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So, you know, as we go and transition here, let's get a switch gears to the next speaker and let's get into the world of fantasy, because this news customer has been using the power of AI to bring entire fantasy worlds to life. For the last 30 years actually. As a leader in visual effects and animation, you've seen the artistry and visual impact in movies like Avatar, you know, Guardians of the Galaxy, Planet of the Apes, Lord of the Rings, and many more. And here's a look of some of their incredible work. Let's play a video. I'm looking for someone to share in an adventure. How am I part of this? You'll see. I know someone who would pay a pretty price for your head. Green night to someone you know. You should get a look at his face. I see you. I do not stand by in the presence of evil. Avengers. I'm about to do something terrible. If we are to die, then we will die fighting. On the inside. We have to get them out. Please join me in welcoming Kathy Gruzas, CIO of Wētā FX. Here you are. Thank you so much, Kathy. Thank you. Please have a seat. Kathy, welcome to INSIGHT 2023, and I thank you for joining me today to share about the world of Wētā FX. I think everybody enjoy the video. I recognize so many scenes from films that have taken the world by storm, and we're excited to have you here and share some of those stories with us. Cesar, I'm so happy to be here. Thank you for having me. Wētā FX has won countless awards for creativity, innovation, and visual effects. The stories and experiences you've created for audiences go beyond what some of us can even imagine. Can you share some examples with us? We work on many major films and streamers. You mentioned Avatar earlier, which is a real standout for us. It has been such a privilege to work on this franchise, as it's unlike anything that's ever been done in the entertainment world. The original film, released in 2009, was the landmark 3D, or stereo as it is known, film of the modern era. The immersive nature of stereo meant the photorealCG imagery needed to be at a higher fidelity than ever before, to really draw the viewer into this magical new world of Pandora, completely reshaping the way that we think about visual effects. And more recently, we took this to the next level in the sequel, Avatar The Way of Water. This was the most ambitious visual effects film of all time. To give you an idea, Wētā FX worked on 3240 visual effects shots, two thirds of which involved water. So much artistry and research went at artistry. Research and development was involved, and we had to address many a technical challenge along the way and really scale out our render and storage infrastructure. But I think the end result speaks for itself. Well, it certainly does. And what you have accomplished creating the avatar film has been unbelievable. I think the resolution is outstanding, and I imagine as image resolutions go up, the volume of data is multiplied by many times. So what technology does it take to pull all these off? We developed a new simulation framework that allowed us to create detailed water at nearly every scale to fully capture the look, the feel, the movement, and the reaction of water in against the CG environments and the characters. We also utilized new machine learning technologies to enhance thetools we use for facial animation, as well as the blending of CG and live action sets and characters. This new tooling enabled the artists to create the amazing work that you see on screen, but in the background, bringing those pixels to life required significant quantities ofdata generated by a complex pipeline, and the management of that takes some wrangling, as we say in the film industry. Hats off to my amazing team. Well. Hats off to your amazing team, that's for sure. And Kathy, you're steering, you know, Wētā FX total IT infrastructure and as well as balancing the requirements for cutting edge equipment and technologies, why has NetApp been the right partner for you? And I don't want to challenge you there. I'm super happy with that decision. But can you share a little bit more about that? So NetApp is our storage of choice for our critical artist facing tier, as ONTAP offers the foundation and feature set for this data to be stored, accessed and protected. We utilize your high performance network attached storage systems on prem and AWS FSX for NetApp ONTAP for both cloud rendering and virtual artist workstations. Our custom storage ecosystem, built to handle the punishing render compute workloads, allows us to really push the performance envelope for large scale film visual effects production and the rendering required for the high resolution, higher frame rates in 3D in ways that have never been done before. Impressive. Movies like Avatar break the mold. They elevate movie magic to new heights because of these artists enabling technologies. Look, I know the Avatar movies are just one of example of the visual effects magic that you bring to life, and I can't wait to see what's next. Kathy. I need to admit that it's fascinating to see behind the curtain, as we're thrilled to partner with Wētā FX and be part of that magic, and we're all excited to see your upcoming films projects. I think the Marvel's, better man. Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes. Thank you Cesar. NetApp is one of Wētā FX longest standing partners, and you play a really important role in helping us continue to innovate. So thank you and thank you. Thank you for having me. Thank you so much for coming. Please. Big applause for Kathy. Thank you so much.
Producing award-winning visual effects, New Zealand-based Wētā FX is one of today’s most influential film companies. Learn how they enable artists with technology from NetApp and AWS.