Previsualization Society

For those involved with previs (creating or using it) you should check out the Previsualization Society.
They formed last year and already have several hundred members.  Previs has traditionally been made up of small groups of people or companies. The society offers them a chance to organize with common goals and to help standardize and educate, much as the VES has been doing with Visual Effects.

They had a mixer this last Saturday and it was good to see them breaking into groups to discuss different ideas with people from other disciplines. (VFX, Editing, storyboarding, etc)

One of the directions is to help make the previs more technically accurate, which I'm all for.  I don't think it can be stressed enough that if the previs is to be used as a real tool for production it has to reflect the real limits of live action shooting.  Getting to a location and being unable to shoot the shot as it's been prevised is of no help to anyone.  People tend to accept storyboards as being a rough guide but when they see something cut together and well rendered then everyone assumes this is a template for the film.  If the final previs ignores the sets and camera mounts then there's bound to be problems.

One of the other things discussed was how previs works together with not just the director but the DP, Production designer, Stunt Coordinator, SPX and VFX.

Previs is certainly an area that's been rapidly growing the last few years.