CG VFX Are Not Evil, Lava Lamps & Celluloid, & Beowulf Goes 3D IMAX
CG VFX Are Not Evil
(thestar.com) Scott Farrar doesn't look like Satan.
He's 60ish, balding and greying. He wears eyeglasses, braces on his
teeth and casual clothes.
And yet as one of Hollywood's senior visual effects experts, a job
that includes the shape-shifting robots of the upcoming blockbuster
Transformers (out Tuesday), Farrar is the devil incarnate to those who
bemoan the shift away from flesh-and-bone filmmaking.
For the past three decades, the California native has been at the
forefront of computer-generated images (CGI), a revolution that few
saw coming.
As both supervisor and camera operator for effects house Industrial
Light & Magic, his team credits include such CGI landmarks as The
Chronicles of Narnia, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, The Mummy, Men in Black
and Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace. He's been nominated
five times for an Oscar, winning in 1986 as part of the team behind
the bright-shining aliens of Cocoon.
Farrar is proud of what he does, and he's eager to explain and defend
his oft-maligned role in the moviemaking process. In an interview with
movie scribes at the recent Transformers junket, he used the word
"real" a lot, a strange one for someone who practises the art of
illusion.
The robots in Transformers are almost entirely digital – a good thing,
since they're as tall as houses – but they're based on thousands of
real-life elements. Like the good-guy robot Bumblebee, who folds up
into a classic Chevy Camaro. An auto buff would marvel at the accuracy
of the paint job.
"Everybody building in digital these days is adhering strictly to
what's true in the real world," Farrar said. "That's why it looks real
..."
Transformers presented a unique challenge: giving believable motions
and emotions to characters that began as cartoons and toys. Detail was
the key.
Farrar paused to pick up a toy figure of good-guy robot Optimus Prime.
"This little guy has 51 parts in this toy. Our Optimus has 10,108."
The drive for robot realism was so obsessive, director Michael Bay
ordered his Transformers team to study martial arts films for
movements that could be incorporated into their robots.
As strange as it seems, there was a time when Farrar worried that he
might soon be out of a job.
As a freelance L.A. cameraman in 1976, Farrar visited the set of the
first Star Wars movie, where he'd been inspired by watching
Hollywood's first use of a motion-control camera.
But for a while only Lucas and his friend Steven Spielberg seemed
truly interested in the potential of new technology for moviemaking.
Farrar and the other toilers at ILM feared it might be a fad.
Farrar has an answer for people who think all movie special effects
are contrived or awful. He agrees that not every blockbuster hits a
home run with its visuals, but the dedication is genuine.
"I think maybe the best answer is that people want to be entertained.
And everybody wants to go to the circus and see that guy walking on
the tightrope a little bit higher. That's what we're here for."
Source: http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/article/230676
Pixar Animation Progression Reel: Ratatouille
Take a look: http://bishopanimation.blogspot.com/2007/06/pixar-animation-progression-reel.html
"Fantastic Voyage" Extras Explore Pre-Digital VFX
"Fantastic Voyage" (now available in a special-edition DVD) is a 1967
sci-fi thriller about a team of scientists who are miniaturized and
injected into a human body.
A DVD extra called "Lava Lamps & Celluloid" points out, "Fantastic
Voyage" was precomputer, pre-CGI. Bluntly put by a visual effects
supervisor who worked on the film, creating the inner space of the
human body was "excruciatingly difficult."
How difficult? To make the cells we see shifting and morphing outside
the windows of the scientists' ship, the Proteus, the effects team
photographed thick liquids like castor oil as they separated in a bowl
of water. The sound of computer blips was borrowed from noise effects
first used 10 years earlier in the Tracy & Hepburn comedy "Desk Set."
When characters were called upon to float through the bloodstream,
they were actually suspended on wires, which on several occasions are
visible on screen (including in one of the movie's trailers, which are
also part of the DVD extras).
Challenges – and the couple of gaffes – aside, the visual effects
personnel on "Fantastic Voyage" did, well, a fantastic job. You may
get arguments from real scientists as to the accuracy of this
depiction of the body's internal network, but even viewed today, the
movie has an impact that is wondrous and startling. Major organs, such
as the brain and the heart, were built on separate sets. The latter
was supervised by the same sculptor who would later conceive Kurtz's
surreal and grisly compound at the climax of Francis Ford Coppola's
"Apocalypse Now."
Antibodies are turned into predators, one of which famously attacks
and devours Pleasance, who is the Proteus crew's clandestine villain.
He gets his just deserts – and the antibody just has dessert.
More: http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/features/20070615-9999-1c15voyage.html
An Animated Discussion on Film and Games
(next-gen.biz) With so much emphasis placed on resolution,
lighting and polygon counts, we often forget how important animation
is to a game's visuals. At the Hollywood and Games Summit, top
animators from both sides of the fence stressed the importance of
sharing best practices.
Innovations in 3D animation and rendering along with the massive
growth of the game industry are motivating more traditional animators
to move into game development worlds.
3D animators and game developers at the Hollywood and Games Summit
shared their thoughts on the transition between the film and game
worlds. Experts from both industries are here in Hollywood to build
partnerships and discuss best convergence practices that will help
them churn out new worlds more efficiently.
The migration of 2D, visual effects and 3D animation artists into game
development brings a unique set of skills and challenges to transmedia
ventures.
It takes years to design a game but when linked with a green-lit movie
property, a game development team may have only a year or so to work
with the art before release.
More: http://www.next-gen.biz/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=6171&Itemid=2
Monster Movie Maker Wangles Huge U.S. Release
(english.chosun.com) Shim Hyung-rae is about to return with a
new science fiction blockbuster "D-War" as in "war of the dragons."
Opening in Korea on Aug. 2, the movie will be released in the U.S. on
Sept. 14. The whole movie will be revealed in a preview on July 23,
with a five-minute segment that is expected to rock viewers with its
special effects, including an enormous dragon and a massive, roaring
anaconda that smashes up urban Los Angeles.
Although this is the 11th movie Shim has directed since 1992's
"Young-gu and Count Dracula", most people still think of him as a
comedian. Partly because of the current slump in the Korean movie
industry, "D-War" is being touted as the "relief pitcher for Korean
cinema" and "the savior of the Chungmuro (Korean Hollywood) in
crisis." It is essentially a sci-fi story heavily laden with special
effects. Will it be able to satisfy Korean viewers stimulated by
Hollywood fare like "Spider-Man 3" and "Transformers"? Korean viewers
are actually well known for their sophisticated tastes.
There's no point in building needlessly high expectations, nor
decrying the film. Shim Hyung-rae and "D-War" have already scored some
important accomplishments. Freestyle, the movie's U.S. distributor, is
promising a wide release in 1,500 theaters across America, and is
taking care of all necessary costs. That's no small success. Compare
that to "Spider-Man 3", which was released in 4,000 theaters, and
Korea's biggest hit so far, "The Host", which opened in just 70
theaters. And U.S. viewers are known to enjoy sci-fi flicks with
monstrous beasts. As a filmmaker who has found his way through a break
in the U.S., not Korea, Shim has much to be proud about.
The poster: http://english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200706/200706290017.html
Indy 4 Filming Creates Problems
(nhregister.com) There was excitement and drama and an energy
down own as the filming of the last installment of the Indiana Jones
series was in full swin Thursday. There also were a lot of hassles as
Hollywood enveloped downtown New Haven.
There were street closures, traffic gridlock, pushy production
assistants herding crowds, and agitated people unable to cross a
closed street to get to work, their cars or a bus stop.
"When you bring in a production of this size, people have to expect a
disruption (in their) personal lives or in their business lives. It
has a ripple effect, even if you are blocks away from the filming,"
said an empathetic Barbara Lamb, the city's director of Cultural
Affairs. "I think that people do get upset, and they get irate when
their normal routines get disrupted, if their clients can't get to
them or their customers can't get to them.
"The flip side of it is, if you ask the people on the street, 'Should
we never do this again?', people will say, 'Of course we should do
this again. This is too exciting to say "Go away."'"
She asked for a little patience. "New Haven will probably never ever,
ever see something this large in a film production again."
It's safe to say there were growing pains the first day of filming as
thousands of people converged on downtown in hopes of seeing Hollywood
history. Downtown merchants complained customers couldn't reach them,
pedestrians complained they couldn't get to destinations and some
spectators complained about poor treatment by production workers.
At one point, there was a small conflagration when production
assistants and Yale police forbade newspaper photographers and private
citizens from taking pictures. Later, after a series of phone calls,
the ban was lifted.
Location Manager Mike Fantasia heard the stories, too, and attributed
it to "green" production assistants who were perhaps overzealous in
doing their jobs and overwhelmed by unusually large crowds. "We
understand that we are guests here. We come in and try to be as
unobtrusive as we can," he said. "We can't hold the world up for our
film. We have to let people cross the street and get where they're
going."
"We're on public streets. All we can do is try to maintain a safe
cocoon around our filming."
The crew is filing with an anamorphic, widescreen format. That means
even when the camera is filming vertically down the street, it
captures a wide swath on either side, forcing the crew to create a
buffer zone of 10 to 15 feet on either side to avoid accidentally
capturing an interloper on film and ruining a take.
After photographers were banned, Lamb asked for a legal opinion from
the city's Office of Corporation Counsel on parameters of the street
closures.
She said she didn't know if the permit specifically delineates
boundaries but "obviously the implication for the film is we want to
control this space because we need to put period cars, we need to put
people in period clothing, and we can't have someone standing around
in jeans and running shoes that didn't exist" in the 1950s.
The bottom line: People should be allowed to cross the street between
takes and snap pictures, although the production company requests no
flashes.
IMAX 3D Version of Beowulf To Be Released November 16, 2007
(newswire.ca) LOS ANGELES, June 29 /CNW/ - IMAX Corporation,
Paramount Pictures, Shangri-La Entertainment and Warner Bros. Pictures
today announced that
Beowulf, the latest film from Academy Award winning director Robert Zemeckis,
the filmmaker behind such box office successes as Forrest Gump, The Polar
Express, the Back To The Future series and What Lies Beneath, will be released
domestically in IMAX(R) 3D simultaneously with the motion picture's premiere
in conventional theatres on November 16, 2007. The film will be released
internationally within three weeks of the domestic launch.
Beowulf will be digitally converted into IMAX 3D and re-mastered into
the unparalleled image and sound quality of The IMAX Experience(R)
through IMAX DMR(R) (Digital
Re-mastering) technology. Paramount Pictures will be the distributor of the
motion picture to IMAX(R) theaters domestically, and Warner Bros. Pictures
will be the distributor internationally.
Phil Tippett to Keynote the //ADAPT 2007 Conference in Montreal
(VFXworld.com) Opening the //ADAPT 2007 Conference line up
at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Montreal (Sept. 24-28) will be
award-winning visual effects supervisor and animation pioneer, Phil
Tippett as the Keynote speaker. The conference will also feature
sequence supervisor Todd Vaziri from Industrial Light & Magic, who
will present segments from TRANSFORMERS, and supervising td Michael
Fong from Pixar Animation Studios, who will present segments from
RATATOUILLE.
An estimated 2500 digital artists from around the world are expected
to attend the industry's second annual creative event focused on
inspiring and teaching advanced digital art production techniques for
film, visual effects and videogame development. The program includes
more than 40 digital art masters, an Art Expo, a Theatre, a Job Fair
and much more, soon to be announced.
Tippett is the founder of Berkeley-based Tippett Studio. His
sophisticated knowledge of filmmaking and powerful ability to design
and breathe life into complex animated characters has earned him two
Academy Awards, two Emmys and a Special Achievement Award during the
course of a career that has spanned over 30 years.
"I am honored to have been invited to this conference to share some of
my experience as a filmmaker," Tippett said. "Having participated in
the dramatic changeover from creating visual effects for motion
pictures photo-chemically (and with models) to now, where nearly
everything is being created digitally, I've been allowed a somewhat
unique perspective. I intend to bring along fond memories from where
we've been, advantages of the current digital age and some trepidation
toward the future."
TMNT Sequel Happening?
(comingsoon.net) Mirage Studios' Steve Murphy has posted a
message on his Blog saying that a TMNT sequel is looking more and more
likely:
As of two weeks ago Imagi Entertainment (the TMNT movie animation
studio) informed Mirage Studios that there was a 50-50 chance of a CGI
film sequel. Last week they upped the odds to 70-30 in favor of a
sequel, as talks between Imagi and their distribution partners Warner
Brothers and the Weinstein Group seem to be heading in a positive
direction...
The numbers are in Mirage Studios' favor, as the first film raked in
$92.2 million worldwide ($54M domestic, $38.1M overseas), yet cost
only $34 million to make.
J.J. Abrams Monster Movie Trailer Attached To Transformers
(Ain't It Cool News) I don't want to ruin this experience for
anyone, but holy shit! I just went to a screening of Transformers (to
see it for my second time) tonight, and I caught a trailer for a top
secret untitled J.J. Abrams movie. This was seriously the craziest and
coolest trailer I have EVER seen! If you want to hear more about it
and hear the description of it, read on. Otherwise, which I suggest
this is what you do, skip reading this until after you see
Transformers, which this trailer will play in front of, and then come
back to read more on the movie.
(SPOILERS)
It starts off at a party in a loft in New York City for this guy
around his mid-20's who's leaving (the city). It's filmed on home
video cameras and looks just sort of like another independent drama
comedy about this guy. This goes one for a little while when all of a
sudden there's a big earthquake and people start to go a bit crazy and
they all run up to the roof to see the lower half of Manhattan, and
one of these buildings, erupt into a huge ball of fire after this
unidentified object from the sky comes flying down and hits it. Then
people really start to go crazy and the camera is dropped and blacks
out. Then it comes back up and they're out running on the streets and
all of a sudden this huge flaming object comes flying through the air
and lands on the street and it's the ripped off head of the Statue of
Liberty. You can hear this odd freaky roar in the background as more
huge flaming/smoking things fly through the air and it ends with
people running and screaming.
There is no title for the movie. It only shows "Produced by J.J.
Abrams" and says "1.18.08″ and flashes the credit block of names for
about a half second and that's it. Everyone in the audience basically
just went "what the f**ck!" after it ended! It's insane…
Apparently this is a top secret project called Cloverfield that J.J.
Abrams is producing and not directing. What is it, you ask? After
doing some research over at Ain't It Cool News, I discovered this
description.
(thestar.com) Scott Farrar doesn't look like Satan.
He's 60ish, balding and greying. He wears eyeglasses, braces on his
teeth and casual clothes.
And yet as one of Hollywood's senior visual effects experts, a job
that includes the shape-shifting robots of the upcoming blockbuster
Transformers (out Tuesday), Farrar is the devil incarnate to those who
bemoan the shift away from flesh-and-bone filmmaking.
For the past three decades, the California native has been at the
forefront of computer-generated images (CGI), a revolution that few
saw coming.
As both supervisor and camera operator for effects house Industrial
Light & Magic, his team credits include such CGI landmarks as The
Chronicles of Narnia, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, The Mummy, Men in Black
and Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace. He's been nominated
five times for an Oscar, winning in 1986 as part of the team behind
the bright-shining aliens of Cocoon.
Farrar is proud of what he does, and he's eager to explain and defend
his oft-maligned role in the moviemaking process. In an interview with
movie scribes at the recent Transformers junket, he used the word
"real" a lot, a strange one for someone who practises the art of
illusion.
The robots in Transformers are almost entirely digital – a good thing,
since they're as tall as houses – but they're based on thousands of
real-life elements. Like the good-guy robot Bumblebee, who folds up
into a classic Chevy Camaro. An auto buff would marvel at the accuracy
of the paint job.
"Everybody building in digital these days is adhering strictly to
what's true in the real world," Farrar said. "That's why it looks real
..."
Transformers presented a unique challenge: giving believable motions
and emotions to characters that began as cartoons and toys. Detail was
the key.
Farrar paused to pick up a toy figure of good-guy robot Optimus Prime.
"This little guy has 51 parts in this toy. Our Optimus has 10,108."
The drive for robot realism was so obsessive, director Michael Bay
ordered his Transformers team to study martial arts films for
movements that could be incorporated into their robots.
As strange as it seems, there was a time when Farrar worried that he
might soon be out of a job.
As a freelance L.A. cameraman in 1976, Farrar visited the set of the
first Star Wars movie, where he'd been inspired by watching
Hollywood's first use of a motion-control camera.
But for a while only Lucas and his friend Steven Spielberg seemed
truly interested in the potential of new technology for moviemaking.
Farrar and the other toilers at ILM feared it might be a fad.
Farrar has an answer for people who think all movie special effects
are contrived or awful. He agrees that not every blockbuster hits a
home run with its visuals, but the dedication is genuine.
"I think maybe the best answer is that people want to be entertained.
And everybody wants to go to the circus and see that guy walking on
the tightrope a little bit higher. That's what we're here for."
Source: http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/article/230676
Pixar Animation Progression Reel: Ratatouille
Take a look: http://bishopanimation.blogspot.com/2007/06/pixar-animation-progression-reel.html
"Fantastic Voyage" Extras Explore Pre-Digital VFX
"Fantastic Voyage" (now available in a special-edition DVD) is a 1967
sci-fi thriller about a team of scientists who are miniaturized and
injected into a human body.
A DVD extra called "Lava Lamps & Celluloid" points out, "Fantastic
Voyage" was precomputer, pre-CGI. Bluntly put by a visual effects
supervisor who worked on the film, creating the inner space of the
human body was "excruciatingly difficult."
How difficult? To make the cells we see shifting and morphing outside
the windows of the scientists' ship, the Proteus, the effects team
photographed thick liquids like castor oil as they separated in a bowl
of water. The sound of computer blips was borrowed from noise effects
first used 10 years earlier in the Tracy & Hepburn comedy "Desk Set."
When characters were called upon to float through the bloodstream,
they were actually suspended on wires, which on several occasions are
visible on screen (including in one of the movie's trailers, which are
also part of the DVD extras).
Challenges – and the couple of gaffes – aside, the visual effects
personnel on "Fantastic Voyage" did, well, a fantastic job. You may
get arguments from real scientists as to the accuracy of this
depiction of the body's internal network, but even viewed today, the
movie has an impact that is wondrous and startling. Major organs, such
as the brain and the heart, were built on separate sets. The latter
was supervised by the same sculptor who would later conceive Kurtz's
surreal and grisly compound at the climax of Francis Ford Coppola's
"Apocalypse Now."
Antibodies are turned into predators, one of which famously attacks
and devours Pleasance, who is the Proteus crew's clandestine villain.
He gets his just deserts – and the antibody just has dessert.
More: http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/features/20070615-9999-1c15voyage.html
An Animated Discussion on Film and Games
(next-gen.biz) With so much emphasis placed on resolution,
lighting and polygon counts, we often forget how important animation
is to a game's visuals. At the Hollywood and Games Summit, top
animators from both sides of the fence stressed the importance of
sharing best practices.
Innovations in 3D animation and rendering along with the massive
growth of the game industry are motivating more traditional animators
to move into game development worlds.
3D animators and game developers at the Hollywood and Games Summit
shared their thoughts on the transition between the film and game
worlds. Experts from both industries are here in Hollywood to build
partnerships and discuss best convergence practices that will help
them churn out new worlds more efficiently.
The migration of 2D, visual effects and 3D animation artists into game
development brings a unique set of skills and challenges to transmedia
ventures.
It takes years to design a game but when linked with a green-lit movie
property, a game development team may have only a year or so to work
with the art before release.
More: http://www.next-gen.biz/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=6171&Itemid=2
Monster Movie Maker Wangles Huge U.S. Release
(english.chosun.com) Shim Hyung-rae is about to return with a
new science fiction blockbuster "D-War" as in "war of the dragons."
Opening in Korea on Aug. 2, the movie will be released in the U.S. on
Sept. 14. The whole movie will be revealed in a preview on July 23,
with a five-minute segment that is expected to rock viewers with its
special effects, including an enormous dragon and a massive, roaring
anaconda that smashes up urban Los Angeles.
Although this is the 11th movie Shim has directed since 1992's
"Young-gu and Count Dracula", most people still think of him as a
comedian. Partly because of the current slump in the Korean movie
industry, "D-War" is being touted as the "relief pitcher for Korean
cinema" and "the savior of the Chungmuro (Korean Hollywood) in
crisis." It is essentially a sci-fi story heavily laden with special
effects. Will it be able to satisfy Korean viewers stimulated by
Hollywood fare like "Spider-Man 3" and "Transformers"? Korean viewers
are actually well known for their sophisticated tastes.
There's no point in building needlessly high expectations, nor
decrying the film. Shim Hyung-rae and "D-War" have already scored some
important accomplishments. Freestyle, the movie's U.S. distributor, is
promising a wide release in 1,500 theaters across America, and is
taking care of all necessary costs. That's no small success. Compare
that to "Spider-Man 3", which was released in 4,000 theaters, and
Korea's biggest hit so far, "The Host", which opened in just 70
theaters. And U.S. viewers are known to enjoy sci-fi flicks with
monstrous beasts. As a filmmaker who has found his way through a break
in the U.S., not Korea, Shim has much to be proud about.
The poster: http://english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200706/200706290017.html
Indy 4 Filming Creates Problems
(nhregister.com) There was excitement and drama and an energy
down own as the filming of the last installment of the Indiana Jones
series was in full swin Thursday. There also were a lot of hassles as
Hollywood enveloped downtown New Haven.
There were street closures, traffic gridlock, pushy production
assistants herding crowds, and agitated people unable to cross a
closed street to get to work, their cars or a bus stop.
"When you bring in a production of this size, people have to expect a
disruption (in their) personal lives or in their business lives. It
has a ripple effect, even if you are blocks away from the filming,"
said an empathetic Barbara Lamb, the city's director of Cultural
Affairs. "I think that people do get upset, and they get irate when
their normal routines get disrupted, if their clients can't get to
them or their customers can't get to them.
"The flip side of it is, if you ask the people on the street, 'Should
we never do this again?', people will say, 'Of course we should do
this again. This is too exciting to say "Go away."'"
She asked for a little patience. "New Haven will probably never ever,
ever see something this large in a film production again."
It's safe to say there were growing pains the first day of filming as
thousands of people converged on downtown in hopes of seeing Hollywood
history. Downtown merchants complained customers couldn't reach them,
pedestrians complained they couldn't get to destinations and some
spectators complained about poor treatment by production workers.
At one point, there was a small conflagration when production
assistants and Yale police forbade newspaper photographers and private
citizens from taking pictures. Later, after a series of phone calls,
the ban was lifted.
Location Manager Mike Fantasia heard the stories, too, and attributed
it to "green" production assistants who were perhaps overzealous in
doing their jobs and overwhelmed by unusually large crowds. "We
understand that we are guests here. We come in and try to be as
unobtrusive as we can," he said. "We can't hold the world up for our
film. We have to let people cross the street and get where they're
going."
"We're on public streets. All we can do is try to maintain a safe
cocoon around our filming."
The crew is filing with an anamorphic, widescreen format. That means
even when the camera is filming vertically down the street, it
captures a wide swath on either side, forcing the crew to create a
buffer zone of 10 to 15 feet on either side to avoid accidentally
capturing an interloper on film and ruining a take.
After photographers were banned, Lamb asked for a legal opinion from
the city's Office of Corporation Counsel on parameters of the street
closures.
She said she didn't know if the permit specifically delineates
boundaries but "obviously the implication for the film is we want to
control this space because we need to put period cars, we need to put
people in period clothing, and we can't have someone standing around
in jeans and running shoes that didn't exist" in the 1950s.
The bottom line: People should be allowed to cross the street between
takes and snap pictures, although the production company requests no
flashes.
IMAX 3D Version of Beowulf To Be Released November 16, 2007
(newswire.ca) LOS ANGELES, June 29 /CNW/ - IMAX Corporation,
Paramount Pictures, Shangri-La Entertainment and Warner Bros. Pictures
today announced that
Beowulf, the latest film from Academy Award winning director Robert Zemeckis,
the filmmaker behind such box office successes as Forrest Gump, The Polar
Express, the Back To The Future series and What Lies Beneath, will be released
domestically in IMAX(R) 3D simultaneously with the motion picture's premiere
in conventional theatres on November 16, 2007. The film will be released
internationally within three weeks of the domestic launch.
Beowulf will be digitally converted into IMAX 3D and re-mastered into
the unparalleled image and sound quality of The IMAX Experience(R)
through IMAX DMR(R) (Digital
Re-mastering) technology. Paramount Pictures will be the distributor of the
motion picture to IMAX(R) theaters domestically, and Warner Bros. Pictures
will be the distributor internationally.
Phil Tippett to Keynote the //ADAPT 2007 Conference in Montreal
(VFXworld.com) Opening the //ADAPT 2007 Conference line up
at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Montreal (Sept. 24-28) will be
award-winning visual effects supervisor and animation pioneer, Phil
Tippett as the Keynote speaker. The conference will also feature
sequence supervisor Todd Vaziri from Industrial Light & Magic, who
will present segments from TRANSFORMERS, and supervising td Michael
Fong from Pixar Animation Studios, who will present segments from
RATATOUILLE.
An estimated 2500 digital artists from around the world are expected
to attend the industry's second annual creative event focused on
inspiring and teaching advanced digital art production techniques for
film, visual effects and videogame development. The program includes
more than 40 digital art masters, an Art Expo, a Theatre, a Job Fair
and much more, soon to be announced.
Tippett is the founder of Berkeley-based Tippett Studio. His
sophisticated knowledge of filmmaking and powerful ability to design
and breathe life into complex animated characters has earned him two
Academy Awards, two Emmys and a Special Achievement Award during the
course of a career that has spanned over 30 years.
"I am honored to have been invited to this conference to share some of
my experience as a filmmaker," Tippett said. "Having participated in
the dramatic changeover from creating visual effects for motion
pictures photo-chemically (and with models) to now, where nearly
everything is being created digitally, I've been allowed a somewhat
unique perspective. I intend to bring along fond memories from where
we've been, advantages of the current digital age and some trepidation
toward the future."
TMNT Sequel Happening?
(comingsoon.net) Mirage Studios' Steve Murphy has posted a
message on his Blog saying that a TMNT sequel is looking more and more
likely:
As of two weeks ago Imagi Entertainment (the TMNT movie animation
studio) informed Mirage Studios that there was a 50-50 chance of a CGI
film sequel. Last week they upped the odds to 70-30 in favor of a
sequel, as talks between Imagi and their distribution partners Warner
Brothers and the Weinstein Group seem to be heading in a positive
direction...
The numbers are in Mirage Studios' favor, as the first film raked in
$92.2 million worldwide ($54M domestic, $38.1M overseas), yet cost
only $34 million to make.
J.J. Abrams Monster Movie Trailer Attached To Transformers
(Ain't It Cool News) I don't want to ruin this experience for
anyone, but holy shit! I just went to a screening of Transformers (to
see it for my second time) tonight, and I caught a trailer for a top
secret untitled J.J. Abrams movie. This was seriously the craziest and
coolest trailer I have EVER seen! If you want to hear more about it
and hear the description of it, read on. Otherwise, which I suggest
this is what you do, skip reading this until after you see
Transformers, which this trailer will play in front of, and then come
back to read more on the movie.
(SPOILERS)
It starts off at a party in a loft in New York City for this guy
around his mid-20's who's leaving (the city). It's filmed on home
video cameras and looks just sort of like another independent drama
comedy about this guy. This goes one for a little while when all of a
sudden there's a big earthquake and people start to go a bit crazy and
they all run up to the roof to see the lower half of Manhattan, and
one of these buildings, erupt into a huge ball of fire after this
unidentified object from the sky comes flying down and hits it. Then
people really start to go crazy and the camera is dropped and blacks
out. Then it comes back up and they're out running on the streets and
all of a sudden this huge flaming object comes flying through the air
and lands on the street and it's the ripped off head of the Statue of
Liberty. You can hear this odd freaky roar in the background as more
huge flaming/smoking things fly through the air and it ends with
people running and screaming.
There is no title for the movie. It only shows "Produced by J.J.
Abrams" and says "1.18.08″ and flashes the credit block of names for
about a half second and that's it. Everyone in the audience basically
just went "what the f**ck!" after it ended! It's insane…
Apparently this is a top secret project called Cloverfield that J.J.
Abrams is producing and not directing. What is it, you ask? After
doing some research over at Ain't It Cool News, I discovered this
description.
