(cbc.ca) Legendary moviemaker Steven Spielberg will shoot his latest big production, the sci-fi thriller Robopocalypse, in Montreal next summer, according to a report.
The Journal de Montreal reports that Spielberg has inked a deal with the Montreal film studio Mel's Cité du Cinema to start production of the $200-million film, based on the best-selling novel by Daniel H. Wilson.
The story of Robopocalypse is set in the aftermath of a robot uprising. The entire film will be shot in Montreal, according to the newspaper, citing studio owner Michel Trudel as its source.
Bringing the mega-budget production to Montreal is expected to create hundreds of jobs for Quebecers.
Trudel told the paper he expects construction to begin on movie sets by March, and that filming should begin in July and wrap by September.
Spielberg's Tintin to debut in Quebec
Robopocalypse is being co-produced by Twentieth Century Fox and DreamWorks, the company co-founded by Spielberg.
Location scouts had reportedly visited Oklahoma earlier in the year, but Canada was ultimately chosen in order to take advantage of tax incentives.
With such a large budget, Robopocalypse — tentatively set for a 2013 release — will be one of the biggest ever movie shoots to come to Montreal. Other Hollywood productions that have recently chosen Montreal as a filming destination include last year's Source Code, starring Jake Gyllenhaal, and the Snow White with Julia Roberts, which shot this past summer.
Trudel said he had struggled for some time trying to secure studio space that would be large enough to accommodate the scope of the Robopocalypse production.
Guillermo del Toro's PACIFIC RIM Goes 3D
(marketsaw.blogspot.com)
No word on whether this is a native 3D shoot or not (one might assume it would be given del Toro's close association with James Cameron). Either way I am ecstatic that 3D has been selected by the man himself, del Toro.
Here's the storyline:
PACIFIC TIM is set in a future where giant malevolent creatures threaten to destroy the earth, and the planet must band together and use advanced weapons technology to eradicate the growing threat.
‘The Lone Ranger’ Filming Begins in New Mexico in February
(onlocationvacations.com)
Disney halted production on the movie over budget concerns but has decided to move forward with the project on a smaller budget. Originally budgeted at $250 million, The Lone Ranger has been cut down to $215 million, which includes a reduced pay check for the movie’s star, Johnny Depp.
It’s also being reported that the filmmakers will sacrifice their back-end participation if the film comes in over budget, a major incentive to stay within budget.
Today producer Jerry Bruckheimer confirmed the news, tweeting, “#THELONERANGER….and Tonto…will ride again. Excited for another adventure with Johnny Depp and Gore Verbinski. Hi-Yo Silver, Away”.
The movie had already started building sets in rural New Mexico over the summer and will likely continue construction in the next few weeks.
Filming was suppose to start last month, but it looks like they are now shooting for a February 2012 start date.
Weta Digital Awarded VFX For "The Last Days On Mars"
(sfx.co.uk) Ruairi Robinson to work with Weta on his feature film debut for Being John Malkovich producer
Oscar-nominated Irish animator and short film maker Ruairi Robinson – best known for 50 Percent Grey and The Silent City (above) – is set to direct his first feature film, a science fiction thriller called The Last Days On Mars.
Weta will provide the FX and the movie is bring produced by Michael Kuhn (Being John Malkovich, The Sin Eater), with a script by Clive Dawson (London’s Burning, Casualty, The Bill, The Bunker). The Last Days On Mars is expected to start shooting in 2012 on location in Jordan and at Shepperton Studios.
On Clive Dawson’s website he reveals that the project was originally called The Animators, which is quite apt really – he, also, worked as an animator in the past. It is based on a short story by Sydney J Bounds and the screenplay came joint-fourth in the 2010 BRIT LIST of hot screenplays written in the UK.
The plot is described as follows: “As their last day on Mars draws to a close, the astronaut crew is on the verge of a major breakthrough – collected rock specimens reveal microscopic evidence of life. Meanwhile, communication is underway with AURORA, the approaching spacecraft that will relieve the crew of their operations. In their last hours on the planet, two astronauts go back to SITE 9, a cavernous valley on the surface of Mars, to collect further evidence of their discovery. But a routine excavation turns deadly when one of them falls to his death and his body taken host and re-animated by the very life form they sought to discover.”
“I have loved making sci-fi films since I made Pitch Black,” says Kuhn, “and for The Last Days On Mars we have assembled a great team to do justice to a wonderful and commercial script.”
Blue Sky Studios: Facility Expansion; Pipeline Upgrade
(animationinsider.net)
Within the past month, CG feature production house Blue Sky Studios has made a couple of interesting resource investments. As the landscape for domestically-developed and produced computer animated feature films grows and intensifies, returning studios must find a way to stay competitive that involves an upgrade in both their human and technological resources. This past month, Blue Sky Studios (Greenwich, CT) announced a plan to expand its home production facilities in the northeast United States, as well as their anticipated integration of a new piece to their pipeline/production management system.
Blue Sky Studios, previously located in White Plains, New York, moved to its current Connecticut home in 2009, and has since benefited well from state-level support in "prov[ing] that film studios like what Connecticut has to offer and are willing to invest here." The plan to expand its current digs to 150,000 sq. ft. (adding a reported 43,000 sq. ft.), as published by the Associated Press, will accommodate a number of interests pursuant of Blue Sky Studios bringing more services in-house.
Accompanying the project to build additional square feet onto the Greenwich production facility are plans to hire an additional 70 personnel. Many of the new hires will reportedly be in production positions, which should alleviate some of Blue Sky's current outsourcing needs. The on-site expansion will include the usual addition of conference rooms, screening areas, editorial space, and more. Financial assistance for the project includes a $3,000,000 loan for space and equipment upgrades, plus a local tax credit of 20% on infrastructure costs more than the stated three million. Local reports indicate Blue Sky has grown from 300 jobs to more than 400 in the two years since it has moved across the border to Greenwich.
The animation production studio's most recent feature, Rio, directed by Carlos Saldanha, earned a worldwide box office gross upwards of $483.87 million. Blue Sky Studios' next two features are Ice Age: Continental Drift (July 2012), the fourth of the Ice Age franchise, as well as Leafmen (May 2013), which will be a film based on the children's book by William Joyce.
In other Blue Sky Studios news, an upgrade in pipeline services will accommodate the company's growing slate of feature titles. More to the point, Blue Sky announced their eventual move to integrate a web-based management platform created by Shotgun Software (Los Angeles, CA), to better track, coordinate, and execute production resources.
Film Planned Of Stephen King's "Rose Madder"
(darkhorizons.com)Palomar Pictures have announced they are developing a feature film adaptation of one of the better works of Stephen King's 90's efforts - "Rose Madder" reports Variety.
The story interweaves a gruellingly detailed take on spousal abuse with dark fantasy touches as it follows Rose McClendon, a woman who escapes her violently abusive police officer husband and goes on the run.
Setting up a new life at a women's shelter, she comes upon a painting into which she's able to travel inside of - a painting of a beautiful yet insane woman looking across a field at a labyrinth with a one-eyed bull-like beast inside it. Her husband however is a psychopathic bloodhound who ruthlessly sets out to track her down.
"In America" co-scribe Naomi Sheridan has penned the script adaptation and plans to shoot the film sometime in the next eighteen months.
"I, Frankenstein" Heads to Victoria
(Encore Magazine) Already planned for an Australia-based production, Stuart Beattie's I, Frankenstein has settled on a Victoria-based shoot, Encore Magazine reports.
Set to begin filming in January, the film tells the modern-day tale of Dr. Frankenstein's creature, Adam, who nearly centuries after his "birth", has found himself in a gothic city, caught up in a war between two immortal clans. Though based on the comic by Kevin Grevioux, leading man Aaron Eckhart recently explained to ComingSoon.net that Mary Shelley's original novel is where he's currently focusing his attention to build the character.
The production is expected to spend $37 million on local Australian cast and crew and will be released on February 22, 2013.
Pixar Studios Will To Start Paying Fees - Voters approve Tax Measure
(mercurynews.com)EMERYVILLE -- Voters in Tuesday's election decided to change the way the city levies business license fees in an attempt to increase municipal revenues.
That means Pixar Studios will have to start paying the fees, which the company ceased to do after Disney acquired the studio in 2006. Measure C, approved by 81 percent of voters, also increases the tax rate from 0.08 percent of gross receipts to 0.10 percent.
A little more than 79 percent of voters who turned out Tuesday or mailed in ballots voted yes on Measure D. The measure is expected to affect Pixar, Novartis and LeapFrog by raising the cap on the tax from the current $117,000 to $300,000 a year.
Voters defeated Measure F, an initiative to force the Emeryville City Council to contract outside legal services. Outgoing Councilmember Ken Bukowski, who lost his re-election bid Tuesday, spearheaded the measure that would have forced the city to contract out for legal services. The measure would have had no legal effect because Emeryville already contracts for its city attorney services, City Clerk Karen Hemphill said. The measure was defeated by a vote of 65 percent to 35 percent.
‘Tintin’ Could Have Same Effect on Motion Capture as ‘Avatar’ Did on 3D Films
(livemint.com)Why is it that earlier movies with 3D computer-generated animation, such as The Polar Express or A Christmas Carol, left people feeling slightly uncomfortable, while The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn has garnered praise for its looks?
Down to details: Animators must get the smallest detail right or their art becomes unsettling.
Down to details: Animators must get the smallest detail right or their art becomes unsettling.
The answer comes from the field of robotics. In 1970, Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori discovered that robots with human-like features, made people uncomfortable—something he termed the uncanny valley.
Mori’s concept of the uncanny valley is simple—as the appearance of an object becomes more human, our empathy for it increases, but only up to a point. Beyond that, the empathy drops sharply, and only slowly moves back towards the positive after reaching the lowest point—a corpse.
In early 3D work, the characters and models did not look lively enough, lacking fluid motion. The net result, of stiff characters with flat, unmoving eyes, and faces that lacked expression, is in line with the lowest point on Mori’s chart, a zombie.
This is why 2D animation could feature humans while 3D animation has largely been about toys, robots or animals. The 3D style is close enough to being human to fall squarely inside the uncanny valley, so 3D animation, as popularized by Pixar, stayed away from human protagonists that had been a staple of the Disney era.
The visual effects of The Adventures of Tintin have been created by Peter Jackson’s Weta Digital studio, which also created effects for The Lord of the Rings films, King Kong and Avatar.
Aside from Jackson and Steven Spielberg (co-producer and director), the film also has inputs from James Cameron and Robert Zemeckis, who have made a number of motion-capture movies.
Like the animation studios, Weta has also stayed away from creating humans, until now. So what exactly makes Tintin different from films like Mars Needs Moms?
Shiven Sharma, PhD in machine learning, the University of Ottawa, Canada, has been working on video games, where the same concerns about the uncanny valley are at play. He says: “As fidelity improves, from simple blocky polygons to textured faces, it continued to get better and better, but beyond a point, we aren’t able to recreate a person yet. The fine details are what give these things away. The eyes, and the small movements around the mouth, are hard to animate perfectly, as is flow.”
While animation was moving on a different path, games continued to try and improve the look of human characters. Sharma says: “There are a lot of tricks that animators would use—such as having bald heroes or making them wear a helmet. This is because flowing elements like hair are very hard to show properly. This is also why the ‘space marine’ is such a popular design style—it’s an obvious exaggeration, and isn’t supposed to be real, per se.”
Sharma says: “Our mind is more accepting of stylized representations. That’s why the Tintin movie looks so good. They’ve made photorealistic people out of the comic books. But they’re Tintin people—the way they’re shaded, and the way they’re proportioned, is all made to have the same visual style that Hergé created in the comic.”
According to Sharma, by intentionally exaggerating some features and movements, the mind is able to accept that the image in front of it is not, in fact, human.
These visual tricks, coupled with the same motion-capture technology from Avatar, use a mind-boggling array of capture points to detect the most minute movement and translate that on to the screen for fluid animation of characters moving, talking or reacting to scenes and create a far more realistic world than other motion-capture movies have accomplished before.
Thanks to the huge advances in computer technology year on year, the processing power that can be thrown into carrying out these calculations is now at a point where small movements below the skin, such as the way muscles shift when a person walks or smiles, can be tracked.
Vancouver Based Visual Effects Industry Booming
(vancouversun.com)As partner and visual effects executive producer for Image Engine, Shawn Walsh knows what it's like to be at the heart of a booming market. Over the past 15 years, the Vancouver based special effects studio has grown from 20 to 200 people, and even garnered an Academy Award nomination for its work on the film District 9.
Walsh says that the company has seen the biggest growth and change in the past five years. "It really took hold in 2006," he says. "A big part of that story is the fact that Vancouver began to be recognized internationally as a dynamic market for postproduction and visual effects. From a business perspective it's friendly. The talent is here, we have time zone parity with Los Angeles and a lower cost of living, and there are good tax incentives."
The tax incentives are a big plus for the industry he says. "The great thing about that is that you can qualify for anything shot anywhere in the world. If you look at the cost savings and the high quality of talent in Vancouver, it's easy and efficient to work in this industry here."
He notes a significant influx of largescale visual effects studios establishing a presence in Vancouver continues to bode well for the market. "There are multiple factors that are all contributing to the growth and health of our industry. It's not just one thing happening. The city just seems to have captured people's imaginations for all sorts of reasons."
Many studios look to Vancouver. "While it's not the cheapest place in the world ... it hits that sweet spot for value from a producer's perspective."
3-Alarm Fire Reported at George Lucas' Skywalker Ranch
(latimesblogs.latimes.com)A three-alarm fire has been reported at director George Lucas' Skywalker Ranch near Nicasio, according to the Marin Independent Journal.
The fire was reported at 5:34 p.m. at the more than 5,000-acre ranch on Lucas Valley Road, Marin County firefighters told the Journal.
The fire is believed to have begun as a chimney fire in the main house on the property.
The ranch has its own fire station, the Skywalker Ranch Fire Brigade, which was organized in July 1985 to protect the ranch. The Skywalker fire station called for help from the Marin County Fire Department, the Journal reports.
[Updated, 9:30 p.m.: The fire was contained in an area of a three-story office building and has been extinguished, fire officials said in an interview with The Times.
Multiple Marin County agencies responded to the fire, which was reported as a three-alarm, said Chief Mike Giannini of the Marin County Fire Department. There was little damage to the building, and the fire did not spread, Giannini said.
“It actually sounded much worse than it really was,” he said.]
Robert Zemeckis Exits "Here There Be Monsters"
(comingsoon.net) Robert Zemeckis, who is currently filming Flight starring Denzel Washington, will no longer direct Legendary Pictures' fantasy action adventure Here There Be Monsters.
Producer Todd Lieberman told SFX they are "talking about potential directors. Robert is not officially involved any more."
The film, written by Brian Helgeland, is "an original idea that came from Thomas Tull, who runs Legendary Pictures. It's basically a retelling of the John Paul Jones story but inserting a sea monster into the mix," Lieberman added. "It could be a great, historical, epic, fun, sea monster movie – something I've never done before."
Lieberman said that his dream casting for Jones would be Christian Bale, who he has worked with on The Fighter.
Another project The Muppets producer is currently filming in Montreal is Jonathan Levine's Warm Bodies, for which a first look image was released a week ago. The film stars Nicholas Hoult and Teresa Palmer.
"The reason I wanted to get involved with the movie is because it's a challenging tone in that it's a zombie movie that takes place through the eyes of a zombie. It's also in a way a little bit self referential to the zombie genre, so there's a slight humorous tone to it," he said.
"But at its center it's a love story and it takes itself seriously – and there's action and there's horror and comedy, so really all of these different disparate tones. Hopefully we can balance those and make something that's truly unique."
The Hobbit Racks Up $20m in Tax Rebates
(nzherald.co.nz) The production company for Peter Jackson's The Hobbit racked up $20.2 million for its tax rebate in the first actual year of production, according to its financial statements.
The movie, produced by Warner Bros Entertainment' subsidiary 3 Foot 7, recognised the subsidy as part of its $70.9 million annual revenue in the 12 months ended March 31, according to statements lodged with the Companies Office last week.
The bulk of revenue was a fee to fellow subsidiary New Line Productions for production services, though that won't be recognised until the production is wrapped up.
The $20.2 million rebate amounts to 14.4 percent of the $140.6 million annual production cost, just below the 15 per cent of locally incurred costs that can be claimed back in tax under the Large Budget Screen Production Grant, known as the qualifying New Zealand production expenditure.
Though the entire project is expected to cost about US$500 million to produce, the total tax rebate may be NZ$50 million to $60 million below the maximum possible rebate of US$75 million, according to media reports.
The period captures pre-production work last year and a couple of months of filming, which kicked off in March this year.
The two-movie project has suffered several delays, including funding woes from MGM, first-choice director Guillermo del Toro quitting and producer Peter Jackson taking over, a threatened actors' boycott, and surgery for Jackson.
Funding for The Hobbit became a political football last year after actors threatened to strike and Warner Bros countered by threatening to film the movie elsewhere.
Prime Minister John Key stepped in to broker a deal with Warner Bros US executives who flew into New Zealand, giving them an extra subsidy of $9.75 million per movie for spending more than $200 million, expanding what spending qualifies for the rebate under the existing rules, and changing employment law to classify all film workers as contractors by default.
The government would also stump up US$10 million to market local tourism as part of The Hobbit's release.
Last week, Jackson announced Wellington will host the world premiere of the first Hobbit film when Prime Minister Key dropped into the set as part of his election campaign. The same day the opposition promised to repeal the changes to employment law passed for the production.
In December last year, Jackson's Weta Digital was awarded $7.2 million over three years under the government's Technology Development Grant Programme. Weta will be a major contributor to the digital special effects for the two movies, having previously worked on blockbusters including James Cameron's Avatar and Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy.
Stan Lee to Receive Visual Effects Society’s Lifetime Achievement Award
(hollywoodreporter.com)Stan Lee, the man who co-created Spider-Man, the Incredible Hulk, the X-Men, the Fantastic Four, Iron Man, Daredevil, the Avengers, Silver Surfer and Doctor Strange, is being honored with the Visual Effects Society's 2012 Lifetime Achievement Award.
The former comic book writer, who became Marvel Comics' first publisher in 1972 and is currently Chief Creative Officer of POW! Entertainment, will be given the honor at the 10th Annual VES Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel on February 7, 2012.
"Stan Lee's imagination has created a completely original and profitable niche in the entertainment world and has allowed visual effects to flex its muscle in service to it!" VES Chair Jeffrey A. Okun said in a statement. "Thanks to Mr. Lee's fantastic creations and amazing stories he not only created a future filled with gadgets and inventions that we aspire to create for real -- but all while inspiring the minds and imaginations of storytellers, visual effects artists and computer wizards everywhere."
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"As a writer there is nothing more rewarding than to see your creations brought to life on the screen and I am indebted to all of the incredibly talented artists who have contributed to my projects," Lee said in a statement.
Lee's Marvel Comics characters have been licensed and marketed since 1965. More than 2 billion of his comic books have been published in 75 countries and in 25 languages.
Films featuring the X-Men, Spider-Man and members of the Avengers have grossed billions of dollars at the box office over the last decade. The next major Marvel film, The Avengers, opens May 4, 2012 and the trailer has already broken records with over 10 million downloads in just 24 hours.
VFX Vet Scott Ross: 'A Trade Association Has to Be Put Together'
(hollywoodreporter.com)Ross—who is a co-founder and former CEO of Digital Domain and served as the general manager of George Lucas’ Industrial Light + Magic and as senior vp of LucasArts—will address the state of the visual effects industry during a keynote Tuesday at the Society of Motion Picture & Television Engineers’ Technical Conference & Exposition at the Renaissance Hollywood Hotel.
The Visual Effects Society—which doesn’t have collective bargaining power—has been aiming to raise awareness of the alarming state of the VFX industry, citing issues including working conditions, facility profit margins, overtime, credits, change fees and ownership of intellectual property. That organization recently wrote and released a VES “Bill of Rights” and is urging the industry to discuss and address the problems.
Ross suggested though that an effort in the form of a trade association might be useful. “A trade association has to be put together ... where there are certain rules and stipulations in the ways that (for instance) cancelation charges happen and the way people get paid,” he told The Hollywood Reporter. “There needs to be standards and practices put into effect that deals with financial considerations. Obviously there are issues of price fixing and I’m not suggesting that at all. But there are so many things that can be done in a trade association where the studios I think will sit up and take notice."
“I tried about a year ago (to form a trade association), but the response that I got was very lukewarm,” Ross told THR. “I backed away and my understanding is the VES is trying to fill that vaccuum—not as a trade association but by trying to bring up the issues the industry faces."
STORY: Scott Ross To Deliver SMPTE Keynote
“There is still a window of opportunity (to reverse the downward spiral of this industry in California),” Ross says, nothing that there are “only 7-10 visual effects companies in the world that really do the (largest projects). If they approach their business model in a different way, I think that studios would be forced to make changes.”
But he warns that those companies based in the US are at a disadvantage because those in other countries benefit from incentives. “It's not a fair playing field for the U.S. companies," he said. "(Many US VFX companies) are doing everything possible to set up facilities wherever there are tax incentives and a cheap labor pool. I think they are setting themselves up for failure.
“California as a State needs to realize that postproduction is a really important part of this industry,” he added. “We have seen so many VFX companies fold and seen so much outsourced, meanwhile we have seen box office increasing and studios making more VFX-oriented tentpole movies.”
STORY: Groundbreaking 3D Vision Eye Clinic Opens Thursday
Separately, there has been some discussion about formation of a union. Ross opines that a union “exacerbates the situation and intensives the need to go overseas.”
Ross also urges companies specializing in 2D-to-3D conversion services to learn from the VFX industry’s situation. "(The studios) are going to look for the lowest cost, highest quality provider (of conversion sevices) … that is probably going to be very difficult to find in the US,” Ross warned. “If you fast forward to 2015, I think the 2D-to-3D conversion companies will be facing some of the problems the visual effects community is facing in 2011.”
Happy Feet mocap supervisors support Andy Serkis for Academy Award
(if.com.au) Happy Feet motion capture supervisors Francois Laroche and Greg Allen have thrown their support behind actor Andy Serkis’ bid to be eligible for an Academy Award.
Serkis, best known for his ‘mocap’ (or performance-capture) acting in The Lord of the Rings trilogy and King Kong, says he should be eligible – as a motion capture actor – to be nominated for a Best Supporting Actor gong come next February for his portrayal of Caesar in sci-fi flick Rise of the Planet of the Apes.
Francois Laroche, who worked with Serkis on The Lord of the Rings trilogy, says "he deserves our industry’s highest honours”.
“Motion capture is seen by many as non-creative in an industry where creatives rule the roost,” says Laroche, who is currently working on Happy Feet Two at Sydney’s Dr D. Studios.
“When you get a powerful actor like Andy Serkis defending mocap, it turns the creative pecking order on its head. An actor defending mocap is menacing to them – it’s like waving a big creative stick.
“The tradition of Shakespeare trumps the tradition of Disney. People respond aggressively to that, as if their lives are threatened, and they’re willing to throw any kind of argument in its way. The arguments don’t quite add up though.”
Laroche says Serkis did something new with Rise of the Planet of the Apes and that the art of filmmaking needed more of that.
Happy Feet Two motion capture supervisor Greg Allen says Serkis is so committed to his craft that rules about what technique was used to create a performance was so “petty” and “limiting” in a field that is still growing.
“We worked with Andy Serkis on Lord of the Rings,” Allen starts.
“The first time he got in a suit we were doing some Gollum testing and we asked him to just be Gollum. He looked at himself in Giant’s ‘Realtime’ software and started slowly driving the creature – within a minute he was writhing around on the floor as if being tortured.
“It was so compelling that nobody wanted to yell ‘cut’, so we didn’t, and he ended up completely exhausted doing a seven-minute take.”
Allen, Laroche and their team at Dr D Studios are currently working on delivering Happy Feet Two before the end of the month. The actors behind the animated sequel to the 2006 hit also won’t be eligible for an Oscar next year.
Serkis has previously defended his 'mo-cap' performances in interviews with the UK's The Daily Telegraph and The Guardian.
Immediately after, comments flooded VFX blogs and forums, debating the hot topic.
One post said: “If you deserve to be considered for an Academy Award nomination for acting in regards to your performance motion capture, then every animator who has ever animated a character in any movie deserves consideration as well”.
It doesn’t look like the Academy – an actor-dominated body – will change their minds anytime soon. It has been suggested instead that a special category be introduced to recognise mocap acting.
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