AN EXCITING VIEW AHEAD

VIEW Conference director, Maria Elena Gutierrez explains why this year’s festival of animation and visual effects will be its best

VIEW Conference is Italy’s largest CG and animation festival, and in recent years has fast become a go-to event – being held in Turin helps. This year’s five day conference will start on 24 October and marks the event’s 17th year.

While other event offer huge, orchestrated lectures VIEW prides itself on being more personal. VIEW conference director, Maria elena Gutierrez explains: “VIEW is a smaller, more intimate, curated conference. At VIEW, speakers from high profile projects share their work with an audience of around 600 people in a theatre setting in our main room.”

This year’s keynote speakers include Byron Howard, co-director of Walt disney Animation Studios’ Zootopia; dr. donald Greenberg, director of the Program of Computer Graphics at Cornell university; and Brad Lewis, producer of Warner Animation Groups’ Storks.

“The speakers and talks are carefully scheduled so that all attendees, including all the speakers, can go to all the talks,” explains Maria. “Most speakers stay for the entire week to hear the other talks and to interact with attendees. Questions from the audience during the talks often come from other speakers and many of the speakers also offer workshops. Where else could an attendee take part in a small workshop offered by the director, director of photography, screenwriter or animation supervisor of a major feature film? The resulting interaction among speakers who might have never met before VIEW, and among attendees during the week, is unique and inspiring and has fostered unexpected future collaborations.”

Some of the speakers you can meet around the show this year include Pixar’s supervising technical director John Halstead; Sony Pictures Animation’s director david Feiss and roger Guyett, the visual effects supervisor of Star Wars.

“This year, I wanted to bring people from animation, visual effects, games and virtual reality, and include some innovators who can’t be put into a box,” explains Maria. “Curating VIEW is a little like creating a gourmet meal. each ingredient, each speaker, is special, but when they are all assembled, the conference becomes magnificent. That’s our secret sauce.”

curating view is a little like creating a gourmet meal. each ingredient, each speaker, is special Maria Elena Gutierrez, VIEW conference director