Filming of this prestigious life story took place in Hawaii in early 2010 with Robb wearing a green sleeve on her arm so visual effects could be added in post-production to create the appearance of a stump. More additional filming took place in Tahiti in August 2010. Soul Surfer was released in theaters on April 8, 2011 in the United States and Canada by a partnership between FilmDistrict and TriStar Pictures.
Bethany (AnnaSophia Robb), a natural talent in the sport of surfing, loses an arm in a freak shark attack. Helped along by the love of her parents (Helen Hunt, Dennis Quaid), brothers, and friend Alana Blanchard, she refused to give up. With big plans to return to competition, questions about her future continued to trouble her. Upon seeing the devastation in Thailand caused by the 2004 tsunami on a trip with her local youth group, Bethany discovers a greater purpose: to make a difference in the lives of others. She realizes she cannot give up. She needs to be an inspiration for other people with traumatic experiences and disabilities. She wants to make a difference and prove that you can do anything you put your heart to.
I believe that this film did not get enough credit. There was a large amount of work that went into this film. Not only does filming surfing create challenges, but a realistic shark attack, and a green screen arm that looked completely real as a stump. This film had phenomenal technical work. I believe that the film also had beautiful acting. The actors captured the emotions perfectly, and as a viewer, I really felt what they were going through. I think that this movie is one to be watched, it is very inspirational and truly a great film on a brave, courageous person. It really earns its name, Soul Surfer.
SO I know in one of my blog post before, I talk about the bates motel and talk mostly about the characters. However, in light of all commotion The Bates motel is causing. This drama series sure keeping its fans on their toes. Now, Instead of reviewing what amazing show it is and go on and on about how much I can't get enough of it I decided to do a little research.
The bates motel creates an eery feel throughout the show and their house in general is something that creates a good scene. What I found out though, is that the roof of the famous house is actually not even there. It is added on in post prediction. With the unit we are learning in class, I felt like bringing this up would correlate to that. You rally can add on anything you want and create the perfect set you desire without having to use funs in building it.
Another random fact about bates motel is that it isn't the first time someone has tried to do a spin of of psycho. IN 1987 NBC produced a sequel to the film, however the plot is a lot different then we are seeing in this series. The original sees was about a boy who was a troubled teen who then ends up in an asylum. The boy meets Norman bates and after norman dies the boy tries to renovate the motel. Due to low ratings and negative reviews the poi lot was not picked up as a seres like it intended.
Another thing you may want to know about The Bates Motel is that the '"ending" of norman bates isn't intruded to be the Psycho in the movie that they are basing it off of. The writers, producers and directors want to create a unique version of the story. ALSO, another random fun fact is that Freddie Highmore (Norman) will be graduating with a degree in linguistics. He is Fluent in arabic and Spanish. I have no idea why this show intrigues me so much, but I just had to talk about it again.
With the technology that we have in todays society there is a lot of cool things people can do to make their vision come to life. I never really noticed how many shows were shot in a green screen. Not only you can create a virtual set but It also can be an easier way to get the shot you desire. Green screen is also a budget saver because if you are shooting something that is "on the moon" you don't actually have to go there or try to mimic it by creating it. All you have to do is have an image or a video to put it behind the subject, and they are there! Badabing badaboom.
Technology is truly amazing and the capabilities that we have achieved in the film industry has created a whole different playing field with films then the past. We went from silent films to what we have now.
Films and Tv shows need to be visually pleasing and sometimes getting permission to shoot in a specific area is impossible so the next best thing or even the better thing is doing it in green screen. After watching this video (http://www.rightthisminute.com/video/bet-you-never-knew-these-scenes-were-filmed-green-screen) It amazed me how many shows and films used a green screen for things you wouldn't even think of having, Just a single scene was shot in green screen from Ugly Betty and it just made me realize that everything is shot in green screen. It is just crazy how you would think that it is just on the street of NYC but in reality, they are not outside, not in NYC and in a green screen studio.
For my blog this week I thought it would be a good idea to talk about green screening because we will be doing this for our film.
How a green screen works:
Firstly Green screening has many different names. Chromakeying and color keying are two different names. This is the process of singling out a particular color in an electronic image and then using computer software to make that color transparent. This allows another image, which can be just about anything you can imagine, to show through.
This sounds very simple and it is for the most part, but there are some things that can make in complicated.
Firstly is lighting the Screen. If the screen is not evenly lit this can cause issues because there will be different shades of green resulting in different variations of transparency. This can completely mess up a chromakey.
Make sure to light your screen properly!
A second issue is lighting you subject to match the image you are superimposing over the green screen. If the light, color, and shadows of the subject don't match, your audience will notice and t will effect your picture.
Make sure to light your subject according to your setting!
Finally edging. When using a green screen the color of the green can reflect on the edges of objects causing them to also become slightly transparent. This is fairly unavoidable but can be fixed in post with some work.
We live in an age of CGI. Hollywood studios have been finding that it is a lot easier to CGI a bunch of enemies or explosions or anything in action and Sci-Fi films. Unfortunately I am one of those people that have not really enjoyed these transitions. Almost all of my favorite action and fantasy films took place in the mid-2000's. Lord of the Rings, Kingdom of Heaven, Mask of Zorro, The Bourne Trilogy. These films had a sense of realism to them that a lot of the more modern action films don't.
Although I thoroughly enjoyed The Hobbit, an Unexpected Journey, the excessive use of animation really took me out of some of the scenes. There were scenes that were exclusively CGI and since I knew it was all CGI, all suspense was immediately taken out of the scene. I think the reason why I enjoyed the big budget action films of the 2000's was because special effects were not good enough at that point to completely shoot a scene, but could only be used to enhance scene. Give them that extra something if you will. For an example I have added two scenes, both from director Peter Jackson, one from the Hobbit done completely in CGI and one from The Fellowship of the Ring, decide for yourself which one has more tension.
Hopefully, you agree with my opinion that the second clip is much better. Mainly because of the lack of frame cluttering. It's almost as if Peter Jackson told the animators to put as much stuff in the frame as possible. This excessive animation really makes it difficult for me at least to get personally involved in the scene. The sad part is, is that a scene shot in a forest with a bunch of guys in costume did so much more for me than and thousands of dollars of animation could.
I am going to bring up a point here that might cause some contention. As some of my classmates have already stated, they really did not like the film Pacific Rim, and while by no means did I think it was a great film. I found it to be very enjoyable and worth the money I spent in the theater (mainly cause I didn't watch it in 3D). Now obviously this film relies on CGI like it is nobody's business, but the thing I found interesting after looking a bit further into the making of the film was that director Benicio Del Toro made a conscious effort to make the cockpits of the Jaegers a real set and the enhance it with CGI. Here is a clip about building the set.
Now I thought that was pretty amazing. Especially because of the lack of necessity. They were already making an extremely CGI heavy set, Del Toro could have just as easily had the actors put in a green screen environment and done everything in post, but he said no. I want to add a sense of realism in an otherwise unrealistic film. This went as far as to make real functioning pilot suits and helmets.
Well for those of you who have stuck through this whole post and watched all the videos and listened to all my wild comments I say thank you. I always appreciate a good debate, so if someone has a conflicting idea I'd love to hear their arguments. After all, we're here to learn.
Here a quick and dirty (and ugly:-) composite I just did against your background. I shot myself against a green fabric, with light coming from my window (too cold outside, hehe) , flipped it contrasted, desaturated and tinted the image to match the "light" on the parking lot. As a detail I added a "reflection" of the background in my glasses like we mentioned in class.
today in class we shot a short scene from our GDK and after we got everything in place i was really impressed with exactly what was possible with the green screen. i mean it had reflections from our background on things like the desk. after effects looks like it does a lot of the work, or maybe arturo just made it look easy, probably the latter. we did have some scares as far as styrofoam ceilings go but im really glad we did that in class today i think i learned a lot
The end of class kind of blew my mind. After taking nearly the entire class to set up the lights and scene I figured we wouldn't be able to actually make a finished product. Once Arturo put the footage in, it took him 5 minutes to make a realistic scene. I thought it was amazing. That after-effects automatically made the reflection on the desk fit with the scene, that was awesome. Just how fast the process was and how many options you have to tweak things and make it look exactly how you want, I thought it was incredible.
