Posted – April 9th, 2011
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Welcome to my blog!
欢迎来我的博客！

 
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My name is Jan Heinze – vfx producer and spare time geek. I am interested in people, cultures, communication and stories. This is why I love my job as a manager and producer, live in China and travel a lot, try to learn everything about communication and understanding, work in a story-telling “oriented” industry. [more about me]

I collect impressions, inspirations, links – publish articles and pictures on this website.

Posted – November 23rd, 2011
under Logbook, Visual Effects
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Suckerpunch, Fast5, Hugo, Red Tails … – it’s a wrap!

 
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…  Journey, Ironman 2, Percy Jackson, The Loosers, Nightmare on Elmstreet, Hindenburg … Just trying to catch up on the last year in this post :) What a productive year! We just opened the “new” PIXOMONDO Beijing facility 2 years ago and already finished our work on the 8th Hollywood movie, several TV shows, commercials and a lot of very nice local projects.

Thanks to everyone who made that possible and supported us. Big respect to the team – especially the artists, leads, coordinators, managers who believe in and work so much for our goal to develop this facility as a “visual effects and design lighthouse” for high-quality productions and a good and collaborative working environment in China. I guess we are developing our very own way on how we do productions and business here …. There is still a lot of hard work in front of us, but I am sure this facility has a bright future. I hope I will find the time to post some more about the projects we were doing and the ones we are working on now. (If we are allowed to talk about them ;)

Posted – November 23rd, 2011
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Random Sapiency

 
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Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did. ~ Mark Twain

Posted – November 23rd, 2011
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Random Sapiency

 
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Defeat is not defeat unless accepted as a reality in your own mind. ~ Bruce Lee

Posted – July 17th, 2011
under Logbook, Sapiency
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Random Sapiency

 
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And in the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years. ~ Abraham Lincoln

Posted – July 13th, 2011
under Links, Technology, Visual Effects
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Arri Alexa

 
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We are working on visual effects for some major feature films  (stereo and mono) shot on the Arri Alexa. As we are starting to offer complete post production solutions in China (for digital movie projects) I did some research on the specific work-flows for this camera. I am sharing some interesting and useful links, if you consider shooting on Arri Alexa or do post-production:

Press Release from Arri (no lies;):

After much anticipation, ARRI is pleased to unveil ALEXA — the first model in a new generation of digital cameras for feature, television, commercial, documentary, music video production and more. Compact, ergonomic and lightweight on one hand, robust with ARRI’s legendary reliability on the other, ALEXA’s new Super 35 format sensor delivers amazing images with a base sensitivity of EI 800, low noise and an unsurpassed dynamic range of 13.5 stops. ARRI Imaging Technology (AIT) captures organic, film-like images unlike any digital camera, with natural color rendition and pleasing skin tones.
The unique Dual Gain Architecture (DGA) design of ALEXA’s CMOS sensor ensures the same wide exposure latitude across a range of sensitivity from EI 200 to EI 1600. This creates opportunities in post-production, where it is easier and faster to get the most out of the rich, captured images. Good detail in both highlight and shadow areas as well as a very low noise level help the colorist to reduce time, effort and thus, cost in grading. ALEXA’s excellent signal to noise ratio and clean color separation are particularly effective for greenscreen and VFX work.
The ALEXA system represents the most versatile and quickest workflow from the set, through post to distribution. This is achieved through ALEXA’s efficient Shoot To Edit (Shoot > Edit) workflow with a multitude of output options, complete metadata and integrated color management.
ALEXA is unique in that it can simultaneously record Apple QuickTime/ProRes files, output uncompressed HD video and uncompressed ARRIRAW data.

Posted – June 20th, 2011
under Logbook, Sapiency
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Random Sapiency

 
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People do not seem to realize that their opinion of the World is also a confession of character. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Posted – April 21st, 2011
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Random Sapiency

 
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“The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, but illusion of knowledge.” Stephen Hawking

Posted – April 21st, 2011
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Random Sapiency

 
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“The fairest rules are those to which everyone would agree if they did not know how much power they would have.” John Rawls

Posted – April 11th, 2011
under Exploring Beijing, Featured, Fun & Recreation, Logbook, Picture Blog
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Exploring Beijing | Summer Palast 颐和园

 
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One the most beautiful sites in Beijing! Go there during the week and you will almost be alone ;)
The Summer Palace (simplified Chinese: 颐和园; traditional Chinese: 頤和園; pinyin: Yíhé Yuán; literally “Gardens of Nurtured Harmony”) is a palace in Beijing, China. The Summer Palace is mainly dominated by Longevity Hill (60 meters high) and the Kunming Lake. It covers an expanse of 2.9 square kilometers, three-quarters of which is water.
In December 1998, UNESCO included the Summer Palace on its World Heritage List. It declared the Summer Palace “a masterpiece of Chinese landscape garden design. [wikipedia.org]

 

Posted – April 9th, 2011
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Random Sapiency

 
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Nothing makes you more tolerant of a neighbours’ noisy party than being there. – Franklin P. Jones

Posted – April 6th, 2011
under Cultures, Information Design, Inspiration
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Hans Rosling: Asia’s rise — how and when

 
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This is one of my favourite TED speakers. The facts as well as the way he is visualizing data and make it understandable are mind blowing and very inspiring.

Hans Rosling was a young guest student in India when he first realized that Asia had all the capacities to reclaim its place as the world’s dominant economic force. At TEDIndia, he graphs global economic growth since 1858 and predicts the exact date that India and China will outstrip the US.

Posted – April 6th, 2011
under Links, Logbook, Project Management, Visual Effects
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Link: Talk Management System Blog

 
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Interesting posts about business logic, process management, recruiting etc. This is a corporate blog but still useful and inspiring.

http://talkmgt.com/blog/

Posted – April 2nd, 2011
under Exploring Beijing, Featured, Fun & Recreation, Logbook, Picture Blog
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China BW

beijing-bw-6 
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Posted – November 5th, 2009
under Articles, Featured, Logbook, Visual Effects
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Ninja Assassin – out soon!

 
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we were really lucky to have worked on
two thrilling movies recently:
Ninja, James McTeigue Wachowskis,
a very cool actionpiece in the tradition of ninja films with the visual style of the wachowskis

ninjaposterrevisedBesides some other projects I was really lucky to have worked on a thrilling movie as a VFX Producer for Pixomondo this year: Ninja Assassin, directed by James McTeigue (V for Vendetta) and produced by Larry and Andy Wachowskis (The Matrix), is a very cool actionpiece in the tradition of ninja films. Dan Glass and Chris Townsend (Visual Effects Supervisors) gave it a stunning look and us the chance to contribute creativity and sweat! Check out the website!

I am very proud of the work the Ninja team at Pixomondo created and happy about how much it influences the look of the movie. It was a great team-effort on a very demanding show with lot’s of ups and downs. So much passion and love (“Add a little bit more love”;) went into the shots. It was a great experience for me!

Unfortunately we didn’t get the chance to give credit to all the great artist who contributed so much with their work, in the rolling titles of the movies. (We had 6 lines – just enough for 10 credits). But I would like to take the chance to do this here.

ninja_pixomondo_crew_2

Thanks you! It was an honor and pleasure to work with you all!

 

 

VFX Supervisor – Simply a great job, Bjørn!
Björn Mayer

My great coordination crew - keeping track of 160+ shots, countless tasks and notes for more then 50 artists:
Jan Fiedler (the brain)
Viktorija Ogureckaja
Franzisca Puppe

Our fabulous CG and FX crew – creating beautiful rendering and made not just our shots incredible “bloody”:

Bernd Nalbach (CG Supervisor)
Pieter Mentz (Bloody Lead)
Mohsen Mousavi

Fikret Yildirim

Marcel Kern
Irfan Celik
Michele Danzé
Julius Lechner
Ralf Rendelmann

more…

Posted – September 1st, 2009
under Featured, Logbook, Picture Blog
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Indonesia ’09

 
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Back from vacations :-)