(darkhorizons.com)
Fandango has conducted a poll amongst their user base for the most anticipated movies of next year, splitting the results by both gender and separating both remakes and films overall.
The results prove a tad surprising, especially the higher than expected placements of Baz Luhrmann's "The Great Gatsby", Len Wiseman's "Total Recall" remake and Tarsem Singh's "Mirror Mirror":
THE MOST ANTICIPATED BLOCKBUSTER IN 2012:
According to Men:
1. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (Warner Bros)
2. The Avengers (Marvel/Disney)
3. The Dark Knight Rises (Warner Bros)
4. The Bourne Legacy (Universal)
5. Men in Black III (Sony)
According to Women:
1. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, Part 2 (Summit)
2. The Hunger Games (Lionsgate)
3. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (Warner Bros)
4. Dark Shadows (Warner Bros)
5. The Avengers (Marvel/Disney)
THE MOST ANTICIPATED REMAKE IN 2012:
According to Men:
1. Total Recall (Sony)
2. The Amazing Spider-Man (Sony)
3. The Great Gatsby (Warner Bros)
4. Snow White And The Huntsman (Universal)
5. Mirror Mirror (Relativity)
According to Women:
1. Snow White And The Huntsman (Universal)
2. The Great Gatsby (Warner Bros)
3. Mirror Mirror (Relativity)
4. Total Recall (Sony)
5. The Amazing Spider-Man (Sony)
15 Features Selected For VFX Oscar Long List
(blogs.sites.post-gazette.com)The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has announced that 15 films have been selected for consideration for Achievement in Visual Effects for the 84th Academy Awards. They are, in alphabetical order:
"Captain America: The First Avenger"
"Cowboys & Aliens"
"Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2"
"Hugo"
"Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol"
"Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides"
"Real Steel"
"Rise of the Planet of the Apes" (left)
"Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows"
"Sucker Punch"
"Super 8"
"Thor"
"Transformers: Dark of the Moon"
"The Tree of Life"
"X-Men: First Class"
In early January, the members of the Academy's Visual Effects Branch Executive Committee, who selected the 15 films, will narrow the list to 10.
All members of the Visual Effects Branch will be invited to view 10-minute excerpts from each of the 10 shortlisted films on Thursday, Jan. 19. Following the screenings, the members will vote to nominate five films for final Oscar consideration.
The 84th Academy Awards nominations will be announced live on Tuesday, Jan. 24, 2012, at 8:30 a.m. in the Academy's Samuel Goldwyn Theater.
Steven Spielberg on the Next Jurassic Park
(comingsoon.net) it's been over ten years since Jurassic Park 3 hit theaters and with rumblings of them finally getting around to doing Jurassic Park 4, something hinted at by original director and producer Steven Spielberg at this year's Comic-Con, fans of the successful franchise and dinosaur enthusiasts have been itching for any good news that it really was going to happen this time.
At today's junket for The Adventures of Tintin, ComingSoon.net sat down with Spielberg for four glorious minutes of questions about his adaptation of Hergé's globe-trotting adventurer and we tried to quickly get in a question about their progress on Jurassic Park 4.
"I haven't been active in the last year because I've been so busy obviously on 'War Horse,' 'Tintin' and now I'm currently shooting 'Lincoln,' but right now, it's on the schedule to bring out another 'Jurassic Park.'"
Unfortunately, when we attempted to find out if it will continue on from the last movie or reboot and start from scratch, he couldn't tell us. "It's just another boring secret," he chuckled.
So yeah, sorry to say that we don't have much to add, although if Spielberg has it on his radar, that's certainly a good sign that maybe we'll see it sometime in the next few years? Fingers crossed!
Hot Sci-Fi Movie Project 'Rosa' Lands at Fox
(hollywoodreporter.com)20th Century Fox is in final negotiations to pick up Rosa, a sci-fi project based on an animated short from Jesus Orellana, a comic book artist who not only created the short but will direct the live-action feature movie.
The pick-up shows the level of heat Spain-based Orellan has generated with his short, which hit the web the second week of Nov. By the end of the month, he had agency representation with Verve and last week was pitching the project to studios.
STORY: Ben Kingsley In Talks to Join Sci-Fi Thriller 'Ender's Game' (Exclusive)
What is noteworthy is that the short, made from his home computer in Barcelona on a next-to-nothing budget, is the only thing that Orellana has directed. It was made to show his vision for a live-action project he hoped to direct. Consider the impending deal mission accomplished.
Fox-based Simon Kinberg and his Genre Films banner will produce with Scott Glassgold and Raymond Brothers of I Am Entertainment, which also reps Orellan. A scribe will be hired to write the script, which will build on the storyline and the characters of the short. Orellana had a roadmap for the feature story as part of his pitch presentation.
MSN Goes Ape at WETA in New Zealand
(movies.uk.msn.com)It's the blockbuster of the year. And we've travelled far to find out how they did it. 'Breaking Motion Capture Boundaries' is one of the documentaries on the new Blu-Ray for Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes and, having witnessed the technology at the Weta workshop in Miramar, New Zealand, I can attest to the revolutionary work that these special effects wizards are achieving.
Andy Serkis is modest in his discussion of motion capture performance. But having attempted this first hand, I can only begin to describe the difficulty of the artform that he's mastered. He's absolutely comfortable in these conditions. The end result, the unique CGI character of Caesar in ROTPOTA, could only have been achieved by Serkis.
Andy Serkis performing on the set of Rise OF The Planet Of The Apes (© Twentieth Century Fox)
Twentieth Century Fox
My experience with the motion capture suits, in which I was trained to ape about like the actors in Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes, was mindblowing. It's eerie to watch yourself in ape form immediately after running through these basic performances. In fact I enjoyed it so much that I put my back out and flew home on a cocktail of painkillers. But that's another story...
VIDEO - Take a look: http://movies.uk.msn.com/msn-goes-ape-at-weta-in-new- zealand
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 Hits $1 Billion in 16 Days
(Activision) Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 has broken Avatar's record for hitting the $1 billion mark in 17 days. The game has reached the mark in just 16 days:
Activision Publishing, Inc., a wholly-owned subsidiary of Activision Blizzard, Inc., announced today that Call of Duty®: Modern Warfare™ 3 crossed the $1 billion mark in sales since its launch on November 8, 2011, according to Charttrack and retail customer sell-through information. Highlighting the trend of interactive entertainment gaining a greater hold of audiences worldwide, the game achieved this milestone in just 16 days, eclipsing the record set in 2009 by the feature film "Avatar," which reached the $1 billion milestone in 17 days.
THQ Lays Off 30
(venturebeat.com)uDraw GameTablet for WiiTHQ has laid off 30 people from its Play THQ development team, including executive of kids-family-casual games Martin Good.
Play THQ is the team behind the uDraw GameTablet (pictured above). The system was viewed as an innovative addition to the Wii game console that could bring out the artistic side of younger players. But sales during the season of huge blockbusters were weak.
VentureBeat first heard of the layoffs on Twitter and contacted THQ to confirm the story. In a statement, THQ said that lower-than-expected sales of the device have led the company to take the difficult, but important, step of reducing the number of employees that support the brand. The company adds this will allow them to reduce costs, increase efficiency, and increase the focus of the organization.
“WWE ’12 and Saints Row the Third are two of the top games this holiday season and we also have another huge hit coming up in February with the launch of UFC 3,” THQ said. ”We want to make sure that we are focused on maximizing the sales and profitability of these titles as well as the broader pipeline of titles that matter most to our future.”
Earlier this week, THQ updated its outlook for its fiscal 2012 third quarter, which ends on December 31. Due to uDraw’s weak sales, the company says it now expects to report net sales for the third quarter approximately 25 percent below its previously announced guidance of $510 million to $550 million.
THQ expects to announce fiscal 2012 third quarter results in early February 2012 and will provide an update to its fiscal 2012 fourth quarter and full year guidance at that time.
Oscar Winning Special Effects Studio “Amalgamated Dynamics Inc.”
(bzfilm.com) Here it is – an exclusive interview from Alec Gillis, one of the founders of Amalgamated Dynamics Inc. In the interview Alec talks about how ADI started off, shares his thoughts on today’s special effects, and more.
I’d like us to stop by the “Thing”, one of ADI’s latest works. Obviously, you’re aware of the 1982 original film, and the SFX work done there. I’ve seen both films, and though the effects in the 2011 film were top notch, the still looked somewhat less real than those of 1982 film. How much of computer graphic effects were used in the 2011 film? Why didn’t ADI go heavier on the traditional old-school effects?
I really want the fans to know that ADI does not have the final word on what the ultimate FX approach is. We are sometimes as surprised as anybody when we see the final results on screen. I read a lot of comments online that reflect a basic lack of understanding of how corporate film making works these days. In 1982 it was different. Before studios realized that genre FX films were the goldmine that they are today, they paid less attention to the filmmakers making genre films. Nowadays there is much more scrutiny of the process, much more studio input, and much less freedom for directors to take chances. Everyone who we worked shoulder-to-shoulder with on “THE THING”, from the director to Image Engine to the producers to Strike Entertainment is top-notch, talented and conscientious. The folks at Universal are as well. Everyone wanted that movie to succeed. But there is a different process in place in 2011 that there was in 1982. I promise you and the fans that we always try to encourage the use of practical effects, but it isn’t often solely our call.
Full Article: http://bzfilm.com/talks-interviews/exclusive- interview-with-oscar-winning- special-effects-studio- amalgamated-dynamics-inc/
Weta Digital Alum Finish Shoot For "The Cure"
(voxy.co.nz)The action thriller The Cure, starring Antonia Prebble (Outrageous Fortune, Power Rangers, The Tribe) and Australian Daniel Lissing (Packed to the Rafters, Crownies) wrapped this week following a phenomenal five week shoot in and around Wellington.
The film is written, produced and directed by David Gould previously of Weta Digital where he handled visual effects on features such as The Lord of the Rings, King Kong, Rise of the Planet of the Apes and The Adventures of TinTin. In between these features he returned to Australia to make the short films Awaken and Inseparable Coil. This week, after wrapping THE CURE, he attended the AUSTRALIAN SCREEN INDUSTRY AWARDS in Brisbane, winning the BEST DIRECTOR AWARD. He also won the BEST NEW FILM AWARD for AWAKEN.
He comments: "The award winners are chosen by members of the wider film industry rather than a select few individuals, so it's great to know that you have the support and respect of your fellow industry peers. Having just wrapped the shoot of my first feature film a mere 48 hours earlier made it all the more satisfying. What an amazing year!"
Team Will Show Can't-tell Photo Inserts at Siggraph
(physorg.com)Visitors to this month's Siggraph Asia conference on computer graphics from December 12 to 15 will witness a presentation from a team at the University of Illinois in Urbana Champaign on how to tweak photos by adding in something that was not there before. They will present their study, Rendering Synthetic Objects into Legacy Photographs, which details their approach.
So what? What could possibly be new about this? Their method has more going for it than older techniques used by the Kremlin or budding Photoshop enthusiasts. The team, Kevin Karsch, Varsha Hedau, David Forsyth, Derek Hoiem, can simulate lighting conditions so that the object looks realistic.
Humans can quickly detect photo fraud, maintains Karsch. They can do so in spotting lighting inconsistencies in a doctored photograph.
In contrast, the university team’s method, he says, is successfully confusable even for people who pride themselves in spotting differences.
If you don’t know the perspective, if you don’t know the geometry of an object, then you are just manipulating pixels, he commented, with unconvincing results.
In their computer program, a user is asked to select light sources in the picture. An algorithm recreates the 3-D geometry and lighting of the scene and the artificial object is inserted into its new environment. The program adds shadows and highlights to the object before converting it back to 2-D.
The weakness in existing photo editing programs, they say, is that they simply insert a 2-D object. Karsch, a computer science doctoral student whose advisor is David Forsyth, explains that image editing software that only allows 2-D manipulations does not account for high-level spatial information that is present in a given scene, yet 3-D modeling tools may be complex and tedious for novice users.
The team set out to extract the 3-D scene information from single images, to allow for seamless object insertion, removal, and relocation.
The process involves three phases: luminaire inference, perspective estimation (depth, occlusion, camera parameters), and texture replacement. The team, in their paper, says their method can realistically insert synthetic objects into existing photographs without requiring access to the scene or any additional scene measurements.
“With a single image and a small amount of annotation, our method creates a physical model of the scene that is suitable for realistically rendering synthetic objects with diffuse, specular, and even glowing materials while accounting for lighting interactions between the objects and the scene.”
Potentially useful applications include interior design, where decorators might take a photo of a room and experiment with different furniture and object insertions. Other possibilities include entertainment and gaming.
VIDEO - Take a look: http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-12-uiuc-team-cant-tell- photo-inserts.html
ILM Vs. Henson
(madartlab.com) Inspired by the No Right Answer concept at The Escapist, I give you an impossible question:
Which is better: Industrial Light and Magic or the Jim Henson Company?
Industrial Light and Magic was founded by George Lucas in order to make the first Star Wars movies possible. They have remained an FX studio on the cutting edge of technology ever since and are responsible for the visual effects in such films as Willow, Jurassic Park, Terminator, Avatar and the NeverEnding Story.
The Jim Henson Company is, unsurprisingly, the company created by Jim Henson and is responsible for not only the Muppets and Sesame street, but also Labyrinth, the Dark Crystal, and Farscape amongst others.
Which is the better FX house: Industrial Light and Magic or the Jim Henson Company?
Chime in with your answer: http://madartlab.com/2011/12/05/ai-ilm-vs-henson/
The Culture of Dissent at Pixar Animation Studios
(bigthink.com) What's the Big Idea?
Pixar Animation Studios, the company Steve Jobs acquired in 1986, has won a total of 26 Academy Awards and made over $6.3 billion worldwide. The studio's incredible run of success includes Toy Story 3, the highest-grossing animated film of all time. In fact, with the exception of Cars 2, every feature film Pixar has produced has been both a critical and commercial success, grossing on average $602 million, the highest in the industry. Talk about the Midas touch! With a track record like that, Pixar must be immune from making mistakes.
Not true at all, points out the economist Tim Harford in his book Adapt: Why Success Always Starts With Failure. According to Harford, instead of preventing errors, Pixar is really good at with fixing them quickly. To put it another way, Pixar's President Ed Catmull embraces a process of rigorous critique in which the studio ensures that films go "from suck to nonsuck." Films are scrutinized right up to the last stage of production.
According to Harford, what Pixar has done so well is the studio has established a positive environment for dissent. In the video below, Harford argues that all organizations are bound to make mistakes. The key is for these mistakes to be "revealed, exposed and then corrected as soon as possible." The culture has to be right for this to work. After all, people hate criticism. On the other hand, dissent must be listened to if you don't want your product to "suck."
VIDEO - Take a look: http://bigthink.com/ideas/41463
'Green Lantern' Fails to Make the Long List for Visual-Effects Oscar
(nola.com) Given the critical bashing it suffered upon its release this past summer, few expected the New Orleans-shot "Green Lantern" to be an Oscar powerhouse, exactly. But it wouldn't have been unwarranted to see it nominated in a couple or three technical categories.
'Green Lantern'An image from Warner Bros.' New Orleans-shot superhero film 'Green Lantern.'
Now it appears that's not going to happen.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has released its long list of those films still in the running for the visual effects Oscar - likely the best chance of "Green Lantern" to grab a nomination. Alas, it didn't make the cut, making its chance of Oscar-night gold that much slimmer.
Unused Motion Capture Previs Action Scene For X-MEN: FIRST CLASS Revealed
(comicbookmovie.com)Hit the jump to check out this cool deleted motion capture previs sequence for Matthew Vaughn's critically acclaimed film X-Men: First Class, featuring Azazel battling the X-Men inside the Blackbird...
X-MEN: FIRST CLASS unveils the epic beginning of the X-Men saga – and a secret history of the Cold War and our world at the brink of nuclear Armageddon. As the first class discovers, harnesses, and comes to terms with their formidable powers, alliances are formed that will shape the eternal war between the heroes and villains of the X-Men universe.
VIDEO - Take a look: http://www.comicbookmovie.com/fansites/Wolvie09/news/?a= 51096
Filmmakers Recreate Awesome Star-Wars-Era Special Effects
(fastcodesign.com)New cameras allow indie filmmakers to use old-time special effects on a cut-rate budget.
Watching the stylish trailer for C, you could be forgiven for failing to realize that you're looking at a set made of cardboard and milk crates. But that's exactly what it is. Derek Van Gorder and Otto Stockmeier's science fiction film about an idealistic flight officer gone rogue is being shot on a shoestring budget, so they make up for a shortage of materials by being long on craftsmanship.
"The cameras allowed us to take a new approach to studio shooting."
The ultra-low budget means no money for CGI. Instead, they've turned to older effects techniques, working with miniatures for the exterior shots, and exploiting tricks of light and depth of field to create the darkened interiors of the spaceship. Though CGI is not involved, none of this would be possible without the latest digital technology.
Thanks to the improved low-light sensitivity of contemporary digital cameras, the team is able to exploit techniques that would have once required massive lighting rigs, with the attendant massive budgets. "[It] allowed us to take a new approach to studio shooting," says Van Gorder.
For model shots, the improved sensitivity means they can narrow the aperture, which keeps more of the ship in focus, so that it looks less like a miniature. This kind of setup used to require so much lighting that models melting on set was an occasional hazard. For the interior shots, their lighting fixtures use inexpensive gear like regular fluorescent tubes, flashlights, Christmas bulbs, and home video projectors, all light sources that would have been too dim to film with in the past. The result is the ability to create highly controlled lighting on set at almost no cost.
Beyond budget, the big appeal of these effects is that they evoke the signature look of science fiction films from the '60s, '70s, and '80s, says Van Gorder. While much contemporary science fiction has turned inward and gone gritty, C is intended to be a movie that returns to the excitement of space exploration and an enthusiasm for the future. Van Gorder says that both digital and analog tools have a place in modern filmmaking and that, for indie filmmakers, the exciting thing is that CGI is no longer the only option.
"I think this fits with the theme of our film, which is all about appropriating the technology around us and putting it to work for progress," says Van Gorder, "Ultimately, the tools are a means to an end--they're not important in and of themselves, what matters is how you use them."
They've passed their funding goal on Kickstarter, but you can still pre-order the film and support the project. They've already worked out a budget for turning that extra money into higher productions values--but not too high, of course.
VIDEO - Take a look: http://www.fastcodesign.com/1665604/filmmakers-recreate- awesome-star-wars-era-special- effects
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