Sony Pixel Power calrec Sony

Welcome to Chechnya Team Garners HPA Judges Award for Creativity & Innovation

01/10/2021

The HPA Awards Committee has announced that director David France and visual effects supervisor Ryan Laney will receive the organization's prestigious Judges Award for Creativity and Innovation for 2021 for Welcome to Chechnya. The coveted distinction will be bestowed on November 18 at the HPA Awards gala at the Hollywood Legion.

The Judges Award for Creativity and Innovation was conceived to recognize companies and individuals who have demonstrated excellence in the development of processes or projects that support creative storytelling. The award is not bestowed every year, but rather at the discretion of the jury, reserved for truly important work. Co-chaired by Carolyn Giardina and Joachim Zell, jury members include cinematographer Markus F rderer, ASC; Paramount Pictures SVP Asset Management Andrea Kalas; Legendary Pictures VP, Post Production Technology JoAnne Kim; and Cinema Audio Society president Karol Urban.

Welcome to Chechnya is a powerful and eye-opening documentary about activists who risk unimaginable peril to confront the ongoing anti-LGBTQ persecution in the Russian republic of Chechnya. The film follows the activists as they work undercover to rescue victims, get them into safe houses, and help them obtain visas to escape persecution.

The filmmakers shadowed activists to document the ongoing pogrom against LGBTQ people in Chechnya, where leader Ramzan Kadyrov continues his campaign to detain, torture, and execute his own people. Director David France (How to Survive a Plague) and VFX supervisor Ryan Laney (The Day After Tomorrow and Spider-Man 3) used cutting-edge machine-learning to automate face replacements and provide anonymity to the people on the ground, telling the story of an extraordinary group of individuals endangering their own lives to challenge the evil.

To help witnesses avoid punishment for speaking out, the victims were given a digital disguise by the VFX team. The film lives in the harrowing stories of these individuals, and keeping them safe was a critical priority. We wanted to capture the physicality of the people and show their emotional journeys without putting them at risk. We had tried several ways to hide their identities, but it was Ryan who solved it, said France.

Helming the VFX team for the first documentary ever to be included on the Academy's VFX shortlist was Laney, who describes the technique as transferring the style of one person's face onto the movements of the other person's. We call it a veil' because it is a bit like make-up, where the new face is painted over the original. Machine learning decouples identity from movement so we ended up with 100 percent the original person's motion, but their identity is veiled and undetectable.

The filmmakers recruited mostly queer activists to be the face doubles for the witnesses. I asked them if they would lend their faces as a human shield to protect the identities of the folks I'd filmed. And they signed on as an act of activism, said France. We [digitally] captured the likeness of these people in all the lighting environments found in the film, Laney says, adding that once they had this material, they worked on the individual shots by effectively combining machine-learning, automation, and traditional, artist-driven visual effects techniques.

Awards tickets are now available at www.hpaonline.com.
LINK: https://hpaonline.com/welcome-to-chechnya-team-garners-hpa-judges-awar...
See more stories from hpa

Most recent headlines

05/01/2027

Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be demoed at CES 2026

Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...

06/09/2026

Dolby and MagentaTV Bring Fans Closer to the FIFA World Cup 2026 in Germany with Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos

June 9 2026, 23:00 (PDT) Dolby and MagentaTV Bring Fans Closer to the FIFA Worl...

04/08/2026

Dalet Announces Commercial Availability of Dalia, Bringing Media-Aware Agentic AI to Enterprise Productions

Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...

04/07/2026

Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway Opens in Dolby Cinemas Across Japan, Presented in Dolby Atmos and Dolby ...

April 7 2026, 19:00 (PDT) Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway Opens in...

01/07/2026

Riedel, SKAARHOJ Expand Collaboration WithSimplyLive Integration

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

01/07/2026

PlayBox Technology Publishes State of Broadcast Infrastru...

PlayBox Technology has published State of Broadcast Infrastructure 2026, an in-depth industry research report examining the technologies, operational challenges...

01/07/2026

Jigsaw24 Appoints Alan Henry as Head of Sales for Media a...

LONDON, UK, 1 JULY Jigsaw24 has appointed Alan Henry as Head of Sales for Media and Entertainment, reinforcing its continued investment in helping broadcaster...

01/07/2026

Content Vault Partner with XMA to Distribute Universal Fi...

Content Vault, the patent-pending secure content distribution platform protecting high-value media from disclosures, theft and unauthorised access, today announ...

01/07/2026

Bitcentral Announces Strategic Evolution to Create Two F...

Bitcentral, Inc. a leading provider of enterprise software and digital media solutions for news, sports and entertainment broadcasters, as well as streaming pla...

01/07/2026

Adder Technology Names Neil Hillier as CEO

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

01/07/2026

IBCAP Opens New Anti-Piracy Lab in Denver

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

01/07/2026

FCC Plans to Auction 160 MHZ of Mid-Band Spectrum

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

01/07/2026

CBS Miami Launches 'Hope 4 Venezuela' Relief Effort

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

01/07/2026

Groundbreaking First Nations Screen Business Accelerator launched through national partnership

Groundbreaking First Nations Screen Business Accelerator launched through nation...

01/07/2026

Chyron Launches the All-New Chyron Academy: A Reimagined, Hands-On Learning Experience for Live Broadcast Production

Chyron Launches the All-New Chyron Academy: A Reimagined, Hands-On Learning Expe...

01/07/2026

Amplium Captures Kawasaki Brave Thunders Game with Blackmagic URSA Cine Immersive

Amplium Captures Kawasaki Brave Thunders Game with Blackmagic URSA Cine Immersiv...

01/07/2026

Boris FX Optics Expands Plugin Support to Apple Photos, Capture One, and Affinity Photo

Boris FX Optics Expands Plugin Support to Apple Photos, Capture One, and Affinit...

01/07/2026

FIFA World Cup delivers strong audiences across all RT platforms

9.2 million streams on RT Player between 11 and 28 June Reach of 2.9 million viewers during Group stages of FIFA World Cup on RT 2 23 million video views acr...

30/06/2026

Entries open for Thomson's Young Journalist Award 2026

Could your journalism reach an international stage? Entries are now open for the Thomson Foundation's Young Journalist Award 2026, one of the most prestigi...

30/06/2026

CazTVs 12 ENG Teams Across North America Keep Brazilian Fans on Top of World Cup

As Brazil's only way for fans to see all 104 matches, YouTube channel proves the power of digital...

30/06/2026

UJAM release Retrocraft multi-effects

Brings together saturation & lo-fi effects Following on from the release of their Voxcraft vocal-processing plug-in, UJAM have announced the launch of Retro...

30/06/2026

Zensphere v2 from Rapid Flow

New IR reverb engine, Juno-inspired chorus & more The latest version of Rapid Flow's hardware-emulation synth plug-in expands on its predecessor with a ...

30/06/2026

Shy Audio release Shy 90s Smack

Excels at heavy-handed VCA compression For their latest release, Shy Audio have recreated the crunchy' sound of a rackmount compressor that found its w...

30/06/2026

Apple raise Mac & iPad prices

Component scarcity drives cost increases Shortly after Apple's CEO Tim Cook acknowledged that cost increases would soon be inevitable , the company hav...

30/06/2026

Statement regarding GetUp Save Our SBS' campaign

Statement regarding GetUp Save Our SBS' campaign 30 June, 2026 Media releases The GetUp Save Our SBS' campaign is an independent initiative. SBS ...

30/06/2026

The First Hitachi Cash Recycling Devices in the EU Were Deployed at Bank Pekao S.A.

Hitachi and Bank Pekao S.A. have completed the installation of the first Hitachi...

30/06/2026

Clear-Com Upgrades Communication Systems for Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune

eds3_5_jq(document).ready(function($) { $(#eds_sliderM519).chameleonSlider_2_1({ content_source:......

30/06/2026

Telemundo, Peacock See More Record Setting World Cup Audiences

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

30/06/2026

FOR-A America Adds Two Execs to U.S. Sales Team

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

30/06/2026

A3SA Disputes Weigel Assertions that NextGen TV Threatens EAS

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

30/06/2026

MainStreaming Selected by ITV to Support Delivery of ITVX...

MainStreaming, the award-winning and innovative Edge Video Delivery Network, today announced that it has been selected by ITV to support the delivery of ITVX, I...

30/06/2026

Chyron Launches New Chyron Academy

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

30/06/2026

Clear-Com Upgrades Communication Systems for Jeopardy and...

When Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy! needed to upgrade their wireless communications system, they turned to Clear-Com FreeSpeak wireless for their iconic televi...

30/06/2026

Supreme Court Gives Trump Tight Control over Independent Regulators

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

30/06/2026

Rocket Lab to Acquire Iridium in $8 Billion Deal

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

30/06/2026

Kyocera AVX Releases New Web-Based Antenna Integration Tool

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

30/06/2026

YouTube Shorts Get a Makeover

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

30/06/2026

Rise Announces 2026 Worldwide Mentoring Cohorts

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

30/06/2026

Other World Computing Launches New Atlas Core Line with 256GB CFExpress 4.0 Type B Memory Card

Other World Computing Launches New Atlas Core Line with 256GB CFExpress 4.0 Type...

30/06/2026

DaVinci Resolve Studio Used for Taketoshi Sado's Perfume Cold Sleep -25 years Document-

DaVinci Resolve Studio Used for Taketoshi Sado's Perfume Cold Sleep -25 year...

30/06/2026

NVIDIA BioNeMo Agent Toolkit Brings Accelerated AI to Life Sciences Researchers in Claude Science

Life sciences has entered an era of computational scale, and for more than a dec...

30/06/2026

FOR-A America Expands U.S. Sales Team to Accelerate Growth of Software-Defined Solutions

Fernando Cruz and Jaz Wray Join as Regional Sales Managers; Bringing Extensive S...

30/06/2026

How NVIDIA's Inference Software Stack Powers the Lowest Token Cost

As organizations move from AI pilots to production AI factories, infrastructure decisions have shifted from peak chip specifications to cost per token: how many...

30/06/2026

Into the Omniverse: Three Workflows for Improving Vision AI Agent Accuracy With Synthetic Data and Fine-Tuning

Editor's note: This post is part of Into the Omniverse, a series focused on ...

30/06/2026

June 29, 2026

Scripps Research scientists demonstrate a faster, cheaper route to making critical drugs using common table sugar New method illustrates how to build a tough ch...

29/06/2026

Op-Ed: Why the 2026 World Cup Is Redefining the Economics of Live Sports Production

By Andy Rayner, CTO, Appear The 2026 FIFA World Cup is the largest football tou...

29/06/2026

Study: Esports Plays Major Role in Gen Z Media Habits, Purchasing Behavior

A new multi-country study from ESL FACEIT Group, Hero Esports, and Niko Partners estimates that 400 million Gen Z consumers regularly engage with esports, under...

29/06/2026

ESPN Sets Multiplatform Plans for America 250 Celebration

ESPN will mark America's 250th anniversary with a series of content initiatives across its linear, digital, and streaming platforms, including a special edi...

29/06/2026

OBSBOT Named Official Camera and Webcam Partner of Esports World Cup 2026

The Esports Foundation has named OBSBOT the Official Camera and Webcam Partner for the Esports World Cup 2026, bringing the company's AI-powered imaging tec...

29/06/2026

Insight Productions Launches Insight Storm, 53-Foot Esports Broadcast Truck

Insight Productions has launched Insight Storm, a 53-foot mobile broadcast unit designed specifically for esports production, live entertainment, and digital-fi...