(reuters.com) Box office watchers predict that “Happy Feet Two” will fall short of the $41.5 million opening enjoyed by the first film.
The dancing penguins sequel is predicted to rack up $30 million over the weekend in 3,606 locations, 2,800 of which are 3D compatible. The Warner Brothers film cost $140 million to produce.
Digital Domain Attempts To Go Public Today
(vfxsoldier.wordpress.com)
Later today Digital Domain will attempt to become a publicly traded stock on the New York Stock Exchange:
Digital Domain Media Group, a special effects company whose work appears in Transformers, TRON and Titanic, hopes to raise $54.8 million in an initial public offering of stock set for Friday.
I never agree with Fox News but their segment on Digital Domain was pretty much spot on.
Why is this such a huge story in the VFX industry?
Digital Domain is the only stand alone VFX company to have tried to go public and by doing so, they must publicly report their finances for all to see… and it isn’t pretty:
When adding in non-cash charges for depreciation and amortization and stock warrants to employees, the losses ballooned to $45.2 million in 2010 and $112 million in the first half of 2011.
Just “Paper Losses”?
According to DD CEO John Textor, who boosted his pay to $750,000 from $500,000, these are all just “paper losses”.
This was in reaction to a former business partner and Florida politician Carl Domino who tried to stop the state of Florida from giving subsidies to Digital Domain:
Every indication is that this is a failed business model,” Domino said this week. “I don’t know how long you can keep losing that kind of money.”
Seeking Alpha agrees:
An award-winning digital production company, DDMG is an artistic success but business failure to-date based on its income statement.
Executive Pay and Facility Overhead Costs Are Too Expensive
What’s interesting is that the vast majority of those losses were overhead costs for opening facilities in locations that are offering subsidies like Australia, London, Vancouver, Abu Dhabi, and Florida and compensation for executives and board members.
I went over the salaries of some of the DD execs and had to ask: With so many bonuses and extra pay in severance, what incentive is there for these execs to change the VFX business model?
And as far as the subsidies are concerned, the only location foolish enough to give subsidy money directly to Digital Domain is the state of Florida. It’s important to understand that the other locations offer subsidies to the US studios producing the film. DD is having it’s arms twisted into opening these other facilities to get the work and swallow the expensive facility costs. As you can see, $100 million in the first 6 months of 2011 is HUGE.
Will Digital Domain IPO Be Successful?
VFX artist Joe Harkins concludes that the DD IPO will fail. On the other hand Dave Rand is supportive.
I honestly don’t know. There have been many companies that have gone public without generating any profits. Hell I’ve done vfx for companies that never even generating a dime in revenue and they are still in business. DD is definitely generating revenue and are getting involved in creating their own IP and also co-producing a number of films.
This is the second time they are attempting to go public. The first time they didn’t even come close to this point. They’ve lowered the amount they are trying to raise from $115 million to about $60 million so the amount is much less. I seriously doubt they would try to list if they didn’t think the possibility for funding was out there.
Granted there are some huge problems and shady suspicions. The fact the IPO is happening on a Friday before the holiday and a small no-name accounting firm was hired to replace a big-name accounting firm brings back memories of the wrongful termination lawsuit DD lost to Ex-President Brad Call.
Will A Studio Buy-Out Digital Domain?
Don’t laugh but I’ve sometimes come to the same conclusion as one of the commentators in that Fox News segment above: That a bigger conglomerate will buy the big VFX studios out. Afterall, many VFX facilities like MPC, Imageworks, Cinesite, ILM, and Weta are backed by very large companies or producers with deep pockets.
The studios NEED visual effects in their films and while all you wanna-be director/editor/actor/student/waiters/cgtalk-trolls think its easy to just open your own shop and do big league effects, they still rely on the big facilities to get the job done.
Yes, they are treated like mules but the studios need them to tend to the VFX for their films and if one of them dies, that’s less VFX bidding competition.
It’s going to be a wild ride. We’ll see where it goes.
"20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" Sinks Into Rewrites
(Deadline) Andrew Kevin Walker has come aboard to rewrite Walt Disney Pictures' 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Deadline reports. This will mark a second teaming between he and director David Fincher, who previously worked with him on Se7en.
Originally scripted by Scott J. Burns, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea is based on the classic Jules Verne novel of underwater adventure with Captain Nemo and the crew of his submarine vessel, the Nautilus.
The film's previous screenwriter, Scott Z. Burns, recently spoke with ComingSoon.net and drops a few details about the tone of his screenplay.
"'20,000 Leagues' came about because David and I were trying very hard to find something to do together," he said. "I wanted to do something that was science fiction with David because I think science fiction is maybe the most exciting area to work in right now. David is so visually gifted that I was like, I'd love to be able to sit there at my desk and come up with any kinda crazy sh*t and know that David Fincher is going to turn it into something. As it so happened, David and I both loved '20,000 Leagues' when we were kids. It was one of my favorite books. So David came to me and said that Sean Bailey had contacted him about doing '20,000 Leagues' at Disney and I said, 'I would love to do that.'Then we met with Sean who was really great and said, 'Come to Disney and let's try and make a really cool version of a classic story.'"
Fincher, meanwhile, is gearing up for the December 21st release of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and has not yet announced whether or not 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea will be his very next project.
The Award Winning 10 Minute CGI Short Sci-Fi Film Made in a Basement for Less Than $100
(alphanerd.me)ROSA is an epic sci-fi short film that takes place in a post-apocalyptic world where all natural life has disappeared. From the destruction awakes Rosa, a cyborg deployed from the Kernel project, mankind’s last attempt to restore the earth’s ecosystem. Rosa will soon learn that she is not the only entity that has awakened and must fight for her survival.
The short-film was created entirely by young comic-artist Jesús Orellana with no budget during a single year. Since it’s world premiere at the Seattle International Film Festival, ROSA has been an official selection at film festivals around the world such as Screamfest, Toronto After Dark, Anima Mundi or Los Angeles Shorts Film Festival. In October ROSA was screened at the opening night of the Sitges International Film Festival, considered the world’s best festival specialized in genre films. Following the succesful festival run, the short film has attracted the attention of the major talent-agencies and Hollywood producers. Currently ROSA is in development to be a live-action motion picture.
For more information regarding ROSA, please visit rosamovie.com
VIDEO - Take a look: http://www.alphanerd.me/?p=1032
New Line Goes on a Giant Monster Rampage
(The Hollywood Reporter) New Line Cinema is interested in bringing some classic 8-Bit action to the big screen. The Hollywood Reporter has word that a feature film version of Rampage is in early development, based on the 1986 game from Atari.
The Kaiju-themed game was a cross-platform hit and spawned five sequels with the most recent, "Rampage: Total Destruction" arriving in 2006 for the 20th anniversary. The original game is officially described as follows (thanks to Moby Games):
George, Lizzy and Ralph were just ordinary Americans, until an experiment went wrong, turning them into a Gorilla, Lizard and Werewolf respectively. Following this, the three of them plan to go round destroying buildings, and up to three human players can join in.
Smashing at the edges of the buildings for long enough will make them collapse. The police and military are after you, and will shoot at you, so try to destroy them (failing that, you can avoid the bullets). You will need to eat regularly, with things like plants on offer, to avoid shrinking back to being human.
The project is now out to writers so check back for developments as they become available.
Transformers Ride Visual Effects : The Challenges of Industrial Light and Magic
(disneydigest.com)On December 3rd, Universal Studios Singapore will launch the highly awaited Transformers ride and Universal promise that this motion thrill ride will showcase "the most advanced evolution of immersive theme park entertainment". Universal Studios Singapore will celebrate the Transformers world premiere at an exclusive evening event on December 2 and Michael Bay, director and executive producer of the blockbuster movies who also served as the attraction’s creative consultant, will be there to help commemorate the opening.
Now, more about the ride itself: The Transformers ride will feature 12 scenes, comprising sets blended seamlessly with hyper-realistic 3-D digital media and special effects to bring tactile realism to every moment. Guests will be unable to discern illusion from reality as they get transported onboard advanced motion-based ride vehicles into the Transformers universe, and partake in the ultimate 3D battle against the Decepticons right alongside the Autobots.
Enlisted as NEST recruits, guests are tasked to help the Autobots protect a remaining shard of the ALLSPARK – a powerful energy cube that gives life to the Transformers. As the Decepticons attack the facility in a bid to obtain the shard, guests will be introduced to a new Autobot – EVAC – created exclusively for the ride.
New to the Autobots family, EVAC is a stealth transportation Autobot stationed on Earth designed to transport personnel and classified materials at hyper speeds. For the ride, park guests will board EVAC and begin the ride of their lives, zipping through subway tunnels, down city streets and across rooftops, with the Decepticons hot on their heels. "Park guests, especially fans of Transformers, will be thrilled as they come face-to-face – and be transported – by an Autobot. This epic ride experience will allow guests the opportunity to truly “Ride The Movies".
And it's no one else than Industrial Light & Magic, the famous Lucasfilm division, which produced the ground-breaking visionary special effects and 3-D images exclusively for the ride. Artists that had worked on the Transformers: Dark of the Moon movie and understood its style also contributed to the ride. Jeff White, visual effects supervisor at ILM says:
"In many ways, creating the media for TRANSFORMERS The Ride built upon the pipeline we have developed for the film’s visual effects but for this project there were a few added twists and challenges. The screens on this project were so large and immersive they required us to render at 8k, four times the resolution that we normally render at.
The process began with a lengthy pre-visualization phase where we collaborated with Universal Creative and creative consultant to work out the main beats of the story that would take us through the ride, all with a focus on making it the best interactive guest experience possible".
"We then used a combination of photography from Chicago and completely digital environments to create the backdrops for the action and seamlessly integrated it into the practical sets. Following which was a lengthy and complicated animation process where we worked out the timing of the characters actions and how they interacted with the cameras to make sure it provided the best experience on the motion simulator. Finally, we added lighting and fx simulation for all the dust, papers, explosions and debris to make sure it felt the films.
The Singapore division of ILM did almost all of the work on the pre-show media as the guests enter the facility. They are an extension of our facility and were able to use the same assets, rendering and compositing tools we do in the US. Additionally, since they are where the ride was being installed, they were an invaluable resource to interface with the Universal Studios Singapore to get any information and data that we needed as it was being built.
There were many unique challenges in the making. For instance, instead of a flat screen we have in the ride 12 different screens in various shapes and sizes. The most complicated were the torus screens which were completely immersive and required rendering a 180-degree field of view. Also, each shot on the ride had to take the viewers angle on the screen into account so that as they approached the screen the perspective feels natural.
This required complicated camera blending from the moving ride into our virtual world and we worked very closely with the motion programmer at Universal to make sure it was a seamless blend."
The ride which open December 3 in Singapore will open next year at Universal Hollywood and i have the feeling that the ride should be as memorable as the Spiderman ride at IOA. In less than a month this should be confirmed.
Source: http://www.disneydigest.com/dd/?u=http://disneyandmore. blogspot.com/2011/11/ transformers-ride-visual- effects.html
'Breaking Dawn Part 1' on Pace for $140M Open
Sensing that end is nigh for their favorite vampire romance franchise, members of Team Edward and Team Jacob will flock to the movie theaters this weekend to see “The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1.”
But will tween ticket-buyers turn out in enough force to propel the Summit sequel to record numbers?
It's unlikely, but even if the sequel falls short of those lofty marks, it still stands to sink its teeth into an awful lot of green. The first installment in the two-part finale is on pace to bank $140 million this weekend in 4,061 theaters.
Animators Quit UK For Tax Breaks Abroad
(ft.com) Peppa Pig, Wallace and Gromit, Bob the Builder, Noddy and Thomas the Tank Engine are some of the UK’s best-known exports, with television shows watched by children all over the world.
But UK animation companies are warning that they can no longer afford to produce these programmes in Britain, because they are being undercut by subsidies and tax breaks in other regions.
“We have about two to three years before it is all gone,” said Oli Hyatt, co-founder and head of development at Blue Zoo, which makes animations such as Kerwhizz and Get Squiggling for the BBC.
“Five years ago, around 82 to 84 per cent of all UK-originated animation was made in the UK. Now it is just down to 23 per cent,” he said.
Aardman Animations, the Bristol-based maker of the Wallace and Gromit films, warned earlier this month that it was moving its television production overseas. Miles Bullough, head of TV at Aardman, said the company could not produce Ploo, its new pre-school show, in the UK at a competitive rate.
The UK animation industry, which employs an estimated 4,700 people and has revenues of £300m a year, is suffering because a number of other countries have begun offering tax breaks to lure animation projects.
Ireland, for example, allows companies to claim back up to 28 per cent of 80 per cent of their production costs. In Canada, companies can claim back up to 40 per cent of labour costs in some provinces, and South Africa offers tax rebates of up to 25 per cent.
“Our problem is that everyone has tax breaks for animation – Ireland, Belgium, Canada, South Africa. We are doing jobs here that make no money, just to keep the industry going,” Mr Hyatt said. “But we can’t keep doing this at a loss or just to break even.”
Mr Hyatt said his company, which employs about 80 animators, expects to make no profit from its current project, Tree Fu Tom, an animation for the BBC which is expected to air early next year.
Aardman has already gone overseas for a number of projects. Of the 90 people making Chop Socky Chooks, Aardman’s CGI animation series, for example, 70 were based in Canada. Over 50 per cent of Planet Sketch, a children’s show for ITV, was made in Canada.
Other companies are doing the same. Production of the Mr Men animation has moved to the US, while Thomas the Tank Engine is made in Canada. Octonauts has gone to Ireland and part of Alphablocks, which teaches children to read in English, is being made in Israel.
According to a survey by Animation UK, the industry’s trade body, 76 per cent of independent UK animators are considering moving abroad for work.
Chorion, owner of the Mr Men series and Noddy, is due to be broken up because it could not meet interest payments on its bank loans, while HIT Entertainment, owner of Bob the Builder, had to restructure last year and could be sold.
The industry is pushing for tax breaks, similar to those given to the film industry, which allow producers of British films to claim back about 20 per cent of costs. The government recently confirmed that film tax breaks would continue to 2015, but has shown no inclination of extending these to TV animation.
“We will continue to make films in Bristol, but for TV animation, which is much more price sensitive, it is not as clear,” Mr Bullough told the Financial Times. He believes there is a danger that an important part of the UK’s cultural heritage could be lost.
“TV would be worse off if our iconic shows are not made in the UK. I think they would lack authenticity for the viewers.”
Effects So Special, They’re Unnoticeable
(toronto.com) Step aside, Houdini. Allan Magled and Berj Bannayan can make an airplane appear out of thin air.
Their Toronto company’s work on the Canadian-made horror Final Destination 5 was so convincing, movie studio brass didn’t believe what Soho vfx had accomplished when they first saw it.
Magled and Bannayan showed footage of a passenger jet on a rain-slicked tarmac at Vancouver International Airport. The pilots are visible in the cockpit window, walking around and taking their seats. Ground crews are seen inspecting the underside of the plane as airport vehicles move around the jet. The bright runway lights show the rain pelting down hard. It looks like a terrible night to fly — if it were real.
“You’re not allowed to shoot film in the Vancouver airport, only stills,” Soho vfx CEO Magled explained as he ran the scenes of the plane in the company’s Liberty Village screening room. The studio couldn’t believe it was a sequence created on computers and not the real thing. “So we sent them the (computer) wire mesh version (of the plane) and said, ‘we did all that,’” Magled added with a chuckle. “You get better at everything over time.”
That’s certainly true of Soho, which has created special effects for more than 60 big-budget films since opening in 2002. This year alone it did work for nine major films, including Rise of the Planet of the Apes and the latest in the Twilight saga, Breaking Dawn Part One, opening Friday.
Soho started out with four or five people 10 years ago. Today, 100 technicians sit before glowing computer screens in darkened workrooms, creating digital magic on the latest project, scenes for Spider-Man director Bryan Singer’s new fantasy Jack the Giant Killer, due out next summer, starring Nicholas Hoult, Stanley Tucci and Ewan McGregor.
“You can’t throw a rock in here without hitting a nerd,” Bannayan says with a chuckle, clearly including himself in that number. “Everybody is passionate about their work. That’s the defining characteristic of a geek, somebody who really gets excited about this stuff. All our crew, God bless ’em, they put everything they have into this work.”
Bannayan comes from a computer science background and “started writing the software development we use in this industry.” Magled worked in various places, from construction sites to a butcher shop, before landing in film production. Both worked at globally respected Toronto effects house C.O.R.E. Digital Pictures, now defunct, before going out on their own.
Like most visual effects houses, Soho vfx works on a shot-by-shot basis. Studios hire a visual effects producer who oversees all of the effects needed for the movie, based on the director’s vision. Vendors are asked to bid on shots, Magled explains. Simple things like removing cables on a stunt performer’s harness or cleaning up a sky is considered a simple job. Soho does more complex work, like the smash-and-run tunnel chase scene in Knight and Day, starring Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz. The tunnel was empty, Magled said with delight. All of the cars were added digitally.
That’s when they’re going for realism, but sometimes fantasy is the goal, like when Soho helped create the monster in The Incredible Hulk, mutants in X-Men Origins: Wolverine, or a fantasy army in The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
The airplane shot for Final Destination 5 took about five months from start to finish, with Bannayan doing one of his favourite tasks, scouting locations with a LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) optical sensor. The camera-like device lets Bannayan get a 3-D image that can be recreated digitally. (He’s just back from England where he scoped castles for Jack the Giant Killer.) For the Final Destination 5 jet, he went to the Mojave Airport in Southern California, a kind of graveyard for grounded aircraft.
“I could have spent months there,” he said.
Back at Soho, artists made a wire mesh model of the plane, a 3-D sculpture on the computer created with the aid of the LIDAR images.
“The texture department starts painting texture on these images and the software takes that and wraps it around the plane like a skin,” Magled explains. Then it goes to lighting, the details added based on night photography taken at the airport. Next the background action is added, along with the rain and the pilots in the plane. The trickiest part is the water on the ground and the reflections it creates, Magled points out.
The final image looks like a plane on a tarmac — completely unremarkable and hardly worth noticing. Far from frustrating Magled and Bannayan, that reaction to all their team’s hard work delights them.
“The goal is to be seamless,” says Bannayan.
“That’s the highest compliment,” adds Magled. “If you saw it and didn’t pay attention, that’s the goal here.
“The airplane is there; it’s right in front of your face. It’s a stereo (3-D) shot that sells 100 per cent as photo-real and we’re very proud of it,” Magled says. “What we’ve done here is bring that kind of work and say it was done by a local artist, rather than going to L.A. or New Zealand or London. We were the first ones to bring that kind of heavy work here and the studios take us seriously.”
Soho VFX Reel: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtMiheRUAVg&feature=player_ embedded
Pixar Premiere Animators' Occasion
(stuff.co.nz)A small group of Kiwi animators and special effects artists have had a sneak peak at Pixar's latest film, as the industry gathers in Wellington for its annual conference.
The southern hemisphere premiere of short film La Luna was held at animation conference Animfx yesterday at Te Papa.
The film follows a working-class boy who sweeps up fallen stars on the moon with his father and grandfather, and is being considered for an Academy Award.
Pixar director Enrico Casarosa, who was a storyboard artist for the United States giant on films Ratatouille, Cars and Up, afterwards gave an insight into his directorial debut.
Despite lasting only seven minutes, La Luna took nine months to make, using 50 to 60 people at its peak, which is a "small team" for Pixar.
At first the characters appear to be fishermen as they row out to the moon – a throwback to Casarosa's childhood in Italy.
"I grew up with the sea right by. A lot of fishermen. At home we lived with my grandfather, but my dad and my grandfather never got along. I was always the little kid stuck in between these two guys.
"One would ask me a question, and the other would ask me a question, but they would never talk to each other."
There has been a strong turn-out at the conference in Wellington, underlining the importance of the industry to the capital.
Weta Digital was well-known overseas, said Casarosa, who is based in California.
"People are getting excited about The Hobbit again. It feels like there is a little bit of recapturing of some of that magic that was there a few years back during the Lord of the Rings. I think people are very curious about Tintin as well."
There have been claims that Weta Digital is now the world's second-largest special effects workshop after Pixar.
Graham Mitchell, chief executive of ultrafast broadband company Crown Fibre Holdings, said he had heard anecdotally that Weta had achieved the No2 spot.
"I don't think people realise how successful they are."
But Weta spokeswoman Amy Minty said the claim was not easy to quantify.
Although Weta was certainly one of the largest, it would be reluctant "to describe ourselves in such a definitive way". A Technology Investment Network report estimated Weta's revenues climbed by $10 million to $110m this year.
A tour of Weta Digital tomorrow promises to be one of the highlights at Animfx, which has attracted about 400 people in the conference's sixth year.
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Weta has promised "behind the scenes" presentations on how it created the apes in Rise of the Planet of the Apes and on the making of The Adventures of Tintin.
Stop Motion ‘T is For Toilet’ Chosen Contest Winner for ‘The ABCs of Death’
(.latinoreview.com)Drafthouse Films, Magnet Pictures and Timpson Films announced Lee Hardcastle-directed short film “T is for Toilet” as the winner of the contest to find the next great horror filmmaker. It will be included with the international co-production of “The ABCs of Death,” an anthology film featuring segments directed by over two dozen filmmakers.
The anthology is inspired by children’s educational books, which will feature 26 individual chapters, helmed by different directors assigned to a letter of the alphabet. The directors were given the freedom to choose a word to represent a form of death based on their letter.
Hardcastle’s “T is For Toilet” used claymation to tell the nightmarish tale of a frightened you boy using the toilet by himself.
The contest received over 170 submissions from all over the world and 50,000 votes were cast from the public. The public vote narrowed the field to 13 finalists, in which the 25 other filmmakers voted on the winning film.
“We are delighted that ‘T is For Toilet’ was as popular with the other directors as it was with the public,” said co-producer Ant Timpson. “And we are thrilled that Hardcastle’s work will be seen alongside modern horror’s greatest filmmakers.”
VIDEO - Take a look: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCmMebE0pIg&feature=player_ embedded#!
Occupy Wall Street 'Star Wars': Police With Lightsabers
(huffingtonpost.com)One internet user decided to go right for the celebrated and clear cut revolutionary story of the past 50 years: "Star Wars." And guess which side was portrayed as the evil Empire?
VIDEO - Take a look: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExP0BPf3gLI&feature=player_ embedded
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