Weta Workshop Seeks To Build Major Tourist Attraction
(stuff.co.nz) Weta Workshop boss Sir Richard Taylor wants to help develop a "major tourist attraction" in an underground area beneath Auckland's Sky Tower.
A new Weta merchandise store opened today in the Sky Tower, where the five-time Oscar winner hopes to eventually bring the tourist attraction to life.
The store, called Weta Cave, sells merchandise based on the iconic films Weta Workshop has worked on and also allows visitors to get up close to characters, props and displays from the movies. It is only the second store of its kind to open in New Zealand.
But Taylor says the underground area, near the Sky Tower elevators, is an ideal space for a new tourist attraction.
"This is neat getting an opportunity to establish this little shop here but imagine this space... I can really imgaine this being a major tourist attraction.
"Of course the tower already is but coming down the lifts into an amazing tunnel filled with fantastical creations, it would be a very special place for tourists and locals to visit."
He would like to use his award-winning special effects skills on the project, which he visualises as a series of tunnels and caverns weaving throughout the underground area of the Sky Tower.
"I have actually written up a whole proposal on it. This space is perfectly set up to be an amazing cavern system.
"You can imagine exploring these deep caverns. You could create all array of fantastical creatures and worlds under here and that would be really amazing."
Weta Cave has been set up to coincide with the Rugby World Cup and will be open for the next three months. Taylor has not had time to approach SkyCity with his tourist attraction proposal.
New ‘Real Steel’ Featurette Shows Motion Capture Boxing
Posted on Monday, August 22nd, 2011 by Germain Lussier
I know I’m in the minority when I go on and on and about how excited I am for Real Steel. Most of you see Shawn Levy‘s name, some robots fighting in the ring and think “Rock Em, Sock Em Robots” the movie. And come October 7, maybe you’ll be right. But I see Transformers meets Rocky. The Terminator meets The Champ. C-3PO vs. R2-D2. I see the potential of a sci-fi action movie coupled with the predictable, yet effective, heart of a underdog sports movie. This latest featurette, called “Main Event,” gives us a good sense of that and also shows how Levy captured the motion of the robots fighting using real life boxing legend Sugar Ray Leonard. Check out the clip, featuring stars Hugh Jackman, Evangeline Lilly and Anthony Mackie, after the jump.
VIDEO - Take a look: http://www.slashfilm.com/real-
VFX Industry Vet Looks at the Changing Post-Production Landscape
(if.com.au) Ben Baker previously ran Framestore London's innovative Digital Lab between 2005-2009 at a time when digital intermediate was just moving into the mainstream. He also acted as post supervisor on The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader for Walden Media/Fox Studios:
I’m in Albuquerque, New Mexico, setting up a film from London that needs to shoot 10 days of Western scenes – some in the desert and others at a local rodeo. The heat reminds me of home, in Townsville.
The desert air has no moisture in it at all. We get a low humidity/high-heat warnings from the unit production manager. We set up our mobile dailies rig in a room off to the side of the sound stage and can hear the lion that’s also being filmed as part of the VFX unit somewhere in the building, which gives it a weird, otherworldly feeling.
A large, high-speed fibre-optic network and the right tax incentives have done wonders for the production sector in New Mexico.
They’ve wised up to the ‘Music-Man’ style productions, that come into town making promises of photo opportunities and a flourishing film sector, but leave very little behind. To get the tax breaks now in New Mexico, inbound productions need to use local teams and bricks-and-mortar businesses. But it’s the data connections that have really made the place hum.
The studio where we are shooting only has a five m/bit DSL internet connection – not much better than your typical home internet, which wasn’t going to cut it.
We need to publish the dailies to a creative team that includes people in three cities on two continents. Increasing the speed of the line into the studio isn’t an option because we are only there for two weeks and it would take about that amount of time for the local telco to send someone down.
But Intel Corp has an office and factory in town, which suggest the availability of bandwidth, and after a few calls around town, we find that the tech boom quite a few years ago had brought fiber optic connections to New Mexico.
We are able to get access to a 500m/bit connection out to Los Angeles through a local data centre. The volume of data that needs to be uploaded each day (two hours of h264 and DNX Avid media) was seen as so small, the data centre offered to do it just to help us out, free of charge.
They could ramp up if we want to send the ALEXA camera master data over to the UK, to a two gigabit connection, and still would only need to charge us a nominal fee to cover the line increase.
It’s nothing now for a production like The Avengers to be shooting in New Mexico and to have the camera data sent immediately to facilities in LA. Or, like the show we’re doing out here, have a small local team processing the camera data near set and then uploading the resulting Avid and executive review material into an asset management system that can be picked up globally.
Because of the available fibre networks, we were able to seamlessly continue to deliver the dailies data through to Los Angeles and London without a hitch and without anyone waiting days to see and approve dailies.
And it’s not only production shooting in New Mexico that has benefited from the expansion of fiber networks.
Large underground data silos are also being built to harness the bandwidth, and providing infrastructure for other services that the film sector could be using – storage, server-side processing of images, and fast, secure delivery onto distribution systems.
Here and in other parts of the world, it’s not only possible to now shoot in a remote location, upload the raw camera data onto a cloud-based server, process your dailies and then create editorial files, but it’ll be that same system that a cinema taps into for the premiere.
First Photos of Creature FX from ‘The Thing’?
(slashfilm.com) Update: While we were unable to confirm or debunk these ourselves, but Shock Till You Drop reports that “a sculptor on the show says [the photos] are not legit.” Original story and photos follow below.
As with any monster movie, one of the big questions surrounding The Thing, Matthijs van Heijningen Jr.‘s prequel to John Carpenter‘s 1982 movie of the same title, is what the creature will actually look like. Sure, we know what it used to look like, in the 1982 film, but there’ve been nearly three decades of special effects technology advancement and changing public tastes since then — will van Heijningen’s live up to Carpenter’s original vision?
While we don’t have photos of the finished product, we do have a look at some of the maquettes used for the film that give a pretty good impression of what the filmmakers were going for. If the end result succeeds in making these visions come to life, we’re in for some wonderfully repulsive creature work. Check out the images after the jump.
The folks behind the unofficial Facebook page for The Thing stumbled across these small scale models, which showcase the creature in a few different forms. There are several steps in between these maquettes and actually putting these visions to film — we don’t know how good the CGI will be or whether things will have been tweaked since these models were made. But for now, it’s good to see that the filmmakers seem to be on the right track. Early buzz on the film has has indicated that the alien in the new film is every bit as “disgustingly terrifying” as it was in the original movie, and if these stills are anything to go off of, The Thing does indeed seem to live up to that promise.
Take a look: http://www.slashfilm.com/
Disney, CMU Pioneer New Motion Capture Software
(thetartan.org)
Filming for The Dark Knight Rises may be capturing everyone’s attention in Pittsburgh, but that was not the only movie magic occurring in the city this summer. Scientists at Disney Research, Pittsburgh (DRP) and Carnegie Mellon have been working together on technology to improve the accuracy of motion depicted in films and to enhance moviegoers’ experience watching films.
DRP developed a new tactile technology, called Surround Haptics, which would make it possible for video gamers and film viewers to experience a variety of sensations, including the jolt of a collision and the feel of bugs across their skin. Surround Haptics, which is going to be used to enhance a high-intensity driving simulator game, allows players seated in a chair fitted with inexpensive vibrating actuators to feel everything from road imperfections to car collisions.
“Although we have only implemented Surround Haptics with a gaming chair to date, the technology can be easily embedded into clothing, gloves, sports equipment, and mobile computing devices,” Ivan Poupyrev, senior research scientist at DRP, said in a press release.
DRP and Carnegie Mellon’s Robotics Institute have also developed technology that will better allow computer animators to more realistically depict complex facial expressions. To do so, researchers attached 320 reference marks to a professional actor, and they recorded facial motion-capture data from the actor while he expressed a variety of emotions and actions.
“We can build a model that is driven by data, but can still be controlled in a local manner,” J. Rafael Tena, a Disney research scientist, said in a press release. The researchers analyzed the motion-capture data to divide the face into 13 regions; as a result, computer animators can now manipulate the regions to create the facial poses they desire.
Researchers have also improved motion-capture techniques so they are no longer confined to a closed studio. In traditional motion capture, cameras are attached to an actor in a closed studio to record his or her motions. Animators can then use that data to create computer-generated effects or creatures, such as Gollum from the Lord of the Rings films.
DRP and Carnegie Mellon’s new method uses body-mounted cameras to estimate the position of the person in relation to their surroundings. This method allows motion capture to happen outside of a studio in practically any location — even over large distances outdoors.
“This could be the future of motion capture,” Takaaki Shiratori, a post-doctoral associate at DRP, said in a press release. As video cameras become ever smaller and cheaper, “I think anyone will be able to do motion capture in the not-so-distant future,” he said.
Wachowskis "Cloud Atlas" Budget Reduced
(slashfilm.com) Questions about Cloud Atlas, the very ambitious adaptation of David Mitchell‘s novel that was written and will be directed by Tom Tykwer and Andy and Lana Wachowski, are slowly being answered. We know the cast (Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Hugo Weaving, Susan Sarandon, Ben Whishaw, Jim Broadbent and possibly Bae Doona) and we know that many, if not all of those actors will play multiple roles in the six interconnected stories that make up the novel’s unconventional narrative.
But we’ve wondered how Tykwer and the Wachowskis will manage to direct the film together, and now here’s info: they’ll work with two full filmmaking teams in parallel. Tykwer will head one team and the Wachowskis the other when cameras start to roll in Germany next month.
THR reports that, in addition to that fact, the $100-120m budget that has been reported in the past few months will be “definitely lower.” That’s per Stefan Arndt, the head of X Filme, the company producing the film in Berlin. He also said,
Many have called the novel unfilmable, but Tom [Tykwer] and the Wachowskis have found a way to tell these stories in an amazing, linear and very cinematic way.
THR speculates that Tykwer will handle the period-set chapters of Cloud Atlas while the Wachowskis will take care of the sci-fi settings. Trouble is, there is only one explicitly ‘sci-fi’ story: the fifth, ‘An Orison of Sonmi~451.’ The sixth story has sci-fi elements, but I wouldn’t call it full-blown sci-fi by any means. That’s probably nitpicking, though. And who’s to say that the teams will tackle equal amounts of the film? Sonmi~451′s story could be an entire film undertaking on its own.
(If it were me assigning segments, the obvious way to go would be to give Tykwer the first, second and sixth stories, with the Wachowskis taking the balance. But I also wouldn’t mind seeing Tykwer handle some of the more explicitly sci-fi moments, just for the sake of the change-up.)
Even with the lower budget — hell, because of it — this remains one of the most ambitious films in production this year. I’m not yet sure that I anticipate good things, as the novel does indeed seem to defy easy adaptation, but I can’t wait to see how it comes together. Warner Bros. will release the film in the US.
Transformers Returning to IMAX Theaters
(Paramount Pictures) Transformers: Dark of the Moon is returning to 246 IMAX domestic locations for an extended two-week run from Friday, Aug. 26 through Thursday, Sept. 8, Paramount Pictures announced today. During those two weeks, the 3D film will play simultaneously with other films in the IMAX network.
Since its launch on June 29, Transformers: Dark of the Moon has grossed $1.095 billion globally, with $59.6 million generated from IMAX theatres globally.
"Transformers: Dark of the Moon: An IMAX 3D Experience" has been digitally re-mastered into the image and sound quality of The IMAX Experience® with proprietary IMAX DMR® (Digital Re-mastering) technology for presentation in IMAX 3D. The crystal-clear images, coupled with IMAX's customized theatre geometry and powerful digital audio, create a unique immersive environment that will make audiences feel as if they are in the movie.
Is There Hope for Disney’s ‘The Lone Ranger’?
(latinoreview.com) There’s still a chance the masked man would ride again.
There was no presentation for Disney’s “The Lone Ranger” this past weekend at D23 in Anaheim. However, Chairman of Walt Disney Studios Rich Ross still has certain hopes for brining the hero on to the big screen.
“I’m hoping to do it. I’m certainly hoping. I think it’s a compelling story and no one wants to work with Jerry and Johnny more than me, so we’ll see how it works,” said Ross to Deadline over the weekend.
The biggest hurdle for “The Lone Ranger” is due to its massive budget at $250 million, especially for a western. According to Walt Disney Studios, the studio may still approve the production at $215 million.
Deadline’s Mike Fleming read into Ross’ quote further that Disney may only work with producer Jerry Bruckheimer and actor Johnny Depp on this film—and possibly with another director. Gore Verbinski was originally attached to the project.
Fleming also wrote the salaries for Depp, Bruckheimer and Verbinski can amount to more than $30 million. So without Verbinski, it could reduce the film’s budget to a reasonable level. Then the next question would be if Depp willing to be on the project if Verbinski is no longer attached to “The Lone Ranger.”
Disney is already committed to mega-budgeted films including $250 million for Andrew Stanton’s “John Carter” and $200 million into Sam Raimi’s “Oz The Great and Powerful.”
The last western from Disney was with 2004’s “The Alamo.” It generated a little over $22 million domestically on an estimated budget of $95 million. So a $200 million plus budgeted western sounds like a pretty scary thought.
Is Gore Verbinski out? More rumors: http://wdwdailynews.com/movie-news/will-%E2%80%98the-lone- ranger%E2%80%99-ride-on- without-gore-verbinski/
Chaotician Responds To Jurassic Park IV Rumours
(contactmusic.com)Jeff Goldblum spotted walking down Santa Monica Blvd in Los Angeles with a friend. The actor, sporting a smart ensemble of hat, shirt and tie, was quizzed on Jurassic IV. The project is likely to go ahead, but the casting of Goldblum and co-star Sam Neil remain rumours.
When asked about the movie, Jeff simply shrugged his shoulders and gave a wry smile. When one reporter claimed he wanted to see Goldblum back on screen, the actor chuckled and said, "Oh, you're so nice". Los Angeles, California - 18.08.2011
Will General Zod Battle Superman As CGI Warrior In MAN OF STEEL?
(whatculture.com)We all know 300, Watchmen & Sucker Punch director Zack Snyder loves his unique style of CGI, so what do we make of the first image ( http://whatculture.com/film/ will-general-zod-battle- superman-as-cgi-warrior-in- man-of-steel.php/attachment/ picture-65 ) of Michael Shannon (if it’s not him, he must have a twin) on the set of his Superman reboot Man of Steel that surfaced over the weekend?
As you can see Shannon is wearing a costume similar to what Andy Serkis wore whilst filming Rise of the Planet of the Apes before being replaced by motion capture animation in post-production… Is Zod being setup the same way?
Clearly some sort of extensive CGI is going to replace Shannon in whatever scene they are working on in that location above… but just what do they have in mind here?
/film were quick to speculate that General Zod may not be the military figure that is the best known depiction of the character and one that has already appeared in the Richard Donner movies, memorably played by Terence Stamp;
They predict that he may be closer to the warlike armored God that artist Jim Lee depicted as the character in his 2004 comics run;
Others have speculated the CGI could work like the Iron Man armour from the Marvel movies or could be something that the powerful alien General creates as a costume for himself when required… like Green Lantern’s CGI suit from this summer.
Whatever the truth… it’s definitely an image that has us intrigued.
"Thelomeris" Trailer: Mark Hamill’s Hungarian Steampunk Sci-Fi
(wired.com) The first trailer for Thelomeris, a Hungarian movie about a spooky clockworks factory that churns out endless product made by slave labor, offers a dark look at the indie sci-fi film’s steampunk aesthetic.
The clip showcases the CGI handiwork of director Balazs Hatvani, who began crafting the movie’s gloomy urban vistas in 2008. Thelomeris casts Star Wars vet Mark Hamill, who also serves as a creative consultant on the film, as a stranger who challenges a factory boss to change his ruthless ways.
Several Eastern European artists are incorporating steampunk aesthetics into their work these days. Earlier this summer, young Hungarian filmmaker Emil Goodman created flying-machine short film Henry Waltz, while Romanian authors banded together to produce an anthology of steampunk literature.
VIDEO- http://www.wired.com/underwire/2011/08/thelomeris/
The Art of Special Effects: TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON – Scott Farrar – VFX Supervisor – ILM
(artofvfx.com)
How did you create and animate the impressive Shockwave?
I think you mean Collosus, the 150 foot long snake-like creature. He was so complicated that he took 6 months for Rene, one of our best model-makers, to finish him. Animating him took longer because he had so many body parts.
Can you talk about his rig and the animation of its tentacles?
The hard part in rigging him is allowing the rings on his body and tentacles to spin as he moves across the ground or through the building. His animation and position on the building is done first, then we destroy the sections of the building where he is placed. That involves many computer-simulations: breaking glass, metal, cables, beams, smoke, fire, sparks, concrete, dust and liquid.
The render times for Collosus entwined with the Tilted Building were the highest in ILM’s history: 288 hours per frame! And that is just for one eye, and sometimes the computer would choke on a frame and we had to start over. That’s because both objects were reflecting the environment, and that is a complex algebraic calculation. To compare, the longest render on the last TRANSFORMER’S was 36 hours for an IMAX frame. Over 50 different specialists worked on this shot.
Have you developed specific tools for the destruction of so many environments? Such as warehouses of Chernobyl and Chicago?
Yes. Mostly, we shoot real locations and build from real photography. I shot aerial shots, or plates, from a helicopter for 6 weeks in Chicago, for instance. We also sent a crew from our Digital Matte Department to shoot a complicated assembly of all the buildings along the river in downtown Chicago, and 3 other areas as well. Our new tools are used to stitch 1000′s of photographs together to create a 3 dimensional virtual “city” in which we can fly or position a camera anywhere. It is photo-real, and you cannot tell it is a re-creation of buildings. It’s very cool.
Can you explain to us, step by step, the creation of the incredible shot where Shia Leboeuf is ejected in the air from Bumblebee on the highway and then finds himself back on board Bumblebee? How did you create it?
I knew I would need to photograph Shia for at least part of this shot, because digital doubles of actors still do not hold up well, especially in a slow-motion shot where you can study every emotion on his face. So, we flew Shia on wires in front of a bluescreen, and shot him at high speed. We also photographed a real location with the road and bridge for reference, using stills and movie cameras. And we shot a plate of Shia in the real car for the final part of the shot.
We built the background from the stills, changed the lighting, and created the camera move. Bumblebee was an animated car transforming into robot, then changing back to car, and with a wipe across screen, we end with Shia settling in his seat in the car. Real Shia switches to a DigiDouble when Bumblebee grabs him and goes into a roll. The bottle truck and all the gas bottles, debris, smoke, sparks dust flame shooters and broken glass are all separate animated elements. That’s it!
Full article: http://www.artofvfx.com/?p=1444
Graphic Wrtists, Engineers Brainstorm Makeover of 3D
(timesofindia.indiatimes.com)VANCOUVER: The city of Vancouver is so far west, you can almost peer across the Pacific Ocean and see tomorrow across the international dateline. That's what several thousand scientists, graphic artists, and computer engineers were doing for four days at the city's international convention centre earlier this month. And their vision was literal and mostly in 3D.
Whether it was future of the cinema experience, gaming platforms for the next generation of tablets and phones or technology for the movie industry, Hollywood is just a few thousand kilometres south, all signs pointed to a complete 3D makeover.
"Cinema audiences will desert theatres if it's not 3D. When handheld appliances are becoming so savvy, the theatre-going experience has to be value for money," says Merzin Tavaria , the co-founder and chief creative director of Prime Focus, a Mumbai-based company that is involved in adding the new dimension to the silver screen.
Prime Focus has been involved in the making of Avatar, Narnia, Harry Potter's last movie and Clash of The Titans. Many like Tavaria were in Vancouver until last weekend for Siggraph 2011, as the conference was called, to rub shoulders with hundreds of gaming specialists and artists working on the future technologies and even robotics.
This is where most of the showcasing happens for the visual effects industry.
"Most of the new technology is about shooting and projecting at about 60 frames per second instead of the current 24 that 2D uses," says Paul Salvini, chief technology officer of Christie, one of Canada's top digital imaging companies that supplies 3D projection systems worldwide.
On display, for example were dancers pockmarked with sensors that picked up their moves on a computer so that faces and limbs of animated characters could be supplanted on them to make animation more lifelike. If that's not new for you, there is one technology under works that's done away with the sensors because these could restrict an artist's movements.
It involves 18 cameras mounted on an overhead frame that recognizes moving objects and tracts them to help animators build more humanlike characters. Then of course there are apps for phones that allow visually-impaired people navigate cities by having the cellphone buzz on either side to guide them to turn.
Cameras take spatial shots of faces and send them to printers that quirt resins instead of ink to make 3D images within a few hours. Experts say it is no accident that Vancouver has emerged as a hub for computer animation and visual graphics. The region is dotted with small schools that train technicians and artists who go on to work in Hollywood or big animation companies like Disney or Dreamworks.
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