Films about films

Since many of you are now actively watching movies, I suggest that if you have not seen it try to see Rango. It is simply an amazing piece of work. Directed by Gore Verbinski (Pirates of the Caribbean) the film pays direct homage to a number of films both in terms of storytelling structure, some memorable characters themselves and even music and lighting.

Needless to say, if you are to fully enjoy this film's homage structure you should try, if you have not done so, to see some of the principal films referenced in Rango.

Films referenced are of course the extraordinary "Chinatown" (by Roman Polanski) which shares the core story of the film, "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly", "For a Few Dollars More" (Sergio Leone), John Ford westerns, "There Will be Blood" (Paul Thomas Anderson) in terms of lighting, and great characters based on such icons as John Huston (in Chinatown), Lee Van Cleef's in For a Few Dollars More, which in Rango is the very bad Rattlesnake Jake. and, yes, Clint Eastwood as "the Spirit of the Desert", poncho and all. Clint Eastwood rose to fame thanks to the Sergio Leone's "spaghetti westerns" known as the Dollars Trilogy.

A couple of more references I saw were to "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" by Terry Gilliam, (And oh, a wink to Star Wars, of course) I am sure there are other direct references I missed, see if you can find them!

In short it is a film fest, definitely watch it! Needless to say the character modeling, animation, environments, shaders and particularly the acting, etc are simply outstanding. Talking about acting, some of the characters are actually played by their actors, (like Johnny Depp) who are not only doing voice over. But the subtlety of their emotions down to the smallest twitches is a pleasure to watch.

Photographs copyright © 2011 by Paramount Pictures

Lee Van Cleef in "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly", one of the great  so-called "spaghetti westerns"

Pixar has long been a source of animated entertainment, which has most likely shaped all of us in some way or another. Dreamworks and Pixar both are renowned for some of the best animation of humans, and other characters ranging from robots, insects, every type of animal imaginable, even mythological creatures.

When I was still in high school, debating whether or not to choose a major in animation or live action, I looked a lot at the similarities and differences between live action film and animation. While animation is now entirely digital and created from computers, whereas live action is shot using real people on a set/location, there are some similarities.

Live action is frequently used in animated films, where someone hooked up to a motion tracking system performs the actions of the character, and the motions are recorded and used to create the motions of the character. On the other hand, animation is frequently used in live action movies to create the backdrops and special effects that would otherwise be impossible to achieve.

Through both styles, the same basic concepts are held constant, where every shot is thoroughly thought through, every line and every motion is carefully planned by teams and teams of crew members.

But besides making some deep concepts more "kid friendly," what is the purpose of choosing animation over live action? Because as far as I've noticed, almost all animated films (except stop-motion shorts) are comedies. Any thoughts?

40 Year Old Pixar Animation

40 Year Old 3D Computer Graphics (Pixar, 1972) from Robby Ingebretsen on Vimeo.

I found this video in an article on Huffington Post. I found it really interesting to watch some of the early versions of 3D animation, especially because I love Pixar movies and shorts. I know this makes me sound geeky, but I always really liked watching how the character's hair was animated. I first noticed it in the scene in Monster's Inc. where Mike and Sully are banished into the Himalayas with the Abominable Snow Man. Mike is throwing snow cones at Sully and they way that they hit his fur while it blows around in the fierce storm wind. Unfortunately, I can't find the video from the scene, but I did find this trailer...

...for a new Pixar movie coming out in summer of 2012 called "Brave," where the lead characher has large, frizzy red hair. While I have never gotten very into animation outside of loving the movies and shorts, I think that it would be really interesting to learn about. Watching the 40 year old animation project made me wonder what the process looks like today, and how much similar the processes are. I would love to work at Pixar one day...not particularly in the animation department but perhaps in the creative aspects of story development or production.

It is always fun to see how far technology has progressed over the years, but this 40 year old animation was not what I expected at all. I had always imagined that 3D animation was a younger technology. Watching this video helped me realize how far the technology has come, and I am so excited to see what comes next....

http://www.grantland.com/blog/hollywood-prospectus/post/_/id/32873/whose-brain-will-the-new-pixar-movie-be-set-in

Jackie

Mother of all Remixes

After watching the Everything is a Remix in class today I though I would talk about one of my favorite recent films. Rango is simply an amazing piece of work. Directed by Gore Verbinski (Pirates of the Caribbean) the film pays homage to a great number of films both in terms of storytelling structure, some memorable characters and even music and lighting.

Films referenced are of course "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas", "Lawrence of Arabia", "Hitchkikers Guide to the Galaxy", "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly", "A Bug's Life" (based itself in Kurosawa's Seven Samurai), "For a Few Dollars More" (Sergio Leone), John Ford westerns, the extraordinary "Chinatown" (Roman Polanski) which shares the core story, "There Will be Blood" (Paul Thomas Anderson) in terms of lighting, and great characters based on such icons as John Huston (in Chinatown), Lee Van Cleef's in For a Few Dollars More, which in Rango is the very bad Rattlesnake Jake. and, yes, Clint Eastwood as "the Spirit of the Desert", poncho and all. (And oh, a wink to Star Wars and their Tie Fighters!, why not) I am sure there are many other references I missed. Let me know!

John Huston in Roman Polanski's "Chinatown"

In short it is a film fest, definitely go see it in the big screen if you can! Needless to say the character modeling, animation, environments, shaders and particularly the acting, etc are simply outstanding. Talking about acting, some of the characters are actually played by their actors, (like Johnny Depp) who are not only doing voice over. And the subtlety of their emotions down to the smallest twitches is a pleasure to watch.

Lee Van Cleef in "The Good, The Bad and the Ugly"

The lighting throughout the film really impressed me the most. The lighting plans were so detailed and intricate and they gave the film a very unique look.

I read an interview with Tim Alexander, the visual effects supervisor on the film. An interesting interview because Tim discussed how Industrial Light & Magic, a company used to working in live action, had to adapt their entire workflow to create an animated feature length film.

Tim said lighting was difficult for them because they are so used to receiving video plates where the lighting in the shot has already been composed by the DOP, in which case they just created their effects based on the existing lighting plot.

Creating an image that was 100% animated was difficult because they had to create the lighting from scratch. To help them with this problem, they hired an experienced DOP, Roger Deakins (Shawshank Redemption, True Grit, O Brother, Where Art Thou, Fargo, Dead Man Walking, etc) to help them figure out lighting designs. I must say the plan definitely worked because the lighting is simply perfect!

Photographs copyright © 2011 by Paramount Pictures

Rango! gotta love your lizard

I just saw Rango last night. Simply amazing piece of work. Directed by Gore Verbinski (Pirates of the Caribbean) the film pays a homage to a number of films both in terms of storytelling structure, some memorable characters themselves and even music and lighting.

Films referenced are of course "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly", "For a Few Dollars More" (Sergio Leone), John Ford westerns, the extraordinary "Chinatown" (Roman Polanski) which shares the core story, "There Will be Blood" (Paul Thomas Anderson) in terms of lighting, and great characters based on such icons as John Huston (in Chinatown), Lee Van Cleef's in For a Few Dollars More, which in Rango is the very bad Rattlesnake Jake. and, yes, Clint Eastwood as "the Spirit of the Desert", poncho and all. (And oh, a wink to Star Wars, why not) I am sure there are other references I missed!

In short it is a film fest, definitely go see it! Needless to say the character modeling, animation, environments, shaders and particularly the acting, etc are simply outstanding. Talking about acting, some of the characters are actually played by their actors, (like Johnny Depp) who are not only doing voice over. But the subtlety of their emotions down to the smallest twitches is a pleasure to watch.

Photographs copyright © 2011 by Paramount Pictures

Lichtfaktor

Since Leah posted her light writing piece I think she (and all of you) will be interested in the work of Lichtfaktor which are a couple of very active German artists. But in this video (no need to speak German to understand it!) you can also see the work of my favorite light graffiti collective. The fabulous and radical (and OPEN SOURCE!!! yeah!) Graffiti Research Lab. There is also a piece on the AR (augmented reality) group DAIM using tracking fiducials to create 3 dimensional light graffiti. This is the 21st century after all...

Super Mario FX

I think this is a cool example that relates to one of the proposed Golden Doorknob ideas.

The Power of Numbers

Fractal generated landscape

Last class we mentioned the example of Benoit Mandelbrot, the father of Fractal Geometry. His work is so important and has influenced so many fields, from mathematics to medicine to entertainment and economics that I am not even attempting to go into more details.

I leave it up to you to find out by utilizing available resources in the net or in the literature, like Mandelbrot's own book The Fractal Geometry of Nature, which made possible to non-specialists to understand or simply enjoy how the visualization of a simple recursive formula can reveal the underlying structure of the world around us, I would even say of the Universe itself.

After people in the film industry for example, were able to "see" with their own eyes the generative power of this recursive formulas, computer graphics programs were developed to take advantage of this procedure to generate highly realistic natural phenomena, from landscapes to water, explosions, fire and such. Things would never be the same.

Algorithmic music generated by the Wolfram Tones program

On a similar note (pun intended), Stephen Wolfram, has contributed to the visualization field, as well as many others too numerous:-) to mention here. Among other things he is the creator of Mathematica, a computational software used primarily for scientific and engineering visualizations. Thanks to that program many applications have been developed that relate to the arts as well. The case in point is Wolfram Tones, which allows you to generate music, soundtracks etc. where you can modify parameters (such as type of sound, rhythm etc) to suit your taste or your application, try it out. You could call it Audiolizations!

My SFX Work

These are some sample scenes of film, special effects, miniature work and computer animation work I have done in the past few years.

From concept to creation

See how closely the production has followed the storyboard. It makes a lot of sense if you think about it. All the time spent in planning the shot to tell the story pays off when you are doing the extremely time consuming work of animating, whether in clay or in CG. You won't have much time to change characters, situations and action, so try to get it to your liking at this stage. And have fun!

Storyboard and end result

Click the images to see a full size version.
The pictures are taken from the book Creating 3-D animation about the Aardman animations. I highly recommend this book if you are serious about animation. It will give you not only great ideas and behind the scene looks at some of the most memorable animations of our time but will also give you a sense of what it takes to do such work.