(comingsoon.net)
After Guillermo del Toro’s dream project — At the Mountains of Madness — was cancelled unceremoniously, he has thrown himself into a number of new projects. Currently, he’s directing Pacific Rim, starring Idris Elba and Charlie Day.
On how Pacific Rim is coming along, courtesy of io9, Guillermo del Toro said:
“Very good, we’re at the end of our second week. We are shooting everything for the main complex in the movie, which is a huge complex in Hong Kong where the robots are maintained. We are doing that, while building downtown Hong Kong streets.”
Pacific Rim, in short, is about people in the future piloting giant robots to fend off an alien threat in the form of massive, ghastly monsters.
Full John Carter Trailer is Visual Effects Spectacle
(thehdroom.com)John Carter Trailer is Visual Effects SpectacleDisney has released the first full trailer for John Carter and its a visual effects showpiece not unlike the first trailer for Avatar, only replacing the lush forests of Pandora with the barren deserts of Mars.
It's not hard to draw comparisons between Avatar and John Carter based on this new trailer. The tall, lanky Martians, caught up in war, are similar in stature to the Na'vi of Pandora. A human fighting amongst them and huge effects sequences are also shared traits.
You could also draw comparisons of Carter taking on a giant blind white ape while in chains to the arena sequence in Star Wars: Attack of the Clones in which Obi-Wan, Anakin and Padme were faced with battling large exotic alien beasts while chained up. I was a little surprised to see the end of the ape sequence appear in the trailer.
John Carter is based on the science fiction book series by Edgar Rice Burroughs. It stars Taylor Kitsch, Lynn Collins, Mark Strong, Bryan Cranston, Willem Dafoe and Thomas Haden Church in the story of a Civil War veteran who ends up on the surface of Mars and caught up in a massive war between races.
Directing John Carter is Pixar vet Andrew Stanton in what is his first live-action feature film. The inhabitants of Mars and much of the landscape is computer generated, so Stanton is still working in familiar territory. With a resume that includes WALL·E and Finding Nemo, there are great expectations that Stanton will deliver with John Carter when it hits theaters on March 9.
VIDEO - Take a look: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4jfd3mW9B0&feature=player_ embedded
DWA CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg to Receive CinemaCon Honor
(comingsoon.net)The 2nd Annual CinemaCon exhibitors convention, to be held at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, is roughly five months away, but they're already starting to announce the honorees with the first of them being DreamWorks Animation CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg, who is being presented with the 2012 "Pioneer of the Year" by the Will Rogers Motion Picture Pioneers Foundation on Wednesday, April 25, 2012. ComingSoon.net should have full coverage of the show, but receiving this award is pretty major for Katzenberg, who has been a regular fixture at the show each year, often showing early footage or works-in-progress from DreamWorks Animation's slate.
You can read the full press release below:
The Will Rogers Motion Picture Pioneers Foundation will present its 2012 "Pioneer of the Year" Award to Jeffrey Katzenberg, CEO of DreamWorks Animation SKG, Inc., it was announced by Ted Cooper, President of the industry�s foremost charitable organization. Katzenberg will be honored on Wednesday, April 25, 2012 at CinemaCon, the industry's largest and most important gathering of cinema owners and operators from around the world. CinemaCon 2012 will be held at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas.
"We are honored in our own right to be able to single out someone like Jeffrey Katzenberg," noted Ted Cooper. "When it comes to passion for our industry and compassion for those in our industry who need help, Jeffrey has no equals. He is most deserving of this prestigious accolade. As well we thank our friends at NATO for their continued support as we could not imagine a better forum at which to honor Jeffrey than at CinemaCon 2012."
'G.I. Joe' Sequel Crew Member Dies After Accident On Set
(tmz.com) A crew member working on the set of the movie "G.I. Joe 2: Retaliation" died yesterday after an accident on the New Orleans set ... TMZ has learned.
Officials at Paramount Pictures confirm ... the crew member was working on tearing down the set, when something went terribly wrong.
Sources connected to the production tell us ... the man was working on a high-powered scissor lift, when the machine tipped over and the man sustained fatal injuries.
Paramount released a statement saying, "Our thoughts and deepest condolences are with the [crew member's] family at this time."
The statement continues, "The safety of our cast and crew is our top priority and the studio is fully cooperating with all investigating agencies as they examine the circumstances surrounding this unusual accident.”
A Look at the Lucas Empire
(Marin Independent Journal) George Lucas' global filmmaking empire includes 6,100 acres at the Skywalker, Big Rock and Grady ranches in Lucas Valley, with development on less than 5 percent of the land.
• Skywalker Ranch. It's for pre- and post-production work, and home to Skywalker Sound and Skywalker Properties, as well as agricultural ranch facilities. Most of its 2,500 acres are preserved through the Marin Agricultural Land Trust. An on-site fire department provides the county with mutual aid response at no cost to taxpayers.
• Big Rock Ranch. It's a multimedia office for Lucasfilm Animation and the George Lucas Educational Foundation. Some 2,483 acres were set aside as agricultural preserve through MALT. Some 120 acres were fenced off to protect Marin dwarf flax, a threatened plant.
• Grady Ranch. Planned is a digital media production facility for movies and television, complete with costume storage, makeup and dressing rooms, production suites, guest suites, office suites, stages, screening rooms, a fitness center and café. Some 800 acres of the 1,039-acre ranch were donated to the county as open space, while another 187 will be private open space.
• Letterman Digital Arts Center. Based at the Presidio in San Francisco, this facility accommodates Lucasfilm's corporate operation, Industrial Light & Magic, LucasArts and
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video teams. The 23-acre campus includes four buildings and 17 acres of public park.
• Lucasfilm Singapore. Lucasfilm's first overseas production facility is under construction in Singapore. It features a production building with eight floors of office space, a data center, production facilities, a 100-seat theater, retail shopping and a public park and gardens.
MARI 1.4 Announced
(3dworldmag.com) The Foundry continues to shake-up 3D Paint with the release of MARI 1.4
MARI has been widely adopted across the industry at leading film studios and post-production houses including Sony Picture Imageworks, DreamWorks, ILM, Pixar and Digital Domain to name a few.
Leading visual effects software developer The Foundry announces the release of MARI 1.4.
Designed from the ground up to meet the needs of the most demanding VFX texture and matte painting artists, MARI is a 3D digital paint tool that simplifies artist workflow.
Capable of handling vast numbers of pixels, MARI eclipses other 3D paint tools in speed, flexibility and processing capabilities. MARI allows artists to concentrate on painting detailed, multi-layered textures directly onto 3D models in a fluid and natural way.
Introducing Adobe Photoshop layered PSD import and export, industry standard colour management with OpenColorIO and triplanar projection, MARI 1.4 speeds up and simplifies workflow.
With MARI 1.4 artists can paint detailed, multi-layered textures directly onto 3D models, solve commonplace VFX problems, save time, and work in ways never thought possible before.
Hayden Jones, VFX Supervisor at Rushes said: “Using MARI to paint was a revelation! It’s immensely quick and intuitive. MARI allowed me to concentrate on the getting the artistic look right, without having to get bogged down in technicalities.”
Rob Bredow, Chief Technology Officer at Sony Picture Imageworks adds: “MARI streamlines our artist workflows on our most complicated assets. It is the latest addition to our pipeline as we provide artists with the right, innovative tools to meet any creative challenge.”
MARI 1.4 is available immediately and runs on Windows and Linux. It supports Ptex, Python OpenEXR, and C API.
MARI 1.4 is priced at $1,980/ £1,200 with maintenance costing $330/£200.
For more information and for video demos of MARI 1.4 go to www.thefoundry.co.uk
It’s High Time For a Best Video Game Motion Capture Actor Award
(kotaku.com) It's High Time For a Best Video Game Motion Capture Actor Award In today's lifelike edition of Speak Up on Kotaku, commenter MarcianTobay says it's time to honor the motion capture actors, without whom our professionally-voiced video game characters would be nothing more than well-spoken robots.
Let's discuss Motion Capture. This will involve minor spoilers from a side-plot in Arkham City, so helmets on.
Watch this clip. Skip to 1:55 and watch the projection of The Riddler. I just got to this scene last night and I can't get it out of my head. Now, I love The Riddler more than any sane person should, so this entire clip was candy to me. One thing stood out, though; His movement.
It's High Time For a Best Video Game Motion Capture Actor Award Please watch the clip with the sound off. Skip ahead to that, and turn off your speakers. Even without the sound, you're still experiencing the Riddler. How he casually waves his cane around. The sarcastic way he dismisses the "unimportant" cops' lives. Even how he loses his gusto and flair whenever Batman calls him insane. There's no wasted gesture. There's no idle face in the corner looping the same non-synched lips for two minutes.
What fascinates me about this is how much we've advanced as an art form. Remember how we used to get still sketches of characters while beeps and boops signaled that they were talking? And now we have this. It's truly incredible. In fact, I dare say there is more acting in this brief clip than some star Hollywood beauties put on, but that's a different discussion.
My core question is: Why aren't we talking motion capture more? Why isn't the man or woman who played The Riddler getting acknowledgment? Yes, Mark Hamill VOICED The Joker, but who was the person that pantomimed that melodramatic gasp when Batman first says "Protocol Ten"? Who actually held the cigar and contemptuously sneered when Penguin first thought he killed Batman?
Yes, yes, everyone posts clips with confusion and surprise when we found out a man played Harley Quinn, but I advise things go further. Let's start recognizing the great motion capture artists. Let's have nominations for "Best Physical Actor" that go alongside "Best Voice Actor". Let's start getting them the respect they deserve.
Why is it that when Andy Serkis plays Gollum in Lord of the Rings, everyone talks about it for years to come, yet when video games have similar feats of immersion, people ignore it.
I'll start by asking YOU:
-What is your favorite physical performance in a video game?
Animation Catagory Snubbed by NY Film Critics
(nj.com) The New York Film Critics Circle announced their annual prizes on Tuesday, marking the start of the end of the movie year, and the beginning of the Oscar-focused awards season.
The entire year’s slate of cartoons which so disappointed many voters (not me – I liked “Rango”) they voted not to give a best animation prize at all.
Full article: http://www.nj.com/entertainment/movies/index. ssf/2011/11/ny_film_critics_ choose_the_artist_as_best_ picture.html
A 24/7 Global VFX Pipeline For "HUGO"
(broadcastnewsroom.com)DMN Newswire--2011-11-30-- International visual effects company Pixomondo completed over 800 shots as the primary visual effects vendor on Martin Scorseses 3D epic adventure, Hugo. Independently produced by GK Films and distributed in the U.S. by Paramount Pictures, the film features shots contributed by ten of Pixomondo's eleven facilities across Germany, the US, Canada, China and the UK. Pixomondo's 24/7 global pipeline was instrumental in completing the project on time and budget while keeping up with the highly inventive creative vision of director Martin Scorsese and visual effects supervisor Rob Legato.
Employing stereo 3D as a narrative device driving an immersive audience experience, Scorsese was intent on pushing the capabilities of 3D filmmaking to extremes. With this mandate as the driving force, Pixomondo developed custom workflows not only to handle complex challenges in VFX, but also to capture in painstaking detail all of the live action production data required to accommodate the rigorous effects and post production demands of this project. Pixomondo began working on Hugo in July of 2010 and was integrated into the production from the outset with Pixomondo VFX Supervisor Ben Grossmann and Digital Effects Supervisor Alex Henning on set in England and France working alongside Legato and Scorsese.
"Marty and I worked with Ben on Shutter Island so we already knew he was our first choice for Hugo," said Legato. "For this film, Pixomondo's ability to tap internal teams around the world was invaluable. It simplified everything from both a creative and logistical standpoint. This was a project with many moving parts, and Ben, Alex and the entire Pixomondo team worked tirelessly to cater to the demands of this show."
Bringing to Life 70,000 Parts For Transformers: Dark of the Moon's "Driller"
(heyuguys.co.uk)A glimpse into the creative process of those big, effects-heavy Hollywood blockbusters always offers a fun and fascinating prospect, and that’s precisely what happened when one of the industry big-hitters, Oscar-winning Visual Effects Supervisor Scott Farrar, recently took the stage to chat about his experiences working on Transformers: Dark of the Moon.
An employee of ILM for thirty years now (he worked on ‘Jedi’, and before that, the early Star Trek films), Farrar has lent his considerable talents to Michael Bay for over six years, and the third of the Transformers films presented the biggest challenge and most ambitious undertaking in his career so far. As well as a huge leap in digital effects this time around (giving ILM more than 200,000 hours of rendering power a day), Farrar and his team had to create a cityscape ravaged by a Decepticon onslaught, and unleash the awe-inspiring, building-devouring juggernaut referred to as the “Driller”, a giant snake-like creature with spinning rotator blades, knives and teeth (and comprised of over 70,000 parts!) All this was achieved while also factoring in the inclusion of 3D.
Full article: http://www.heyuguys.co.uk/2011/11/29/bringing-to-life- those-robots-in-disguise-the- vfx-of-transformers-dark-of- the-moon/
Evil Dead Remake Scares Up Distribution Team
(Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions) Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions (SPWA) and FilmDistrict have partnered with Ghost House Pictures on a worldwide deal--excluding U.K. and France--for Sony Pictures to distribute the remake of Evil Dead. The announcement was made by Steven Bersch, SPWA President, and Peter Schlessel, CEO of FilmDistrict. Lia Buman, FilmDistrict's EVP of Acquisitions, will oversee the project.
Original producing partners Rob Tapert, Bruce Campbell (who also starred in the original franchise) and Sam Raimi will produce. Ghost House Pictures partners Joe Drake and Nathan Kahane will executive produce. Nicole Brown and J.R. Young will oversee the project for Ghost House.
Men In Black 3 Actress Beams Aboard Trek Sequel
(Variety) J.J. Abrams' untitled Star Trek sequel appears to have added Alice Eve to the cast. Variety has the word, suggesting that Eve will play an all-new character and not one previously established in Star Trek canon.
Eve is best known for her role in 2010's She's Out of My League and will appear next year in The Raven and Men in Black 3.
Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Zoe Saldana, Karl Urban, Simon Pegg, John Cho and Anton Yelchin are expected to all reprise their roles as members of the Enterprise crew with Abrams back in the director's chair and a script again from Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman.
Benicio Del Toro has been named as Abrams' top choice for the film's lead villain, but nothing official has, as of yet, been announced.
Variety's article goes on to suggest that Del Toro's role is likely a familiar Trek character and that he'll be accompanied by another, older supporting villain that has yet to be cast.
The Star Trek sequel is expected to begin production in January, shooting in 3D, and will see a release on May 17, 2013.
Darren Aronofsky's "Noah" Looks For Character Ark
(Variety) Though Christian Bale's name was originally associated with Darren Aronofsky's upcoming biblical epic, Noah, Variety reports that the star has passed on the project and that Michael Fassbender is now being eyed to play the ark-builder.
"Since I was a kid, I have been moved and inspired by the story of Noah and his family's journey," Aronofsky recently announced when Paramount Pictures and New Regency Productions stepped in to jointly fund the feature. "The imaginations of countless generations have sparked to this epic story of faith. It's my hope that I can present a window into Noah's passion and perseverance for the silver screen."
Fassbender appeared this year in Jane Eyre, X-Men: First Class and A Dangerous Method with his next, Shame, opening this Friday. Next year, he'll appear in Steven Soderbergh's Haywire and Ridley Scott's Prometheus. After that's, he's set to re-team with Shame and Hunger director Steve McQueen for 12 Years a Slave and will likely return at some point for an as-of-yet-untitled X-Men: First Class sequel.
Glendale to Get 'Animated' in Image Makeover
(lacanadaonline.com)Glendale is boring. Or at least that’s what more than a year of market research indicates.
Consultants hired to develop a new brand strategy for the city unveiled their findings Tuesday at City Hall, saying most people think of Glendale as the boring city between Burbank and Pasadena.
To combat that image, Nashville-based North Star Destination Strategies suggested a new marketing strategy centered on the tagline, “Your Life. Animated.”
With a nod toward Glendale-based animation studios such as DreamWorks Animation and Disney’s creative campus, the phrase comes with a new logo that includes the city’s name in lowercase letters surrounded by five multicolored curlicues.
“Glendale has long been content to be a quiet, productive, safe community, but now it’s time to let the secret out,” said Alison Maxwell, the city’s deputy director of economic development. “The dynamism, animation and creativity [here], it’s not something that’s presented and marketed to the world.”
The City Council approved the branding elements Tuesday on a 4-1 vote, with Councilman Dave Weaver dissenting. He called the rebranding project — with a budget of $1 million in redevelopment money — a waste of money.
The city has spent $139,000 on the project so far.
“I feel like Uncle Scrooge. I just don’t get it,” Weaver said after Maxwell clicked through a PowerPoint presentation outlining how the new logo and tagline can be used on city stationery, the municipal website, permits and street banners.
But Mayor Laura Friedman said the branding strategy is an important element in attracting good-paying jobs.
“We need to attract companies, and this branding will help us do that,” she said.
Maxwell said the tagline can be molded to fit different activities, such as using “Work. Animated” on business brochures. Local businesses could incorporate the tagline into their own advertising, pointing to an image of a Porto’s Bakery bus stop advertisement that said “Your Appetite. Animated.”
Acura of Glendale owner Jeanne Brewer said she could envision the Brand Boulevard of Cars dealerships dropping car emblems into the logo’s multiple curlicues in advertising ventures.
“We believe nothing is more important than a brand. We live it every day,” said Caruso Affiliated executive and past president of the Glendale Chamber of Commerce Rick Lemmo, adding that he liked where Glendale was going with its tagline.
Maxwell said the logo’s curlicues could also be used in other ways, such as creating a bicycle rack out of colorful swirls.
The point is to “help the logo get into people’s consciousness without being literal about it,” she said.
However, Maxwell added that a branding campaign doesn’t stop with a logo.
“The brand is the way that service, that agency, expresses itself to its customers, to its clients, to consumers,” Maxwell said.
Kickstarter Project: SPACE OUT from High School to Outer Space
(kickstarter.com)Space Out is a short film that brings together a real-world high school experience with a science fiction space fantasy.
The film was created in collaboration with high school students from Envision Academy in Oakland, CA.
Please help us finish this film and make this dream a reality!
Check it out: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/797589661/space-out- from-high-school-to-outer- space
Twilight Zone Heads Into Rewrites
(Variety) Invictus and Sherlock Holmes writer Anthony Peckham is in final negotiations to write The Twilight Zone for Warner Bros. Pictures and Appian Way.
Peckham will rewrite the original draft by Jason Rothenberg. Matt Reeves (Cloverfield, Let Me In) is set to direct.
Appian Way partners Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Davisson Killoran will produce with Michael Ireland, while Matt Cherniss will executive produce.
Based on the classic Rod Serling TV series, the movie is expected to start filming in the summer of 2012.
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