The experts behind the Oscar-winning film The Jungle Book and the VES Award-winning John Lewis Christmas Ad will join Sohonet to discuss how VFX Studios are utilising cloud rendering tools to reach a level of visual complexity and detail in their work with increasingly tight deadlines. And how they are benefiting from expanding their compute abilities beyond in-house walls to deal with the dramatic spikes in rendering workloads as deadlines approach. This panel will feature incredible behind the scenes footage from both The Jungle Book and The John Lewis Christmas Ad.
The Panel Moderator: Gary Negus, VP Sales, EMEA at Sohonet
Panelists: David Spilsbury, Director of Technology at MPC Advertising,
Craig Dibble, Lead Render Systems Engineer at MPC Film,
Oliver Pennington, Head of Engineering at Sohonet
Gary Negus, VP Sales, EMEA, Sohonet Gary leads the delivery and development of Sohonet's sales and customer account management practice across Europe. He has 25+ experience implementing the best practices for sales and customer relationship management into enterprises across Media, It and Finance. Before joining Sohonet in 2013, Gary was Global Account Director and Media Services Sales Manager at Technicolor where he developed key strategic relationships internationally and led the European Media Services sales team back to growth.
Craig Dibble, Lead Render Systems Engineer at MPC Film Craig is the Lead Render Systems Engineer at MPC. He has been the lead architect on MPC's secure cloud render platform, first developed for Disney's "The Jungle Book", and the first such platform to be given permission to render Disney content in the cloud. He has since been a major factor in developing the security and audit documentation and driving studio acceptance of cloud technology for VFX. He has overseen the deployment of the platform at 5 of MPC's sites so far, providing easy access to burst render capacity and allowing MPC Film and MPC Advertising to easily scale their resources up and down as required. Craig joined MPC in 2014 from Animal Logic where he built and managed their render farm, which was at one stage the most powerful supercomputer in Australia.
David Spilsbury, Director of Technology at MPC Advertising Oliver Pennington, Head of Engineering, Sohonet Oliver joined Sohonet in 2013, and leads the UK Engineering team with the long-term goal of automating the existing Engineering and Operations workflow.Oliver is in charge of the development and design of compelling customer solutions that directly respond to the growing demands for digital workflows in the film, broadcast and media industries.He has also been largely involved in both the development and deployment of Sohonet’s Connected Cloud Services, notably, Sohonet FastLane - a tool which serves as a direct connection to the industry's major cloud service providers.
About Sohonet Sohonet are the global experts in connectivity, media services and network security for the media and entertainment industry. We allow creatives to work on content wherever they are in the world by providing an extensive range of solutions which enable them to transfer and store valuable and critical content quickly or to collaborate securely in real-time. And all of this is backed up by our unrivaled 24/7 technical support. The Sohonet Media Network is the largest and most-established private, high-performance network for the media industry and connects over 450 of the leading studios, production and post-production facilities around the world. Sohonet enjoys strong partnerships within the broadcast and film industry, supporting organizations such as the BFC, The Production Guild, SIGGRAPH, HPA, SMPTE, The Digital Production Partnership, AMWA, UK Screen Association, The Production Guild, MESA and MESA Europe, and The Visual Effects Society. About MPC MPCs a creative studio, which crafts spectacular visual experiences in any space, on any screen. They have been global leaders in VFX for over 25 years with industry-leading facilities in London, Vancouver, Los Angeles, New York, Bangalore, Montreal, Paris, Amsterdam, and Shanghai. MPC Film serve the international movie industry by bringing the vision of some of the world’s most creative film makers to life. They won the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects for their stunning work on Disney's The Jungle Book in 2017 and in 2012 they won the Oscar for their contribution to the VFX of Life Of Pi. Recent projects include Ghost in the Shell, Blade Runner 2049, Alien Covenant, the Mummy, Pirates of the Caribbean: Salazar’s Revenge and Justice League.