Meet Heath Firestone


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Heath Firestone
Firestone Studios
Denver, Colorado USA

Heath Firestone is a director first, but his skills run the gamut from writer and producer, to editor and visual effects supervisor. He has been working professionally in the industry for over thirteen years, has taught seven different subjects from editing and digital effects to advanced compositing for animation at both film and animation schools. He has been a pioneer in high definition production, advanced 3D compositing, and Blu-ray Disc authoring, embracing many new technologies long before they reach the mainstream. In addition to his artistic interests, he has designed and built proprietary high end editing workstations, and developed several new digital effects technologies, techniques, and rigs.

Heath has a special interest in complex 3D compositing and digital effects, and has been an early adopter of HD, having owned HDCAM equipment for over five years. He also owns Firestone Studios LLC, and a small but advanced HD studio in Denver.

Heath has produced and directed hundreds of productions overseeing productions with crews of over seventy five. Heath has overseen seven camera shoots, and intimately knows every job on the set, having trained many of his crew. He has designed and built studios, been a guest speaker and presenter at industry trade shows, is a contributing editor for Post Magazine and TV Technology Magazine, and has consulted for companies including NASA and Lockheed Martin.
Heath has also been involved with the development of digital effects programs at The Colorado Film School and The Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design. Heath has always embraced new technologies and techniques and pioneered many aspects of low light retro-reflective compositing. Heath has also designed and built effects studios, having designed traditional greenscreen and retro-reflective compositing studios.

Heath also has an uncanny ability to predict the success of new technologies, and embrace the ones that will stand the test of time, often before they are made available to the public. He has also been a beta tester for most of the hardware and software he uses in his productions. He has also written a number of articles for a variety of industry publications covering topics from new technologies to his unique experiences utilizing new equipment and techniques.

His company, Firestone Studios LLC has also recently acquired a 3D camera tracking system, which uses acoustic and inertial sensors to translate a live action camera's movements into 3D paths in 3D graphics applications. This gives them the ability to do incredible moves which might ordinarily be avoided because of the difficulty of match moving. They are also developing a few other interesting technologies based on motion capture, compositing, and 3D applications to add to their arsenal.

Heath's driving interest in the film industry is his insatiable need to tell compelling, poignant stories in interesting and engaging ways. He has studied myths of various cultures, as one of his great interests is in mythical structure. He believes that movies are today's modern myths, and that they serve an important role in society, and it has always been his interest to contribute by creating or recreating stories which have a purpose and in one way or another positively affect his audience by creating realistic characters going through their own trials in life.

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You can find Heath Firestone hosting in Creative COW's Adobe Encore DVD , and Autodesk Combustion forums.