(axiomsedge-scifi.com)
There was hope in some corners (including ours) that word of mouth from last weekend would help John Carter to a strong second week performance at the Box Office. But that didn’t pan out and the film dropped 55% from its soft domestic open and only pulled an estimated $13.5 million in the Number 3 slot. That indicates that this one could fade quickly in the States and may even get bumped early with the Summer blockbusters just around the corner (starting up in May with The Avengers).
But the news was not all bad for John Carter as it continues to perform well overseas and pulled in over $55 million there this past weekend, bringing its worldwide gross now to right at $180 million. That means that it may avoid the flop prediction many had for it prior to its release, but it’s still be very far from even a moderate success by Hollywood’s standards.
Genre Films at the Box Office the Weekend of March 16-18 (Based on Early Estimates*):
The Lorax Rank – 2 (LW – 1) / Revenue – $22.8 MM / Fresh Rating – 57%
John Carter Rank – 3 (LW – 2) / Revenue – $13.5 MM / Fresh Rating – 49%
Journey 2: The Mysterious Island Rank – 8 (LW – 10) / Revenue – $2.5 MM / Fresh Rating – 42%
Silent House Rank – 12 (LW – 5) / Revenue – $2.1 MM / Fresh Rating – 47%
Chronicle Rank – 19 (LW – 13) / Revenue – $0.5 MM / Fresh Rating – 84%
Hugo Rank – 20 (LW – 20) / Revenue – $0.5 MM / Fresh Rating – 93%
The Avengers World Premiere Is April 11th - Almost A Month Before U.S. Release
(CBN News) The Avengers movie will have its world premiere on Wednesday, April 11, at Hollywood's El Capitan Theatre.
The red carpet event will begin at 6pm, with the first screening at 7pm.
This is almost a month ahead of the May 4th U.S. release date.
International release dates begin with Australia on April 25th, with the UK premiere the following day.
U.S. Avengers fans may want to stay off Facebook, Twitter and generally the entire internet as spoilers are sure to arrive online!
Pixar / Google Tech Titans Pushing Housing Prices Sky High In San Francisco
(The Wall Street Journal) A bidding war broke out in November when a small house in San Francisco's tightly packed Noe Valley came on the market.
Twenty-two people, including employees of Facebook, Zynga, Google and Pixar, battled for the home. The winning offer was $1.5 million—40% higher than the asking price. The house had a great view, but it was only 1,800 square feet and came with an old kitchen which, like most of the interior, was covered in 1970s plywood paneling. Seen from the curb, there's hardly any house at all—just a one-car garage and gate leading to small front courtyard.
Dolores Park, with a view of the Mission District and skyline of downtown San Francisco in the background, is a popular hangout for the new generation of tech entrepreneurs.
The inconspicuousness was part of the attraction, said Jasmin Arneja, 42, who bought the two-bedroom house with her husband Gagan, 40, a software engineer at a networking start-up. "It's the antithesis to these outrageous bizarre Gordon Gekko-esque houses. It just incorporates so much of our values," said Ms. Arneja, who runs a philanthropic advisory firm.
Housing prices in the San Francisco Bay area are once again soaring, thanks to an infusion of cash from the rising shares of Apple and Google and the initial public offerings by Zynga, LinkedIn, Yelp and soon Facebook, expected to be the largest in Internet history. But while a previous generation of dot-com executives opted for mansions in wealthy San Francisco neighborhoods like Pacific Heights and tony Silicon Valley suburbs like Atherton, this generation is gravitating to modest homes and condos in grittier parts of the city.
Ground zero of the current tech-fueled real-estate boom is the Mission, formerly a majority Hispanic neighborhood on the southern edge of San Francisco that's close to the main arteries that link San Francisco to Silicon Valley. Median home prices in the Mission grew 44% in December compared with a year earlier. Adjacent Noe Valley had a rise of 31% over that same period, according to the San Francisco Association of Realtors. The average number of days homes sat on the market in both neighborhoods has almost halved over the past year.
That's in sharp contrast to what's happening nationally, where the housing market continues to flounder, with the Case-Shiller 20-City index down for the fourth straight month in a row. It's even an aberration from the San Francisco area (including Oakland), which saw a 5.4% drop in home prices in December from a year earlier.
Newly minted tech millionaires in San Francisco are shunning mansions in wealthy neighborhoods and leafy suburbs in favor of modest homes and condos in grittier parts of the city. Geoffrey Fowler has details on Lunch Break. Photo: Jason Henry for WSJ
Real-estate agents say it's a cultural shift. The new generation of Internet executives—younger than the last generation of dot-commers—eschews the trappings and responsibilities of expensive properties. They want to bicycle, walk or take public transportation. They like living near food trucks and dive bars.
"You can spend a lot of money on a great restaurant here or just $5 on a burrito," said Christian Niles, 31, who bought a two-bedroom apartment for $585,000 in the Mission with his wife in August because he saw real estate as a good place to store the cash he'd made from selling his app called TrackerBot to Pivotal Labs last summer. He plans to never own a car.
StumbleUpon CEO Garrett Camp bought a 2,900-square-foot loft penthouse with four bathrooms and a patio for $3 million this past summer in the South of Market area. Twitter co-founder Evan Williams bought a $2.4 million house in Noe Valley in 2009.
The hottest properties are near corporate shuttle bus stops—where employees for companies like Google, Facebook, Genentech, LinkedIn and Apple line up daily for the ride to Silicon Valley. Real-estate agent Amanda Jones calls it the "Shuttle Effect" and said proximity can command as much as a 20% premium. Some real-estate agents said they're dying for a map of where the buses pick up. "When a listing gets deluged with people—that tells me it's close to a stop," said Ms. Jones.
Some companies share a few of the same stops, occasionally leading to employees getting on the wrong bus. Discussions can get animated about adding or moving a stop, said Jessica Herrera, Facebook's transportation coordinator who controls the stop locations for Facebook's eight shuttle busses, including a new glass-topped double-decker the company rented to make space for the growing crowds. "Everybody wants a stop that's next to their house that comes every five minutes," she said, adding that discussions have remained civil.
The Mission apartment building where investor Michael Barton bought a condo: 'You can tell there is an upsurge going on here.'
Stephanie Pocino, 28, makes the 45-minute trip to Facebook every day from her rented apartment building in the Mission. She has no garbage disposal and no dishwasher, but the Victorian building has lots of charm and bay windows. She carries a wireless Internet card, which she uses to answer emails and work on presentations while on the commute, and her laundry, which she gets done free at the company's headquarters.
Soaring rental prices—up more than 10% in the Mission and Noe Valley in the past six months alone—are also making buying more competitive, said Vanguard Properties broker Craig Waddle. He's seen bidding competitions for rentals and rental offers coming in higher than the asking prices. At an open house for a one-bedroom offered for $1,400 a month, 40 people were filling out applications on the spot. One person walked up to the owner, offered $1,700 and got the place.
"It's been kind of shocking," said Raj Gajwani, 36, who has been looking for a house in Noe Valley for around $1.5 million for the past few months. A founder of two online companies, he and his wife are expecting twins and want a house close to a shuttle-bus stop for his wife's commute but with "culture, interesting people and activities." They also want something they will be able to sell for more money in five years, when they might have to move to the suburbs for better schools.
Mike Shaw, a real-estate agent who has worked for 15 years in the San Francisco market, said buyers often want something already renovated or vintage because they don't have the time or the interest to hire designers and architects. "That person in jeans and a sweatshirt could be low on the totem pole or a multibillionaire. They haven't realized the value of good design either in architecture or fashion," said Suzanne Tucker, a San Francisco designer who has remodeled many of the most lavish homes in the Bay Area.
Buyers argue they have a different sensibility. Ms. Arneja, who snagged the sought-after house in Noe Valley, said she was drawn to the interior, which is covered almost entirely by dark redwood and brick, lending it a feel that lands somewhere between a den and a tree house. "This is clearly a '70s house," said Ms. Arneja. "I would like to think of it as a shining example of good architecture during a bad period of design."
Pop-up restaurants with long lines, coffee shops that brew one cup at a time and shops selling curiosities like local honey have followed the influx of cash. Apple employee Amandeep Jawa, who takes the company bus to work, covered the driveway of his Victorian with a "parklet," a public space registered with the city featuring seating and greenery. His crowning achievement: a topiary triceratops, dubbed Trixie, made of succulent plants.
But the gentrification is far from complete. A surge in violence between feuding gangs called the Norteños and Sureños claimed two lives in less than 24 hours in the Mission in August, and there was a shooting in front of a coffee shop. Noe Valley saw a rash of sexual assaults; residents there have also reported attempted carjackings and armed robberies.
"The key word is coexistence," said David Campos, a member of the city's Board of Supervisors representing the Mission and Bernal Heights.
Blogs popular with tech workers keep track of the violence, and one UC Berkeley student produced a map called "Gangs and Cupcakes," which overlaid Norteño and Sureño territory with the Mission's most popular cupcake cafes. In recent years, somebody spray-painted "cafe gentrification" on the sidewalk in front of popular coffee shops.
The high prices and the changes in the neighborhood are only going to intensify, predicted Lawrence Coburn, 42, who first moved to the Mission in 1999 to found a start-up and has lived in an 1,100-foot rental loft there since 2003. "A lot of my friends are trying to hustle to buy a place before all the Facebook people get liquid," he said.
Investor Michael Barton, 48, recently decided to buy because he wanted to lock in his investment before Facebook's IPO money hits town. The area around his 950-square-foot, two-story loft is "kind of funky, and gritty and dodgy," said Mr. Barton. But an industrial building next door has been taken over by Internet start-ups. "You can tell there is an upsurge going on here," he said.
Source: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405297020478180457727 1491070580960.html
"Mortal Instruments" To Battle Demons On Big Screen
(comingsoon.net) Constantin Film and Unique Features are still moving forward with their film adaptation of Cassandra Clare's best-selling book series "The Mortal Instruments" despite Sony Pictures and director Scott Stewart ("Legion") departing the project last month.
Now they've set Harald Zwart ("The Karate Kid") to direct and confirmed actress Lily Collins ("Mirror Mirror") is still attached to star in the project which will be based on the first book "The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones".
Set in contemporary New York City, the story follows a seemingly ordinary teenager who discovers she is the descendant of a line of Shadowhunters, a secret cadre of young half-angel warriors locked in an ancient battle to protect our world from demons.
She soon join forces with a group of Shadowhunters, who introduce her to a dangerous alternate New York called Downworld, filled with demons, warlocks, vampires, werewolves and other deadly creatures.
Jessica Postigo and I. Marlene King adapted the script while Robert Kulzer, Bob Shaye and Michael Lynne are producing. Shooting aims to begin August 15th in Toronto.
Budget 2012: Could This Be the Year for the UK Games Industry?
(guardian.co.uk)Richard Wilson is feeling optimistic. Again. The CEO of video game industry trade body, Tiga, has spent the last three years lobbying parliament for tax credits and other initiatives designed to boost investment in the sector. In 2010, it looked like his goal had been achieved when Alistair Darling promised to look into tax incentives for developers – but then Labour lost the election and George Osborne removed any mention of games from his emergency budget.
Since that disappointing volte-face, cross-party support for the industry has been growing, and last Thursday, Tiga hosted a lunch at the House of Commons, attended by video game makers as well as several MPs, all seemingly supportive of the Tiga cause. So is this the year the games industry garners the sort of support already enjoyed by UK film?
"I think there's been a change in mood; a real recognition that the video game industry could make an important contribution to the economic recovery," said Wilson, when I caught up with him after the event. "MPs and policy makers see us now as an industry that can support a wider set of objectives. Growth has been disappointing over the last couple of years - the need to identify sectors where there's real potential has put the games industry in a better light. And we've marshalled better evidence, we've knocked down more of the objections and we're closer to getting what the industry needs."
Justin Tomlinson is the sort of MP that Wilson needs to be winning over. He's on the government benches, and at 35, he represents the generation that grew up with games. "I went from a Vic-20 to an Amstrad 464 Colour, then later had a Commodore Amiga," he explains. "I was very fortunate that I have an older brother, and in the eighties – when you had to program a lot of your own games – I'd help by reading out the code from a book and he typed things in."
Through these formative experiences Tomlinson has become a keen supporter of games programming, and of computer science in general. He has helped fund school visits to the Museum of Computing, which opened in his Swindon North constituency in 2003, and says he sees and appreciates the business benefits of the games industry. "I'm supportive, not just because I play games, but because clearly as a country, we're competing in a worldwide market. We're never going to win on cheap labour, and therefore we need to support high tech industries. This is clearly a growing market, and there is so much potential. If we can look for favourable conditions, it is something that will benefit the country, providing both employment and tax revenue."
Tiga has certainly worked hard to accentuate the benefits of supporting British game developers. Accused of putting forward a somewhat unfocused argument back in 2010, Wilson has streamlined the trade body's case into a fresh report, catchily titled, 'A New Games Tax Relief: An Incentive to Build a Sustainable Games Development Sector', which argues for tax relief based on development budgets, with both small projects and triple AAA developments supported. Wilson suggests that his proposals will lead to almost 5000 new industry jobs as well as eventually increasing the games development sector's contribution to UK GDP by £283 million.
"The other thing is, by having a tax break in place, all the evidence from overseas suggests that venture capitalists and business angels look at your sector in a different light," he says. "Even those companies that don't go out to get the tax breaks will benefit indirectly because the investment community is looking at the sector more positively."
This whole idea of perception is proving to be very important. At the start of the Commons event, Sam Vanags, a technology partner at global accountancy giant Grant Thornton, gave a quick speech in which this point was very much accentuated. "We're hearing a lot of anti-banking, anti-corporate sentiments at the moment," she said. "Some of the people we work with in those sectors are reluctant to take advantage of the tax credits available to them. But you guys are perceived differently; you're perceived as the future of the UK economy and you're being actively encouraged to take up tax breaks already available to you."
Of those current benefits, Vanags highlighted R&D tax credits, mentioning the modifications that should be made this week, and in the near-future. She pointed out that currently, for companies with less than 500 employees, the tax relief on allowable R&D costs is 200 per cent. From April it will be 225%. The rules will also be widened to include the costs of agency employees and outsourcers – good news for the games industry where freelancers are often used in areas such as art and audio. The Patent Box Regime is also coming in next year, offering lower tax rates on patentable technology and software, which could apply to developers writing back-end code for things like motion cameras and streaming game services. Finally, Vanags mentioned the possibility of a new Seed EIS Investment scheme offering 50% income tax relief on new projects or start-ups that qualify.
Could it be that extensions to the R&D tax scheme are the more likely outcome moving forward? "The least I'd hope for from the budget would be further improvements to R&D tax credits," says Wilson. "That's the bare minimum. And even the suggestion that there should be an enquiry into the case for wider games tax relief would be a massive step forward. But our ambitions are much more grandiose than that. We hope to see some version of games tax relief being promised in the budget – we'd be ecstatic about that, the games industry would be much better off as a result."
And the lobbying continues. This morning Tiga sent out a final letter to George Osborne, backed by MPs such as Stephen Timms, Tom Watson and Chris White, putting forward the case for tax credits again. The chancellor has stated that the content of the Budget has already been decided, but Wilson isn't taking any chances.
Keen to get an inside gauge on how effective this pressure was proving, I asked Tomlinson about his own optimism for video game tax relief. "Well, the country is not awash with money and there are a lot of worth causes, all lobbying for their slice of the cake," he said. "It's fair to say that this industry has lobbied in a pro-active and constructive manner and is already demonstrating the huge potential that's out there, so I remain cautiously optimistic.
"It's important for the industry to keep pushing, though, because a lot of decision makers don't necessary understand it. It's not an obvious one. No one can rest on their laurels..."
Becoming A Special Visual Effects Expert Now A Kindle Download
(newsgadgetsday.blogspot.com)GoreMaster interviews over 25 Special Effects artists working in the industry today. They share their individual journeys that lead each of them to the work they love in television, film and visual arts. Each artist offers advice and encouragement to anyone who is interested in getting started in this highly competitive and rewarding career. This book is ideal for any fan of Horror, Science Fiction or Fantasy film special effects. Learn about the experts who create the movie magic in the films you love to watch!
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Discovery to Reveal the Making of Ra One
(M M Network) RA.One represents a significant milestone in Indian cinema. One of the most ambitious and expensive science fiction films with world-class visual effects and animation wizardry, it has proved India’s expertise to produce high quality VFX films. Deconstructing the production of one of the most illustrious films in its one-hour special, Discovery Channel will premiere REVEALED: THE MAKING OF RA.ONE, on Friday, March 30th at 8 pm.
The programme will repeat on Sunday, April 1st at 8 pm. A unique initiative by Discovery Networks, the programme will also simulcast on TLC, Discovery Science and Discovery Channel Tamil.
A celebration of glorious triumphs in innovation and technology, Discovery Channel will provide unique access to various aspects of filming the movie. REVEALED:THE MAKING OF RA.ONE will provide an account of some of the biggest challenges to produce the film including release of all 3500 plus VFX shots on time. A 5,000- strong team from India, UK and the US, including 400 at Shah Rukh Khan’s own company Red Chillies VFX worked in shifts in 14 studios across the world. A testimonial for its accomplishment, the film has also won the National Film Award for best special effects. Achieving the unprecedented, the movie proved the expertise to create cinema at a global scale. The first to use Dolby 7.1 surround sound, RA.One raised the bar of excellence in Indian cinema.
Commenting on the programme, Rahul Johri, senior vice president and general manger – South Asia, Discovery Networks Asia-Pacific said, "Discovery Channel brings signature mix of compelling, high-end production programmes across genres including, science and technology, exploration, adventure, in-depth and behind-the-scenes glimpses to entertain and inform its audiences. Taking viewers on a cinematic journey, the programme Revealed: The Making of RA.One will captivate their fantasy about unique filming techniques."
32TEN Studios Announces Launch of Professional Workshop Series
(DMN Newswire) 32TEN Studios, a stage rental and practical effects house headquartered at a historic soundstage location in Marin CA, has launched a Professional Workshop Series. This new series of educational, hands-on gatherings has been designed to help filmmakers, game designers, and a variety of entertainment industry professionals further their technical and theoretical application of production and post production skills, while also teaching the art and craft behind those disciplines to filmmaking enthusiasts.
The Professional Workshop Series will offer educational programs designed to satisfy a range of filmmakers: from the basic film enthusiast to the industry veteran. Led by prominent technology companies and industry experts with extensive filmmaking backgrounds, the workshops will educate through the use of seminars and hands-on workshops. Mostly targeting production professionals who wish to hone their skills or become exposed to new areas within the production and post production universe, these workshops will be held on a regular basis on the stage at 32TEN Studios.
The first Professional Workshop program, entitled "From Green Screen to Silver Screen," to be held on March 31st and designed for educators and film enthusiasts, will walk participants through the basics of digital post-production visual effects. The session will be led by Vince de Quattro, who has just been named as the Director of Artist Development for 32TEN Studios. (Side Note: De Quattro will also spearhead 32TEN Studios' new "Pre-College Summer Film Program" for teenagers - that series commences in June.)
De Quattro will also lead another event in the series, entitled "Production Workshop," on a recurring basis, commencing March 22nd. This three-hour evening workshop is designed for both independent filmmakers and producers looking to understand the animation and effects marketplace, as well as young artists looking to assume roles as production assistants, production coordinators,
and ultimately producers in the feature animation and post-production VFX industry. These sessions will feature production training in bidding, artist management, the culture of the hybridized art/technical entertainment industry, and other guidance for producers of short film, commercial and music videos in today's digital arena.
The third event in the Professional Workshop Series will be a presentation entitled "Models and Miniatures in a Digital Age" by Fon Davis on April 4th, from 7 - 9pm. During this presentation, Davis will discuss the considerations when deciding on a scale for the model, choice of materials, and level of detail. He will show examples of when miniatures are the best option over live action or CG, and explain the reasons why. Lastly, he will unveil the tricks of the trade that artists use to make models and miniatures look full scale and completely realistic.
Future such Professional Workshop events are slated to include such topics as Visual Design, Crane Operation, Pre-Visualization Technologies, High Resolution Camera Technology, Motion Capture, Motion Control, Stereography, and Pyrotechnics. These workshops will be posted at www.32ten.com
Tim Partridge, President/CEO of 32TEN Studios, said, "Our vision for 32TEN Studios is for our historic site to serve as a creative hub for the Marin County and Northern California filmmaking community. We also intend to provide the community with the opportunity for continued learning of new production technologies and techniques with this series of regularly scheduled workshops."
Adds David Tanaka, Sectional Chairman, Bay Area, for The Visual Effects Society, said, "The Visual Effects Society, Bay Area Section, is very excited as to the creation of 32TEN Studios. The services they will be offering to the entertainment industry at large, and the potential opportunities they hold for skilled artists and technicians throughout the Bay Area, are endeavors the VES Bay Area surely supports. The founders of 32TEN are all former colleagues and acquaintances to many in the VES membership, and their company name, which bears a familiar address to many of us in the VFX industry, is of special significance. The VES Bay Area Board of Directors looks forward to collectively sharing in 32TEN's local community outreach, and to collaborating with them on future projects, including their Professional Workshop Series, and other upcoming educational events."
To view these offerings, please see: http://www.32ten.com/index.html#the-edu-bar
Is 3D the New CGI?
(justatad.wordpress.com)Remember the emergence of CGI? There had been a few of films to employ the technique in the 80s. Tron, Young Sherlock Holmes, The Abyss. But really, CGI came to the fore with two landmark films in the early 90s. The first was James Cameron’s Terminator 2: Judgement Day, and the second was Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park. Both films used CGI in very specific ways, and both sparingly. They look like CGI, but their very deliberate usage means they don’t feel too dated, even compared to a lot of modern CGI. But after those films came all the bad CGI. The Mummy is probably the most notable. That thing was a total CGI fest. Of course, at the time CGI was still something of a novelty, bringing images to the screen that were previously impossible. Sure, it looked like CGI, but it was also cool. Now it just looks like dated crap.
These days CGI has become the norm. Some CGI is better than others, but for the most part it all looks pretty good, and we’re starting to see directors like Christopher Nolan and Brad Bird scale back on the CGI in favour of melding the computer animation where necessary with practical effects taking the spotlight. But otherwise, I feel like we can say CGI has essentially matured into something that will generally look great and become more photorealistic and refined over time. So what’s the next “new” technology? I’m starting to feel like 3D is the answer.
Now, I don’t think 3D is going to completely take over for every film—at least not any time soon. It’s too expensive to do well, and like colour was for its first 20 years or so, it’ll be used mostly in films that beg that extra bit of spectacle. CGI was the same way, by the way. Now it’s totally normal for a drama like The Social Network to employ heavy use of CGI, but even into the early 00s, the idea of using such a complex, expensive technique for anything other than crazy shots and big spectacle was out of the question.
Modern 3D also has other similarities to CGI in terms of adoption. There were a number of early digital 3D films, mostly computer animated films, and they helped break ground for the format. And then came two major uses of 3D. Films that made it clear that 3D had serious potential. The first was Coraline, an animated film, but it was stop-motion and shot with real cameras. The animation looked particularly great in 3D, but director Henry Selick also used the 3D to artistic effect. In the “real world” sections of the film, the colours were muted and so was the 3D effect. When the film enters the fantasy world, the 3D pops more. It becomes deeper. Characters and objects interact all over the depth of the frame. It was truly spectacular.
Then, of course, came James Cameron’s Avatar. The rest is history.
But what we saw in the wake of Avatar was essentially a lot of The Mummy. Big movies shot and/or converted to 3D without any care or thought. Just throwing it at the audience. The major difference, of course, is that while the bad CGI of The Mummy was pretty cool back when it came out, bad 3D is not so forgiving. First of all, theatres charge more for it, so it feels like a slap in the face when it actually detracts from the experience of watching a film. But even without that, the technological and biological limitations of current 3D make it so that bad 3D—and sometimes even good 3D—can be an uncomfortable experience.
This is a major hurdle, but I think it will get better over time. Better screens. Laser projection. Higher frames rates. These upcoming advances in digital and 3D technology are likely to take away most of that physical annoyance, if not completely negate it. And so we will be left purely with the artistic implementation of 3D, and after seeing films like Hugo and Pina in 3D, I can now see the potential for the technology beyond mere spectacle. It may take another 10 years or more, but I think 3D will probably follow that CGI path. It started interesting and with a couple great examples, followed by a mix of mostly crap and a few positive exceptions, and might now on its way to becoming simply a natural part of the filmmaking process.
Ralph McQuarrie & The Canceled Star Trek Movie
A lot has been written since the sad passing of Ralph McQuarrie on the 3rd of March this year. He’s the artist who is credited with coming up with the designs for Darth Vader, Chewbacca, C3PO & R2D2 to name a few. It has been said that without him, there would have been no Star Wars at all as it was his illustrations that convinced 20th Century Fox to give Star Wars the green light.
His designs for Star Wars are immediately recognizable if you are a fan of science fiction or not, and are now part of our societies pop culture. His images from Star Wars represent science fiction to the general masses and because of this, they are exploited to sell everything from cars to mobile phones. Rest assured that if the images of Vader or C3PO weren’t burnt into your conscience, no advertising company would consider using them.
A lot has been said about McQuarrie’s work on Star Wars but he created designs and illustrations for other films and TV shows such as Battlestar Galactica, The Golden child and E.T. But in 1976, he was also part of a failed attempt to make a big screen version of Star Trek.
Star Trek: Planet of the Titans was the brainchild of British writing team Chris Bryant and Allan Scott (Don’t Look Now) In the directors chair was Phillip Kaufman who went onto direct the excellent remake of ‘Invasion of the Body Snatchers’ starring Donald Sutherland and Leonard Nimoy. Production designer was Ken Adam who had previously worked on various James Bond films as well as Stanley Kubrick’s Dr Strangelove. Ken Adam hired Ralph McQuarrie to do the design work for the film and adding Gene Roddenberry to the mix, you have to agree that its an impressive list of talent at the helm for Star Trek’s first big screen adventure.
McQuarrie’s design for the Enterprise included a saucer section that could separate and land on a planets surface. Also his designs for a shuttlecraft and interior of the Enterprise.
Phil Kaufman was very excieted to be part of the project. He told a reporter;
‘’George Lucas is a good friend of mine, he told me before he made Star Wars to be bought. I thought George had a great thing going. When I was asked if I would be interested in doing Star Trek, well…I felt I could go through the roof’’
Having a director who is very excited about a project is obviously a bonus but if you are planning on making a Star Trek movie, fans would expect the original cast to also be on board. All signed up but Leonard Nimoy proved stubborn. After the show was canceled in 1969, Nimoy had spent a lot of time distancing himself from Star Trek due to the fear of being type cast. As the image of Mr Spock become more and more iconic, he found it difficult to separate himself from the character in the eyes of the public. Also, he was not happy with the way Gene Roddenberry and the marketing team at Paramount exploited his image for which he felt he was not properly compensated. An example being the famous Heineken billboard poster that showed Spock’s ears being aroused by beer.
Eventually the entire original cast signed up and any remaining issues were smoothed out. A story was agreed and ‘’Star Trek: Planet of Titans’’ played out as follows.
The enterprise receives a distress signal from the USS DaVinci. By the time they reach the sector the distress signal originated, the USS DaVinci has disappeared. While the Enterprise investigates, Kirk is hit by an electromagnetic wave that causes him to behave erratically and steal a shuttlecraft. He pilots the shuttlecraft towards an invisible planet and the shuttlecraft disappears.
Three years later, Spock leads a team back to that area of space and discovers the planet. The planet turns out to be the home world of the Titans, a highly advanced race that is believed to be extinct. The Klingons also turn up because they are also interested in the knowledge of the Titans. But a more serious problem is that the planet is being drawn towards a black hole and it now becomes a race between the Federation and Klingons to acquire the knowledge of the Titans before its too late.
Spock finds Kirk who has spent the last three years living in the wild. Spock managers to restore Kirk to his normal self and they both discover that the planet is populated an evil species known as the Cygnans. The Cygnans, it is revealed, were responsible for the death of the Titans. Kirk in an attempt to destroy the Cygnans, orders the Enterprise into the black hole. The black hole destroys the Cygens and throws the enterprise in to the orbit around earth……earth of the past. Kirk and crew beam down and realize they are witnessing the dawn of man. They teach the Cro-Magnon man how to make fire and come to the realization that they are the Titans…..
I will admit right now that even though I am a huge Star Trek fan, I would have struggled with the plot of this film and in many ways im glad it didn’t get made. Paramount canceled project in order to start production on a new Star Trek series called ‘Star Trek Phase II’ instead. After the success of Star Wars, Paramount changed its mind again and morphed the series into Star Trek: The Motion Picture, the rest is history.
Director Phil Kaufman’s reaction to the cancellation of the film -
‘’We were dealing with important things, things that George [Lucas] has a smattering of in Star Wars. We were dealing a lot with Olaf Stapledon. There were chapters in Last and First Men that I was basing Star Trek on. That was my key thing. Gene and I disagreed on what the nature of a feature film really is. He was still bound by the things that he had been forced into by lack of money and by the fact that those times they were not into science fiction the way they are now. Gene has a very set way of looking at things. My feeling always was that he was anchored in a 10-year-old TV show which would not translate for a feature audience, ten years later with all that had been done and could potentially be done in a feature scope. For years I had walked around San Francisco with George Lucas talking about what he was doing. I knew what the potential of this kind of stuff was.’ Perhaps most shocking to him was the feeling that Paramount canceled the film because of the success of STAR WARS, which was released in May of 1977, and the belief that they had blown their opportunity at the box office. ‘They didn’t even wait to see what Star Wars would do,’ Kaufman said incredulously. ‘I don’t think they tried to understand what the phenomenon of Star Trek was.’’
Full article: http://whatculture.com/film/ralph-mcquarrie-the-canceled- star-trek-movie.php
This Post-Apocalyptic Short Animation Deserves its Own Movie
(io9.com) This post-apocalyptic short animation deserves its own movie This post-apocalyptic short animation deserves its own movieOh, this is rather impressive. Behold Ruin, a cryptic 8.5-minute short film by the folks at Oddball Animation. In the post-apocalypse of Ruin, nature has reclaimed entire cities. Humans are still around, but verdant metropolises aren't as empty as they seem. Seriously, you'll want to give this animated short a whirl — it's like a lost scene from a certain Austrian cyborg franchise. Hat tip to Sean!
VIDEO - Takle a look: http://io9.com/5894011/this-post+apocalyptic-short- animation-deserves-its-own- movie
When Steve Jobs Made Cutbacks at Pixar
(freefeast.info) Steve Jobs was one of the geniuses of his time. He changed the way people communicate by his “i” serieses. ipod, iphone, ipad are only few examples of his success story. He created such products that inspired other companies to copy such products.
Even if ideas of such products were of steve Jobs, he wanted many workers to work on that ideas and to made that dream become reality. So, with out his coworkers Jobs was just a paralysed person with only active brain. Even though Steve’s workers were his main lifesupport, he treated them like there existance never mattered. That’s the one thing that made him very bad boss in eyes on his workers.
Following are few lines his workers told about Steve Jobs at various interviews;
“He’s not warm and funny … He was not the world’s greatest manager. In fact, he could have been one of the world’s worst managers.”
“He was very petulant. He was very brittle. He could be very, very mean to people at times.”
“Whether it was to a waitress in a restaurant or to a guy who had stayed up all night coding, he could just really just go at them and say, ‘You’re doing this all wrong. It’s horrible.”
Job’s quest for perfection came in part from his adopted father, Paul Jobs, who taught him “how to make great things”
Followings are some worst incidents of his with his workers;
1)When Steve had to make cutbacks at Pixar, He fired people and didn’t give any severance pay. Pamela Kerwin, an early Pixar employee, Pleaded that employees at least be given two weeks notice.
“Okay,” he said, “but the notice is retroactive from two weeks ago.”
2)Jobs interviewing a job candidate “How old were you when you
lost your virginity?” he asked.
The candidate looked baffled.
“What did you say?” “Are you a
virgin?” Jobs asked. The
candidate sat there flustered, so
Jobs changed the subject. “How
many times have you taken
LSD?”
3)When MobileMe launched in the summer of 2008, it was plagued with problems. People had trouble getting their data to sync to the cloud and across their devices.
Jobs then fired the MobileMe boss on the spot and replaced him with Eddie Cue.
4)When Apple was about to reveal the “Bondi Blue” iMac, he berated his good friend and ad partner Lee Clow over the phone. Jobs said Clow’s team was getting the color wrong for the print ads. He shouted, “You guys don’t know what you’re doing. I’m going to get someone else to do the ads.”
These were few things that leads him to the greatest path of success.
Source: http://freefeast.info/general-it-articles/steve-jobs-as-a- boss-an-employees-worst- nightmare/
Call for Entries: SIGGRAPH’s 39th International Computer Animation Festival
(bayareaartgrind.com)In 2012, SIGGRAPH’s Computer Animation Festival celebrates its 39th year as the world’s most innovative exploration of computer-generated animation and visual effects. This four-day, international event is a glimpse into the most talented technical and artistic minds of our industry. It showcases everything from student films to blockbuster visual effects!
Now in its 39th year, the SIGGRAPH conference is expected to draw an estimated 25,000 professionals from five continents to Los Angeles, California. SIGGRAPH is Calling for Innovative Computer-Generated Animation and Visual effects. The festival will showcase jury-selected entries alongside invited works in a single program, in the tradition of SIGGRAPH’s original Electronic Theater. In addition, a few thematic and monographic screenings of both juried and curated material complement the Competition Section. For the third year in a row, selected screenings will be open to the general public in addition to conference and festival attendees.
The festival accepts submissions in 10 distinct categories:
1. Computer Animation Shorts
2. Music Videos
3. TV and Web Commercials
4. Visualizations and Simulations
5. Student Projects
6. Animated Feature Films
7. Visual Effects for Short Films and TV Programs
8. Visual Effects for Live-Action Feature Films
9. Real-Time Animation
10. Miscellaneous
Stereo 3D work will be considered and can be entered in any of the above categories. Please visit the official website for further details.
Be Part of A Premier International Event on Computer Graphics: On the first night of the festival, the Festival Jury will present the Best in Show Award, Jury Award, and Best Student Project Prize. The Best in Show Award qualifies the winner to be considered for nomination in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Best Animated Short Film category. An Audience Award will be announced on the last day of the conference.
This is An International Call for Work!
* All films screened in the Computer Animation Festival’s Competition Section are eligible for the Best in Show, Jury, and Audience Awards. Only those works in the Student Projects section are eligible for Best Student Project recognition. Pieces selected for the Invited Section are not eligible for awards.
* Only finished works will be considered for inclusion, and all submissions must be uploaded at final resolution.
SIGGRAPH’s Computer Animation Festival Accepts Submissions Online. Works should be uploaded on the SIGGRAPH official website. Please consider reading all guidelines before submitting your work.
Website link: http://s2012.siggraph.org/submitters/computer-animation- festival
All entries must be uploaded by April 9th,2012 (22:00 UTC/GMT). Only finished works will be considered for inclusion, and all submissions must be uploaded at final resolution.
Source: http://bayareaartgrind.com/2012/03/17/call-for-entries- siggraphs-39th-international- computer-animation-festival/
Sophisticated VFX Push Global Theme Parks Market to Reach US$31.8 Billion by 2017
(PRWEB)Follow us on LinkedIn Theme parks are outdoor locations, which offer specialized amusement along a preconceived theme. Traditional theme parks comprise various themed lands containing rides (roller coasters, etc), games, concerts and themed events originating from specific subjects such as countries, myths, fairy tales and movies, among others. Theme parks are usually planned to serve as a fun outing for the entire family, and they are considered a form of leisure activity as they offer an opportunity for entertainment during an individual’s discretionary free time.
North America and Europe represent mature markets for theme parks with growth in visitor attendance stabilizing. Increasing competition from other modes of entertainment, continuing economic woes such as high levels of unemployment, and widening deficits will continue to challenge growth in these markets. Future growth in the world theme parks market will stem from developing countries in Asia-Pacific, Latin America and Middle East. Asia represents one of the fastest growing regional markets worldwide largely as a result of strong economic growth, rising standards of living, income levels, discretionary income, and increased per capita spends on entertainment/leisure. China, which houses few of Asias largest theme parks, is witnessing healthy growth.
A key noteworthy trend in the theme parks market is the park within a park concept. Most of the parks are adding second-gate attractions and a number of hotel rooms as part of attempts to restructure parks into integrated resorts, capable of operating throughout the year. Investments in park upgradation such as installation of new rides, creation of new zones in the park, deployment of interactive and wireless technologies including Wii, RFID badges, and kiosks, to make the park more interactive and lively, are all expected to help bolster attendance in the upcoming years. Another key technology trend, is the move towards adoption of simulation technologies, and virtual reality to replicate natural scenarios. High-end visual imagery with sophisticated special effects designed to optimize visitor experience is forecast to result in magnetizing greater crowds to the parks.
World market for theme parks, which witnessed growth sag in the year 2009 as a result of the recessions downward pressure on consumer spending, staged a recovery in the years 2010 & 2011. In Europe despite the concerns over the debt crisis, international attendance at European theme parks continues to hold up. The depreciation of the Euro amidst the pressures exerted by the eurozone debt drama is positively benefiting tourism in Europe with the number of middle class Asian tourists increasing in the region. In the event of the Greek crisis further pulling down the Euro, luxury goods in Europe is expected to become cheaper. This thereby will result in increased number of travelers from Asia, especially China, for cheaper luxury shopping. The strengthening RMB and a weakening Euro is making travelling to Europe cheaper for the Chinese. This higher influx of outbound tourists into Europe is expected to help theme parks in the region withstand the debt crisis.
Full article: http://www.fortyeightk.com/2012/03/global-theme-parks- market-to-reach-us31-8- billion-by-2017-according-to- new-report-by-global-industry- analysts-inc/
Shiver Me Timbers! Pirates of the Caribbean Ride is 45 Years Old
(magic.blogs.mydesert.com)“Yo ho, yo ho, a pirates life for me.”
Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland turned 45 years old on Sunday.
The ride was the last one at Disneyland that Walt Disney helped create. Sadly, he died just before it opened.
The ride, which continues to be one of the most popular in the park, was initially intended to be a walk-through museum.
But as Walt and his team continued to develop the attraction, they decided a boat ride would be far more fun and appealing to Disneyland guests.
Right they were.
Over the years, it’s undergone a few makeovers, but only to add features, not take away. Most notably, characters from the ride-inspired “Pirates of the Caribbean” movies, including Johnny Depp’s Capt. Jack Sparrow, have been added throughout.
I remember the first time I took the cruise, it was just a few months after it opened. I was in awe of the detail throughout the ride: the fireflies and old man in the rocker on the front porch of one of the shacks on the bayou; the stomach-tickling drop just past the skull that tells you, “It be too late to alter course now;” the battle zone; the captain’s quarters filled with gold coins and trinkets; pirates chasing women near the market; and, of course, the jailhouse dog with the key dangling from its mouth.
If I could do just one ride at Disneyland on any given day, Pirates of the Caribbean would be my choice. No hesitation.
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