Plastic Man Forms, CGI As Propaganda, & MoCaping The Human Sneeze...
WACHOWSKI BROS TO BOUNCE BACK WITH "PLASTIC MAN"
(chud.com) A reader by the name of Ballack writes in from Berlin (one of my favorite cities in the world!) saying that Joel Silver was on German radio recently talking about Ninja Assassin, the James McTeigue-directed, Wachowski-produced martial arts movie. Ballack claims that Silver also spilled the beans on what the Wachowskis would be directing to follow-up Speed Racer* - Plastic Man.
You'll remember that a pre-Matrix Bros W wrote a Plastic Man script, which Ballack claims Silver said would be the basis for this new film. Our scooper also reports that Silver said they want the movie to have a global release at the end of 2009.
And if that's not a big enough story, Ballack further claims that Silver says that Keanu Reeves will be playing Eels O'Brien (the real name of Plastic Man). Apparently this is the start of a new love period between Reeves and the Wachowskis, as Silver (via Ballack) said that the brothers want to work with him on all their future projects.
Is any of this true? I've made a bunch of phone calls to representatives for the Brothers Wachowski and Keanu Reeves, and I've gotten 'no comment' and 'let me look into that' (which is publicist talk for 'Talk to you never'), so take every single word in this story with a massive grain of salt.
But is it possible? Could be, which is why I've run it. The Wachowskis are almost certainly trying to figure out how to follow up the puzzling failure of Speed Racer - a PG-13, accessible but modestly edgy movie could be the thing. It's a property I know they like, and going to Plastic Man could fit into the recent Warner Bros/DC Comics summit, which focused on bringing a wider variety of DC Universe properties to the screen.
IS PIXAR'S HIT ANIMATED FILM 'WALL-E' LEFTIST PROPAGANDA?
Watch the far right eco-rant: http://www.brooklynmutt.com/post/42161476/is-pixars-hit-animated-film-wall-e-leftist
Video Game Awards Add VFX Category
(comipress.com) VANCOUVER July 10, 2008 – There were many leaps forward announced today by the producers of the Elans – an awards show that has for the last two years honored video games and animation with big-name hosts such as William Shatner (1st year) and Seth MacFarlane (2nd year) – not the least of which being their addition of Visual Effects award categories to their next show taking place in Vancouver on Saturday, February 28, 2009.
Adding VFX to their categories isn't the only big step forward the Elans are taking; the 3rd Annual Elan Awards will also become the first ceremony of its kind to have all of its categories open to world-wide submission.
"Expanding the Elans to international content is an exciting next-step," says Ian Verchere, Producer/Creative Director/Faculty, Masters of Digital Media Program. "Vancouver's video game, effects and animation industries compete on the world stage for commercial and critical success, so it's appropriate for the world's best games, animation and special effects to compete for the Elans on a Vancouver stage."
Wait ... How Much Do These CG Movies Cost?!
(animationguildblog.blogspot.com) These movies" being Kung Fu Panda, Wall-E, and Horton Hears a Who*.
The first thing to know: What a studio says a movie costs and what it really costs might be two different things. I know first-hand that companies sometimes put costs incurred by one film onto the production number of another film. (Hard to believe that fine, ethical business executives would do such a thing, but there it is).
Second thing to know: When you look at the alleged costs for this or that film and compare them, there's no way of knowing if you're comparing the same thing. As The Wise Old Production Exec told me moments ago:
Some pictures include advertising and distribution costs in their announced budgets, others don't. Some include costs of A-list talent in the up-front budget, others might not if most of those costs are percentages of gross on the back end. And the costs of studio overhead vary widely ...
By the Wise Old Studio Exec's reckoning, Blue Sky's overhead would be quite a bit less than the overhead for Pixar/Disney. As the WOSE said:
The last studio I worked for, I estimated $120,000 per employee, per year. So figure it out: if the studio is carrying 300 employees, that's $36 million per year. And if a picture takes two years to produce, that's $72 million, assuming the full staff is working on that one picture for all two years.
I don't know exact numbers, but Pixar has a larger staff than Blue Sky Animation.
From the outside, you can never know with total certainty what a picture actually costs. A decade ago, a management person at the late, lamented Warner Bros. Feature Animation studio informed me that Quest For Camelot ran up a tab that was a whole lot higher than the one Warners admitted to. Execs officially maintained the feature cost $80 million; my source said it was more like $130 million, but much was charged off to "studio overhead."
Then we come to the three box office champions cited above. DreamWorks Animation honcho Jeffrey Katzenberg has said DreamWorks's features cost $150 million for new models, $120-$130 million for sequels because a lot of fixed costs that carry over have already been paid for. But Mr. Katzenberg is likely ballparking, since KFP is officially listed at the $130 million mark.
Wall-E was a film in production for a long time, which might account for its $180 million price tag. As the WOSE informed me:
Eighty percent of a picture's costs are labor, and the longer a film is in work, the more expensive it will be. If you've got lots of people on payroll for years, the picture ends up higher priced ...
Studios have different way to attack costs. One obviously is the size of a crew, another is length of production time. (We won't count "just make it up.") Half a century ago, Sleeping Beauty was the most expensive animated feature Walt Disney Productions had yet done, costing around $4 million. Two years later, the studio produced 101 Dalmations for half that price, using less than half the artists.
You see? Feature budgets can be brought down.
Green Lantern Screenplay Almost Finished
Like Marvel's Iron Man, DC's Green Lantern is a self-made hero, based on applied technology rather than bizarre mutation. An 'everyman' with whom the public can widely identify.
Writer Marc Guggenheim says a first draft of Green Lantern is almost done - he is penning the screenplay with Michael Green and Greg Berlanti. US TV producer Berlanti will also direct the big-screen adaptation.
More: http://blogs.coventrytelegraph.net/thegeekfiles/2008/06/green-lantern-movie-cowriter-s.html
Pixar 'Buy n Large' Spoof Trashes Cable News
(multichannel.com) Buy n Large, the scary mega-corporation that controls the world in Pixar Animation Studios' Wall-E, doesn't just lay waste to the Earth's environment.
Pixar's Wall-EA few decades from now, it completely neuters cable news.
Pixar's very convincing Web site for Buy n Large includes an array of fake press releases from the year 2057 — "Wisconsin Mall Granted City Status," "BnL Announces Police Select" — including one announcing the BnL Infotainment Network, "where the news of the world will always be shown in an entertaining, softer light."
"Mixing humor and news is a booming industry, and the space is rapidly becoming crowded with newcomers," says the release, credited to the BnL Associated Press.
The network aspires to be "the clear leader in presenting hard news in a soft shell" with shows like A Lil' News that deliver a punch line every 30 seconds "regardless of the news topic."
BnL's faux report even quotes "analyst Richard Greenberg," which sounds suspiciously similar to a real analyst, Pali Research's Richard Greenfield — who covers Pixar's parent, The Walt Disney Co.
The BnL story has "Greenberg" praising the company's successful launch of the Dogs With Sprinklers Network: "No one could have predicted that a 24-hour network featuring various breeds of dogs playing with sprinklers would ever have been a smash hit. BnL has proven it is willing to take risks, and this bodes well for their latest offering."
Asked for comment, Greenfield told The Wire: "I would be sincerely flattered if there is a connection between anything Pixar creates and our research work."
VES Challenges Effects Industry
(variety.com) The movie industry's effects wizards would do well to let everyone see the man behind the curtain, according to the Visual Effects Society.
In "The State of Visual Effects in the Entertainment Industry," the VES's first-ever white paper, the org warned that the effects industry's talk of "magic" has turned vfx into a "black box" that few outsiders understand -- a situation that drives up production costs and undermines working conditions for digital artists.
The paper, written by Renee Dunlop, Paul Malcolm and VES prexy Eric Roth, challenged vfx industry to get involved in production earlier and educate others about what they do.
"The need to clarify the digital visual effects process has never been greater," said the paper, noting that the misconception that simply adding more computers will solve vfx problems is helping create "what is approaching a digital sweatshop environment."
"We have never sufficiently explained that the 'magic' of visual effects has never resided in technology; it resides in the people using the technology."
The VES noted that about 20 of the top 25 all-time grossers are vfx films, and that vfx take up anywhere from 25% to 50% of a movie's budget.
If vfx pros are brought into the process sooner, said the paper, production costs should fall as effects pros can point the way to "better creative and production decisions and, therefore, a more efficient production schedule."
The white paper also had some ominous predictions for production jobs overall.
Entire job categories, even entire production departments, are likely to disappear over the next 5-10 years as digital artists take over more and more production tasks. Computer graphics techniques are likely to make matchmovers, compositors and rotoscopers obsolete and visual effects are usurping functions of other departments, especially the art direction, camera and costume departments.
"The situation we see today, when the technology of one department so directly impacts the potential future of another, is relatively rare," said the white paper.
JOURNEY DOES WELL IN 3-D THEATERS, NOT SO WELL IN OTHERS
(showbizdata.com) About 57 percent of the weekend revenue for Journey to the Center of the Earth came from 34 percent of the theaters showing it -- those that were equipped with 3-D projection facilities, the Los Angeles Times reported today (Monday). Tickets at the 3-D theaters were priced at $3-4 above those at 2-D-only houses. The newspaper observed that revenue for Hellboy II was considerably diminished by the shortage of theaters capable of screening it in 3-D. Although producers had initially expected that they would be able to screen the film in 1,400 theaters, they were only able to line up 954. (Nevertheless, it represented the widest release ever of a film in digital 3-D.) The remaining 1,857 showed it in conventional 2-D. Michael V. Lewis, chairman of RealD, whose technology was used in the film, said he was "ecstatic" about the initial response. "This demonstrates the power of 3-D and we are going to continue to roll out the technology on a global scale as quickly as possible," he told the Times.
MoCap Tech Reveals The Art Of... Sneezing?
(technology.newscientist.com) Having a laugh with friends? Your computer may soon be able to join in. Software that can automatically recognise "non-linguistic" sounds, such as laughter, and generate an appropriate facial animation sequence, could improve the quality of web-based avatars or computer-animated movies.
Animated characters are already "learning" to lip sync when played human speech. But this is only part of the picture – we laugh, cry, yawn and sneeze our way through life, and realistic computer animations must be able to mimic the facial expressions that accompany these sounds too.
Darren Cosker at the University of Bath, UK, and Cathy Holt at the University of Cardiff, UK, have developed software to automatically recognise some of these vocalisations and generate appropriate animation sequences.
Sobs, sneezes and yawns
Cosker and Holt used optical motion capture to record the facial expressions of four participants as they performed a number of laughs, sobs, sneezes and yawns. The researchers also recorded the participant's voices during their performances.
The researchers then developed software that correlates the key audio features of each non-linguistic vocalisation with the relevant facial motion-capture data.
This motion capture data was used to animate a standardised facial model, with help from James Edge at the University of Surrey, UK.
The result is a software model which, when played a new laugh or cry, can automatically animate an avatar in an appropriate manner.
'Standard' laugh
"Providing a person laughs with this standard structure, the computer can take their voice and create an animation sequence," says Cosker.
But there are still limitations with the technique, he says. A loud guffaw sounds different to a snigger, and the software cannot yet get to grips with this level of variation.
"There is also some ambiguity in the audio," says Cosker. "One person's laugh can sound similar to another person's crying. In terms of classifying actions on the basis of audio alone, we still need to do more work."
Yawn of a movie: http://technology.newscientist.com/channel/tech/dn14299-sneezesensing-software-gives-avatars-a-good-laugh.html?feedId=online-news_rss20
MUPPETS NOW HISTORIC TREASURES AT SMITHSONIAN EXHIBIT
(showbizdata.com) The Smithsonian Institution in Washington on Saturday unveiled its latest exhibit, "Jim Henson's Fantastic World," featuring 14 of Henson's famous Muppet creations, including many of those from Sesame Street, such as Bert and Ernie and Kermit the Frog. The exhibit, scheduled to remain at the Smithsonian until October, before traveling on a three-year tour to seven other cities, displays Henson's creative process. "We're showing how he went from drawing to a cartoon to a puppet to a moving image," project director Deborah Maconic told the Associated Press. Since the Muppet characters are subject to fading, they are being displayed under special lighting and are being treated as if they were historic treasures, placed behind glass enclosures. "We consider every single thing in here to be precious," Maconic said.
Transformers 2, Star Trek, & G.I. Joe Dodge Funding Bullet
(online.wsj.com) A $450 million film-financing deal between Viacom Inc.'s Paramount Pictures and Deutsche Bank AG has fallen through, the latest sign that the credit crisis on Wall Street has roiled Hollywood.
The studio had been working for months with Deutsche Bank on an agreement to fund as many as 30 films, including "Transformers", "Star Trek," "G.I. Joe" and "Hotel for Dogs," from its DreamWorks label. But the talks have languished for some time, and prospects for completing the deal had recently seemed bleak.
Paramount will now either turn to other co-financing arrangements to fund the films, or pick up more of the tab itself, according to an executive at the studio. The agreement with Deutsche Bank provided a 25% equity stake in each film, capped at $30 million. The studio will make up for that gap on each film with a combination of internal funds and co-financing deals already in place. "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," for example, is co-financed with Warner Bros., and "Star Trek" is co-financed with Level 1 Entertainment. Paramount will release both films within the next year.
