Actor and impressionist Jim Meskimen shows impressive skills impersonating famous celebrities, which combined with the latest deepfake AI technology creates shockingly convincing results.

With the untimely passing of Paul Walker midway through the production of Furious 7, now in theaters, it was questioned for months how they would replace the unfinished shots needed with the star. Many stories were circulated including the complete scrapping of the film, but with the help of CGI and Paul's brothers Cody and Caleb Walker they were able to finish the movie and fill in the gaps that Paul had not yet finished.

Awesome is what happens. We have all seen the yummy slow motion footage that comes out of cameras like the Phantom, but what the Bolt High Speed Cinebot has done is integrate a precise (and repeatable) movement into those images. Imagine a giant robotic arm with a camera on the end, and you at the controls.

There is something magical about having your 2D photos seem like they're actually 3D. It brings them to life in a way none other method can. The depth, the complexity and the subtle movements give your regular 2D photos more meaning and context, and it makes the viewer focus on the image much more than normal. Joe Fellows is a master of the 2.5D (Parallax) Effect and in this short video he shows you everything you need to know to make this effect yourself on your own images.

What happens when you take a technology from the early 90's and use it in your photography business in 2014? Just ask Jeffrey Bennett, a professional wedding photographer based in Detroit who in 2011 decided to start producing GIF animations for each one of his engagement sessions and wedding nights, which resulted in many happy clients, a lot of interest from potential clients and of course beautiful results he can then share online.

"Cats" has been released to both disappointing reviews and box office returns, and in an attempt to help stop the bleeding, Universal Pictures has taken the unheard of step of sending a new version of the film to theaters.

Just when you thought your brand new super-spec gaming machine was powerful enough to handle anything, something new comes along to dash your hopes and monster rig dreams. A recent video from Intel demonstrates an AI tool that "enhances" graphics to look photorealistic. The implications of this could be incredible for gaming and photography industries.

How are you getting people to look at and engage with your work? This is something we all have to think about constantly in today’s visually saturated market place. It’s why it’s all the more important to look at – and learn from – those producing stunning and engaging work. Let me introduce you to Leonardo Dalessandri, and his latest project “Watchtower Of Turkey”, a video that he worked on over the course of a year and quite possibly some of the best visual media you’ll see in 2015.

If you're open to more heavy-handed retouching of your images, you have almost limitless possibilities of what you can do with even the blandest of images. In this tutorial, learn how to create realistic light rays and dappled light to add some atmosphere to a photograph.

Every well-known movie has specific scenes it is famous for. This is the case with the bike fight scene in John Wick: Chapter 3 Parabellum, where we take a glimpse behind the scenes to see how the production team made that action choreography.

In the growing wake of low-budget, special effect action minis whose audience has become larger and larger on YouTube, Sam and Niko's "Real GTA" steps the game up once more with a perfect assimilation of the popular "Grand Theft Auto" video game into real, Los Angeles life. Complete with sound effects recreated as similarly as possible within the actual game, the same Los Angeles street scenes, and smashing special effects (like the famous wads of cash exploding out of recently killed bystanders), "Real GTA" reminds us both how ridiculous and subsequently fun it is.

If you’d asked me this question last week, I would have said no. What a difference a few days makes. Ruslan Pelykh, a New York City-based videographer and photographer, is creating outstanding video with a Leica D Lux 6, a 10 megapixel, $600 point and shoot. This post is a kick up the butt for anyone hanging on for a piece of gear as being the reason they can’t create with what they have. Welcome to creating more, with less.

"Rogue One" is the latest addition to the epic space battle in the "Star Wars" universe, and damn, did it impress. From all angles, the film looked to hit on all the cues that made the original 70s and 80s films incredible, yet still filled it with plenty of new and relevant stories to bring it to life in 2016. Capping off a wild year of many celebrity deaths, it brings an interesting question: should we bring back deceased actors to fill a role?

It's truly incredible what they can do with film today, especially with the advancement of visual effects and motion graphics. When I first heard they were remaking Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles I was incredibly sad; all those years growing up watching the original live action films featuring the puppets crafted by Jim Henson's. It was brilliant and really well done for a movie of its time. Then came the almost 100% CGI filled epic by Michael Bay himself, yet it works and it's fun.

The Academy Awards nominations were recently released and it's no surprise that "The Wolf of Wall Street" received nominations in the "Best Picture" and "Best Actor" categories, but what about visual effects? The visual effects for the movie while extremely subtle are outstanding to say the least. The company behind the special effects for the movie is Brainstorm Digital. They released the VFX breakdown of "The Wolf on Wall Street", and proves just how much special effects can have an impact on modern storytelling.

Whether you’re a photographer or you focus on video, this article highlights the high octane visual set piece created by Slaughterhouse Pictures, who successfully combined principles of both stills and motion work to create high impact visual media with zero budget and very limited resources. Read the exclusive FStoppers article and watch the BTS video to get some simple and highly effective little tips that you will be able to apply to all aspects of your own work.

Last week saw the release of ‘Anomaly’, a film that is redefining the approach and model for independent, narrative film making. Co-Director Salomon Ligthelm outlines how he managed the project as it grew from “a 2 minute art film” into the astonishing 38 minute-long final masterpiece, and provides key takeaways for all of us that we can apply to our own stills or motion projects. If you have any interest in what's coming over the horizon for cutting edge, independent, visual media production, this is for you.

From time to time, we show of some behind the scenes videos of popular movies and TV shows that highlight the hard work done behind the camera to make the stories come alive. However, rarely do we get to see a side by side comparison of a visual effect heavy movie such as Final Destination 5, showing us all the hard work that is done to seamlessly create exciting moments on a budget.

The use of artificial intelligence in photo editing is becoming more prevalent with every day that passes. It never fails to impress me, but this has gone one step further, and perhaps, a step too far.

James is not one of the ordinary kids in town. James is a superhero shooting lasers from his eyes and flying around. These super powers are all possible thanks to his dad, Daniel Hashimoto, who is a DreamWorks animator and a visual effects specialist based in LA. Daniel decided to use his visual effects skills and upgrade his own home-videos of his young son James, who is now also known as "The Action Kid".

If you are a videographer or a photographer dabbling in video you know how much of a pain in the ass it can be cutting interview footage with just one camera angle. The feared "jump cut" in an interview can completely ruin the overall production and professionalism of your entire video project. Luckily, Adobe has recently debuted their new Morph Cut tool in Premiere Pro CC to help filmmakers fix this sometimes unavoidable problem.

The basic answer is that their videos are more complex. They have more setups and budget, sure, but in these videos, Josh Olufemii goes through the details to show what they do with regards to color, contrast, lighting, depth, and composition.

"What the heck just happened?" I remember saying to a friend as we finished Season 5, Episode 8, "Hardhome" of Game of Thrones a few weeks ago. I was in a crowded bar with many other GoT fans as we all just sat in silence as the credits rolled. This was no "Red Wedding" but I still had that "Oh S***" feeling you get when everything hits the fan.

Matt Allard from Newsshooter.com has been hopping around Inter BEE 2015, an NAB-like exhibition that takes place in Japan, reporting on new video gear from established, as well as developing companies. In this particular video, he gets to try out a different type of lens adapter– one that is built specifically to let light leak in from the sides and flare the image as it's recorded in-camera.

Computer-generated imagery in movies is a common thing when it comes to blowing up stuff in space and showing giant robots fighting in downtown Los Angeles. But here are some examples where you may have never thought computer graphics were used.

I've always been one to complain about poorly rendered computer graphics in modern movies. I thought I could easily pick out what was real and what was rendered on a computer. This video makes a compelling argument that there is such a thing is "good" CGI.

With impressive looking example videos and a relatively inexpensive price tag when compared to a MoVi or Ronin, the Kickstarter for the SteadXP has already blown past its fundraising goal. I wasn't sure what all the hype was about until I watched their video with before and after examples.

If, like me, you have a love for history, being able to see footage from Victorian England in 1901 is a real pleasure. Using neural networks, we can now see previously grainy and fuzzy video from the era upscaled to 4k, 60 fps, colorized, and significantly improved image quality.

Following the introduction of its Immerge virtual reality system, Lytro, the "light field" camera company whose consumer models we now see discounted nearly everywhere, recently left the consumer space to concentrate on and introduce its new product, Lytro Cinema. Offering a complete solution with an included server to handle the 755 megapixels of data at up to 300 frames per second (not typos), the Lytro Cinema is a new kind of too-good-to-be-true beast. But the most incredible thing about the camera? It's no lie.

You may have noticed over the last few years that it is increasingly common for a film or show to have what looks to be unexposed shots. The question is: why?

First-person cameras, such as the ubiquitous GoPro, have been filming hours of footage from their owner’s journeys for years now. These lengthy uncut videos don’t hold much interest to most people, but a team of Microsoft Researchers are aiming to change that by using some remarkable technology they hope to release as part of an upcoming app.

Rob Whitworth builds upon his previous experience from his innovative Barcelona "flow motion" time-lapse with this new production covering the business oasis, Dubai. In his latest piece, Whitworth makes it apparent that he has perfected his craft to create the most fascinating time-lapse we've seen so far. We asked him to comment on his process. And while we got some behind-the-scenes footage and images, Whitworth simply told us, "It's always fun to keep people guessing." So by all means, let's guess.

Elf is undoubtedly a Christmas classic, but the 2003 film was low budget, and the idea of creating a lot of the visual effects in-camera had many senior people worried it couldn't work.

A couple of a weeks ago I shared a video called "Centriphone," which left many people (myself included) wondering how exactly the creator, Nicolas Vuignier, was able to capture this incredible effect. Just today he has released a behind-the-scenes video explaining exactly how it was done, along with plans for how anyone can make their own with a 3D printer.

A few years ago, simple timelapse videos were all the rage. To spice things up, videographers started to add small camera movements to their timelapses using motorized sliders. Those small camera movements have become far more complex today as some of these camera movements are miles in length. These are called "hyperlapse" videos.

ISO performance on cameras has improved exponentially over the last decade, and now you are able to use higher values than ever before more or less without punishment by way of noise. Sony's new videography titan is raising that bar even further it seems.

Adobe Premiere Pro CC is an incredibly powerful video editing suite with a lot of nuance. Here are 11 great tips and tricks for getting the most out of the software in your next project.

Earlier this year Lukas Renlund, a 30-year old professional photographer from Scandinavia, sat down and tried to imagine what the photography industry might look like in 5 or 10 years. That imagination-session lead him to quickly start a new photography/media company named 'Not So Fast | Media'. Instead of offering still photographs to their clients, the new company focuses only on creating motion photographs- Beautiful moving images.

If you've every tried keying out a person you know the NLEs have improved a lot over the years. After Effects can even give you a workable cut-out without a green screen now. But what are the professional movie making folk changing to now? What's next?

Adobe is updating its video applications and adding new features across the board. Many of these features include improvements for editing virtual reality content, smarter automated tasks, and some other features modeled after Final Cut 7, which Apple announced will not be supported in its upcoming MacOS High Sierra update.

There is no doubt that Iceland has become an incredibly popular travel destination for photographers and filmmakers in recent years. One filmmaker has taken his footage to the next level to create a stunning Iceland short film.

Earlier this month, Apple released a new Spike Jonze-directed ad titled “Welcome Home” that featured FKA Twigs dancing through shapeshifting apartment. Today, AdWeek shared a revealing behind-the-scenes video where we learn that almost all of it was practical effects. It’s almost unbelievable.

Last week Jerusalem had one of the heaviest snow storms ever recorded in the region. Media outlets called it a "Historic Storm" and "Biblical Snowstorm," and thousands of people lost power and got stuck at home. Some even got stuck in their cars on the highway. This didn't stop photography student Nitzan Yogev (24) from going outside, hopping on the light-rail train and recording one of the most captivating snow videos I've ever seen - and all shot on the iPhone 5s.

Filmmaker Claudiu Voicu has a reputation for his editing skills but in his latest video, he deliberately chose to include as many tough transitions as possible into one three-minute snowboarding movie. Clearly he likes a challenge and the results are stunning, hilarious and surreal.

The Chemical Brothers new music video with Beck for the song "Wide Open" is the best music video I've seen in a long time. The premise is so simple; the entire video is one take of a girl dancing around a warehouse. What makes this video so compelling is that over time she becomes a 3D printed version of herself.

Filmmaking at a decent level has been opened up to the masses over the last decade or so, with cameras that boast great video specs being available at all price points. This video breaks down one filmmaker's top five cameras for filmmaking that are under $1,000.

Modern cinematic productions have begun evolving yet again, this time replacing the green screen. Some of the most impressive films of recent years have used OLED screens and Unreal Engine.