sports teams, so we were just constantly in conversation with each other. You reached this level of shared reality that is so incredible, and I’ve spent the rest of my life trying to help other people get there in their relationships, too. “TALK” cleverly captures your framework for better conversations: topics, asking, levity and kindness. Let’s start at the beginning. How should we decide what to talk about? My first piece of advice is to prepare. Some people do this naturally. They already think about the things that they should talk about with somebody before they see them. They should lean into this habit. Some of my students, however, think it’s crazy. They think preparation will make the conversation seem rigid and forced and overly scripted. But just because you’ve thought ahead about what you might talk about doesn’t mean you have to talk about those things once the conversation is underway. It does mean, however, that you always have an idea waiting for you when you’re not sure what to talk about next. Having just one topic in your back pocket can help you in those anxiety-ridden moments. It makes things more fluent, which is important for establishing a connection. Choosing a topic is not only important at the start of a conversation. We’re constantly making decisions about whether we should stay on one subject, drift to something else or totally shift gears and go somewhere wildly different. Sometimes the topic of conversation is obvious. Even then, knowing when to switch to a new one can be trickyMartin Parr/Magnum Photos What’s your advice when making these decisions? There are three very clear signs that suggest that it’s time to switch topics. The first is longer mutual pauses. The second is more uncomfortable laughter, which we use to fill the space that we would usually fill excitedly with good content. And the third sign is redundancy. Once you start repeating things that have already been said on the topic, it’s a sign that you should move to something else. After an average conversation, most people feel like they’ve covered the right number of topics. But if you ask people after conversations that didn’t go well, they’ll more often say that they didn’t talk about enough things, rather than that they talked about too many things. This suggests that a common mistake is lingering too long on a topic after you’ve squeezed all the juice out of it. The second element of TALK is asking questions. I think a lot of us have heard the advice to ask more questions, yet many people don’t apply it. Why do you think that is? Many years of research have shown that the human mind is remarkably egocentric. Often, we are so focused on our own perspective that we forget to even ask someone else to share what’s in their mind. Another reason is fear. You’re interested in the other person, and you know you should ask them questions, but you’re afraid of being too intrusive, or that you will reveal your own incompetence, because you feel you should know the answer already. What kinds of questions should we be asking – and avoiding? In the book, I talk about the power of follow-up questions that build on anything that your partner has just said. It shows that you heard them, that you care and that you want to know more. Even one follow-up question can springboard us away from shallow talk into something deeper and more meaningful. There are, however, some bad patterns of question asking, such as “boomerasking”. Michael Yeomans [at Imperial College London] and I have a recent paper about this, and oh my gosh, it’s been such fun to study. It’s a play on the word boomerang: it comes back to the person who threw it. If I ask you what you had for breakfast, and you tell me you had Special K and banana, and then I say, “Well, let me tell you about my breakfast, because, boy, was it delicious” – that’s boomerasking. Sometimes it’s a thinly veiled way of bragging or complaining, but sometimes I think people are genuinely interested to hear from their partner, but then the partner’s answer reminds them so much of their own life that they can’t help but start sharing their perspective. In our research, we have found that this makes your partner feel like you weren’t interested in their perspective, so it seems very insincere. Sharing your own perspective is important. It’s okay at some point to bring the conversation back to yourself. But don’t do it so soon that it makes your partner feel like you didn’t hear their answer or care about it. Research by Alison Wood Brooks includes a recent study on “boomerasking”, a pitfall you should avoid to make conversations flowJanelle Bruno What are the benefits of levity? When we think of conversations that haven’t gone well, we often think of moments of hostility, anger or disagreement, but a quiet killer of conversation is boredom. Levity is the antidote. These small moments of sparkle or fizz can pull us back in and make us feel engaged with each other again. Our research has shown that we give status and respect to people who make us feel good, so much so that in a group of people, a person who can land even one appropriate joke is more likely to be voted as the leader. And the joke doesn’t even need to be very funny! It’s the fact that they were confident enough to try it and competent enough to read the room. Do you have any practical steps that people can apply to generate levity, even if they’re not a natural comedian? Levity is not just about being funny. In fact, aiming to be a comedian is not the right goal. When we watch stand-up on Netflix, comedians have rehearsed those jokes and honed them and practised them for a long time, and they’re delivering them in a monologue to an audience. It’s a completely different task from a live conversation. In real dialogue, what everybody is looking for is to feel engaged, and that doesn’t require particularly funny jokes or elaborate stories. When you see opportunities to make it fun or lighten the mood, that’s what you need to grab. It can come through a change to a new, fresh topic, or calling back to things that you talked about earlier in the conversation or earlier in your relationship. These callbacks – which sometimes do refer to something funny – are such a nice way of showing that you’ve listened and remembered. A levity move could also involve giving sincere compliments to other people. When you think nice things, when you admire someone, make sure you say it out loud. This brings us to the last element of TALK: kindness. Why do we so often fail to be as kind as we would like? Wobbles in kindness often come back to our egocentrism. Research shows that we underestimate how much other people’s perspectives differ from our own, and we forget that we have the tools to ask other people directly in conversation for their perspective. Being a kinder conversationalist is about trying to focus on your partner’s perspective and then figuring what they need and helping them to get it. Finally, what is your number one tip for readers to have a better conversation the next time they speak to someone? Every conversation is surprisingly tricky and complex. When things don’t go perfectly, give yourself and others more grace. There will be trips and stumbles and then a little grace can go very, very far. Topics:

Is the F-150 the ultimate Bratmobile?

The smoke is rising. The clock is ticking. Watch the first teaser for The Lost Bus, Paul Greengrass’s intense new film based on real events! The VFX are made by:beloFX (VFX Supervisor: Russell Bowen)CinesiteILMRISE (VFX Supervisor: Oliver Schulz)Outpost VFX (VFX Supervisor: John McLaren)Vitality Visual Effects (VFX Supervisor: Jiwoong Kim)Mist VFX (VFX Supervisor: Sasi Kumar)Host VFX The Production VFX Supervisor is Charlie Noble.The Production VFX Producer is Gavin Round. Director: Paul GreengrassRelease Date: Fall 2025 (Apple TV+) Screenshot © Vincent Frei – The Art of VFX – 2025 The post The Lost Bus appeared first on The Art of VFX.

By CHRIS McGOWAN Images courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures. Final Destination Bloodlines, the sixth installment in the graphic horror series, kicks off with the film’s biggest challenge – deploying an elaborate, large-scale set piece involving the 400-foot-high Skyview Tower restaurant. While there in 1968, young Iris Campbell (Brec Bassinger) has a premonition about the Skyview burning, cracking, crumbling and collapsing. Then, when she sees these events actually starting to happen around her, she intervenes and causes an evacuation of the tower, thus thwarting death’s design and saving many lives. Years later, her granddaughter, Stefani Reyes (Kaitlyn Santa Juana), inherits the vision of the destruction that could have occurred and realizes death is still coming for the survivors. “I knew we couldn’t put the whole [Skyview restaurant] on fire, but Tony [Lazarowich, Special Effects Supervisor] tried and put as much fire as he could safely and then we just built off that [in VFX] and added a lot more. Even when it’s just a little bit of real fire, the lighting and interaction that can’t be simulated, so I think it was a success in terms of blending that practical with the visual.” —Nordin Rahhali, VFX Supervisor The film opens with an elaborate, large-scale set piece involving the 400-foot-high Skyview Tower restaurant – and its collapse. Drone footage was digitized to create a 3D asset for the LED wall so the time of day could be changed as needed. “The set that the directors wanted was very large,” says Nordin Rahhali, VFX Supervisor. “We had limited space options in stages given the scale and the footprint of the actual restaurant that they wanted. It was the first set piece, the first big thing we shot, so we had to get it all ready and going right off the bat. We built a bigger volume for our needs, including an LED wall that we built the assets for.” “We were outside Vancouver at Bridge Studios in Burnaby. The custom-built LED volume was a little over 200 feet in length” states Christian Sebaldt, ASC, the movie’s DP. The volume was 98 feet in diameter and 24 feet tall. Rahhali explains, “Pixomondo was the vendor that we contracted to come in and build the volume. They also built the asset that went on the LED wall, so they were part of our filming team and production shoot. Subsequently, they were also the main vendor doing post, which was by design. By having them design and take care of the asset during production, we were able to leverage their assets, tools and builds for some of the post VFX.” Rahhali adds, “It was really important to make sure we had days with the volume team and with Christian and his camera team ahead of the shoot so we could dial it in.” Built at Bridge Studios in Burnaby outside Vancouver, the custom-built LED volume for events at the Skyview restaurant was over 200 feet long, 98 feet wide and 24 feet tall. Extensive previs with Digital Domain was done to advance key shots. (Photo: Eric Milner) Zach Lipovsky and Adam Stein directed Final Destination Bloodlines for New Line film, distributed by Warner Bros., in which chain reactions of small and big events lead to bloody catastrophes befalling those who have cheated death at some point. Pixomondo was the lead VFX vendor, followed by FOLKS VFX. Picture Shop also contributed. There were around 800 VFX shots. Tony Lazarowich was the Special Effects Supervisor. “The Skyview restaurant involved building a massive set [that] was fire retardant, which meant the construction took longer than normal because they had to build it with certain materials and coat it with certain things because, obviously, it serves for the set piece. As it’s falling into chaos, a lot of that fire was practical. I really jived with what Christian and directors wanted and how Tony likes to work – to augment as much real practical stuff as possible,” Rahhali remarks. “I knew we couldn’t put the whole thing on fire, but Tony tried and put as much fire as he could safely, and then we just built off that [in VFX] and added a lot more. Even when it’s just a little bit of real fire, the lighting and interaction can’t be simulated, so I think it was a success in terms of blending that practical with the visual.” The Skyview restaurant required building a massive set that was fire retardant. Construction on the set took longer because it had to be built and coated with special materials. As the Skyview restaurant falls into chaos, much of the fire was practical. (Photo: Eric Milner) “We got all the Vancouver skyline [with drones] so we could rebuild our version of the city, which was based a little on the Vancouver footprint. So, we used all that to build a digital recreation of a city that was in line with what the directors wanted, which was a coastal city somewhere in the States that doesn’t necessarily have to be Vancouver or Seattle, but it looks a little like the Pacific Northwest.” —Christian Sebaldt, ASC, Director of Photography For drone shots, the team utilized a custom heavy-lift drone with three RED Komodo Digital Cinema cameras “giving us almost 180 degrees with overlap that we would then stitch in post and have a ridiculous amount of resolution off these three cameras,” Sebaldt states. “The other drone we used was a DJI Inspire 3, which was also very good. And we flew these drones up at the height [we needed]. We flew them at different times of day. We flew full 360s, and we also used them for photogrammetry. We got all the Vancouver skyline so we could rebuild our version of the city, which was based a little on the Vancouver footprint. So, we used all that to build a digital recreation of a city that was in line with what the directors wanted, which was a coastal city somewhere in the States that doesn’t necessarily have to be Vancouver or Seattle, but it looks a little like the Pacific Northwest.” Rahhali adds, “All of this allowed us to figure out what we were going to shoot. We had the stage build, and we had the drone footage that we then digitized and created a 3D asset to go on the wall [so] we could change the times of day” Pixomondo built the volume and the asset that went on the LED wall for the Skyview sequence. They were also the main vendor during post. FOLKS VFX and Picture Shop contributed. (Photo: Eric Milner) “We did extensive previs with Digital Domain,” Rahhali explains. “That was important because we knew the key shots that the directors wanted. With a combination of those key shots, we then kind of reverse-engineered [them] while we did techvis off the previs and worked with Christian and the art department so we would have proper flexibility with the set to be able to pull off some of these shots. [For example,] some of these shots required the Skyview restaurant ceiling to be lifted and partially removed for us to get a crane to shoot Paul [Max Lloyd-Jones] as he’s about to fall and the camera’s going through a roof, that we then digitally had to recreate. Had we not done the previs to know those shots in advance, we would not have been able to build that in time to accomplish the look. We had many other shots that were driven off the previs that allowed the art department, construction and camera teams to work out how they would get those shots.” Some shots required the Skyview’s ceiling to be lifted and partially removed to get a crane to shoot Paul Campbell (Max Lloyd-Jones) as he’s about to fall. The character Iris lived in a fortified house, isolating herself methodically to avoid the Grim Reaper. Rahhali comments, “That was a beautiful location [in] GVRD [Greater Vancouver], very cold. It was a long, hard shoot, because it was all nights. It was just this beautiful pocket out in the middle of the mountains. We in visual effects didn’t do a ton other than a couple of clean-ups of the big establishing shots when you see them pull up to the compound. We had to clean up small roads we wanted to make look like one road and make the road look like dirt.” There were flames involved. Sebaldt says, “The explosion [of Iris’s home] was unbelievably big. We had eight cameras on it at night and shot it at high speed, and we’re all going ‘Whoa.’” Rahhali notes, “There was some clean-up, but the explosion was 100% practical. Our Special Effects Supervisor, Tony, went to town on that. He blew up the whole house, and it looked spectacular.” The tattoo shop piercing scene is one of the most talked-about sequences in the movie, where a dangling chain from a ceiling fan attaches itself to the septum nose piercing of Erik Campbell (Richard Harmon) and drags him toward a raging fire. Rahhali observes, “That was very Final Destination and a great Rube Goldberg build-up event. Richard was great. He was tied up on a stunt line for most of it, balancing on top of furniture. All of that was him doing it for real with a stunt line.” Some effects solutions can be surprisingly extremely simple. Rahhali continues, “Our producer [Craig Perry] came up with a great gag [for the] septum ring.” Richard’s nose was connected with just a nose plug that went inside his nostrils. “All that tugging and everything that you’re seeing was real. For weeks and weeks, we were all trying to figure out how to do it without it being a big visual effects thing. ‘How are we gonna pull his nose for real?’ Craig said, ‘I have these things I use to help me open up my nose and you can’t really see them.’ They built it off of that, and it looked great.” Filmmakers spent weeks figuring out how to execute the harrowing tattoo shop scene. A dangling chain from a ceiling fan attaches itself to the septum nose ring of Erik Campbell (Richard Harmon) – with the actor’s nose being tugged by the chain connected to a nose plug that went inside his nostrils. “[S]ome of these shots required the Skyview restaurant ceiling to be lifted and partially removed for us to get a crane to shoot Paul [Campbell] as he’s about to fall and the camera’s going through a roof, that we then digitally had to recreate. Had we not done the previs to know those shots in advance, we would not have been able to build that in time to accomplish the look. We had many other shots that were driven off the previs that allowed the art department, construction and camera teams to work out how they would get those shots.” —Nordin Rahhali, VFX Supervisor Most of the fire in the tattoo parlor was practical. “There are some fire bars and stuff that you’re seeing in there from SFX and the big pool of fire on the wide shots.” Sebaldt adds, “That was a lot of fun to shoot because it’s so insane when he’s dancing and balancing on all this stuff – we were laughing and laughing. We were convinced that this was going to be the best scene in the movie up to that moment.” Rahhali says, “They used the scene wholesale for the trailer. It went viral – people were taking out their septum rings.” Erik survives the parlor blaze only to meet his fate in a hospital when he is pulled by a wheelchair into an out-of-control MRI machine at its highest magnetic level. Rahhali comments, “That is a good combination of a bunch of different departments. Our Stunt Coordinator, Simon Burnett, came up with this hard pull-wire line [for] when Erik flies and hits the MRI. That’s a real stunt with a double, and he hit hard. All the other shots are all CG wheelchairs because the directors wanted to art-direct how the crumpling metal was snapping and bending to show pressure on him as his body starts going into the MRI.” To augment the believability that comes with reality, the directors aimed to capture as much practically as possible, then VFX Supervisor Nordin Rahhali and his team built on that result. (Photo: Eric Milner) A train derailment concludes the film after Stefani and her brother, Charlie, realize they are still on death’s list. A train goes off the tracks, and logs from one of the cars fly though the air and kills them. “That one was special because it’s a hard sequence and was also shot quite late, so we didn’t have a lot of time. We went back to Vancouver and shot the actual street, and we shot our actors performing. They fell onto stunt pads, and the moment they get touched by the logs, it turns into CG as it was the only way to pull that off and the train of course. We had to add all that. The destruction of the houses and everything was done in visual effects.” Erik survives the tattoo parlor blaze only to meet his fate in a hospital when he is crushed by a wheelchair while being pulled into an out-of-control MRI machine. Erik (Richard Harmon) appears about to be run over by a delivery truck at the corner of 21A Ave. and 132A St., but he’s not – at least not then. The truck is actually on the opposite side of the road, and the person being run over is Howard. A rolling penny plays a major part in the catastrophic chain reactions and seems to be a character itself. “The magic penny was a mix from two vendors, Pixomondo and FOLKS; both had penny shots,” Rahhali says. “All the bouncing pennies you see going through the vents and hitting the fan blade are all FOLKS. The bouncing penny at the end as a lady takes it out of her purse, that goes down the ramp and into the rail – that’s FOLKS. The big explosion shots in the Skyview with the penny slowing down after the kid throws it [off the deck] are all Pixomondo shots. It was a mix. We took a little time to find that balance between readability and believability.” Approximately 800 VFX shots were required for Final Destination Bloodlines. (Photo: Eric Milner) Chain reactions of small and big events lead to bloody catastrophes befalling those who have cheated Death at some point in the Final Destination films. From left: Kaitlyn Santa Juana as Stefani Reyes, director Adam Stein, director Zach Lipovsky and Gabrielle Rose as Iris. (Photo: Eric Milner) Rahhali adds, “The film is a great collaboration of departments. Good visual effects are always a good combination of special effects, makeup effects and cinematography; it’s all the planning of all the pieces coming together. For a film of this size, I’m really proud of the work. I think we punched above our weight class, and it looks quite good.”