David Fincher to Direct 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea Instead of Girl With the Dragon Tattoo Sequel?

(reelz.com)                 It seems box office receipts aren't the only way to get a sequel made these days.

Last week, Sony Pictures Entertainment and Columbia Pictures decided to keep developing the sequel to director David Fincher's adaptation of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, despite Dragon Tattoo's mediocre box office numbers (currently at $106 million worldwide on a $90 million budget). Based on the first of Stieg Larsson's international best-selling "Millennium" trilogy of novels, Dragon Tattoo's holiday opening was ultimately seen as the movie's undoing (the movie's first trailer dubbed the thriller "the feel-bad movie of Christmas"). Nevertheless, Sony decided to not only move forward with The Girl Who Played with Fire, Steig's second novel in the trilogy, but also with The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, anticipating that international box office could eventually bring in $200 million to $300 million worldwide.

Dragon Tattoo screenwriter Steven Zaillian (American Gangster) is already set to adapt both novels, but Fincher is still in question. The director revealed last month that he feels no "need" to make sequels to Dragon Tattoo, and he could be too busy with another, long-gestating project.

According to The Playlist, Fincher's schedule may not align with Sony's, as Fincher is looking to finally shoot his remake of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Originally, McG was going to direct 20,000 Leagues, but Disney scrapped the adaptation in 2009, allowing the studio to hire Fincher to start over with the project almost a year later.

Armed with a script written by Scott Z. Burns (Contagion) and Andrew Kevin Walker (Se7en) and based on Jules Verne's classic story, Fincher is now looking to shoot 20,000 Leagues "in the fall or early 2012", the exact same time Sony is hoping to shoot The Girl Who Played With Fire. The heavy CGI and 3-D production will reportedly require an extensive post-production period and, to make matters worse, Fincher is also planing to direct the pilot of an upcoming Netflix show titled House of Cards in the spring. That would keep Fincher busy until at least 2013, the year Sony hopes to release the Dragon Tattoo sequel.

Sony will retain stars Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara, both of whom are already signed for The Girl Who Played With Fire, but retaining Fincher seems impractical. Of course, Sony could decide that they want to sign Fincher for the sequel anyway (for a payday that could exceed $10 million), change the release date plans, and push off production for a year, but, it seems unlikely — for now at least. Not that Fincher's concerned. According to the report, Fincher has an option for the sequel that will pay him $5 million whether he does or does not direct the movie, so Fincher has little reason to change his plans if he doesn't want to.




Disney's $250 Million "John Carter" Gamble

(TheWrap.com)     The exit of Disney marketing president MT Carney on Monday creates yet more drama around "John Carter," the $250 million sci-fi epic that may be the biggest studio gamble since "Avatar."

The film doesn't hit theaters until March, but reports are rampant that "John Carter" has gone over budget and required costly reshoots.

A lackluster early trailer didn't help the buzz and now, without a marketing executive to lead the global rollout, the pressure on "John Carter" is more intense than ever.

"It doesn't just have to open big -- it has to be one of the top grossing films of all time," a rival studio executive told TheWrap.

A film of this size and scope typically requires a marketing budget of roughly $120 million, adding to the price tag.

All eyes are on Disney to see if the studio can turn the lead character from Edgar Rice Burroughs' once beloved, now largely forgotten 11-volume Mars series into a $700 million blockbuster. Its director, Andrew Stanton, admitted to the New Yorker in October that it will have to gross that much worldwide to justify a sequel.

That's more than "The Twilight Saga: Eclipse," "Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl" or "Iron Man" banked during their theatrical runs.

Only one March release, "Alice in Wonderland," has ever exceeded that benchmark, and it was able to rack up over $1 billion globally thanks in no small part to the combined talents of Johnny Depp and Tim Burton.

In contrast, "John Carter" is relying on untested "Friday Night Lights" star Taylor Kitsch and Stanton, who scored hits with "Wall-E" and "Finding Nemo" but is hardly a household name. Stanton has had great success with animation -- winning Oscars for both those movies -- but he's never shot a live-action film before.

Ironically, Kitsch is also starring in "Battleship," a $200-million-plus film from Universal that has set off rumors in the blogosphere of a similarly troubled production.

Subsequent "John Carter" trailers and TV spots have received a more favorable reception, and there's still time to build excitement for the outerspace adventure, but there's no denying the stakes.

Disney declined to comment.

Compounding those challenges is the ouster of Disney's controversial president of movie marketing Carney, who had been overseeing "John Carter"s' rollout. The movie opens in two months, but with Carney out and Disney still searching for her replacement, it will be left to the studio's inhouse team to handle the opening.

The studio has not hired an outside marketing consultant for "John Carter," nor does it plan to, an individual with knowledge of the situation told TheWrap.

Marketing issues aside, some industry observers tell TheWrap that a movie this risky should never have been made -- at least not at this budget. To them, "John Carter" is evidence of runaway production and profligacy.

"How does something like this get green lit?" one film financier told TheWrap. "It's insane. The only people who could justify a budget like this are true superstar filmmakers like Peter Jackson, Steven Spielberg, James Cameron and George Lucas. Guys who have a proven history and who have created billions."

Though the film was greenlit while Dick Cook served as the studio's chief, according to an individual with knowledge, it will test the regime of Rich Ross, who replaced him in 2009.

If Ross pulls it off, he will be credited with launching a potential film franchise that has both fascinated and bedeviled the film industry for decades.

The attempts to get the Burroughs story onto screens dates back to 1931, when Looney Tunes director Bob Clampett approached the author about plans to adapt the first book in his John Carter series, "A Princess of Mars," into a feature-length animated film.

Clampett's vision was abandoned over concerns it wouldn't play well to midwestern audiences, but starting in the 1980s the idea of filming Burroughs' story was kicked around at Paramount and Disney. At various points, everyone from Tom Cruise to Jon Favreau was attached to the film.

But the movie, which centers on a Confederate soldier (Kitsch) who is transported to Mars where he tries to put an end to interstellar civil war, has proven notoriously difficult to adapt.

There's a great deal of optimism that Stanton may have cracked the code. After all the boyish looking, Pixar dynamo has a reputation for taking films that on their face should never work -- "Wall-E" is a nearly silent movie about a robot -- and spinning them into celluloid gold.

One producer who works with Disney said that the studio is bullish about the project, and the New Yorker reports that an early test screening had 75 percent of the audience rating the science fiction epic as "good" or "excellent."

"I think it has a good shot of breaking even or turning a profit," J.C. Spink, a producer on "A History of Violence" and "The Hangover," told TheWrap. "At its core, it's a really cool story. I remember hearing rumors about 'X-Men' and 'Avatar,' and they turned out to be great movies. You can't make a judgment until a movie comes out."

That said, the early trailers and the studio's decision to abbreviate the film's title from "John Carter of Mars" to "John Carter" left some sensing that Disney doesn't quite know how best to sell what Stanton delivered.

"I've seen the trailer and they never explain what the hell is going on," the rival studio executive told TheWrap, adding: "Not releasing the film in the summer raises some eyebrows."

"The trailer felt weak," a film producer told TheWrap. "It felt like 'Cowboys and Aliens' with some guy running around the old west or I guess Mars."

A full trailer and a collection of TV spots released last month have received slightly better buzz. The new previews for the outer space epic positions its hunky hero as a freedom fighter in the "Gladiator" vein and overflows with shots of CGI-created aliens.

The geek crowd, which will be key to making the movie a hit, was more impressed.

"Can't deny it," Harry Knowles of Aint It Cool News wrote. "Little boy in me is being pretty insistent. It isn't my instant inclination to introduce the character in that fashion, but getting to really hear the sound ... it kinda' gives me goosebumps."




Phil Tippett Goes Dark For Animated Short

(onecoolthingaday.com)       

      VFX legend Phil Tippett (Star Wars, Jurassic Park) directs this dark animated short:   

VIDEO - Take a look:   http://www.onecoolthingaday.com/today/2012/1/10/vfx-legend-phil-tippett-star-wars-jurassic-park-directs-this.html




X-Men: First Class Planning Sequel

(comingsoon.net)                 Maybe this isn't the biggest shocker, but Michael Fassbender told ComingSoon.net's SuperHeroHype tonight that he's pretty sure there will be another "X-Men" movie following a $353.6 million worldwide box office for X-Men: First Class.

SuperHeroHype caught up with the in-demand actor tonight at the National Board of Review Gala in New York CIty, where he received the Spotlight Award for his roles in four 2011 movies, including "First Class," and Fassbender told us that he is indeed in!

"I have no choice. They contracted me for two options. I gotta get down with it," he joked. "We're at the ground level, but yeah I think there's going to be another one."

You can next see Fassbender in Steven Soderbergh's Haywire on January 20th and then in Ridley Scott's Prometheus, opening in theaters on June 8.




George Lucas Celebrates ‘Red Tails’

(blogs.wsj.com)                The premiere of the new World War II drama “Red Tails” in New York City drew many of the movie’s cast members–and some of the real-life airmen depicted in the film.

Inspired by actual events, “Red Tails” tells the story of the Tuskegee Airmen, the first group of African-American fighter pilots in the U.S. armed forces. “Star Wars” creator George Lucas executive produced the film, which was released under his Lucasfilm banner.

At last night’s screening at the Ziegfeld Theater in New York City, Lucas said that the film was the result of “a lot of work by a lot of people.” He stood near the back of the theater as the crowds streamed in; he was recognized by some theatergoers, but many others didn’t notice the legendary filmmaker as they rushed to their seats to take in his latest project. Lucas, as he watched patrons arrive, seemed eager to see how the film would be received.

Lucas has a lot riding on “Red Tails”–in October his representative told Speakeasy that he has spent $58 million to make the film and $35 million more to distribute it.

Also on hand for the premiere were “Red Tails” stars Cuba Gooding, Jr., and Terrence Howard, who happily posed for pictures with female fans in the Ziegfeld lobby. Later, director Spike Lee joined Gooding and Howard in front of the cameras.




Cinesite Accepting Intern Applications

(variety)            London vfx house Cinesite is accepting applications for its annual internship program, Inspire, now in its third year. Program now includes a new technical effects strand that specifically targets graduates with an interest in computer programming or technical effects. Antony Hunt, managing director, added the track to encourage a new-generation of programmers to consider the vfx industry as a viable option for their skills and to help budding effects artists demonstrate their technical ability. Cinesite internships are six-week paid summertime positions. "I'm always bowled over by the amount of submissions we receive for Inspire, and every year the quality of entries keeps getting better," said Hunt. Previous Inspire winners have worked on "Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides," "John Carter" and "World War Z ." Since finishing their placements, all six winners have secured positions at Cinesite.




Brad Bird discusses future of The Incredibles

(tgdaily.com)                Brad Bird was recently interviewed about Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol - but ended up talking about The Incredibles, a CGI, family, super hero parody film from Pixar that hit theaters back in 2004.

Bird told MTV that he’s been working on the franchise in his head for years, and has a lot of ideas, most of which he concocted before making the first film.

Obviously, some had to be put off due to time constraints, as the film needed to explain a lot of backstory while establishing the characters, leaving little room for other devices. Future films wouldn’t have such constraints.

"I haven't got it all figured out yet," he said. "I have got a lot of ideas that I originally intended to be in the first movie, and you have to start throwing things out of the balloon at a certain point to get it up in the air, but a lot of the things you throw out are really cool, and would be good in a movie, so some of those things were intended for Incredibles, and there just wasn’t the space to get them in there. I love those characters and if I could make [a film] that was to Incredibles what the Toy Story sequels were to Toy Story, I'd do it.”

Bird goes on to explain that a part of the reason a new Incredibles film has not yet been made is that the number of super hero films currently coming out is so high, that it discourages more. "What the world [really] needs now is another superhero sequel," he says with sarcasm.

Despite the current glut of current super hero films, I believe The Incredibles is a unique project that a lot of fans would love to see more of, especially since it’s a sort of parody of the super hero genre. There is a lot of material out there right now to make fun of, and I don’t think it would suffer for a share of the audience.




Bakeoff Buzz: Heart Trumps Hardware

(variety.com)                   Visual effects have long been used for spectacle: spaceships, disasters, superheroes -- the kind of things that inspire the term "movie magic."

In truth, though, that sometimes leaves vfx pros feeling like carneys outside an opera house, good for some casual amusement but not to be taken as seriously as the real artists inside.

Vfx artists love it when their talents are used for more ambitious pictures, or at least to lend some real emotional punch to tentpole spectacles. Pros' desire to do serious work that's taken seriously helped shape this year's Academy vfx bakeoff, and it's likely to shape the results as well.

Emotion, not technology, fuels the buzz this year. Even "Transformers: Dark of the Moon" vfx supervisor Scott Farrar, talks first about emotion when asked what he means to highlight in his bakeoff reel.

"Of course everybody thinks it's explosions and things and that's certainly part of it," Farrar says. "But we have important exposition and acting moments, especially from Bumblebee, who can't talk. He's my favorite character. He tells a lot with his eyes and nuances of facial expression."

In the bakeoff is Terrence Malick's elegiac "The Tree of Life," an art film mostly about Malick's Texas upbringing. John Knoll, who was vfx supervisor on "Mission: Impossible 4," observes "Tree of Life's" 18-minute "origin of life" sequence is "beautifully executed (shots) that represent a lot of unconventional thinking about how these things are made." And it doesn't hurt that "Tree of Life" is an ambitious work from an established auteur.

Another auteurist pic in the competish, "Hugo," is also a bittersweet exercise in nostalgia, and uses its vfx elements, including vistas of Paris and its vanished 19th century train station, to create a stylized feel reminiscent of magic realism. Its vistas of Paris and the other digital environments are the more obvious vfx, but Farrar (who is a d.p. by training) hails its "elegant" shot design.

"Rise of the Planet of the Apes" fits the more traditional mold of vfx pics, and the performance-capture tech behind it is only a modest advance from previous winners. But it's Andy Serkis' performance as genetically altered ape Caesar that has vfx pros buzzing. The tech behind Lola Visual Effects' "Skinny Steve" shots in "Captain America: The First Avenger" is no major breakthrough, either, but the impact of seeing star Chris Evans go from scrawny to brawny is new.

Sometimes the vfx contribute to emotion by being believable enough not to take the aud out of the movie. That's arguably true on "X-Men: First Class," "Real Steel" and "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2." "Potter" vfx supervisor Tim Burke, says, "Our goal from day 1 was to make (sets and vfx) so integrated that the audience would never know it was a heavy CG film."

On "Mission: Impossible 4," there some obvious vfx, such as the blowing up of the Kremlin, and while Tom Cruise really did cling to the outside of the towering Burj Khalifa in Dubai, he did it with the aid of safety rigs the vfx team had to painstakingly remove.

But Knoll is especially proud of a simpler scene: The hallway sequence with a projector that fools a guard. "I love that gag," he says. "Even though it was not super complicated work, we helped tell an amusing story. It's one of my favorite parts of the film."

So this year, as the vfx race heats up, look for more talk about art and less about new technologies. As "Hugo" vfx supervisor Rob Legato puts it: "My stress is about how beautiful it looks and how beautifully it represents the artistic point of view of the movie. Does the picture inspire you in some way? If so, it transcends the artifice of how it was done."




Breaking Dawn: The Other 600 Mundane FX Shots

(boomtron.com)                     Twilight fans know that bringing Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight to the big screen have required a fair share of special effects. Movie wizards have allowed giant wolves to share scenes with humans and vampires. They’ve given us glimpses and vampires, made of organic marble, who shimmer when sunlight hits them. They’ve utilized wires to make vampires kick butt in fast moving fight sequences. They’ve even made Kristen Stewart look like a sickly, bruised, pregnant woman. Well, you might not know it, but even more mundane areas required a touch from FX masters. Take a look at some behind the scenes video from Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, part one.

According to SPIN VFX supervisor Jeff Campbell, the Cullen house existed on a sound stage. Who knew? So, each and every window had to be set up with a green screen. Then, special effects artisans had to add reflections for fake glass and green vistas so that the house would appear to be located deep in the lush woods of Washington State.

Compositing supervisor Eric Doiron had to shoot tons and tons of views of the Cullen House from every conceivable angle, at various times of the day in order to get the lighting and reflections on the glass just right. Models of all of the furniture were used and believe it or not, even and digital body doubles for Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson were employed to figure out how they would reflect off of the glass. There was something like 600 shots taken over the course of three months. What a job!

VIDEO - Take a look:            http://www.boomtron.com/2012/01/robert-pattinson-and-kristen-stewart-breaking-dawn-fx/




Warhorse Tank Set for Museum

(dorsetecho.co.uk)                    FILM and history lovers are in for a treat as a tank used in Steven Spielberg’s latest blockbuster War Horse comes to Dorset.

The fully operational replica of a British Mk IV tank will be displayed at The Tank Museum in Bovington when the film is released later this week and will be used in its tank display later in the year.

Museum curator David Willey said: “The vehicle is a wonderful recreation with all the presence and menace of the real thing.

“But inside, it remains simple and modern.”

War Horse, based on Michael Morpurgo’s 1982 children’s book and stage adaptation of the same name, tells the story of Joey the horse, who is deployed as part of the cavalry during the First World War.

The play at the National Theatre has achieved West End success and won five Tony awards, including Best Play, at last year’s ceremony.

The full-sized replica tank used in the film was based on the museum’s own Mark IV, which was built in 1917.

Oscar award-winning special effects company Neil Corbould Special Effects LTD, whose credits include Saving Private Ryan and Gladiator, visited The Tank Museum to take measurements from the vehicle and copy original documents related to the MK IV tank from the museum’s archive in 2010.

The tank, which has been secretly kept at the museum until the film’s release, was built around the engine, transmission and track from a modern commercial excavator.

It makes a brief appearance in the film, symbolising the impact of technology on the battlefield and the changes in warfare that World War One ushered in.

David added: “We obtained this replica because with the World War One centenaries approaching, we wanted a working example of a tank that was representative of that conflict.

“For conservation reasons, we are no longer able to run any of our own vehicles from this period.

“We have long been investigating the possibility of building our own replica so when this vehicle became available to us we were eager to acquire it.”

The vehicle will be part of the museum’s Tankfest event in June and War Horse will be in cinemas from January 13.

• The Tank Museum, Bovington, holds the broadest collection of armoured vehicles in the world.



The 10 Best Visual Effects Scenes of 2011

(popularmechanics.com)                   There's a backlash building in Hollywood against the overuse of computer-generated imagery (CGI). For the most part, though, 2011's popcorn blockbusters still leaned heavily on green screens and render farms to produce the most spectacular visual effects (VFX) of the year. Here are our picks for the scenes that proved that pixels can still impress us (even when the movies they populate don't).

10. The Adjustment Bureau: Door-to-Door

Say what you will about the decision to turn one of Philip K. Dick's bleakest, most nihilistic stories into a metaphysical romance, but The Adjustment Bureau is filled with VFX shots so classy, you never realize that whole streets, crowds and environments were fake. The most dizzying sequence comes at the end, when Matt Damon and Emily Blunt's characters sprint through various magical doors, seamlessly teleporting from one New York location to another. They travel from a courthouse to Yankee stadium to a Manhattan street, and then to Liberty Island. Without the VFX house’s before-and-after highlight reel, the reality-warping illusion is impossible to see through.

9. Immortals: Clashing with Titans

Gods move in mysterious ways in Immortals. Or, rather, their victims do, hanging and twisting in midair after being killed—a way the filmmakers demonstrated the superhuman speed of the gods making war with Titans.

This effect shows up multiple times during the movie, but the brawl that follows the Titans' prison break is most stunning, as the gods' targets and their spattered blood instantly downshift to a new, slower speed, drifting through space while combat proceeds at a regular pace around them. Though copious CGI completed the effect, the VFX wizards smoothly integrated the different movement rates by filming different actors at different speeds. One shot combined motion-capture footage filmed at 48 frames per second (fps), and separate footage at 500 fps.

8. Hugo: Paris Overflight

Scorsese's surprise contribution to 3D and family-friendly cinema, Hugo, begins with an extended overflight of a snowy Paris in 1931. The entirely digital cityscape is convincing, but it's when the camera nosedives into the rail terminal, through the crowds and past the walls to follow the eponymous hero's hidden route among the station's pipework and clockwork gears that we realize what CG can do in the hands of a master director and cinematographer. The interior shots are mix of live and digital elements, but none of it comes across as a polished-up videogame cutscene. It's a fitting beginning to a movie-length tribute to cinema in general, and the father of visual effects, Georges Méliès, in particular.

VIDEO - The other seven:   http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/digital/visual-effects/the-10-best-visual-effects-scenes-of-2011?click=pm_news





What Went Wrong with Animation in 2011?

(blogs.indiewire.com)                 It certainly seems that way, since all I kept hearing over the holidays was disappointment: Carping about "Cars 2" and sneering about "Happy Feet Two" (which arguably offered no compelling reason to return to the dancing penguins of the Antarctic). At least you could say that "Puss in Boots" exceeded expectations and "Rio" transported us to a Brazilian paradise.

And all that complaining about too many sequels and a lack of originality didn't inoculate Steven Spielberg's "The Adventures of Tintin" from criticism. While some were pleasantly surprised by his liberating adventure in virtual production, others questioned the wisdom of the performance capture and the whiz-bang pacing. On the bright side, "Arthur Christmas" was welcomed as a nice comeback for Aardman. No wonder the off-beat "Rango" stepped in early on to fill the creative void and has been the Oscar front runner ever since.

Best use of performance capture was "Rise of the Planet of the Apes," perhaps the animated triumph of the year for its astounding CG Caesar. Thanks to Weta Digital and Andy Serkis, we got both technical virtuosity and emotional catharsis. And it's that emotional component that truly separated the animated films of 2010 from 2011. There was no "Toy Story 3" or "How to Train Your Dragon" or "Despicable Me" last year. Period.

And, according to Box Office Mojo, it was reflected at the box office. Whereas 2010 was led by the record-breaking "Toy Story 3" ($415 million), "Despicable Me" ($251.5 million), "Shrek Forever After ($238.7 million), "How to Train Your Dragon" ($217.5 million), and "Tangled" ($200.8 million), all in the top 10, 2011 saw a huge drop-off in grosses for animated features.

Still, "Cars 2" led the way on the strength of the Pixar brand and boys' love of cars ($191.4 million), followed by "Kung Fu Panda 2" ($165.2 million), "Puss in Boots" ($145.5 million), "Rio" ($143.6 million), "The Smurfs" ($142.6 million), "Rango" ($123.2 million), "Gnomeo & Juliet" ($99.9 million), "Happy Feet Two" ($60.9 million), "The Adventures of Tintin" ($50.8 million since its Christmas debut), "Arthur Christmas" ($46.1 million), and "Winnie the Pooh" ($26.6 million).

But the biggest animation box office story of 2011 was "The Lion King" 3-D theatrical release, which brought home a staggering $94.2 million for Disney. With 3-D on the wane, but more Disney and Pixar evergreens slated for 3-D release this year, time will tell if this is more than just a one-off. In any event, the added revenue propelled "The Lion King" to second place on the all-time list of animated features, with $422.7 million (less than $19 million shy of "Shrek 2"). Talk about mixed messages: After the lackluster showing of "Winnie the Pooh," the future of Disney's hand-drawn legacy looks bleaker than ever.

Then again, it was more about technology than storytelling in 2011: "Cars 2" offered noteworthy tweaks from Pixar in lighting, painting, and driving performance befitting Formula 1 racing, gadget-driven action and virtual world building; "Kung Fu Panda 2" had its own lighting and rendering advancements from DreamWorks for virtual world building as well as new feathers, cloth, and rigging for the elegant baddie, Lord Shen; "Happy Feet Two" started from scratch with a new studio (Dr. D) and benefitted from a project-driven pipeline that improved animated performance and environmental richness; "Rio" saw Blue Sky create a whole new animated world for its birds of paradise and Carnival festivities; "Arthur Christmas" brought out the best in Aardman and Sony for designing and rendering marvelous misfits caught in a winter wonderland of yuletide dreams; and Weta finally proved with "Tintin" that performance capture has a rightful place in animation for hitting that sweet spot between photorealism and caricature. Indeed, Weta continues to stand at the forefront of the virtual production revolution with its breakthroughs.

However, Industrial Light & Magic made the biggest technical leap of the year with "Rango," its first animated feature (how ironic given that Pixar had its origins as ILM's computer graphics division). Leveraging its unrivaled VFX legacy for photorealism, ILM went outside the box for a down and dirty animated look that was more photosurreal. Now the studio is chomping at the bit to work on another animated feature. So, with Paramount in need of a new animation provider for its fledgling division, perhaps ILM will get the chance to evolve as new player. Let's hope so.

Meanwhile, the prospects for 2012 look much brighter: Illumination ("Despicable Me") is back with "Dr. Seuss' The Lorax" (March 2); Pixar has its first fairy tale and female lead in the Scottish actioner, "Brave" (June 22); Sony has the intriguing monster mash-up, "Hotel Transylvania" (Sept. 21), directed by Genndy Tartakovsky ("Samurai Jack"); Disney has "Wreck-It-Ralph" (Nov. 2) about an arcade game baddie-turned hero, helmed by former" Simpson's" animation director Rich Moore; and DreamWorks has the imaginative "Rise of the Guardians" fairy tale/superhero mash-up (Paramount, Nov. 21).

Plus, three stop-motion features are slated for release in 2012: Aardman's "The Pirates! Band of Misfits" (Sony, March 30); Laika's "Coraline" follow-up, "ParaNorman" (Focus Features, Aug. 17); and Tim Burton's "Frankenweenie" (Disney, Oct. 5). The really good news is that there are only two high-profile sequels this year: DreamWorks' "Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted" (Paramount, June 8) and Blue Sky's "Ice Age: Continental Drift" (Fox, July 13).




Time Lapse Video of 'Albert Nobbs' Make-up Transformation

(makeupmag.com)                  On Jan. 9, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced the seven films that remain in the running for this year’s Achievement in Makeup Oscar. Among the contenders is Albert Nobbs, which is directed by Rodrigo García and stars Glenn Close as a woman who disguises herself as a man to find work in 19th-century Dublin.

Special make-up effects artist Matthew Mungle designed the film’s prosthetics, which were applied by make-up department head Lynn Johnson. Below is a featurette on Close’s make-up and hair in Albert Nobbs.

For complete details on the Oscar contenders, pick up Issue 93 and Issue 94 of Make-Up Artist magazine. And visit this site soon for coverage of the 84th Academy Awards make-up Oscar finalists.

The 84th Academy Awards will air Feb. 26 on ABC. Check local listings for show times.

VIDEO - Take a look:           http://makeupmag.com/news/newsID/905/




“X-Men Origins: Wolverine"  Pirate Gets One Year In Prison

(splashpage.mtv.com)                 A few years ago, there was a lot of hubbub surrounding “X-Men Origins: Wolverine." (No, it wasn’t the way they messed up Deadpool.) About a month prior to the film’s release, an unfinished copy was uploaded to the Internet for crazed fans to download and peruse. Lacking CGI or careful editing, the version was still more or less intact, and fans were able to criticize to their heart’s content. (Again, mostly about Deadpool.)

Though the original source of the leak was never found, the U.S. attorney’s office nabbed one scapegoat for the affair: Gilberto Sanchez, who admitted to putting the workprint on Megaupload.com and spreading the link around the Internet. Yesterday, Sanchez was sentenced to a year in federal prison on one count of uploading copyrighted work being prepared for commercial distribution.

Sanchez said he bought a copy of the workprint on a Bronx steet corner, but prosecutors weren’t dismayed.

"The federal prison sentence handed down in this case sends a strong message of deterrence to would-be Internet pirates," U.S. attorney Andre Birotte Jr. said in a statement. "The Justice Department will pursue and prosecute persons who seek to steal the intellectual property of this nation."

A one-year sentence seems hardly fitting considering the movie still ended up grossing $373 million worldwide, but those limits are in place as a deterrent against other would-be pirates, and Sanchez has to bear the sole damage against the thousands who presumably downloaded the incomplete film. It’s a sad story, but hopefully Sanchez will come out of it without looking worse for the wear.

The Live Action Star Wars Series Gets a Working Title

(IGN)                  The bad news for fans eagerly anticipating the live action "Star Wars" series is that not much has changed since word broke last June that the massive production is currently on hold, awaiting costs to drop to a point that will make the FX-heavy undertaking financially feasible. Producer Rick McCallum is hoping that won't be too far off, however, and today told IGN that the show even has a working title: "Star Wars: Underworld."

"It's underneath what's going on," he reiterated about the series' focus, "It's the criminals and the gangs. The guys who are running Wall Street, basically. The guys who are running the United States."

Even if the series is a few more years away, McCallum says there's no risk in the scripts become dating and that the delay can only make the show stronger.

"They're timeless," he explains. "They take place between Episode III and Episode IV. That 20 year period when Luke is growing up. It's not about Luke, but it's about that period when the Empire is trying to take things [over]."



Digital Domain's State and Local Incentives Up to $135.1 Million

(sunshinestatenews.com)      

           Digital Domain Media Group (NYSE: DDMG) has received an extra $11 million in tax credits from the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity.

The latest credit, announced Thursday by the company, brings to $135.1 million the sum that the digital production company has received in incentives from the state, Port St. Lucie and West Palm Beach.

"As we deliver on the job creation promises we have made to the communities that support our growth, we benefit from a unique business model that utilizes these grants and economic incentives to greatly minimize the financial risk of such growth,” John Textor, CEO of Digital Domain Media Group, stated in a release.

The latest credit will be used to develop the studio’s first film in Florida, “The Legend of Tembo.”

Digital Domain Media Group has contributed to films such as “Thor,” “TRON: Legacy,” “Transformers,” “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” “Apollo 13” and “Titanic.”

The company is set to officially open a $40 million, 115,000-square-foot studio in Port St. Lucie Jan. 3, according to TCPalm.

In West Palm Beach, Digital Domain is creating an institute with Florida State University's College of Motion Picture Arts.

The incentives break down:

State of Florida -- $20 million, cash grants; $19.9 million, tax rebates -- resalable.

City of Port St. Lucie -- $10 million, cash grants; $10.5 million, land (appraised value); $39.9 million, low-interest building and equipment lease financing.

City of West Palm Beach -- $10 million, cash grants; $9.8 million, land (appraised value); $15 million, low-interest financing. 

The company has also received an estimated $50 million from its recently announced China joint venture partner, Beijing Galloping Horse Film Co.




"Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters" Delayed Nearly a Year

(comingsoon.net)                   Paramount Pictures has rescheduled their Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters from March 2nd of this year to January 11, 2013.

The film arrives from Dead Snow director Tommy Wirkola and stars Jeremy Renner, Gemma Arterton and Femke Jansen. Set 15 years after the Grimm's Fairy Tale siblings incident at the gingerbread house, the film finds Hansel and Gretel working as bounty hunters, tracking down supernatural beings.

While the Wirkola film is planned for a 3D release, it should not be confused with the also-in-development film Hansel and Gretel in 3D, set to be produced by Michael Bay.





The Un-CGI Rant

(horrorthon.blogspot.com)                  I just finished watching the Coen brothers' True Grit (which had me bawling like a baby) and thought it was maybe the most perfect Western I've ever seen. While watching the end titles I saw a credit for the digital effects house Luma Pictures (whom I'd actually heard of because of their work on a couple of the Marvel superhero movies). I thought back over the movie and tried to guess what they'd done, and my guesses were correct (all the falling snow, and the extension of the Arkansas town in the top image above).

I'm so tired of reading and hearing people complain about CGI in movies, when (in my opinion) CGI is the best thing to happen to cinema since Technicolor, or maybe even sound. The complaints are universally based on a willfully ignorant point of view and a nonsensical argument.

Pre-digital special effects, almost without exception, look like special effects. They're nearly impossible to miss. The matte paintings of depression-era Chicago in The Sting; the model London rooftops in Murder by Decree; the tilted "out-the-window" backdrops in countless movies: they all look fake. You accept the fakeness; it's part of the "magic of movies."

But CGI changes all that. The four images above are the afforementioned True Grit (in which the long main street of the town is not a static image at all; it's glimpsed in the background of a dozen sweeping shots with people and horses moving in the foreground); Saving Private Ryan (where the Allied fleet off the coast of Normandy, including battleships and dirigibles, is made to match exactly to actual D-Day photographs); Quantum of Solace (which is filled with undetectable CGI like this bell-tower shootout in Siena) and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (in which Cate Blanchett's head is attached to a real ballet dancer's body). All flawless, all undetectable, all expedient, showing you things you could never see without twenty times the budget (which is why something like Heaven's Gate was so expensive; Michael Cimino had to build the town of Casper, Wyoming circa 1890).

The only time people realize they're seeing CGI is when the image depicts something clearly impossible (like Asgard, or the starship Enterprise, or Iron Man flying around). Suddenly the audience realizes that it's got to be a trick, and they say, "Oh -- CGI." And then they complain about what they're seeing as if the CGI itself is to blame (rather than the creative decisions that went into determining what the shots would look like). Everyone starts bitching about how CGI intrinsically "looks fake," so why can't they do it the old way (where, as I've said, you can't possibly miss the effects shots; they stand out like a sore thumb even before anything happens in them because the film's been fed through an optical printer and has lost its first-generation crispness). It's bad logic and lazy thinking. If a little light came on next to the screen every time a digital effect was in use, people would realize how unbelievably great CGI is and would stop bitching. But this doesn't happen, so people stare at dozens and dozens of wonderful, difficult, artistic (and cost-saving!) CGI effects, not even realizing it, and then say they "hate" CGI. I wish people would wise up, that's all I'm saying. (I just had to vent.)




Warner Bros. Plans "A Discovery of Witches"

(Variety)                Warner Bros. has plans to adapt Deborah Harkness' novel, A Discovery of Witches, into a feature film and, Variety reports, they've brought aboard David Auburn to provide the screenplay.

The first book in the "All Souls Trilogy," "A Discovery of Witches" will receive a sequel this summer with "Shadow of Night." On her site, Harkness describes the first novel as follows:

When historian Diana Bishop opens a bewitched alchemical manuscript in Oxford’s Bodleian Library it represents an unwelcome intrusion of magic into her carefully ordinary life. Though descended from a long line of witches, she is determined to remain untouched by her family’s legacy. She banishes the manuscript to the stacks, but Diana finds it impossible to hold the world of magic at bay any longer.

For witches are not the only otherworldly creatures living alongside humans. There are also creative, destructive daemons and long-lived vampires who become interested in the witch’s discovery. They believe that the manuscript contains important clues about the past and the future, and want to know how Diana Bishop has been able to get her hands on the elusive volume.

Chief among the creatures who gather around Diana is vampire Matthew Clairmont, a geneticist with a passion for Darwin. Together, Diana and Matthew embark on a journey to understand the manuscript’s secrets. But the relationship that develops between the ages-old vampire and the spellbound witch threatens to unravel the fragile peace that has long existed between creatures and humans—and will certainly transform Diana’s world as well.

Auburn is best known as the playwright behind "Proof." He also wrote The Lake House and wrote and directed 2007's The Girl in the Park.




Reel FX Acquires ‘Invasion’ Film Pitch from ‘Journey 2’ Director

(latino-review.com)                 Director Brad Peyton has found his next journey.

Cary Granat’s Reel FX has acquired the pitch from Peyton for “Invasion.”

Peyton will produce and direct “Invasion.” The script is written by J. Daniel Shaffer. The project will also be produced by Andrew Adamson under the Strange Weather Films banner.

The plot is about unarmed students in Philadelphia who must battle an attack from a supernatural force.

Variety had described “Invasion” to be in the vein of “Cloverfield.”

Peyton had directed the upcoming “Journey 2: The Mysterious Island,” which starred Josh Hutcherson, Dwayne Johnson, Vanessa Hudgens and Michael Caine. He also directed 2010’s “Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore.”

“Journey 2” will be in theaters on February 10.




Designing Fantasy Worlds the Weta Way

(popmatters.com)                  Daniel Falconer fondly remembers a childhood of Jim Henson’s Muppets and Star Wars. Little did his parents know that young Daniel’s fascination with fantastic worlds was really on-the-job training. Today from his studio within Wellington, New Zealand’s Weta Workshop, the grown-up Falconer still gets to play with cool toys—only now he helps design them for global film and television industries.

Falconer’s interest in design was sparked by films he watched as a boy. “I was profoundly impressed as a child by Jim Henson and everything he touched. His amazing fantasy films The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth were every bit as influential on me as Star Wars. These movies created deep and rich imaginary worlds that I could believe in and which seemed to live beyond the confines of the screen. I watched ‘making of’ documentaries on television that showed how creature shops designed, built and brought to life these worlds, and I knew that was what I wanted to do with my life.”

During part of the work-experience phase of his coursework, Falconer began to spend holidays working with a studio near his West Auckland home. After a fateful meeting with Weta Workshop founder Richard Taylor, the young artist was invited to see how he liked the Wellington-based company. At the time, Weta was putting together a design team and “seeking enthusiastic young artists ... I spent a week at Weta in Wellington and loved it. Fortunately, they liked me, too, so I returned home, finished up the last handful of weeks of my design degree and moved to Wellington as soon as I was done to start work with Weta at the end of 1996. I have been here ever since.”

Working Where “Cool Stuff” is Made

Although Falconer explains that “Weta is primarily a service-providing physical effects company for other people’s films and TV projects,” he also knows that it was formed “to facilitate Richard Taylor’s insatiable desire to make cool stuff.” Because film audiences only see the results of months, sometimes years of planning and design, they may not realize that Weta does more than develop elaborate creatures for the film industry.

Full Article:            http://www.popmatters.com/pm/column/151918-making-cool-stuff-the-weta-way/




'John Carter' FX Will Be Difficult to Pull Off

(digitalspy.com)                John Carter star Ciaran Hinds has said that the forthcoming Disney blockbuster will be a difficult movie for director Andrew Stanton to "pull off".

The Northern Irish actor appears as Tardos Mors in the science fiction epic alongside Rome co-stars Polly Walker and James Purefoy.

Hinds told Digital Spy that Stanton first approached him to star in the movie after seeing him perform in a stage production of Burnt by the Sun.

"Andrew Stanton came to see a play I was doing three years ago at the National. God love him, he sat through a big Russian epic," he said.

"I met him afterwards and he'd seen [HBO drama] Rome and he wanted to use some of us, because he wanted these people on Mars - Jeddaks - to be almost Roman."

"I [then] realized that this is the Andrew Stanton who did Finding Nemo and WALL-E. Those were two of the most beautiful films I know - they touch adults and children alike."

Hinds confessed that Stanton has a challenge on his hands juggling the movie's huge visual effects demands.

'John Carter' still: Tars Tarkas (Willem Dafoe), John Carter (Taylor Kitsch)

"I think John Carter is going to be a difficult thing to pull off, but he's a very brilliant man," he commented.

"It's moving three different things. It's moving animation with computer digitalisation and real live-action. How you do that seamlessly I've no idea, and then how that reads through this big interplanetary story... it remains to be seen."




Universal Plans Carrey-Led "Almighty" Sequel

(darkhorizons.com)                 Jim Carrey is being eyed to reprise his role from "Bruce Almighty" in another sequel in that series at Universal Pictures says The Press Associaton.

In the 2003 original, Carrey played TV news reporter Bruce Nolan who is offered the opportunity to be God for a week.

The 2007 sequel/spin-off "Evan Almighty" followed Bruce's former colleague Evan Baxter (Steve Carell) with a Noah's Ark inspired riff.

Jarrad Paul and Andrew Mogel are penning the follow-up. As the entire project is still in early stages, there's no word if Morgan Freeman would return to play God, or if Jennifer Aniston would reprise her girlfriend role from the original.





Tippett FX Group Takes a Bite Out of The Bakery

(sfgate.com)                    Bakery Relight's™ pipeline technology plays a key role in Tippett Studio's latest VFX projects, including, 'Immortals' and 'The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, Part 1 & 2'.

Gemenos, France (PRWEB) January 04, 2012

The Bakery (www.bakery3D.com), is proud to confirm that visual effects powerhouse, Tippett Studio has chosen Bakery Relight™ software for its FX group production pipeline.

Bakery Relight is the first product from French-based 3D computer graphics company, The Bakery, founded in 2007 by veteran motion picture artists and technologists, Erwan Maigret and Arnauld Lamorlette. Since its debut at NAB 2011 in Las Vegas in April, Relight has swiftly garnered strong praise and support from industry insiders worldwide.

Tippett's Digital Effects Supervisor, Scott Singer explains, "Our entire FX pipeline is based on The Bakery's advanced VFX specific tool set. We've now completed several of our latest film projects using this technology, including 'Immortals' and 'The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, Part 1' , which released last November, as well as our current projects, 'Ted', 'Mirror, Mirror', and 'The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, Part 2', which are scheduled for release in 2012."

"We couldn't have completed the work we did on one of our top-secret projects without it," says Singer. "Especially considering the small size of the crew in the FX department, the very short period of time we had to complete it, and the large amount of complexity involved. We completed the FX animation on the project - 25 shots of rigid bodies with 4 FX animators in 6 weeks. We can now do these things because we can quickly build shot independent, data-driven automated processes and efficient interactive processes."

"The Bakery team has been amazing in helping us to solve our pipeline architecture problems, allowing us to work more efficiently. We primarily use their advanced VFX-specific database functionality to describe assets, asset management, VFX processes, process control and farm submission. We can now work far more efficiently with data driven, reproducible results managing hugely complex processes and data. It has become the backbone of our effects pipeline and has replaced most of the traditional Tippett pipeline for the FX Group. We can now describe any pipeline processes as a series of interchangeable and re-useable modular building blocks - like pipeline Legos™ in a way. Thanks to the Bakery, we can now create four times as many wolves, in four times as many shots with two thirds of the crew size and in less time, or describe the complex steps necessary to deliver raw blood data to lighting, as we did in 'Immortals'."

"We're working with the Bakery on an ongoing basis now to build on the asset system to encapsulate more complex, compound asset management for future projects," says Singer.

"We're extremely proud to be able to collaborate at this level with a partner such as Tippett Studio," says Bakery co-founder and CEO, Erwan Maigret, whose credits include Technical Lead on "Shrek 2", "Madagascar" and "Shrek the Third". "Tippett Studio brings an extraordinary level of knowledge and expertise to the table. This partnership is a great validation of both our technology and the work of our team."




Helmers War for Future of  Toons - Eye on the Oscars: Animation 2012

(variety.com)                While 'The Adventures of Tintin' and 'Rango,' were made by director-driven teams, 'Puss in Boots' emerged from Dreamworks' established culture.
This year's animated feature race is a culture clash.

Live-action helmers Steven Spielberg and Gore Verbinski, working outside established animation studios, built unique creative cultures tailored to their movies.

Those established companies -- Disney, Pixar, DreamWorks -- and their entrenched creative cultures have long been the backbone of the animation business. This year, though, those entrenched cultures have evolved, perhaps reflecting a maturation of the feature animation industry.

At DreamWorks Animation, for example, "Puss in Boots" director Chris Miller describes the studio culture as more filmmaker-driven than it has ever been. "In the early days of DreamWorks, Jeffrey Katzenberg was really hands-on," says Miller. "Now he's allowing us to find our own way, and even to fall on our faces -- whatever it takes."

Miller cites his "Shrek" spinoff "Puss in Boots" as a good example. "There was a willingness to give this character his own world apart from 'Shrek,' and let the comedy be driven by character, not by satire. Jeffrey let us do that."

Verbinski and his "Rango" team went anti-corporate, creating a cloistered workspace at Verbinski's old house in the hills above Los Angeles. The goal was to insulate those artists from studio or producer notes, and liberate them to take risks. It was a high-wire act from day one.

"None of us had any animation experience," designer Mark "Crash" McCreery admits. "We were under the radar, working in a home, and nobody stopped us."

Verbinski's team spent a year creating a "story reel" -- an early version of the entire picture, albeit with simple art and temporary sound. It fell to Industrial Light & Magic, which had never done an animated feature before, to bring that story reel to life in CG animation. "Gore talked to ILM's animators as if they were actors. He let them embrace a character and own it." ILM learned to think in terms of entire sequences, not just individual shots, but in the end, says McCreery, "nothing changed from the animatic Blind Wink had done to the final product."

Spielberg, who usually works with ILM, instead teamed with Peter Jackson's Weta Digital for the first time on "The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn." Each side helped the other.

Spielberg had never had to capture actors in a blank "volume" before, and Weta helped him by providing him with rough CG reference imagery on monitors.

"That at least grounded me," Spielberg has remarked (Daily Variety, Nov. 16). "I was hoping that I could bring some of the filmmaking tools of my trade to a medium that I had never explored before, and that really did the trick."

Weta, on the other hand, had never done stylized characters, and Spielberg wanted to keep the graphic style of Herge's original books. Says Weta partner Joe Letteri: "We had to find a way to honor the source material and still create a unique look on film."

Letteri credits Jackson with getting heavily involved early on. Jackson, whose pictures built New Zealand-based Weta into a world-class vfx studio, eased the path for both Weta and Spielberg.

"He (Jackson) understood the challenge of taking a character design and turning it into a 3D character that you want to see onscreen," Letteri says. Letteri notes that while Spielberg lived a half world away from Weta, he collaborated constantly via videoconferencing. "It was a surprisingly easy way to work."

Arguably the most unusual blended culture this year paired the stop-motion animators at Aardman with the 3D-CG artists at Sony Animation and Imageworks for "Arthur Christmas."

To mesh such different studio cultures, Sony artists worked at Aardman in Britain during story development, and "Aardman West" was set up in L.A. during production.

"We wanted to feel like a joined-up studio and not a vendor," explains director Sarah Smith. "In a small studio like Aardman, you think of the totality of a project. You're always -- in your head -- trading one part of the process against another, in terms of what's important to you.

"It can be hard for people from a visual effects pipeline like Sony's to do that kind of holistic thinking. Had it been a classic 'vendor' relationship, you can imagine all sorts of horse-trading. But having our teams related to each other all the way through, we could to keep that 'big picture' thinking." nPixar's story-driven culture is guided by its famous "brain trust" of collaborators and its policy of inviting comments from everyone in the studio's rank and file. Even John Lasseter, who built that culture, and who could almost certainly ignore such notes with impunity if he so desired, heeded their critiques of "Cars 2," recalls producer Denise Ream.

"There were uncomfortable times when issues were brought up by crew members -- like several instances where people felt that the movie bordered on violence. It's a spy movie, so we definitely had to have stakes. It would not have been believable if we didn't. But John definitely heard what Pixar people had to say, and made changes."




Persistence of Vision's David Dozoretz Recalls Tom Cruise Driving 'Protocol' Previs

(chicagotribune.com)               Tom Cruise has long been known as a leading man and action movie hero, but seldom has he been described as a technology pioneer. Yet that's the role the actor played on all four "Mission: Impossible" films, said David Dozoretz, senior previsualization supervisor on Paramount's "Mission: Impossible -- Ghost Protocol," which has cumed more than $141 million domestically and $225 million overseas. Dodoretz, who worked on three of the pictures (he skipped "M:I2" as he was occupied with the "Star Wars" prequels), said that 1996's "Mission: Impossible," which launched the series, "was the first movie that really used previs," a computer animation program that adds motion and graphics to the storyboard process and allows everyone on a picture -- from below-the-line department heads to top studio execs -- to get an advance sense of what a scene will look like in order to make informed production decisions.

Dozoretz, who was then with ILM, recalls that on the first "M:I" Cruise and the producers wanted to do a sequence in which a train pulls a helicopter into the Channel Tunnel. "The studio wasn't really sure about it, so we all decided to do a rough computer animation to show what it can look like," said Dozoretz. Since that early application, which Cruise encouraged, previs has been deployed on hundreds of big-budget movies to aid in the decision-making process and -- significantly -- to save money. By the time "M:I4" was in development, Dozoretz had become a previs maven. He's one of the founders of the Previsualization Society, a trade group, and for the past dozen years has been running Persistence of Vision, a previs consulting shingle. Dozoretz was working on the J.J. Abrams-directed "Super 8" when he got word that Abrams was was planning to produce the fourth "Mission" installment. "They didn't have a script yet, only a rough treatment," Dozoretz recalled. "One sequence was going to take place on top of the world's tallest building" -- the 160-floor Burj Khalifa in Dubai. By January 2010, Dozoretz and his team were on board and worked steadily on "M:I4" for the next 12 months. "It was really early on," he said. "We were starting on the Burja previs even as J.J. was first talking with (director) Brad (Bird) in the other room." Production designer James Bissell recalled that pre-production on "M:I4" was "truncated" as a result of protracted negotiations among the major players behind the film. It took some time before a full script was available, "and then we were on three continents, filming second unit in Moscow and first units in Dubai and Prague, and additional locations in Vancouver."

Previs, he added, was particularly useful in such pressured circumstances in order to help Bird -- who had heretofore only helmed animated pics -- visualize difficult and complex live-action sequences. Bissell and others fed data into the previs computers, helping Dozoretz build several "M:I4" scenes -- none more dramatic than the film's signature sequence, in which Cruise climbs up the Burj Khalifa's sleek surface 130 stories above the ground, rappelling from floor to floor in order to access a secure computer room from the outside. More than six months before any shooting took place, Dozoretz created as many as "15 or 20" versions of the sequence for Bird. "We'd show it to Brad, and he'd say, 'This isn't quite working.'?" Bird would then make suggestions for picking up the pace in some areas, slowing it down in others. Then the team would show the previs sequences to the studio and decide how the shooting would take place. At that point the previs also got disseminated to most of the film's department heads. "They'd put the previs on a large monitor and go through whole scenes, one shot at a time," said Dozoretz, "deciding how they were going to get certain shots, what they need to do at certain points during production and how to rig for safety."But there was one factor no one could have predicted. "When we spent those first six months working on the sequence, we thought it was all going to be visual effects work," Dozoretz said. "We figured they'll shoot plates and Tom will be put in digitally."

But Cruise had other plans: He wanted to do his own stunts, and to suspend himself in a harness 130 floors above the ground while helicopters flew around and Imax cameras recorded his vertigo-inducing moves up and down the side of the mirrored tower. "When we were designing the sequence we thought we could do anything because it was going to be all digital," said Dozoretz, "But it turned out to be the real Tom." So instead of creating a virtual world, the vfx artists ended up with the opposite task: They worked on live-action images of Cruise suspended in mid-air and carefully removed wires, cables and reflections of the crew in the building's exterior.




Will CGI Kill the Video Star?

(abdulhalik.wordpress.com)                   Tintin was epic. It managed to give near three hours of rollicking entertainment, bringing alive the twelve year old thrill seeker inside me. Speilberg and Peter Jackson did a more than decent job of doing justice to the comic book. The entire thing was done in cgi, using motion capture technology. Meaning real actors donned motion capture suits and acted out the scenes, which were then renderd into an an animated universe.

It was so real that at times you could hardly tell the difference. This made me think of creative destruction and how it might affect the movie industry soon, or later. Actors haven’t taken a real hit from economic forces for a good few decades now. There was the advent of silent film, which put a few radio stars out of business,  then there was actual audio in film which probably put a few mute and hoarse voiced actors out of business. But after that, acting was pretty much acting, you dream of it when young, escape a dreary rural existence and go out and become a star ot thereabouts.

Tintin only uses real actors behind the scenes though. The faces are competely artificial; a hybrid of many faces aimed to match the comicbook journalist as closely as possible. If this catches on, soon the movie industry might face a whole new phase of creative destruction, the old being destoyed to give way to the new; real actors giving way to artificial ones. Better looking artificial ones; fitter, more agile and capable of delivering far more camera angles at far lower budgets than can be even dreamt of in the real world. By ‘soon’ i probably mean a good few decades. People were saying the same thing when the first Final Fantasy movie came in too, and motion capture before Tintin only worked properly for non human elements like Gollum, the apes in Planet-of-the and the Navi in Avatar.

The Milennials that is, my generation, have already seen so much creative destruction it should hurt; if we didnt revel in it. There was the CD destroying the tape, then being destroyed in turn by the mp3. Then the internet comes and completely screws over many established industries while they were looking the other way. Most imprtantly the age old book is also undergoing a significant phase of creative destruction the like of which hasnt been seen since Gutenberg. Creative destruction happens when something is replaced in a way that is completely impossible to compete against, the only possible outcome is for the old to gradually and stubbornly give way to the new.




The Real Wizards of Oz Deserve Better Treatment

(ronaldengle9.posterous.com)               Visual effects are the true "movie stars" of big studio pictures -- they turn today's movies into box office hits the same way big name actors ensured the success of classic films. In fact, 46 of the 50 top worldwide Box Office films of all time were visual effects-driven. And movies and broadcast programs you wouldn't think of as visual effects driven routinely utilize "invisible" effects to make changes to hair color, the sky, or to the background of a scene -- even creating the entire backlot and sets.

While visual effects-driven films are the ones that clean up at the box office, the visual effects artists who make the magic possible often are not adequately compensated or recognized for the contributions that they've made to the final creative product or the financial bottom line. Visual effects artists not only create fantastic visuals, we also aid in the storytelling, providing new possibilities for directors and producers who want to tell stories in compelling ways, never seen before, to actually get on the screen for everyone to enjoy.

But for the artists who create the visuals and help tell the stories we all want to see, life and working conditions are often not a happy Hollywood fantasy. Here's a dirty secret no one in the industry wants to talk about: visual effects artists and professionals are the only major group of entertainment industry workers who are not protected from labor abuses or provided with health insurance and other benefits through collective bargaining. That's just not right.

Make no mistake -- we want directors, producers and studios to make respectable profits because that means they will create more movies and TV shows that will utilize visual effects artistry and employ our colleagues. Unfortunately, though, a lot of new visual effects work gets outsourced to countries around the world because of tax incentives or lower wage rates. As that trend speeds up, many are wondering if the current industry business model will be sustainable, as visual effects facilities struggle through razor-thin margins while trying to create the cutting edge work that is expected of them.

Full article:    http://ronaldengle9.posterous.com/eric-roth-the-real-wizards-of-oz-deserve-bett




VFX Tentpoles & CG Animation Fail To Save US Box Office

(guardian.co.uk)                US box office takings fell to a 16-year low in 2011 despite the success of blockbusters such as the latest in the Transformers, Twilight and Harry Potter series.

Ticket revenue in the world's largest movie market fell 3.5% to $10.2bn, while the estimated number of tickets sold dropped 4.4% to 1.28bn, the lowest figure since 1995's 1.26bn, according to box office tracker Hollywood.com. Tentpole movies that provided disappointing returns for studios this year included sci-fi-western mashup Cowboys & Aliens, animated anthropomorphic penguin sequel Happy Feet 2 and Ben Stiller/Eddie Murphy comedy thriller Tower Heist.

No animated film or comic book movie topped $200m in 2011, in stark contrast to the previous year when Toy Story 3 broke the $1m mark and Iron Man 2 pulled in more than $600m. "There were a lot of high-profile movies that just ended up being a little less than were hoped for," said Chris Aronson, head of distribution for 20th Century Fox.

All of the top five highest-grossing films in the US were sequels or follow-ups. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, the final instalment in the long-running schoolboy wizard saga, was the No 1 film overall with $381m, followed by Transformers: Dark of the Moon with $352m, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1 with $271m, The Hangover Part II with $254m and Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides with $241m. The highest grossing debutant was Thor at No 8 with $181m, and one has to look as low as No 12's Bridesmaids ($169m) to find a film based on an entirely original screenplay that was not a sequel of some sort.

Growth in other markets such as China may help take some of the strain from the drop in US revenues but experts say studios remain concerned that the glory box office years of the past decade may be gone for good Stateside.

"I'm not prepared to be Chicken Little yet, but if the films coming in 2012 can't reverse this trend, then I think we need to re-evaluate our expectations," said Hollywood.com analyst Paul Dergarabedian. "We are living in a different world today than we did in the mid-90s in terms of the technology available to deliver media. That may finally be having an impact."




CGI Movie Magic: It’s Wonderful. But Do We Care?

(blog.cheetahdeals.com)                  Computer-generated imagery, or CGI, has revolutionized movie making. Think of the shape-shifting villian in “Terminator 2: Judgment Day” (1991), the levitating combatants in “The Matrix” (1999), and of course the sensual, turquoise world of “Avatar” (2009).

But do you love it? When the movies, thanks to CGI, can depict scenes that defy the laws of gravity or even of mortality – and thereby suspend the consequences of life as you live it — how much do you really care about what happens to the characters who walk through these scenes? Do you follow their fates with the kind of intense identification that generates our passion for the movies – or with a yawn?

This question occurs to some viewers more and more frequently as movies heavily dependent on CGI techniques come to dominate the industry. This summer’s roster of some twenty digital spectacles includes “Super 8,” “X-Men: First Class,” and “Green Lantern.”

Although the first fully computer-generated feature film, “Toy Story,” was released in 1995, CGI really took off in 2002 with George Lucas’ all-digital “Star Wars II: Attack of the Clones.” Now CGI is used in a broad array of films and TV shows. Some say the CGI technology is as much a game-changing shift as the move from silent films to talkies, or from black-and-white to color. But is it an improvement?

CGI can produce digital triumphs in the hands of great directors like James Cameron who created in “Avatar” an entire world which, although fantastical, was somehow familiar. In the same way, George Lucas in “Star Wars” drew upon combat footage of WWII fighter plane dogfights to produce space battles that occurred at warp speed but were still recognizable. It’s this combination of the strange yet familiar that engages the viewer.

What happens, however, when CGI in the hands of less imaginative directors produces scenes that are purely fantastical, in which characters are not answerable to the laws of physics or even common sense?

Often, the answer is disengagement on the part of the viewer and boredom. Any plot difficulty can be resolved by having a character morph into a cheetah and sprint out of danger at 60 m.p.h, or having another character blown to bits only to reassemble before your eyes and brush the dust off. After enough of this, it’s hard to care what becomes of people so impervious to real-life consequences. Such emotions as empathy, dread and joy – the feelings traditionally inspired by film characters we care about – simply evaporate, if they ever had a chance to get started.

As one critic notes in a recent “New Yorker” article: movie goers care about characters who make “their way through a world where walls are solid, gravity is unrelenting, and matter is indissoluble. … Can you have a story that means anything halfway serious without gravity’s pull and the threat” of death?

The director of “Super 8”, J.J. Abrams, appears to understand this. Abrams, who directed “Star Trek” (2009), fills his story about a bunch of kids in a small Ohio town making a zombie movie with plenty of CGI: a train wreck is depicted with millions of pixels of computer-generated disaster as cars buckle, spin and shoot high into the air. But along with this sort of thing is an entire world rendered in loving, realistic detail: a small American town in 1979 filled with ranch houses, family dinners, and old cars.

Think of “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” (2008), a film directed by Abram’s mentor, Steven Spielberg. That film depicts a small town in 1957 suburban America in such exquisite, realistic detail as to seem autobiographical – one feels that Spielberg is recreating where he grew up. Just as we are settling in to enjoy this trip down memory lane, the entire town is revealed to be an atomic bomb test site inhabited by dummies –  and in the next moment is obliterated in a nuclear blast delivered via CGI. Dummies or not, the effect is shocking because of the balance struck between traditional movie realism and CGI magic. Somewhere, the pixels have to meet up with real people for us to care about either.




Digital Domain Ready to Open its Dazzling Tradition Studios

(reuters.com)             TRADITION - The red carpet is ready to be rolled out for Digital Domain Media Group's Tradition Studios.

The company is set to open its doors after the first of the year to start a new tradition in feature animation films for children.

Digital Domain Media Group Chairman and CEO John Textor said Tradition Studios is the first complete studio for feature film animation for the digital effects company and is unlike any of its other five locations across North America. Tradition Studios, located off Interstate 95, is the place Digital Domain will film and produce its original animated stories.

Digital artists have begun making the 115,000-square-foot, $40 million studio home, but the official opening isn't until Jan. 3, with public tours expected to begin in February. However, the digital effects company offered a sneak peek into its newest studio and the amenities it plans to offer the community.

From animation studio tours, an outdoor movie amphitheater and soccer fields, Textor said the new building is designed to draw the public in and promote its new venture of telling children's stories. He said the concept of inviting families is vital to the company's new mission.

"We make movies for children and like the idea of children visiting and playing at the facility," Textor said. "It's not only exciting for kids in the community, but it brings artists closer to their audience. They may think they're working for me, but I like to remind them who their audience is."

Tradition Studios' first film, which is in development, will be "The Legend of Tembo" slated for release in fall 2014. The film tells the story of a young African elephant captured and separated from his family and taken to India. To get home, Tembo must transform into a fierce, battle elephant.





EA Being Taken To Court Over Battlefield 3 Vehicles

(cinemablend.com)               Out of all the things to sue EA for, it appears that they're being sued over the use of the Bell aircraft in Battlefield 3 by Bell Helicopter owner Textron. EA's response? They've pled the First Amendment.

According to Game Industry, legal documents have surfaced detailing how Textron wants a cut of the financial action that Battlefield 3 is raking in. Their claim is that EA either needs to remove the three Bell helicopter models from Battlefield 3 or pay up some royalties. EA has responded that none of the helicopters are protected by the First Amendment's Fair Use and that having the AH-1Z Viper, UH-1Y and V-22 Osprey in Battlefield 3 isn't infringing on any rights violations.

According to EA, "The Bell-manufactured helicopters depicted in Battlefield 3 are just a few of countless creative visual, audio, plot and programming elements that make up EA's expressive work, a first-person military combat simulation."

EA's stance is further supported by a 2011 ruling [via GI] that gives video games the same creative First Amendment rights as movies and literature in regards to fair use.

This is probably one of the rare times where EA is in the right and I agree with them. Otherwise they (and just about every other video game company out there) would end up paying everyone else and their mother an arm and a leg to have silly stuff in games, like satellite dishes, windows, decorations, and a number of other pointless objects that help create density and atmosphere within a game.

I'm sure Activision is sitting back in their golden-polished chairs laughing their butts off at the news, thinking "It's a good thing Call of Duty no longer has any vehicles".

...and, we're back.

Star Trek Sequel Will Use Post-Conversion 3D, IMAX Being Considered

(cinemablend.com)            

      Movies actually shot in 3D will always trump those that have been post-converted, but the truth is that the latter has been getting much better recently. While the post-conversion fad got off to a horrible start with the release of Clash of the Titans - which is easily one of the worst 3D movies we've seen in recent years - some of 2011's best 3D movies weren't actually shot stereoscopically. While not perfect, The Lion King, Green Hornet and Green Lantern all did a pretty damn good job taking advantage of the technology. So keep that in mind while swallowing this new bit of news.

J.J. Abrams has confirmed with MTV that the next Star Trek movie will be shot in 2D and then be post-converted. While the director was reticent when it came to revealing details about the plot, he was quick to talk about how they will be handling the use of the new technology. "We're shooting on film, 2D, and then we'll do a good high-end conversion like the Harry Potter movie and all that. Luckily, with our release date now we have the months needed to do it right because if you rush it, it never looks good." But that's not the end of it. Apparently some consideration is also being given towards filming part of the movie in IMAX, a la Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol and The Dark Knight Rises. "IMAX is my favorite format; I'm a huge fan," Abrams said.




Visual Effects Society Announces Nominees for 10th Annual VES Awards

(comingsoon.net)                The Visual Effects Society (VES) today announced the nominees for its 10th Annual VES Awards ceremony recognizing outstanding visual effects artistry in 23 categories of film, animation, television, commercials, special venues and video games. Nominees were chosen Saturday, January 7 by distinguished panels of VES members who viewed submissions at the FotoKem screening facilities in Burbank and New York, FotoKem’s Spy in San Francisco, and other facilities in London, Sydney, Vancouver and Wellington, NZ.

“The standard of the creative work that is being considered this year is unbelievably high across all categories,” said Jeffrey A. Okun, Chair of the Visual Effects Society. “The judges faced a huge challenge because all of the work was so far above the norm. We’re honored to have the opportunity to focus the spotlight on the outstanding work that has contributed to some of the highest grossing films and broadcast projects of all time.”

As previously announced, Stan Lee will be honored with the VES 2012 Lifetime Achievement Award and Douglas Trumbull with the Georges Méliès Award.

The 10th Annual VES Awards will take place on Tuesday, February 7, 2012 at the Beverly Hilton Hotel and will air exclusively on ReelzChannel.

The nominees for the 10th Annual VES Awards are as follows:

Outstanding Visual Effects in a Visual Effects-Driven Feature Motion Picture

Captain America: The First Avenger
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 2
Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides
Rise of the Planet of the Apes
Transformers: Dark of the Moon


Outstanding Supporting Visual Effects in a Feature Motion Picture

Anonymous
Hugo
Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows
Source Code
War Horse


Outstanding Visual Effects in an Animated Feature Motion Picture

Arthur Christmas
Kung Fu Panda 2
Puss In Boots
Rango
The Adventures of Tintin

Full Nominations Listing:  http://www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=85759




"Thor 2" Starts Filming this Summer

(Empire)                In an online chat at Empire, Tom Hiddleston revealed when and where Marvel Studios will start filming Thor 2:

I have no idea. And without revealing too much, there's a specific skill set you need to be Loki's army - let me know if you have the qualifications. And all I know about Thor 2 is that we're supposed to film it in London in the summer and that it's being directed by Alan Taylor.

Walt Disney Pictures and Marvel Studios are planning a November 15, 2013 release for the sequel.

Hiddleston can first be seen as Loki again in Marvel's The Avengers, opening in theaters on May 4.





10 Contenders Remain in VFX Oscar Race

(SHOOT Publicity Wire)          The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences today announced that 10 films remain in the running in the Visual Effects category for the 84th Academy Awards®.

The films are listed below in alphabetical order:

"Captain America: The First Avenger"
"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"
"Transformers: Dark of the Moon"
"The Tree of Life"
"X-Men: First Class"

All members of the Visual Effects Branch will be invited to view 10-minute excerpts from each of the 10 shortlisted films on Thursday, January 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, January 24, at 5:30 a.m. PT in the Academy's Samuel Goldwyn Theater.




Sam Worthington Completes "Wrath of the Titans"

(comingsoon.net)                 Set for a busy year on the big screen, Sam Worthington takes the title role in the upcoming action thriller Man on a Ledge, starring opposite Elizabeth Banks, Jamie Bell, Genesis Rodriguez, Anthony Mackie and Edward Burns. We'll soon be posting video interviews with the entire cast, but Worthington also dropped a few details about two highly anticipated sequels that also feature him as a leading man: Wrath of the Titans and Avatar 2.

"I saw [it] the other day and I love it," says Worthington of Wrath. "I think it did exactly what I wanted. There were things about the first one that I felt that I, personally, could improve myself on and work a bit harder on."

Set ten years after the events of Clash of the Titans, the film revolves around Worthington's Perseus and his relationship with both his son, Helius and his father, Zeus.

"Even though we've got big-ass monsters and it's set in a Greek mythological world and it's a f--ing huge blockbuster, it's about a father and a son," the actor explains.

Avatar 2, meanwhile, remains somewhat of a mystery even to Worthington. Scheduled for a December 2014 release, the plan is to shoot the sequel back to back with a third film.

"I'm talking to Jim next week," says Worthington of his imminent return to Pandora. "I'm going to visit him and we're going to see what's going on."




Steven Spielberg: 'CGI is Artificial & Audiences Can Tell'

(digitalspy.com)                Steven Spielberg has claimed that an audience can always tell the difference between CGI and real-life action.

The director admitted to BBC Breakfast that he would probably use computer technology if he were making his breakthrough movie Jaws today.

Spielberg said: "Today, I would probably shoot a Jaws movie with CGI, but you know something? The audience can tell the difference.

"The second you see a million soldiers charging, you know that no-one hired a million soldiers charging any place in the world, and you know that it's artificial."

He added: "I think one of the the reasons Jaws was so effective was it was authentic.

"Just those small pieces [of footage] that were used in the cutting of the film gave the shark some bite."

Asked if he would ever return to the series, Spielberg said: "No, the only way I'm going back on the water is on a pleasure cruise! I hated being on the water, I hated shooting that movie.

"The movie really resulted in... it just really started my career, so I can't ever [deny] how important the film was to my career, but making a movie on the water is insane!"

Of the use of CGI in new movie War Horse, Spielberg said: "There are only three shots in the film that aren't real horses, and those are pretty obvious shots."

He continued of shooting in Dartmoor: "There is no place like it in the world. When I got to Dartmoor, I suddenly realized that I had a third character that I had to include in War Horse, and that was the land and the sky. so Dartmoor plays a major role.

"We had three days of amazing sunsets, and we actually took advantage of those. There is no sky replacement."

Spielberg added: "You know, audiences are so used to digital enhancements or replacements that they don't trust cinema anymore.

"They see a movie and... if something beautiful strikes them emotionally, or in a beautiful way, they say 'That was faked' or 'They did that later on the computer'.

"Not a single shot in this movie has a sky enhancement or a replaced sky or a replaced landscape. That is Devon, Dartmoor... it is pretty extraordinary country."




Disney Grabs Two-Time Oscar Winner To Direct  ‘Maleficent’

(geeksofdoom.com)                      It’s been a while since we heard about Maleficent, the Walt Disney project that focuses on the villain of their classic animated film Sleeping Beauty, but now the Mouse has a director.

With names like Tim Burton rumored to be possibly involved, instead it turns out that Disney has chosen Robert Stromberg to direct the movie, which is being developed as a starring vehicle for Angelina Jolie.

Maleficent will be Stromberg’s first time directing a feature, but he’s a two-time Academy Award-winner—for Art Direction on James Cameron’s Avatar and Burton’s Alice in Wonderland—and also visual effects whiz with 92 VFX credits on his resume. Titles he’s worked in the visual effects department on include Pan’s Labyrinth, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, The Golden Compass, and HBO series John Adams, The Pacific, and Boardwalk Empire.

It’s not yet known exactly what storyline the movie will follow, only that it will be a new take on the Sleeping Beauty tale, this time from the perspective of the infamous and intimidating Maleficent.

Stromberg will direct from a script written by Linda Woolverton, who also wrote Alice in Wonderland and worked on the screenplays for Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King for Disney.




Rhythm & Hues Studios Establish VFX Studio in Kaohsiung

(CNA) Rhythm & Hues Studios Inc. (R&H), one of the world's top five visual effects companies, will set up a visual effects center in Kaohsiung and launch two other ventures in Taiwan next year, the company's head said Friday in Taipei.

The R&H VFX Center in Taiwan's southern harbor city will be the Oscar-winning company's sixth facility in the world and will allow the studio to run a 24-hour production cycle. Established in Los Angeles in 1987, the company has two facilities in India and one in both Malaysia and Canada.

"We're very happy to come to Taiwan," John Hughes, the president and founder of R&H, said in Chinese to express his gratitude to those who had helped make the move possible.

The Kaohsiung studio will hire 200 artists and train 40 instructors and 600 students before it creates animations and visual effects, according to Hughes.

The studio will allow people in Taiwan to contribute to the animation market, as they will be able to make world-class visual effects themselves, he added.

In addition, R&H will also make Taiwan the leading provider of computer services for Hollywood and the digital content industry by setting up a cloud computing database in Taipei with Chunghwa Telecom Co., the nation's top telecom carrier, and Quanta Computer Inc., the world's largest notebook computer ODM service supplier.

Furthermore, the company will also initiate a film fund to help co-finance and co-produce Hollywood films, it said.

"I'm very, very excited to begin these ventures in Taiwan," Hughes said, adding that he hopes to stimulate the digital content industry in Taiwan and thus attract other similar companies to follow suit, ultimately forming a community.

The investment will be a boost to Taiwan's digital content industry, said Economics Minister Shih Yen-shiang, who attended the ceremony.

The actual total investment from R&H could be as high as NT$6 billion (US$198 million), Shih said, adding that the investment will cement Taiwan's leading position in the IT industry and could make Taiwan a cloud computing hub for the world.

Taiwan's digital content industry has been thriving over the years. Its output rose from NT$153.7 billion in 2002 to NT$522.5 billion in 2010, and is expected to exceed NT$600 billion this year despite the global economy downturn.

R&H has been involved in more than 130 Hollywood films, such as "The Incredible Hulk," "Night at the Museum" and "T




Tim Burton and Robert Downey Jr. Eye Pinocchio

(The Hollywood Reporter)                   First announced in 2010, Warner Bros. is developing a live-action take on Pinocchio with producer Dan Jinks and a script from Bryan Fuller. Now, The Hollywood Reporter brings word that the studio is in talks with Tim Burton to direct and Robert Downey Jr. to potentially star as Geppetto.

The story originated in Italian author Carlo Collodi's novel "The Adventures of Pinocchio," published at first as a serial beginning in 1881. In 1940, Walt Disney Pictures released the most famous adaptation, though many subsequent takes have followed, including another project currently in production. That Pinocchio film is a stop-motion feature being developed through the Jim Henson Company with a script from Guillermo del Toro and Gris Grimley.

Tim Burton's most recent film was 2010's Alice in Wonderland and, this year, he's set to release Dark Shadows and Frankenweenie. Downey, meanwhile, recently appeared in Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows and can next be seen in Marvel's The Avengers.




Image Conscious: A Conversation With VFX Supe Michael Owens

(flickeringmyth.blogspot.com)                     “Today you can almost do anything and the quality is way better,” reflects Michael Owens. “I remember early on in my career we were like a red headed stepson. Nobody wanted us on the set. They thought we were doing voodoo. They were like, ‘I don’t get this.’ Now, today you’re partnering with all of these people whether you needing a tear to fall or 10,000 spaceships to fly through.” The movie industry acceptance has come with a price. “Quite frankly, the tentpole films coming out are never considered to be good movies which is unfortunate; they’re big visual effects movies that make billions of dollars and are in 3D.” The latest trend in Hollywood has not completely convinced Owens. “The project I’m currently helping out with right now at Method is a post-conversion 3D. I’m not a big fan of 3D myself or stereo. It is a massive headache and complication to what you’re already trying to do. What we do naturally is put square pegs in round holes. This is 10 times worse now. I don’t know anybody you enjoys the process of it.” The technological transition resembles a previous one. “It’s like when you went from the silent era to the sound era. The camera just got nailed to the ground. It’s that same thing. It’s so cumbersome to deal with.”

“At the moment I’m helping out on Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter [2012]. Method needed some help and I said ‘Okay,’” states Michael Owens. “One of the ones I really wanted to work on and was late getting to was Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close [2011]. The script is brilliant and has all this cool kid imagination stuff in it. I look forward to seeing that movie.” When asked what is required to be a successful visual effects supervisor, Owen advises. “You need to understand your technique and your tools. Preferably, you need to understand them on the set as well. The other half of it is cinematic artistry.” He adds, “You develop an eye and it doesn’t happen over night. I’ve always loved cinema and I hope I do it well.”

Full article:    http://flickeringmyth.blogspot.com/2011/12/image-conscious-conversation-with.html




Bad Robot App Delivers VFX On Your iPhone

(herocomplex.latimes.com)            The week before Christmas was a big one for J.J. Abrams and his production company, Bad Robot, with the wide release of “Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol.” which quickly gave Bad Robot the bragging rights to the biggest hit of the holiday season. But the week was also notable for another landmark: Bad Robot is now in the iPhone app business.

The app is called Action Movie FX and it gives users the ability to insert special effects into any video they take with Apple’s smartphone. The two effects included with the app are a missile attack and car smash, allowing anyone to get all Michael Bay on unsuspecting family members, sleeping pets or the guy who cut them off on the 405 Freeway.

In an e-mail interview, Abrams called Action Movie FX the first of a “slew” of “cool projects” that his Bad Robot is working on in the interactive space.

“I think it should be noted that this is the first time I have used the word slew,’” the filmmaker noted, adding that the endeavors include “movies, some TV shows or books, some short-form filmed and animated projects, some music and some apps.”

The app was financed by Bad Robot and overseen by Andrew Kramer, the visual effects wizard whom Abrams plucked from his website, Video Copilot, to work on the opening credit sequences of the Fox series “Fringe” and the 2009 feature film “Star Trek.”  He and Bad Robot executive David Baronoff worked on the app with a small team of outside programmers for about two months.

“I just loved the idea that people could add high-quality visual effects to their footage, all with a phone they already carry with them,” Abrams said of the app.

Kramer said the biggest challenge was getting the app to track moving images while also making the interface as foolproof as possible. “We went through so many different versions while wondering, ‘How are people going to use this app? Should we have director’s notes? What about on-screen tips?’”

“Action Movie FX” debuted Dec. 22, and surged to No. 1 on the list of most downloaded free entertainment apps and since then it ranked consistently among the top 25 free apps of all kinds.

Source with video:    http://herocomplex.latimes.com/2012/01/06/action-movie-fx-bad-robot-app-delivers-big-bangs-for-your-buck/




Kanye West To Meet George Jetson?

(darkhorizons.com)                   Kanye West has met with film executives to discuss working on a live-action "The Jetsons" movie according to NME.com.

The rapper is reportedly a huge fan of the cartoon series and has met the team working on the film for a "brainstorming" session. Earlier this week he talked about his new design company DONDA on his Twitter account and said he was in talks about potentially serving as creative director on the 'Jetsons' film which has been in development for some years.

Producer Denise Di Novi confirmed his involvement but said it was still very early days yet - "He was interested in creatively brainstorming what we were doing with the movie and what ideas he might have. It was a really friendly, preliminary conversation… He was going to think about it more and see if he got inspired visually."




“Rango” Helped Paramount Become Top Studio of ’11

(blog.bcdb.com)                Aided by such films as Gore Verbinski’s ani­mated Rango, Para­mount Pic­tures announced Mon­day that it ended 2011 in the No. 1 posi­tion among all studios.

Para­mount achieved the high­est total com­bined gross of any stu­dio for the year, earn­ing a record $5.17 bil­lion world­wide. The stu­dio, which released a total of 16 new releases domes­ti­cally this year, placed first in the North Amer­i­can mar­ket share with $1.96 bil­lion, while also amass­ing record grosses at the inter­na­tional box office with $3.21 billion.

“This year, our stu­dio reached some key mile­stones, includ­ing the release of three vibrant Para­mount fran­chise pic­tures and our first orig­i­nal CGI ani­mated film,” said Para­mount Pic­tures chair­man and CEO Brad Grey. “Our first orig­i­nal ani­mated film, Rango, from direc­tor Gore Verbin­ski, earned rave reviews and more than $100 mil­lion at the domes­tic box office. We also ben­e­fited from our dis­tri­b­u­tion part­ner­ships with Dream­Works Ani­ma­tion and Mar­vel, and I want to thank them both.”

Rango has made $123.5 mil­lion at the North Amer­i­can box office. Other ani­mated titles were DWA’s Kung Fu Panda 2 ($165.2 mil­lion) and Puss In Boots ($145.8 mil­lion), and Steven Spielberg’s Tintin ($51.4 million).

“This achieve­ment reflects the com­bined efforts of our entire team across the globe and the care­ful process by which we select the projects and part­ners we believe in,” said Grey.




Budget Cuts Halt "Akira" Production

(darkhorizons.com)                  Warner Bros. Pictures is shutting down its "Akira" remake again due to casting and budgetary issues says Heat Vision

Production offices in Vancouver are being closed with crew members apparently told to stop working and go home.

Producers Jennifer Kiloran Davisson and Andrew Lazar will work with director Jaume Collet-Serra for the next two weeks to iron out the script. Should that not work out, the whole project could be scrapped altogether.

This live-action remake of the classic 80's anime struggled in development hell for years with numerous incarnations and budgetary cutbacks along the way.

This would technically mark its fourth so called 'death', each time though it has come back. In order to do that this time though, its already lean $90 million budget will have to be cut down significantly further - somewhere more around the $60-70 million mark.

In fact its becoming a common thing for various Warner-related projects in the works with word this time last month the studio shut down its "Arthur and Lancelot" while regular cohort Legendary Pictures put a hold on "Paradise Lost" - in both cases it was due to budgetary issues.




Portman To "Ascend" For Wachowskis?

(darkhorizons.com)                 Natalie Portman is being courted by Lana and Andy Wachowski to star in their next sci-fi feature "Jupiter Ascending" says The Press Association.

Portman, who worked with the pair on "V for Vendetta" which they produced, is said to be seriously considering signing up for the top secret project which begins shooting this Fall.

The role would mark her first since giving birth to son Aleph. Portman is also looking at adapting Jonathan Safran Foer's book "Eating Animals" for the big screen.




Stallone Assures Movie Fans ‘I do all my own CGI’

(newsbiscuit.com)                Evergreen action hero Sylvester Stallone is taking Hollywood back to the ’80s with his latest blockbuster, promising fans he’ll perform all his own CGI.

Movie fans have long bemoaned the lack of unrealistic stunt doubles to laugh at in low budget blood baths, the sheer availability of talented computer programmers making rubbish films a thing of the past.

But Stallone has already clawed back some ground with recent releases, winning plaudits such as ‘unintentionally funny’ and ‘utter, utter bollocks’ across a number of influential internet forums.

Stallone told his followers that the action scenes in his latest film, ‘The Unbearables’, are all his own work. The film tells the tale of an ageing boxer who finds himself in Vietnam, surrounded by monster trucks and high explosives. ‘I used my own ‘pooter,’ explained the two-dimensional character, ‘you’d know if a pro stood in for me. I’m told you can easily spot my style.’

With the help of some children, Stallone was repeatedly shown how to look for explosions on YouTube. ‘It’s easy when someone knows how,’ admitted Stallone. ‘The kids helped me over and over, they were very understanding. I forget stuff when I blink.’

Stallone’s unique approach to special effects has drastically reduced the cost of his films. By quickly swinging the camera between the action on set and a video being played on his laptop, almost any unlikely event can be seamlessly inserted into the movie, as long as it’s easy to spell.

‘We got a helicopter flying out of the sea, then exploding, then being laughed at by a kitten,’ revealed the star, ‘and it cost nearly nothing.’ In fact, Stallone’s movie was made on a lower budget than most pantomimes, a situation aided by his unwillingness to pay for a script.

Stallone maintains that a script is unnecessary if you put enough cattle-physiqued actors in one place, and get them to face the right way. ‘Me, Dolph Lundgren, Mickey Rourke, David Walliams. With that talent, why buy word papers?’ he asked. But some costs are inevitable.

With takings down slightly for Stallone’s last film, the studio is putting some pressure on him to deliver. Stallone now admits it was a mistake to design the posters himself, and still has a crayon lodged in his armpit. ‘We got a professional make-up artist this time, she does all the growth hormones and steroids. It’s easy to push a needle in a bit too far, I learnt that the hard way,’ he admitted. Fortunately for the big man, audiences are yet to notice that Jason Statham’s frontal lobes have been botoxed.

Source:              http://www.newsbiscuit.com/2012/01/06/stallone-assures-movie-fans-i-do-all-my-own-cgi/