Worth a mention - 10/10/11

For VFX Artists, A Cautionary Tale of Unpaid Wages

(variety.com) Chris Winters thought he'd landed a sweet gig when he went to work last November for a startup visual effects and production company in Michigan, Maxsar Digital Studios.

He'd grown up in the Wolverine State, and the new job was close to his parents' home. "I was excited about it," he says. "It seemed too good to be true -- and it was too good to be true."

In less than a year, Winters and at least a half-dozen other artists were chasing a producer for $50,000 in unpaid wages, while Maxsar Digital was forced to close. Production incentive programs can lure legitimate productions and bring a lot of money into the state. But they can also attracts bottom-feeders who can tap into the state's allotted funds. The Maxsar tale occurred at the same time that a shift in state government meant a sudden lack of support for the program, followed by a crash in the filming industry in the state.

The Michigan experience stands as a cautionary tale for anyone involved in incentives. States need to be aware that not every film company will be able to deliver on all its expectations. And film companies, their employees and local businesses need to be aware that politics is a volatile area, and a shift in administrations can mean a drastic shift for everyone involved.

Winters, along with as many as 15 other freelance vfx artists, went to work for Maxsar Digital on a sci-fier called "Scar 23," produced by Philippe Martinez, who was CEO of Maxsar, though Maxsar wasn't the production company on the pic. The new Maxsar artists didn't know Martinez, but they soon learned that the French-born exec had served jail time in France after investors complained to authorities about his former company, Ulysse, which had been forced into receivership in Los Angeles.

Martinez's business dealings in 2006-2007 with helmer Amy Heckerling and filmmaker David Ayer on separate projects left both complaining publicly that Martinez was trying to renegotiate terms of already-completed deals or deliver less support for their films than he'd promised.

After winning rights to Ayer's "Harsh Times" with a $4 million bid, Martinez later asked him to slash the price by $1 million. In a 2008 Entertainment Weekly interview, Heckerling alleged that Martinez botched deals for "I Could Never Be Your Woman" by signing away DVD rights, killing its chances for theatrical release and relegating it to the straight-to-DVD bin.

At first, production seemed to be going as planned on "Scar 23," and one supervisor told the team that Maxsar planned to ramp up its slate with more films each year for the next several years. But by early 2011, the company began to fall behind in paying many of its freelance artists.

When the artists began asking what was happening, says Winters, "we were told a lot of things. They kept saying that they were going to find more investors and that we would get our money, so when they asked me to keep working even though I wasn't being paid, I did it."

They were also told that Maxsar could be affected because newly elected Gov. Rick Snyder, a Republican, said shortly after taking office he believed the film incentives program in Michigan needed to be changed or abolished. Maxsar general counsel Franklin Walker (who is among those still owed money by the company) says "I told (the vfx artists) we would pay them, but that we were having problems because of investors being scared off by the governor's statements about the incentives program."

The Michigan Film Office, however, says that since "Scar 23" had been approved for the incentives program in 2010, it would be grandfathered in, regardless of what the new governor or state legislature did in 2011.

Potential investors were brought into the Maxsar facility to view vfx work on "Scar 23," according to editor Nick Hoban, a former Maxsar staffer who was paid in full for his work there. Hoban believes the failure to attract more investment wasn't just a matter of worries about the incentive program.

"They were constantly rewriting the script for 'Scar 23' and asking the vfx artists for ideas about how to fix the problems in the script," Hoban says. "It was not a good story, so I don't think the incentives would have made a difference either way."

But since Snyder began moving to eliminate the Michigan film credit and replace it with a grant program capped at $25 million, the entire film industry there has cratered.

"I was working on 'Avengers' earlier this year, and the minute the governor started talking about changing the incentives program, they pulled out of Michigan and went to Cleveland," says David Rumble, a Michigan-based location manager. "So I've spent the last seven months in Ohio along with a lot of other Michigan crew people who had to follow the work."

Rumble thinks Michigan's film business collapsed as soon as Snyder began his anti-incentives statements. With fierce competition from neighboring states like Ohio, it was all too easy for producers to find financially greener pastures nearby. Michigan also recently lost "Iron Man 3" to a more attractive incentives program in North Carolina.

"It's the big productions that fill up hotels, restaurants and hire a lot of local crew and then pay them union day rates," says Rumble. "Little films will always cut corners and try to pay you less."

The Michigan Film Office admits there's less film production this year than in 2010, but emphasizes it is still able to approve incentives for 21 projects.

Of the lost "Iron Man 3" deal, the film office says, "We put a competitive offer on the table to Marvel and Disney, and they, like every project, had to make a business decision."

Michigan's incentive program has a dim future at best. As of now, SB 569 -- the legislation that would introduce a cap of $25 million and spell out how that money would be awarded -- sits in committee in the state legislature. Since it hasn't moved, the Michigan Film Office decided on Sept. 30 that it will no longer take incentive applications for fiscal year 2012.

Maxsar workers were made well aware that incentives played a part in the company's financial crisis. Moreover, even as the studio was falling weeks behind paying its freelancers in early 2011, management started to tell the vfx artists that they needed to complete certain parts of the vfx for "Scar 23" quickly. According to several artists interviewed for this story, supervisors said they needed the shots for an audit by the Michigan Film Office. The audit, they said, would show that Maxsar was doing the work that would qualify them for 2010 incentives funds.

However, Michigan's film office says it doesn't examine the vfx on a project during any kind of audit. The Film Office and the Dept. of Treasury only perform an audit in order to determine the actual amount spent in the state during a production, since that number is used to calculate the size of the incentive check a production will receive.

Maxsar shuttered in April, leaving "Scar 23" unfinished and some of its freelancers, including at least six digital artists, unpaid for as much as three weeks' work. Some tried to contact Walker or Martinez to find out if there were any plans to pay them. Some artists managed to get through and were promised they would get their money. Others found themselves dialing disconnected phone numbers.

Vfx artist Adam Skutt says he was told by Martinez in July that the producer was about to cut a deal for a different project, and that if the deal went through, some of the funds would be used to pay him the more than $4,000 he was owed. After that phone call, he never heard from the producer again, and Martinez has since stopped taking his calls, he says. Skutt never received his payment.

Still others were told that once "Scar 23" passed through its incentive audit, Martinez would settle all debts for Maxsar. Walker, who confirms that the artists' claims are legitimate, says there are records of all Maxsar's outstanding debts, including contact information for all creditors, including the artists. None of the vfx artists interviewed for this story say they had heard from Maxsar or had been asked for their current contact information.

"If anything, it seems like they've been avoiding us, because a phone number for Franklin (Walker) was changed and then I couldn't get in contact with him," says Winters, who has been working with an attorney to try to get the $9,000 still due him.

The incentive check for "Scar 23" could go a long way toward settling those debts. Though the Michigan Film Office can't comment on specific aspects of the audit for the project, they confirmed "Scar 23" was approved for the incentives program and that their audit is in progress. The office also stated that if the film qualifies for the entire amount specified in its original paperwork, an incentive check for $4.28 million could be issued, although neither Maxsar nor Martinez would be the recipient. Instead, payment would be made to a company called Teddy 23, registered in Michigan with Luc Campeau listed as "resident agent."

While it may seem strange, it is possible to receive an incentive check on a project that has not been completed. For this to happen, though, the producer must demonstrate through an audit that the money for the project has been spent in Michigan. Also, projects must be pre-approved for the incentives program, and before they begin work, they must usually show a concrete plan for completion and distribution. However, any wages paid out to those who are still owed money will not be eligible for the incentive program since those wages will have been paid after the final incentive paperwork has been filed.

Having helped complete Maxsar's "audit" footage at a breakneck pace, Joan DiSalvo, a vfx producer who is owed more than $5,000 by Maxsar, says, "In the end, I couldn't get any answers about payment, so now I'm pursuing options through the (Michigan) Dept. of Labor." Hiring an attorney would eat up too much of what DiSalvo is owed, she says, and a small-claims court victory would mean little, since Maxsar is no longer in business.

Adds Winters: "These amounts, $3,000 or $5,000, might sound small, but when you're freelance, it's a lot of money. People forget we still have to buy health insurance on our own, which costs a huge amount when you don't buy it as part of a company, and you also have to save for the times when you're out of work."

Variety reached Martinez by phone via his office at Bauer Martinez Studios in Florida. When asked about the money he still owed the "Scar 23," crew, he became upset.

"I spent a lot of money in Michigan, and I don't want to talk about it anymore," Martinez said in late August. "We're going to pay them in September, I think. I'm tired, and if you want to write a story about $50,000, then go ahead."

Then he hung up. Walker followed up about 30 minutes later to answer questions on his client's behalf, contributing much of the information for this story. In their last conversations with Variety, both Martinez and Walker confirmed that money was still owed to people who had worked on "Scar 23."

In the meantime, Winters and the others can only wait and hope for payment.

"I'd like to think it will happen," says Winters. "But we've been told so many things at so many different points that I'm not sure what to believe anymore."

As of Oct. 6, Adam Skutt, Chris Winters and Joan DiSalvo had not been paid.




Real Steel is the Worldwide Champ This Weekend

(Box Office Mojo) The ComingSoon.net Box Office Report has been updated with studio estimates for the weekend. Click here for the full box office estimates of the top 12 films and then check back on Monday for the final figures based on actual box office.

DreamWorks Pictures' Real Steel opened in first place at both the domestic and international box office this weekend. Domestically, the Shawn Levy-directed action drama earned an estimated $27.3 million from 3,440 theaters, an average of $4,729 per location. Internationally, the Hugh Jackman-starrer added $22.1 million from 19 markets for a worldwide total of $49.4 million after one weekend. The film, distributed by Disney, cost about $110 million to make.




Rebooted RoboCop And ED-209 To Be Redesigned

(latinoreview.com) José Padilha Talks Redesign Of RoboCop And ED-209 Now that director José Padilha has established himself further as a more than competent director with 'Elite Squad 2,' it's safe to look forward to his take on 'RoboCop.' It doesn't look to be shaping up as one of those cases in which some random hack gets a chance to horribly mess with your nostalgia.

The director has already addressed casting rumors, if he has used anything from Darren Aronofsky's script, and one of the filming locations. Speaking with Crave Online, Padilha added a couple of things to the list. He's asked if he wants to redesign RoboCop and the thorn in the character's side, the ED-209. At first Padilha acts like he's pulling a Christopher Nolan, but ends up essentially confirming a redesign for the both of them -- that is unless he's using Paul Verhoeven's script. He said:

"That I can’t tell otherwise I’m going to give the movie away. We are already doing that, working on the designs so I do already know stuff. Listen, the design has to match the script. You don’t design something out of the blue. You design something that makes sense inside the dramatic universe that you are exploring. So that’s what we’re doing."




Real Steel: CGI Indistinguishable From the Practical Robots

(digitalgypsy.com) Oh my goodness.. It's been about two months or so since I last did a big update, and several things have been happening on my front in the digital world.. After the wrap of Real Steel, which officially was near the beginning of summer, we had been working on some marketing stills and sequences for the show which you may have seen here and there. Finally it's out! I've been working on the film since July 2010, so this has been a pretty long road to finally see this film in the theaters. We had a cast and crew screening last week, and it was good! Mind you, I'm a little biased and jaded since I worked on it, but if you have a son in the right age range, they will love this film, and they'll want a robot of their own.

Since the movie is now out, I can kind of talk about the sequences I was responsible for! Some of you may have read in the past that this was my first official lead compositing position at Digital Domain. I was a comp lead with three other compers, with two comp supervisors over us. I had a number of compositors under me, close to ten, working for the sequences I was in charge with, and we had a blast, the sequences came together pretty flawlessly. The big set sequences I was primarily responsible for include; the bull and Ambush fight in the beginning, the Metal Valley junk scrap sequence, the Metro fight in the zoo, and pick up shots of Atom as he works his way through various robots at underground venues. Overall, I had to manage about 130-140 shots. In the near future, I'm sure you'll hear about some of the techniques we used to create the visual effects on the film.

One of the amazing parts of the film, after seeing it twice, is that our hero robot, Atom, is indistinguishable from the practical robot they built for the film.. After working with Atom and Ambush on certain sequences, and then seeing them in the final product, it was just way cool to see how animatronics and visual effects just blended together, and you almost forget that what you see before you is all built in the machine. Pretty much all the robots are hard to tell from their practical counterparts in the ring, and I'm curious to see if any review site out there can distinguish between the two!




List Of Special Effects Companies For Marvel's The Avengers; WETA Also Joins

(comicbookmovie.com) Joss Whedon and Marvel's comic book adaptation The Avengers is currently in post-production stages. While there was a report that Industrial Light & Magic will be doing VFX, another big company will work on some major scenes...

The Avengers, directed by Joss Whedon, finished shooting early this month. Now, the film is in big post-production stages where companies are working on visual effects. It was previosly reported that Industrial Light & Magic will be doing VFX, but now it seems that WETA Digital has joined ILM to make the film's effects even better. Below is a list of the special effects companies, some of the movies they've worked on, including who've worked on practical effects and previsualization. Also, I heard that WETA may work on visual effects for The Hulk or the mysterious aliens that'll appear in the movie. So, if it's true, it will look amazing.

VFX:
WETA DIGITAL:

- X-Men: First Class

- Avatar

- District 9

- King Kong

- Lord of the Rings - Trilogy



INDUSTRIAL LIGHT & MAGIC:

- Transformers - Trilogy

- Iron Man

- Star Trek (2009)

- Pirates of the Caribbean - Trilogy

- Super 8



LUMA PICTURES:

- Captain America: The First Avenger

- X-Men: First Class

- Thor

- Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

- The Green Hornet




LIVE ACTION SUIT & PRACTICAL EFFECTS:
LEGACY EFFECTS:

- Thor

- Iron Man

- Iron Man 2

- Cowboys & Aliens

- Avatar



PREVISUALIZATION:
THE THIRD FLOOR:

- X-Men: First Class

- Thor

- Let Me In

- Star Trek (2009)

- War of the Worlds


There you go. There could be more companies working on, but for now this is it. Seeing all that above, I think we can expect some cool stuff in the film.

Starring Robert Downey, Jr., Chris Hemsworth, Tom Hiddleston, Chris Evans, Mark Ruffalo, Samuel L. Jackson, Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner and Cobie Smulders, The Avengers is set to hit theatres on May 4, 2012!




How Pixar Gave Steve Jobs His Mojo Back

(thedailybeast.com) Computers didn’t make Steve Jobs a billionaire—toys did.

On Nov. 22, 1995, Toy Story—the world’s first fully computer-animated film—opened to critical acclaim and $29 million in box-office receipts. One week later, Pixar, the studio that created the movie and that many had written off just months before, went public. It was the biggest IPO of the year and meant a billion-dollar windfall for Jobs.

More than that, it gave Jobs back his mojo.

A decade earlier, he had been ousted from Apple. Wounded and restless, he paid $5 million to filmmaker George Lucas for the rights to his small but intriguing animation division and put up another $5 million for capital. Jobs took a 70 percent stake. The new company was called Pixar—and it would take another nine years before it came into its own, in the process reconfirming Jobs’s genius and turning the prince of Silicon Valley into a Hollywood hero.

While most of Jobs’s products and businesses—Apple and the Macintosh; NeXT Inc.; the iPod, iPhone, and iPad—bore their father’s DNA, Pixar was always different. Like Jobs himself, Pixar was adopted; he bought the company when it was seven years old, when its own culture had already begun to jell. Over the years, Jobs would infuse Pixar with many qualities, but the company was never quite his, culturally, making his influence there a sort of nature-vs.-nurture case study of what it means to be a Steve Jobs project.
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Though Pixar and Apple were were different animals entirely—the former was “Hawaiian shirts and hugs,” the latter “minimalism and screaming”—Jobs ultimately created a billion-dollar company., Louie Psihoyos / Corbis

Pixar was born in 1979 as Graphics Group, a division of Lucasfilm, after Lucas sensed the potential of 3-D computer animation and lured several of the new medium’s visionaries from the New York Institute of Technology. In Lucas, the group found a colorful but patient sponsor, one who prepared them well for the arrival of Jobs in 1986.

Full article: http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2011/10/09/how-pixar-gave-steve-jobs-his-mojo-back.html




In Los Angeles, Scaled-Back Plan for Film Museum

(nytimes.com) LOS ANGELES — The movies may finally get their museum, but it won’t be as flashy as originally planned.

Scaling back a proposal to build a landmark building in this city’s Hollywood district, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences said on Tuesday night that it would join with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art to develop a museum of the movies that may inhabit part of that art museum’s existing complex in the mid-Wilshire area.

In a joint statement the Academy and the county museum described a plan to negotiate contracts and begin fund-raising to open the museum in Lacma West, a former department store that currently houses office space and occasional exhibitions.

They did not disclose the expected cost of the new museum, or the amount of the Academy’s expected contribution. But on Wednesday, Tom Sherak, the Academy’s president; Dawn Hudson, its chief executive; and Michael Govan, the art museum’s chief executive, described a site that would require much less than the anticipated $400 million cost of the Hollywood project, though it would have more exhibition space.

“It’s actually bigger,” Mr. Sherak said of a museum that will be housed in a 300,000-square-foot space that a May Company department store once occupied.

The new museum could be open in three to five years, if negotiations and fund-raising remain on track, he said.

The new plan follows the collapse of an ambitious effort by the Academy, which has about 6,000 members drawn from Hollywood’s professional ranks, to build a huge, free-standing museum as a showcase for the history and craftsmanship of film. That structure was to have been adjoined to its existing Mary Pickford Center for Motion Picture Study, where the Academy preserves and stores film prints, on Vine Street, near Sunset Boulevard.

In 2007 the Academy hired the French architect Christian de Portzamparc, a winner of the Pritzker Architecture Prize, to design a grandiose center that was described by some Academy officials as being comparable in scope to the Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles, designed by Frank Gehry. Like the Disney Hall, the museum was intended to help revive the neighborhood in which it would have been nested.

But that plan fell apart, as a long writers strike in 2007 and then the 2008 financial crisis diminished fund-raising prospects. And the pullback left the Academy holding several blocks of land that have been estimated to cost $45 million, though much of that value was almost immediately lost in the real estate downturn.

Under the arrangement agreed to on Tuesday, the county museum will lease space and provide guidance for the movie museum, but the Academy will own and control the project and will establish an endowment for its support.

“I think everybody realizes that the great art of the 20th century is film,” Mr. Govan said of his institution’s interest in becoming associated with a museum that reaches beyond the fine arts into popular culture. Recently the Los Angeles County Museum of Art has hosted an exhibition of artwork by the film director Tim Burton, and, he said, will build an exhibition around the work of another director, Stanley Kubrick, next year.

Ms. Hudson said the proposed museum would include newly gathered collections and material drawn from 42,000 movie posters and 10 million movie photographs that are mostly locked away in the Academy’s archives.

As of June 30, 2010, the Academy’s last published annual report showed that it had about $258.6 million in net assets and investments of about $187 million.

Almost all of the group’s income comes from its Oscar show that takes in about $80 million annually and in recent years has cost about $33 million to produce. Structured as a nonprofit, the Academy finances various archives and a library devoted to the movie world, and it has scattered grants among film festivals and education programs.

But it has long been building a nest egg, much of which was earmarked years ago for the development of a museum that has been intended as a focal point of not just Hollywood culture but also world film.




Puppeteers, CG Meet to Create 'Real Steel' Robots

LOS ANGELES--Big-budget sci-fi movies and computer-generated visual-effects are inseparable and probably will be for years to come. That doesn't mean there isn't still something magical about using engineering and craftsmanship to make lifelike, "in the flesh" versions of the other-worldly or futuristic characters these movies bring us onscreen.

That's part of the reason director Shawn Levy decided to build huge, gadget-rich "puppet" versions of the boxing robots from the new Hugh Jackman action movie "Real Steel," which opened in theaters yesterday. The Dreamworks film takes place in the near future when human fighters have been replaced by mechanized pugilists.

There are plenty of CG shots of the automaton ring warriors training and going at it round by round. But Levy had Legacy Effects construct working "real life" versions of the creatures via animatronics to interact with Jackson and the other actors on-set.

During a recent press event for the flick, Levy said he was amazed at how well the robots worked and how easily his cast rubbed elbows with them.

Legacy Effects built 24 robot puppet in total, including versions of the main "stars" Atom, Noisy Boy, and Ambush. According to Legacy's statistics, each puppet contained more than 350 individual machine parts, making for a final creation that weighed more than 250 pounds. Each limb joint could be adjusted to let operators take control of the bots with puppet articulation rods. Legacy used digital design and sculpting software in house to turn around all of final creations in four months.
"It's hard to believe, but the truth is when you're in the presence of these robots and they're moving, you think of them as real."
--Shawn Levy, "Real Steel" director

"We had remarkably few mishaps," Levy said. "These robots and the puppeteers who operate with their remote controls were incredibly reliable. We had one scary moment early on in the first work where Ambush was fighting that bull in the opening of the movie. He was standing on the lift gate, and in the middle of the take, I guess his hydraulics system went haywire and his chin started lowering and it lowered all the way down as such that he crushed his own collarbone. And his chin got stuck in his chest plate, and it was scary."

"It's hard to believe, but the truth is when you're in the presence of these robots and they're moving, you think of them as real," Levy continued. "To see [Ambush] kind of destroy himself was a little sad. So we had a 25-minute break and we fixed him right up. And from that moment on, we did not have any mishaps. I'm very, very thrilled with the results of going practical with the effects, which is a rarity increasingly."

Levy said he wanted to build working versions of the robots so his cast could have more to play to than a green screen.

"If you're asking [actors] to fake it with a tennis ball, that's tough," he said. "But if you're asking an actor to play a scene with a real 8.5-foot-tall robot, you get something different altogether. And so you get an acting reality and also you get a visual reality. I just think there's a difference. And I knew that I wanted the movie because the premise is so kind of out there. I actually wanted the aesthetics and the style of the movie to be quite realistic."

CG obviously rendered the faster, action-packed robot sequences requiring more movement. The Legacy team also used computers to "touch up" the puppet sequences with some additional detailing, enhancements, and animated damage.




Special Effects Artists Return For Potter Studio Tour

(monstersandcritics.com) London - Student wizard Harry Potter and his best friend Ron Weasley accidentally land their flying car in the Whomping Willow, whose flailing branches thrash the vintage 1960s rust bucket.

No fewer than 15 cars were used and demolished in the filming of this scene from Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets - although the audiences did not know this, of course.

The movie was the second of eight in the record-breaking Potter series, based on the novels by British author JK Rowling.

Many Harry Potter fans believe that scenes such as the one involving the Whomping Willow were the product of computer-generated imagery.

Yet that was rarely the case, as fans will be able to find out when the Warner Brothers film studios, just north of London, open for tours in spring 2012.

This is where the Harry Potter series was shot. Two giant stages contain original sets, costumes and props.

'The entire studio was full of Harry Potter for 10 years,' says Michael Finney, the US designer of the tour.

Finney, whose previous work includes the lighting design for a Star Trek tour in Las Vegas, marvels at how much of the Potter sets have been preserved.

'Film sets are normally thrown away quickly to make room in the studios for new ones,' he said. 'But these remained here for 10 years. That is quite unusual.'

Warner Brothers has built replica stage sets next to the original ones for the tour, which the Hollywood studio anticipates will be one of London's top new attractions in summer 2012, when the city hosts the Olympic Games.

Meanwhile, the studio is renovating the original sets - which are damaged beyond use - even patching holes in the roof that sometimes let in rain or snow during the Harry Potter shoots.

'The point is that people see how the set looked during filming,' Finney says.

Many of the Potter movies' original designers, costume makers and special effects people have returned to set up the tour.

One of them is John Richardson, who was also responsible for special effects in nine James Bond movies. He later worked on the Harry Potter sets, creating countless special effects with the help of up to 40 people.

Many of the effects were more mechanical than one might expect in the era of computer simulation.

'We built everything from scratch,' Richardson says, pointing to a magical door with a serpent lock, a cart for a trip into the vaults of the goblin-run Gringotts Wizarding Bank, and abundant screws and tools.

'People always think, 'That was definitely done on a computer!' But it's not true.'

Richardson is building a replica of the Weasley family kitchen, so that tour participants can perform a bit of magic themselves.

At the push of a button, a pot washes itself, needles begin to knit as though guided by invisible hands, and a knife hacks automatically on a cutting board.

The tour will also include the complicated technique of broomstick riding, which developed into a phenomenon of its own during the Potter series.

Visitors who walk through the Great Hall at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry will also see scaffolding on the outside - a reminder that it is only a film set.

They will become acquainted with all the intricate details in the office of Hogwarts' headmaster, Professor Dumbledore. But when they turn around, the illusion vanishes as they realize the room has no back wall and is full of technical equipment.

This, Finney says, will make the tour interesting not only for Potter fans, but for anyone who would like to learn more about film techniques in general.

Daniel Radcliffe played Harry Potter in all eight films, starting when he was 11 years old. It is not yet clear whether he will be on hand for the opening of the tour.

When the filming came to an end last year, Radcliffe said he would miss it, describing the Potter set as 'such a magical place to grow up.'




"The Thing" Reunion Screening, October 13th

(dreadcentral.co) So you're stoked for the prequel to The Thing, which comes out on October 14. Of course you are; who wouldn't be? Another tango with a hideous intergalactic horror…Hell yeah, I'm in. But to make the dish even sweeter, Creature Features has the perfect appetizer for those of you in the Hollywood area.

On Thursday, October 13, Creature Features will present John Carpenter's 1982 version of The Thing, complete with special guests and displays. I can't think of a better way to get into the mood for the new film. Read on for the details.

From the Press Release
Mayday…mayday…can anyone hear me?…We found something in the ice…

In 1982 director John Carpenter unleashed a motion picture that shocked audiences and set new standards in terror and special effects. Now, nearly 30 years later, Creature Features proudly presents an unprecedented reunion screening of The Thing at the Arclight Cinema in Hollywood on Thursday, October 13th, at 7:30pm.

This special event showcases Carpenter’s vision in its vivid, widescreen glory for one last big-screen viewing before Universal Pictures premieres its chilling new prequel the following day.

Admission includes:
Cast and crew members recount their personal insights and recollections with host Drew McWeeny of Hitfix.com. Confirmed guests include producer David Foster, matte photographer Bill Taylor, renowned movie poster artist Drew Struzan, who will be displaying his original one-sheet artwork from The Thing, and many more to be announced.

A spectacular display of original props, production artwork and memorabilia from both the 1951 version and the 1982 remake, gathered exclusively for this event.

Commemorative program book created especially for this event with photos and commentary…and much more!

Tickets are $20 per person and are available exclusively through creaturefeatures.com via Ticketbud. Seating is limited so reserve your seat now!




Popular Mechanics Names James Cameron Most Innovative Leader of 2011

(mnn.com) James Cameron, director of "Avatar" and "Titanic," was among the winners of the seventh annual Breakthrough Awards announced this week by Popular Mechanics magazine. The awards recognize innovators and innovative products that "dramatically advanced the fields of technology, medicine, space exploration, automotive design, environmental engineering and more."

Cameron received this year's Leadership Award for the revolutionary CGI and 3-D techniques he helped develop for his films, and well as the part he played building a new class of submersibles to help explore the deepest reaches of the Earth's oceans. "Exploring is, in many ways, my first love," Cameron told the magazine.

Cameron's 3-D cameras did more than just shoot the movie "Avatar": they will also be used on NASA's next Mars rover. The team from the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory that developed the previous rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, received this year's Mechanical Lifetime Achievement Award.

"From off-the-shelf blood vessels to a cellphone tower the size of a Rubik’s Cube, our Breakthrough Award winners not only capture the imagination, but hold the potential to improve and save lives," Popular Mechanics Editor-in-Chief James B. Meigs said in a prepared statement.

Other winners include the team that developed the Hybrid X electric car; Paul Edmiston, who developed a method of cleaning toxic water, including waste from natural gas fracking sites; the software development kit that allows hacking of the Microsoft Kinect; The Square iPhone credit-card readers; and Ford Motors' inflatable rear seat belts.

An awards ceremony will honor the Breakthrough Award winners next week. The November issue of Popular Mechanics (available Oct. 11) will include detailed descriptions of all of the winners' associated projects.

This year's other winning innovators and innovative products include:

Take a look: http://www.mnn.com/green-tech/research-innovations/stories/popular-mechanics-names-james-cameron-most-innovative-leader




Happy Birthday Guillermo del Toro

(theonering.net) Guillermo del Toro was born October 9, in Guadalajara Jalisco, Mexico. He dreamed of being a filmmaker and went on to create a formidable catalog of movies that includes Cronos (1993), The Devil’s Backbone(2001), two Hellboy films (2004 and 2008) and Pan’s Labyrinth (2006). He is a co-writer of the two forthcoming films based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit. He also became part of TheOneRing.net community so we wish our friend and the talented director, producer, writer a happy birthday and many happy returns!