Imageworks Outsources VFX, Hanks Does Sci-fi, & Transformers To be Huge...

Superman Returns Leads Saturn Award Nominations

(iesb.net)          The Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror films has announced the nominations for the 33rd Annual Saturn Awards. Leading the pack is Bryan Singer's homage to the superhero mythos "Superman Returns" with 10 nominations.

BEST SPECIAL EFFECTS

John Bruno, Eric Saindon, Craig Lyn, Michael Vezina -  (X-Men: The Last Stand) (20th Century Fox)
Jeremy Dawson, Dan Schrecker, Mark Soper, Peter Parks  -  (The Fountain)  (Warner Bros.)
Roger Guyett, Russell Earl, Patrick Tobach, Dan Sudick  -  (Mission Impossible III) (Paramount)
Karin Joy, John Berton, Blair Clark, John Dietz  -  (Charlotte’s Web)  (Paramount)
John Knoll, Hal Hickel, Charles Gibson, Allen Hall  -  (Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest) (Buena Vista)
Mark Stetson, Neil Corbould, Richard R. Hoover, Jon Thum  -  (Superman Returns)  (Warner Bros.)

BEST MAKE-UP

Howard Berger, Gregory Nicotero, Mario Michisanti -  (The Hills Have Eyes)  (Fox Searchlight)
Paul Hyett, Vickie Lang  -  (The Descent)   (Lionsgate)
David Marti, Montse Ribe  -  (Pan’s Labyrinth)  (Picturehouse)
Todd Masters  -  (Slither)   (Universal)
Ve Neill, Joel Harlow  -  (Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest) (Buena Vista)
Gregory Nicotero, Scott Patton  -  (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning) (New Line Cinema)

BEST ANIMATED FILM

Cars     (Buena Vista)
Flushed Away    (DreamWorks SKG)
Happy Feet    (Warner Bros.)
Monster House   (Sony)
Over the Hedge   (DreamWorks SKG)
A Scanner Darkly   (Warner Independent Pictures)

BEST SCIENCE FICTION FILM

Children of Men   (Universal)
Déjà vu     (Buena Vista)
The Fountain    (Warner Bros.)
The Prestige    (Buena Vista)
V For Vendetta   (Warner Bros.)
X-Men: The Last Stand  (20th Century Fox)

BEST FANTASY FILM

Charlotte’s Web   (Paramount)
Eragon     (20th Century Fox)
Night At the Museum   (20th Century Fox)
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest   (Buena Vista)
Stranger Than Fiction   (Sony)
Superman Returns   (Warner Bros.)

All nominations:  http://iesb.net/index.php?option=com_d4j_ezine&task=read&page=1&category=2&article=1931&Itemid=29

Hanks Eyes Ulster Quarry For Sci-fi Movie

The Oscar-winning actor's production company has been exploring the possibility of shooting part of a new sci-fi movie in Ulster.

And one of the locations under consideration is Magheramorne quarry on the outskirts of Larne.

It was the subject of a major planning battle in the 1990s, after a leading UK waste company tabled proposals for a massive landfill superdump.

The controversial scheme was eventually ditched after a lengthy public inquiry.

Alternative proposals have since been developed for the quarry, involving an eco village and a film studio.

A planning application for a studio has been submitted by movie production firm Cement Works.

Company director John Anderson said: "I can confirm that we have met with representatives of Mr Hanks and discussed the possibility of providing facilities for a new film.

"Negotiations about movie locations are highly complicated and dependant on very complex financial agreements."

A leading movie producer, Ulster born Mark Huffam, is a co-director of Cement Works. He was an associate producer on the Steven Spielberg film Saving Private Ryan, which starred Hanks.

Mr Anderson also said: "Magheramorne has a unique landscape that offers unrivalled opportunities to film-makers.

"It provides industrial, rural, woodland, coastal and harbour settings all in the same location."

Mr Anderson said a number of movies have shot scenes in Magheramorne in recent years.

These included Breakfast on Pluto, a Neil Jordan film starring Liam Neeson and Cillian Murphy, and The Mighty Celt, featuring Gillian Anderson and Robert Carlyle.

Bleak landscapes within the quarry site could prove ideal for the futuristic sci-fi movie envisaged by Tom Hanks' film company.

It would feature an underground city created after a catastrophic disaster strikes the world.

Hanks - the star of box office smash hits Philadelphia, Castaway, Forrest Gump, Sleepless in Seattle and The Green Mile - could both direct and appear in the film.

It is intended that the Magheramorne film studio would operate alongside an eco-village involving new homes powered by renewable energy.

This project has been developed by construction giant Lafarge with support from wildlife charity WWF.

Source:    http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/local-national/article2287466.ece

Sony Imageworks Readies To Outsource

(animationxpress.com)               US based Sony Pictures Imageworks (SPI) has announced an equity investment in renowned visual effects and animation studio FrameFlow, which has its production operations in Chennai. As part of the deal, FrameFlow will become Imageworks India and will work seamlessly with Sony Pictures Imageworks’ main production facility in Culver City, California.
The newly named entity expects to quadruple its workload in the coming years and deepen its capabilities through investments in infrastructure, technology and training from Sony Pictures Imageworks.

Imageworks India also plans a significant growth in its current talent base of 80 employees. To accommodate anticipated expansion, Imageworks India will relocate to a larger facility in Chennai with a seating capacity of up to 300.

“The level of professionalism and quality of work that we experienced in working with the FrameFlow team was exemplary, and gave us the confidence to extend and establish a strong long term relationship,” said Jenny Fulle, Executive Vice President, Sony Pictures Imageworks and now the Co-Managing Director of Imageworks India. “We are very excited about expanding our capacity with Imageworks India in Chennai.

Hitesh Shah, co-founder of FrameFlow and now the Co-Managing Director of Imageworks India commented, "We are extremely excited to announce this partnership with Sony Pictures Imageworks, an Academy Award-winning visual effects and animation facility. We are deeply honored to be chosen to join the Imageworks family. It’s a testament to the passion and talent of our team and creative leadership of Krishnakant Mishra to receive this supreme validation of the quality of our work”

Also speaking at the occasion, Abhaya Kumar, Managing Director of FrameFlow’s Indian operation added, “This relationship represents the culmination of our strategic vision to expand and deepen our capabilities through integration with an industry leader like Imageworks. We look at this strategic investment as a part of the continuing Indian Success Story – one that elevates the standing of the whole Indian visual effects and animation industry on the global stage.”
FrameFlow was founded three years ago to deliver high-quality effects support to top facilities worldwide. Prior to becoming Imageworks India, FrameFlow proved its value by working with Sony Pictures Imageworks on movies such as CLICK, GHOST RIDER and SPIDER-MAN® 3 among many other projects.

As part of Sony Pictures Imageworks, Imageworks India will continue to provide visual effects and animation services as a resource to the industry. Imageworks India (formerly FrameFlow), has been a trusted partner to other top visual effects and animation studios in the U.S. and the United Kingdom.

Box Office Vs. Artistic Achievement At Oscar

(floridatoday.com)              Box-office hits and artistic achievement seldom go hand-in-hand at the movies. Cinema history is littered with hit movies that simply don't deserve attention. And, correspondingly, a fickle public has too frequently ignored many a great gem, as filmgoers pursue an escapist romp and skip the more challenging or unsettling experience.

This disparity seems most obvious at Oscar time, as the filmmakers vying for statuettes have been less successful at the box office than many of their more commercial contemporaries.

No other film can put this year's major Oscar contenders in the rarified box office air of "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men's Chest" (with a $423.3 million gross) or "X-Men: The Last Stand" (with $234.4 million). The highest gross among the live-action Oscar-nominated features is the $128 million each, taken in by "Borat" and "The Departed" and of course, "Pirates" nominated in three categories for sound editing, sound mixing and visual effects.

We say "live action" because there is one category of Academy Award nominees that produces hits -- the animated division. Oscar partygoers should look to the producers of "Cars" and "Happy Feet" to pick up the champagne tab, since those films, at least, cracked the 2006 top 10. "Cars" was an especially successful film at No. 2, bringing in $244 million, according to Variety's box office charts.

Increasingly, the Academy Awards reflect the industry-wide phenomenon through which attention is paid more and more to younger audiences, brought up on video games and computer graphics, and in pursuit of fast-paced action and special effects.

Hollywood also remains mired in the blockbuster mentality that can be traced back to "Jaws" and "Star Wars" films of the late '70s, when a few huge movie smashes defined a studio's success. The target audience grew younger, as Hollywood fashioned films for 15 –to 25 year olds, and became dependent on big opening-weekend grosses. It is harder today for quieter, more thoughtful films to "find" audiences through gradual word of mouth.

That's why many of this year's Oscar nominees are on screens at art houses, since that's the only place today that carefully grooms older audiences and depends on word-of-mouth interest. (The Oscars are a big part of that word-of-mouth concept; many people still go to movies simply because they are Oscar nominated.)

In 2006, the movie-going public preferred "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest," "Cars," "X-Men: The Last Stand," "The Da Vinci Code," and "Superman Returns."

And, of those, only "Cars" is likely to drive away with a major Oscar, and only because now there's a cartoon category.

Peter Jackson Stays In Studio Dog House

(scifi.com)                Robert Shaye, the founder and co-chairman of New Line Cinema, told the New York Times over the weekend that he regretted losing Lord of the Rings helmer Peter Jackson as a friend, but does not regret blasting the director in comments earlier this year.

Shaye told the newspaper that he made the statements "in a moment of emotion" but did not regret it. "I regret losing a friend," he said, as he showed a visitor a Gandalf sword that Jackson had sent him as a gift, before Jackson sued the studio in a dispute over accounting practices from the Rings films.

A representative for Jackson declined to comment to the Times.

Shaye also declined to say whether or not he would make The Hobbit with Jackson, though he made it clear earlier that New Line would no longer work with him. "Some directors are impossible," he said. "Are there a few people I wouldn't work with? Yes, but I won't name names."

Shaye also declined to comment on reports that Spider-Man director Sam Raimi has been asked to direct The Hobbit. He said, however, that although there was no workable script yet for the film, he intended to release it in 2009.

The Math & Science Behind Blockbuster Movies

(presszoom.com)                 On Feb. 19 at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in San Francisco, movie lovers get a behind-the-scenes glimpse at the physics-based simulations that breathe life into fantasy.

"It is an exhaustive task to prescribe the motion of every degree of freedom in a piece of clothing or a crashing wave," says Ron Fedkiw, an assistant professor of computer science at Stanford who will speak about computations used to make solids and fluids more realistic in feature films. "Since these motions are governed by physical processes, it can be difficult to make these phenomena appear natural. Thus, physically based simulation has become quite popular in the special effects industry. The same class of tools useful for computational fluid dynamics is also useful for sinking a ship on the big screen."

Fedkiw's talk is part of a symposium titled "Blockbuster Science: Math and Science Behind Movies and Entertainment," which brings together leaders from industry and academia. The other speakers are Tony DeRose of Pixar in Emeryville, Calif., and Doug Roble of Digital Domain in Venice, Calif. Math Professor Tony Chan of the University of California-Los Angeles will moderate the symposium.

Science at the Oscars

This year, two of the three movies nominated for a special effects Oscar--Poseidon and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, both made by Industrial Light & Magic ( ILM )-- required heavy numerical simulation, says Fedkiw, who has consulted for ILM for six years. Most recently, the PhysBAM ( for Physics Based Modeling ) core math engine he developed helped to create realistic water in Poseidon and Davy Jones' tentacles in Dead Man's Chest.

Computer graphics ( CG ) experts used to have to make a Catch-22 decision. They could run inferior algorithms on many processors or run the best algorithm on only one processor. The problem is that many algorithms do not scale well to larger numbers of processors. But about a year and a half ago Fedkiw figured out how to run a star algorithm on many processors, resulting in special effects unprecedented in their realism.

More:    http://presszoom.com/story_124528.html

CG Previs Stuns "Wanted" Creator

(comingsoon.net)              Wanted creator Mark Millar has posted an update on his official site about Universal Pictures' adaptation of his graphic novel directed by Timur Bekmambetov ("Night Watch") and starring James McAvoy and Morgan Freeman.

Millar got to see 30 minutes of pre-vis (rough versions of sequences in a movie using computer graphics) for the film and talks about the footage:

This is going to be amazing. Like I trailered yesterday, even Gill's Mum gave a big Keannu-style WHOA at a sequence between a car chase and a train. I can't give much in the way of details here, but watching some of the scenes from the book come to life can only be compared to giving birth to a 100 million dollar baby. The opening sequence with The Killer plus boyfriends chasing his would-be assassins across the rooftops is just jaw-dropping. I was honestly pinching myself, worried I was bi-polar and this whole thing was just a wishful hallucination.

March 08 cannot get here fast enough. McAvoy, Freeman and the big star they aren't telling you about until Summer plus an action director THIS GOOD really is going to be something special. Three months ago my expectations were zero. Now they're enormous.

HIGH-DEF MOVIES COMING TO PLAYSTATION

(showbizdata.com)                    Sony movies will soon become available for downloading on its PlayStation Network, Sony Computer Entertainment Europe chief Phil Harrison has told the games website 1UP. "We have a hard drive [on the PlayStation 3], we have a commerce engine. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out we will have that on the network very shortly." He added that movies, music and both standard and high-definition TV shows will all be available on the Sony network. "The ten-year plan of allowing people to download all kinds of digital content to their PlayStation 3 ... was absolutely the right thing to do," he said.

James Cameron Technology On Journey 3D

Young actor Josh Hutcherson told SCI FI Wire that he hesitated at first to join the remake of Journey to the Center of the Earth, but when they explained the 3-D technology, he jumped into the project.

"When they first asked me to be in this 3-D movie, I thought maybe it wasn't a good move for me right now," said Hutcherson, 14, who appears with AnnaSophia Robb in The Bridge to Terabithia. "But then I talked to the director about the technology and realized that it's not a 3-D kiddie movie; it's an action adventure 3-D adult thing."

Hutcherson (Zathura) co-stars in Journey 3-D with Brendan Fraser (the Mummy movies), Anita Briem and Garth Gilker.

Hutcherson has already finished filming the adaptation of the Jules Verne SF classic, which was directed by Eric Brevig, who was visual-effects supervisor for The Day After Tomorrow and Men in Black.

"Two weeks after I finished Terabithia I went to Montreal to film Journey to the Center of the Earth with Brendan Fraser, and that's coming out 8/08/08," Hutcherson said. "It's the most action-packed movie I've ever done."

Hutcherson said that he was amazed by the 3-D technology and the camerawork developed by Terminator director James Cameron. "It's two cameras on one, and they use a one-way mirror, double lenses and fiber-optic cables," he said. "It's confusing. When I found out that was a serious hard-hitting action adventure and that the cameras were developed by James Cameron, I was into it."

Christopher Columbus Discovers Dilbert

(moviehole.net)             Christopher Columbus seems to have a thing for pint-sized bespectacled mission men. Talking about the filmmaker, of course, not about the guy who discovered La Ribs on West Pico.

The “Harry Potter” filmmaker has snapped up the film rights to “Dilbert”, the popular comic book strip by Scott Adams. Columbus is considering it as one of his next directing gigs.

The rights to the popular cartoon previously laid with Columbia - who produced the TV series - who planned to turn the office dweeb into a feature film a couple of years back. Never happened. With Columbus on board, the film will be now be shot, tinned and released by Warner Bros.

The comics tell of a Cubicle denizen named Dilbert who toils away at Path-E-Tech which makes undefined products. The focus is on his survival amongst a moronic boss, hostile co-workers and his malevolent pet, Dogbert. Daniel Stern (“City Slickers”) provided the voice of the character in the series.

Columbus, whose last film as director was “Rent”, hasn’t got any directing gigs lined up at the moment – though he’s producing about four films; including “Carpe Demon: Adventures of a Demon-Hunting Soccer Mom” and “Will Sebastian” – so don’t be surprised if he decides to tackle this one himself.

Transformers To Be "Revolutionary" - "ILM's Heaviest Digital Effects Ever"

(seibertron.com)            Dreamworks makes a Transformers presentation at Toy Fair 2007:

Brian Goldner (Hasbro - CEO) took the stage once everyone was in the theatre. He made several comments about the Transformers franchise before making some introductions. I missed the name of one of the people who were on the stage. Tom DeSanto was present, but not on the stage. Brian Goldner was joined by Adam Goodman (Dreamworks) and, of course, Michael Bay (Director). Here are some of the things that were said about the Transformers Movie prior to playing the 4 different scenes:

- This movie will be "Revolutionary" in the same sense of the Matrix trilogy starring Keanu Reeves from Warner Brothers.
-[You will be] blown away.

-Transformers is a 3 billion dollar brand behind Star Wars and G.I.Joe. I was surprised to hear that Transformers makes less money than G.I.Joe but this might have something to do with Hasbro's brand sharing with Takara Tomy.

-The Transformers Movie is one of the few original franchise flicks that will be released in 2007. Mentioned other franchise films such as Harry Potter, Pirates of the Caribbean, Spider-Man and several others.

-For Dreamworks, this movie will be bigger than War of the Worlds and Mission Impossible 3 (both movies starred Tom Cruise). The Transformers Movie will be a worldwide event.

-Mentioned that this movie harkens back to the fun days of Steven Spielberg's Back To The Future and other Amblien movies from the 1980s.

-Michael Bay stated that this has been a really fun movie to work on. He really seemed to have enjoyed his time with this movie. He told us some about the origin of him getting involved with the movie. His initial reaction was that he didn't want to be involved with a toy movie to "how can I find out more about this franchise" in about 30 seconds.

-I read in some of the existing reviews of this event that people quoted Bay as saying it took 38 hours to render 1 frame of film. I wrote in my notes that it was 38 hours to render 1 second of film. I don't know if I misheard or what, but that's what was in my notes. I'm sure we'll find out clarification at a later date.

-I think it was Bay who said that the movie was "mind blowing." It was also said that the film was ILM's "heaviest digital effects ever." Considering their work on Star Wars, I find this hard to believe but after the full sophisticated transformation of Blackout, I could see how it was more complex than just rendering a shell of a ship (for example).

There were a total of 4 scenes previewed at the event.

Blackout's transformation was more complex than I would have imagined. This was a big area of concern for me originally. I was worried that the robots were going to have parts that "morphed." I was reassured by seeing an actual Blackout truly "transform" from a helicopter to a robot. I couldn't believe the complexity of his transformation on screen. It was unbelievable and much longer than I was expecting. If I recall correctly, Blackout is the first Transformer to transform in the movie. It was everything I could have hoped to see a helicopter transform for the first time on the big screen. It was absolutely amazing and even gave me chills while I saw this incredible event happen.

The action seems very similar to Indepence Day (ID4 - Will Smith, Jeff Goldblum). ID4 is one of my all-time favorite movies so I'm pretty pleased with this direction. The scenes were absolutely incredible, the transformation of Blackout was fascinating and spectacular, and the mood was exactly what I was hoping for in the movie. I still think some of the robot designs could have used some improvements to be more reminiscent of the original characters but it's too late for that now. From what I've seen and from the version of the script that I've read, I think ILM has done a top notch job with bringing Transformers to life. The robots are designed to look like REAL Transformers, not computer animated or cell animated or toys for that matter. I think this goal was accomplished.

Source:  http://seibertron.com/news/view.php?id=9564