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  • A Special Award for Top Visual Effects

  • 2023/7/28 15:45:18  &  BY DANS DIGITAL
  • What is AEAF?
    Photography enthusiasts have something to say about it.
    AE is Auto Exposure and AF is Auto Focus.
    Bingo! But the AEAF we're talking about now is not about these two automatic locks when taking pictures.
    It is a global professional film and television advertising special effects event that integrates competition, presentation, and exhibition.
    It is also an important international platform for the exchange of special effects, film and television advertising, and 3D animation works.

    We all know that
    The movie industry has the Oscars.
    The TV industry has the Emmy Award.
    The music industry has the Grammys.
    The journalism industry has the Pulitzer.
    And the world of film and television special effects has the VES (Visual Effects Society Awards).

    And AEAF is also a special effects technology award. 
    Although the history is not very long，
    the scale of the award ceremony is not so grand either,
    it is not so easy to get in.
    In all fairness,
    Take a look at its award-winning film and television commercials, CG animation works, you may know how challenging it is.


    Let's talk about the annual hit "Film Visual Effects" category.

    The Bronze Award went to Godzilla 2: King of the Monsters, produced by MPC, a leading company in film and television commercial and visual effects for post-production

    This popcorn monster movie, which is called "What Logic, what plot, special effects are enough," was another visual effects fest. The masses see straight after the addiction.



    The Silver Award went to Alita: Battle Angel, produced by Weta Digital. It is a world-renowned film and television commercial special effects and 3D animation company.
    Cameron has been planning this film for 20 years and has elevated motion capture to a new level of expression capture.
    And it created the first CG and live-action character in the history of cinema, giving us an adrenaline-pumping experience.
    The film used 30,000 computers and a total of 432 million hours of rendering...
    The CG model of the main character Alita's eyes has as many as 9 million polygons, with more than 500,000 tiny hairs on her face...
    And Cameron revealed in an interview with the media that such a huge volume of production is only the Avatar sequel film technology testing process.

    It is a very bold approach to test the waters of one film with another.



    However, both films that lost to Avengers: Endgame, which was also produced by Weta Digital.
    This movie has set a new record in global box office history.
    It has already surpassed Avatar, the record holder at the box office for nearly a decade.

    Likewise, in the aforementioned VES (Visual Effects Society Awards) competition, the film The Avengers: Endgame also won the gold medal in the category of "Best Visual Effects in a Motion Picture".



    And It's time to mention DANS DIGITAL.
    This year, 4 film and television commercials, promotional videos, and CG animation short films from DANS DIGITAL were shortlisted .
    Since the first entry in 2017, all 10 film and TV commercials, promotional videos and CG animation shorts submitted by Dans Digital have been shortlisted.
    In this high-level competition, the finalists are all evenly matched.
    Winning is almost no longer a competition of strength, 
    but a battle of luck, 

    popularity, social influence, and the themes.

    Without further ado, let's take a look at the four film and television commercials, and promotional videos, which belong to four different factions.

    In “ the Best Animation Commercials” category, the film and television commercials and CG animation short work T5 Wildest Dreams has been shortlisted. And it belongs to the “Jaw Dropping Faction”.



    In  “ the Best Animation Commercials” category, the film and television commercial, corporate video and CG animation short work Yuxin Building has been shortlisted. It belongs to the “Poetic Etherealism Faction”. 

    And we will publish this filmseparately in the coming days.



    In  “ the Best VFX Commercials” category, the city promotional video and CG animation short film Wutong Emerging Industrial Cluster has been shortlisted. 
    It belongs to the “Stunning Visual Effects Faction”. 

    And due to the business plan, this work cannot be shown to the audience yet.



    In “ the Best VFX Commercials” category, the city promotional video and CG animation short film NDU Tianjin Dredging has been shortlisted. It belongs to “The Mountain-Shifting and Reclamation Faction”. 



    The same group of people, at the same time, harness four different styles.

    It is as difficult as the simultaneous cultivation of two supreme martial arts.
    It is no wonder that during that time, the director and the entire production team of partners had a painful look on their faces.
    Maybe it is the Proverbs "Be obsessed, or be average".

    In the AEAF award-winning and finalist film and television commercials, 3D animation, CG animation short works,
    we can see that those works have a common point: special effects production is only the carrier, the content is the soul of it. 
    Award-winning works not only have a skilled special effects technology, 
    more importantly, whether the special effects serve the content.

    As Eric, the director of visual effects at Weta Digital, which produced Alita said
    “The purpose of the special effects we do is to make the audience forget about the technology while watching the movie.”
    This is the unique appeal of AEAF in special effects events.
    DANS DIGITAL has respected this philosophy and applied it to the creation of the film, TV commercials, and 3D animated promos.