Apple TV+ miniseries Five Days at Memorial shines a light on a disturbing true story of a New Orleans hospital flooded during Hurricane Katrina. In this podcast, the show’s VFX supervisors — returning guest Eric Durst and newbie Matt Whelan — reveal how they recreated New Orleans circa 2005 and added invisible effects that would earn the show an Emmy nomination.

Eric and Matt talk about how they worked with the show’s practical team to build versatile sets that would seamlessly integrate with CG, and discuss how Google Earth helped them rebuild and reflood New Orleans. They also give an on-set perspective on how AI is changing the industry.

What if the 1969 moon landing catastrophically failed? That’s the question artist Halsey Burgund poses with his “Moon Disaster” project, which makes use of AI technology to envision then-president Richard Nixon delivering an alternative speech to be used in the case of emergency.

In doing so, Halsey draws attention to the fact that such a speech existed and was never broadcast, as well as the ways in which modern technology can fool viewers. Halsey sheds light on the video and audio technology used for this alternative take on history, talks about how he combines tech and art for his audio installations and reveals what he’s got coming up.

Recorded at a high-tech facility in Chaos’ plush new offices in Sofia, Bulgaria, this week’s episode checks in with Vladimir “Vlado” Koylazov, Chaos’ co-founder. Chris discovers more about Vlado’s new role as head of innovation, and how the company is embracing recent technological developments to make it easy and efficient for customers to stage and render scenes.

Vlado also shares his thoughts on how artificial intelligence is changing the way software works, as well as how it’s helping his team code. You’ll learn about interesting uses for NeRFs and camera tracking, the benefits of having a personal assistant, and some of the exciting new things coming up from Chaos.

Much has changed since Chaos launched Project Lavina in 2020. Remote working has become the norm, real-time workflows have become increasingly prevalent, and GPU power has accelerated. In response, Lavina has evolved into Chaos Vantage, a real-time ray-traced rendering engine tailored to the needs of today’s VFX and arch viz artists.

Simeon Balabanov, Chaos Vantage’s product manager, talks through what makes the engine different from other real-time rendering solutions and dives into current rendering techniques at the same time. Simeon also reveals what’s new in Chaos Vantage 2, including the surprising use cases that have shaped its features, and he offers a sneak peek into what’s coming up for this groundbreaking software.

Hanno Basse has been a guiding hand behind the scenes of the modern entertainment experience. At 20th Century Fox, he pushed HDR into the movie experience at home and in theaters, and he helped the entertainment industry adopt cloud computing via his role at Microsoft Azure. Today, Hanno is bringing his expertise to Digital Domain, where he serves as CTO.

In this podcast, Hanno reveals how advances in machine learning have taken DD’s famous digital humans from the Avengers’ Thanos to She-Hulk: Attorney at Law’s protagonist and added realism to the video game The Quarry. Hanno also discusses how real-time technology is improving the entire production process and gives his thoughts on the future of VFX.

Terrence Masson’s students are probably the luckiest on the planet. The computer arts lecturer draws on 30 years of experience in the industry, from working on innovative movies including True Lies and Interview with the Vampire, helping create South Park’s progenitor in CG, and retooling the original Star Wars trilogy for its 1997 reissue.

In this podcast, Terrence talks through some highlights of his career, including how he flew the Millennium Falcon and killed Boba Fett for Star Wars, and how he was called on to review UFO footage for Ancient Aliens. He also talks about his gaming and archviz experiences, and shares some interesting perspectives on AI in education.

Michelle Munson’s passion for internet technology took her from streaming video over LAN to founding data transfer company Aspera. Now, she’s launched Eluvio, a Web3-based content distribution system that makes it easier and cheaper for producers to share media while giving consumers fair access to a high-quality product with added extras.

Michelle discusses Eluvio’s partnership with Warner Bros, and its first content: Superman and Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of The Ring. Michelle also busts some of the myths around NFTs and blockchain technology, and talks about how the Eluvio Content Fabric Protocol could be adopted by streaming platforms, indie producers, and live events in the future.

After being inspired by Star Wars to pursue a career in entertainment law, Joshua Lastine helped with clearances on everything from American Idol to The Man in the High Castle to Midway to the Hulkbuster armor in Avengers: Age of Ultron and weapons for TV series Echo 3. Today, Joshua runs Lastine Entertainment Law, which drafts bespoke agreements for everything from YouTube videos to big-budget movies, and he teaches law at Los Angeles Film School.

In this podcast, Joshua covers all the hot topics in the film and TV industry, including AI, the causes of the writers’ strike, digital celebrities, and the effects of streaming media. Joshua offers an informed perspective on where the industry is going, details the strengths and weaknesses of artificial intelligence, and explains how copyright law applies to everything from code to works of art.

Marc Simonetti’s dreamy visual style has made him a big name in sci-fi and fantasy art — but what does this mean in the age of AI? In this podcast, Marc tells Chris how it feels to have your name used as an AI art prompt some 400,000 times, and what it’s like to see your name attached to artwork that isn’t yours.

But it’s not all bad — Marc delves into the advantages of AI art and how it might put the concept back into concept art, and offers positive advice for budding artists who are about to embark on art courses. He also talks about his fascinating career, which has seen him rub shoulders with George RR Martin, and he discusses his work on movies including Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets and the upcoming Ghostbusters: Afterlife sequel.

Hailing from Detroit, Linden Vennard began his career in visualizing vehicles (of course!). Having established pipelines that turned raw CAD data into sumptuous CG images, Linden became a core part of Speedshape, the VFX studio that specialized in creating visuals for automotive companies. After Speedshape closed, Linden traveled to Asia and Africa before returning to the US to become a freelance CG generalist.

Linden talks about his early inspirations to pursue a career in VFX, how he got started in automotive visualization, and how he worked with budding Hollywood director Joseph Kosinski to bring his “Blackbird” commercial to life. Linden also talks about his explorations in Midjourney AI imagery, where he’s created over 10,000 images.