(comingsoon.net)
The Visual Effects Society announced the winners of the 10th Annual VES Awards last at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, California. The annual event recognizes outstanding visual effects artistry in 23 categories of film, animation, television, commercials, special venues and video games. Here is the full press release with the winners:
The Visual Effects Society (VES) announced the winners of its 10th Annual VES Awards tonight at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, California. The annual event recognizes outstanding visual effects artistry in 23 categories of film, animation, television, commercials, special venues and video games.
More than a thousand attendees -- filmmakers, producers, directors and members of the visual effects community-- gathered to recognize the year's best work and the artists who created it. Rango was the evening's most honored project with four awards, including Outstanding Visual Effects in an Animated Feature Motion Picture, Outstanding Animated Character in an Animated Feature Motion Picture, Outstanding Created Environment in an Animated Feature Motion Picture, and Outstanding Virtual Cinematography in an Animated Feature Motion Picture. Hugo, Rise of the Planet of the Apes and Transformers: Dark of the Moon all took home two awards in the Feature Motion Picture categories, while Boardwalk Empire and Game of Thrones each garnered a pair of awards in the Television categories.
Stan Lee received the Lifetime Achievement Award and visual effects pioneer Douglas Trumbull received the Georges Méliès Award at the show, which was hosted by Patton Oswalt. Antonio Banderas, Lou Ferrigno, directors Chris Miller, Marc Webb and Jennifer Yuh Nelson, and a host of luminaries were on hand to present awards. A surprise appearance by Martin Scorsese, whose film Hugo received two awards, was one of the evening's highlights.
The complete list of winners of the 10th Annual VES Awards is as follows:
Outstanding Visual Effects in a Visual Effects-Driven Feature Motion Picture
Rise of the Planet of the Apes: Dan Lemmon, Joe Letteri, Cyndi Ochs, Kurt Williams
Outstanding Supporting Visual Effects in a Feature Motion Picture
Hugo: Ben Grossmann, Alex Henning, Rob Legato, Karen Murphy
Outstanding Visual Effects in an Animated Feature Motion Picture
Rango: Tim Alexander, Hal Hickel, Jacqui Lopez, Katie Lynch
Outstanding Visual Effects in a Broadcast Miniseries, Movie, or Special
Inside the Human Body: Phil Dobree, Sophie Orde, Dan Upton
Outstanding Visual Effects in a Broadcast Series
Terra Nova - Occupation & Resistance: Kevin Blank, Colin Brady, Adica Manis, Jason Zimmerman
Outstanding Supporting Visual Effects in a Broadcast Program
Game of Thrones - Winter is Coming: Lucy Ainsworth-Taylor, Angela Barson, Ed Bruce, Adam McInnes
Outstanding Visual Effects in a Live Action Commercial
Dior J'adore: Pascal Giroux, Julien Meesters, Stephane Pivron, Manuel Souillac
Outstanding Visual Effects in an Animated Commercial or Video Game Trailer
Diablo III: The Black Soulstone: Nicholas S. Carpenter, Graham Cunningham, Chris Thunig, Taka Yasuda
Outstanding Visual Effects in a Special Venue Project
Transformers the Ride: The Ultimate 3D Battle: Lori Arnold, Yanick Dusseault, Delio Tramontozzi, Jeff White
Outstanding Animated Character in a Live Action Feature Motion Picture
Rise of the Planet of the Apes - Caesar: Daniel Barrett, Florian Fernandez, Matthew Muntean, Eric Reynolds
Outstanding Animated Character in an Animated Feature Motion Picture
Rango - Rango: Frank Gravatt, Kevin Martel, Brian Paik, Steve Walton
Outstanding Animated Character in a Broadcast Program or Commercial
Canal + The Bear: Laurent Creusot, Guillaume Ho, Olivier Mitonneau, Michal Nauzin
Outstanding Created Environment in a Live Action Feature Motion Picture
Transformers: Dark of the Moon - 155 Wacker Drive: Giles Hancock, John Hanson, Tom Martinek, Scott Younkin
Outstanding Created Environment in an Animated Feature Motion Picture
Rango - Main Street Dirt: John Bell, Polly Ing, Martin Murphy, Russell Paul
Outstanding Created Environment in a Broadcast Program or Commercial
Game of Thrones - The Icewall: Markus Kuha, Dante Harbridge Robinson, Damien Mac, Fani Vassiadi
Outstanding Virtual Cinematography in a Live Action Feature Motion Picture
Hugo: Martin Chamney, Rob Legato, Adam Watkins, Fabio Zangla
Outstanding Virtual Cinematography in an Animated Feature Motion Picture
Rango - The Dirt Saloon: Colin Benoit, Philippe Rebours, Nelson Sepulveda, Nick Walker
Outstanding Virtual Cinematography in a Broadcast Program or Commercial
Gears of War 3 - Dust to Dust: Niles Heckman, Richard Morton, Vernon Wilbert Jr.
Outstanding Models in a Feature Motion Picture
Transformers: Dark of the Moon - Driller: Tim Brakensiek, Kelvin Chu, David Fogler, Rene Garcia
Outstanding Models in a Broadcast Program or Commercial
Boardwalk Empire - Georgia Peaches: Matthew Conner, Eran Dinur, David Reynolds, Szymon Weglarski
Outstanding Compositing in a Feature Motion Picture
Captain America: The First Avenger - Skinny Steve: Casey Allen, Trent Claus, Brian Hajek, Cliff Welsh
Outstanding Compositing in a Broadcast Program or Commercial
Boardwalk Empire - Gimcrack & Bunkum: Anton Dawson. Eran Dinur, Austin Meyers, David Reynolds
Outstanding Visual Effects in a Student Project
a.maize: Roman Kaelin, Falko Paeper, Florian Wittmann
The 10th Annual VES Awards will air exclusively on REELZCHANNEL Sunday, February 19 at 10pm ET/7pm PT with encore presentations throughout February. For more information on the VES Awards and the Visual Effects Society please visit www.visualeffectssociety.com
Maxon UK Opens Satellite Office in London
(3dworldmag.com)The new Pall Mall office will provide Maxon’s London-based customers with benefits: now you can get face-to-face technical support and same-day deliveries of Cinema 4D
Maxon Computer Ltd., the UK subsidiary of the leading developer of professional 3D modelling, painting, animation and rendering solutions, has opened a satellite office in London.
Based at the Institute of Directors’ (IoD) headquarters in Pall Mall, London, Maxon UK’s new office provides the company with outstanding facilities and a base of operations in the heart of the West End to better support its growing number of customers based in the City.
Maxon UK’s managing director, Liam Stacy, states: “With more and more of our customers being based in London, it makes a lot of sense for us to support our London customers locally.”
According to Maxon, the number of London-based design companies now offering 3D motion graphics to their clients has risen substantially, and Maxon’s role as the 3D motion graphics leader has seen sales of its Cinema 4D animation software rise in the City.
Hollywood VFX Tentpoles Bomb During The Super Bowl
(fitperez.com) According to DVR data from TiVo of what commercials were watched and re-watched, the public's favorite spots were Doritos' "Man's Best Friend" (1st) and "Sling Baby" (3rd), with M&M's "Ms. Brown" coming in second!
You know what commercials people didn't latch onto? Anything from Hollywood!
The trailer for Sacha Baron Cohen's The Dictator ranked 24th amongst all the ads, while others didn't even come close to the top.
Even expected blockbusters like The Avengers and G.I. Joe: Retaliation didn't fare to well amongst viewers. Each television spot only came in at 43rd and 53rd, respectively!
Either people didn't care because they were able to watch the commercials online in advance or they aren't to psyched for the movies Hollywood is releasing in 2012.
Here are the rest of the lackluster results for the Hollywood promos: Star Wars in 3D (No. 48), Battleship (No. 61), Act Of Valor (No. 66), Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax (No. 68), John Carter (No. 75), and Safe House (No. 100).
3D "Star Wars" Looks For $21m Weekend
(comingsoon.net)George Lucas finally brings his series of 3D "Star Wars" rereleases to theaters starting at "the beginning" with Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace 3D (20th Century Fox), unquestionably the worst movie in the six-film series, but also the one that's the most kid-friendly, which certainly will help it bring in the same avid fans that flocked to see the movie originally, making "Phantom Menace" the highest-grossing movie in the series (not including rereleases). Lucasfilm has done this before with the Star Wars: Special Edition rerelease in 1997, which grossed $137 million, but for better or worse, this is the first time "Episode I" has been re-released in theaters since its original release in 1999. One imagines many fathers will want to experience this with their boys who were probably too young to see it in theaters 13 years ago, which should help give Lucas' franchise new life. If one takes into account the added cost of 3D tickets, this could end up doing better than normal even though if does have competition both for guys and family audiences, which will likely keep it somewhere between $21 to 24 million for the weekend and somewhere around $70 million total.
Feeling Creatively Drained?... Let This Letter From Pixar Inspire You
(blodgettsblognstuff.com) Words of wisdom from the animation industry... KCRW's The Business, talks about the Animator Letters Project and airs a reading of the 'Persist' letter contributed by Pixar animator, Austin Madison, read by Austin himself.
Letter Transcript:
PIXAR
May 17, 2011
To Whom it May Inspire,
I, like many of you artists out there, constantly shift between two states. The first (and far more preferable of the two) is white-hot, "in the zone" seat-of-the-pants, firing on all cylinders creative mode. This is when you lay your pen down and the ideas pour out like wine from a royal chalice! This happens about 3% of the time.
The other 97% of the time I am in the frustrated, struggling, office-corner-full-of-crumpled-up-paper mode. The important thing is to slog diligently through this quagmire of discouragement and despair. Put on some audio commentary and listen to the stories of professionals who have been making films for decades going through the same slings and arrows of outrageous production problems.
In a word: PERSIST.
PERSIST on telling your story. PERSIST on reaching your audience. PERSIST on staying true to your vision. Remember what Peter Jackson said, "Pain is temporary. Film is forever." And he of all people should know.
So next time you hit writer's block, or your computer crashes and you lose an entire night's work because you didn't hit save (always hit save), just remember: you're never far from that next burst of divine creativity. Work through that 97% of murky abyssmal mediocrity to get to that 3% which everyone will remember you for!
I guarantee you, the art will be well worth the work!
Your friend and mine,
Austin Madison
"ADVENTURE IS OUT THERE!"
‘Army of the Dead’ is Dead
(latino-review.com)Movie Hole spoke with director Matthijs van Heijningen Jr while he was doing press for the Blu-ray release of The Thing, his prequel to John Carpenter’s horror classic. During the interview van Heijningen spoke to a few different topics.
First, he didn’t want to use “The Thing” as the title for his prequel, but he couldn’t come up with anything better so he acquiesced to the studio. Second, he is not a fan of making sequels and, if there is a third film in The Thing series, he has already said he will not direct it. Third, his planned followup to Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead, titled Army of the Dead, will most likely not happen.
From van Heijningen:
“I don’t know if that’s going to happen – it was really expensive, because it was going to have to shoot in Las Vegas.
“They didn’t really want us to shoot in Las Vegas – because of the expense of shooting in Las Vegas. I really don’t think it’s going to happen.”
Army of the Dead‘s plot followed a father as he fights through hoards of zombies in Las Vegas on a search for his daughter.
I was one of the many people who scoffed at Snyder’s remake, but then I saw the movie and actually enjoyed it. A follow up would have been nice, but it doesn’t look like it’s going to happen, at least not anytime soon.
How The Muppets Film was Boosted by CGI
(bbc.co.uk) "We have a saying around here - it's not easy doing green," says Look Effects' director of marketing Pam Hogarth as she prepares to introduce her colleagues.
When The Muppets opens at cinemas in the UK later this week, the film will contain about 350 shots created by the Los Angeles-based special effects team.
However, audiences not in the know will be hard pushed to spot more than a few dozen.
Take for instance Kermit's rousing speech to his fellow performers as he tries to inspire them to save their theatre.
"I don't care what anybody says," implores the long-suffering stage manager. "I believe in you."
His audience looks him straight in the eyes... except it is all an illusion.
Publicity still from The Muppets Most of the special effects in the film are designed to go unnoticed
When the puppeteers filmed the scene, Kermit was facing a blue screen, the colour chosen instead of the traditional green to accommodate the character's colour.
The 60-odd puppets facing him were added with painstaking care - and state-of-the-art graphics processors - some time later.
Digitally removed
Working this way involved extra effort, but it had its rewards.
"When they first came to talk to us about doing the movie I was a little curious what we would do on it," says Anthony "Max" Ivins, Look's visual effects supervisor.
"I thought we're not going to do CG Muppets, that just wouldn't be right. But it wasn't that, they wanted to give the writers and the director the freedom to just shoot the movie that they wanted to shoot.
"So we did a lot of head-to-toe puppets that were shot on a full blue-screen stage with puppeteers in blue suits.
"Some of the characters have up to four puppeteers running them. And it unleashes them if they don't have to hide from the camera."
In previous Muppet movies, many of the shots had to be designed around the teams operating the puppets, with boxes and pieces of furniture used to obscure them.
Muppet puppeteer in blue suit Puppeteers wore blue suits to make it possible to remove them from shots
This time, the puppeteers did not need to worry where they were standing because they were completely covered in blue suits, allowing them to be digitally removed afterwards.
But in many cases, that was easier said than done.
"Fuzzy Muppets on blue screen is not the funnest work," says Mr Ivins. "The lighting is never completely even on a Muppet."
Accelerated effects
To ensure audiences do not spot that the puppets have effectively been copied and pasted into their scenes, multiple keys - or cutouts - were taken for each frame of the film.
This allowed the visual effects artists to adjust their compositing tools so that different parameters could be applied to the parts of the characters in bright light from the parts in shadow.
Although much of this work still needed to be done manually, recent breakthroughs in GPU (graphics processing unit) technology helped speed up the process.
Computer chip maker Nvidia's Quadro graphics cards are widely used across the special effects industry - the firm claims about 95% of the market - thanks in part to the take-up of its Cuda programming language among key software developers over the past two years.
Effects programs written in the language take advantage of the GPU's skill at solving a problem by processing lots of little chunks of information simultaneously rather than attempting to process a few big chunks at speed.
When applied to appropriate tasks this offers a performance boost over what could be achieved by relying solely on the CPU (central processing unit).
Compositing is only one process that benefits.
"There are certain visual effects applications that are very keen for GPU," says Dominick Spina, Nvidia's senior technology product manager.
Sam the Eagle special effect shot The Muppets' feathers and fur made them tricky to composite, adding to the workload
"Any type of simulation - fire, water, fluids, volumemetrics [for clouds or smoke] - the reason being is that there is a very large computational component to those renders, so you have to physically simulate all of the motion.
"That's very well suited to GPUs as you can send a lot of data to a chip at one time and then get the result back.
"You're optimising your CPU as well by offsetting everything that is better processed on the GPU."
Time to tweak
It may all sound quite technical, but in an industry that works to tight deadlines it can make a huge difference.
In the case of a computer-generated fireworks sequence towards the end of The Muppets film, it allowed the visual effects team to perfect the explosions and see the results nearly instantaneously afterwards.
"We used a lot of lens flare, edge rays and warp effects to create the fireworks," says Look's director of technology, Michael Oliver.
"The artists could sit there with their GPU and deploy these effects and within seconds see the results, versus other workstations that don't have GPUs which would take two minutes to render this on a CPU."
"So they could sit there and tweak the fireworks - they could make them brighter, smaller, flashier.
Continue reading the main story
“Start Quote
About 10% too much intensity of speed and movement and it's like: 'Uh-oh - they look as if they are all killing each other instead of celebrating'”
End Quote Anthony Ivins Look Effects
"Whatever the director or supervisor wanted, and they could sit with the artist and do it in real time to get the look exactly the way they wanted it."
Killer crowds
The speed gains offered by GPUs become even more apparent in cases where the effects are highly complex.
"Now we can do five iterations in an afternoon where it might have taken a day to an iteration before - so it would have taken a week instead of an afternoon to have done the same amount of testing," said Mr Ivins.
The Muppets' most graphics- intensive shot involves a view from a helicopter on to part of Hollywood Boulevard in front of the historic El Capitan theatre which doubles as the puppets' base in the film.
The shot involved replacing many of the street's advertising hoardings with Disney-approved images - including a poster for its Cars 2 movie - as well as filling the area with a computer-generated crowd.
"That's one of the times when the graphics cards came into play in a big way because the crowd is a bunch of little people, so you get millions of polygrams moving really quickly when you get that many characters in one scene," said Mr Ivins.
"That was a fun shot to do because we ran our own particle system that moves the crowd around. And there was a fine line between an active happy crowd and a riot!
Computer-generated crowd on Hollywood Boulevard, and the shot before the effects were added A computer-generated crowd on Hollywood Boulevard was one of the movie's biggest effects scenes
"About 10% too much intensity of speed and movement and it's like: 'Uh-oh - they look as if they are all killing each other instead of celebrating.'"
Expensive tricks
Look's artists say there is one downside to the speed gains - some producers now push for "crazy schedules" to save costs, despite the firm's philosophy that "more time equates to a better product".
But Mr Ivins adds that being able to have a film's director or visual effects chief come in and see changes made in real time, rather having to wait for the dailies to arrive, can help speed up the decision-making process and avoid unnecessary work.
So when Crazy Harry explodes Abraham Lincoln's face off Mount Rushmore, and when sparks fly out of new character Walter after he is flung into an electric fence, the audience can be assured that the final results closely match the filmmakers' vision.
"The Muppets have always been about artistic integrity, not cheap tricks," says Kermit at one point in the film.
You may not always be able to trust what you see on screen, but the combination of low-tech puppetry and hi-tech graphics that brings Fozzie, Miss Piggy and the rest of the gang back to life helped all those involved live up to their leading frog's standards.
"The Jetsons" Jump-Starts Development
(Variety) Two new writers have been brought aboard the long-gestating big screen version of The Jetsons, Variety reports.
Van Robichaux and Evan Susser will tackle the Hanna-Barbera cartoon adaptation. They're best known for their spec script, Chewie, a story about the making of Star Wars, told from the perspective of Chewbacca actor Peter Mayhew. The script made the 2011 "Black List" of unproduced screenplays.
Producer Denise Di Novi spoke with ComingSoon.net last summer and offered a update on the film.
"I've been developing that for so many years," she said at the time. "...Part of it is that every couple of years, the genre kind of changes. I really credit Jeff Robinov at Warner Bros. with this. In choosing Chris Nolan to do Batman, he really exploded the expectations on adapting all these kinds of titles, the pressure is on to really make them the coolest movies, not the cornball cartoon movies. Every couple years it's changed what they thought the movie should be and I'm hoping now we're hitting it at the right time. I've never given up on that movie."
Though nothing is certain at this stage, Robichaux and Susser's take could be the one to finally bring The Jetsons to the big screen.
Why Oscar Snubbed Pixar, 'Tintin,' 'Arthur Christmas' for Best Cartoon
(hollywoodreporter.com)When the Academy Award nominations were announced Jan. 24, most of Hollywood was waiting to see which films would emerge as best picture contenders. But within the smaller, intensely competitive animation community, the focus was on its own feature nominees, and in that category the results were shocking.
Sure, both of DreamWorks Animation's 2011 entries, Kung Fu Panda 2 and Puss in Boots, made the cut, as did Gore Verbinski's Rango. But where were Steven Spielberg's The Adventures of Tintin and Pixar's Cars 2, not to mention Sony/Aardman Animations' Arthur Christmas or Fox's Rio? Instead, two obscure, foreign-language, hand-drawn animated movies, Chico & Rita and A Cat in Paris, rounded out the list of nominees.
Insiders at the various companies snubbed were stunned, though none wanted to go on record with their displeasure. By way of explanation, one Academy member says of the voters: "They were sending a message. They are against motion capture and kids' movies, and they want to save hand-drawn animation."
Well, yes and no. Many traditional animators are suspicious of motion capture or, as it's also known, performance capture, in which actors' performances are fed into a computer. In 2010, they succeeded in adding a line to the Oscar rule book that says, "Motion capture by itself is not an animation technique." That doesn't rule out mo-cap movies; it just means that they must prove they include frame-by-frame animation as well.
In addition to Tintin, two other motion-capture movies, Happy Feet 2 and Mars Needs Moms, were entered; all three were judged sufficiently animated to proceed. (The only movie that ran afoul of Academy rules was The Smurfs, a live-action/animation hybrid that was found not to contain enough actual animation.)
But the fact that Tintin didn't receive a nom in the animation or visual effects categories and that Andy Serkis wasn't nominated as a supporting actor for his work in Rise of the Planet of the Apes suggest, as Visual Effects Society chair Jeffrey Okun puts it: "The industry is confused. It comes down to, 'What is animation?' That is something everyone has been struggling with."
The Academy's ani noms aren't just about kinds of animation, though. They are made by a committee of slightly fewer than 100 members -- half of them animators from the Academy's short films and feature animation branch and half from throughout the Academy. Each member rates each movie on a scale of six to 10. Says Jon Bloom, chair of the branch's executive committee, "Part of the instructions the committee is given is to consider the entire achievement as a whole, not just its animation." That means story, characters, music and vocal performances all come into play. He says no larger lesson can be drawn from this year's choices beyond the fact that it was a highly competitive year. "My own ballot had many highly rated films, far more than five," he says.
But the final list does appear to favor films with elements that appeal to adults -- such as Antonio Banderas' comic take on a Latin lover in Puss or the Clint Eastwood allusions of Rango. That put Cars 2, which some critics had complained was driven by merchandising, at a disadvantage -- even though it was a pet project of Pixar's John Lasseter, who sits on the Academy's board of governors. So, too, Tintin: The character may be beloved in Europe, but here the movie may have seemed too much of a boys' adventure tale.
Chico & Rita, on the other hand, is a genuinely adult movie -- it even features female nudity -- charting a tempestuous love affair between a Cuban songwriter and a sexy singer, set against a musical backdrop that includes everyone from Dizzy Gillespie to Tito Puente. "It's a great, beautiful, adult animated film," says Eric Beckman, who heads the New York-based micro-distributor GKids Films, which will release Chico through its adult Luma Films label. He also is handling A Cat in Paris, which follows a cat burglar across the rooftops of Paris. Of the upset, he says, "In all honesty, I expected we'd get one nomination, but I never thought we'd get two."
Journey 2: The Mysterious Island Looks For $16m Weekend
That just leaves the 3D action-adventure Journey 2: The Mysterious Island (New Line/WB), which may be hurt by the presence of the "Star War" re-release, which is targeting the same family audience looking for action adventure. Brendan Fraser is nowhere to be found but Josh Hutcherson is joined by Dwayne Johnson and Michael Caine, the former likely to have the strongest draw, but maybe not enough to convince fathers and young boys to miss the opportunity to see "Star Wars" in theaters in 3D. The original Journey to the Center of the Earth opened with $21 million and went on to gross over $100 million, boosted by the then-original idea of a 3D live action movie, and while this could bring in a mix of boys and girls, it's more likely to be hurt by school being in session Friday and Monday. Like so many family movie sequels, we think this won't do as well as the original, ending up somewhere in the $16 to 18 million range this weekend and probably get up to roughly $60 or 65 million or so by the time it leaves theaters.
Film Industry in Ontario Contributed $1.26-billion to Economy in 2011
(arts.nationalpost.com)David Cronenberg, a 19th century police detective and flesh-eating zombies have helped Ontario’s film and television industry reap a record $1.26-billion for the provincial economy last year.
The figures mark a 31% increase or $300 million from the previous year and are the best results recorded since the Ontario Media Development Corporation started gathering data in 1986.
The real success story, Karen Thorne-Stone, president and CEO of the corporation, said Tuesday, is that domestic production accounts for almost 70% of all activity. She cited the success of home-grown television shows such as the police dramas Flashpoint and Murdoch Mysteries.
“It means we have stability in the system and our talents in front and behind the cameras are employed,” she said after delivering a lunch-time speech at The Economic Club of Canada.
The figures, which were released Tuesday, also show a 165% increase in domestic feature film spending, thanks in part to Cronenberg’s Cosmopolis and Resident Evil: Retribution (its predecessor, Resident Evil: Afterlife, is Canada’s top-grossing film, having taken in $300-million worldwide).
Canada’s film industry has boomed over the last decade or so as foreigner took advantage of the sagging Canadian dollar. But for years, folks in so-called Hollywood North feared that the opportunities would dry up once the dollar came closer to par with the U.S. dollar.
“Ontario is no longer the discount location,” Thorne-Stone said. “People are coming here because we have quality, reliability and world-class talent … Even as we watched the Canadian dollar rise, to notice that the phone is still ringing and projects are still coming, that’s very heartening.”
Toronto competes with Los Angeles, New York, London and Vancouver when attracting large productions. Donna Zuchlinski, the corporation’s film commissioner, said the low dollar helped the develop the infrastructure and the crews in the province. “But as the crews matured and the infrastructure grew, it was the reputation that we had that superseded where the dollar was at,” she added.
She pointed to resources such as Pinewood Toronto Studios, the largest studio complex in the country which accommodates big blockbuster movies, and the province’s leadership in 3D technology; films such as Tron, Harry Potter and Twilight: Breaking Dawn came to Ontario for post-production and visual effects work.
“If you look at A Dangerous Method for example, you might not think there is any CGI element to it at all but we did tons of work here in Toronto on getting the look of that period of Western Europe right through CG enhancements,” said Martin Katz, the Toronto-based producer of Cronenberg’s A Dangerous Method. “As each part of the industry grows, it helps to shoehorn other parts of the industry.”
In comparison to Ontario’s film industry, Vancouver historically has received more foreign productions than Canadian-based work, making it more vulnerable to the rises and falls of the dollar. However, Susan Croome, BC Film Commissioner, said last year was “a solid year” in B.C. with blockbusters such as the latest Mission Impossible and Superman films being filmed in the province.
“Canada is recognized as being a very stable, safe place to do business,” she said. “Clients want to go with a sure bet with high quality and people who deliver on our promises.”
The B.C. Film Commission will release its numbers later this month.
BY THE NUMBERS
$165.9-million The contribution to the economy from domestic feature film production in 2011 due to co-productions such as Resident Evil: Retribution, Foxfire, Cosmopolis and Silent Hill: Revelation 3D
$231.6-million The amount reaped from foreign feature film production. While the number of foreign feature films dropped slightly, budgets were larger including two of the biggest films ever shot in Ontario: Total Recall and Pacific Rim.
$626.7-million The contribution from domestic television series including Rookie Blue, The Firm and The L.A. Complex, shows which were also picked up by U.S. networks.
25% The Ontario Production Services Tax Credit which includes all eligible Ontario production costs.
Pixar’s Brave Concept Art And Sculptures – Images And Video
(bleedingcool.com)There’s a rolling exhibition of concept art and development pieces on display at Disney’s Hollywood Studios park at Walt Disney World. They’re in the midst of a changeover right now, as while the signage still tells visitors to expect Winnie the Pooh and Cars 2 works inside, they’ve already brought out the pictures and sculptures for Pixar’s summer movie, Brave.
Denise of Mouse Steps stopped by the exhibit, camera in hand, and has reported back with images and video of what she saw.
Here are some of the images, and at the foot of the post, the video which is more comprehensive and actually features some of the best stuff.
But as you’d expect, it’s all good looking stuff.
Take a look: http://www.bleedingcool.com/2012/02/05/pixars-brave- concept-art-sculptures-images- video/
Why 'Chronicle' Is A Step In The Right Direction For Tentpoles-In-The-Making
(blogs.indiewire.com)Let's not get it twisted, Josh Trank's "Chronicle," is neither superhero film, tentpole nor masterpiece. However, it is a model that will soon be adapted by studio tentpole minded projects across the board, even if it's not completely successful at the box-office (read our review here). For those that haven't seen the film yet, don't worry, no major spoilers ahead. We'll discuss the film in broad terms, but much of this is evident from the trailers.
A found footage film, "Chronicle," is about a group of teenagers who inexplicably gain telekinetic powers from a source we won't disclose, but all you need to know is that it's a MacGuffin-like plot device, which almost has no bearing on the story (read: it really could been anything, it doesn't matter).
While "Chronicle," like all films, has its flaws, and carries what is arguably a completely unneccessary found-footage conceit (the parameters of which are often broken for the sake of convenience) and doesn't always have the greatest of executions -- there's a few emotional beats missing along the way with the main character's devolution into "monster" -- what it does possess above most genre and superhero fare are ambitions on its mind far beyond the good vs. evil paradigm. Hell, its aims even go beyond the general boundaries of the modern superhero film, which essentially these days is a moody, brooding self-examining would-be hero who is unconvinced he is worthy of such powers and then is put to the test. And because of that, "Chronicle" is infinitely more interesting than its fellow films in the genre, even if it doesn't always hit its marks.
What "Chronicle" does best is side-step the notion of one-dimensional villains and heroes and asks the simple question: what might happen if teenagers were bestowed with super human powers and how would they behave and respond?
The answer is refreshingly modern (and simple). They would fuck around, abuse their power for their own gain (both in trivial and consequential ways) and essentially take their newfound abilities out for joyrides as often as possible (and yes, they try and impress chicks too, duh). Grounded in that relatable reality, "Chronicle" seems to dwarf the simple concerns of pictures like "Thor," "Green Lantern" and "Captain America" (and possibly "The Avengers," which appears as if it will follow the same boring premise -- heroes trying to save the world from destruction).
In a sense, "Chronicle" is an above average genre film or a very typical drama that happens to have super natural elements. The main conflict isn't quite apparent at first because there is (thankfully) no traditional villain. Instead, as witnessed in the trailers, its about these three teenagers self-policing themselves and one of the more socially-pained and tormented of the trio succumbing to hubris and manifesting his powers through emo tantrums and frustrated rage. And yes, we'll concede, this is arguably where the film misses its mark a few times, even though it attempts to set up this character's emotional issues early on. The transition to pure, uncontrollable anger seems slightly off, but that's a minor issue, a smaller part of our larger point.
The bottom line is "Chronicle" gets more elements right then it does wrong. For one -- and you can bet your ass studios will be paying attention to this just as they did with the relatively inexpensive "District 9" -- Trank's film has thrilling action and aerial sequences and the film didn't cost $150 million. In fact it cost around $12 million, so if it is a hit, it could be very lucrative. Even if it's not a commercial smash, there's a reason Trank is rumored to be the first choice to reboot the "Fantastic Four" franchise: he's produced a picture that's been made for less than half the cost of those cornball films, and it's 10 times as interesting and inventive as either of them. And he's done it with his debut film, proving he can make a quality, engaging and entertaining genre film for a song -- and Hollywood loves that.
Of course they could always make the mistake of throwing millions of unnecessary dollars at him and frontloading his next picture with stars (which one could argue is happening with "Elysium"), but that would be the studios' continuing miscalculation of overspending to try and make a massive profit (see films like "The Lone Ranger" that are major risks as they are either huge hits or huge bombs with no middle ground).
Like "Cloverfield," "District 9" or even "Monsters" demonstrated, a new, more thought-provoking and cost-effective playing field is merging in sci-fi/creature-based, super-powered genre films. Forced to be creative because the budget isn't exorbitant (like Spielberg was way back in the day with "Jaws") and by focusing on things like story and character rather than spectacle, "Chronicle" and films of its ilk tend to look less like scrappy newcomers, and more like seasoned veterans, that still contain an original voice that is loud and clear. With less at stake financially, and with that lowered risk a greater opportunity to play creative rather than worrying about four quadrant marketing, films like "Chronicle" will hopefully lead to a bridging of that gap in the studio system, where virtually every movie is subjected to do-or-die expectations.
But there is one caveat in all this: it's up to audiences to make that happen. Studios only respond where they see dollar signs, and if "Chronicle" fails to impress this weekend, this conversation is pretty much moot. So far, this scrappy, microbudget approach has largely been in the proven domain of horror films (though next month's comedy "Project X" will be another test of a lo-fi production with no stars). That said, if "Chronicle" can develop strong word of mouth and show legs over the next few weeks, you can be sure executives will be paying very close attention, and hopefully begin taking more chances on films that don't require a built-in brand and $100 million dollars to get made.
M Night Shyamalan's "AfterEarth" Begins Principle Photography
M Night Shyamalan tweeted: “Superbowl is over. First day of #AfterEarth begins tomorrow. 60 days of production begins. Good luck to the wonderful cast and crew. Day 1. Two firsts. This is the first time I am shooting on a digital camera. The camera I am using is a Sony F65, and I am the first filmmaker to use it. I chose this camera because of its ability to convey naturalism as well as its technical latitude. The jungles and forests are very dark.”
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