Desiree Ryden, an FX technical director at MPC in Vancouver, is telling a Spark FW 2014 panel on the visual effects on The Secret Life of Walter Mitty about the propriety software Kali used in a dream sequence.

Ryden explains Kali allows materials like wood, metal and concrete to bend, flex or splinter.

And that proved useful for a 2 1/2 minute scene where co-leads Ben Stiller and Adam Scott engage in a snowboard duel in the streets of New York City where they churn up concrete, complete with sparks and a dust trail.

“Sometimes reality is not that interesting, so you have to add the Hollywood kaboom for thrills,” fellow MPC FX technical director Alex Ouzande tells the Vancouver audience.

Ryden and Ouzande were doing more than talking up their proprietary software.

The MPC duo also pitched young visual effects artists about joining their VFX house.

They weren’t alone.

Spark FW 2014 included a sprawling job fair at the Vancity Theatre in Vancouver, where visual effects decision makers on Hollywood movies like The Secret World of Walter Mitty offered face time to young artists, as they looked to fill job vacancies.

FX powerhouse Industrial Light & Magic’s Vancouver facility was at Spark FW 2014 looking for 3D generalists, animators and digital compositors, while Nerd Corps also has current openings for designers, animators, VFX and lighting artists.

Also hiring is Vancouver-based Gener8 Media, as it looked for compositors, rotoscope artists and rotomation artists.

“It takes the guesswork out of it,” Ben Breckenridge, a stereoscopic supervisor at Gener8 Media, told a stereo 3D roundtable about spatial relationships in a virtual CG environment.

Breckenridge pitched Gener8’s own proprietary conversion software that reconstructs a virtual 3D set onto which it can project an original shot and set the depth of field to situate characters in front or behind the 3D screen.

“We’re definitely producing a higher quality result,” he said of the resulting 3D conversion.

That was a common theme at Spark FW 2014, as the latest 3D software and technologies enable more flexibility and realism in the latest Hollywood tentpole movies.

“We have a lot flexibility that allows us to exercise infinite control over how we present our movies in 3D,” Robert Neuman, stereoscopic supervisor at Walt Disney Animation, told conference delegates, with recent movie credits like Wreck-It Ralph and re-releases of Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King.