(comingsoon.net) Paramount Pictures announced today that filming has begun for the Untitled Star Trek Sequel:
Paramount Pictures announced that principal photography has commenced in Los Angeles, CA on the sequel to STAR TREK from director J.J. Abrams. The film will be released on May 17, 2013 in 3D. The 2009 re-launch of the "Star Trek" franchise by Abrams was met with critical acclaim and a worldwide gross of over $385 million at the box office.
Paramount Pictures and Skydance Productions present a Bad Robot Production of a J.J. Abrams Film. Returning to their posts on the Enterprise are John Cho, Bruce Greenwood, Simon Pegg, Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Zoe Saldana, Karl Urban, and Anton Yelchin. They are joined by new cast members Benedict Cumberbatch, Alice Eve and Peter Weller.
Based upon "Star Trek" created by Gene Roddenberry, the film is produced by J.J. Abrams, Bryan Burk, Damon Lindelof, Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci. The script was written by Alex Kurtzman & Robert Orci & Damon Lindelof.
Jeffrey Chernov, David Ellison, Dana Goldberg and Paul Schwake are the executive producers. The director of photography is Dan Mindel, ASC, BSC. The production designer is Scott Chambliss. The film is edited by Maryann Brandon, A.C.E. and Mary Jo Markey, A.C.E. The costume designer is Michael Kaplan. The music is by Michael Giacchino.
The Adventures of Tintin Wins Best Anim Golden Globe
"The Adventures of TinTin," a rollicking motion-capture movie based on the beloved (in Europe, anyway) comic about the indefatigable Belgian boy reporter, has won the Golden Globe for best animated film.
Criticized by some for a slightly creepy visual style, the movie is practically one long chase around the globe as TinTin (voiced by "Billy Elliot"'s Jamie Bell) and the down-on-his-luck drunk Captain Haddock (voiced by Andy Serkis) seek a treasure hidden by one of Haddock's ancestors before rival Sakharine (James Bond himself, Daniel Craig) can.
"TinTin"'s competition was fairly weak this year: "Rango," with Johnny Depp, "Puss in Boots," the spin-off from the tired "Shrek" franchise, a new "Winnie the Pooh" movie and "Arthur Christmas."
Gizmodo Australia Visits Lucasfilm, Meets Star Wars FX Guru Dennis Muren
(gizmodo.com.au)
Dennis Muren is one of the founding team members of Industrial Light and Magic, Lucasfilm’s effects team since the days of A New Hope. With eight Academy Awards to his name, Giz AU had the chance to sit down with Muren at Lucasfilm in San Francisco to talk about the special content available on the Blu-ray releases, as well as what it was like to invent an entire special effects industry.
More: Gizmodo Visits Skywalker Sound: Samples, Fruit Bats And Phillip Island Penguins
The Lucasfilm PR team tells us that when other Lucasfilm staff heard Muren was in the house this day, people were begging to sit in on his media session to hear what he had to say. Such is the esteem of Muren within the company.
And rightly so. Muren has stood alongside George Lucas since they were first building model X-Wings, Star Destroyers, and Death Stars, through Indiana Jones, through to ILM’s work on other films like T2 and Jurassic Park, and into the modern era.
“For me, I’ve been doing this since I was a kid. I literally had no job that I knew I was going to be able to go to all through high school and college. Because there wasn’t any! There was commercials and the occasional film, but that was it. I never thought I could make a living out of this and then Star Wars came along. Suddenly there were thousands and thousands of people and people can even go to school and learn how to do it for a career.”
Full article with pics: http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2012/01/gizmodo-australia- visits-lucasfilm-interviews- star-wars-effects-guru-dennis- muren/
Is Motion Capture Pure Acting?
(effectscorner.blogspot.com)There has been debate and discussion lately regarding if motion capture is pure acting.
Here are a couple of latest links to check out:
James Franco requests recognition for Andy Serkis work on RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES
Here's the URL if it doesn't work: http://www.deadline.com/2012/01/oscar-exclusive-james- franco-on-why-andy-serkis- deserves-credit-from-actors/
Then, what the Weta effects team did was to essentially “paint” the look of Caesar over Andy’s performance. This is not animation as much as it’s digital “make-up.”
And here’s one of the responses. Be sure to check out the links to the videos by Andy Serkis and Jeffrey Engle
I’ll try to clarify a few things if I may.
Both acting and animation are very difficult to do well and require talent and artistry. Some people try to define the specifics of each one but at the end of the day they are both used to bring life to a narrative character. Whether it’s a live action person or an animated person/animal/object on screen, the audience should be able to relate to the character in some way and be provided some emotion connection.
Acting-
Acting is one of those jobs that looks very easy to those who don’t do it.
Having worked with actors, directed actors and taken both acting and improv classes, I can say with confidence it is very difficult to do well. An actor has to act and react as the character they are supposed to portray. They have to be able to become one with the character. When in that zone the actor is in the moment and the fictional world becomes their world. An actor has to put themselves out there for all to watch and that can make them feel very vulnerable. Actors are not allowed to analyze or observe their performance since that takes them out of the moment. They have to make it look effortless and to feel completely natural even though they are saying written dialog and may be doing the shot multiple times. Subtle facial expressions and body language convey more than the spoken dialog. Casting of actors for a film is very important since different actors will bring a different take on a character.
Animation-
Animators are frequently given a bit of a brush off from the rest of the entertainment community. Much of what’s animated is aimed at children or young adults so can’t be serious according to some. But take a close look at many animation classics, even for children, and great animation does reverberate emotionally in the viewer. Look at Dumbo, Pinocchio and other Disney classics. Warner Brothers and other studios also brought engaging animated characters to life. These days Pixar and similar 3D animation studios are accomplishing the same thing.
Animators on visual effects projects must achieve a level of realism beyond what happens in most animated films. One’s not better than the other but there are differences. A visual effects animator may have to animate a horse or other animal and make them totally believable as the animal they are supposed to portray. In many cases the animation may be intercut with the footage of the real animal so the match in motion has to be spot on. Visual effects animators may also be called on to animate fantasy creatures or talking, breathing characters.
A true test for a character animator is to animate a simple flour sack drawing or model. Even without a body or face an animator can bring life to the flour sack in such a way to convey happiness, sadness, curiosity and other emotions.
Even though the term may be computer animation an actual artist is the one that does the animation. The computer is just the tool as a pencil was to pre-computer animators. Casting the right animator can be as important as casting the right actor.
Full article: http://effectscorner.blogspot.com/2012/01/acting-and- animation.html
Capturing the Maya of Movies
(thehindubusinessline.com)Francis Ford Cuppola is oft quoted as having said that “Cinema, Movies and Magic have always been closely associated”. The magic of movies comes from their ability to make you forget that they are ‘make-believe'. Yet, movies today and those of the pre-digital age have one key difference – realism!
Movie-making today largely happens on the computer, while 50-60 years ago it was shot in the great outdoors with elaborate sets. But, thankfully, the wow-factor and the appeal remains the same. For example, take these two films: Ben-Hur (1959) and The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (2004). Both won 11 Oscars and both featured spectacular settings.
But the difference? In Ben-Hur, every character was real, the one million props used were hand-built and there was no digitally altered content. The Lord of the Rings however, had many digitally-generated characters and huge chunks of the props and backgrounds were created only on a computer.
Today, every movie that comes out of Hollywood or for that matter even Bollywood has some visual effects. It may be in the form of animation, 3D renderings or graphics. But often, people don't even realise that the scene they're watching on the screen has only been created on a computer.
All the Star Wars films were mostly made up of visual effects. Most people come to expect this, but they may not have noticed that the tattoos on Natalie Portman's back in Black Swan were made using visual effects. Whenever she had a nervous breakdown, the tattoos would morph and move around.
Films like Star Wars, Avatar, Real Steel and Tron are all examples of how visual effects have helped science fiction movies achieve success at the box office. One of the companies at the cutting edge of delivering the digital platform for creating such hits is Autodesk.
“Thanks to visual effects, you are experiencing more fake content than you could probably imagine,” says Rob Hoffmann, Senior Product Marketing Manager (Media & Entertainment) at Autodesk Inc. Autodesk is based in the US and specialises in 3D design, engineering and entertainment software. Its software is used extensively by media and entertainment industries
“You would be shocked to discover that what you think is real on television or in a movie may actually be a 3D simulation of something as simple as a waste paper basket on the ground or a car on the street,” says Hoffman.
For instance, if a movie director wants to depict a scene of Mumbai city in 1920, it can be created virtually in hours, and actors just have to repeat their dialogues in front of a blue screen. On the big screen however, it appears as if they are in pre-Independence Mumbai. Visual effect experts can virtually create anything – whether it's the Taj Mahal, Eiffel Tower or Mount Everest – and at a cost which is significantly lower than creating a real set.
For example, in the action-adventure Hollywood movie 300, no part of the film was shot in the real world – all the scenes were recorded but in front of a blue screen. Once the acting was over, they created the background in 3D. “Everything in the movie was ‘fake' and you wouldn't have even realised it,” says Hoffman.
Avatar effect
For the movie Avatar, not all of the characters were animated. Director, James Cameron, had live characters performing in front of blue screens which were later modified by visual artists. In this movie too, none of the scenes were shot in real-life locations because the movie was set in a planet that doesn't exist.
This has given rise to what people in the entertainment industry call the ‘Avatar effect'. People's expectations have increased tremendously and every time they go to watch a movie, they expect that the movie should be better than Avatar, says Hoffman, who has over 14 years of experience in the digital media market.
Autodesk has been working on a technology called x-Gen, which is from Walt Disney Pictures. It allows the placing of ‘assets' in a scene. For example, in the movie Up all the balloons were created by x-Gen. “Producers want to cut down on cost wherever possible, visual effects and virtual production give that solution,” he said.
Standardisation
One of the biggest approaches that Autodesk is taking right now is standardisation, which is extremely important for production. Today, films, television series or video games are not produced in one location using just one software, but in multiple locations using many tools. It is really important that every artist have access to a standardised data format, Hoffman adds.
For instance, if an artist is working on one project, he can hand it over to another artist to carry on where he left off. Hence, the data should be clean and transportable. This is extremely important when it comes to integrated global production, where post-production centres spread across the world – Los Angeles, Soho (London) and Mumbai – are working on the same project but in different time zones.
The interesting thing is that in the ‘follow-the-sun' model, companies get 24-hour post-production work. For instance, a team in India working on a project, at the end of the day, hands over the project to a team in Soho, which in turn passes it on to another team in Los Angeles. It comes back to India again in the morning, thus forming a full circle. In order for this integration to happen, it is important that all the teams work with a standard tool.
There are many tools used in a facility. One artist must use these tools in the work, and the other artist should also have the same tools like 3D Max, Maya etc. The whole idea is that the software should not be a barrier between the artist and the art that he is creating, said Hoffman.
New Prometheus Photo Reveals Space Jockey Suits
(L.A. Times) A new image from Ridley Scott's Prometheus features yet another lead actor staring off at something off camera, but the devil is in the details this time. With a little assistance from Photoshop and that good ol "brighten" function, it appears those pesky ol' Space Jockeys have made another appearance.
The image was paired with the Los Angeles Times' chat with writer Damon Lindelof who says, "The movie is definitely epic in its scope. One of the filmmakers that we ended up talking about to a fair degree of redundancy was David Lean, who directed Lawrence of Arabia. We wanted to make the movie feel big by having the characters be small in big spaces. That connected to the larger themes we were talking about � that we�re all just these little gnats crawling around on our little planet."
Full press with pics: http://www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=85998
Fadeout of Film Stock Reflects Biz Changes
(variety.com) A few weeks ago I moderated the Q&A that followed the Variety screening of "Jane Eyre." I asked director Cary Fukunaga if he'd shot with a digital camera or on film, and he replied that he always prefers to shoot film.
The audience applauded. Loudly.
In truth I was flabbergasted. "Yay, film!" Really? Dismissing the possibility the aud held an improbably large number of Kodak shareholders or cinematographers, I was left wondering: Why would a Hollywood movie audience applaud film stock?
Look, I'm an amateur photographer and I still shoot film. I miss Kodachrome. I'm not keen on making the jump to a digital camera (more on that below). But I suspect the cheering wasn't as much for film itself as for what it represents: a movie business and a moviegoing culture that seem increasingly threatened by the shift to digital. I think Hollywood's filmmaking community is grieving a world that appears to be rapidly slipping away.
Maybe rightly so.
Film, and the rhythms it imposed, defined the movie business. Even the actors' unions divided work according to whether performances were captured on tape or film.
Changes from the shift to digital run as deep as the loss of the traditional calls of "Action!" and "Cut!" When there's no film to consume, no magazine to change, no gate to check, directors often just keep rolling. I already hear complaints that sets are getting sloppy, and there's too much footage to review and log, but the discipline imposed by film is likely gone for good.
Film also stands for a less globalized, less competitive industry. Animation, post and vfx work can go anywhere there's a fast data connection. So we've seen a race to the bottom. Who can provide the cheapest labor and greatest government incentives? Michigan? Canada? England? India? Bulgaria? Not California, that's for sure.
Digital home entertainment, from videogames to home theater systems, is eroding the moviegoing culture. Games in particular are drawing young men, who have been the studios' core audience for years. With vast film and TV libraries available on demand, each new release now competes with thousands of back titles. Once I'm done with my Awards Season screener orgy, I'm likely to be more interested in watching some Hal Ashby movies on VOD than anything new in theaters in January. Is that because home entertainment has become so good, or because studio movies have become so dull? In my case, both. And with box office slumping across the board, I think millions of bored moviegoers might agree with me.
And then there's the most serious (but least understood) issue: the fragility of digital files. Disks deteriorate, hardware becomes obsolete, software disappears or changes. Properly stored, a hundred-year-old reel of 35mm film can be viewed almost as easily as something shot yesterday. But a 20-year-old WordStar file on a 5 1/4 inch floppy disk? Good luck finding a drive to read it, much less an operating system and software that can open the file. So too for digital image files. That's a why I prefer film for stills. I trust film to save my photos for years or decades. Digital files might as well be sand paintings by comparison.
So I understand the grief as film, and the business it symbolized, seems ready to go the way of the Moviola.
If it's any consolation, film isn't quite dead. Kodak execs say its motion picture stock business is a profitable, viable business.
"We're still making billions of feet of film and will continue to do so," Kodak VP of marketing Ingrid Goodyear told Variety. "Right now and for the foreseeable future we still see film to be an important of Kodak's business."
Hollywood may be abandoning film, said Goodyear, but "India is still very, very film-centric. It's very strongly embedded in their industry and their psyche. Interestingly enough, we saw some decline in Japan, that was 2010 versus 2009, and this year we've seen some stabilization."
What's more, Kodak is seizing the one area where film is unquestionably superior to any digital solution in the market today: archiving. Next year they plan to introduce a black-and-white recorder film offering "hundreds of years of image stability when stored under proper conditions," as well as an economical color recorder film made specifically for elements that were shot and finished digitally.
So if you're in the "Yay, film!" camp, there's some good news for you -- if it's really film you care about. On the other hand, if film is a tangible symbol for the movie business you've known and loved, well, you have my condolences. Because, to paraphrase Bruce Springsteen, that film is going, boys, and it ain't comin' back.
BITS & BYTES:
DVD screeners may be as endangered as film. Focus Features is making "Pariah" available to WGA members for screening via Deluxe Media Management's screener site. At least one other studio is considering moving to streaming screeners. Blu-ray screeners don't seem to be in the conversation ...
Warner's prestige holiday release "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close" was the first major studio pic to shoot with the ARRI Alexa camera and a Codes/ARRIRAW workflow. It was also the first pic d.p. Chris Menges shot on a digital camera. ...
Sid Ganis has joined Dolby Labs as a strategic advisor ... Grass Valley has tapped Colin Hay as its new VP for the Northern EMEA region. He will be based out of the U.K. ...
Production services and post company Stargate Studios has opened a branch in Toronto. Kris Woods heads up the new Stargate Toronto. New outpost has a staff of 15 producers, supervisor and artists in Liberty Village. Stargate also has facilities in Vancouver and Los Angeles, and partners with Chilefilms in Latin America as well as companies in Mumbai and Malta. ...
Digital Domain Media Group is now licensing its 3D conversion technology. DDMG acquired In-Three, which pioneered "dimensionalization," and moved the operation to Florida. It will now license patents to other companies. First licensing deal was struck by Samsung, for use in consumer electronics, components, services and software. ... RealD has extended its deal with French exhibitor Les Cinemas Gaumont Pathe. Under the new pact the number of RealD screens in the chain will grow to 600. RealD remains the chain's exclusive 3D provider. ... RealD is also issuing special edition 3D glasses for kids in conjunction with the January release of Disney's "Beauty and the Beast 3D"...
P+S Technik's PS-Cam X35 effect camera is now available to the U.S. market. Company has also opened a technical base in Hollywood at the Television Center Studios... Panasonic's new 3D camcorder, the HDC-Z10000, has a suggested list price of $3500. Panasonic is claiming the new camera is good for closeups less than 18 inches from the subject ... Image Systems has announced two software releases: The new versions of its Phoenix film and video restoration software and Nucoda color grading software now run at 64 bits, improving speed. ... Maxon has relaunched its Cineversity training website with improved search and filtering capabilities. ... Digital Film Tools has released reFine software for image sharpening, detail enhancement, and pencil and pastel effects. ...
Post facility Spice Shop in Bangkok has installed a 4K/2K Scanity film scanner ...
Goosebumps Gets Big Screen Adaptation
(The Hollywood Reporter) The film announced for development back in 2008, Columbia Pictures has found a new screenwriter for their feature adaptation of R.L. Stine's Goosebumps series. The Hollywood Reporter says that Jack the Giant Killer writer Darren Lemke has been brought aboard the project.
Screenwriters Larry Karaszewski and Scott Alexander (1408) previously worked on adapting the material before Carl Ellsworth (Disturbia) was brought on board in 2010.
Neal Moritz is producing the film through his Original Film banner with Deborah Forte of Scholastic Entertainment.
The "Goosebumps" series have sold more than 300 million copies worldwide, second only to the "Harry Potter" series in total sales.
Four Animated Films to Watch in 2012
(dnaindia.com)
1) Brave
Brave is Pixar’s first film to feature a female lead, a fact which has many animation fans excited. It is also their first foray into the world of swords and sorcery. The film’s protagonist is Merida, an archery expert princess determined to live a greater life than the one her
culture has laid out for her. Her quest for independence not
only puts her at odds with tradition, but also unleashes a curse that Merida must undo to save her people.
2) Frankenweenie
What’s a boy to do when his beloved dog is hit by a car? If the boy is Victor from Tim Burton’s latest animated outing, he uses the power of science to bring Sparky back to life. True to the story it’s based on, Sparky isn’t quite the dog he used to be. After Corpse Bride, Frankenweenie could inject some new energy into the Burton
3) The Secret World of Arrietty
Arriety is a Studio Ghibli film, directed by first-time director Hiromasa Yonebayashi, who has been animating for the renowned Japanese studio since 1997. Arriety explores the lives of a family of tiny people who survive by “borrowing” everyday items used by normal sized humans. Borrowers, as they’re called, always take care to avoid being seen by humans, but when a young boy discovers the teenaged Arrietty, the two become friends.
4) Madagascar 3
In the latest installment of the beloved franchise, Alex, Marty, Melman and Gloria join a traveling circus in an effort to get back to New York. During the course of a tour through
European cities that ends in a fabulous big top in the heart of London, the four help their new friends rediscover their passion for show business and reinvent circus performance.
Me, Myself, and CGI
(burrellosubmarinemovies.wordpress.com) One of my grievances with the overuse of computer generated special effects is just that: overuse. It seems to create this shortcut to the magic and for me the magic has rarely been more convincing this new way. Shortcuts are not in themselves bad, but they can be used too much. So many films to come out in the past decade and a half or so seem to be leaning a little too much on this readily available tool. Stephen Sommers’ movies like The Mummy Returns (2001) and Van Helsing (2004) and Michael Bay’s Transformers movies (2007, 2009, 2011) are exhausting to watch. Too much wispy, plastic, pristine CGI crammed into the seams. Maybe Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001, 2002, 2003) worked better because we weren’t always focused on them and there were enough scale models and interesting characters to pull us in. In addition to just being poorly written, acted, directed, etc. the Star Wars prequels (1999, 2002, 2005) are overloaded with CGI special effects. My brain can’t take it all at once. I remember watching Episode I in the theaters and just being baffled at why Lucas didn’t just make a cartoon. It seems there’s just less imagination when all of the questions can be answered by computers. It’s convenient one-stop shopping and that means any bozo can get at the goodies.
Perhaps my biggest grievance from the latest special effects trend is that CGI has eclipsed so many other means to create the illusions I love. I miss matte paintings, backlighting, and puppets. I’m not a huge fan of Joe Dante’s Gremlins (1984), but imagine if all the creatures were CG. I couldn’t imagine it being nearly as creepy or gritty. Imagine Jim Henson’s Labyrinth (1986) the same way. If Werner Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo (1985) were made today you can bet they wouldn’t build a real boat and drag over a mountain. And you can forget Akira Kurosawa’s torching of an entire castle set for Ran (1985) or Andrei Tarkovsky burning down a house twice for The Sacrifice (1986). Why did Lucas feel the need to make a Star Wars: Special Edition (which, you may notice, highlights some extremely poorly aged CGI special effects juxtaposed with the old puppets and prosthetics that still look great today) and why did Spielberg screw around with E.T. by injecting the already wonderfully expressive face with cartoonish CG “enhancements?” I’m with Quentin Tarantino on this one: CGI car crashes are terribly boring and ugly. Where’s the grit? I like grit in my movies. I love the asymmetry and dirt and dimension. Jan Svankmajer’s Alice (1988) blows Time Burton’s Alice in Wonderland (2010) out of the water (though that probably wasn’t too hard). CGI may be cheaper and easier, but it’s less fun to look at (for me anyway). Maybe it is simply a love affair for glorious expensive excess on my part, but if it is excess they wish to throw at me I’d like it to at least be real and have true substance. That’s what I’m paying for.
Maybe it’s me but I just could not find the appeal of Avatar (2009).
It all really boils down to personal preference, I guess. CGI almost always looks cartoony to me. I feel more detached by the illusion because I just know that deep down nothing happened. When a digital spaceship blows up there’s nothing for me to cling to. When a three-dimensional model of a spaceship blows up it’s thrilling to me because something that had actual matter has been destroyed (and my brain knows the difference). I like the character and texture of the older special effects.
In the end all special effects do the same thing. They try to fool us into believing the impossible but today’s cynical audience isn’t fooled by any process. We will always know when it’s fake. A CGI Godzilla or King Kong doesn’t fool me more than a rubber suit or stop-motion miniature. Some have told me that “old” special effects are dated and cheesy, but we know that the dinosaurs and the monsters aren’t real regardless of how they are conjured. Forgive me, but CGI can look just as cheesy and fake. (And the explosions and car wrecks could still be real if they’re done the old-fashioned way.) The creatures manufactured through special effects are never going to trick us into believing they’re real off the screen. But something from the Jim Henson’s workshop has a rather unique mystique in that it might still be around but dormant in some old warehouse and the creatures from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (2005) are simply confined to some digital space on several computers. Return of the Jedi’s (1983) Rancor and the giant scorpion from Honey, I Shrunk the Kids” (1989) seem more real and interesting to me than most of the digital monsters thrown at audiences today.
It’s not that I’m against technological progress (entirely), but I do think it might be appropriate to question it and reminisce on the magical times shared between traditional effects. When Barry Levinson’s Young Sherlock Holmes (1985) came out people were dazzled by the stained-glass window knight that sprung to life because of CGI. Jurassic Park (1993) works splendidly as it is, combining digital effects with life-size animatronics, but that was back when CGI was new and exciting and used sparingly to fill in the gaps that would be too difficult to produce another way. James Cameron’s Terminator 2 (1991) and Chuck Russell’s The Mask (1994) work great too but now CGI can come off as a bit of a cheap crutch and its novelty is gone. . . for me at least. Imagine if Burton’s Wonderland was made with every digital character done via stop-motion (this was what a lot of us thought it was going to be a few years back). It’s a personal preference, but the aesthetic of CGI is just so flat and boring to me. I don’t like my movies to look like video games. I like it more real and present.
I don’t hate CGI. I think there are plenty of times when it is effective and cool, but as it becomes cheaper and more accessible I see more and more of it and the spectacle it one was is no more. It’s ho-hum and standard now. A lot of new films have become visually boring because of their over-reliance on CGI. And special effects should never be boring.
We will never have the time back when movie magic was largely a mystery. Studios used to be cagey and not like to reveal how the illusions were done. Now every movie comes with at least a few documentaries on how it was all done. Jaws (1975) may be a clunky robot shark, but we get that it’s a shark and that’s all the film needs to do. A CG shark might be more distracting (consider 1999′s Deep Blue Sea). Would Spartacus’ army be more believable as a CGI onslaught or as flesh and blood actors as they are in the 1960 film? Is it bad to know how the trick is done? No. Not if your a magician. But the audience likes to be fooled. They like to keep guessing and looking for the seams. At least I do.
Full Article: http://burrellosubmarinemovies. wordpress.com/2012/01/16/me- myself-and-cgi/
Fantastic Four Reboot Moves Forward
(Variety) It's been some time since it was first announced that 20th Century Fox is planning a reboot of the Fantastic Four film franchise. Today, Variety has an update with word that the studio is eyeing Josh Trank as a potential helmer.
Trank makes his big screen directorial debut with Chronicle on February 3rd and, with it, already has a connection to both the studio and the superhero genre.
Fantastic Four, Marvel's self-proclaimed "World's Greatest Comic Magazine", first hit the stands in 1961. Its debut is generally considered the beginning of the "silver age" of comics and the real beginning of the Marvel Comics universe that exists to this day.
The property has been adapted twice before for the big screen with Fantastic Four in 2005 and Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer in 2007. Both were directed by Tim Story. A 1994 feature-length version was also infamously produced by Roger Corman and never released.
Trank's involvement in the reboot is likely contingent on Chronicle's box office performance and a decision is not expected to be reached until next month at the earliest.
VFX Company Flipbook Awarded Work on Guillermo del Toro Horror Film
(how-do.co.uk) Flipbook will be working alongside Hollywood director, Guillermo del Toro (Mimic, Blade II, Hellboy) on a new horror short.
Del Toro is the executive director on The Captured Bird, which is directed by the former editor-in-chief of Rue Morgue Magazine, Jovanka Vuckovic and produced by Jason Lapeyre.
The Manchester-based CGI animation and visual effects company got the job partly down to Twitter:
“A contact of ours on Twitter tweeted a call for VFX artists from a Canadian jobs site and I did a bit of research into the job, found The Captured Bird website and offered our services and use of our render farm,” managing director, Andrew Lord told How-Do.
“I got a call back from Jovanka as soon as Canada came online, saying that she loved our work and that she’d be delighted if we could work on it.”
The film is, according to Vuckovic, “partly inspired by a childhood nightmare, the writings of H.P. Lovecraft, the fables of the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Anderson.” It also draws reference from a paranormal phenomenon called The Shadow People.
Flipboard will be one of half a dozen visual effects companies working on the project, although they are the only one based in the UK.
“Tammy Sutton is the VFX supervisor on the production and has worked on the visual effects for films such as Avatar, Twilight and Spiderman 2, so we’re understandably very pleased to have the opportunity of working with her,” added Lord.
"Madagascar 3" Casting New Animals
Dreamworks Animation has finally revealed who'll be playing the three major new roles in the upcoming "Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted" reports Heat Vision.
Jessica Chastain ("The Help," "The Tree of Life"), Bryan Cranston ("Breaking Bad") and comedian Martin Short are set to play Gia the jaguar, Vitaly the Siberian tiger, and Stefano the sea lion respectively.
The story follows our regular quartet of escaped zoo animals (Ben Stiller, Chris Rock, David Schwimmer, Jada Pinkett Smith) continuing their way back home who end up joining a European traveling circus. That's where they come across these three new characters.
Frances McDormand and Sacha Baron Cohen also star in this Noah Baumbach-scripted entry which hits cinemas on June 8th.
A Conversation with VFX Supe John Bruno
(flickeringmyth.blogspot.com)“I met Ivan Reitman who said he could get money to do this movie Heavy Metal [1981],” recalls veteran American Visual Effects Supervisor John Bruno. “We setup a facility with Gerry Potterton in Montreal; there was a tax structure. I did Taarna. Gerry showed me how to do bottom light glows and laser beams. Richard Edlund came to Montreal to talk about Empire Strikes Back [1980] at the Canadian Film Board so we all went. I met him and I said I wanted to show him this movie. He said when you get something I’d be happy to look at it. We were finishing multiplane camera shots of Taarna flying on her bird through a giant skeleton into a power plant. I had these reels and I called Richard. I ran the footage for him and he asked if I wanted to come to ILM [Industrial Light & Magic] to do ghosts for Poltergeist [1982].”
“I spent all my time with Richard out there. It was fantastic. He’s my mentor,” readily admits John Bruno. “The main thing Richard taught me was interactive light. You have to make a three dimensional spot for your two dimensional element.” An example the six-time Oscar nominee mentions involves animating an electrical beam from a magic wand which zaps somebody. “You have to have interactive light practically in the set on that character. A lot of people today add an airbrush glow to things; that’s when it doesn’t look to me real.” Filmmakers were drawn to ILM. “Everything was an experiment. Steven Spielberg would ask for things that were interesting visual effects problems to solve. George Lucas had visual effects problems to solve.” Bruno observes that demanding directors, like Michael Bay, use the facility “to create something impossible and make it look real. There’s a lot of fear involved.”
Ghostbusters (1984) reunited John Bruno with director Ivan Reitman. “I remember it being a little cheesy but that’s what made it funny. The movie from start to finish from script to release date was 10 months. What that did was break all previous rules of how long it took to make a movie.” The Marshmallow Man was a man dressed in a suit standing over a miniature set. “That’s a film we did what we wanted because we didn’t think anybody would see it. The big movie that year was supposed to be Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom [1984]. Ghostbusters became, if not the first, the second highest grossing comedy of all-time.” The picture is memorable for another reason for Bruno who served as the Visual Effects – Art Director. ‘The best experience I’ve ever had in my life was working with John DeCuir on Ghostbusters; he was the ultimate production designer.” Ghostbusters received an Oscar nomination for Best Visual Effects. “It’s funny stuff. I still quote from it.”
“It was mostly trying to enhance ghost effects,” says John Bruno when reflecting on his Oscar-nominated contribution to Poltergeist II: The Other Side (1986). “We didn’t have an imploding house in that one.” On the subject of Tim Burton and Batman Returns (1992), Bruno remarks, “He was a little quirky. He mostly kept to himself. We worked with the producers who would say, ‘Storyboard this. He had approved this. Just shoot this.’ He’d be there. Stuff would happen. You’d be there and make sure it got shot. You’d send the stuff over. I never sat with him in an editing room. The only director I never did.” The comic book picture contended for Best Visual Effects at the Academy Awards. “We did Catwoman and a lot of stuff with penguins. That was first time I ever did digital penguins; it was a trip.”
“Renny Harlin was fun to work with on Cliffhanger [1993],” states John Bruno who got the opportunity to expand upon his Oscar-nominated work for True Lies (1994) by switching the highflying action showdown from a Harrier jet to a helicopter. “I storyboarded that sequence earlier to get the job. I added [Sylvester] Stallone. He hooks up the ladder to the helicopter and it pulls him out over the cliff. Stallone is hanging there, the engine blows, the copter swings down and they have a big fistfight on the helicopter. That was my era of True Lies; I had the bad guy fight Arnold on a Harrier spinning around.” The sequence utilized a one foot puppet of Stallone and an eight foot helicopter “all shot in camera at a high speed in a parking lot using some very big sculpted cliff face. Then all of the shots were done at practical locations in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy. We had the same vertical motion control rig that we used on Batman Returns. We bolted it to the Alps and did these shots where we’re going vertical rapidly filming Stallone. It was a lot of motion-control but all at location. It was quite bizarre.”
“On Alien vs. Predator [2004], with Richard Bridgeland, we had to build a third scale set to match a third-scale puppet queen,” says John Bruno. “We were basically working together all the time. The same thing was with X-Men 3 [2006].” Asked whether the roles of production designers and visual effects supervisors will merge into a single job, the 30 year movie industry veteran replies, “I can draw. I don’t know if everybody can do that. I’m not shy talking to the Art Director or the Production Designer.” Bruno was hired to look after the visual effects for The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1 (2011) and its sequel Breaking Dawn – Part 2 (2012). “I storyboarded the movie with three other guys whom I have worked with since Heavy Metal. The people I worked with there were Brent Boates from Vancouver, Phil Norwood from California, and Terry Windell. We also had John Mann.”
“I’m looking forward to Hugo (2011). I want to see that,” states John Bruno who is a frequent collaborator with Oscar-winning filmmaker James Cameron. “Jim has already said it’s as good as the 3D we did on Avatar [2009].” As for his own attitude towards the technology, Bruno says, “Done well, it’s really good.” Problems arise when the 2D to 3D conversions are rushed to meet theatrical release dates. “The one thing that bugs me is going to a small local theatre, getting a pair of 3D glasses and its two stops darker when you look through the glasses onto the screen. You go to an IMAX Theatre and on the screen it’s the full amount of luminous on the screen. It’s an issue and it makes me angry. I know what’s 3D is suppose to look like. I have experience there. They’re killing it. They basically turn the power of the light bulb down to save money because those bulbs cost ten grand a piece. It’s frustrating. I don’t want to tell everybody they have to see movies in an IMAX Theatre to have a really good 3D experience but it’s coming to that.” 3D is moving beyond cinema. “Sports are the next thing. I’m doing World Motorcycle in 3D. I’ve been filming that with Vince’s [Pace] rigs for the last three years. We’re starting next season in March.”
“I did Star Trek: Voyager [UPN, 1995 to 2001] for two seasons as a director. I directed the movie Virus [1999],” states John Bruno who may well be stepping behind the camera again. “I’ve been offered something now that I’m working on.” As for some words of guidance in handling visual effects, Bruno advises, “You have to come up with the approach. Bite the bullet and say, ‘This is how we’re doing this.’ And not change course.” Bruno believes, “The big thing as a visual effects supervisor is that he’s only as good as the director. If you’re trying something and they don’t want it or they want something that you don’t think is going to work it makes it complicated. I’ve been lucky.”
Modest Proposal to Replace Child Actors with Motion-Capture
(variety.com)Adults are already voicing characters like Russ, one of the animated teenagers in FX's 'Unsupervised'; maybe it's time to use mo-cap instead of child actors, too.
Andy Serkis has made a name for himself playing apes of the giant and genius variety, as well as a misshapen Middle Earth monster obsessed with a ring.
Which raises an interesting question: How would he feel about playing a 10-year-old?
Serkis -- the reigning king of performance capture -- has been featured in "King Kong," "The Planet of the Apes" and "The Lord of the Rings." Watching some upcoming TV shows, though, I began to wonder if modern technology couldn't be put to use reducing the number of child actors as well.
Kids, after all, are an inconvenience in Hollywood terms, raising all kinds of issues regarding child-labor laws and curtailed shooting schedules. Moreover, there's enough evidence that growing up on movie sets isn't great for kids -- see "The E! True Hollywood Story" -- and anything to mitigate the process seems worth considering.
Notably, television has already found interesting ways to circumvent this problem -- especially within programs depicting minors in a more provocative fashion than would normally be acceptable.
Faster than you can say "Bart Simpson," the perfect solution: Animated kids.
Because if motion capture has become a go-to method to make the fantastic plausible -- bringing blue aliens and Martians to life -- animation represents a means of introducing helpful layers of unreality into situations that might otherwise seem a little too real.
FX's latest comedy, "Unsupervised," features teenage characters (good luck scheduling production around that) and surrounds them with sex, drugs and absentee parents.
But they're not really kids at all. The show is animated, with adults providing the voices for virtually all the characters.
In this regard, the show is hardly alone. From "The Simpsons" to "Beavis and Butt-head" to "South Park" -- along with such lesser lights as MTV's "Good Vibes" and Fox's short-lived "Allen Gregory" -- adults have given voice to kids, who, thanks to the cushion of animation, can be presented in wildly inappropriate (and occasionally quite funny) situations.
So why stop there?
Obviously, there are all kinds of practical concerns in replacing kids with motion capture, starting with cost. But the technology's only going to get better, which will gradually make wider use of computer-altered or enhanced surrogates more feasible, especially for more generously budgeted studio productions. And the savings associated with less restrictive work hours when kids play larger roles would likely help offset some of the additional expense.
The practice of adults playing children has already been used in computer-rendered movies like "The Polar Express." But we've also seen some creative uses of technology, such as FX's "American Horror Story," which digitally took about 30 years off Jessica Lange for flashback sequences, in much the way Brad Pitt aged downward in "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button." What's a few more decades among friends?
Most of the discussion through the years about motion capture has surrounded such issues as its prospects of putting actors out of work, or the relative merits of those performances vs. flesh-and-blood portrayals, most recently spurred by an awards-consideration push behind Serkis' work in "Apes."
As for child actors, there will still be a need for them, but fewer kids could grow up on movie sets. Besides, talk to people in Hollywood and most would think twice before setting their own children on that particular path.
Variety's tech guru David Cohen has accurately written that while computers can approximate extraordinary figures, it remains "fiendishly difficult to make realistic CG humans that just look, move and talk believably for more than a few seconds. It's never been done in movies, even with performance capture."
Still, one could argue people already accept a degree of unreality when it comes to teenagers, given the longstanding habit of casting young adults as high-school students -- from "Grease" to "Glee" -- for all the obvious reasons.
Cynics have joked we're not far from a day when all parts will eventually be played by Serkis, as productions like "Avatar,""Beowulf," "John Carter" and "The Adventures of Tintin" continue to perfect techniques allowing actors to be something they're not, from towering aliens to rampaging apes.
No comments:
Post a Comment