electra73’s Neighborhood

      There was spectulation in September that Marvel was considering 3D, but MarketSaw has reported that they have a credible source explaining that the film will definitely NOT be in 3D.
"Jim here. Got some rather bad news for S3D fans out there. I have it from a very good source (one very much in the know) that IRON MAN 2 will NOT be made in stereoscopic 3D. It was being considered back in September of this year.

I am VERY disappointed to say the least as I thought the *FIRST* one should have been made in S3D - let alone the second. I think Marvel is wasting a valuable opportunity to get this done and of course they are leaving a lot of money on the box office table by not doing it as well.

I am digging for more info on this but from what I can tell you - it is a no go for 3D. I do know that IRON MAN 2 is not the ONLY property that Marvel is considering for S3D! More when I get it."

To tell you the truth, I am very glad this film is not in 3D. I feel it is just a an annoying gimmick for the studios to make more money. I really hope they don't try this with none of the Upcoming films, Thor, Captain America, and specially not The Avengers. And I truly hope Marvel doesn't add the 3D because of the third installment of Iron Man. Great News.





Lucas' Red Tests

(movies.ign.com)              So George Lucas' Tuskegee Airmen film Red Tails has finished shooting, and now word has it that the man himself is considering using consumer-level DSLR digital cameras for pick-up shoots on the project. And not just that, but the oft-mentioned Star Wars live-action TV series is apparently also under consideration for use with the groundbreaking technology.

Slash Film noticed this tidbit on DSLR blogger Philip Bloom's site, and while it's all a bit techie sounding, this does give us an idea of where Lucas wants to go with his future projects. Bloom explains how he shot some test footage on Lucas' ranch for Lucasfilm's producer Rick McCallum and head of post-production Mike Blanchard.

"I had, at this point, never seen my work projected on a really good projector before so this was going to be a real test of the cameras," says Bloom. "Rick and Mike wanted to see how well the footage held up on the big screen. They had shot some stuff and weren't happy with what they were getting. … I was nervous. Never having seen my work on a big screen as good as this, but also George Lucas came in to watch and also the legendary sound designer Ben Burtt. My heart was racing. I watched as the edit played and they loved it."

The post by Bloom is also interesting because it offers a glimpse into the world of the Hollywood elite. It turns out that while staying at the ranch, Bloom got to sleep in the "Federico Fellini apartment" -- which is the bed Clint Eastwood always stays in. And then guys like Quentin Tarantino apparently just drop by from time to time.

"Then Quentin Tarantino came in as he was due to talk at a screening of Inglorious Basterds and George said to Quentin, come see this," he continues. "Quentin waxed lyrical, calling it Epic and William Wyleresque and was shocked it was shot on a DSLR. He had no idea you could shoot HD video on them or they were so good."

The bottom line: "Mike and Rick were over the moon. They didn't know how well these cameras would hold up on the big screen and it passed with flying colours. Lots of swear words of incredulity were used!"

As Bloom notes, Lucasfilm has always been at the forefront of digital technology, and Lucas and McCallum are obviously seeing the potential that theses cameras are offering. The pick-ups planned for Red Tails next year will mostly be "intimate in cockpit stuff and flying shots," which the DSLRs will be perfect for because of their size and ease of use.

"They were also looking at new ways to shoot the much anticipated Star Wars live-action TV series," Bloom adds. So, you know, there's that too.

Source:     http://movies.ign.com/articles/105/1056838p1.html





Using ZBrush in Avatar

(vizworld.com)              “Patton” on the ZBrushCentral forums has posted some early concept work from Avatar showcasing some of the early modeling and design work that went into the project 3 years ago using ZBrush.

    I started working on Avatar 3 years ago and was working with Zbrush 2 ( that means no subtools!!) I had to work on a fairly slow laptop so that I could work directly with Jim Cameron on the mocap stage.

    I was really green as a 3D artist but jumped in with both feet, after all this time I still really love the stuff we produced at Stan Winston Studio / Legacy effects.

    I was part of the group of artists that Designed the Na’vi characters I was responsible for working out Jake (Sam Worthington) and Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) Digital sculpts with expressions as a proof of concept for the look of the Na’vi people. I also did the designs for Norm (Joel Moore) as well as the Grace ( Sigourney Weaver}.

Source:            http://www.vizworld.com/2009/12/zbrush-avatar/





Is PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN 4 About to be Anchored?

New Disney chairman Rich Ross has made an immediate impact on his company’s future film production slate since taking on the job two months ago.

He quickly made the high profile cancellation of McG’s 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea (a big budget tentpole for them) and after the big flop that was Old Dogs recently – caused much embarrassment to those involved by killing off the Wild Hogs sequel (from the same director and John Travolta) and actor Robin Williams’ farce comedy Wedding Banned.

Ross, a guy I might quickly begin to like at Disney, is clearly not afraid to flex his muscles and cancel productions with the wrong talent on board or films that don’t make sense either creatively or financially.

So with a couple of high profile executions recently, what do we make of three possibly connected developments that have taken place over the past month or so, which could effect a MASSIVE tentpole at Disney.

1) Johnny Depp signs on to make the sexy spy thriller The Tourist with Angelina Jolie next March, right when he should be filming Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides.

2) This week, Terry Gilliam states that Depp has now suddenly found time in his packed schedule to shoot the time-traveling character role in his recently resurrected The Man From Don Quixote.

3) Nine director Rob Marshall starts to sound a bit iffy/iffy towards Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, a movie whose filming start date seems to have been pushed back two months without any kind of announcement and is now looking a little less like a movie that will definitely set in stone happen.

Here’s what Marshall said…

    We’re still trying to figure out if it’s going to all happen. If it happens–I think Johnny’s doing a movie with Angelina Jolie in the spring [The Tourist] — so if it happens, we’ll start in the summer, and we’ll see. I’m excited. If it happens, it happens. I’d be thrilled. I just love Johnny and I’m excited about the genre.

There’s an awful lot of “if’s” now appearing for a film that sure sounded like it “would” be happening a little while back.

Has the Disney terminator Rich Ross struck again – or am I looking for a story when there isn’t really one to find?

You tell me. Depp is sure packing his 2010 schedule though… and Ross seems to be a results guy and Nine doesn’t seem to be all that. So… well, again, you tell me.




Avatar At The House Yoda Built

(nbcbayarea.com)               As you've already heard, the special effects in Avatar are flat out eye-poppingly awesome.  So it should be no surprise that, to track down how they were put onto the big screen, we went to Industrial Light and Magic, the house Yoda built.

Set back in San Francisco's quiet Presidio, ILM is legendary for its movie effects, from Star Wars, to Pirates of the Caribbean, and now to Avatar.  John Knoll, who has an Oscar on his mantel thanks to Pirates, sat down to talk with us about how his team put the jaw-dropping effects onto the big screen, and what it's like to work with mercurial director James Cameron.

Put it this way, Knoll says with Cameron, "You know exactly where you need to go, it's just a matter of getting there."  Unlike many directors, who come to ILM with humility and a lot of questions, Cameron came with a map, and a long to-do list.  Money, obviously, was no object.  "This was really diving in," Knoll says.  "With both feet."

Some $300 million later, Avatar is hauling in good reviews, big money ($3.5 million in the early Friday hours), and lots of Oscar buzz.  Unlike most "effects" movies, that feature three or four scenes to strut their stuff, Avatar creates a whole different world. And you're immersed into it.  It's 3D, but not with swords flying out of the screen at you; this is an entire 3D world we haven't seen in a movie before.

The guess here is that, as people line up to see it over the next few weeks, Hollywood will have taken a turn:  A new kind of special effects movie, that will likely change the way films are made in the future.  Much like Cameron's last big-budget blockbuster, Titanic.  Which, you may remember, cleaned up at Oscar time.

And how does it feel to have created this buzz?  Says Knoll, "I have to see other people's reactions.  It's rewarding to see what they think."  He should prepare for a lot of rewards.





3D "Captain EO" Returning to Disneyland

Michael Jackson's Captain EO, the 17-minute film made exclusively for Disney's Theme Parks, is returning for a limited engagement to Disneyland in California in February 2010. It was announced on December 18 that this revolutionary 3-D film, which cost an estimated $30 million to make, would finally be shown to audiences again after a 12-year absence.

Although it is billed as a 3-D film, Captain EO is really a 4-D film, utilizing not only spectacular 3-D effects requiring the viewer to where 3-D glasses, but also external in-theater effects including lasers shot over audience members' heads and effects such as smoke and stars coming out of the ceiling and walls. According to Wikipedia, at the time it was the most expensive film ever produced on a per-minute basis, averaging out at $1.76 million per minute.

The film was directed by Francis Ford Coppola and executive produced by George Lucas. The film stars Michael Jackson as Captain EO, the leader of an alien spaceship crew. Captain EO and his crew face destruction from the evil "Supreme Leader" played by Angelica Huston. The film, which could be considered a music video, features two Jackson songs, "Another Part of Me" which later appeared on the Bad album, and "We Are Here to Change the World", which finally appeared on the 2004 compilation, Michael Jackson: The Ultimate Collection.

The film premiered at Walt Disney World's Epcot Center in Orlando, Florida on September 12, 1986. It debuted six days later at Disneyland and ran continuously through April 1997. Captain EO played in the 500-seat Magic Eye Theater in Disneyland's Tomorrowland. To celebrate the premiere at Disneyland, the park remained open for 36 hours continually and attendees received a souvenier t-shirt. Captain EO was also shown at Disney Parks in Japan and France.

Disneyland reports that “Honey I Shrunk The Audience” will be closing sometime in the next few weeks to make way for Captain EO’s return.





Hawkman Movie Soon Taking Flight?

(screenrant.com)              The guys over at Collider picked up on a story yesterday that was first floated by Pajiba, regarding DC/WB possibly moving ahead with a Hawkman movie. I don’t really have all that much trust in Pajiba, but Collider’s report at least warrants us discussing the subject. Good guys over there.

Apparently, since the formation of DC Entertainment earlier this fall, the DCE/WB squad has been working hard on trying to catch up to Marvel in the super hero movie game (makes sense). This is pretty much the point of DCE – streamlining creative properties into profitable multimedia franchises – and reportedly, they are striving to make it happen, including getting some of their second-tier heroes (Hawkman) developed into Iron Man success stories.
     

Producers like Joel Silver and Akiva Goldman – who have been working with superhero properties for awhile – are being name-dropped as the sort of big guns who will make some of these DCE/WB projects into big screen realities. A few movies that have already gained traction are The Green Lantern, The Flash, Shazam! and the upcoming adaptation of Lobo. Well, Hawkman is now rumored to be on deck for a movie makeover.

Of course, a Hawkman movie is one of those things that’s been talked about by both fans and Hollywood players alike for…ever, maybe. Well before comic book movies blew up during the “oughties,” most of us were already having those discussions about seeing our favorite DC superhero(es) on the big screen. “Wouldn’t a ‘Hawkman’ movie be awesome?” was definitely part of the conversation at one point or another.





TyRuben Ellingson Designs Vehicles for 'Avatar'

(urbanacitizen.com)            ST. CLOUD, Minn. (AP) - St. Cloud native TyRuben Ellingson is no stranger to working at the forefront of pioneering film technology.

After working as virtual effects art director on the Steven Spielberg-directed "Jurassic Park," a film featuring pace-setting computer generated imagery, Ellingson thought he'd never work on a film like it again.

Then, film producer John Landau called him in to be a concept designer and lead vehicle designer for James Cameron's "Avatar" starring Sigourney Weaver, Michelle Rodriguez, Sam Worthington and Stephen Lang.

"I remember looking at ('Jurassic Park') and thinking, 'This is going to freak everyone in the world out,'" Ellingson recalled. "When I got involved in 'Avatar,' it started to feel the same way. It started to feel like what Jim was proposing was so huge and so out of control and so dynamic, it started to make me think, 'Whoa.' This is going to make an impact on culture."

"Avatar" is the first narrative film from Cameron since 1997's "Titanic," a film that racked up 11 Academy Awards and a record $1.8 billion worldwide at the box office.

"Avatar" was a grand idea in Cameron's mind before "Titanic," but the technology of the time wasn't ready. He waited a decade before starting production on his action-adventure, interstellar love story.

What puts the film on the cutting edge is the way it mixes live action and computer animation to create an eye-popping, vivid alien world.

"It's going to be so memorable and so relevant to conversations for the next six months to a year," Ellingson said shortly before the film opened. "But I'm going to say something very risky. I think two weeks after the movie comes out, people are going to stop talking about it in terms of the technology, visual effects and CGI. I don't think that's where the heart of the movie lies."

More:    http://www.urbanacitizen.com/main.asp?SectionID=21&SubSectionID=126&ArticleID=152661





A Cross Between 'Shrek' And 'Lord Of The Rings'?

(splashpage.mtv.com)              "Sherlock Holmes" producer Dan Lin is currently hard at work on a very different but no less enigmatic film project — none other than the adaptation of cartoonist Jeff Smith's "Bone."

Details on the comic book film have been fairly scarce, though Smith has previously said that he's happy with the project's progress so far. But Lin, who is producing "Bone," had more detailed comments to offer when speaking with Collider about the film. Specifically, Lin said that he and the "Bone" crew are striving for a tone that mixes the best elements of "Shrek" and "Lord of the Rings" together.

"It really looks like a mix of Shrek as far as the three Bone characters and their comedy, their Looney Tunes of Marx Brothers comedy set in a Lord of the Rings world," said Lin. "I mean, the best way tonally again is Shrek meets Lord of the Rings. Very fantastical but between the Bone characters just a lot of comedy."

Lin revealed that Australian writer Justin Monjo is working on the film's screenplay, while Animalogic — the folks behind "Happy Feet" and Zack Snyder's upcoming "Guardians of Ga'Hoole" — is responsible for the animation and visual effects on "Bone." There's also hope that a director could be hired as soon as January.

"We've met with several directors and we hope to come to a director decision by January and Jeff Smith has been very intricately involved in the development process with us," said Lin. "I'm thinking in first quarter of next year you'll hear who's the director of Bone and that'll give you a sense of where we're going."

The producer said that "Bone" is aiming for a rating of either PG or PG-13, and that the current dilemma facing the production is exactly how much of Smith's original work should be adapted for the first film.

"If anything, right now we're discussing how many books should be in the first movie and if we do things right hopefully there'll be multiple movies to tell," said Lin. "But right now there's a discussion of do we use the first 3 books? Do we use the first 4 books of Bone? That's the discussion but the source material is all from Jeff's books."





USC's Unique Facial Screening Technology Lauded in Avatar

(uscnews.usc.edu)               Paul Debevec, associate director for graphics research at USC’s Institute for Creative Technologies, research assistant professor Abhijeet Ghosh and postdoctoral researcher Wan-Chun Ma have been recognized with film credits for their work using the institute’s facial screening technology in Avatar.

Working with the visual effects artists at the New Zealand-based company Weta Digital, the institute’s graphics laboratory scanned the faces of many of the film’s principal cast members using Light Stage 5, the latest geometry and appearance capture system. This innovative technology, housed at the institute’s Marina del Rey campus, captures the shape, shine, color and texture of an actor’s face down to the level of each fine pore and wrinkle.

The detailed scans were used by Weta Digital during its process of creating the film’s photorealistic digital humans and creatures, which are being lauded as a groundbreaking achievement in the evolution of digital filmmaking.

Avatar joins a growing list of movies that have used the Light Stage technology. Others include Spider-Man 2, Spider-Man 3, Superman Returns, King Kong, Hancock and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.





"Wolverine" Pirate Just A Patsy?

The FBI has accused the man who allegedly was first, or among the first, to upload a pirated copy of "X-Men Origins: Wolverine" that circulated online in April. What authorities have apparently yet to do is identify the original source of the leak.

On Wednesday, after Gilberto Sanchez was charged in New York with violating federal copyright laws by posting "Wolverine" to a file-sharing site a month before the film's theatrical release, he told reporters from The New York Daily News: "It's just ridiculous. I bought it from a Korean guy on the street for five bucks. Then I uploaded it. I didn't make any money."

In the months after the leak, "Wolverine" went on to gross $375 million worldwide, so it doesn't appear the pirated copy prevented the film from turning a profit. But 20th Century Fox, which produced the movie, argues the unauthorized version was watched about 14 million times online and no matter how one slices it, the leak cost the studio big money.

Full Press:             http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10420059-93.html

   Hoodwinked Too Gets Hoodwinked And Pushed Back It’s still hard to believe that Hoodwinked was successful. It had terrible animation that I could have made on my very first Acer PC, running Windows 98. The voice acting was awful, just a slew of big names who showed up to read lines. And the plot, while interesting, was executed sloppily. Despite all of this, the movie made millions and warranted a sequel. But it won’t be coming as soon as we thought.

According to the LA Times, The Weinstein Company has decided to push back the release of Hoodwinked Too: Hood Vs. Evil from its original January 15 release date to some time in February. A Weinstein executive cited their desire to push Youth in Revolt (coming out January 8) as well as the need to tweak some of the animation. There are also fast food tie-in deals that have yet to be closed.

The original film was released on January 15 and obviously did very well, so it’s hard to say how this move will affect the flick (it may have to go up against Shutter Island or Kevin Smith’s Cop Out). But really, is anyone waiting for this to come out anyway? While Hoodwinked was initially successful, it definitely doesn’t have half the staying power of a Pixar movie.





From 'The Jazz Singer' to 'Avatar': A Look at Historic Technological Movie Tricks

(jacksonville.com)                James Cameron's "Avatar" mixes live-action filming with an array of technological tricks: 3-D, motion capture, computer animation and green-screen technology, among them. It hasn't been cheap; the movie's budget is said to be at least $300 million. But early reviews have been largely positive, and many in Hollywood are hoping that "Avatar's" technological wonders can transform the movie industry at a time when it needs a jolt. Here's a look at other movies that popularized some technological advances in movie-making — some that stuck around, and some that didn't.

"The Jazz Singer" (1927) featured a few lines of actual people speaking, as Al Jolson uttered these famous lines: "Wait a minute, wait a minute. You ain't heard nothing yet." The talkies had arrived ...

"King Kong" (1933) couldn't have been told without stop-motion animation. It had been done for decades before, but legendary special-effects wiz Willis O'Brien, moving a King Kong puppet a tiny bit for each new frame of film, really wowed the masses.

"Becky Sharp" (1935), based on Thackery's novel, "Vanity Fair," is credited with being the first feature film shot entirely in Technicolor - though filmmakers had been experimenting with color techniques almost since the beginning. It was followed by hits such as "The Trail of the Lonesome Pine" (1936) and "The Adventures of Robin Hood" (1938). And though black-and-white dominated for years afterward, the new technology's promise was made clear in 1939, when Dorothy arrived in Oz in "The Wizard of Oz" and when Atlanta burned in "Gone With the Wind."

Disney's "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" (1937) was the first full-length animated feature, and it holds up just fine today.

"The Thief of Bagdad" (1940) won an Oscar for its many special effects, including the technique of shooting actors in front of a blue screen, then blending their images with other footage - allowing the fantasy film's fantastical images to come to life. The technology has been used by TV meteorologists and hundreds of films since.

"Bwana Devil" (1952), an African adventure yarn, kicked off a short-lived 3-D craze in the '50s. It's been used fitfully since then, most recently in "Avatar" and at last weekend's Dallas Cowboys football game (most fans didn't seem that thrilled with the images on the big stadium screens).

"The Robe" (1953) was a biblical epic that introduced audiences to widescreen Cinemascope, as movie execs tried to find a way to lure viewers away from tiny TVs.

"Scent of a Mystery" (1960) introduced audiences to Smell-O-Vision, in which scents were pumped into the auditiorium at the appropriate time. Audiences quickly said "No thanks."

"Tron" (1982) didn't do great at the box office, but it was the first feature to make wide use of computer-generated images - images that exist only digitally - as it took us along with a programmer who enters the world of his computer. A no-doubt flashier sequel is planned for next year.

Cameron's "Terminator 2: Judgment Day" (1989) really showed the potential for CGI, with its liquid-metal villain, the first main character to be created entirely digitally.

"Toy Story" (1995) was the first feature-length computer-animated film, so successful it pretty much pushed hand-drawn animation to the sideline (though it's mounting a comeback with "The Princess and the Frog").

"Star Wars: Episode II — Attack of the Clones" (2002) was the first major live-action feature to be shot entirely digitally, without film.

In "The Polar Express" (2004), Robert Zemeckis used motion-capture technology (in which actors' performances are digitally tinkered with) for an entire movie. He would do the same in "Beowulf" and this year's "A Christmas Carol."

Blu-ray 3D Standards Finalised

(darkhorizons.com)                The Blu-ray Disc Association has announced that a 3D Blu-ray specification standard has been finalized reports CNet.

Using the new MVC codec, an extension of the MPEG-4 AVC codec currently used by most Blu-ray discs, 3D films will require around 50% more space than their 2D counterparts while the discs should be backwards compatible with existing Blu-ray players.

To take advantage of it though it will require a 3D capable Blu-ray player, PS3 owners will get an operating system update that will make theirs 3D capable. However it will likely also require a new TV set capable of supporting stereoscopic 3D which may be a hitch as none have really hit the market yet, and there's simply not enough titles to take advantage of 3D capability.





Morpheus to Fight Predators

(ShockTillYouDrop.com)                 Laurence Fishburne ("CSI," "The Matrix" trilogy) has joined the cast of Robert Rodriguez's Predators, now filming in Austin, Texas under the direction of Nimrod Antal.

Fishburne is playing a character named Roland in the film. He joins a cast that includes Adrien Brody, Topher Grace, Danny Trejo, Walton Goggins and Alice Braga.

They play a disparate group of people who land on the Predator home planet only to discover "unspeakable horrors."

20th Century Fox is targeting a July 7, 2010 release for the film.




Stunning Demo Reel of VFX Impresses

(infoaddict.com)               Wow. Stargate Studios, founded in 1989, has worked created special effects for a ton of movies and television shows. They are now showing off their proprietary Virtual Backlot Library that offers real-time compositing. Compositing is a popular, cheap method of adding background to live-action via a traditional green screen, but Stargate has elevated the art to new heights, as is evidenced by this newly released demo reel. This is impressive work indeed.

Take a look:              http://www.infoaddict.com/stunning-demo-reel-of-green-screen-special-effects-impresses




Toy Story 3 to Get IMAX 3D Release

(IMAX Corporation)              IMAX Corporation and Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures today announced that Toy Story 3 will be released to IMAX 3D theatres simultaneously with its wide release on June 18, 2010. Toy Story 3 will be digitally re-mastered into the unparalleled image and sound quality of "The IMAX Experience" with proprietary IMAX DMR (Digital Re-mastering) technology.

Commenting on the announcement Bob Chapek, president, Distribution, The Walt Disney Studios, said, "We're very excited to once again unite Disney Digital 3D with The IMAX Experience, and to do it for the long-awaited release of 'Toy Story 3' is a real treat. A film like this is designed to take audiences on an exciting thrill-ride adventure, making it a perfect match for both 3D and IMAX."

"We have always envisioned the 'Toy Story' franchise as an ideal fit for 'The IMAX Experience' and we're very happy to finally turn that vision into a reality," said IMAX CEO Richard L. Gelfond. "This film also fits nicely into our 2010 lineup, ensuring that families will be able to start the summer holidays with a fun Disney release in IMAX."




2,400 Hours to Make 1 Second of Action

(nypost.com)                   Hundreds of of graphic artists linked up the world’s third-biggest computer setup and invented new camera systems to create the astonishing 3-D futuristic world of “Avatar,” James Cameron’s new sci-fi thriller.

With a whopping $489 million budget, the groundbreaking movie — the most expensive ever made and Cameron’s first since 1997’s “Titanic” — is meant to immerse audiences in high-tech imagery and ensure they leave the theater asking: “How did they do that?”

Cameron’s team hired WETA Digital, the same New Zealand company behind Gollum and other special effects in “The Lord of the Rings” films, to create the artificial yet realistic-looking images in “Avatar.”

“WETA Digital ended up having more than 800 employees just working on their effects,” said Jon Landau, Cameron’s co-producer.

Some of the film’s shots required 100 computer hours for each frame — or 2,400 hours of computing time for each second of film, figuring each second requires 24 frames.




Dan O'Bannon Dead at 63

(examiner.com)                    Some sad news from the world of film making yesterday. Screenwriter, director and actor Dan O'Bannon has passed on at age 63.

O'Bannon was responsible for some of the favorite sci-fi/horror myths of our generation. He wrote the screenplay for a little film called Alien, directed by Ridley Scott, (you may have heard of it), and worked on all the sequels. He was also responsible for The Return of the Living Dead, the amazing George Romero zombie satire, and he worked on the Total Recall script and created the B-17 sequence in Heavy Metal. Not only that, but he provided the screenplay and served as Special Effects Supervisor on the John Carpenter flick, Dark Star, and he worked on a film called Star Wars. You may have heard of that one, too.





When VFX Become 'Vomit Inducing'

(abcnews.go.com)          "Avatar" is one of the most expensive movies ever made. This year's most eagerly awaited release cost $237 million to make and another $150 million to market. One of its stars, Sigourney Weaver, described "Avatar" as "like 'Gone with the Wind' in space."
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The movie's special effects may bring some unpleasant side effects.

James Cameron's last opus was of course "Titanic," the highest-grossing movie of all time. Early reviews of Avatar were very positive, the film is being hailed by some as "The future of cinema."

The epic, which runs two hours and 41 minutes, premiered in London to wild applause. But some see Cameron as a vainglorious auteur and seek to puncture his perceived pretension. One anonymous critic claimed the ground-breaking 3D effects in "Avatar" are, I quote, "vomit inducing." Word quickly spread through the blogosphere.




Does Your Work Space Repulse Women?

(arstechnica.com)                New research suggests that a stereotypical programmer's workspace—Star Trek posters, empty Mountain Dew/beer cans and all, according to the article—may be a significant reason why more women are not entering into computer science disciplines and fields. While my formal training is as a chemical engineer, I have been programming since my parents enrolled me in computer camp when I was eight and didn't have many friends at home. In the intervening 23 years, I can probably count on one hand the number of times my computer workspace has been clean as opposed to looking like a bomb went off, but it has never looked like a sophomore male's dorm room... except my second year of college when I took all those computer science classes.

Where other STEM fields (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) are seeing the percentage of women enrolled increase, computer science is going through a decline. The study, published in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, finds that the feeling of ambient belonging—a sense of how well one feels they fit into a field—is not there for women in computer science. "When people think of computer science the image that immediately pops into many of their minds is of the computer geek surrounded by such things as computer games, science fiction memorabilia and junk food," said Sapna Cheryan, a University of Washington assistant professor of psychology.

The authors describe this feeling as one that is garnered on a first impression of a space. "You look at the objects and make an instant appraisal of how you would fit with the objects and the people who are typically found in that environment. You also make a judgment of 'I like it here' or 'I don't belong here,'" said Cheryan.

To assess such a feeling, the authors set up a series of four experiments that were designed to aid understanding of whether stereotypical surroundings may cause women to choose fields of study over computer science.

The participants, over 250 male and female students not enrolled in a computer science course of study, and were ushered into a classroom that was either filled with stereotypical computer science objects, or one with generic crap. They were told the room was being shared with another class, and after a few minutes were asked to fill out a questionnaire probing their feelings about the room.

The survey found that women's who sat in the stereotypically decorated room expressed less interest in computer science than those who sat in the control room. Men, on the other hand, did not show a similar drop in interest. This lead the researchers to conclude that choices of classes or even major can be influenced simply by the decor of the offices, classrooms, and labs that a department has.

In a continuation on the theme, the researchers conducted three similar experiments. When faced with the choice of joining one of two all-female teams, the only difference being the objects found in the team's workroom—stereotypical versus nonstereotypical—women overwhelmingly (82 percent of the time) choose to work with the team based in the nonstereotypically decorated room.

When men and women were asked about job offers at two companies who both had a 50/50 gender ratio, where one was decorated with the usual computer science gear and the other more generic stuff, both genders preferred the nonstereotypical setting, women more so than men. The final experiment probed thoughts about working at a nondescript Web design company; again, women would choose a work environment that was not decorated in the stereotypical computer science way.

The work does show a definitive trend of nontechnical people not liking work environments that have stuff a 17-year-old male would have hanging on the walls of his room. However, outside of the occasional computer science TAs office or undergraduate dorm room, I cannot see how this stereotypical setup seems very, well... stereotypical—especially in the latter of the three experimental setups. While my personal workspace may look like an utter mess, it is not the image that my company (or any I have visited, worked with, or interviewed at) as a whole projects themselves to potential hires and customers.

Judging simply from the image that accompanys this article, the brightly colored Star Trek poster and game boxes strongly draw one's eyes and attention—after all, it's what they were designed to do! I would be curious if the disparity in ambient belonging remains if even just these two focal objects were removed from the "stereotypical computer science" workspace. Technical books and papers are one thing, but a huge color poster and unrelated video games are not what I would consider to be present in any sort of professional environment (short of a movie studio, or game development office), nor what I would think appropriate for a general use classroom at a University.

Prior work has shown that kids and teens (and by extension, I'll wager college-aged young adults) don't actually feel that the common stereotypes are descriptive of people who work in STEM fields. While I will agree that certain aspects of technical fields can be off-putting to individuals who don't know the field—compounded by arrogant jerks who revel in their smug superiority over such unenlightened people—it has been shown that by and large, people are interested if someone gives them the time of day to answer questions.

Many STEM fields suffer from a chicken-and-egg type problem. A group that is not adequately represented in teaching or high-ranking positions is by definition not present to mentor new people from that group, hence perpetuating a cycle that is very hard to break. While cleaning up the first impressions that may be perceived by those outside or new to the field will help, it will not instantly resolve the underlying issues. As the cryand for more  competent technical individuals increases, however, every little bit of information that helps bring more people in is good.

  Out doing promotion for "Sherlock Holmes", British thesp Mark Strong ("Body of Lies," "Rocknrolla") tells Cinema Blend that most of his work on the upcoming "John Carter of Mars" film will not involve much CG.

"My character doesn't actually get involved in any of the motion-capture stuff. All the stuff is live action. Although I can shift my shape, so I have to be photographed by a 360-degree camera. I can adapt into anything. That's going to be my particular talent" says Strong who plays Matai Shang, the ruler of the Thems.

He adds that "there's some filming in Utah, but most of it is in a studio outside of London". Joining him are the likes of Taylor Kitsch, Lynn Collins, Willem Dafoe, Samantha Morton, Dominic West, Polly Walker, Thomas Haden Church and James Purefoy.

Andrew Stanton helms the project currently scheduled for a Summer 2012 release.





Roy Edward Disney Dies at 79

(forums.cgsociety.org)               In the 1980s after establishing financial independence, he paved the way for a new management team that brought back to life the art form that defined Walt Disney Co.
Roy E. Disney

Roy Edward Disney, seen in his Burbank office in 1985, was the billionaire nephew of entertainment icon Walt Disney. Roy E. Disney so closely resembled his uncle's physical appearance that when he made outings to Disney theme parks or was out promoting the company's animated films, people in public would ask him if he was Walt Disney's brother. (Los Angeles Times)


Roy Edward Disney, the nephew of Walt Disney whose commitment to his uncle's creative spirit prompted him to mount revolts that led to the unseating of two of the company's chief executives and a revival of the studio's legendary animation unit, died Wednesday. He was 79.

Disney, who had been battling stomach cancer, died at Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian in Newport Beach, according to Clifford A. Miller, a spokesman for Disney's company Shamrock Holdings.

Disney toiled for years in the shadow of his famous uncle and his father, Disney Studios co-founder Roy O. Disney, who ran the business side of the company for his brother. But the quiet scion would emerge as a forceful protector of Disney traditions when he believed that the company that bore the family name was headed in the wrong direction.

"People always underestimated Roy," Peter Schneider, the former president of Walt Disney Feature Animation, said recently. "You underestimate Roy at your peril, as many people have learned."





3D Computer Graphics Patents Deemed Invalid

(vizworld.com)              In a victory for software patent haters everywhere, a patent on “improving 3D computer graphics through provision of an improved method for performing visibility calculations” was recently overturned because it was considered related to calculations and algorithms, and therefore not patentable.

    Patents “directed to improving 3D computer graphics through provision of an improved method for performing visibility calculations” were invalid under In re Bilski, 545 F.3d 943 (Fed. Cir. 2008) (en banc), cert. granted, — U.S. —, 129 S.Ct. 2735 (2009) because they failed to claim patentable subject matter. “[Plaintiff] concedes that its patent claims are not transformative, but nevertheless argues that they are tied to a particular machine; to wit, a computer. . . . The claim language clearly states that these claims are drawn to mathematical calculations and algorithms for calculating whether certain surfaces are visible or invisible in 3D computer graphics. This is exemplified by the language of the claims, which specify a sequence of calculations that involve identifying,comparing,determining, and ignoring; data. Though the calculations may be performed on a computer, they are not tied to any particular computer. For these reasons, the claims of the [patents-in-suit] fail to pass muster under the Bilski machine implementation test for patentability under 35 U.S.C. § 101.”




Bryan Singer Will Direct X-Men: First Class!

(MySpace.com)            James Cameron's Avatar had its premiere in Los Angeles tonight, and MySpace had a television crew on-hand at the "blue carpet" to interview arrivals.

One of the people there was director Bryan Singer, who directed X-Men and X2: X-Men United for Avatar distributor 20th Century Fox at the start of the decade. In recent interviews, Singer has been asked about possibly directing the planned prequel X-Men: First Class, and he always seemed interested, but earlier this evening he let slip that he has in fact just signed the deal with Fox to direct the next "Origins" film, which will reportedly look at the early days of Cyclops, Jean Grey and others at the Xavier Institute for Higher Learning.

You can see for yourself what Bryan Singer told the interviewer about signing to do X-Men: First Class if you go to the Official MySpace site, click on "Next Slide" at the bottom left and then scroll forward to the 27-minute mark where he's asked about what he has coming up next. He tells the interviewers without any hesitation and complete seriousness: "I'm ramping up to do a movie called 'Jack the Giant Killer' at Warner Bros, and I just yesterday signed a deal to do an 'X-Men: First Class Origins' picture, which is kind of cool. I'm very excited."





"District 9"  VFX Studio Expands - Bank Provides $2.2M Financing

VANCOUVER, Dec. 17 /CNW Telbec/ - Image Engine Design Inc., a Vancouver-based production studio specializing in visual effects for movies, today announced the expansion of its studio facilities to help meet growing business demand. The acquisition of a new building was made possible through a $2.2 million financial loan package from the Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC).

Image Engine, founded in 1995, began providing visual effects for feature films in 2006. Most notable of these early years was a significant body of work for Marvel Studios' The Incredible Hulk. The company, which started out doing work for television, gained experience and respect with its work on the popular TV series Stargate as well as several other television productions, including one for Stephen King where its creature work garnered a coveted VES award.

A turning point occurred with the opportunity to provide visual effects on District 9, the breakout film for Writer/Director Neill Blomkamp. The film gave Image Engine the chance to show what a Vancouver, Canada facility could accomplish under tight budgetary constraints and an extremely challenging creative agenda. Since the movie's release in August of this year, the alien shots delivered by Image Engine have received critical acclaim from the visual effects industry, including recognition from District 9 Producer, Peter Jackson, of "Lord of the Rings" fame.

For Greg Holmes, CEO of Image Engine, BDC's support and understanding of the company's expansion plans were key to helping prepare for future successes: "BDC was very supportive, and able to qualify risk and characterize it differently than traditional banks. Their years of experience in supporting entrepreneurs and matching a decent business model to a property acquisition opportunity helped them understand where we were going."

BDC Financing Account Manager in Vancouver, Kobie Lofty-Eaton, says "a sound and solid evaluation of risk factors can lead a project on the path to success. This is part of the expertise we offer at BDC. The movie industry is a good example. No matter how big or how risky the project, with the right tools we can help our clients show that their expertise is second to none worldwide."

Greg Holmes points out that there are lessons to be learned from playing at a high level in this very competitive business: "Knowing your appetite and capability for risk and execution is important. This industry is driven by gifted artists and talented people, but without a solid business backbone to carry the weight of that risk, it is difficult to achieve results that are sustainable".






Avatar VFX Revolutionary?

(movieviral.com)             Special effects are big thing for me. For years, they were an addition to what was going on on the screen; something to help your imagination along. I find that the Star Trek franchise sums this point up for me. Watch any of the early original episodes and the special effects are laughable, but they helped to set the scene. This was fine for years but then along came Star Wars. It has to be recognised as a milestone in cinema history, because it changed what we saw on screen. The ripple effect this brought to film can be seen up to this day, and the pioneer, ILM, is still the biggest and best in the business.

The problem I now have with special effects is the part it plays in a films today. 2012 may be the perfect example of this. If you read Dan’s review, you will remember his issues with the effects, that there far too many things going on to take in. For films like this, the special effects are the story, with everything gearing up to that set piece, where the White house is destroyed, or a big explosion rips through the Manhattan skyline. It takes away from the imagination of the audience, and I fear, the writers as well. But people are starting to notice and perhaps the biggest rebellion centered around Transformers 2. The effects were big, but the story was terrible and the acting even worse. It seems we, the film-going audience, have started to see past the effects now.

Up until this week, my film of the year for special effects was Star Trek. The effects were beautiful, well-crafted, and subtle. They add to the film but don’t take over it. If you look at the shuttle hanger scene for instance, you’re watching the film, not the effects, because they are subtle, believable. I was worried that Avatar would err on the overpowering side, after all, at least 75% of the film is special effects, but wow, you’d better be ready.

Avatar

My advice for your trip to the cinema? You’ll need to do some preparation work first. Buy some energy drink and some saline solution, mix them up and soak your eyes in it! You’ll need it. The effects are amazing. It’s as simple as that.

You might have cringed when you saw the first trailer. I know I did. These big blue creatures walking around just didn’t quite sit right with me, but when you see them on the big screen in all their 3D glory, you very quickly forget that these creatures are not real. The animation is flawless in their movement and their interaction with the scenery. It is like nothing you have seen before, and Cameron must be applauded for waiting all these years (upwards of 10 if you’re counting) until the technology could keep up with his imagination.  The marines’ weaponry and machinery is just as amazing to watch and looks so damn realistic and plausible that I expect to see them hit the battlefield sometime in the future. Cameron enjoys taking us to places that we have never been before. Just watch the doc “Return to Titanic” to see his perseverance, and in Pandora, he has once again showed us a place that is so wondrous and intriguing that you want to spend more time there.

My one admission I have to make is that I watched this in a normal cinema rather than on IMAX (we’ll update the review though when we do), and as such I don’t know if my criticism of the 3D will ring true with those that do get to see it as the director intended. In parts the 3D worked very well, but there are other moments that I would have been just as happy watching the 2D version. The scene at the start of the film which sees Jake Scully landing on Pandora is a good example of 3D that works, but at other points, particularly when the Navi are on screen, the 3D seemed to be lacking. There are some scenes where you are following Navi Scully through the trees at a great height, and this should have been the money shot, but it just didn’t materialize. As I said, this may not be the case in IMAX, so if you’re torn between your local Multiplex or IMAX, choose IMAX for sure.

So, in terms of the special effects thats a big A+. This is the Star Wars for our generation, and your kids will be watching this for several Christmases to come. It will change cinema.





CGI Vampire & Werewolf Take On Animated Zombies

(Variety)                     DreamWorks Animation has hired Ethan Reiff and Cyrus Voris to write Gil's All Fright Diner, an adaptation of the A. Lee Martinez novel that has Barry Sonnenfeld attached to direct.

Gil's All Fright Diner revolves around a vampire and a werewolf. They are mismatched partners who battle zombies and try to save the world, after they stop in a diner in the desert that is a conduit for the supernatural.

Kirk De Micco was the first writer on the film.

Reiff and Voris' credits include Kung Fu Panda and the upcoming Robin Hood.





Award Winning VFX Studio Pixomondo Expands For Commercials

(shootonline.com)           Pixomondo, with studios in Berlin, Frankfurt, Munich, Stuttgart, London, Shanghai, Beijing and Santa Monica – and with a Paris office opening soon - is launching a new commercial digital production company, called Public Art. Public Art is aimed to service the advertising community and features a collection of live action directors, designers, animators, visual effects artists and flash developers.

Pixomondo's feature effects division had many shots in the recently released movies "2012" and "Ninja Assassin". Currently they are engaged on work for several features including "Suckerpunch", "Percy Jackson and the Olympians The Lightning Thief", "Hindenburg" and a number of other movies.





Rob Marshall On Fourth "Pirates" Status

Out doing promotion for his new musical adaptation "Nine", director Rob Marshall talked with Coming Soon about his hiring to direct the next sequel in the 'Pirates' franchise, "Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides", for Disney Pictures and Jerry Bruckheimer Films.

Marshall says it may not have progressed as far as you might have thought - "We're still trying to figure out if it's going to all happen. If it happens--I think Johnny's doing a movie with Angelina Jolie in the spring ("The Tourist") - so if it happens, we'll start in the summer, and we'll see. I'm excited. If it happens, it happens. I'd be thrilled. I just love Johnny and I'm excited about the genre."

When asked about the film's visuals, he said "I would need a script first. It all comes from the script and the story. You serve the story and you find out what the story is and then you work from there, that's it. It's simple."




NY Anim Company to Create VFX for 'Ghost Whisperer' Director

(webwire.com)            Walsh Family Media, an independent animation company and visual effects studio in NY, was selected to provide visual effects cinematography for the upcoming film White Irish Drinkers. The film is an independently funded venture by renowned writer/director John Gray whose projects include Ghost Whisperer, Empire and Helter Skelter.

Walsh Family Media was asked to digitally recreate a crowd of screaming fans at the concert of a legendary rock band. The scene was originally filmed at Lafayette Theater in New York where producers John Gray, Paul Bernard, Melissa Peltier, and James Scura had only 100 extras on hand for the scene. Using state-of-the-art composite and visual effects, Walsh Family Media helped transform the meager crowd of 100 into a roaring crowd of 3,000, the number of seats in Lafayette Theater.

According to producer Paul Bernard, the visual effects provided by Walsh Family Media helped the film overcome budget restraints. "It’s hard to fill a 3,000 seat venue on a small budget so we turned to WFM Services to help create a crowd scene deserving of legendary rock fame" said Bernard. "It’s amazing what these guys can do on the computer.”





Spider-Man 4 In Trouble?

(cinemablend.com)             Director Sam Raimi is hung up on a few major issues, mostly notably that they still don’t have a completed script. And why is it incomplete? Why it’s Spider-Man 3 all over again. Raimi is butting heads with the studio over who the villain should be. That same conflict is how we got a Spider-Man 3 overloaded with too many villains, at least half of whom Raimi seemed to have absolutely no interest in shooting. If this is true, it sounds like Sony has learned absolutely nothing from the last movie and they’re still unwilling to simply let Raimi, a proven commodity, do whatever the hell he wants.

So word is that Raimi wants Vulture to be the bad guy and Sony wants anyone but Vulture to be the bad guy. Now I can see Sony’s point of view here, Vulture is pretty much the worst villain in the web-head’s rogues gallery. He’s more of a punchline than a villain really and I’m pretty sure that very few Spidey fans actually care about seeing him on screen. On the other hand, Raimi is Raimi and it probably doesn’t matter whether or not Vulture sucks in the comics, on film he has the ability to make the character awesome. There’s only one reasonable decision here and that’s for Sony to get the hell out of the way. We don’t need another Venom debacle.





VFX Games Artists Ready For Pool Party & Awards Show

(gamesindustry.biz)               San Diego will be the new Host City for the previously-Canadian awards ELAN Awards Show which honors artistry and innovation in the video games industry.

Today the highly anticipated announcement of the Official Categories for the 2010 ELAN Awards.

Three days of celebrating are in place for the video game, animation and visual effects industries beginning with a pool party on Saturday, July 17th, followed by a street party on Sunday night and wrapping up with a four-part-party including the awards ceremony itself on Monday, July 19th, the evening prior to Comic-con.

Every year the ELANS go to the industry to determine their award categories, a practice they believe to be crucial to staying on top of what's important in such a rapidly changing industry. "This year's categories were a bit tougher than previous year's in that we're not quite done with some that are on their way out meaning they're still very relevant, and ones that were too new a year ago have proven themselves worthy now and must be included," says Carinci, explaining her thirty award category show. "And there will be more," she smiles, "as we're adding 4 exciting sponsored awards which we'll announce on January 4th, the day submissions officially open." An Industry-only newsletter containing all pertinent information for submissions pertaining to the entire judicial process and submissions will be delivered Monday, December 21st just prior to the holidays.

And now, the Official Categories for the 2010 ELAN Awards are:

21. BEST REAL-TIME VISUAL EFFECTS in a VIDEO GAME PRODUCTION

Recognizing outstanding achievement in visual effects in a video game, the ELAN in this category is awarded to the vfx artist, vfx team or vfx director that exhibits excellence in real-time game engine-rendered visual effects within a video game. This category is open to vfx teams hired outside of the video game company.

Full Press:       http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2010-elan-awards-award-categories-announced---all-30-of--em





Over 350 Avatar Screenings Already Sold Out

(cinemablend.com)             Over 350 Avatar Screenings Already Sold Out Avatar is less than 24 hours away from exploding onto the screen, with thousands of midnight screenings kicking off tonight. Early ticket sales are already giving an idea of just how big the movie may be.

Given the heavy focus on the movie's visual effects and 3D nature, it's no surprise the movie will open on a record number of 3D screen. Of the 3,457 theatres showing the movie, 2,032 will be running it in 3D, including more than 190 IMAX theaters. Also unsurprisingly, almost 90% of all ticket sales at some major movie ticket sites are for 3D screenings.

Already more than 350 showings have sold out online, with many others filling up. That's no indication the movie will be breaking New Moon's midnight or opening day records, but it's a healthy sign that audiences are excited.

One thing is for sure: guys are far more excited for this movie than the ladies. MovieTickets.com reports that 78% of its tickets are being bought-up by the boys. I guess shirtless characters with well-defined abs only get the ladies going if they're werewolves, not blue aliens.

    This time last year, a rumor emerged that "Avatar" director James Cameron might step up to helm a remake (of sorts) of the sci-fi classic, "Forbidden Planet." The possibility was sort of substantiated by Latino Review, who reported that Cameron had seen the script and "flipped" for it.

Shortly after, we had the opportunity to follow up with "Babylon 5" creator J. Michael Straczynski, who was reportedly developing the "Planet" script. As he told MTV News at the time, "I’ve always wanted to do something involving 'Forbidden Planet.' It’s my favorite science-fiction film of all time. I’ve watched the rights go from one company to the next. I heard that the rights at Dreamworks were about to expire and I went to Joel Silver and said I think if you move quickly you can grab it and I can write it. And he did. It’s the dream of a lifetime to play in that universe."

Straczynski went on to explain that he has a very specific plan for the project, something unique and fresh. "It’s not a remake. It’s not a reimagining. It’s not exactly a prequel," he explained at the time. "You’ll have to see it. It’s something that no one has thought of when it comes to this storyline." With all of this in mind, MTV's Josh Horowitz had to ask what was up with "Planet" when he spoke to Cameron recently at the "Avatar" junket in London.

"That's a project that I'm actively involved in, but I haven't made any decisions about it yet," Cameron said, adding "I love 'Forbidden Planet.'"

So the rumor as it was originally reported isn't quite accurate. Yet, anyway. Cameron certainly could still step up to direct, but something tells me he's probably going to want to dive back in for an "Avatar" sequel if this week's sci-fi epic performs as expected. And it should, given how freaking awesome it is.

Besides, it's not like Cameron can make a decision before he gets a feel for where the project is. Which he hasn't yet. "I haven't seen it yet," he said of Straczynski's script. "I'm supposed to get it here pretty soon."

So there you have it. Cameron is definitely interested in "Forbidden Planet," but he's not making any commitments to it yet. Publicly, anyway. All that said, I expect we'll eventually see this project blast into space. I'm just not sure that Cameron will be at the helm.




42 Crazy Awesome VFX Breakdowns

(ae.tutsplus.com)                       Are you ready to get pumped up? I could literally watch VFX Breakdowns all day and night... which probably explains my lack of sleep this past week. Well, I'm willing to suffer for your enjoyment... that's just the type of guy I am. Here are 42 of the most killer VFX breakdowns I could find on the web. Hold on to your jaw because it's about to hit the floor. I'm not liable for dental bills.

Take a look:     http://ae.tutsplus.com/articles/roundup/42-crazy-awesome-vfx-breakdowns/




Stop-Motion Artists Get Shout-Outs For "Coraline" Golden Globe Nom

(awn.com)             Henry Selick, director/screenwriter and producer: "This Golden Globe nomination is sweet validation for the years of hard work it took to bring 'Coraline' to life using stop-motion animation with the greatest crew of animators, artists, and technicians I've ever been privileged to work with. I share this nomination with all of them and we all share our thanks to the Hollywood Foreign Press."

Bill Mechanic, producer:  "It is a very pleasant surprise and honor for our movie to be recognized with this nomination.  The hundreds of artists who worked so hard and for so long on CORALINE all share in the joy."




Getting Wild About Facial Animation

(awn.com)               At first, Spike Jonze wasn't sold on a CG approach to the facial animation for the creatures that populate his adaptation of Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are. He wanted to try animatronics, but his good friend David Fincher convinced him otherwise by showing him some of the early tests they were doing on The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (which, ironically, Jonze turned down). And that gave him the faith he needed to go down this path.

Not surprisingly, it was an unusual path -- even for CG.

The creatures were defined; the movie had been shot; and there was a rough cut, but the faces were static because of the masks. But the emotional impact was still apparent.

In steps Daniel Jeannette as animation/visual effects supervisor, who had previously worked on Happy Feet at Animal Logic after a prestigious stint at ILM.

 "Early on, somebody said you should use CG creatures because it gives you the freedom to do what you want," Jeannette recounts. "It gives you a lot of control, but there's also a lot of limitation that comes with it. And, ultimately, you're talking about a lot of greenscreen work. This didn't work with Spike's vision of shooting on location or the core of the story, which is the relationship between Max and the creatures. It was better to have him interacting with actors in costumes. It was real, the performances were nuanced and emotionally it hits you in the gut."
Image
However, Framestore wound up doing all of the animation and vfx. Jonze was very hands on: directing and helping supervise the delicate and crucial task of "making sure these creatures lived and had a soul." Photo by Sonny Geras.

They tried a lot of techniques before realizing that the best approach would be limited facial animation enhancement whenever they needed lip-synch. In other words, strictly for the movement of the face, they only animated the eyes, lips, teeth and tongue.

And the faces in Wild Things were brought to life at London-based Framestore primarily using a new twist on an old technique known as "sequence projection" or "projection mapping," often used to create talking animals. For Wild Things, however, it had to be taken to a new technical and artistic level. Character suit performances were filmed with static faces. The faces or heads were tracked in 3D and a CG articulated head was animated on top to achieve the appropriate performance to match suit and dialogue.

Full Press with pics:    http://www.awn.com/articles/article/getting-wild-about-facial-animation





Avatar : How Many People Does it Take to Make a Movie?

Take a look:    http://blogs.sundaymercury.net/anorak-city/2009/12/avatar-how-many-people-does-it.html




When to Outsource Your 3D Model and Rendering Services

(max3dmodels.com)                Imagine that your launch was successful and now customers want your animation in a 3D scene futuristic city model. You are an expert in animation, but not in 3D modeling and 3D models of the city are known to take weeks to do! 3D animation using the plan took 2 weeks and now wants a more complicated than a week. . . In the medium term and more to do. You can customize a stock 3D models of the futuristic city scene or subcontract. This project has an aggressive deadline and you're not very good at adapting 3D models of the city quickly. . . and outsourcing can allow you to focus on animation.

Sound familiar? Outsourcing 3D modeling and rendering and do it at home is a common problem 3D Model Animation Studios and artists face, especially when in a hurry to make 3D projects. When is a good time to outsource their 3D modeling? A golden rule of one of our customers is that "If anyone can do it in half the time I … Then it's time to give it away. My time is too valuable. "Normally, customers outsource 3D modeling and rendering 3D model, such as 3D scene of the city, you can customize or very effective by custom 3D services like 3D personal flat pyramid. For example, creating a 3D model of downtown New York scene in max, obj or 3ds file format. What could take weeks to do can make 3D model builder expert who specializes in 3D cities just a few days. So you get less frustration, turn faster and higher quality of results, it is worth spending money on. Here are some tips to help you know when outsourcing can work for you:

 – Runs on something you're not very good and is not part of its powers. Also it will take time to learn and become more efficient at it.
– You have too many projects 3D trapped in the pipe and a limited budget prevent you from taking on more 3D artists on staff.
– 3D project is a cycle and thus avoid cuts in the future to ensure that you only need the right people at all times.
– 3D project is a project for a while.
– Positive for project bids 3D model as 3D models of the city.
– It's more productive and profitable for you to have custom 3D services experts agree. Even when you outsource 3D modeling to increase profits, as it saves more than half of the 3D project costs due to savings in labor costs. Outsourcing experts agree that having someone else do the areas that are not within its competence, can do more, and you can take advantage of lower labor costs and increase profits. Account can not do everything and there are other options and ways to improve your 3D development cycle and get your 3D projects to its customers and / or customers much faster and cheaper than the competition
– or face losing customers.

Once you've decided the best thing for you to outsource, consider using the experience of a 3D model of artists with a wide range of experience in custom 3D modeling and rendering, including 3D models of the city.





Star Trek 2 Probably Not Happening Soon

(411mania.com)                In an interview with the New York Times, Paramount Pictures chairman Brad Grey seemed to indicate that Star Trek 2 is a ways off.

    "As for J. J. Abrams, a producer and the director of Star Trek," the article reads, "Mr. Grey is looking for Star Trek 2. And Mission: Impossible IV. And possibly before either, what he called another 'tentpole' film to be directed by Mr. Abrams, and yet to be announced. … 'We have been wildly ambitious,' Mr. Grey said of his plans. 'It has much to do with the fact that we are feeling as strong as we are.'"

Obviously if JJ Abrams has to do another new "tentpole" film first, Star Trek 2 would have to be pushed back a bit.

The "tentpole" film in question may be Mystery on Fifth Avenue, a new adventure film that is apparently a cross between National Treasure and Jumanji.




'Avatar' Fails to Make AFI Cut

The American Film Institute largely avoided bigger studio movies and focused on smaller indie efforts as it compiled its list of the year's top 10 movies.

Announced on Sunday, the list, devoted to U.S. productions, included Pixar/Disney's 3D-animated "Up" (the No. 3 film to date with $293 million in domestic grosses) and Warner Bros.' boys-gone-wild comedy "The Hangover" (No. 4 with $277 million) but did not include James Cameron's "Avatar," which already is being lauded for its groundbreaking effects work.

Instead, the 13-person AFI jury opted for a second 3D-animated film, "Coraline"; two movies dealing with the impact of the Iraq War, "The Hurt Locker" and "The Messenger"; "Precious," the tale of an abused inner-city teenager; "A Serious Man," which follows a Job-like character as he faces life's setbacks; "A Single Man," which centers on a gay widower; "Sugar," a sports drama about a Dominican-born baseball player; and "Up in the Air," which focuses on a corporate-downsizing expert.




FBI makes arrest in 'Wolverine' Uploading Case

"X-Men Origins: Wolverine" was uploaded to a file-sharing network last spring, before its release to theaters.
(Credit: 20th Century Fox)

Update 7:50 a.m. PT: To include new information from FBI that suspect may not be source of the leak.

The FBI has accused a man of copyright infringement for allegedly uploading to the Web the feature film "X-Men Origins: Wolverine" last spring.

Gilberto Sanchez, 47, was arrested in the Bronx, N.Y., early Wednesday morning by FBI agents without incident, law enforcement sources told CNET. A spokeswoman from the FBI's Los Angeles field office, which led the investigation, confirmed the arrest.

If convicted, Sanchez faces up to three years in prison and a $250,000 fine or twice the gross gain or gross loss attributable to the offense, whichever is greater.

When the feature film from 20th Century Fox was leaked to the Internet in April, it caused panic in Hollywood because the movie, which reportedly cost $100 million to make, was not scheduled for theatrical release until May. The fear was that Internet distribution of an unauthorized copy would hurt ticket sales.

By the time the movie screened in theaters, the unauthorized copy had been watched 4.1 million times, according to market researcher BigChampagne.

According to a copy of a grand jury indictment that was unsealed last week in U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, Sanchez is accused of uploading the film to file-sharing network Megaupload.com under one of his online aliases, which include "theSkilled1" and "SkillyGilly."

The indictment does not say, however, how Sanchez allegedly obtained a working copy of the film and Laura Eimiller, an FBI spokeswoman, declined to provide those details. She did say that the agency has not ruled out more arrests. What this means is that Sanchez may not have been the source of the leak.

The copy that made the rounds online was rough. Many of the computer-generated graphics had not been inserted yet and the cables holding actors to simulate flying were visible.

The major studios say that films being leaked to the Web is a huge problem, and they have gone to great lengths to increase security. In this case, when the film first leaked, executives at Fox said they were confident that the person who leaked the movie would be caught because of forensic marks on the film copy.

Watermarks are inserted into varying film copies so that they can be identified and any leaks can be traced.

However, some proponents of content sharing claim that such leaks and the publicity they stir actually help ticket sales by building interest in a movie prior to its release--provided that the film is any good.

In 2003, a New Jersey man pleaded guilty to copyright infringement charges after uploading the superhero film "Hulk" to the Web weeks before its theatrical release. In that case, the man was sentenced to six months house arrest and ordered to pay a $7,000 fine.





George Lucas Loses Court Appeal Over Star Wars Costume Copyright

(timesonline.co.uk)                  George Lucas’s empire failed to strike back in the Court of Appeal today as he lost a multimillion-pound legal battle with the British creator of the Star Wars stormtrooper helmets.

Andrew Ainsworth recently began selling replicas of helmets and armour made from his original mould, prompting a $20 million (£12 million) lawsuit from Lucasfilm, Mr Lucas’s company. But yesterday a court agreed that he had not broken any British law — because his creations were not art.

“It’s taken five years but I think this should be just about the end of it,” Mr Ainsworth told The Times this morning. He is now recruiting sales and marketing staff and planning a big expansion of his memorabilia company.

Lucasfilm vowed to take the case to Britain’s new Supreme Court, saying that famous props such as the Daleks from Doctor Who could be freely copied under the Appeal Court’s ruling.
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Mr Ainsworth was a young industrial designer in Twickenham when he made the helmets in 1976, on a plastic forming machine that was usually “churning out kayaks and watersports stuff”. He was recruited via a friend who was working with Mr Lucas at the nearby Shepperton Studios.

“We just made it on spec. I didn’t even know it was for a film to begin with,” he said. Mr Ainsworth made 50 helmets, for which he was paid £20 each. He also made equipment for numerous other characters, earning about £30,000 from the Star Wars films. Lucasfilm’s earning from merchandise are estimated at several billion dollars.

In 2004, Mr Ainsworth closed his watersports equipment factory and dug out his original models. Realising that “the memorabilia market had really kicked off”, he began selling replicas.

Lucasfilm, acting to crush the rebel force, immediately sued him in the US. He did not defend the case — “taking on Lucas on his home patch is not a good idea” — and a California court awarded $20 million in damages against him, even though he had only sold 19 models in the US.

When Lucasfilm tried to enforce this in Britain, Mr Ainsworth appealed through the pages of The Times for legal help. “I got calls from about a dozen good lawyers,” he said.

During the battle that followed, Court 52 of the Royal Courts of Justice was invaded by stormtroopers and a fighter pilot from the forces of Emperor Palpatine.

Mr Justice Mannn ruled that they were not sculptures and so did not have copyright protections. They were instead industrial designs, which could be protected for only 15 years.

Yesterday Lord Justices Rix, Jacob and Patten agreed, dismissing Lucasfilm’s appeal. They said the helmet and armour had a “utilitarian” rather than artistic purpose, so “neither the armour nor the helmet are sculpture”.

They also ruled that Lucasfilm could not enforce its US copyright in Britain, but agreed with Mr Justice Mann that Mr Ainsworth did not himself own the copyright in the helmets.

Mr Ainsworth said yesterday “Anybody can now make them — but they’re not me. I make the original ones.”

He has been left with a legal bill of more than £2.5 million, although he will seek to recover many of his costs from Lucasfilm.

Asked how he might be celebrating his victory, Mr Ainsworth said, “I don’t know. Maybe we’ll go and find another galaxy.”

       I'm not going to ask why Avatar isn't on the Academy's short list for Best Animated Oscar because the answer to that question is obvious… it wasn't submitted. Perhaps that's just the problem though. Why not? And don't go jumping to a quick decision. Let me give you a little food for thought. I might be able to make a case that will have you considering it much more than you may think.

How much of Avatar is CGI and how much is live-action? In reading an article at Gawker recounting a Hollywood Reporter article it says, "When completed, Cameron expects Avatar to be about 60% CG animation, based on characters created using a newly developed performance capture-based process, and 40% live action, with a lot of VFX in the imagery." That works for me considering there's most likely no real way to tell for sure.

Taking this into account, let's follow that up with a peek at the first part of the Academy's rules for what is and what isn't an animated film, at least in Oscar's eyes:

    An animated feature film is defined as a motion picture with a running time of at least 70 minutes, in which movement and characters' performances are created using a frame-by-frame technique. In addition, a significant number of the major characters must be animated, and animation must figure in no less than 75 percent of the picture's running time.

Now the big question… Is Avatar animated? The first place I went in search for an answer to this question was the production notes for the film where it actually includes a separate section labeled IS IT ANIMATION? The section begins as such:

    Ask the animators at WETA, and they'll tell you that the avatars and Na'vi are animated. Ask Jim Cameron, and he'll say the characters were performed by the actors. The truth is that both are right. It took great animation skill to ensure that the characters performed exactly as the actors did. But at the same time, no liberties were taken with those performances. They were not embellished or exaggerated. The animators sought to be utterly truthful to the actors' work, doing no more and certainly no less than what Sam, Zoo or Sigourney had done in the Volume. Of course the animators added a little bit, with the movement of the tails and ears, which the actors could not do themselves. But even here, the goal was to stay consistent with the emotions created by the actors during the original capture. So when Neytiri's tail lashes and her ears lower in fury, they are merely further expressing the anger created by Zoe Saldana in the moment of acting the scene.

One way of looking at the information above is to say instead of putting actors in rubber suits or makeup all James Cameron did was apply makeup and creature effects with CGI. Sort of like last year's Best Makeup Oscar-winner, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

However, to the point of staying faithful to the actors performances similar techniques have been used in hand-drawn animation forever such as when the role of Snow White was acted out by Marge Champion as reference material for Disney animators for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Also, as you can see in the video to the right, Helene Stanley was used for Sleeping Beauty. Obviously this is not the exact same thing as performance capture, but with this conversation it seems we're getting into varying shades of gray and it will ultimately come down to your interpretation of the facts.

Take all of this into consideration and what do you come up with? Is Avatar animated and if so, is it animated enough to be considered in the Best Animated Oscar category? What about the films I mentioned at the opening? The ones included on the short list for consideration.

To the question of how much of Avatar is CG and how much is live-action the answer was 60% CG and 40% live-action. Adding to this and having seen the film, I would put good money down saying there isn't a single frame of that film that doesn't include CG animation, let alone a scene that has more live-action elements than it does CGI. Compare this to Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel in which the only animation is six of the film's characters and based on that alone I think Avatar is already more of an animated film.

I already touched up on it a little bit, but how about performance capture? Like Avatar, Disney's A Christmas Carol is a performance capture feature with characters portrayed inside CG environments and it is considered animation. Doesn't this mean Avatar should be considered animation as well?

Look at the clip from Avatar to the right, to my knowledge there isn't a single element of that image that isn't CGI, it's simply performance capture, animated creatures and CG environments.

Finally, the one thing the four contending films listed above have in common is they all employ CGI, just like Avatar and many, many other films we could open this discussion to. I bring this up because it has pretty much been agreed upon around the Internet Avatar will be taking home the Oscar for Best Visual Effects, which creates an interesting conundrum. Why is the CG in Avatar considered visual effects while the CG employed for a Pixar or DreamWorks film simply considered animation? If Avatar is up for Oscar's Best Visual Effects award shouldn't Up and Monsters vs. Aliens be as well? The fact they aren't, but A Christmas Carol is, interests me.

Perhaps the real question is When is CGI no longer considered visual effects and when is it considered animation? The line has to be drawn somewhere because it seems extremely grey at the moment.





New Director Boards Creature From the Black Lagoon

(Los Angeles Times)             Universal's Creature from the Black Lagoon has found a new mate in director Carl Eric Rinsch.

The L.A. Times reports commercial helmer Rinsch (and one time contender for the Alien prequel) has been tapped to direct the long-gestating remake.

Gary Ross penned the script, but Universal is starting over in the story stage.

Meanwhile, the man who was supposed to bring the Creature back to life, Breck Eisner, is moving on to The Brood remake.





Hollywood FX Artist to Direct Mexico's Biggest Film Ever

(cinematical.com)                     Everyone in Hollywood just wants to direct, but when it comes to visual effects artists becoming full-fledged filmmakers, the results aren't always great. Among those who've made the transition, for better or worse, are Joe Johnston (Jurassic Park III), Eric Brevig (Journey to the Center of the Earth 3D), Colin and Greg Strause (Aliens vs. Predator - Requiem) and Neil Blomkamp (District 9).

Joining them now is Dean Wright, Oscar-nominated for effects work on The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe and a veteran artist who had a hand in Titanic, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Kangaroo Jack and the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Wright, who got some of his directing experience handling the second unit filming for The Return of the King, is already at work on a Jesus biopic called Kingdom Come, slated for release in 2010. And now, according to Variety, he's already set up his follow-up, another epic, titled Cristiada.

Scripted by Michael James Love (Gaby: A True Story) the historical film will tell of Mexico's Cristero War, which took place in the late 1920s between Catholic rebels and the anticlerical Mexican government of the time. While the actual war lasted from 1926 to 1929, its roots were in the 1857 Constitution of Mexico, which aimed to rid the nation of its heavy Catholic influence. Following the Mexican Revolution, the new 1917 Constitution revisited such provisions for religious persecution.

Cristiada will reportedly be Mexico's biggest production ever, though the film will be in English. Coming off the LOTR and Narnia films, we can probably expect large battle sequences and great set pieces, yet it's hard to imagine Wright needing to apply his visual effects experience here. Between this and his Biblical epic Kingdom Come, it's presumable the filmmaker is now less interested in fantasy and science fiction than movies celebrating Christianity. Considering The Passion of the Christ grossed around the same domestically as each of the LOTR installments, it doesn't seem like a lesser direction to go in, either.





Framestore's Avatar VFX Crew Pulls 11 hour days for 7 Months

(thenational.ae)                 The buzz from the production company Fox is that Avatar represents a quantum leap for special effects, akin to the likes of King Kong, 2001: A Space Odyssey and Jurassic Park. But many fear that, due to its heavy reliance on digital effects, Avatar is just as likely to become the next Phantom Menace.

Despite these early reservations, the small number of reviews that have emerged in the past few days have been largely positive. The trade paper Variety called Cameron’s new world “a place worth visiting” and The Hollywood Reporter refered to the “jaw-dropping wonder” of Avatar.

“Special effects have become more than just embellishments within films, now they seem to be the driving force behind the way films are conceived and marketed,” says Simon Hunter, the president of the New York Film Academy, Abu Dhabi.

“Home cinemas have changed the reasons why we go to the movies, and now Hollywood is looking to create event pictures with extraordinary special effects that force people to see something on the big screen.”

Throughout his career, Cameron has pioneered the use of computer-generated imagery in films such as Titanic, Terminator 2 and The Abyss. Although much of Avatar is computer-generated, its live-action elements were filmed using the Fusion 3D camera system, invented by Cameron for the project.

“The potential pitfall is that when you have too many toys to play with and the focus becomes the toys and not the story. Story is still everything in filmmaking,” warns Hunter.

Avatar also uses the same actor-driven motion-capture technology that brought Gollum to life in the Lord of the Rings trilogy and can currently be seen in Robert Zemeckis’s A Christmas Carol.

To craft the most technically ambitious film in cinema history, Cameron enlisted the services of three of the world’s top visual-effects companies: Peter Jackson’s Weta Digital, George Lucas’s Industrial Light and Magic and the London-based outfit Framestore.

“It involved a hideous number of man hours. We simply didn’t do conventional working days,” says Jonathan Fawkner, a VFX supervisor at Framestore. The company won an Academy Award for its work on the 2007 film The Golden Compass and has also provided digital effects for the Harry Potter films, as well as The Dark Night and many others.

Avatar demanded that nearly 150 of Framestore’s artists and animators work 11 hour days for seven months – all for just three of the films special-effects sequences. By contrast, the team at Weta Digital spent almost four years on the film.

Having worked so intensely on Avatar, and with an acute awareness of the technological challenges involved, Fawkner believes that the film’s reputation as a giant leap forward in the evolution of special effects is well deserved.

“Does Avatar represent a pinnacle? I think so,” he says. “The technology is the best that’s available and James Cameron doesn’t set the bar low. There’s no wool to be pulled over his eyes. If he could have come to London and pushed a mouse around, he probably would have.”





Thor Writers to Pen Vampire Apocalypse

(The Hollywood Reporter)               Ashley Edward Miller and Zack Stentz, who wrote Thor for Marvel Studios, will pen the futuristic vampire project Damn Nation at Paramount.

The Hollywood Reporter says that Dark Horse Entertainment is producing the adaptation, which is based on a comic by Andrew Cosby and art by Jason Alexander (not the "Seinfeld" actor).

Set in a U.S. evacuated after an attack from "inhuman nocturnal predators," the comic tells the tale of the survivors after the government has been forced to relocate to London while scientists search for a solution.





300 Prequel Moves Forward

(Los Angeles Times)                Frank Miller says the new project, his follow-up to 300, now titled Xerxes, begins about 10 years before the events of 300, and Zack Snyder has expressed interest in it as a film property as well. "It's the battle of Marathon through my lens," Miller said. "I've finished the plot and I'm getting started on the artwork."

Miller said that during his research trips to Greece he realized that the myth and history overlap begins to blur, which adds to the storytelling allure. "The fact and the myth are inseparable and, believe me, when you go sailing for a while in the Aegean Sea, you start believing in Poseidon."

300 earned $456 million in theaters worldwide.






'Star Trek' Sequel To Reflect Contemporary War Issues 

(latimesblogs.latimes.com)               Here's what Roberto Orci, one of the show's key creators, had to say:

    "We’ve literally had two meetings now. We haven’t decided anything but we’re starting to circle around some ideas. We got a lot of fan response from the first one and a considerable amount of critical response and one of the things we heard was, ‘Make sure the next one deals with modern-day issues.’ We’re trying to keep it as up-to-date and as reflective of what’s going on today as possible. So that’s one thing, to make it reflect the things that we are all dealing with today.

I asked Orci somewhat flippantly if that meant we might see Starfleet grappling with the ethics of torture or dealing with a rising terrorist threat or perhaps a painful, politicized war with the Klingons.

    "Well yeah, those are the kind of issues we're talking about. Wow, you're good! But seriously that's the way we're thinking, that's an approach. So if you have any ideas ... "






Avatar Scores Best Motion Picutre Nom for the 67th Annual Golden Globe Awards

(The Hollywood Foreign Press Association)               The Hollywood Foreign Press Association announced the nominations for "The 67th Annual Golden Globe Awards" this morning which you can view below. The awards will take place Sunday, January 17, 2010, at The Beverly Hilton with a live telecast airing on NBC at 8 PM (EST).


BEST ANIMATED FEATURE FILM
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs
Fantastic Mr. Fox
Coraline
The Princess and the Frog
Up


BEST MOTION PICTURE - DRAMA
Avatar
The Hurt Locker
Inglourious Basterds
Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire
Up in the Air






Weta Workshop's Richard Taylor Joins With Infiniti To Build $200 Million-plus Fund

(Variety.com)                   Hong Kong private equity firm Infiniti Capital has set up a fund with the Chengdu-based Green Leaf Film Studios and Richard Taylor, co-founder of the Weta vfx house in New Zealand, to raise between $200 million and $400 million to invest in film, TV and other projects for the Chinese market.

The fund, called Panda Screen Prods., will focus on animated and visual effects-driven live-action products, especially those with merchandising potential. Some products will be China-focused, while others will have broader appeal.

Infiniti Capital’s Hong Kong subsidiary, Infiniti Advantage, will manage the fund.

Chinese productions will be co-produced by Green Leaf Film Studios and the team is in discussions with entertainment industry experts to support the project. The group is also in talks with the regional government about access to facilities, land and resources.

Milestone Capital, a New Zealand-based private investment group, helped set up the fund.

Infiniti Capital also has offices in Christchurch, New Zealand, and Sydney, Australia.





What Might -- and Might Not -- Win the Visual Effects Oscar

When it comes to the Academy Award for best visual effects, you might think there are too many possible contenders to put on one ballot. And you'd be right. That's why the Academy Visual Effects Branch Executive Committee has narrowed it down to a list of 15 semifinalists, from which the nominees and eventual winner will be chosen. Here's what's in the running now:

Angels & Demons, Avatar, Coraline, A Christmas Carol, District 9, G-Force, G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Sherlock Holmes, Star Trek, Terminator Salvation, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, 2012, Watchmen, and Where the Wild Things Are.

In a couple weeks, the committee will narrow the list down even further, to seven entries, and then 15-minute excerpts of those seven films will be shown to all the members of the Academy's Visual Effects Branch. The branch will then vote to determine the three actual nominees.

Scanning the list of 2009 releases, I note the following films that might conceivably have been nominated for this award but that didn't make the shortlist:

Drag Me to Hell, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, Land of the Lost, New Moon, Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian, Ninja Assassin, Surrogates, Underworld: Rise of the Lycans, X-Men Origins: Wolverine.

Considering a lot of the CGI work in shortlisted Sherlock Holmes is aggressively bad, I would argue that something like Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian should have taken its place, but I don't think I can muster enough energy to be truly outraged at any of the omissions. Can you?

   Yesterday there was news that James Cameron is developing “a Shane Salerno-scripted sci-fi action script for Fox, described as an ‘event’ film set in the future.” At the time no one knew anything else about the picture, but Salerno’s involvement led some to speculate that this was Doomsday Protocol, a script Salerno sold to Fox, announced last year.

That isn’t the case, however, based on a red carpet interview given by Cameron last night at the London premiere of Avatar. The film is actually a 3D remake of Fantastic Voyage, and Cameron is only producing, not directing.

MTV talked to Cameron and his producer Jon Landau, and they reportedly gave up the details. That’s all we know for now, as MTV doesn’t report any further statements from the pair.

The original film was released in 1966 and featured a Soviet scientist who discovers the key to miniaturizing things without danger of them reverting to their original size after a period of time. But an assassination attempt leaves him in a coma with a blood clot engangering his brain. A US team is miniaturized and sent into his bloodstream to destroy the clot and save his life. But they’re relying upon outmoded technology, and only have an hour to work before they begin to revert to original size, and are targeted by his immune system.

(As a kid, I always wanted to see the short version where the ship just instantly reverts to full size, exploding outward from the guy’s body.)

Because Cameron is reportedly producing this film, that leaves the gates open for speculation about his next directorial effort. It could still be the long-gestating Battle Angel, oceanic drama The Dive, or a segment for Heavy Metal, for which he’s been said to be a contributor. Or it could be something else entirely.




Portman to Star in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies!

(Variety)               Natalie Portman will star in and produce Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, a film that is based on the best-selling book written by Seth Grahame-Smith and Jane Austen. Variety says that Lionsgate will finance and distribute.

Described as an expanded version of the Austen classic, the book tells the timeless story of a woman's quest for love and independence amid the outbreak of a deadly virus that turns the undead into vicious killers.

Portman will play feisty heroine Elizabeth Bennet, who is distracted from her quest to eradicate the zombie menace by the arrival of the arrogant Mr. Darcy.





A Breakdown of Best Matchmoving and Tracking Applications

(thepixelart.com)                Matchmoving is becoming more and more popular in visual effects world and is also quite interesting to know how to use, and to be able to utilize it within your studio or in your freelance work. In this new digital era where almost every single thing you see on the television or in a movie has CG elements placed into real world footage and you cannot afford not to have a working knowledge in a matchmoving software package. This article features a useful rundown of all the matchmoving software available for purchase and download, and perhaps to give you enough knowledge as to where to take your business as well as your workflow.

Boujou

One of the more popular 3D camera trackers, as well as one of the more expensive ($10,000 per full license), 2D3’s Boujou is an Emmy Award-winning product that continues to pump out amazing looking visuals for the movies, commercials and productions that choose to utilize its capabilities. Now in its 5th version and offering new features such as a new automatic sequential solver, which looks at single frames instead of the old way, looking at the entire shot and this allows the user to interrupt the process and tweak when needed, and overall makes the whole solve faster.

Full Press     http://www.thepixelart.com/breakdown-best-matchmoving-and-tracking-applications/





Special Effects Artist Fogler ’90 Realizes Fantasy in ‘Avatar’

(orient.bowdoin.edu)                Next week, as Bowdoin students wrap up the semester's work, the film "Avatar" will hit the big screen and bring special effects artist and class of 1990 alum Dave Fogler's newest creations to life.

In this fantasy film in which humans encounter an alien humanoid race, Fogler and his team created everything from the flying, futuristic helicopters to the moss trampled beneath the protagonist's feet.

"It's an interesting project. It makes you realize the extent that things are being enhanced by special effects in the movies that are coming out now," said Fogler. "When you think of the special effects needed for this movie, obviously it's the spaceships and aliens that come to mind. And we did work on those, of course, but it's really become much more than that. It's everything you add to a movie. Those things you actually need just to compose a shot are all stuff that we're making."

Upon coming to Bowdoin in the late 1980s, Fogler said that his artistic passion had not yet been wholly solidified.

"Like most liberal arts students, I didn't know what I would be doing here," Fogler said.

After exploring both artistic and musical interests, it was Professor of Art Mark Wethli that became his "main man," pulling him into the world of studio art.

Full Press:      http://orient.bowdoin.edu/orient/article.php?date=2009-12-11&section=4&id=8





"Foxed!"  Canada's First 3D Stop-Motion Film In Production

(ca.sys-con.com)                     Geneva Film Co. has begun production on Canada's first stop-motion animated 3D film. Following in the footsteps of the immensely successful Coraline 3D, Foxed! leverages the immersive power of Digital 3D and the beauty of handmade stop-motion animation.

Written and directed by award winning animator Nev Bezaire, Foxed! tells the story of Emily, a twelve year old girl who is kidnapped by foxes along with the rest of the town's children. When she discovers that the foxes are living the children's lives unbeknownst to their parents, she must overcome her impulsive nature and outwit the foxes. The viewer will explore the frightening 3D world the foxes have created as Emily struggles to save the town's children. When complete, the film will be delivered for TV as a regular 2D version and as a theatrical film in 2D and Digital 3D.

Foxed! is produced by Geneva Film Co.'s founder and digital 3D filmmaking pioneer, James Stewart, who has led the Digital 3D movement in Canada. With the release of James Cameron's Avatar on December 18, cinemas worldwide are scrambling to install 3D screens. There are currently over 10,000 digital 3D screens worldwide.

"The work we are doing and what you will see in films like Avatar will revolutionize motion pictures in all media - film, TV, gaming and mobile. The immersive nature of 3D changes the way we tell stories" says Stewart.

Foxed! was recently awarded a Bravo!FACT grant kick-starting production this month.




Digital Disasters Take High-tech Turn

(variety.com)               We've seen Los Angeles swallowed up by an earthquake, New York obliterated, and other waves of destruction caused by motor vehicle crashes and sci-fi baddies.

Once such mayhem had to be filmed with models and miniatures, and if it was digital, it had to be animated by hand. Miniatures are still a staple in this area, but this sort of destruction is increasingly put on the screen with a simulation -- combining complex physics, arcane math and massive amounts of computing power.

Marc Weigert, who supervised the visual effects on "2012" along with Volker Engel, says, "A high-rise building, for example, might have a metal structure, cement walls and windows. In the computer you build all of these parts separately and give them the properties (of their real counter­parts). For instance, a brick wall breaks totally differently from a concrete wall. The computer calculates what each material does and how they interact with each other. For example, a piece of glass hits and bounces off concrete."

Simulations have become very popular for images of mass destruction. "It is used so much because its adds spectacle to a film," says Industrial Light & Magic's Ben Snow, who served as vfx supervisor on "Terminator Salvation." "I think it is the art directability combined with increasingly realistic simulations that make it a really good way of achieving these spectacular shots."

Simulations were a big part of "2012's" Los Angeles earthquake sequence, in which a family flees by limo to the Santa Monica Airport and takes off in a Cessna, narrowly escaping by air as the city collapses and the Westside slides into the sea.

While a simulation renders an accurate picture, Weigert says, "When it's 100% correct, it is too boring." In that case, artists augment the work with hand animation to make the images more exciting. "For instance," he says, "the story (of the earthquake scene) meant that one glass building had to break in a very specific way."

"Watchmen" vfx supervisor John "DJ" Des Jardin used massive simulations for the movie's climax, as superbeing Dr. Manhattan is framed for the destruction of New York.

"We wanted to be specific with the physical choreography," Des Jardin says, noting that the destruction was simulated in the computer with hand animation for control.

"We didn't want a nuclear blast. We wanted it to be mysterious. So we had to come up with a specific idea of what the physics of the event was and the timeline. It collapses in on itself and pulls things into it, so you see dust and debris. Then, when it goes down to nothing, we push thing out, and there is an area of almost zero gravity where things start to float."

Simulated destruction also played an important role is this year's sci-fi tentpoles, including "Terminator Salvation."

In one sequence, Motor Terminators chase a group of the movie's heroes, who try to outrace them in a tow truck. The truck plows through cars and has a head-on collision with a station wagon, flipping the oncoming car.

"The first approach was to simulate it on set with a rig. If you can do it for real, always try to do it for real," says Snow, but the result was not exactly what the team was looking for. And so the shot went into the digital realm for additional work.

"The practical explosion was used to help us look like the car is kicking up dust and debris. But then once the car lifts off the ground, it is completely replaced with CG," Snow says. "(Hand) animation gave us the dramatic choreography, (digital) simulation gave us the ability to take that dramatic choreography and make it look physically real. And then we used practical dust, and the initial explosion allows us to bring back some of the reality."




Anatomy of a Motion-Capture Scene in Avatar

(popularmechanics.com)

1: The Volume

Most of James Cameron’s space epic, Avatar, was shot on a performance-capture stage, known as the volume, in Playa Vista, Calif. The volume was rimmed by 120 stationary video cameras, which could record the movements of all actors at once in 3D, with submillimeter precision. Data from the cameras was streamed into Autodesk software, which translates actors’ movements into digital characters in real time within a low-resolution computer-generated environment. So riding a fake banshee mockup onstage instantly translated to CG footage. Multiple cameramen were used on set for reference video, but because the volume essentially captures performances from every angle at once, Cameron could digitally render whatever angles and shots he wanted after the performance, adjusting the camera movements while viewing playback.

2: Digital Closeup

Like many actors in Avatar, Zoë Saldana plays a fully computer-generated character, Na’vi princess Neytiri. To map her movements to her digital doppelgänger, Saldana wore a motion-capture bodysuit with reference markers and stripes. She also wore a head rig designed by Cameron that aimed a small video camera at her face. That camera tracked green ink dots, painted on Saldana’s face, throughout the scene, giving Cameron closeup-level detail of changes in expression to map to Neytiri’s CG face

Full Press:    http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/industry/4339457.html?nav=RSS20&src=syn&dom=yah_buzz&mag=pop




WHO'S a Ghost ?

(comingsoon.net)                  We're not sure just how big these possible spoilers for Ghostbusters 3 is, but we wanted to caution readers that they might not want to know the following yet.

In an interview with Channel 4, Avatar star Sigourney Weaver was asked about possibly appearing in Ghostbusters 3.

"I'm afraid to say it [Ghostbusters 3] is happening, I hope people are excited about that," she said. "I don't know if I'm going to be in it, I have had a couple of calls asking 'would you read the script."

"I know that my little son Oscar – who was kidnapped from me – I think he has grown up to be a ghostbuster," she added before spilling another, even bigger bit...

"I might be in it; I see nothing wrong with being in it, although I don't think I will have a big part. I think Bill Murray has a little more to do with it - he's a ghost."




Cameron Talks Two "Avatar" Sequels

(darkhorizons.com)             Speaking at a press conference in London, James Cameron confirms that should "Avatar" do well that two potential sequels could be in the works reports Variety.

How is that possible considering the cost? Unlike a lot of other franchises, many of the assets (namely CG backgrounds and elements) and technology is already in place which should make further films cheaper to produce.

Cameron says "in terms of the pitch it was: OK, you've spent a lot of money on the first one; on the second one we'll be able to amortize it [the CG assets] and focus on the story and all that ... and they bought that."

Cameron adds that he has worked out the story for a second and third film. Fox however says while the property clearly has sequel potential, the studio would not confirm any plans for further installments.

The film has screened for media in the US, UK, Canada and Australia over the past 12-24 hours, expect my review up either later today or Saturday.





Layout Artists Are VFX's Unsung Heroes

(variety.com)            How can a mass of bits and bytes stomp its heavy metal feet on a sand dune filmed by Michael Bay? Or, how can an elegant combination of ones and zeroes touch an actor filmed by James Cameron? It starts with layout artists.

"Layout artists are the unsung heroes," says Industrial Light & Magic's Scott Farrar, visual effects supervisor for "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen." "Once you scan a shot filmed on location into the computer, it's just a 2D photograph. Layout artists are the key to putting characters in place."

CG robots can't fight on top of a photograph; they need to climb inside the landscape. So, layout artists at ILM build three-dimensional virtual environments that match the filmed sets. "Layout artists have to match the position of anything a CG character touches down to the film grain," Farrar says. "Otherwise, things slide."

The artists then orient the virtual environments to match the camera view in every frame as the camera moves through a shot.

"Transformers'" shots were particularly tricky to match."In the desert, the ground undulates, a forest doesn't have straight lines, and the wind moved everything," says Terry Chostner, layout supervisor at ILM. "Plus, Michael Bay runs six or eight cameras on a shot and shoots all sorts of formats with lenses that have different distortions. It made things very difficult."

The "Avatar" layout team, facing unprecedented technologies, had to almost reinvent the process. "Layout for 'Avatar' was very different from what we would typically call layout," says Shawn Dunn, Weta's head of layout and animation technologies. "It wasn't just at the front end."

The picture was shot in stereoscopic 3D (S3D), so the layout artists had to match two camera views, left eye and right eye. Much of "Avatar," however, takes place in an all-CG world, with performance capture animation.

Cameron's Lightstorm Entertainment provided data captured from the actors' performances and a low-resolution model of the ground plane. Weta's layout artists then gave their modeling department a list of assets -- trees, bushes, vines, and so forth -- to build in high resolution, translated Cameron's camera moves into the virtual world, and sent high-resolution digital sets to the lighting team.

"I was providing data to people until the last week," Dunn says. "We have characters moving rapidly through vistas with 100,000 trees, bushes, rocks and vines. The amount of work we had to do was phenomenal."





Could Avatar's 3D Technology Save Your Life?

(io9.com)             Directors like James Cameron and Robert Zemeckis are using motion capture and computer animation to place actors in unusual bodies and fantastical environments. But the medical community is increasingly utilizing technology originally designed for movies and video games.

Cameron has promised us that Avatar represents a huge technological advancement, a blending of real-world performances and imagination that will transport us to the foreign world of Pandora in an immersive, visceral way. But developers of medical technologies are looking to achieve the same sort of experience with the world we have, and the entertainment industry's advances in image capture and graphics processing are paving the way.

Certainly medicine is no stranger to computer animation, something they have long used to explain concepts and train personnel. And motion capture has been used for years in gait analysis. Physiotherapists often film patients wearing reflective motion capture markers to analyze their gait, in much the way that filmmakers use motion capture markers on their actors.

But the demand for improved computer graphics technology graphics from the entertainment industry means more sophisticated applications in medicine as well. Just this fall, Nvidia, which develops graphics processing technology for, among other things, gaming systems, demonstrated how the technology used to create immersive 3D experiences for games can also create immersive experiences of the human body. Along with Siemens Healthcare, Nvidia has developed an ultrasound viewing experience that sounds like it was scripted by Cameron: parents and healthcare workers can put on a pair of stereoscopic glasses and examine a fetus as if they were looking directly inside the womb. The demonstration comes just months after Nvida released its GeForce 3D Vision system, with a pair of stereoscopic glasses to improve the immersive experience of playing video games and watching 3D movies.

For filmmakers like Cameron, the goal is to capture the detail of the human experience, down to the most minute muscle movements and to create worlds that are so detailed as to appear real. If he's successful in creating an experience with Avatar that gives audiences both a fully immersive experience of a world that's completely invented and manages to translate the twitches of the human face onto an animated alien, imagine what his technology could accomplish when simply reflecting a world that actually exists. Perhaps the legacy of Cameron, Zemeckis, and other filmmakers working in these fields will include advances in virtual surgery, diagnosis, and other innovations in the medical field.

    According to the site MarketSaw, Peter Jackson's digital production facility, Weta Digital, is due to have the first go-round of the Tintin film by January. Sounds like Jackson and Spielberg are on target to hit their European release date of November 2011.

The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn is a film based on the Belgian character Tintin. Co-Directed by Steven Speilberg and Peter Jackson, the movie is scheduled to be released in the states December 2011. For more information on all things Tintin, be sure to visit: the TintinBlog.com and ShopTintin.com.





3D-animated Rapunzel To Go Witch Hunting

(The Hollywood Reporter)                  The Hollywood Reporter says that Tony-winning actress Donna Murphy, who played Doc Ock's wife in Spider-Man 2, is joining Mandy Moore and Zachary Levi in Disney's 3D-animated Rapunzel.

Moore voices the title character, while Levi is the voice of the bandit who finds himself on the road with the rebellious, teenage hair apparent. The movie picks up with the princess, famous for her 70 feet of golden hair, after she's been stolen from her parents' castle as an infant and imprisoned. Now a teenager, Rapunzel escapes and goes on the run with a bandit as her captor pursues them.

Murphy will voice Mother Gothel, the witch who keeps Rapunzel prisoner in a tower that had no doors or stairs.

Byron Howard and Nathan Greno (Bolt) are directing the musical comedy, to feature music by Alan Menken.






New Sinbad Movie Worthy Of Stop-motion Animation Pioneer Ray Harryhausen

(examiner.com)              It seems that Sinbad the Sailor is getting ready to set sail on a wondrous adventure once again, in a new movie set to hit theaters next summer.

Sinbad, The Fifth Voyage is the dream project of producer/actor Shahin Sean Solimon (Djinn), who as a child had a goal to one day create a Sinbad movie worthy of the Sinbad films of stop-motion animation pioneer Ray Harrhausen. Solimon, a Persian American, came to this country at age 6 from Iran. He studied film in college, and made his first indie movie, Djinn in 2008. Now the actor/writer/director is set realize his goal of bringing his hero to the big screen.

The new movie leans more to the original Persian tales of Sinbad than from the Harryhausen movies— this is not going to be a remake or re-imagining. Instead Solimon drew inspiration straight from the Book of 1001 Arabian Nights tales, which were a compilation of Arabic tales spanning from the 9th century to the 13th century, during the Islamic Golden Age. The tales were first translated in English, in 1706.

As Solimon's version unfolds, Sinbad must rescue the Sultan's daughter, who has been abducted on the night she and the sailor become engaged. Sinbad and his crew must embark on a long and arduous quest, sailing to far off exotic lands in pursuit of his bride to be. During the journey, he encounters all sorts of strange creatures and adventures.

At this time the movie is still being cast. As it stands so far, Star Trek:The Next Generation's Patrick Stewart has been confirmed as being "attached" to the project. However at the time of this writing, his character has not been identified. Solimon, of course will be playing Sinbad.





Real Steel Coming November 18, 2011

(ComingSoon.net)                   DreamWorks Pictures and Disney's Touchstone Pictures are targeting a November 18, 2011 release for director Shawn Levy's Real Steel, the studios' first project together under their new deal.

In the sci-fi action-adventure, Hugh Jackman will play an ex-fighter who becomes a promoter when human boxing is outlawed for being too violent. The new gladiators are 2,000-pound robots with human qualities. The ex-fighter's access to sub-standard robot parts hampers his hopes for glory in Robot Boxing, until he discovers a discarded robot that always seems to win. The ex-fighter has also discovered he's the father of a 13-year old son, and they bond as the robot brawls its way toward the top.

The premise is based on a short story by Richard Matheson that was adapted into an original "Twilight Zone" episode that starred Lee Marvin.

Nov. 18, 2011 is also when Warner Bros. was planning on releasing George Miller's Happy Feet 2.





"Twilight Saga: Eclipse" Going IMAX

(darkhorizons.com)                 IMAX Corporation and Summit Entertainment announced today that The Twilight Saga: Eclipse, the third film in the studio's "Twilight" franchise, will be released to IMAX(R) theatres simultaneously with the film's launch on June 30, 2010.




Best Performance By An Avatar: How Actors Will Work in the Future

(screendaily.com)                    Watching Avatar at a James Cameron-hosted screening on the Fox lot last week, it was clear a new level of motion capture has been born. Some of his actors, namely Zoe Saldana, CCH Pounder and Wes Studi, spent months working on the film but only appear as Na’vi, 10-feet tall blue aliens with huge eyes, Shrek-like ears and a tail. Their facial features and voices are blended into the creatures and Cameron used their face and body movements as the basis for the characters. Sam Worthington and Sigourney Weaver also spend a large percentage of the film in Na’vi guise. Weaver, in particular, is unmistakeable.

The effect is startling. Working with Peter Jackson’s Weta Digital facility in New Zealand, the Avatar team has created lifelike digital characters which carry the story arc of the film. While watching, I was so engaged by the characters I constantly had to remind myself they were not human. It isn’t like watching Roddy McDowall in an ape suit or Gollum. It’s a whole new cinematic experience.

Cameron attributed the success of the process to his actors. “This was total performance,” he said. “That’s why Zoe and Sam had to train.”

I was also lucky enough to discuss motion capture with Peter Jackson, who was in Los Angeles to promote The Lovely Bones. Jackson explained that motion capture is “a way of moving. It has nothing to do with how the characters look, which is a design of the character. It’s terrific because instead of an animator and a computer animating a character frame by frame, motion capture allows a real actor to perform.”

“We were capturing body performance, hands, the entire facial performance,” added Cameron. “What the actors do in the moment is sacred. Once that moment is created, the technical processes that come afterwards cannot take away from it.They can only add to it.”

Jackson went on to elucidate that on the first of the Tintin movies, which he is producing and Steven Spielberg is directing, Jamie Bell, Andy Serkis and Daniel Craig are “bringing it to life” but the faces that will be seen on screen when the film is released at the end of 2011 will look like the characters from the pages of Hergé. “They are performing it as if they are doing the movie for real,” said Jackson. “And yet, what’s coming to life are characters that Hergé designed. They look as if he actually designed them himself.”

So not only are movie stars becoming less significant to blockbusters, but from now on these films will increasingly employ actors (and in the case of Tintin, some pretty famous ones) to ‘act’ the part. Yet their faces will never reach the screen. Quite how or whether awards bodies will recognise this new style of performance is a question that can’t yet be answered, but it’s certain that performance capture could become a key part of a film actor’s income in the future.





'Tron Legacy' Conceptual CGI Test Makes For An Electric Revelation

It's been a semi-tough year for Walt Disney Studios.  They've had big hits such as "The Proposal" and Pixar's "Up," but expected blockbusters such as "G-Force," "Surrogates" and "A Christmas Carol" were anything but.  This lead to chairman Dick Cook getting axed and eventually his head of marketing met the same fate.  But while Cook may have leaned a bit to heavily on the Jonas Brothers and Miley Cyrus' of the Disney family to keep things afloat (which wasn't always the smartest strategy), he did put a number of films into production that have a chance of truly breaking out past his departure.  Tim Burton's "Alice in Wonderland" will be Cook's first "I told you so" this Spring, but next Christmas he may be wistful over a potential monster debut of "Tron Legacy."

Take a few minutes and enjoy the conceptual test that sold the movie to Cook and the studio embedded in this page:   http://www.hitfix.com/articles/2009-12-10-sneak-peek-tron-legacy-makes-an-electric-revelation





Jonah Hex Headed For Reshoots -I Am Legend's Director Consulting

(empireonline.com)                According to the lads over at Bloody Disgusting, it looks like Warners' adaptation of Jonah Hex is headed back to the studio for additional shooting.

Hearing that a movie is headed for additional camera time months after it originally wrapped is usually cause for concern - though not always, as some directors simply need extra time once the first couple of cuts are complete to fill in gaps or squeeze in new ideas.

But when that news comes linked to word that original Hex director Jimmy Hayward will have I Am Legend's Francis Lawrence "consulting" on the new footage, that's when the alarm bells start to ring.

Hayward, of course, is making his live-action debut with the movie after directing Blue Sky's Horton Hears A Who! He's also got plenty of experience under his belt - he spent time at Pixar before moving on to direct Robots and Horton.

And given the casting breakdown tracked down by Spoiler TV for characters including the lead's wife and child, it appears that at least some of the new material will help bolster Hex's background.

The proof, of course, will be in the final film. And whether Josh Brolin suddenly turns into Will Smith halfway through…





Stan Winston Studio and Digital Domain FX Artist Now VFX Sup for MastersFX

(SHOOT Publicity Wire)              Mastersfx, Hollywood's preeminent creators of practical character effects, has launched a digital division. André Bustanoby, formerly an FX artist with Stan Winston Studio and Digital Domain, has been named the Visual Effects Supervisor for the new division. Todd Masters, Founder, Mastersfx, made the announcements.

Mastersfx is currently contributing FX to a number of high profile television and feature film projects. These include: Twilight: New Moon, True Blood: Season Three, The Vampire Diaries, Fringe, Flash Forward, Eureka, Sanctuary, Big Love, Private Practice and Grey's Anatomy, among others. The company just won a 2009 "Gemini" Award for its contributions to the cable TV series Stargate: Atlantis.

The new digital division of Mastersfx allows the company to skillfully integrate practical character effects with digital FX. This marriage of practical and digital allows for effects that are best for each shot design, project budget, project time constraints, and production preferences, all in the service of good storytelling, regardless of the medium.

Regarding the news, Masters said, "Our new digital group allows our company to integrate the best of both worlds within special and visual effects. There will always be room for practical, on-set effects that include makeups, prosthetics, puppets and other character gags. By enhancing these moments with our digital expertise, our company's contributions to film, TV, commercials and multi-media projects lets us plan every FX design in advance, pre-visualization, so we can best determine the most dramatic—and efficient—element to deliver. We can 'throw all the tools' onto the table, and can then decide which to ultimately deliver to the director."

     Director Matthew Vaughn likes to do things his own way. When his friend, comic book writer Mark Millar, approached him with the idea of making a movie based on his Kick-Ass comic book, Vaughn refused to leave it up to "the whores in Hollywood." Instead, he went out and raised Kick-Ass's $50 million budget himself.

One of the ways Vaughn avoided the inflated budgets of other "superhero" movies is by filming as much as possible with his cameras, rather than relying on CGI, a technology that he is not very comfortable using.

    I hate [CGI]. F*cking green screen. It's like, for me, CGI is for when you really can't do it in camera. I use it when I have to, but I just think it's fake.





"Avatar" Steals "Pirates' of the Caribbean" Costly Prize

James Cameron's new movie Avatar, set in the future on another planet, also had an out-of-this-world budget.

The science fiction movie, made in Wellington and to be released next week, is regarded as the most expensive film ever made – costing a staggering US$297 million (NZ$415m).

This meant Avatar, Cameron's first film as a director since Titanic in 1997, had beaten the previous record holder, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, which cost US$274 million (NZ$383m), Australian newspaper the Sunday Mail reported.

 BIG BUDGETS

1. Avatar - US$297 million
2. Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End - US$274m
3. Spider-Man 3 - US$258m
4. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - US$250m
5. Superman Returns - US$232m





"The Wolfman" Gets An R Rating

(darkhorizons.com)                  After much publicised reshoots, re-edits, vital crew changes, and various versions tested, Universal's new take on "The Wolfman" has finally gone before the MPAA.

The result? An 'R' rating for "bloody horror, violence and gore" that in a refreshing change the studio itself is happily publicising rather than shying away from.

There was talk that both a PG-13 and a longer, darker and more violent R rated cut of the film were both tested recently with the latter winning out in terms of reaction.

We'll see for ourselves February 12th, but reviews will likely start emerging in late January.





UK Govt Set to Reject Videogames Industry Tax Breaks

(gamesindustry.biz)                  The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alistair Darling, is set to reject calls from the videogames industry in the UK for tax breaks, according to a report in The Guardian.

The games industry, which contributes more to the economy than the government-aided film industry, is likely to be again passed over as requests for parity with the movie business are ignored.

The UK national debt currently stands at over GBP 800 billion (USD 1.3 trillion), with borrowing this year likely to nudge GBP 175 billion (USD 285 billion), and some industry insiders have previously expressed their doubt to GamesIndustry.biz that against such a backdrop the government would be willing to extend state aid plans.

However, TIGA's Richard Wilson led a group of UK developers in taking a petition to Downing Street earlier this week, stating that tax relief for games businesses would result in benefits for the country.

"If it is right to provide tax relief for the UK film industry then it is also right to provide tax relief for the UK videogames sector," he said then. "The introduction of a Games Tax Relief would increase employment, investment and enable British videogame developers to better compete against those countries which have sort to attract this growing sector using tax incentives.

"If the UK intends to capitalise on this modern industry and echo the success of the UK film industry then I urge the Government to introduce a Games Tax Relief as a matter of urgency."

The government has already spent a huge amount of money bailing out the banking sector, with a recent National Audit Office report estimating the cost to the tax-payer of rescuing companies, including RBS, as around GBP 850 billion (USD 1.4 trillion) - with that bank now proposing to pay its staff around GBP 1.5 billion (USD 2.4 billion) in bonuses.





'Men in Black 3' Begins Casting   
               
(latinoreview.com)                 Josh Brolin To Be In 'Men in Black3'? Busy actor Josh Brolin is being considered for an unspecified role in "Men in Black 3."

His exact part is a matter of discussion, but in recent days there's been chatter in Hollywood development circles of a few possibilities: He could play a new single-monikered government agent, with Tommy Lee Jones' Agent K passing the baton to Brolin's character. Or he could play Agent K as a young man. Or something else entirely.

Whatever the part, Brolin could be playing against some star power: Will Smith is expected to return in the new "MIB" as Agent J.

This last part is probably the most crucial.

Sony is currently contemplating a production start for the picture in 2010 (though it has yet to be greenlit).

"MIB 3" doesn't have a go ahead yet, and that's obviously 100 percent dependent on whether or not the Fresh Prince will return. Well, I for one could probably live out the rest of my days without seeing a part three for this franchise. Part one was just OK and part two was what scientists call "not good." My gut says it doesn't happen, but you never know with Big Willie.





CGI Ranks In Top 10 Movie Developments Survey

(ropeofsilicon.com)                I just received a press release from a PR firm representing Hollywood.com with what they have determined to be the "Top 10 Most Significant Movie Developments of the Past Decade" and it's an interesting list to ponder and outside of a couple of the selections I agree with most all of it. However, it is quite obvious the biggest influence over the last decade has been the Internet, but before adding any more comments, here's the list as determined by Hollywood.com:

   1. The evolution of social media (Twitter, blogs) to propel box office numbers
   2. The advancement of Computer-Generated Imaging
   3. The rise of 3D films and IMAX theaters
   4. The creation of Netflix, as well as the ability to download movies before they are available on DVD or Blu-Ray
   5. The launch of online ticket sales
   6. The major influx of movies based on comics
   7. Fantasy books made into major feature films including The Lord of the Rings trilogy and Harry Potter
   8. The surge in piracy (Remember the X-Men Origins: Wolverine leak?)
   9. The rise of the Fanboy and nerd culture as movies targeted this influential demo
  10. The development of High Definition technology and Blu-Ray

Full Press:      http://www.ropeofsilicon.com/article/what-are-the-top-10-most-significant-movie-developments-of-the-past-decade






Globes Pushing 'Avatar' Towards Best Picture Oscar

(hollywood.com)                  HitFix is reporting today that James Cameron's highly anticipated Avatar could be a shoo-in for a handful of Golden Globe nominations.

A screening on Monday produced "very reliable sources" who said that the Hollywood Foreign Press Association was incredibly positive about the film.

HF says it's now very likely that Avatar could be nominated in both the Best Picture, Drama and Best Director categories when the Golden Globe nominations are announced next Tuesday.

HF surmises that an entry by Avatar could push expected Globe nominees such as The Hurt Locker or An Education out of the Best Picture, Drama race (which would be kind of ironic given that Cameron was once married to Hurt Locker director Kathryn Bigelow…).

Additionally, as HF notes, this could push Avatar into serious consideration for one of those 10 Best Picture Oscar slots.

With the Globes nominations coming out three days before the film, Avatar's presence among the nominees could also help put its debut weekend over the top. The film is already tracking at a $60 million plus debut, according to HF, and critical kudos could "boost interest among those on the fence about the genre flick."





Movie Effects Artist Wishes ‘Twilight’ Vampires Didn’t Sparkle

(newmoonmovie.org)              Ah, the super talented Todd Masters.  A man who obviously is ahead of his time in the world of character effects, I mean look at his work!  Masters FX is Todd’s 22-year-old Los Angeles-based company, but Todd isn’t exactly feeling the whole “vampires who sparkle” thing.

    “We’re not really into the whole sparkly vampire thing,” said Masters, a graduate of Sammamish High School who grew up in Lake Hills. “Vampires don’t sparkle.”

    Among the company’s contributions to “New Moon” were wounds, scars, the tattoos worn by the wolf-morphing Quileute characters and one very graphic — and very sparkly — vampire death.

    But alas — little to no blood.

    “They don’t bleed,” said Masters. “They just sparkle.”

    As you can probably guess, Masters is not a fan of Stephenie Meyer’s book series and doubts he’ll become one.

Ouch!  Not a fan?  Oh well, we can’t win them all folks.  But you simply can’t ignore the massive and undeniable talent that Mr. Masters has, I mean his  work is absolutely magnificent, maybe we will win him over…one day? :)

Masters, has also worked on several blockbuster smashes like, ”Nightmare on Elm Street and the very popular shows “Vampire Diaries” and “True Blood.”

Check out the very interesting story at SeattlePi, and check out 5 pics of Todd’s fascinating New Moon work, including the infamous Quileute tattoo, here.

So the whole “I love boys who sparkle” debate.  I think it’s cute and innocent, although the only one we’ve seen sparkle is my beloved Edward.  It would be nice to see them all bling out if even for a second.  As far as the blood and gore goes, I’m not into the whole bloody mess of it all.  I do enjoy True Blood as well as Vampire Diaries(that Stefan…woohoo!) but I like the lightness of  The Twilight Saga better, where the violence & blood is kept down to a minimum.  So how do you feel about the whole sparkle vs blood debate?  And also vampires are dead, are they even able to bleed? Hmmm..




'Pirates of the Caribbean 4' Still Scripting

(aceshowbiz.com)                  Though he refuses to confirm that the film is definitely going to happen, producer Jerry Bruckheimer says the story of 'Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides' is being worked on.
Story of 'Pirates of the Caribbean 4' Being Worked On
See larger image

Despite Bill Nighy's statement that any announcement about "Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides" is premature, the movie has slowly shown its shape. Being interviewed by IESB, producer Jerry Bruckheimer said he and other filmmakers are "working on the story right now."

Though so, he refused to confirm that the next installment of "Pirates of the Caribbean" film franchise is definitely going to happen, claiming "Nothing is except death and taxes. Deaths and taxes are 100%. Nothing else is." Moreover, when asked whether or not Johnny Depp will return to reprise his role as Jack Sparrow, the 64-year-old expressed uncertainty as he said, "Well, if the script's good, he'll be there."

However, in September the actor himself has revealed that he is set to work on another "Pirates of the Caribbean" movie. Additionally, Depp is reportedly "excited to work together" with Rob Marshall, who has confirmed his participation in the upcoming Disney's movie. Marshall will replace Gore Verbinski who decided to drop out of the next "Pirates of the Caribbean" movie after successfully directing the first three films.

Eying a summer 2011 release, "Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides" is said to follow Jack Sparrow in his quest to find the Fountain of Youth. He will team up with Captain Barbossa in order to "defeat some supernatural terror".




IDW Revives Famous Monsters of Filmland

(IDW Publishing)               Forrest J. Ackerman's legacy lives on long after his passing.

"Famous Monsters of Filmland" announced its return to print with partner IDW Publishing ("30 Days of Night," "Locke & Key"). The new Famous Monsters magazine will begin its run on a quarterly basis starting in summer 2010, and will be available in major book retailers, comic stores, and online at FamousMonsters.com.

Originally launched in 1958, "Famous Monsters of Filmland" was one of the first magazines to take readers behind-the-scenes of some of the most popular movies of present and past. Under the guidance of beloved editor-in-chief Forrest J. Ackerman, credited with nurturing and even inspiring the careers of early contemporaries such as Ray Bradbury, Ray Harryhausen, and L. Ron Hubbard, the magazine brought monsters to life and made household names out of writers, directors, creature designers, FX artists, and monster makeup technicians.

Editorial duties for the magazine will be handled by Michael Heisler, a veteran of the comic book industry for over 20 years, with experience logged at Marvel Comics, WildStorm Productions and IDW itself. "FM was far and away my favorite magazine when I was a kid, and there has been nothing quite like it since," says Heisler. "Our goal is to update that magic for a modern audience, with coverage of current horror in all its forms, while continuing to pay tribute to the classic films that started it all. Personally, I'm thrilled to be taking this step down the road that Forry Ackerman and 'Chilly Billy' Cardille put me on so many years ago."

        H2O Motion Pictures has released stills and information on the Alex Winter (Yes, Bill from Bill & Ted) directed remake of Tibor Takács’ original film.  One of the most interesting tidbits is that H.R. Giger – known by most as the creature designer of the Alien from ‘ALIEN’ - will be providing New Creature Design based off of the original designs by Randall William Cook.  Based off the stills released, they look practically the same as the original creatures.  So, I’m hoping that Giger is creating some new demons for our eyes to see.

  McG Plans To Make Terminator 5 And 6 Does anyone really want to see another Terminator movie? Well, McG doesn’t care whether you want one or not. In fact, he’s pretty adamant about making two more movies. During a BD-Live Director’s Commentary, director Joseph McGinty Nichol, better known as McG, said he’s planning on directing Terminator 5 and 6.

In between announcing he’s making T5 and then announcing T6 will follow, McG revealed the secret to successful filmmaking, according to Gizmodo (via Coming Soon): “There's two elements that go into filmmaking. There's sound, and there's the picture.” Oh! Really? Other than that, it didn’t seem like McG had anything important to say. The transcriber from Gizmodo complained the director was only given positive comments to respond to, which clearly doesn’t represent the general consensus.

Is McG even aware of the fact that Halcyon Entertainment is in the midst of selling the franchise rights? It’s impossible to have a fifth and sixth film set in stone, when by February 1st, those in charge will have to pass the reins to someone else.

Terminator Salvation isn’t a complete travesty, but McG even admitted, “I'm disappointed in myself that I couldn't make the best movie.” Being disappointed isn’t an excuse to go ahead and give it another shot. A massive $200 million budget is a lot to go wasting on more ‘sound’ and ‘picture.’




"Hancock" Sequel to be Put on Hold

(entertainment.oneindia.in)                Plans to make sequel to superhero comedy Hancock has been put on hold to allow actor Will Smith to spend more time with his family, according to director Peter Berg. Berg had recently confirmed that Smith and his co-star Charlize Theron would both reprise their roles in a follow-up to the hit 2008 movie.

However, the plans have been deferred as Smith takes break from movies to enjoy life with his wife, Jada, and help his son, Jayden, in his a starring role in the new Karate Kid picture. Berg is adamant Hancock 2 will get made, but it may take longer than expected.

"It''s being written now and it''s an issue of everybody involved in Hancock. There are so many cooks in that particular kitchen that it''s so busy and Will has kind of taken time off to be with his kids and his kids are now making all kinds of films,” Contactmusic quoted Berg as telling The Latino Review. “There are so many people involved in that, from Will to his (business) partner James Lassiter to Michael Mann, myself and to get us all in the same room just like this where we can all talk and then agree on anything, you''ve never met a group of people that have a harder time agreeing on anything.

"It''s like the Israeli peace process times a thousand how tough it is to resolve. I think it''ll happen though. We just have to kind of get in the same room for some consistency,” he added




'Avatar' is the 800-pound Gorilla in Visual Effects Race

(variety.com)               The 800-pound gorilla of the visual effects race is "Avatar," which combines motion-capture animation, virtual environments, robot and machine effects, and creatures -- and does all of it in stereo-scopic 3D. Weta Digital leads the way on a project so vast that writer-helmer James Cameron is likely to have his hands full just sustaining high quality across its many shots and vendors. (Even Cameron's landmark "Titanic" has its bad vfx shots.)

In any other year, "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" would seem huge, with a plethora of robots and its CG vfx rendered for the 70mm Imax format. "Transformers" lead shop Industrial Light & Magic has several contenders this year, including "Star Trek" and another killer-robot pic, "Terminator Salvation." Roland Emmerich's end-of-the-world opus "2012" offers eye-popping destruction. Gritty alien-slum pic "District 9" is a well-liked underdog. "Watchmen" has stylish work from Sony Imageworks and others.

THE CONTENDERS:

2012
Columbia
Highlights: Giant L.A. earthquake; huge wave and water simulations
Vfx runtime/shots: 77 min./1,315 shots (total runtime: 154 min.)
Vfx shops: Uncharted Territory, Double Negative, Digital Domain, Scanline

AVATAR*
Fox
Highlights: Planet Pandora, alien Na'vi, digital characters and 3D everything
Vfx runtime: N/A
Vfx shops: Weta Digital, Industrial Light & Magic, Framestore, Prime Focus

DISTRICT 9
TriStar
Highlights: The "prawn" aliens and technology and their integration into South African environment
Vfx runtime/shots: 44 min./537 shots (total runtime: 112 min.)
Vfx shops: Image Engine, the Embassy, Weta Digital, Weta Workshop

G.I. Joe: THE RISE OF COBRA
Paramount
Highlights: Accelerator suits, convoy chase, Paris car chase and destruction of Eiffel Tower
Vfx runtime/shots: 90 min./1,763 shots (total runtime: 112 min.)
Vfx shops: Digital Domain, CIS Group, Moving Picture Co., Dan Sudick (practical f/x)

HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE
Warner Bros.
Highlights: The inky memory flashbacks, the climax's tornado of fire and an all-digital Dementor attack on London
Vfx runtime/shots: 144 min/1,233 shots
Vfx shops: ILM, Double Negative, Moving Picture Co., Rising Sun Pictures

THE IMAGINARIUM OF DOCTOR PARNASSUS
Sony Classics
Highlights: Widely varied styles, miniatures and pyro for Jude Law's sequence
Vfx runtime/shots: N/A
Vfx shops: Peerless Camera Co.

STAR TREK
Paramount
Highlights: Diversity among planets, aliens, space ships, environments
Vfx runtime/shots: 60+ min./1,100 shots (total runtime: 127 min.)
Vfx shops: ILM, Digital Domain, Svengali Visual Effects, Lola VFX

TERMINATOR SALVATION
Warner Bros.
Highlights: Killer robots, the proto-Terminator, the digital T-800 and digital Arnold Schwarzenegger
Vfx runtime/shots: 67 min/1,271 shots (total runtime: 106 min.)
Vfx shops: ILM, Asylum, Rising Sun, Stan Winston Studio, Kerner Studios

TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN
Paramount
Highlights: More and bigger robots, in more worldwide locations, on huge Imax screens
Vfx runtime/shots: 80 min./1,600 shots (total runtime: 149 min.)
Vfx shops: ILM, Digital Domain, Asylum

WATCHMEN
Warner Bros.
Highlights: The destruction of New York, Rorschach's mask, the Owlship and all-digital Dr. Manhattan
Vfx runtime/shots: 97 minutes/925 shots (total runtime: 161 min.)
Vfx shops: Sony Pictures Imageworks, Intelligent Creatures, Moving Picture Co., CIS

WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE
Warner Bros.
Highlights: The CG-animated facial expressions on the creatures
Vfx runtime/shots: about 60 min/1,155 shots (total runtime: 97 min.)
Vfx Shops: Framestore; Iloura; Rising Sun; D Train FX

ALSO IN THE MIX
• "Land of the Lost"
• "The Lovely Bones"*
• "Sherlock Holmes"*
• "Twilight: New Moon"
• "X-Men Origins:Wolverine"





Marvel's $1 Billion Superhero Theme Park Concept Art

(WorstPreviews.com)          Marvels $1 Billion Superhero Theme Park Concept ArtSubmit Comment
Marvel and Disney are currently in the process of merging, and once they do, Disney will take over the superhero company and its many properties, including a $1 billion theme park being built in Dubai, UAE.

Today we have several pieces of concept art for the park that will have rides and sections based on Spider-Man, Iron Man, The Hulk and X-Men. The art shows rollercoasters, 3D theaters and a Spidey freefall ride. Check out the images below.

Even though the plan is to have the park ready by 2012, there are many things that could delay it or completely scrap it. Disney may try to get out of the park deal, plus the Dubai economy is not doing all that well right now.

Take a look:    http://www.worstpreviews.com/headline.php?id=16030&count=0




Jack Black Animates Legendary Creatures

(comingsoon.net)             Jack Black, whose last foray into animation was the hit "Kung Fu Panda," is the centerpiece of an untitled animated film pitch that Illumination Entertainment, Chris Meledandri's Universal-based family film unit, is acquiring preemptively.

The untitled pitch is centered in the world of cryptozoology, which is the search for legendary creatures whose existence has never actually been confirmed, like the Loch Ness Monster or Bigfoot.

Pitch was made by scribe Jason Micallef, with Black in the room. Black will produce with partner Ben Cooley through their Electric Dynamite banner, along with Meledandri. Black is only aboard as producer and will not provide a voice in the film. It is Black's first animation project as producer, but he and Cooley are producers on the Black starrer "Gulliver's Travels" and the docu "Branson." Black's previous producing credits include "Nacho Libre" and "Tenacious D In the Pick of Destiny."

He is separately reprising for the "Kung Fu Panda" sequel and lent his voice to "Shark Tale" and the first installment of "Ice Age."

Micallef previously wrote "Butter," a script that made the Black List, and has Jennifer Garner attached with Michael De Luca producing. Micallef,and Underground Films' Josh McGuire, most recently rewrote "The King of Kong" for New Line.

Illumination's first major animation release is "Despicable Me," which Universal releases July 9. Steve Carell provides the lead voice, and Jason Segel, Danny McBride, Julie Andrews and Russell Brand also voice characters.




3D Scanning By...  Webcam?

(nexus404.com)             Qi Pan, a PhD engineering candidate at Cambridge University has developed software that allows users to create a fully 3D digital model with a regular, stationary webcam. No need for multiple cameras or 3D imaging lasers, as the software is able to render the model by simply having the model rotated in front of the webcam by hand.

The technology is called ProFORMA (obviously named by an engineer) and the secret to it, is that it renders the 3d model
as the real life model is being collected. It seems to be highly accurate and what impresses me is that it even accurately captures the textures of the item being modeled into 3D.

The principal isn’t that much different than motion capture which has helped create realistic human motions in CGI movies and video games for some time, but unlike mo-cap, the target doesn’t have to be covered in small light-sensitive balls that help the computer and multiple cameras track the motion.

And what is equally impressive is that instead of the expensive motion-capture equipment (which can cost over $6,000 for a single motion-capture equipped glove, which doesn’t include the cost of the cameras of drivers), this is done with a single, off-the-shelf webcam, and, like I said earlier, also captures the textures.

The possible applications of this tech is pretty limitless at this point. This could seriously change the cost and effort needed for 3D modeling
. Check out the full page at Cambridge below, including a YouTube video that shows the software capturing and rendering the 3D model ‘live’ (that is, as he rotates the target object).

Demo:    http://nexus404.com/Blog/2009/11/23/3d-scanning-without-a-3d-scanner-cambridge-develops-software-to-create-3d-models-with-regular-webcam/




3D "Christmas Carol" Readies To Face The Na’vi

(huffingtonpost.com)           A Christmas Carol lost 400 screens over the weekend and box office numbers plummeted 52%. At $119 million, its still a bit ahead of The Polar Express but its day-to-day comparisons are starting to drop.

Sadly, this one really only has one more weekend left, as it loses its 3D and IMAX screens to Avatar on the 18th.





Creature Designer Neville Page on Creating Avatar's Banshees

(firstshowing.net)            We're down to the last few weeks before James Cameron's Avatar arrives in theaters everywhere. I'm seeing it later this week and I'm sure early reviews will start hitting around then as well. But before we get into that, I wanted to feature this great interview that Hero Complex did with creature designer Neville Page. You may not recognize him yet, but Page is a engineer / artist / designer who has worked previously on Cloverfield, Watchmen, J.J. Abrams' Star Trek, James Cameron's Avatar, and Tron Legacy. He's the guy responsible for designing the creatures, worlds, and vehicles in pretty much all of those films. Read on!

Before getting to Avatar, Page explained that he's been inspired the most in his life by Star Wars as well as other films like Blade Runner, Ridley Scott's Legend, and James Cameron's Aliens. And speaking of Aliens, Page actually says it was Cameron himself who designed the queen. "At his house he pulled out the original design … I think to remind us he was quite capable… I had no idea he was that much of an artist." Never knew that, but it's definitely cool to know. As for Avatar, Page was primarily responsible for designing the banshees, the flying creatures on Pandora that you've probably seen before. He explains the process:

    "The banshee is what I spent the most time on. We knew it was a flying creature. What made it so incredibly challenging, with a bird you have to design it flying, perching, everything has to work. You can’t just draw it one view at a time… The hardest thing of all was having a Na’vi on top of it and flying it. You had to backwards engineer it. It was like designing and engineering an aircraft. And that’s without the beauty and aesthetics of it."

That wasn't all that Page did, though. He was part of the original design team that was brought in in 2005 to work with Cameron. "We worked on the Na’vi, the plants, the environment… Jim, like few others, is so tuned into the plausibility of organisms. He wanted them to look as real as possible, and work organically as well." He didn't even realize what it would look like in the end until he saw the footage at Avatar Day ("I thought to myself, 'Wow, Jim pulled this off'"). Page was also asked about the comparison that many people are making between the tall blue Na'vi aliens in Avatar and the characters in the animated movie Delgo.

    "I thought the choice of the color blue, you only have a few colors to go with. Alien colors are greens and blues or pale whites. Jim had a palette he wanted. Do I think there is much of a comparison? Clearly there is. I think [the video and side-by-side comparisons] was too literalized. I think it’s easiest to do with many films. You can take a bunch of stuff and spin it to whatever you want. It’s like any love story. There can be parallels drawn to any love story. It’s who can tell it better, with more compelling imagery. That’s definitely what Jim has done here. People are going to get it."

Page is dead on with that explanation. It happens all the time. Almost every week we hear about another lawsuit from someone claiming that they wrote a story similar to some movie and that the screenwriter stole the idea from them. I think it was just mere coincidence that these designs seem so similar. They obviously designed the Na'vi way before Delgo had even been released. I'm glad that Page could even agree that they look the same, but that's not the point, that doesn't really mean anything. I doubt this will change the mind of anyone who is already opposed to Avatar, but I'm glad someone is addressing this pointless "concern."

You can find the full interview with Neville Page over on Hero Complex - it's worth reading even if you're not overly excited for this. Avatar arrives in theaters worldwide in only 12 more days on December 18th!





Mass Animation Launching 2nd Project, This Time Paid

(industry.bnet.com)                        While all eyes follow the massive changes in the distribution of movies and TV shows — from the networks, cable, and theaters to the Web — not many stop to wonder what role the Web will have in the future of production.

Except Yair Landau. The Mass Animation project, a 5-minute short called “Live Music” that was crowdsourced on Facebook last year by the former Sony exec, recently opened for the animated feature Planet 51. It seemed like a smart, but narrow, experimental effort to stretch the movie and TV pipeline way out of bounds.

It appears to have worked. Landau’s pipe dream of revolutionizing production for movies and games may not be as far-flung as it seemed at first. His experiment just won him a round of projects –- and this time he’s getting paid for the work.

It’s a first step toward building an entertainment-industry business model that seeks to do more than just port or tweak content online, or slap users with a fee for doing what they already do. This time it’s about getting users to actually participate in the production of a game.

Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) just commissioned Mass Animation to produce the trailer and some game “emotes,” or gestures, for their DC Universe massively multiplayer online game (MMOG), out in 2010. Superhero fans download digital models on Facebook and contribute their best footage. Winners make it into the trailer.

If the business model works, the game takes off with a large and already committed fan base. “It’s about building mindshare about our games,” says John Smedley, president of SOE. “It’s also a new way of marketing, and a way of building a community – something that just throwing a trailer out there won’t do,” he explains. Landau sees the implications clearly: “One thing Sony Online does, which all MMOGs do, is beta testing. This is inviting people to get engaged in the game even earlier than that. The more people vested in your game when you bring it to market, the better your prospects are,” says Landau.

And that’s not all. Landau’s developing a feature-length movie that riffs off the “Live Music” characters, which he’ll shop around next year. Mass Animation’s also in discussions for a TV project, a short for a charity, and a CGI feature film update of a classic 2D animated film. And Landau’s parent company Bedouin Media is in talks with a game developer for an animated TV series and a CG feature. Not bad for a one-man shop leveraging the talent of unknowns to do studio-quality work.

The animation industry is undergoing a shift of its own. Tim Westcott, an entertainment industry analyst at Screen Digest, says the industry is fragmented: “On one hand, you have Hollywood studios that produce massively budgeted movies upwards of $150 million and mostly do it in-house with their own staff of animators. On the other end of the scale are indies, and it has become very difficult for most animation producers because broadcasters are cutting what they spend on original programming – most animation studios make a living doing commercials, corporate films, and service work.

Landau seems to have found a niche in between the studios and independent work. “Yair has unique qualifications because of the fact that he came from a studio environment and had made feature films. It’s neat to see him go out of Sony and embark on something unexpected and very cool,” says Smedley.

But Landau insists his project is not just about giving studios a low-cost alternative:

    The cost savings are not the primary driver — we are not materially cheaper than outsourcing to India or Hungary. Mass Animation is focused on a quality product and we believe we generate a higher level of emotional engagement and committed storytelling from the participating animators than outsourcing.

And Landau appears to have even bigger plans. The next step is targeting a teen/young adult demographic that he says is underserved in the U.S. animation market –- with new genres that resemble games with theatrical storylines. “There are stories people could be telling in CGI right now that the audience is there for, but which people haven’t figured out the economic formula for or have the risk appetite for,” he says.

Is a new kind of interacting online storytelling brewing? “If you look at games like Modern Warfare 2 and Uncharted 2, they have cinematic-level visuals and storytelling going on in the game. Look at the stuff people are creating in Machinima –- that’s also evolving. There’s a real opportunity to tell long-form stories both in-game and using CG characters like that to tell other stories,” he says.

Landau says there’s nothing comparable in the market in the U.S. If that’s the case, Landau has an open field.





No 3D Treatment For 'Spider-Man 4', But 'Men In Black 3'?

(aceshowbiz.com - blogs.coventrytelegraph.net)                  The next "Spider-Man" film will not be among movies which get 3D treatments. In a recent interview with Associated Press, Chief Executive of Sony Corp. Howard Stringer has said he did not think "Spider-Man 4" will be shot with 3D camera.

Rumor that "Spider-Man 4" may be a 3D movie first came out after Sony Pictures Entertainment's co-chairmen Amy Pascal and Michael Lynton had an interview with Forbes magazine. Being asked whether or not they were considering to implement the said technology in the forthcoming movie, Pascal simply said, "Could be."

In the fourth installment of the superhero film, Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst will reprise their roles as Peter Parker/Spider-Man and Mary Jane Watson. Produced by Avi Arad along with Grant Curtis and Laura Ziskin, "Spider-Man 4" will see Sam Raimi returning as director. The principal photography is planned to be kicked off in February or March 2010, and the film is slated to hit U.S. theaters on May 6, 2011.

Sony chief executive Howard Stringer has said he does not expect the next Spider-Man instalment to be released in 3D on the big screen, according to Associated Press.

He added that the DVD and Blu-ray of Michael Jackson's This Is It concert movie would not be in the format either.

But he did say a 3D version of Men in Black - presumably the third film due out in 2011 - was being considered.




Thor Movie "Operates Like a Black Ops"

(comicbookmovie.com)                Natalie Portman blames technology for the blanket of secrecy that surrounds Thor and other Marvel Studios movies!
Ever wondered how Marvel Studios keeps such a tight lid on all of their super hero films in development? Well, according to actress Natalie Portman, who will be appearing as Jane Foster in the live-action adaptation of the popular Thor comic book, that's because Marvel operates like a black ops government agency!

"I think everyone has gotten more secretive just because of the preponderance of technology that can scam just about anything. It's like you don't get a script anymore that doesn't have watermarks that would identify you if you ever tried to leak anything. The Thor script is hard to read because it's on some weird colored paper and they have your name in huge letters across every page. And any time you get a phone call from Marvel, it doesn't come up as a normal number, it's like a five digit code. I've never seen that before. I've had phone calls from people in the government and they don't have that. Marvel's like some like crazy underground world."

Thor will be directed by Kenneth Branagh and is expected to begin shooting in January. Other actors rounding out the cast include Chris Hemsworth, Anthony Hopkins, Tom Hiddleston, Jaimie Alexander, Ray Stevenson, Stuart Townsend, Tadanobu Asano, Idris Elba and Kat Dennings.

Thor opens May 20, 2011!





Reception for ImageMovers Digital Employee Art Show

(pacificsun.com)                  San Rafael, CA – A reception for "Counterpoint," an ImageMovers Digital employee art show, is set for 4:30 to 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 17 at the Marin Community Foundation, 5 Hamilton Landing in Novato.

The Marin Arts Council, Marin Community Foundation and Image Movers Digital present the exhibit featuring the artwork of ImageMovers Digital (IMD) employees. IMD is a new motion picture studio in Marin County, which recently released Disney’s "A Christmas Carol." The exhibit continues through March 4, 2010 at the Marin Community Foundation offices at 5 Hamilton Landing, # 200 in Novato.

This exhibit celebrates the art that IMD employees create just for themselves, offering an understanding of how their own personal, artistic work helps influence their collective achievement. Works featured represent an array of artistic disciplines, including oil and digital paintings, drawings, traditional, and maquette creature sculptures, macro-photography, collage and more.

Established in 2006, ImageMovers Digital is a motion picture studio devoted to the performance capture films of Academy Award-winning director/producer Robert Zemeckis.

For more information call the Marin Arts Council at 415-448-0362 or 415-464-2500 or visit www.marinarts.org