The "Avatar" Effect: Don't Replace the Actor - Replace the Animator
(theaustralian.news.com.au)
But Cameron's producer on Titanic and Avatar, Jon Landau, says that couldn't be further from the truth.
"To me, it's the exact opposite," Landau says. "Our goal on this movie was not to replace the actor, it was to replace the animator. If you think about it, what a great actor does and what a great animator does are antithetical to one another.
"A great actor withholds information. Dustin Hoffman in All the President's Men can sit there and do nothing. No animator would ever allow that, they would put in a twitch. So our objective was to preserve Sam Worthington's performance and have that be what you see in those characters."
The filmmakers don't refer to motion capture, rather they call it "performance capture". Cameron used a newly developed camera through which he could see not the actor but the virtual actor, and not the green-screen set but the virtual world the actor is supposed to be in. Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson are using the same technology on their series The Adventures of Tintin.
"There's no point in having technology being a limiting factor, we want technology to be an enabling factor," Landau says.
The new technology allows the director to fully realise human performances in digital characters. Worthington's character in Avatar is Jake, a paraplegic marine who is transformed into a hybrid alien being (the humanoid Navi) on the planet Pandora in a far, far future in which humans must extract a rare mineral from the inhospitable planet. The effect of seeing the Australian's distinct facial movements in the form of a 3m-tall blue humanoid is unnerving and captivating and extinguishes any thought of Cameron diminishing the place of the actor in film.
"We pitched to people that we were preserving their performances," Landau says.
"We said, 'Look, what we're doing is the 21st-century version of prosthetics. No longer will you have to sit for hours and hours in make-up for you to give the performance of the Grinch or the Godfather. We're going to do it with CGI (computer-generated imagery) but it's going to be you, it's not going to be somebody's interpretation of you."'
Full Press: http://www.theaustralian.news.
Universal Builds Blade Runner-esque Sci-fi "Arcana"
Choreographer-turned-helmer Kevin Tancharoen (the upcoming "Fame" remake) will helm the sci-fi actioner "Arcana" for Universal Pictures says Variety
Details of the script by John Ridley ("Red Tails") are being kept under wraps but it's described as a Blade Runner-esque live-action graphic novel that includes martial arts.
The film will use the heavily green screen production look used for Zack Snyder's "300" film adaptation. Brett Ratner and Jay Stern will produce
Harry Shum Jr., a regular in Fox's upcoming show "Glee," helped develop the original idea with
The Kerner Companies Appoint Lynn Leboe as International Head of Research & Development
(addpr.com)
Eric Edmeades CEO, The Kerner Companies, a leading provider of special effects and 3D technologies, announced today that Lynn Leboe has been appointed International Head of Research and Development.
Lynn Leboe, a graduate of Concordia University, Montreal has more than twenty years experience of uniting art with emerging technologies.
“Exploring Kerner’s international research and development potential will expand our mandate of pioneering vision, quality, integrity, creativity and continuing to deliver excellence on all we touch,” says Eric Edmeades. “Lynn Leboe has an impressive history of implementing innovation in content research and development. She will spearhead international strategic alliances and international research priorities for next generation 3D technologies.”
“I am thrilled to be invited to take part in Kerner’s legacy and future under the visionary direction of Eric Edmeades and his executive team. It’s an honor to be heading up Kerner’s international expansion of their brain-trust,” says Leboe.
“Kerner, like Pixar, is a spin-off of George Lucas’ Industrial Light & Magic and has a long history of ground breaking visual effects and camera technologies.” said Edmeades, “This hails in a new spirit of innovation, collaboration, and leadership to the company.”
About Us: About Kerner: www.Kerner.com
Kerner, previously part of George Lucas' Industrial Light and Magic, is an innovative provider of visual effects and 3D technologies. Kerner is headquartered in San Rafael and operates from the same property the team has been in since working on the STAR WARS, INDIANA JONES and many other blockbuster films.
Trademarks: Kerner, Kerner Studios, Kerner Labs, Kernersoft, Kernervision, Kernercam are all trademarks of the Kerner companies.
Next Batman Movie to be Fully Shot in IMAX?
(comingsoon.net0
The THIRD chapter of Christopher Nolan's Caped Crusader's saga could very well be FULLY shot in IMAX, not IMAX Digital - but the beautiful, stunning IMAX that we saw pieces of THE DARK KNIGHT in.
Part of the reason that Nolan went forward with INCEPTION first - besides taking a creative break from the cape and cowl adventures... was possibly to create a few new IMAX cameras made to his specs. Once again - the cost of shooting an entire feature film on IMAX... the stock, the time it takes to reset, to load, to move the cameras.
Shyamalan Flick to Flee Philly
Pennsylvania's budget impasse even has the Devil heading for the hills.
The upcoming thriller by M. Night Shyamalan is moving production from Philadelphia north to Toronto.
Officials with the state film office say that's because of uncertainty about whether Pennsylvania's film tax credit will be approved in the budget.
The budget has been in limbo for nearly two months.
Shyamalan lives near the Philadelphia suburb of Malvern and has filmed eight of his nine movies in the region, including The Sixth Sense, starring Bruce Willis.
G.I. Joe: Rising to a New Level of Techno VFX
(vfxworld.com)
"There are a handful of things about the film, at least for me, that are unique and provided personal challenge," the overall visual effects supervisor suggests. "One was the Typhoon aircraft, which is the bladeless helicopter that uses vertical takeoff and landing technology. One of the things we wanted to do, in addition to giving it that advanced technology aspect, was to give it some flight characteristics that would make you feel like it's an advanced tactical fighter. Not like a spaceship, but something that would obey the laws of physics. So, one of my fun challenges was defining the animation style for this craft to make it do some really tricky stuff with gravity."
A more crucial challenge for Shermis, however, was designing and executing an elaborate chase through Paris, in which the Joes use special accelerator suits to help thwart the metal-eating Nanomites from disintegrating The Eiffel Tower and all of Paris along with it. In fact, the previs for the sequence not only helped greenlight the Stephen Sommers-directed movie, but also offered the explosive centerpiece.
"Stephen Sommers said, 'I've got this idea where these guys wear exo-skeletal suits and they have a chase here in the streets of Paris trying to knock down The Eiffel Tower.' And that was literally about all the direction I got and I had the opportunity to create something from scratch and design an entire sequence and then execute the whole thing almost entirely the way it was done.
"So we took a lot of this advanced technology and applied it in a cinematic way that gave us a very elaborate and choreographed chase through Paris. There was the challenge of animating human characters and making them feel and act human while also accelerating them. So you had to walk that fine line by having them run 40 miles an hour and not looking stupid. That 10-minute roller coaster ride is just out there."
Shermis turned to Digital Domain, which handled the accelerator suit, the recreation of The Eiffel Tower and the CG cars and the destruction that occurs during the heart-pounding sequence.
"So we were given the task of recreating, I would say, the centerpiece of the movie," explains Bryan Grill, Digital Domain's visual effects supervisor. "It was definitely a mish mash of very big practical effects and a lot of CG augmentation and then full CG shots. It ran the gamut from removing pipe bombs, which would lift cars up, to completely having CG cars get blown up and thrown across the sky. We shot mostly at the Downey soundstage and then went to Prague [at the Czech Republic's Barrandov Studios] for two-and-a-half months. It was pretty intense. We call it raining cars, while the Joes are in their accelerator suits trying to jump through all of these obstacles in their way. It's kind of like a mine field in Paris."
Full Press: http://www.vfxworld.com/?
Wolfman Schizophrenia: Makeup Effects vs CGI
(obsessedwithfilm.com)
There was the several release date set-backs which adds up to nearly two years now since "The Wolfman" was originally intended to debut on our screens. Can you believe the cast of this film were promoting the movie at Comic Con 2008, when back then it was positioned to be a showcase for man-made effects over computer CGI? Oh how times have changed. A whole year of CGI post-production re-edits has resulted in an entirely different picture, one that isn’t the modern day remake of a classic many of us hoped for.
The good news is, it’s not a disaster. Far from it but it does have it’s problems. The main one being what I mentioned above, which has now resulted in a film that blends the work of special effects legend Rick Baker and the CGI monster, but both of which look entirely like different creatures. Sometimes the hairball is CGI, and not particularly convincing Van Helsing/The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen mould CGI and then sometimes it’s clearly Benicio Del Toro, or his stunt double in make-up. The result is two radically different Wolf Man’s, which is so frustrating because they don’t do anything to hide this fact.
Infact they almost try and promote the two different faces. There’s two close-up’s of The Wolf Man in this trailer, one in CGI and one make-up. What on Earth are they thinking?
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