Worth a mention - 11/30/11

"John Carter" To Have More Digital Animation Than A Pixar Film

(denofgeek.com) On Monday, we shared our thoughts on the 20-minute preview we caught of John Carter, Disney’s forthcoming sci-fi fantasy based on the books by Edgar Rice Burroughs. What we saw left us clamouring to see the finished movie, but we were similarly impressed at just how passionate and forthright its director Andrew Stanton was in the fifteen-minute question and answer session that followed.

Hosted by film critic James King, it was among the most entertaining Q&As we’ve ever had the fortune to sit through, with Stanton talking openly about the process of shooting John Carter, its 3D, what it’s like to make a movie in Hollywood, and most intriguingly, why Pixar’s method of making films should be more widely adopted…

The film’s out in March, and I understand you’re well into post-production now, so what have you got left to do?

I’ve got three or four weeks of visual effects left, and then half the movie’s scored, so I score the other half next week, and then it’s just mix, mix, mix all through December.

And then there’s the 3D element as well…

The 3D element will be in the can a couple of weeks after that, more or less.

We all know you as a Pixar legend, as someone who’s had incredible success with animation. Looking at that footage, there are obviously so many challenges. Was it a different experience from animation?

Yes and no. It was way more similar than I expected it to be. Except for the heat outside. That was the huge difference, the sheer physicality of it. I knew that it would be spontaneous, which is the opposite of animation, but that was part of the thrill. But the whole decision making process, it’s all about what’s going to be on that rectangle on the screen, and that, I feel, is no different. You’re just planning what you’re going to do, even if the terminology’s different, or whatever.

To be fair, it was like making two movies – it was making a live-action movie, through most of 2010, and ever since then until here, it’s been making an animated movie, and putting those halves together. There are more shots in here that are digitally animated than there are in a Pixar movie – it’s just this huge thing. It really is like making two movies in tandem and putting them together.




Martin Scorsese Warns Against the Rise of FX-Laden “Theme-Park Films”

(radiotimes.com) Director Martin Scorsese says effects-laden blockbusters have “taken away serious film-going and serious film consideration.”

"We have to react against the theme park film, as well made as they are, and as enjoyable as some of them are," he told the BBC.

Scorsese is best known for gritty crime dramas such as Mean Streets, Goodfellas and Gangs of New York but his latest movie is animated family film Hugo, the director’s first foray into 3D.

The film’s royal premiere on Monday was attended by the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall, as well as actors including Sir Ben Kingsley.

Kingsley said he understood Scorsese’s worries about the continued rise of "popcorn" films. "I think there's a reaction against these movies," he said.

"There are six or seven myths around which all our literature is based. I think there is an anxiety amongst certain film-makers that the thread that connects what we do to these ancient, life-affirming myths is going to snap.

"Once that disconnect happens, the film is drifting. It's just a series of noises and effects."




George Miller Might Make a Whole New ‘Mad Max’ Trilogy

(slashfilm.com) The expanding universe of Mad Max keeps on expanding. There was a point a couple years ago when it was surprising to learn that series creator/director George Miller had written a new Mad Max movie and would be bringing it to screens. That project, Mad Max: Fury Road, is set to star Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron and will hopefully shoot sometime in the first half of 2012.

Shortly after we learned of the existence of Fury Road, we found that it was actually the first of two new films, with the second potentially called Mad Max: Furiosa. And now Miller says that he’s actually got three scripts. So if Fury Road ever gets off the ground, we might end up with a whole new Mad Max trilogy.

In a deep and excellent interview with the Financial Times, in which Miller talks about the financial prospects of his Australian studio space, and the possibility of making a Mad Max video game with L.A. Noire studio Team Bondi, there is this detail about the Mad Max series:

We started with [Fury Road], but we then started to do a second story and a third. We’ve written the script for the second and almost finished the third. We never intended to, they were part of the exploration of the characters.

There aren’t any details on the second and third scripts, but one has to assume that a great deal will depend upon the financial fortunes of Fury Road. That movie is slated to shoot in Namibia next April, after rains and a subsequent explosion of decidedly non-post-apocalyptic foliage in planned Australian locations delayed the shoot.

Miller says,

We were out at Broken Hill with a huge number of massive vehicles – they were built and parked for almost a year there. Some of them are back here, in secret locations not far from here. A full?Australian crew picks up and goes there to shoot the desert scenes, and comes back here to?do other scenes, then all the post-production and digital work is done here.

And producer Doug Mitchell calls the budget of Fury Road ‘massive.’ He elaborates,

If it’s above $100 million it’s a big budget. This is a bigger budget. People have speculated around $200 million [which] I’d neither deny nor confirm. It’s a massive film.

Finally, in the wake of Happy Feet 2 (which has underperformed, which hopefully won’t put too much additional pressure on the budget of Fury Road) Miller is working on another animated film, this time featuring bears. The movie is called Fur Brigade, and Miller calls it “the most ambitious thing we’ve done.”




"Batman 3" IMAX Prologue Goes 70mm Film Only

Paul Franklin dropped new,important Batman 3 first 6 minute viewing info. Recently,director Christopher Nolan’s VFX guy Paul Franklin hopped on Twitter to reveal new details about the recently announced 6 minute prologue for the Dark Knight Rises next month because,apparently,you just can’t see it in any theater.

He wrote, “The Dark Knight Rises IMAX prologue will be released on Dec 21st with M:14,but only in theaters with a proper film projector,no digital!” So, you guys will have to head to an IMAX theater that has a 70mm,15-perf screen to check this thing out. Actually, the prologue is going to be released,here, in the United States on December 16th. That 21st date is for the worldwide release.

We’ll also be seeing the first,full,movie trailer on December 16th with the showing of “Sherlock Holmes 2: Game of Shadows.” So,mark your calenders because I imagine that will be a big weekend,or week,whatever day that lands on. Follow us on Facebook by Clicking Here.




Q&A: How Digital Effects Gave 'The Muppets' New Freedom

(pcworld.com) Rest assured, Muppet purists: You won't see any computer-generated Kermits, Gonzos, or Fozzies in The Muppets, which opened in theaters last week. Every time the Muppets appear on screen in the movie, they're the real deal: fuzz, felt, and fur creatures given their voices, movements, and expressions by human puppeteers.

But you also won't see any visual evidence of those puppeteers in the film, despite the fact that some scenes required several puppeteers to be in full view of the camera. This is where the film's extensive visual effects make their mark.

For the most part, the Muppets appear as autonomous, stand-alone beings in the film, free of their strings, rods, wires, and puppeteer operators. Unlike most effects-heavy movies, The Muppets uses most of its digital trickery to conceal what's actually there instead of adding things to the scene.

To get a behind-the-scenes look at what was involved in giving the Muppets their on-screen autonomy, I spoke with Max Ivins, visual effects supervisor for Look Effects, whose team worked on hundreds of scenes in the film.

PCWorld: When working on the digital effects for The Muppets, did you feel a lot of pressure to make the effects conform to viewers' expectations and to the legacy of the show and the previous films?

Max Ivins: I didn't feel a lot of added pressure. At the beginning of the project, when we were talking about doing the effects for the movie, I was like, "Really? What are we going to do? Put legs on them? Are we doing CG Muppets? I don't get it." But that's not what they wanted to do.

The biggest factor, in terms of what we were used for, was to give the puppeteers more freedom to do the puppeteering. There were a lot of characters shot on a blue stage with blue props, and puppeteers dressed head-to-toe in blue standing behind the puppets. We removed the puppeteers later, so it gave the puppeteers a lot more freedom in that they didn't have to hide from the camera to do everything.

[Click to enlarge] How Digital Effects Gave 'The Muppets' New FreedomAnd the best thing about the movie is that it's about the Muppets--it's not about these spectacular effects. In a way, our job was to make it seem as if we were never present. There was sort of a conscious effort to remove the digital look from things. All of it needed to feel tangible, even if it was obviously not "real." It's a puppet. But they didn't want it to seem as if there was an extraordinary leap in technology, even though we definitely used that.

PCW: Did the digital-effects team have to follow any sort of rules as to what you could and could not do to enhance some of the things the Muppets were doing? For example, adding digital effects to their eye movements or expressions or anything like that?

[Click to enlarge] How Digital Effects Gave 'The Muppets' New FreedomIvins: We didn't do any expressions or change any of the puppeteering. There was one shot involving a reflection in a mirror, and they shot the action from a camera that was just off to the side of the mirror. In that scene, the mirror wasn't as distorted as they wanted--it was like a fun-house mirror. So we took the reverse angle and put [the character] into that and ended up changing the eye line to make it work as a reflection. That was the sole thing we ever did to any Muppet's face.

Otherwise, it was pretty much just rod removal--the only times we ever retouched any of the Muppets was to take out a rod that was in front of them. We didn't add any limbs or arms. If we did use something to repair where a rod had been or anything, we just took the actual photography of that limb or whatever, and cloned it over into the right place.

We didn't really go back and reference any of the movies--we referenced more the television shows, following what the director gave us as a reference. That was mostly about reproducing the "arches" shot, which was the opening for the TV show.

Full article with pics: http://www.pcworld.com/article/244984/qanda_how_digital_effects_gave_the_muppets_new_freedom.html




"Amazing Spider-Man" Lizard Concept Art

(darkhorizons.com) Yesterday there was a lot of buzz via photos of a Pez dispenser mock-up that seemed to show the design of Rhys Ifans' post-transformed The Lizard, the villain in the upcoming "The Amazing Spider-Man" reboot.

Today however comes something much clearer - what is said to be leaked concept art of what the character could look like from Spidermedia.Ru (via Coming Soon). The art looks like the character did in the Comic-Con clip, though the scale is a little different.

Take a look: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v497/spidermedia/MOVIE_news/lizard3.jpg




"Ouija" Scares Up Rewrites

(darkhorizons.com) "Fright Night" scribe Marti Noxon has been hired to work on the script for Hasbro and Platinum Dunes' "Ouija" film adaptation reports Heat Vision.

Despite Universal Pictures dropping out back in August, the "Jumanji"-esque family fantasy tentpole adaptation of the board game remains active at the production company. Noxon, who got her start working on the "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" TV series, will do a new pass on the script which was last worked on by Simon Kinberg.




A ZBrush Christmas

(forums.cgsociety.org) Pixologic Announced that will release an update patch allowing users to take full advantage of the powerful features in Z4R2 as soon as possible, without having to wait until Z5 is released. A few extra goodies may also be included with that update.

ZBrush4 R2b is planned to be released in the second half of December 2011 as a free-of-charge upgrade to all registered users.




Contender – Visual Effects Supervisor Christopher Townsend, Captain America

(btlnews.com) In an era where costumed superhero properties are sought after by studios as franchises, their seamless transfer from four-color comics pages to the big screen is taken for granted in the digital era. Whether the crusader is from Marvel or DC’s line, or somewhere else, the costumes, explosions, supervillain gear, et al are all expected to be rendered with complete suspension-of-disbelief believability. So how is it in another year full of superhero offerings, Captain America managed to stand out?

In part, according to VFX supervisor Christopher Townsend – who’d worked on a Wolverine film in the X-Men franchise, and is currently supervising the third Iron Man installment – it’s because the production was treated as a “World War Two buddy film which happened to have a superhero in it.”

“It was a really fascinating project,” he continues, as much a period piece as anything else. And if those period pieces fit together particularly well – a walk through a World’s Fair, a chase through Brooklyn, a dangerous night flight in a military prop plane, and more, Townsend is quick to credit the other personnel and vendors he worked with.

He credits post-house The Senate with doing great work in converting parts of industrial Manchester (England) to a believable 40’s-era Brooklyn, Rick Heinrichs’ production design with help in converting so many facades for period use, Santa Monica-based Lola FX for the head replacement and body shrinking that allows Chris Evans’ “Captain” to morph from the proverbial Charles Atlas-esque “weakling” to the inevitably hail n’ buff superdude he becomes, Double Negative for their CG environments, and Framestore for the look of uber-Nazi Red Skull.

He also credits prosthetic deisgner David White, for the look of Hugo Weaving’s villain, but notes that much of the “skull” was also done in Photoshop, as a “manipulated image,” to make it even “more scary.” The prosthetic was the base off which the digits riffed, as it were, to give the character an even more other-worldly look, the face being “altered in nearly every shot.”

Lola also helped with the Red Skull work, as well as a the aforementioned night flight, wherein the Captain, gal pal Peggy Carter, and the Howard Hughes-like Howard Stark, take a Stark plane over the Swiss Alps, to Red Skull’s lair, which was shot on a greenscreen gimbal, and later finished with as many period artillery explosions harrying the plane, as research and time would allow.

One of his biggest challenges, understandably, was coordinating everyone – including director Joe Johnston. Most everything came in QT files (though there were DPX’s and other formats as well), which was in turn managed using cineSync. Townsend describes it as a “tool of choice,” especially as it “allows you to interact on screen.”

There were additional vendors in San Francisco, Australia, and other places. But Townsend found himself mostly in L.A., posting and reviewing work on the Avid as it came in.

Speaking of the year in effects in general, Townsend recently commented that “when the visual effects become the main event, and really the sole reason to go and see a movie, the work itself has to be outstanding so audiences still care about what it is they are looking at.”

How much better then, for a project like Captain America, where the effects can take a back seat to the story, and the period in which in it takes place.




The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1 Surpasses $500M Worldwide

(Summit Entertainment) The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1 has grossed $508 million in global box office in only 12 days since the film's release on November 18, 2011.

Summit's Co-Chairmen Rob Friedman and Patrick Wachsberger stated: "We couldn't be more pleased with the success of this film and a franchise that the fans have continued to support over the past several years. Thank you to all involved with the films from the actors, filmmakers and Stephenie Meyer to the most important group of all, the global fan base that continues to drive a desire for more Edward, Jacob and Bella."

In addition to the film's success on a global basis, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1 also reached an additional milestone domestically, having generated $223 million and putting it in the top 12 films to reach $220 million in 10 days.

The next chapter in The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2 will come to theatres on November 16, 2012. Academy Award® winner Bill Condon directed both the first and second part of the two-part finale starring Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner. The project, based on the fourth novel in author Stephenie Meyer's "Twilight" series, was written by Melissa Rosenberg with Wyck Godfrey, Karen Rosenfelt and Stephenie Meyer producing.




Why Robots Will Never be Replaced With CGI

(bostonfilmstudent.com) We’ve all been wondering what would become of the modern day robots, we see the theories in movies all the time.

With robots that can walk, dance, play tennis, and vacuum the floor, we’re not far off from the world in which Hollywood portrays everyday.

And it seems every day, the movies create monsters, beings, and robots with the help of real life robots.

Personally as a filmmaker, I prefer a physical creature in front of the camera in real time, than perhaps pulling a James Cameron, and digitally enhancing everything.

Avatar was a film that marked the death of anamatronics. In which mechanical puppets were used to create living beings on the screen before us.

With films like Alien, The Thing, Jurassic Park, King Kong, Iron Man, Terminator, Gremlins, it seems that some of the better movies have always had a magical physical presence to a CGI being.

John Carpenters ‘Thing’ and even the new film both used the technique of physical machines to create the horrifying monsters in the film. The new film even goes as far to create a hybrid technique of CGI and physical puppetry to create the monsters.

Scientists have even found ways to create machines that express emotion, which have been used in films frequently throughout the years. Now, with mo-cap rooms, the little white dots on the faces of actors can easily be tracked and placed onto a new animated body.

Many filmmakers and actors that often express their love for a physical object to react to, makes me question the value that CGI has.

I think we must look back to the time before CGI and what made the films with puppets and animatronics so fluid and real.

And with the technology of creating robots that can work and react independently on their own, who knows what could become of the next revolution in special effects wizardry.




Old Republic a Win for George Lucas, Not EA

(mcvuk.com) Well, if nothing else EA can at least take this as proof that Activision is nervous about Star Wars: The Old Republic.

EA’s upcoming Star Wars: The Old Republic is seen by some as the first real contender to World of Warcraft’s subscription MMO crown. Not that Bobby Kotick agrees.

In fact, the Activision Blizzard chief executive devoted a fair amount of his Reuters Media Summit talk yesterday to attacking his big corporate rival, and in particular its new MMO.

"[George] Lucas is going to be the principal beneficiary of the success of Star Wars," Kotick stated. "We've been in business with Lucas for a long time and the economics will always accrue to the benefit of Lucas, so I don't really understand how the economics work for Electronic Arts.

"If you look at the history of the people investing in an MMO and achieving success, it's a small number."

EA has previously stated that it needs just 500k subscribers for the game to turn a profit – a claim questioned by analysts, who estimate that EA has spent upwards of $100m on developing the title.

They also believe the game will attract at least 2m players, with some even suggesting that it could steal 1m players from World of Warcraft.

Indeed, EA has predicted that the game could enjoy a lifespan of ten years on the market.

That’s not a uniform opinion, though. Bigpoint CEO Heiko Hubertz told LGC earlier this month that he didn’t think Old Republic would ever be profitable.

Another obstacle may be EA’s decision to stick with the subscription model for the game. This comes at a time when nearly every other major MMO – though notably not WoW – has switched to the free-to-play model, leading to big success for some.




Bryan Singer to Direct, Executive Produce Munsters Reboot

(The Hollywood Reporter) Bryan Singer ("X-Men" films, Superman Returns) will direct and executive produce a reimagining of 1960s sitcom "The Munsters" at NBC from "Pushing Daisies" creator Bryan Fuller, says The Hollywood Reporter.

The project is "billed as an imaginative reinvention of the classic comedy series as a visually spectacular one-hour drama."

Singer will executive produce alongside Bryan Fuller ("Dead Like Me," "Pushing Daisies"), who also is writing the Universal Television-produced project.

Fuller and NBC make an attempt at the project last year, but the network passed. This newer version is said to be "an edgier and slightly darker take exploring origins of Herman and Lily Munster (originally played by Fred Gwynne and Yvonne De Carlo) and how they arrived at the famed 1313 Mockingbird Lane address."

The original series ran from 1964 to 1966 on CBS.

Singer's new movie, Jack the Giant Killer, is scheduled to hit theaters on June 15, 2012.




Tron and On

(tgdaily.com) Having recently revisited Tron, I was very surprised by how much I still enjoyed it, because there's nothing worse than when a childhood favorite doesn't hold up in your adult years. 



I didn't even realize Tron was a flop until years after the fact. For a kid who spent his whole summer at the movies and at the video arcade, it was a perfect blend of video game fun, and blockbuster thrills. Other movies have tried to bring the thrill of video games to the big screen, and Tron was the only movie that actually succeeded at doing it.
Tron and on
I was also surprised at how well the special effects held up, and Tron was state of the art for the time.

Harrison Ellenshaw was the visual effects artist of the film, and as he told me, "Tron was the first extensive use of computer graphics in a motion picture, almost fifteen minutes worth. Up until that time, it was maybe up to a minute at most in Westworld." 



The fact that the effects were done in nine months was "an insane accomplishment," Ellenshaw continues. "80% of the rotoscoping, ink and paint was done overseas in a four month period. Just sending half a million animation cells to Taiwan and back and not losing anything was a monumental task!"

Right before the film's release on July 8, 1982, Disney thought it had the next Star Wars, so how could a movie that was right on the cutting edge like this lose? Not to mention 1982 was an insane summer for genre films with E.T., Star Trek II, The Road Warrior, Poltergeist, The Thing, and Blade Runner.

Tron creator Steve Lisberg felt, "Graphically and visually a lot of people can't handle that much art. It was like we put LSD in the punchbowl at the school prom, and it was just way more than they could handle. I thought Tron was gonna blow people's minds, but people don't want their minds blown by Disney, they want to be reassured by them. And the idea that Disney was gonna mess with your head was almost incomprehensible to the vast majority."

Ellenshaw also felt, "The effects overwhelmed the story. Once you got inside the computer, you didn't get back into the outside world until the very end. You never saw what the real world was doing while these guys were inside the computer trying to save the earth. I think that made the film less relatable to a lot of people." 

According to the book Disney War, the company, who has always been notoriously cheap, wouldn't put up more bucks for the advertising campaign, thinking word of mouth would carry the film. (It didn't.

Of course, Tron's current following is strong enough that the film warranted a sequel last year. Back in the day, Tron was a major pioneer in digital effects, even inspiring John Lassater of Pixar to dive headfirst into computer animation. 

"I'm more pleased with what's happened with the film now," Lisberger says. "It's had this life, and now I don't think it's ever going away."




Ang Lee Wanted Hulk to Look Like Tree of Life

(nymag.comz) At last night's Gotham Awards, Ang Lee confessed to Vulture that he still needs to catch up on this year's movies, but he just watched Terrence Malick's metaphysical epic The Tree of Life. "Most of it blew me away," he said, although he confessed to a little bit of professional envy over the film's trippy special-effects interlude connecting the main story, set in the fifties, with the birth of the universe. "I had those thoughts in The Hulk, about the macro/micro stuff," said Lee, referring to his experimental 2003 comic book flick. "There are some locations [in Tree of Life] I even scouted before, so I see a lot of the elements I was thinking about in The Hulk. Some I put in, some I didn't. The non-drama part of Tree of Life was stuff I was thinking about when I was doing The Hulk. So I've been there. That's why that part didn't take my breath away, because I'd been thinking about similar things. I like to be surprised."

Next up for Lee is his adaptation of Yann Martel's Life of Pi, which he just completed principal photography on; still, don't expect to see it for another year. "It's a mixture of live action and animation," he told us. "Takes a long time to shoot, takes a long time to get it off the ground, takes a long time to write a script, scout, prep, and then it will take a year to finish the post-production, so it's a long project."





-H “The 'Lord of the Rings' films are not made for Oscars, they are made for the audience.” -Peter Jackson