Peter Jackson Reaches into the Past with Technology for They Shall Not Grow Old
Director Peter Jackson, a filmmaker whose name is synonymous with ‘epic’, has turned an eye to history for his next project. Best known for his fantasies, Jackson’s next film will be a unique WWI documentary. However, the film will be unlike anything you saw in history class. They Shall Not Grow Old appears to be one of the most ambitious restoration projects ever. The film promises to give audiences an unprecedented view of life in the armed forces a century ago.
Disney Animation is Getting in the VR Short Film Game Next Month
Ever since I first laid eyes on a (vacuum tube) TV, I have longed to be immersed in a cartoon world. The colors, the characters, the sounds. I want to be in the center of it all. Disney is now making my wildest wish come true, as they so often do. The pioneer animation company is producing the first VR animated short film from a major studio, Variety reports.
Cycles comes from director lighting artist Jeff Gipson who has worked on four fabulous films,
Immersed in the Scene: Next-Gen Filmmakers Bullish on VR Storytelling
Ever since the first works of film were shown to the public around the turn of the 20th century, the experience has been largely the same. People sit in a darkened theater facing a large screen, where projected two-dimensional, still images flit past their eyes at a rate fast enough to produce the illusion of motion.
But the idea of immersing audiences in the movie’s environment—taking them from spectators peeking through the screen’s 2D window to become surrounded by the film’s three-dimensional world—has been around nearly as long as the industry’s dawn.
Tech Evolution: The Wild Ambition of Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
When director Matt Reeves took the helm on Dawn of the Planets of the Apes, he wanted his apes, which would far exceed their numbers in Rupert Wyatt's excellent 2011 Rise of the Planet of the Apes, to have an even greater level of emotional reality. Reeves was starting fresh with an entirely new cast of humans, but he retained some crucial actors from Wyatt's film, including performance capture extraordinaire Andy Serkis and two other notable ape performers,
Super Computing: Inside Industrial Light & Magic’s Wonder Emporium
We interviewed three different Industrial Light & Magic employees last week to find out how they helped create the visual splendor that is Transformers 4: Age of Extinction. We got so much out of the interviews we couldn’t fit it all in to last week's interviews, so we've compiled a lot of the hard facts on the magnitude of their computing powers for today's story, which have grown each year to keep up with the increasingly sophisticated computer-generated demands of directors like Michael Bay.
Two Industrial Light & Magic Wizards on Creating Destruction for Transformers
When your film centers around alien robot colossi laying waste to each other and their surroundings, it's pretty crucial that the wreckage look real. Two of the job titles responsible for making Michael Bay's latest carnival of destruction, Transformers 4: Age of Extinction, look realistic (and, in its way, beautiful) are the creature supervisor and the FX technical director, so we spoke to both, Michael Balog and Sheldon Serrao.
“My group deals with anything geometry based,”
CinemaCon 2014: The High-Tech Moviegoing Experience
You’ve heard the logic before: high-definition screens and on-demand content have altered the moviegoing environment forever, creating a home entertainment experience that rivals a night out at the local movie theater. Of course, anyone who saw Gravity in IMAX 3D might beg to differ, but it doesn’t necessarily take a game-changing tour de force to pack an auditorium. Today, the local multiplex has done an impressive job of not just keeping pace but surpassing your trusty living room sofa,
Looking at the Legendary Career of Oscar Nominated Visionary Hayao Miyazaki
This Friday marks the nationwide release of legendary Japanese anime director Hayao Miyazaki’s eleventh feature film, The Wind Rises. With this picture, Miyazaki is nominated for his third Oscar for best-animated feature film. He was previously nominated in this category in 2006 for Howl’s Moving Castle, and he won in 2003 for Spirited Away, the first anime movie to win in that category.
The Digital Camera Company That Oscar Nominated Filmmakers Prefer
Last week saw the release of RoboCop, a slick and technologically savvy re-imagining of the 1987 classic directed by Paul Verhoeven. With it’s combination of 3D holographic video screens and large scale multi-tier HD video screens present in every environment, from the corporate computer labs that assemble RoboCop, to the cable news channel studios that cover his exploits, to the sleek design of RoboCop himself, the new movie acts as yet another reflection of ourselves –
How The Lego Movie Got Its Stop-Motion Look
When the trailer for The Lego Movie came out, the Internet was abuzz. The Lego characters had that signature stop-motion feel to them, moving in a slightly stilted manner. Was the movie filmed in stop-motion or CG animation? “There were a couple arguments that we all found quite humorous when we first put out the trailers. People on the Internet were saying they knew for a fact we were doing stop-motion,”
Ilan Gabai, FX Technical Director of Rio 2, Talks Digital Wonders
Typically, the job of digital effects animator does not require previous experience working with live explosives. But it certainly looks good on a résumé.
Ilan Gabai, an effects technical director (FX TD) with Blue Sky Studios, can claim that experience. The 33-year-old grew up in Israel and served three years in his country’s defense forces where he handled grenades, mortars, and RPGs. “I got to blow up a lot of things during my training,”
I, Frankenstein Digitally Re-Mastered for IMAX Premiere
“I ought to be thy Adam; but I am rather the fallen angel, whom thou drivest from joy for no misdeed.” So said Frankenstein’s monster, some 196 years ago in 1818 when Mary Shelley anonymously published her groundbreaking book “Frankenstein” in London. In nine days, her creation will loom larger than ever before when he enters IMAX theaters on January 24 in Stuart Beattie’s I, Frankenstein.
Writer/director Beattie’s film,
Looking Back on Some of our Favorite Stories of 2013
When we launched The Credits a little more than a year ago, we aimed to shed a light on the many talented filmmakers who often don’t get much press for their work. While we’ve occasionally spoken to folks who need no introduction (John Waters, for example), most of the filmmakers we’ve focused on have a little less name recognition but a huge amount of talent. We interviewed a lot of people, so the below roundup is really just a taste—there were far too many people to mention in a single post.
Thor-Inspired Contest Encourages Young Women to Pursue STEM Careers
Ten high school students at the top of their science game took a trip to Hollywood to meet the cast of Thor and visit with a host of inspirational women scientists along the way.
When Aurora Hake, a ninth grader at Annie Wright School in Washington, heard about Thor: The Dark World Ultimate Mentor Adventure, she immediately began preparing her video application. The contest—a joint venture designed by Marvel,
Video Featurette: Behind-the-Scenes With the Creators of Walking With Dinosaurs
Ever since June of 1993, audiences have grown to expect a lot out of their dinosaur movies. You can thank Steven Spielberg and Jurassic Park for turning audiences into very exacting judges of what does, and does not, look like a believable dinosaur on screen. Jurassic Park was a huge leap forward in what CGI can do for a film, but for dinosaur fans (which is just about everyone who was ever a child at one point),
The Rose Theatre in Washington State: A Beloved Local Movie House Embraces Digital
If you want to get cinematic about it, you could say that Rocky Friedman is like Humphrey Bogart’s Rick in Casablanca. Both men hold court nightly in neighborhood joints that reflect their refined and idiosyncratic tastes. Like Rick’s café, there’s always action at Rocky’s.
Some of it takes place on screen.
Friedman, 60, is the owner of the Rose Theatre in the tiny seaport of Port Townsend, Washington.
USC’s Paul Debevec‘s Role in The Matrix, Avatar, Gravity & More
Paul Debevec can rightfully claim that he has helped, in small ways and large, create some of the most technologically groundbreaking films of the last two decades. Debevec leads the graphics laboratory at the University of Southern California's Institute for Creative Technologies, and is a research professor in their computer science department. He is one of the most influential academics in the film world today.
Debevec’s research and technology have been used in The Matrix
Gravity Shines Light on Future of 3D Filmmaking
How do you create a 3D film that’s truly worth the price of admission? If one lesson can be taken from James Cameron’s Avatar, Martin Scorsese’s Hugo, and Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity, it’s that the extra dimension has to be crucial to the narrative itself. It’s not enough to wow people—you need a good story reason for the technology, which all of the above directors had in spades.
3D Serving the Story
Cuarón’s masterpiece took place in space,
Behind AMC’s Curated & Interactive Streaming Service YEAH!
Did you know that Daniel-Day Lewis was almost cast as Vincent in Pulp Fiction? Or that for the infamous adrenalin needle scene, Tarantino filmed it in reverse? Or how about hearing from Wes Craven himself what childhood scare first gave him the idea for Freddy Krueger? Welcome to AMC's new streaming service, YEAH!
It seems like about once a month a new on demand streaming service debuts. This is a good thing.
The Future of Film, Television (& More): 5 New Mind Blowing Technologies
There are so many scintillating technologies in the works one imagines looking back on James Cameron’s Avatar as almost quaint. As absurd as that sounds, looking around the technology space is like looking into a future that would have seemed nearly impossibly only a decade ago. With the truly mind blowing speed with which the internet, smart phones and digital cameras have increased in functionality and ubiquity, so to has the ways in which you can shoot,
