(btlnews.com) Sony Pictures Imageworks announced that it will expand its Vancouver, British Columbia capacity by opening an additional 16,000 square feet of space in the Yaletown area for work on the current productions Men In Black 3, The Amazing-Spider-Man, Oz The Great And Powerful and Sony Pictures Animation’s Hotel Transylvania now underway.
Imageworks’ established its Vancouver office in 2010. Its growing presence builds on the Vancouver studio’s experience with The Smurfs production for Sony Pictures Animation and the successful integration of the Canadian team with Imageworks’ Culver City workforce and infrastructure. The new office effectively doubles the floor space. The two Vancouver locations, two blocks apart, are fully connected to Imageworks’ Culver City data center. Imageworks Canada will occupy a total of 32,000 square feet of office space when the new location comes online in March.
“Vancouver today is a vibrant digital production center that offers a strong talent base and significant government incentives vital to our ability to deliver exceptional quality and value to our clients,” said Randy Lake, executive vice-president and general manager of Sony Pictures Imageworks.
“Imageworks Canada here in Vancouver is a true extension of the Culver City studio,” says Rick Mischel, Imageworks’ senior vice president of satellite production, who is based in Vancouver. “Video conference, large-screen viewing suites that mirror the set-up in Culver City, and data transfer connect the artists here directly to our home base.”
“To have Sony Pictures Imageworks Canada expand their studio space by an additional 16,000 square feet is a great vote of confidence in Vancouver,” said City of Vancouver mayor Gregor Robertson. “We’ve worked hard to make our city a global destination for digital media talent, and are thrilled that Imageworks is putting down deeper roots in Vancouver.”
CGI Dinosaurs Roar to Life on the iPad
(macobserver.com)
Inside the World of Dinosaurs is a massive and glorious app for the iPad. It’s far from perfect, and at the price of US$14.95 it is pricey, but M5859 Studios has done a terrific job of creating a compelling and engaging overview of 60 dinosaurs and the world in which they lived. I would consider it a showpiece app for the iPad that really takes advantage of the graphic capabilities and the potential of dynamic audio of the iPad — espcially with some good earphones.
The dinosaurs are rendered in beautiful 3D, and many objects can be horizontally rotated 360º. A great number of graphics can be stretched to full screen and horizontally rotated, though you don’t get the expected stretch animation. Instead the screen re-draws to show the enlarged graphic. Tapping on a button brings you back to where you were.
When you start, you are presented with a clear instruction screen. This is a great idea since there are so many ways to use the app, many of which can get confusing. Most of what you need to know can be found on this screen:
You are shown how to enable narration, which is also printed, and how to rotate and enlarge graphics. Take note of the tabs on the bottom left and right of the screen. Tapping on the right tab will take you through the entire program starting with articles and going through the 60 dinosaurs and 22 pages of dinosaur hunters. The easiest way to get acquainted with the program is to turn on narration and enable auto-page turning. This allows you to listen to Stephen Fry’s wonderful voice reading the narration written by Alicia Barnes.
While doing this you can twirl objects around on a horizontal axis only, or stretch smaller pictures to full screen and rotate many of them. But herein lies a problem. If you enlarge a graphic and don’t return it to its normal size before the narration is done, everything stops. To continue, you need to tap on an X, return the screen to its original size, re-enable narration and auto page turning, and wait until the page you just heard is re-read to continue on in your journey.
Full article with pics: http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/review/dinosaurs_roar_to_ life_on_the_ipad_with_stephen_ fry/
Artists the Key in Building Animation Industry: Canadian Producer
(focustaiwan.tw) Marc Bertrand, who produced the Oscar-nominated short film "Sunday," said Monday that countries could not take shortcuts in building a strong animation industry and had to invest in their artistic talent.
"For me, the way to build the industry is from the ground up, and the ground is the creators, the artists, and the minds of these people," Bertrand, who was in Taipei to speak on the art of storytelling, told CNA in an interview.
He called on the industry to "put the animators at the center of their creations," which is the core philosophy of the National Film Board of Canada (NFB), Canada's public film producer and distributor and where Bertrand has been a producer since 1998.
The NFB creates documentaries on social issues, auteur animation, alternative drama and digital content with a Canadian perspective. Since its founding in 1939, it has created over 13,000 productions and won over 5,000 awards, including 12 Oscars.
Its 2011 production "Sunday," about a little boy who tries to escape boredom on a Sunday by placing coins on a train track, has been nominated for an Oscar this year.
When asked about what advice he would give to Taiwan's government and local industries looking to develop the 3D film and animation market, Bertrand stressed that the artists should play a major part in the creation of a work.
"I hope that the industry will not dictate what artists have to do," he said, adding that the best way to inspire creativity is not by instruction but by giving young artists opportunities.
"Creativity is not something we teach, it is doors that we open to young students and workers. It is inspired by telling them you're important and you're imaginative and asking them 'what do you think?'" he said.
Bertrand said companies need to realize that their main resources are creative people and that governments have to be confident that their investment will turn out good.
"That can be frightening. Creative people can be frightening for commercial use. But that's where the gold is," the producer said.
The flourishing animation and gaming industry in Montreal, for example, is a result of talent that emerged not only from the NFB but also from local animation schools, Bertrand said.
Besides funding art schools, the government should also give grants to students after they graduate to help them develop their skills, and fund creative and art communities to encourage artists to create works together, he said.
The NFB has such a program, one that funds independent filmmakers and supports young animators, including giving them technical help, Bertrand noted.
The producer said Taipei National University of the Arts, which invited him to Taiwan, has impressed him as being able to foster creativity.
"I have a sense that people here are very open-minded, artistically-driven and there is a lot of potential," he said.
Universal’s Ill-Fated Hasbro Deal - What Can Hollywood Learn?
(nymag.com) Candy Land, Monopoly and Stretch Armstrong were all meant to be Universal movies, but it was not to be.
Last week, news broke that the board game Candy Land had been dumped by Universal Pictures and instead set up at rival Sony Pictures, now as an Adam Sandler vehicle. And with this departure, Universal had unloaded the last of its Hasbro-inspired projects (having washed their hands of Stretch Armstrong, Ouija, and Clue within the last six months); this ends — nearly two years early — the studio's largely unproductive, multi-million-dollar deal with the world's No. 2 toymaker. Signed in 2008, the pact originally anticipated a far-less-costly moviemaking world in which movie stars wouldn't be the attraction, brands would. And yet: Candy Land has now been scooped up by another studio not because of the inherent attraction of the board game, but precisely because it would make a good vehicle for a big star. From this expensive and largely fruitless deal – the jury is still out on whether the $250-plus million adaptation of Battleship with no movie stars will end up like the Costa Concordia or rack up Titanic-size grosses – Hollywood can take a lesson not just about the dangers of relying too much on outside brand names, but also on the dangers of a studio looking for too quick a fix.
When the Hasbro deal with Universal was first announced, it was described in a joint statement as a “six-year partnership” that would produce “at least four feature films” based on “the greatest brands in the world” — games and toys like Monopoly, Battleship, and Stretch Armstrong would be the new tentpoles. The reaction from many in the creative community was scorn, followed by resignation: Had it come to this? A latex rubber doll filled with gelled corn syrup was now what passed for intellectual property?
Thankfully for these despondent types, next to nothing came of the deal. Even some Universal machers knew it was a bad idea at the time. “At least Stretch Armstrong was at one point an action figure," says one former top exec in hindsight, "something you could build a story around. But what else is in the Hasbro catalogue that is iconic and translates to a feature film? Certainly not board games.” The success of DreamWorks and Paramount's Transformers films likely inspired the deal, but there was a mythology behind those robots — or at least a history of kids smashing them into each other, making their own stories. What would the story be behind Ouija? Explains one top talent agent, “Sure, my kids played Battleship — but they didn’t even know what they were playing was 'Battleship.'”
Current Universal execs privately admit the “partnership” that was to have run through 2013 is effectively dead, and besides Battleship, which comes out May 18, not a single Hasbro property mentioned in that 2008 press release remains at Universal in active development. Rather than continue to pay the contractually obligated punitive $5 million fines for each film it dithered on, the studio agreed to pay a single, enormous multi-million-dollar penalty just to get out of business with Hasbro. And as soon as it was finalized, Universal began shedding Hasbro projects like a Siberian Husky sheds fur after emerging from a kiddie pool. Only a day before Candy Land was kicked to the curb, Stretch Armstrong was sent packing, too; it’s now in development at Relativity Media, which is starting over at square one, without Taylor Lautner or super-producer Brian Grazer. Late in August, Universal dropped the Michael Bay–produced and McG-directed Ouija, which even Paramount Pictures — whom Bay has made billions for with Transformers — has passed on acquiring. Three weeks before that, Universal dropped Clue. (Perhaps someone remembered that in 1985 it had already been made as a movie with three possible endings, and that none of them ended well?)
It’d be easy to blame the onerous terms of the deal, and the inherent creative roadblocks. (Battleship is a giant action movie about a battleship officer leading a fight against aliens: Why did they even need a brand name for that? And even if at one point someone coyly utters the catchphrase, "You sunk my Battleship!" isn't that a pop-culture reference that could have been made without paying millions in rights fees?) Yet Universal's biggest underlying error in making the deal at all was trying to reverse a fifteen-year absence from family filmmaking with one single deal. Since the nineties, Universal's attempts at big hits largely came from raiding the B-movie junk closet of horror that they owned. Sometimes it worked (The Mummy); but mostly they were costly misfires (The Wolfman, Van Helsing) that not only failed to spawn new franchises, but severely tarnished the studio's own core brand. “It was an issue for years,” recounts our former Universal-ite. “Ever since [Steven Spielberg’s] Amblin had left the lot, that sort of big, tentpole family entertainment — E.T., Back to the Future — had disappeared from the place. At the time, Paramount had DreamWorks Animation; Disney had Marvel and Pixar — all generators of ‘big idea’ content. The hope was that Hasbro would be that for Universal, which had no existing franchises of its own.”
Yet it’s worth noting that the biggest successes Universal has had of late — the Bourne movies, Despicable Me, Bridesmaids — all came not from toys or games, but from books and original-thinking minds. Just like E.T. and Back to the Future. With Candy Land finally out of its system, here’s hoping Universal will recover from its insulin shock soon and get back to making the meat-and-potatoes entertainment that made it great all those years ago, and only fitfully brilliant of late.
The Biggest VFX Flops Of The Past 12 Years
(screenjunkies.com)While it’s too early in 2012 to tell what movie is going to suck the hardest (although Big Miracle is certainly on it’s way), we can turn to the past and evaluate the missteps of Hollywood from yesteryear. Compiled below are a list of the biggest flops, spanning from 2000 to 2011. The classification was applied after careful calculations that factored in total box office gross, number of screens, per screen average and other math stuff that you’re just going to have trust. Whatever. Do you really want to be the guy defending The Adventures of Pluto Nash?
Mars Needs Moms (2011)
With a budget of $150 million, 2011′s biggest flop earned $39 million worldwide. Mars Needs Moms tells the story of a boy who takes his mother for granted but then goes to great lengths to save her when she’s abducted by an alien race. Without any real star power attached, the motion-captured feature took a big risk putting all of its fate into a technology that has had a shaky history with moviegoers. As if losing $111 million weren’t bad enough, it must be terrible to admit having any participation in making this film.
Jonah Hex (2010)
Though $10.9 million on a $40 million production budget doesn’t seem like the hugest of losses, a lot was put behind publicity for this comic book adaptation. Planned to be a summer tentpole, the movie crashed in burned in America causing the studio to scrap a large rollout overseas. Word is that the studio lost as much as they typically earn from a Harry Potter film on Hex. But, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. I find the film delightful and hilarious. Just not for the reasons filmmakers would have liked me to.
Land of the Lost (2009)
It’s sad to see this one on the list. Budgeted at $100 million, the adaptation of the classic show earned only $35 million at the box office. The reason that it’s a shame for Land of the Lost to wind up on a flop list is because it really was an entertaining movie. Marketed COMPLETELY wrong as a goofy romp for kids that parents would enjoy too, it’s actually anything but that. In fact, it brought back the snarky vibe of an 80′s comedy that has been so missed in film. Give this one a shot. Unless you’re the type to have Will Ferrell fatigue. Then there’s no talking any reason into you.
Speed Racer (2008)
Another fun movie that didn’t deserve to be shunned by audiences. The Wachowskis’ Matrix follow-up was totally awesome. Meaning, watching it makes you full of awe. The visuals are insane and, yes, the story is a little cartoonish but for good, obvious reason. Plus there’s ninjas and ninja-fighting. That’s an element that was sorely missing from the source material. That and sequences so fast-paced they could blind a chicken.
The Invasion (2007)
Still coasting off the success of The Others, flop queen Nicole Kidman couldn’t score another hit with The Invasion. Budgeted at $80 million with a take of half that, audiences cared to see this Invasion of the Body Snatchers retread about as much as they wanted to see The Stepford Wives, The Interpreter, The Golden Compass, Bewitched, Australia, and Nine.
Poseidon (2006)
Talk about a disaster. Designed to be an early summer blockbuster, the movie completely tanked in its first weekend. It made up a good amount of its rumored $180 million overseas where people will watch anything but not enough to turn a profit. Though it does give you the pleasure of seeing Fergie and Kevin Dillon killed in extremely painful ways, the wish fulfillment is not worth the price of admission.
The Adventures of Pluto Nash (2002)
Total budget: $120 million. Worldwide gross: $7 million. Let’s just let the math do all the explaining here.
Battlefield Earth (2000)
There’s only one thing that audiences find more annoying than Bennifer. Scientology. John Travolta’s love letter to the religion was made for $100 million and earned less than $30 million at the worldwide box office. Perhaps because the film was just unconscionably bad with Travolta and Forest Whitaker looking like Rob Zombie and the bassist from a Klingon reggae roots band while sneering out their lines like Ben Vereen on Zoobilee Zoo. If you’re going to watch this, you either are trying to test yourself abilities of endurance or you really love some Travolta. In which case, stick with Look Who’s Talking Now. That’s the one with the dogs.
Japan's Studio Ghibli Looks to Break Through
(online.wsj.com) Animated movies from Japan's Studio Ghibli such as "Spirited Away" and "Ponyo" have been blockbusters in foreign markets, but have brought in just middling receipts in the U.S.—despite critical acclaim and strong marketing support from Walt Disney Co. and Pixar's John Lasseter.
'The Secret World of Arrietty' is based on the popular book 'The Borrowers,' giving U.S. distributors more options for marketing the new movie.
Disney hopes to boost Studio Ghibli's box-office punch with the English-language release of "The Secret World of Arrietty," which is based on Mary Norton's much-loved children's book "The Borrowers." The film, which tells the story of tiny people who live beneath the floorboards of a house, has already grossed more than $126 million internationally, and will be released in the U.S. on Feb. 17.
Disney teams with Studio Ghibli on its theatrical releases in North America, and has home-video rights to Studio Ghibli films.
Unlike most previous Studio Ghibli films, "Arrietty" isn't directed by Hayao Miyazaki—a legendary filmmaker in his native Japan and the creator of classics such as "Castle in the Sky," and "My Neighbor Totoro." Mr. Miyazaki serves as a co-writer of the original Japanese screenplay of "Arrietty," which was directed by first-time Studio Ghibli director Hiromasa Yonebayashi.
Mr. Lasseter, chief creative officer, Walt Disney and Pixar Animation Studio, hopes the new film will find a wider audience. Mr. Lasseter served as executive producer on a number of the North American versions of Studio Ghibli films, including "Ponyo," and "Spirited Away," which won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature of 2002.
Part of the challenge in building buzz is that Disney doesn't have merchandising rights for Studio Ghibli films. There will be no "Arrietty" dolls or replicas of the dollhouse in the film, for example. But Disney will open "Arrietty" on at least 1200 screens, in what will be its largest Ghibli release in the U.S. As comparison, "Ponyo" opened on about 900 screens, and "Spirited Away" opened on 750 screens.
"I just want to do everything I can to help make sure people can go see them because they're just magnificent films that are very different than any other animated films these days," Mr. Lasseter said in an interview.
When asked why Studio Ghibli films haven't done as well in the U.S. compared with Pixar or Disney animated features, he said, "I don't know and I would like to correct that. I ask that same question all the time....They're beautiful on the big screen."
The 2009 film "Ponyo" grossed $15.1 million in the U.S. compared with $184 million internationally, according to Hollywood.com. In 2002, "Spirited Away" grossed $10 million in the U.S. compared with $264.9 million internationally.
Frank Marshall and Kathleen Kennedy, who co-executive produced the North American version of "Ponyo," are returning as co-executive producers of "Arrietty." Mr. Marshall said the film's marketing will be broadened to include readers of "The Borrowers" book, especially young girls, parents and teachers.
"There are obviously Miyazaki fans and Ghibli fans already, but we really think that 'Arrietty' is a universal film," Mr. Marshall said. "People know the book, 'The Borrowers,' and so we're hoping that particularly with our well-known cast, that people will discover the movie."
Mr. Lasseter thinks "Arrietty" will win over moviegoers with its tale of a tiny young girl who goes on her first "borrowing" with her father to forage for food and necessities, and the details of how they make their way—climbing a stairwell made of nails, or scaling a table leg with adhesives. "It's an incredible adventure of just going up into this big house and how they get around, and how they use discarded objects that are really small and insignificant in our world but to them are quite big and meaningful," he said.
The cast includes Bridgit Mendler, the star of Disney's "Good Luck Charlie," Amy Poehler, Will Arnett, and Carol Burnett.
Mr. Marshall said prior Studio Ghibli releases in the U.S. weren't large enough to attract audiences beyond already existing Ghibli fans.
"It all depends on how many theaters you're in, it depends on how much is spent on the marketing," Mr. Marshall said. "I think that it's just a slow building audience now."
George Lucas Talks About Adding a Digital Yoda to 'The Phantom Menace'
(insidemovies.ew.com) Moviegoers who head to theaters to see The Phantom Menace when it reopens on Feb. 10 will notice something new besides the fancy 3-D technology. Puppet Yoda is gone, and has been replaced by an all-new digital Yoda, like the one seen in episodes 2 and 3. (Digital Phantom Menace Yoda also appears in the recent Star Wars Blu-ray box set released last September.) While George Lucas has taken some heat for going back and making numerous changes to his original trilogy, he has used a much lighter hand when it comes to his second set of Star Wars films, and in the exclusive clip below, he explains that is because the technology was already in place during filming to fully carry out his vision. Except, it seems, in the case of Yoda. “We were trying desperately to get a digital Yoda into the first film, Phantom Menace,” says Lucas. “We just couldn’t make it work. We came close. We got Jar Jar, and Sebulba, and Watto, and a lot of other characters, but we couldn’t get Yoda because he was much harder to do. And so when we finally did get that accomplished, before the second film, we went back and put the digital Yoda back in the first film as it was intended to be.”
VIDEO - Take a look: http://insidemovies.ew.com/2012/02/03/george-lucas-star- wars-digital-yoda-phantom- menace/
Five Myths of Motion Capture
(animationideas.com)By now you would have seen the Academy Award nominations for best animated feature for 2011.
Congratulations to all the Oscar nominees: Une vie de chat (A Cat in Paris), Chico and Rita, Kung Fu Panda 2, Puss in Boots and Rango.
It’s impossible to say whether a film like The Adventures of Tintin was excluded from the list because it included motion capture as a technique.
But in a recent interview with Joe Letteri, senior visual effects supervisor for Weta Digital, he indicated that he had his own theory on why Tintin was snubbed.
I think that was a really big oversight… Not to recognise those achievements. The visual effects branch didn’t recognise it, because they thought it was animation, and the animation branch didn’t recognise it because it was using performance capture and visual effects techniques. – Joe Letteri
Whether you agree with the decision or not, it’s probably as good a time as any to dispell some myths about films that use motion capture.
Full disclosure: I worked on Happy Feet 2. In this article, my views are my own, naturally, and do not represent the production team or the studio.
Myth 1: Motion capture artists aren’t animators
Note: that is distinct from saying that motion capture is animation. Obviously the techniques are quite different.
But as far as the people hired to edit motion captured from a live performance, in all cases I’ve seen: studios hire animators.
The animators are hired based on their keyframe animation skills and on their showreels.
Why?
Because studios know that motion editing requires the same set of skills that make good keyframe animators: timing, spacing, strong poses, weight, exaggeration, appeal etc.
Myth 2: Movies that use motion capture look terrible
To be honest, there are some horrible looking films out there that use motion capture. You could probably think of three right now off the top of your head.
You want me to name them?
Ha! Nice try.
But you know what – some keyframe animated films don’t look that hot either, quite frankly.
I’m sure for every beautiful film that uses motion capture, like Avatar or Tintin, you could provide a counter-example, but the technique of motion capture by itself is not to blame for crummy films.
Myth 3: Using motion capture makes it a “motion capture movie”
Speaking from experience, there is no way you could possibly take just take the data from the motion capture floor, clean it up a bit and send it off to be rendered.
For starters, there are often many characters and objects that are not suitable for capture by a person in a suit: four-legged animals, birds, vehicles, sets and props.
Seriously. No-one is going to squeeze into a motion capture suit and flap around like a bird, when you could just as easily keyframe animate it.
No-one stuck reflective balls on a trained dog in order to capture the motion for Snowy in Tintin.
Calling a film a “motion capture movie” is about as accurate as calling something a “special effects movie”.
Myth 4: Motion capture movies have no animation in them
On Happy Feet 2 I had a chance to work with George Miller as my director and Rob Coleman as my animation director. When these directors were in a darkened room looking to improve the shot, they honestly didn’t care whether a scene was captured from a dance, a drama performance or animated by hand.
They just wanted the result they were after.
A lot of the time spent as motion editors was perfecting the already brilliant performances, including adding extra motion, adding spins and new gestures, selling the weight of the characters and adding overlap to the body and limbs.
All of these involved adding motion and frames where there were none previously.
In other words, even the motion editors were animating by hand in many cases. Frame by frame.
Myth 5: Films that use motion capture are ineligible for the Academy Award for Animated Feature
If you want your animated feature film to be eligible for Oscar nominations, the rules read as follows:
An animated feature film is defined as a motion picture with a running time of more than 40 minutes, in which movement and characters’ performances are created using a frame-by-frame technique. Motion capture by itself is not an animation technique. In addition, a significant number of the major characters must be animated, and animation must figure in no less than 75 percent of the picture’s running time. – Academy Awards Rules for Best Animated Feature Film (my emphasis added)
I agree.
Motion capture by itself is not an animation technique.
The argument for films like Tintin and Happy Feet 2 is that while they use motion capture as one of their techniques, there is plenty of animation in the film to allow it to qualify.
Happy Feet 2 ran at about 1100 shots, and only around 750 out of those shots contained motion capture. And of those 750 shots, almost all of them would have had some elements animated frame-by-frame: keyframed characters, lip synch, facial expression, moving sets and props.
Honestly, it would be more difficult to find a shot in the film that didn’t contain any keyframed animation.
Whether we like it or not, motion capture is here to stay.
When used intelligently, there’s no reason it shouldn’t compliment frame-by-frame animation as another technique for producing television, videogames and films.
ReelzChannel To Broadcast 10th Annual Visual Effects Society (VES) Awards
(reelz.com) You can watch the 10th Annual Visual Effects Society Awards here on ReelzChannel... and nowhere else. The VES Awards recognize outstanding artistry in more than 20 categories of movies, animation, television, commercials, and video games. Stand-up comedian and actor Patton Oswalt returns to host the show, which will air on Sunday, February 19th.
Some highlights of the night include Stan Lee (comic-book writer/producer) receiving the VES Lifetime Achievement Award and Douglas Trumbull (visual effects pioneer/director) being given the 2012 Georges Méliès Award. Antonio Banderas (the voice of Puss in Puss in Boots) and Lucy Liu (the voice of Viper in Kung Fu Panda 2) are among the celebrity presenters.
Matthew Singerman, SVP Programming, had this to say:
ReelzChannel is proud to be the exclusive broadcast home for the Visual Effects Awards for the third straight year. We love the VES Awards because they honor one of the biggest reasons we all love movies — incredible visual effects, and as TV About Movies® this is great for our viewers since it gives them an opportunity to see which blockbusters receive awards for their stunning visual effects.
We'll also be there on the VES Awards red carpet, introducing you to the nominees, celebrity presenters, and famous faces in attendance. Then Hollywood Dailies co-host Steve Patterson will be behind-the-scenes, talking with the winners backstage. ReelzChannel is on DirecTV channel 238, Dish Network channel 299, and available on your cable or satellite system.
Encore Presentations for the 10th Annual VES Awards
Monday, February 20
3am ET/ 12am PT
Tuesday, February 21
9am ET/ 6am PT
Wednesday, February 22
2pm ET/ 11am PT
Thursday, February 23
7pm ET/ 4pm PT
Friday, February 24
9am ET/ 6am PT
Saturday, February 25
11am ET/ 8am PT
Separable Subsurface Scattering: The Future Of Humans
(kotaku.com)The Video Game Humans of the Future Should Look This AwesomeThe Video Game Humans of the Future Should Look This Awesome A new console generation is almost upon us, not to mention a new era in PC gaming fidelity. We know better graphics are coming, but just what do those better graphics actually look like?
They'll probably look a lot like this.
This technology is called Separable Subsurface Scattering. It's the product of "hours and hours of research, desperation, excitement, happiness, pride, sadness and extreme dedication" on the part of researchers Jorge Jimenez and Diego Gutierrez, and it's designed specifically to be used for human skin in video games.
Not trailers, not movies, not cartoons, but video games. SSS has been written entirely in DirectX 10, and everything you see is being rendered in real-time. Don't believe them, you can download the original demo here and try it yourself.
If you watch the clip and find yourself a little underwhelmed, that might be because it was designed to run fullscreen at 1080p. So try it out as nature intended for the full effect.
(kotaku.com) http://kotaku.com/5882857/the-video-games-of-the-future- could-look-this-awesome
Tech Legend Lowry Leaves his Mark
(jam.canoe.ca) Hollywood tech legend John Lowry was to receive a special Technical Academy Award this week to recognize his work in restoring movies for DVD. (Supplied)
A go-to guy for both NASA and James Cameron -- and an image restorer who had saved scores of classic movies from extinction -- John Lowry still sounded a little sheepish over never finishing high school.
"But I did hire a lot of PhDs," the Canadian-born Hollywood tech legend -- and inventor of the "Lowry Process" -- quipped in a phone interview 11 days before his death Jan. 21 in L.A. at age 79.
Lowry, who was born in Peterborough, Ont., and raised in Toronto's East End, was to receive a special Technical Academy Award this week to recognize his work in restoring movies for DVD.
(Lowry was originally left out from an Academy press release identifying the Canadians being honoured. After seeing that information in the Sun, he phoned to proudly affirm his Canadian-ness).
But it was his sale of a process to "clean up" live Apollo mission video that really launched his legendary career.
Lowry, who started as a CBC stage hand in 1952, absorbed every stage of production and became head of CBC's first effects department (which debuted with a fog machine of his own design).
By the end of the '60s, Lowry took his expertise to the private sector, and began experimenting with overlapping image frames to filter out visual "noise," what would become known as the Lowry Process.
"I was doing the installation of the equipment for a company, and I needed some really bad material to demonstrate. And I watched the Apollo 15 moon-landing and the video was really noisy, really, really bad."
Lowry called the Houston Space Centre to ask for footage and, after a runaround, was finally connected to then-Col. James McDivitt, commander of Apollo 9. Lowry explained what he wanted, and a suspicious-but-intrigued McDivitt agreed, demanding to see the finished result himself.
Some weeks later in Houston, Lowry says, he began showing McDivitt the clean-up. "He was a gruff son of a bitch, and half-way through he's on the phone. And I was thinking, that was kind of rude."
Minutes later, Lowry was replaying the video for an audience of NASA officials. After informing him he could process the video live, McDivitt, "turned sweet as pie, and asked, 'How much?' "
The Apollo 16 and 17 missions ended up with crisp live video. (Recently Lowry was re-called into action by NASA, restoring an odd collection of Apollo 11 video -- including shots taken off TV screens -- to replace original footage that had accidentally been erased).
The Lowry Process really flew with the digital revolution. "The more high-quality the camera, the more things go wrong. An excellent example of that was (James Cameron's) Aliens Of The Deep. It was an underwater documentary Jim shot in IMAX about a mile and a half down the Atlantic.
"They came to me because they had a moray pattern on the picture that was very serious. Quite unusable. The pressure down there was causing serious interference.
"I took the material, sat down at a work station, and 20 minutes later I had the solution. That pleased Jim Cameron to no end, because it saved his movie."
In 1998, he started Lowry Digital Systems, to clean up original masters (some of them nearly unsavable) for the then-fledgling DVD market.
"Our first movie was North by Northwest, which delighted me, because Hitchcock was an idol of mine."
In a demonstration similar to his NASA experience, Lowry approached Warner Brothers for a private screening. "When I got home that night, there were three purchase orders, one for North by Northwest, one for the Bette Davis movie Now Voyager, and one for a little movie called Gone with the Wind.
"We went from zero visibility to success with that order."
His company, recently purchased by Reliance Mediaworks, went on to clean up more than 500 movies for DVD. Among them: the James Bond series, the Indiana Jones movies and various Disney classics.
"It's crazy stuff when I look back at it," Lowry said. "It's been 60 years in this business since I started as a stage hand. And I'm still having a ball."
Canadians honoured
Eight Canadians -- including one posthumously -- will receive Academy Awards honours for scientific and technical achievements Saturday night in Beverly Hills.
Unlike the Oscar trophies being given out Feb. 26 during the lavish TV ceremony for acting, directing and the like for 2011 movies alone, these sci-tech awards honour achievements that "demonstrate a proven record of contributing significant value to the process of making motion pictures."
Andrew Clinton and Mark Elendt, of Toronto's Side Effects Software, will receive the lone 2011 Technical Achievement Award -- for their work with Mantra software that allows better rendering of "volumetric effects" such as smoke and clouds with CG objects.
Raigo Alas and Greg Marsden of Burlington, Ont., and Michael Lewis and Michael Vellekoop of Hamilton, Ont., won one of six Scientific and Engineering Awards -- for their concept, design and implementation of the Pictorvision Eclipse, an electronically stabilized aerial camera platform. The Academy says this system "allows cinematographers to capture aerial footage at faster flying speeds with aggressive platform maneuvering."
The late John Lowry, who was born in Peterborough, Ont., and raised in Toronto, headed a five-man team honoured for his "Lowry Process," used to both clean up and enhance film and digital images alike. Examples include everything from old Apollo space-program footage, to upgrading the James Bond archive for Blu-ray, to Avatar. The chief scientist for Lowry Digital, Ian Caven of Burnaby, B.C., is among the team's honourees.
VFX Supe Scott Farrar on Transformers: Dark of the Moon
(studiodaily) Scott Farrar received his first Oscar nomination for best achievement in visual effects for Cocoon, and went on to win the Oscar in 1996 for his work on that film. At that time, he was a visual effects cameraman at Industrial Light & Magic. Since then, as a visual effects supervisor at ILM, he has stacked up five more Oscar nominations, the sixth for Transformers: Dark of the Moon, an award he shares with Scott Benza of ILM, Matthew E. Butler of Digital Domain, and special effects supervisor John Frazier
F&V: What trends do you see for visual effects artists?
More freedom of expression. I think people are just starting to spread their wings. We’re becoming more nimble and agile in the things we’re trying. Sometimes, you’re stuck with something – if you have a superhero with blue lightning, there aren’t many places you can take that. Fantasy is open to the suggestion and whims of designers. That’s why I like the photoreal stuff where you really fool the audience, where the audience isn’t sure what they’re looking at. That’s fun. I like magic. I like illusion. I like improving and polishing the illusion. That’s the attraction of Transformers for me. There is all kinds of stuff we can do. That’s what makes it great.
F&V: So, you’d do another one?
Absolutely. It’s a lot of fun. It’s fun because of how much creativity we get to utilize.
F&V: This is your sixth visual effects nomination. Do you remember the first?
It was for Cocoon, and we won. Oh, my gosh, it was like a shot out of nowhere. Talk about a bonus on top of everything else. I was just really happy to be in the business doing this crazy job. It was such a thrill. There’s nothing like it. And, it’s wonderful at this stage. It’s very rewarding to be recognized by your own group. It means an awful lot. I look at the array of work and they’re all great looking pieces and that’s cool.
Full Article: http://www.studiodaily.com/main/news/headlines/VFX- Supervisor-Scott-Farrar-on- Transformers-Dark-of-the-Moon_ 13659.html
A Visit to Lucasfilm & ILM for Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace 3D
(comingsoon.net) Twentieth Century Fox recently held a press junket for the re-release of Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace 3D Skywalker Ranch in Marin County and to ILM. Not only did they invite press, but they also asked journalists to bring their kids. On this press junket, the kids, from ages 6-18, would serve as the main reporters, doing all the interviews with the various Lucasfilm and "Episode I" talent.
Here is a chronicle of our two day visit to Lucasfilm…
Let me preface this article with the fact that I am a huge "Star Wars" fan. I was 14 in 1977 when the original Star Wars came out - I saw the film opening weekend at the Grauman's Chinese Theatre. I walked out of that screening in 1977 like many other people, I was blown away. I went home that afternoon and started building my own Darth Vader mask out of paper mache (I still have it). Like many modern day filmmakers who cite "Star Wars" as the creative flashpoint that made them get into what they do today, I was no different! So the idea of being flown up to the land of LUCAS was hard to pass up. The bonus would be that I would spend it with my son, Benjamin!
Day One: We boarded a press shuttle bus from our hotel for the drive up to Marin County, about 40 minutes outside of San Francisco. After almost running over two wild turkeys on Lucas Valley Rd (no relation – the road is named after a turn-of-the-century landowner) we entered the gates at Skywalker Ranch. The ranch has been operating since 1987. It was built by a filmmaker for filmmakers, and is one of the largest, most versatile full-service post-production facilities in the world.
Inside we were greeted by R2D2 and C-3P0, given our special VIP press badges and treated to a nice breakfast featuring various plays on "Star Wars" characters - YODA's Yogurt and NUTE Fruit GUNRAY fresh berries. Inside the rustic lobby and entertainment room, I was in awe of where I was, I was a total geek and found myself reverting back to my 14-year-old self! But we had a job to do, after we took a few photos of the screen-used costumes of Darth Maul, Qui-Gon Jinn and Queen Amidala in the lobby. We were given a great tour of the facilities including The Akira Kurosawa Stage, the 300-seat Stag Theater, George Lucas' private screening room, the Scoring Stage decked out with young Anakin's podracer. After the tour, the press were broken up into groups as Benjamin would be reporting for ComingSoon.net. We had prepared a few questions for the talent, and before we knew it he was on the Front Porch overlooking the vineyards and Ewok Lake doing his very first reporter's stand-up, he did great for someone who had never done anything like this before. He did his intro cold and in three takes he was now a real reporter! As a father, I couldn’t be more proud.
After getting his feet wet with his stand-up intro, Ben was off to interview one on one with the various Lucasfilm talent. First up from "Episode I" was Concept Model Artist John Goodman on the scoring stage, then with Matthew Wood, Skywalker’s Sound Editor and voice of General Grievous. Ben kept his cool especially since Grievous is his favorite "Star Wars" character. Next he interviewed CG Supervisor Joel Aron. Aron is responsible for the designs on the animated TV series "The Clone Wars." He was on hand to discuss the addition of Darth Maul to the series; again Ben was awesome, firing off questions like a pro. Ben ended his interview gig with Lightsaber Stunt Coordinator, Shawn 'ObiShawn' Crosby. Dueling it saber to saber with the Jedi Master/cosplayer and dishing out interview questions. You can check out the intro and interviews using the player below!
After all the interviews were completed, our official job now done, we were treated to a Lucasfilm lunch with Bantha Beef sandwiches and Palpatine Pasta Salad. We had free reign to walk around the facilities, our only warning was NO PHOTOS allowed of the priceless vintage film posters that hung throughout the ranch. George Lucas owns one of the largest collections of 'vintage’ movie posters in the world. Most of the huge posters are from the foreign markets with their bold colors and unique designs. They were all beautiful and it was so cool to wander the halls and see posters for everything from Giant to The Crimson Pirate to Singin' in the Rain and countless others.
Ben also got to play the new (in development) 3D Kinect Star Wars podracer game. He was really blown away by the Rancor Rampage level - and scored big smashing the innocent people of Naboo!
Before our day at Skywalker Ranch was over, we headed to the company store. Passing through the vineyard overlooking Ewok Lake we could see the Main House. Lucas no longer lives there. We loaded up on cool Lucasfilm LTD, Skywalker Ranch t-shirts and hats - the only place you can get them!
It was strange how peaceful the place was, surrounded by a 4000 acre working ranch with cows littering the hillsides. Ben was fascinated with finding frogs hiding in the reeds of Ewok Lake, he's 13 and so into reptiles and amphibians!
Day Two: We once again boarded our press shuttle for our trek to ILM (Industrial Light & Magic). Founded in 1975 by George Lucas, ILM is the leading effects facility in the world. ILM relocated from the ranch to the Presidio campus in 2005 called the Letterman Digital Arts Center.
Once off the shuttle we were greeted by Stormtroopers from the legendary 501st, and the famous YODA fountain statue. We were escorted across the campus to the massive dining hall with a spacious view overlooking the famed Palace of Fine arts. We feasted on a Boba Fett breakfast with our gracious host R2D2. He entertained all the guests posing for photos and chirping happily as he patrolled the bacon platter at the buffet.
Once done with our breakfast, we were again broken up into groups for our grand tour of the ILM facilities and offices, and again we were warned NO PHOTOS allowed! The hallways adorned again with more of Lucas' vintage movie poster collection. Walking through the hallways, we saw many of the awards and special gifts presented to Lucas and the crews at ILM. We saw an original E.T., the busts of Davy Jones, Imhotep and Draco from Dragonheart. Every hallway was littered with all manner of geek lore - the mini-subs from Innerspace, the Scoleri Brothers from Ghostbusters 2, Elliot’s bike from E.T., everywhere we turned it was another gush of HOLY COW LOOK AT THAT!
In the main lobby desk we saw the original YODA puppet from The Empire Strikes Back, Han Solo in carbonite flanked by a Jar-Jar in carbonite. Apparently George Lucas saw this at a "Star Wars" convention and had to have it - who says the man doesn't have a sense of humor? A wall lined with original matte paintings was particularly stunning. It was sad just knowing that these massive paintings on glass have now been replaced by digital rendering, but knowing they were presented not only as beautiful works of art but also a window into special effects history now considered old-technology.
Once our tour was completed we were all ushered into the main lobby of ILM, where we saw Boba Fett and one of the original Darth Vader costumes. Then it was time for the 3D screening...
With our special digital 3D glasses in hand, we took a seat in the Premier Theater. Our host and master of ceremonies ObiShawn would remind us that there was no better venue to see this film than in this theater in the very location that the film was made! A slight chill ran up our spines, the kids in the theater all cheered and raised their lightsabers as the lights dimmed and the curtain raised to transport us to "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...."
Say what you will about "Star Wars: Episode I," it is what it is, a film as Lucas says was made for children. Certainly the film has its share of flaws which have been documented and blogged about to infinitum since the film's 1999 release. I saw it opening day like many other fans in May of '99, and while I haven’t seen it on the big screen since, it was great to share it for the first time with my son (who was one at the time) in digital 3D on the big screen. I leave the reviews to others, but I was blown away by the 3D. I never thought it interfered with the film, I didn't have a headache 20 minutes into it and there were no HEY THIS IS 3D IN YOUR FACE moments. The film is presented as it was in 1999, with the exception of the new digital Yoda, added last year for the Blu-ray release. I found myself enjoying the film with only a mild disappointment of what it could have been, but overall we really enjoined the film in all its 3D glory!
As we heading to the airport, I couldn’t help but think back on the weekend. I had been to the Holy Land of all "Star Wars" fans, LUCASFILM! It will be a time that I know Benjamin and I will not soon forget.
Special thanks to Samara Malkis and the fine staff at Twentieth Century Fox, and to the gang at Lucasfilm and Skywalker Ranch for their spectacular hospitality.
'Chronicle' Effects Supe Builds "The Wheel of Death"
(mtv.com) This weekend, the teenage superheroes of "Chronicle" edged out Harry Potter himself at the box office with their amazing abilities. Made on a relatively tight budget of $12 million, the found-footage superhero movie made almost twice its budget back in domestic ticket sales alone.
Part of the reason for the success, no doubt, was due to the work of visual-effects supervisor Simon Hansen and his team in South Africa. They created all the usual sights of a superhero flick but with a fraction of the budget.
MTV News spoke with Hansen to find out how he did so much with so little. (There are minor spoilers ahead.)
MTV: Where does work begin when trying to tackle something like "Chronicle" on such a low budget?
Simon Hansen: That was obviously the challenge of the film and one of the reasons that I was keen to get involved with the project from the beginning. I get to play with commercially viable films that are also cost-effective to make. Having read the script, it was a small film. It's supposed to be low-budget, relatively. I started making notes when we read the script, noting down all the effects. By the time I got to the third act, I put my pen down because it got so hectic that making notes at that point was a bit of a waste of time. There was clearly a hell of a lot more work that needed to be done. From that point of view, it was a really big film for a low budget, and that was what excited me and what excited everyone on the project. This was the little film that we were going to push further than smaller films normally go.
MTV: What's your approach for doing what the big-budget movies do but with a fraction of the money?
Hansen: My background was actually pursuing that as a goal from a very early age in the industry, trying to make things that looked great but didn't cost a lot. It wasn't a new idea from that point of view. It wasn't daunting or hindering; it was actually the most exhilarating part of the process. The superhero genre is a good comparison, which I think has too much money. Having these large budgets is removing the innovation from the project. Capping the budget is a way to force that ingenuity and innovation into the project, which I think does come across. I think "Chronicle" has that feel of being a higher-budget film than it is, but it always has a kind of edginess to it at the same time.
MTV: Was there a question of "Can we do everything that's in the script?"
Hansen: Yes, the first question is, "Read the script and tell us how much of it we can do and what you think we can't do." My pitch that [producer] Adam [Schroeder] and [director] Josh [Trank] bought on "Chronicle" was that the first thing I was going to try to do was reduce the number of visual-effects shots in the film, because even though my background is visual effects, I like to think of myself as a filmmaker first. I'm not in love with CGI for its own sake. I'd rather do things in camera, and I think most directors would. I think audiences really appreciate the grittiness and edginess of stuff that's real. If you're forced to do CGI, try to do it in a way that's really minimalist, where most of what you're doing is real.
MTV: What was the most challenging shot on the film?
Hansen: The most important and the one I considered the biggest challenge was any kind of flying. What ended up happening was we ended up designing brand-new rigs to actually make people fly that worked out really well. It's probably my favorite part of the process. It's weird in effects how some shots start out one way and they don't seem that difficult, and they end up being really difficult. The most difficult sequence was where Andrew beats up the thugs and tosses them around the street because we had to shoot that all in one day and all those different people were on wires and rigs. We had to do it in different parts and put it all together. You get tripped up by the sun moving during the day when you have to shoot it all in one day. The light's changing all the time, and you're shooting different elements together. For the level of complexity of that shot and the time we had to do it, that was definitely the most difficult.
MTV: How did you come up with the solution for making the characters fly?
Hansen: I'd been very frustrated, even with big-budget films and how they've done flying. Some of the bad examples, not to knock anyone, "Armageddon" 's weightless sequence, for example, was a movie that had a lot of money and didn't get it right. Lots of films don't get it right. I knew it wasn't necessarily about the budget. It was about the technique to get flying to work. I spent a lot of time analyzing footage of sky diving and looking how bodies move in free motion. As a result, I ended up designing a big hamster-wheel rig that the subject would be strapped to in the center and he could be spun within this rig, which could turn itself. You'd get two axes out of it. The actors called it the Wheel of Death because you actually get strapped into this thing and a motor spins you around while the wheel is actually turning. You can do full-on McTwist-type movements. What I tried to get away from was a situation where you pick someone up on wires and move them from one side of a soundstage to another in front of a green screen.
MTV: Was there anything you simply couldn't accomplish with the budget?
Hansen: I think we pretty much did just about everything that we wanted to in the script. There were some shots that didn't work out the way that we wanted them to, where we had to reshoot them or come up with another way to do them. The closest we came to cutting things — we didn't in the end — but the closest we came was not the kind of effect that you'd even be aware of. When Andrew films himself in the mirror and we're using a considerably larger camera than the one he's using, we needed to shoot with one camera and replace it and Andrew in the mirror with the smaller camera. Those turned out to be really difficult shots to plan and get right. No one will really pay them any attention. It's amazing how that always happens.
Walt Disney Would Have Loved The Guys At Pixar
(huffingtonpost.com)Diane Disney Miller, Walt's daughter, is the founder and head of the Walt Disney Family Museum in San Francisco. To celebrate the DVD re-release of "The Lady and the Tramp" and mark the 57th anniversary of the opening of Disneyland, she spoke to the Huffington Post about her father, the secret apartment and life with the world's most famous surname.
What was his favorite ride?
They were all favorites to him, and he was always tweaking them, but he really was into Tomorrowland. The Monsanto House of the Future he thought was very interesting, he took my husband and I there and said you might want to get some ideas here for a home, and I'd never want to live in a house like that, but again, he got into all the animatronics when they did the New York World's Fair in 1963, they did the Tiki Bird room around that time in Disneyland.
And he was delighted with the new audio animatronics; that, for a while was definitely his favorite. And then they did another audio animatronics, and I don't think they have it any more, the Country Bear Jamboree, he was very excited about that, and then he was very excited about the haunted house, the Pirates of the Caribbean ride, and none of those things were completed until after his death. But he was always looking to the thing he was doing to be the furthest thing.
Speaking of progress, some of the best animated movies today are computer animated. What do you think he would think of that?
Oh, he'd be delighted. Anything that he could use in any way, he would reach out and grab it. He'd love all these guys at Pixar, he'd love it.
Full article: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/07/walt-disneys- secret-disneyland-apartment- diane-disney-miller_n_1259421. html
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