John Berton
Assistant Professor, Animation & Visual Effects
John Andrew Berton, Jr. is one of the most experienced practitioners of digital filmmaking techniques. His successful career as a visual effects supervisor includes twelve years of work with the award-winning visual effects house Industrial Light and Magic, where he created effects for blockbuster movies such as Terminator 2: Judgment Day and supervised ILM’s work for Men in Black II, The Mummy, The Mummy Returns and Deep Rising. Berton and his crew were nomination finalists at the Academy Awards’ Visual Effects Bake-off in 1999 for The Mummy and again in 2002 for Men in Black II.
Prof. John Berton has established a laboratory within the Animation Capture & Effects Lab (ACE-Lab) for the study of extremely high frame rate display, the XHFR Lab at the URBN Center in the Digital Media Department. There has been a surge of popular interest in the recent forays into high-frame rate cinematography, led by Peter Jackson’s Hobbit franchise. John Berton’s interest is in exploring the higher end of this scale, not just to see if 48 or 60 frames per second is “better,” but to discover where frame rates of 120 to 240 frames per second begin to reach a perception of continuity that no longer relies on inherent motion blur and other artifacts of low frame rate capture.
By combining the ACE-Lab’s facilities for high frame rate motion capture, facial performance capture, animation, high frame rate display tools and more, the XHFR lab will examine, develop and test the full pipeline of Extra High Frame Rate production and delivery.
