July 27, 2013

Decade of VFX 2003-2013 Compositing REEL

Cut together a decade of my wok as a digital compositor on feature films, it's not every project I've worked on, and not nearly every shot, but showcases (all be it breifly) a good sample of it. ~enjoy!

Schnee VFX 2003-2013 Compositing REEL from David Schnee on Vimeo.

Posted by dschnee at 5:18 AM

June 22, 2012

Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 2 Official Trailer

A lot of red eyes around here....

We will be completing work that will become the final glimpses of our wolves in the Twilight Saga later this fall... This is the final chapter to the Stephanie Meyer series and the end is nigh. Status? so far so good cranking away on the large battle sequence, some of which you briefly see in the trailer above. ~enjoy

Posted by dschnee at 10:51 PM

June 15, 2012

Phil Tippett's "MAD GOD" Only 30 Hours Remain...

To contribute to this experimental, hand-made, animated film, set in a Miltonesque world of monsters, mad scientists, and war pigs.

.....

Posted by dschnee at 9:08 AM

June 16, 2011

Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows Part 2 Trailer 3

Harry be safe... be strong.  I'll see you in a month.


Posted by dschnee at 11:03 PM

6 Most Profitable Secret Movie Creatures Ever


ms010_cinefexScan.jpgSo businessinsider.com recently ran this article, and hey, look who's #1... OK, actually Cloverfield is the bottom of the 6 they chose, but they showcase a pub still from my shot! Nice. For some perspective, I'm adding the production budget for the films below as well. Come on, of course Jaws takes the boat! Indeed less is more.

1. "Cloverfield" made perhaps the most skilled use in movie history of a hyped-up secret monster -- and it paid off to the tune of $168 million. ($25 million production budget)

2. This year's "Battle: Los Angeles" restricted trailer glimpses of its alien invaders to quick cuts with just enough details to spark bloggers' interest. The film's box office take: $202 million. ($70 million production budget)


3. "The Blair Witch Project" rode its shaky-cam secrecy all the way to a $240 million box office pull. ($60,000 production budget)

4. For 1998's "Godzilla" reboot, director Roland Emmerich allowed only the monster's eye and foot to appear in publicity materials. The movie made $376 million. ($130 million production budget)

5. M. Night Shyamalan is known for his reveals -- so the aliens that starred in 2002's "Signs" were kept under tight wraps. The movie made $408 million. ($72 million production budget)

6. But the most profitable secret creature ever was the one that wasn't hidden on purpose. Steven Spielberg had trouble wrangling his giant mechanical shark -- so he ended up shooting from the animal's perspective and building suspense by keeping it out of sight for most of the film. "Jaws" made $471 million. ($7 million production budget)

Posted by dschnee at 12:48 AM

June 15, 2011

It All Ends 7.15 Posters Galore!

One month from today...
You can find the first 3 posters here from my It All Ends 7.15 Posters! post.
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Is there anybody out there...

Posted by dschnee at 11:24 PM

May 25, 2011

Breaking Dawn

Harry Potter Ended, Immortals Lives On, & I'm Breaking Dawn.

Here's the official synopsis for The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn:

In the highly anticipated next chapter of the blockbuster The Twilight Saga, the newfound married bliss of Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) and vampire Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) is cut short when a series of betrayals and misfortunes threatens to destroy their world.

After their wedding, Bella and Edward travel to Rio de Janeiro for their honeymoon, where they finally give in to their passions. Bella soon discovers she is pregnant, and during a nearly fatal childbirth, Edward finally fulfills her wish to become immortal.

But the arrival of their remarkable daughter, Renesmee, sets in motion a perilous chain of events that pits the Cullens and their allies against the Volturi, the fearsome council of vampire leaders, setting the stage for an all-out battle.

The suspenseful and deeply romantic Breaking Dawn continues the epic tale of supernatural fantasy and passionate love that has made The Twilight Saga a worldwide phenomenon.

Currently in Production. U.S. release via Summit Entertainment, November 18, 2011(part 1), and November 16, 2012(part 2).

I still prefer Chud.com's take, Why Breaking Dawn must be made into a movie!

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Posted by dschnee at 10:45 PM

May 24, 2011

Visual Effects Society: 2.0

A snippet from a Variety article by David S. Cohen...

The Visual Effects Society is morphing from milquetoast to militant.

The VES, founded as an honorary society, announced in an open letter Tuesday afternoon that it is changing its mission to focus on problem solving and advocacy for the visual effects industry. Key issues the org aims to tackle include hours and working conditions, consistent onscreen credits and employee benefits commensurate with other workers on films.

While the announcement was abrupt, the VES' transformation is actually the result of years of frustration shared within the org and its leadership, and it was accomplished despite deep divisions in the org and the industry.

The letter, titled "Visual Effects Society 2.0," declares: "In the coming weeks and months, VES will shine a spotlight on the issues facing the artists, facilities and studios by way of editorial pieces in the trades and vfx blogs, virtual town hall meetings, a vfx Artists' Bill of Rights and a vfx CEO's Forum."

Check out the full Variety article here!

An Open Letter To VFX Artists And The Entertainment Industry At Large (.pdf)

It's a very different mission from that envisioned originally by the VES and its founders. VES leadership years ago looked across the biz and saw that crafts needed three kinds of org for full recognition in the movie biz: a union or guild, a trade organization and an honorary society. The VES formed to fulfill the third function, and its leaders waited for the other two to come together and handle the rest.

And waited. And waited.

Repeated efforts to launch a trade association came to naught. For more than 20 years, unions and guilds rebuffed efforts to organize vfx artists, and by the time IATSE and the IBEW announced organizing efforts last year, much of the work had moved abroad.

"No one has stood up to lead the way on the business side of our business," the letter said. "No one has been able to speak out for unrepresented artists and facilities -- or the craft as a whole -- in any meaningful way."

VES chairman Jeffrey Okun, himself a visual effects supervisor, told Variety, "We had more and more requests (from VES members), some of them quite belligerent, asking, 'Why don't you do this?' ?"

Some had asked the VES to become a union. Okun and the org's executive director, Eric Roth, said VES will not assume that role, but "we need to step up and be the voice for the visual effects side of the industry. As we move on, we will be speaking up in a much more proactive way."

Okun emphasized that the org would remain "nonpartisan."

"The purpose of all this is to bring the parties to the table for discussions that will yield a result," Okun said. "While we represent the artists as an honorary society, we also represent facilities, because without them artists have nowhere to work, and studios, because without them facilities have nowhere to work."

Okun said while it's clear the VES' new stance would lead to it stepping on toes, "that's not the intention. The intention is to bring the industry together."

Reaction from the vfx industry was mixed.

Jeff Barnes, head of now-defunct CafeFX, said he fully supports the move, and Jules Roman, prexy of Tippett Studio in Berkeley, welcomed the shift.

"I thought it was tremendous," said Roman of Tuesday's move, "because it put in one place all the issues we all talk about when visual effects people get together. We're subject to so many pressures, but we know what we do contributes so greatly to movies, especially to tentpoles. It's just confusing. So if the VES can articulate the issues for us in a concise form, it's a great thing for the group to do."

Vfx artist Dave Rand, who has become a prominent voice for vfx unionization, recalled trying to get the VES to act when Meteor Studios in Montreal went bust, leaving artists unpaid. "Later we did hear from them, and it was explained to us that according to their charter they could not get involved with our problems. Seems like times are changing and having VES more active in these areas, even as just a conduit or platform, can really benefit the vfx artists."

But Greg Strause, CEO of Santa Monica-based Hydraulx, was skeptical, citing in inherent conflict of interest for the VES.

"I fail to see how they can purport to represent the best interest of artists, and represent the best interests of facilities, and to represent the industry on the global level," Strause said. "Frankly speaking, as a facility owner, our best interest in California is not the best interest of facilities in Vancouver or London."

Strause said he is against anything, such as a union, that would raise prices for vfx for the studios.

"The two things that are highest on our priority list would be an aggressive California tax credit that would keep jobs in SoCal, and all unions should be thinking about this. We also need an aggressive federal tax credit to keep the jobs in the United States. Those are the only two issues everybody should be talking about."

The open letter did not address tax credits, but did cite three problem areas for the vfx industry that the VES will address:

ncredits, where vfx artists are "often listed incompletely" and too low in the crawl;

nbenefits, observing "on a union show we are the only department that is not union and therefore not receiving the same benefits as everyone else on the set"; and

nworking conditions, noting that freelancers often work in vfx shops for 70- to 100-hour weeks for weeks or months on end, while being paid as independent contractors.

Among the first things on the new VES agenda is an Artists' Bill of Rights.

"This should spell out what is basic to each worker and what is not just fair but what is right," Okun wrote in a text chat conducted Tuesday afternoon on Variety.com.

The VES letter said while the org may not have collective bargaining power, it has the power of 2,400 artists in 23 countries, "and the VES board of directors has decided that now is the time to use it. We are the only viable organization that can speak to the needs and concerns of everyone involved in vfx to meet the challenges of a changing global industry and our place within it."

Posted by dschnee at 11:51 PM

May 23, 2011

It All Ends 7.15 Posters

Updated: 18 more from my It All Ends 7.15 Posters Galore! post.

Posted by dschnee at 10:33 PM

May 17, 2011

A New Paradigm for Priest

Read how Priest plays in the best possible digital sandbox.

By all accounts, Priest, the new vampire/western from director Scott Stewart, proved to be a great test case for handling the under $100 million vfx-intensive film. With the help of Jenny Fulle's new Creative Cartel serving as the vfx hub, they were able to effectively manage 750 shots, split between a dozen facilities, including Tippett, Svengali, The Senate, Spin, Zoic, Spy Post, Gradient and Iloura.

We hired Tippett [under the supervision of Blair Clark] to do the creature work. We wanted to make sure they had a unique motion. I'm a reference hound (YouTube's my friend), so I went back and looked at monkeys and gorillas, which was great for the grabbing and pouncing. But, really, what I fell in love with were big game cats: tigers and lions and leopards. There's such elegance in the way they move and they have so much speed and weight."

Tippett animated the vampires like a big-game cat with emphasis on speed, motion and elegance.

Check out the full article here!

In subcontracting a visual effects department, Fulle says it made her role as vfx producer a lot more efficient. "What we're doing now is keeping an infrastructure in place and bringing it within reach of the smaller budgeted shows," she explains. "It's a powerful and smart way of spending your money, and you can get a lot more value.

"Logistically it was a challenge to manage, but at the end of the day, it worked out really well. For me as a producer, I was able to create as big of a sandbox for Jonathan [Rothbart, the overall visual effects supervisor] as I could and he was able to get the most out of what was in that sandbox for him. And Scott knew what he wanted and that's always a help. We were able to push people in different areas. We split the work into digital environments and hard surface models and characters and even primary characters vs. tertiary characters. And we went to the houses and worked with them."

Tippett animated the vampires like a big-game cat with emphasis on speed, motion and elegance.

"Our biggest challenge overall was that we were on a micro budget for visual effects compared to the amount of work we were putting out," Rothbart suggests. "That was a big part of what Jenny was doing. Scott and I talked about grounding it in reality and not appearing too fantastical, everything from the design of the vampires to the concepts behind the vehicles and in the way that we had the creatures and the people interact in the world. We wanted to make sure they all had a level of familiarity so that we stayed grounded in that real state. Scott and I always talk about the fact that visual effects should never be at the forefront of a movie; it should be in support of the action.

One of the most difficult characters was the hive guardian, the bruiser of the vampire world. The original design had him thinner and longer, but Tippett convinced them to give them a chance to design a more powerful creature."The way we thought of it was a rhino or bear with a hard skull structure to be used as a battering ram," Rothbart continues. "For vulnerability, we gave him a soft underbelly as well. We started with some motion tests and it didn't take long for them to get a great sense of what the drone and hive guardian motion should be. Animation supervisor Jim Brown gave him a snarl."

The Senate gave the wasteland an iconic western look.

For the main city, Svengali (under the supervision of Robert Nederhorst) helped create a combination of Blade Runner and Orwell. "We came to the conclusion that they needed to build a city kit," Rothbart adds. "So we worked on a building level first and then expanded that out to the whole city. It's walled and confined, so there's always an upward expansion. We had newer buildings on top of older ones and it went up and up and up. And intertwined with that were these smoke stacks. At the center is the cathedral, which is the hub of the city and the shining light above everything. It was a really good process and solved a lot of the scope problems for us on a micro level."

By contrast, the wasteland by The Senate (under the supervision of Richard Higham) is an infinite horizon of ground and sky. "We did a lot of horizon replacements," Rothbart suggests. "We shot at the salt flats in the Mohave Desert but even that wasn't barren enough. In the DI, they just blasted it to create a great contrast to the city."

Plus there was a thrilling train sequence that was a combination of live action and CG split up between Gradient, Iloura and Spy Post with a 12-scale miniature by Kerner Optical. They built exterior facades of two trains that were pulled by trucks in the desert and then extended out. Then the fight on top of the train was filmed outdoors in front of a bluescreen.

Spy added a future retro look to the train.

The toolset consisted of mostly of Maya, Nuke, RenderMan and mental ray.

A virtual production flow was created with Rothbart in San Francisco and Fulle and her group in LA. They also sent out a color pipeline package to every vendor with LUTs, which took a lot of the guess work out in viewing the movie and mixing live action with digital sequences.

As for the stereo conversion, both Rothbart and Fulle were impressed with the results. "We shot the movie Scope and there's not a straight line with those [rare C-series] lenses, so we wanted to take advantage of that," Rothbart says. "Conversion enhances the experience of looking deep into the channels of the city or into the vastness of the desert."

"When the release date was pushed back several months, we were able to finish the shots, which was a luxury in looking back at it," Fulle adds. "Then we re-engaged some of our vendors where we wanted to re-render in stereo. It was kind of like doing two projects, one after the other. We did the visual effects, we regrouped and then we came back to do the conversion."

Posted by dschnee at 10:01 PM

May 13, 2011

Priest is Released!

in the USA 7 January 2011

visit Season of the Witch @ imdb.com

Box Office Results May 13-15, 2011
Number: 4
Opening Weekend Gross: $14,953,664
Theatres: 2,864
Theatre Average: $1,659
Weeks in Release: 2
Total Gross: $24,408,261
Budget: $60 Million
Running Time: 1 hrs. 27 min.
Distributor: Sony/Screen Gems
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Genre: Action Horror

Priest suffered from a muddled marketing campaign that emphasized its cult graphic novel source material while failing to illuminate any sort of compelling story. Looking to piggyback on the slowly fading vampire craze, Priest's characters often talked about the undead creatures in the previews, though it was hard to tell what made these vampires interesting or unique. Distributor Sony Pictures reported that Priest's audience was 57 percent male and 57 percent over the age of 25. With Thor and Fast Five currently monopolizing young male audiences and Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides on the horizon, Priest only had a minute chance to break-out.

Posted by dschnee at 9:34 PM

May 12, 2011

Scott Stewart Talks Priest

VFX artist-turned director Scott Stewart discusses his latest sci-fi mash-up starring Paul Bettany and Maggie Q.

Scott Stewart has made great use of his VFX expertise, first as a designer with ILM and then as co-founder of The Orphanage, in helming Priest, the dystopian vampire/western opening tomorrow through Screen Gems. He enjoys riffing on Blade Runner, Brazil and Bad Day at Black Rock, and he likes what 3-D can do (he'd much rather rave about how hard it was to get a close-up of his two stars than some badass fight).

Check out the full interview here!

Bill Desowitz: Coming off Legion, what drew you to Priest?

Scott Stewart: The fact that it takes place in an alternate world, and although religion plays a part in it, it's way more Orwellian science-fiction. The vampire is also a different metaphor in Priest. They're albino, they're more feral, they're nocturnal, they're cave dwellers and they have a primitive culture. And so what I realized what was at the heart of the movie was that it has its roots in western iconography and it's an after the war movie.

BD: What was the design process like?

SS: TyRuben Ellingson, an old friend from the ILM days, designed the vehicles; Chet Zar was the creature designer and his characters have a lot of soulfulness. And I'm a big form follows function guy and so are Chet and Ty: his designs are based on relatable, realistic, engineering principles. We just gave ourselves some rules: we called the design aspects of the movie "Retro Futurism." It's hard to do a dark dystopia without living in the shadow of Blade Runner; it's like the Frank Sinatra of science-fiction movies. So you realize that and you just try to make the design tell the story of the world, and we have a walled city, which at the center has a large industrial cathedral, which looms over all the other buildings, and looks like a pin cushion with smoke stacks. And it's always night and it snows ash 24 hours a day.

Image
Svengali serves up an Orwellian nightmare and homage to Blade Runner.

BD: And the vfx journey?

SS: Jonathan Rothbart's my old partner from The Orphange and was the visual effects supervisor, and Jenny Fulle, the visual effects producer, I've known since she was at Imageworks. They really did a remarkable job of getting an extraordinary amount of work done and they stretched a buck pretty darn far. We worked with a lot of facilities around the world. Tippett was the main creature facility and the main matte painting facility was Svengali; we had Spin in Toronto doing secondary creatures and matte work; we had The Senate in the UK that came in and did some environments for us. Zoic contributed as well.

BD: Talk about Genndy Tartakovsky directing the three-minute animated prologue.

SS: It's really cool. I just thought if we were going to set up this alternate world, that it was a great opportunity here to see the mythology of the world. It goes from the Crusades to World War I to the future and so we did that and Robbie Consing reboarded it for me and I did a boardomatic and the studio absolutely loved it. And then we did our budget and it was going to cost several million dollars and it became really easy for them to want to cut it, but I held it in my back pocket for the longest time. And I had talked to Genndy about it -- this hand-drawn, R-rated animation for mainstream audiences in a theatrical picture, which is unusual these days. I've known Genndy a long time and have worked with him as a producer and developer, but this was an opportunity to work with him as a director and co-directors essentially on this.

BD: So what happened?

SS: So the end of that story is I went to the studio and said, "If I could do it for this number, can we do it?" And they said, "Well, we actually have no idea how'd you do it for that tiny fraction of the original multi-million dollar number it came out to be, but if you can, great." He started working on the designs of the characters and I liked the direction he was going in [Americanizing his love of anime]; we talked about a watercolor style background and we just wanted to be very tactile, almost like a storybook (I think most of it was com'd in After Effects). And it was all done in California. Yet it's quite violent. He started with my boardomatic and then he did his pass and reconceived it and we made further adjustments. I had Alan Dale, who's in the film, record the voice-over. And it was a terrific collaboration. All along, the studio wasn't sure if this was going to work or be appealing. Was the animation going to be too graphic and too simple? And when it was done, they thought it was awesome, and we showed it to audiences, and people were real excited about it and that didn't surprise me at all.

BD: It's interesting that you could get away with more blood and gore than in the actual movie.

SS: Yeah, interestingly enough, even though we're a PG-13 movie, the MPAA just went: "Oh, it's animated -- no worries!" Which was so funny because they actually had huge problems with stuff that's less graphic and violent in the live-action movie. They made us turn our blood black or brown, for the most part, in the movie itself.

Image
No ordinary vampire, thanks to Tippett's vfx.

BD: What was the 3-D experience like?

SS: I wanted to shoot anamorphic -- Don Burgess was my camera man and is a real legend, shooting Spider-Man and Forrest Gump. We knew it was a landscape movie -- it was influenced by Bad Day at Black Rock and Ford and Leone and other things. And we wanted to make a widescreen movie, so we talked a lot about 3-D and we wanted to shoot film, we wanted to have that look and use those lenses primarily from the '70s, which have a lot of aberration that they've tried to engineer out of those lenses. We knew what we could get photographically in a 2-D version and, if given enough time, we could make a very compelling 3-D version of the movie [in post]. It's very important to Sony, so once they saw an early cut of the movie, we moved forward with stereoscopic conversion and they gave us about eight more months and an early summer release. Several months and a number of vendors and some very talented stereographers, like Rob Engle and Bruce Jones, and I think they did a remarkable job. We wanted the film like a window into a world, so the movie's quite deep, and it's about looking at the vastness of the desert, the dystopian city.

BD: How's The Mortal Instruments going?

SS: It's going well. It's quite different from what I've done in the past: it's based on a very popular young girls' book series [by Cassandra Clare]. It's a bit Harry Potter, a bit Twilight: a female protagonist [Lily Collins], a seemingly ordinary girl in New York, who discovers she has some extraordinary powers, and there's a city within the city filled with creatures (if you look at that dilapidated church, you can see that it's really a gleaming, gothic cathedral) There's a lot of music and this is a lot breezier than Priest, a lot more comedy and romance with still plenty of action. I think it's going to be a lot of fun.

Bill Desowitz is senior editor of AWN & VFXWorld.

Posted by dschnee at 9:52 PM

April 28, 2011

New Trailer for The Deathly Hallows Part 2

We're less than 2 weeks out from finishing our small treasure of shots... busy silly, silly busy up in here, and just down here is the latest HP7 trailer: (yea youtube is below, but go to trailers.apple.com/hp7/ for the real deal)

Looks neat, vibe is good, into it.

Posted by dschnee at 7:43 PM

April 27, 2011

Tarsem Singh Discusses 'Immortals' Teaser Trailer

Early this morning what looked like a VHS to Youtube quality version of the trailer spread around the interwebs, that one has since been removed, but I saw another crappy version of it later in the day as well... I agree with Tarsem on this one, so I'll post up the real deal once it's released... tomorrow?

Update: Okay it's tomorrow now... Official Website and the Immortal Trailer via trailers.apple.com

Posted by dschnee at 12:06 AM

April 26, 2011

Your Friend Who Works in Special Effects Probably Needs a Hug Right Now

After our little run on the Harry Potter action, definitely hugs needed all around... :(

We can't remember who said it -- maybe Bruce Campbell? -- but a Hollywood actor defined the difference between studio movies and independent films like this: If you know what your movie's release date is before you even start shooting it, you're in a studio movie. That's become even truer over the years: Nowadays, a movie will have a release date before it even has a script. As you can imagine, that makes life incredibly stressful for all those involved with an upcoming tentpole, and today Variety gave us a little glimpse into one such group of individuals: the people at special effects houses.

The Variety article is behind their paywall, but The Playlist gets the gist of it, which is that Warner Bros. was forced to shell out an additional $9 million to pay for extra FX companies to help complete the effects for "Green Lantern," which comes out June 17. But the people Variety talked to at Warner Bros. insist it's not to fix any effects -- just to get them all done in time:

"There is no problem on 'Green Lantern,'" Chris de Faria, Warner's exec VP of digital production, animation and visual effects told the trade. "We try to add things to make the movie better until the 11th hour. That doesn't mean we're risking the movie up to the 11th hour."

This is something studios always want to emphasize when news gets out that a tentpole is rushing to make it to the finish line: "Everything is fine, nothing is wrong, we all know what we're doing, the shareholders have no reason to panic, would you like more cupcakes?" Besides, Warner Bros. are hardly the only ones rushing to hit a deadline: Variety says that one effects house working on Paramount's "Transformers: Dark of the Moon" "has gone to seven-day weeks, 12 hours a day, and canceled the Easter Sunday holiday for its [special-effects] artists."

The Variety article blames all this on the way studios now set up their big movies, valuing the release date over considerations for whether or not it's all that feasible. "So you are always chasing your tail," said Marvel exec VP of visual effects Victoria Alonso, who has "Captain America" to worry about. "You work backwards from that release date, then you add production not being ready to shoot or location complications and you shave the weeks you push from post."

We have friends who work in post-production, and we know that when they get assigned to a big movie that we won't see them for a few months before its release: Their lives are absolutely hellish as they kill themselves getting the movie done. Of late, no tentpole has missed its release, as long as you don't count the last-minute decision not to put out "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1" in 3D as was initially planned. It shouldn't be surprising, then, that big-budget summer movies often aren't very good: The studios are probably just thrilled they got the damn thing out in time. (by Tim Grierson, blog.yahoo.movies.com)

$9 Million Added To Budget, More VFX Houses Hired To Finish 'Green Lantern' In Time For Release Date [The Playlist]
FX shops work around-the-clock for blockbusters [Showblitz/Variety]

Posted by dschnee at 6:16 PM

April 14, 2011

New Priest Trailer #2

They pretty much show an entire sequence of our creepy vampires...

Posted by dschnee at 10:45 PM

April 3, 2011

Priest & Immortals Panel @ Wondercon

Checked out the Immortals panel on Saturday in SF @ Wondercon... unknowingly we arrived in the main hall just as Priest footage was assaulting the senses, by the time we sat down, the lights were up and it was panel discussions action for Priest. Afterwards, a second viewing of the latest footage ended the panel, which I'm not going to lie, it got me hyped to go see this movie.

Around 20 minutes after the Priest panel... Tarsem and the producer Mark Canton come out, Tarsem appeared nervous, but that all changed after the world premiere of the teaser trailer for Immortals... and once the panel began. The teaser was solid and looked fantastic, I think Immortals is going to be a little brutal, a little bad ass, and a whole lot'a beautiful.

Some of the many interesting takes... Tarsem and his passion to put his very DNA into his work, "I don't have children. The only way I can pass my genes or my means on is through my films right now." Nice.

It was said during the panel that Immortals was based off the idea that it's a Caravaggio Painting meets Fight Club, to the Caravaggio influence, which Tarsem admitted was only a starting point. He said he approached the framing and lighting with the Caravaggio influence, but admitted that when you make a film, you often have to adapt based simply on the shots you get and the performances you get. My personal favorite is after a question from the crowd had been answered by Tarsem, and the questioner would say thank you, he'd quickly almost simultaneously respond with "Pleasure". I don't know, haha, loved that.

Tarsem is f'ing awesome, already a solid fan, and now even more so after listening to him speak, I'll let the blogosphere flesh out the rest. Part of the panel is below minus the Q&A session, that had some gems of it's own, but this is a good bit of it below:

http://www.firstshowing.net/2011/tarsems-immortals-unleashed-at-wondercon-with-a-badass-trailer/
http://collider.com/wondercon-immortals-recap/83790/
http://www.slashfilm.com/tarsem-singhs-immortals-trailer-revealed-wondercon/

Posted by dschnee at 11:01 PM

March 24, 2011

It All Ends 7.15

Posted by dschnee at 9:29 PM

March 21, 2011

HP7

HP7 The End Has ComeLast week Tippett found itself on Platform 9 and 3/4, this week we arrive at the deathly hallows assisting on a small'ish portion of vfx work for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2, the (freakin') finale of the phenomenon. (in-sane)

How awesome is it, to be able to contribute to this series. I have truly enjoyed the books over the years, 6 & 7? fantastic. So yeah, I'm crazy happy to get this opportunity. Nine, one, one... so a ton of work in a short amount of time, what, who expected this to be any different? and... I'll see you all in a little over a month or so.

HP7: Part 2 will be released on July 15th, 2011 in the US.


Posted by dschnee at 12:20 AM

March 15, 2011

Season of the Witch: Blair Clark Interview

Vincent Frei's The Art of VFX blog is chalked-up full of fantastic VFX Interviews, and he has added this one from Blair Clark along with some assistance from some other Tippett SOW crew to talk about the work we completed on Season of the Witch.

Blair so generously let me answer a couple below:

How did you create the death of Felson (Ron Perlman) who falls in ashes?
David Schnee (Compositing Supervisor) // The idea behind Felson's death brought to screen over the course of just a few shots was that once he was wrapped up by the demons wings, a spark would ignite sort of furnace that would quickly warm up moving into a super heated blast furnace by the end, engulfing Felson in heat, flame, and fire. The demons big reveal left Felson in a momentary statue like state of ash. Once she drew her wings back disrupting the air, Felson's remains came toppling down the heap of ash with bursts of ember, smoke, and flame. We actually referenced some of our previous work from the burning vampire deaths from BLADE II, and Samuel's death in HELLBOY.

We needed many elements to pull this off, and we did so using a combination of elements from the FX department as well a slew of practical elements shot on stage. We shot a variety of flame elements (think a propane burner cranked up way over high) that we made dance around using flags to fan air at them. This gave us more interesting performances from the standard horizontal flame in a calm environment. These elements worked out well when licks of flames spilled out from the edges of the demons wings and arms. Senior Compositor Satish Ratakonda used these elements along with creative 2d distortions in Nuke to sell this wrapping around for the close up shot. We shot burning twisted up newspaper that we physically beat against a household fan giving us rising embers, which was a lot of fun. Padding the CG with the right practical elements seems to alwasy give you a truer sense of reality, so one of the elements we shot that really worked out for us was burning steel wool. Another of our Compositing Supervisors, Chris Morley mocked up a sculpt Felson in his final pose built entirely of steel wool. When he light this on fire, it gave us a great organic burning look that we were able to composite to some degree in all 3 shots, but primarily used across the entire shape of FX driven ash at the beginning of the reveal. Articulate hand animated regions of burning Felson steel wool was achieved in the composite matching timings from the FX ash toppling down, but offset for a more organic feel. The FX department provided us with great elements for the ash and embers that had an almost Brownian motion quality to them, the rising and swirling, caught up in the pull of air from the animation of the demons wings, it was great. The lighting department also provided us with great interactive lighting across the shots, along with a vital SSS (sub surface scattering) AOV, that we used in the comp to achieve the look of internal lighting inside the membranes of the wings. Again we padded all of this with 2d smoke, dust, fire, embers, and heat distortion elements making it as interesting and real as possible.

Can you explain how you create the impressive death of the demon?
David Schnee (Compositing Supervisor) // The death of the demon starts subtly over the course of a few shots as the reading of the passage in the book begins to inflict pain and damage to her, for the earlier shots leading up to the death, we used Color Codes painted up from our Art department as well as some AOV's for the wing membranes used to create levels of a leading edge burning quality (think burning paper) the look created in the composite. We would animate intensities across the panels of wings driven to flare up more intense when the demons wings moved more (as if the moving air fueled it with more oxygen), and then become more tame when they didn't move as much, all the while trying to ramp up the intensity over the series of shots. The compositors tracked in 2d smoke elements that we turned black as sort of an negative 'evil' smoke element that burned from markings inflamed by the reading, padded with some heat distortion.

By the time we get to her death, the atmosphere in the room was full of 2d smoke which gave us something to light up when we needed to support the internal forces that broke out in intense beams of light from her body, or 'God Rays' as we call them. Often times this is a cheesy 2d effect only, but due to the need for interaction with all the moving parts we were provided a few volumetric lighting passes from our CG Supervisor Aharon Bourland to achieve the look. We continued the same 2d burning wing effect into this shot, but was taken over by an FX Simulation that eroded and dissolved away her wings, arms, and legs using a similar leading edge burn effect. The FX guys orchestrated a series of cracked panels on the demons chest and torso that for a moment tries to hold it all in, but ultimately breaks apart opening up to release our seasoned witch in a burst of light and energy. In the comp we used some 2d distortion techniques making a concussive wave that helped sell the energy during that moment. We padded the naked witch (which was shot as a green screen element) with 2d Schwap! or blood elements made to look like a gooey glistening slime.

After this event, more violent demon animation ensues (see addendum below) as we are left with a eroding shell of the demon and a soul like energy getting ripped apart from it's shell. There is now a slew of swirling debris, ash, bits of demon from FX, as well as this animated ball of particles that tears off and shoots up out of the Scriptorium. It's here that things started to become a bit abstract in the composite. Using the raw FX passes we created a series of interesting throbbing, swirling, and orbiting passes as pre-composites,and then heavily processed them together animating fits of distortion and bursts of light and energy in 2d using Nuke and Shake.

The original idea for very end of the shot was that the ball of energy was to exit through the oculus at the top of the Scriptorium, and up until the eve of delivering this shot for final, the client changed their mind... why would it know to just leave through the hole they asked? So the new plan was to have the ball of demonic energy miss and smash into a blast of chaos at the top of the celling. This turned into a very fast paced science experiment on how the hell are we going to do this and what exactly this should look like. In less than a day and a half, we took a number of quickly generated FX passes from our Lead FX Animator Joseph Hamdorf, and using Nuke heavily processed the exploding particle simulation renders that blasted across the curvature of the ceiling. Using time offset and re-timing tools on the raw FX elements helped us quickly generate a much more complex looking array of elements. Using every trick we had in the book we built on this using tons of layers with glows, distortions, displacements, ripples, 3d projections for concussive shock waves, 2d smoke and dust for atmosphere, and in the end trying to make a few frames look that of distant galaxy with veins of antimatter shot from the Hubble helped get the job done. It was a very collaborative effort in the end, multiple compositors joined in to help generate bits a pieces, pulling off the finale conclusion to the demons death together in pretty much one day. I have to also mention that this would never had come together so quickly with out the compositing speed and strength of Nuke.

Addendum:
"as a more violent demon animation ensues... Senior Animator // Randy Link was responsible for animating the pain inflicted, spastic, death of the demon. He was able to achieve a wickedly disturbing performance that served as the foundation for the rest of the departments to build from. The FX team drove their particle simulations off of it, the TD's creatively catered their lighting to it, and it birthed the opportunity inside the comp to play off his/her key moments, contributing a slew of elements in stride with Randy's performance." (xoxo randy, -your pal schnee)

To read the complete interview visit The Art of VFX: SEASON OF THE WITCH: Blair Clark - VFX Supervisor - Tippett Studio

See Also: Over a years worth of insightful exclusive interviews can be viewed over on the artofvfx.com, definitely worth checking out.

SOW_TIPPETT_VFX_01.jpgSOW_TIPPETT_VFX_02.jpg

« THE GREEN HORNET: Greg Oehler – VFX Supervisor – CIS Hollywood
15 03 2011
SEASON OF THE WITCH: Blair Clark – VFX Supervisor – Tippett Studio
Posted by Vincent Frei in Season of the Witch, VFX Supervisor

What is your background?
Blair Clark (Visual Effects Supervisor) // Attended school at California College of Arts and Crafts (now CCA) in Oakland CA, I was hired by Chris Walas to join crew working on the first GREMLINS film. From there went to ILM, where I met Phil Tippett and began to learn the process of machining Stop Motion armatures from Tom St.Amand, who is still the undisputed master of the craft. I continued to work for Phil, creating armatures for several films at Tippett Studio, then went to Skellington Productions for NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS after which I returned to Tippett Studio in 1994 and have remained here since.

What are the sequences made by Tippett Studio?
Blair Clark (Visual Effects Supervisor) // We were contacted by VFX Producer, Nancy St.John and VFX Supervisor, Adam Howard to assist in supplying Visual Effects for the portion of the third act, involving the girl (played by Claire Foy) transforming into the Demon and engaging Nicolas Cage, and Ron Perlman’s characters in a battle to the death.

How was the collaboration with the director Dominic Sena?
Blair Clark (Visual Effects Supervisor) // The film was well in post production by the time we became involved, and we worked exclusively with Mark Helfrich (2nd Unit Director / Editor).

What references did he give you for the winged demon?
Nate Fredenburg (Art Director) // There had been no design work done on the demon when we became involved with the film so there was no reference. When we asked what kind of demon they were looking for, we were told, "you know, a demon." So it was an open playing field. The demon is identified as Baal in the script, so we started there. We looked at both old engravings of Baal and more contemporary renditions to familiarize ourselves with the range of interpretations. We decided this demon needed to be a demon of old manuscripts to best support the story so we leaned toward a classic representation.

Can you explain how you transform the girl in the demon in particular in the closeup on her face?
Aharon Bourland (CG Supervisor) // The close up was actually the test bed for working out our technique. The first step is to build an accurate model of the subjects face. Once you have that you can get camera and facial match move solves. This has to be really accurate because we will be using this mesh to generate pRef data. pRef (position reference or texture reference) is used in a projection shader to stick a projection onto a deforming surface. We now take the girls face and build a set of blind shapes that will transform it into the demon face. Then the plate is reprojected back onto the newly transforming face and since we use pRef instead of P in the projection shader the plate is warped into the shape of the demon. Were about half way there now. we need to get the color and skin texture changes in. A procedural shader that used coordinate systems from maya to wipe on passes of veins skin erosion masks and other textures was used to animate and render these passes. And finally we have a light pass of a face painted like the demon but morphing from human to demon. All of these passes were then comped together to achieve the final effect.

How did you create the cart taking fire and starting to melt?
Blair Clark (Visual Effects Supervisor) // Those were shots that we shared with UPP (Prague), who had the lion’s share of shots in the film and in these shots, they did all of the fire and melting cage work, and we did the integration and augmentation to the girl turning into the demon.

Can you explain the shooting of the final sequence? Did you use a stunt double dressed in blue to simulate the presence of the demon?
Blair Clark (Visual Effects Supervisor) // The final sequence was shot in Shreveport, LA. Our VFX Supervisor, Eric Leven and Location Data Supervisor Eric Marko worked with the Director and the Stunt team to choreograph the fight between the actors and the Demon. There was a stunt double (dressed in gray tights) used for interactivity (eyelines, choking and grabbing actors, etc.) and was covered with the CG Demon. There were also a few shots that had been previously shot in principal photography with the girl (Claire Foy) acting as the Demon in which we covered here with the CG Demon, but closely followed her performance.

Have you encountered some problems with the wings of the demon? And how did you create them?
Nate Fredenburg (Art Director) // Wings are always tricky. Since we didn’t have much time to build the demon, we went with as simple a rig as we could, which really put it in the hands of the animators to make look good. When designing the demon, we decided to give it an extra wing membrane that was reminiscent of a collar. We thought it would help give the demon added visual interest and presence. The animators hated it and spent most of their time trying to find poses that just got it out of their way. Even when we work hard to design with performance in mind, we can’t anticipate everything.

What were your references for the animation of the demon?
Jim Brown (Animation Supervisor) // We shot a lot of reference of ourselves acting as a demon. There were many takes to figure out how this demon would walk, move, and fight. We started with a more feminine movement, but shifted to a more classic demon character with powerful masculine poses and actions. The wings were a big challenge because of the amount of physical weight they would put on a demon’s back. We had to ask ourselves how much of that weight would we see in the demon’s movement. We looked at bird reference as well as bat reference for poses and postures. In the end having the wings affect the demon’s walk and movement too much took away from the performance of the character. However, they were great for a number of shots when we needed some exciting action. Overall the demon was a mixture of a birds, bats, and animators jumping around like they were possessed.

How did you create the death of Felson (Ron Perlman) who falls in ashes?
David Schnee (Compositing Supervisor) // The idea behind Felson’s death brought to screen over the course of just a few shots was that once he was wrapped up by the demons wings, a spark would ignite sort of furnace that would quickly warm up moving into a super heated blast furnace by the end, engulfing Felson in heat, flame, and fire. The demons big reveal left Felson in a momentary statue like state of ash. Once she drew her wings back disrupting the air, Felson’s remains came toppling down the heap of ash with bursts of ember, smoke, and flame. We actually referenced some of our previous work from the burning vampire deaths from BLADE II, and Samuel’s death in HELLBOY.

We needed many elements to pull this off, and we did so using a combination of elements from the FX department as well a slew of practical elements shot on stage. We shot a variety of flame elements (think a propane burner cranked up way over high) that we made dance around using flags to fan air at them. This gave us more interesting performances from the standard horizontal flame in a calm environment. These elements worked out well when licks of flames spilled out from the edges of the demons wings and arms. Senior Compositor Satish Ratakonda used these elements along with creative 2d distortions in Nuke to sell this wrapping around for the close up shot. We shot burning twisted up newspaper that we physically beat against a household fan giving us rising embers, which was a lot of fun. Padding the CG with the right practical elements seems to alwasy give you a truer sense of reality, so one of the elements we shot that really worked out for us was burning steel wool. Another of our Compositing Supervisors, Chris Morley mocked up a sculpt Felson in his final pose built entirely of steel wool. When he light this on fire, it gave us a great organic burning look that we were able to composite to some degree in all 3 shots, but primarily used across the entire shape of FX driven ash at the beginning of the reveal. Articulate hand animated regions of burning Felson steel wool was achieved in the composite matching timings from the FX ash toppling down, but offset for a more organic feel. The FX department provided us with great elements for the ash and embers that had an almost Brownian motion quality to them, the rising and swirling, caught up in the pull of air from the animation of the demons wings, it was great. The lighting department also provided us with great interactive lighting across the shots, along with a vital SSS (sub surface scattering) AOV, that we used in the comp to achieve the look of internal lighting inside the membranes of the wings. Again we padded all of this with 2d smoke, dust, fire, embers, and heat distortion elements making it as interesting and real as possible.

Can you explain how you create the impressive death of the demon?
David Schnee (Compositing Supervisor) // The death of the demon starts subtly over the course of a few shots as the reading of the passage in the book begins to inflict pain and damage to her, for the earlier shots leading up to the death, we used Color Codes painted up from our Art department as well as some AOV’s for the wing membranes used to create levels of a leading edge burning quality (think burning paper) the look created in the composite. We would animate intensities across the panels of wings driven to flare up more intense when the demons wings moved more (as if the moving air fueled it with more oxygen), and then become more tame when they didn’t move as much, all the while trying to ramp up the intensity over the series of shots. The compositors tracked in 2d smoke elements that we turned black as sort of an negative ‘evil’ smoke element that burned from markings inflamed by the reading, padded with some heat distortion.

By the time we get to her death, the atmosphere in the room was full of 2d smoke which gave us something to light up when we needed to support the internal forces that broke out in intense beams of light from her body, or ‘God Rays’ as we call them. Often times this is a cheesy 2d effect only, but due to the need for interaction with all the moving parts we were provided a few volumetric lighting passes from our CG Supervisor Aharon Bourland to achieve the look. We continued the same 2d burning wing effect into this shot, but was taken over by an FX Simulation that eroded and dissolved away her wings, arms, and legs using a similar leading edge burn effect. The FX guys orchestrated a series of cracked panels on the demons chest and torso that for a moment tries to hold it all in, but ultimately breaks apart opening up to release our seasoned witch in a burst of light and energy. In the comp we used some 2d distortion techniques making a concussive wave that helped sell the energy during that moment. We padded the naked witch (which was shot as a green screen element) with 2d Schwap! or blood elements made to look like a gooey glistening slime.

After this event, more violent demon animation ensues as we are left with a eroding shell of the demon and a soul like energy getting ripped apart from it’s shell. There is now a slew of swirling debris, ash, bits of demon from FX, as well as this animated ball of particles that tears off and shoots up out of the Scriptorium. It’s here that things started to become a bit abstract in the composite. Using the raw FX passes we created a series of interesting throbbing, swirling, and orbiting passes as pre-composites,and then heavily processed them together animating fits of distortion and bursts of light and energy in 2d using Nuke and Shake.

The original idea for very end of the shot was that the ball of energy was to exit through the oculus at the top of the Scriptorium, and up until the eve of delivering this shot for final, the client changed their mind… why would it know to just leave through the hole they asked? So the new plan was to have the ball of demonic energy miss and smash into a blast of chaos at the top of the celling. This turned into a very fast paced science experiment on how the hell are we going to do this and what exactly this should look like. In less than a day and a half, we took a number of quickly generated FX passes from our Lead FX Animator Joseph Hamdorf, and using Nuke heavily processed the exploding particle simulation renders that blasted across the curvature of the ceiling. Using time offset and re-timing tools on the raw FX elements helped us quickly generate a much more complex looking array of elements. Using every trick we had in the book we built on this using tons of layers with glows, distortions, displacements, ripples, 3d projections for concussive shock waves, 2d smoke and dust for atmosphere, and in the end trying to make a few frames look that of distant galaxy with veins of antimatter shot from the Hubble helped get the job done. It was a very collaborative effort in the end, multiple compositors joined in to help generate bits a pieces, pulling off the finale conclusion to the demons death together in pretty much one day. I have to also mention that this would never had come together so quickly with out the compositing speed and strength of Nuke.

Was there a shot or a sequence that prevented you from sleeping?
Blair Clark (Visual Effects Supervisor) // There were several shots, but the death of the demon section was a pretty challenging one.

What is your pipeline and your software from Tippett Studio?
Aharon Bourland (CG Supervisor) // Our primary 3D packages are Maya, Mudbox, and Houdini. For 3D paint we use photoshop, and our in house tool shallowPaint. We do a mixture of geometry caching to gto files and translating maya scenes to ribs, so we can render them in Renderman. For Comp we use a mixture of Nuke and Shake. Nuke was used on the transformation shots in SEASON OF THE WITCH.

How long have you worked on this film?
Blair Clark (Visual Effects Supervisor) // After the Demon design was approved and ready for production, we started working on shots in early September and finished mid-November 2010.

How many shots have you done and what was the size of your team?
Lee Hahn (Visual Effects Producer) // 60 people, 75 shots, 80 days

What do you keep from this experience?
Blair Clark (Visual Effects Supervisor) // What’s not to love about a show with a Demon in it?!?

What is your next project?
Tippett Studio is currently in production on PRIEST (Screen Gems), THE SMURFS (Columbia Pictures), THE TWILIGHT SAGA: BREAKING DAWN (Summit Entertainment), IMMORTALS (Relativity), HEMINGWAY & GELLHORN (HBO Films), as well as a commercial for Busch Gardens. In our spare time some of our employees, under the guidance of Phil Tippett, are working on a stop motion project called MAD GOD. You can see a trailer for it on our YouTube page : www.youtube.com/PhilsAttic

What are the 4 movies that gave you the passion of cinema?
Blair Clark (Visual Effects Supervisor) // Just 4? That’s a tough one. I grew up on a steady diet of Universal and Hammer Horror films, and those gave me a combination of being a creepy little kid, and a desire to be involved in film making. I know as soon as I answer this, I will remember 30 other films that were just as influential, but BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN, SEVENTH VOYAGE OF SINBAD, STAR WARS and GOLDFINGER.

A big thanks for your time.

// WANT TO KNOW MORE ?

- Tippett Studio: Official website of Tippett Studio.

© Vincent Frei – The Art of VFX – 2011

Posted by dschnee at 10:45 PM

March 11, 2011

Immortals to debut at Wondercon 2011

We are in our final stages of completion with our work on Immortals this week and next, with a few more pieces yet left to put together in the coming months, looking forward to what the panel will reveal.

Cast and filmmakers to present first footage of the film and host panel discussion at Wondercon in April.

Saturday, April 2, 5:00 PM - Mascone Center South, San Francisco, CA - Footage and Panel - Main Hall

Visionary director Tarsem Singh (The Cell, The Fall) and producers Gianni Nunnari (300), Mark Canton (300) and Ryan Kavanaugh (The Fighter) unleash an epic tale of treachery, vengeance and destiny in Immortals, a stylish and spectacular 3-D adventure.(ohh joy) As a power-mad king razes ancient Greece in search of a legendary weapon, a heroic young villager rises up against him in a thrilling quest as timeless as it is powerful.

The brutal and bloodthirsty King Hyperion (Mickey Rourke) and his murderous Heraklion army are rampaging across Greece in search of the long lost Bow of Epirus. With the invincible Bow, the king will be able to overthrow the Gods of Olympus and become the undisputed master of his world. With ruthless efficiency, Hyperion and his legions destroy everything in their wake, and it seems nothing will stop the evil king’s mission.

As village after village is obliterated, a stonemason named Theseus (Henry Cavill) vows to avenge the death of his mother in one of Hyperion’s raids. When Theseus meets the Sybelline Oracle, Phaedra (Freida Pinto), her disturbing visions of the young man’s future convince her that he is the key to stopping the destruction. With her help, Theseus assembles a small band of followers and embraces his destiny in a final desperate battle for the future of humanity.

Posted by dschnee at 12:42 AM

March 2, 2011

VFX good enough? Sez who?

Compromise quality? never want that. This trend has been steadfast for years now impacting how we work and deliver on projects. Adding to the pain is 3d... Dearest 3d conversion, you wonderful little hacknique, your the best, xoxoxo, -comp.
We rape, pillage, maim, and murder(figuratively) in order to get our shots up to seamless and epic proportions. Most times fighting tooth and nail, clawing and scratching for another 20 minutes on a shot as we strive to make it the best looking picture possible, and you want us to do what? wait, for what? 3d? Criminey, it won't make it look any better, you know what will make it look better, NOT seeing it in 3d. ~enjoy

3D among many pressures squeezing f/x quality
By Ellen Wolff (variety.com)

Talk to anyone who makes visual-effects movies and they'll tell you that shortened schedules and budget pressures are squeezing the quality of vfx in unprecedented ways.

The impact is being felt in the shifting landscape for jobs, with fewer vfx vendors within U.S. borders and the shops growing in territories offering rebates. At the same time, fans are watching these movies on Blu-ray at near 2K resolution, so vfx shots are receiving heightened scrutiny.

On the one hand, artists and vfx supervisors are capable of delivering images of unprecedented detail and complexity -- images that movie fans eat up. But on the other, studios are pushing vfx vendors to deliver more work in less time, often for less money and now often in 3D, which eats up resources.

The conflict between good and good enough isn't new; Leonardo da Vinci is supposed to have said, "Art is never finished, only abandoned." But current stresses on budget combined with worries about making content that will still be valuable in a future of Imax theaters and 4K/3D/giantsized home screens is ratcheting up the tension and driving down the quality.

Some complaints about quality are linked to worries about the future of the American vfx business. American vfx companies like to link quality concerns to globalization, but the vfx industry outside the U.S. has matured, and "Made in USA" is no longer a necessary quality mark.

"There was a time when their (overseas shops') quality wasn't up what you'd get the U.S.," said Marvel Entertainment's executive VP of visual effects, Victoria Alonso. "Those were hard choices to make because you were inclined to go for the rebates. But we're lucky now that talent has grown exponentially around the world."

If an overseas vendor can meet Marvel's security requirements, she says, "We do take chances with them -- particularly for something automated like rotoscoping or tracking."

Fudges and Kludges

However, Ray Feeney of RFX, one of Hollywood's leading technologists, said, "I believe the quality of what has been delivered to the motion picture screen has gone down over the last few years, but not because of globalization."

Feeney added: "It's because of hugely foreshortened schedules and the requirements for day and date releases worldwide. Because that pressure is so strong, studios want as good a quality as they can get, but only as good as they can get and still meet these practicalities."

Feeney and those who argue for more attention to quality note that movies today receive unprecedented scrutiny. With Blu-ray and HDTV, fans can pick apart a sequence frame by frame, and they can spot fudges, kludges and cheats.

At the same time, though, "The movies get bigger but the budgets seem to get smaller," Alonso says. "Because every department seems to cut down before we shoot or as we shoot, the fix-it-in-post department -- which is us -- keeps growing. You have weather issues, or an actor has to leave and you end up with a greenscreen shoot that you didn't think you would have."

Vfx supervisor Jeff Okun, who also serves as chair of thee Visual Effects Society chairman, said "I had one director say, 'I don't like my sets, but I know you can replace them.' We could, but not in 10 days, when the film was opening."

Mike Fink, head of North American production for Prime Focus, agreed. "The old triangle of 'money-time-quality: pick two' doesn't apply anymore. Studios are confident that visual effects people will figure out how to deliver what a director wants for less money, in less time."

Rush Jobs

This mindset can foster sloppy shooting, said Bill Taylor, governor of the Academy's VFX branch. "There's no digital fix for a camera that was placed in the wrong position," he said. "The pressure to get lots of setups done in a day is greater than ever, so the results coming out of production and into the visual effects labs are sometimes very bad. The quality standards of photography have declined, perhaps because of lack of time on set."

Taylor also noted, "There's a whole generation of digital artists who've never picked up a paintbrush or been on a set. Their lack of experience shows in the final result. There are shots in big movies that are unacceptable by any standard."

Quality control is even more complicated by the compressed schedules of today's movies. To get the work done in less time, studios and producers use a "wide pipeline" -- splitting up the shots to many visual effects studios. Gone are the days when a single studio, like Digital Domain or Industrial Light & Magic, would do an entire movie. Those big shops do the high-profile, research intensive work that can drive a marketing campaign. However on "Iron Man 2," ILM was one of 11 visual effects vendors, and that number isn't unusual.

For "Tron: Legacy," VFX supervisor Eric Barba of Digital Domain wrangled work done in Thailand, India, Mexico and Canada. DD had to develop proprietary networking technology so that Barba could monitor high-def images online.

"It's a new model for the visual effects community. Traditionally, we don't share anything. So keeping the quality level consistent was a concern," Barba said. "You don't want sequences looking like different companies did them."

Floor to Ceiling

The move toward 3D is also putting downward pressure on vfx quality. 3D visual effects are much more complicated than 2D visual effects, but budgets don't always make up the difference. Feeney noted that 3D also exposed some limits of today's d-cinema projection systems.

"The projectors couldn't do full quality stereo, and studios have scrambled to bring the quality of stereoscopic movies back to a minimal 2K level. That level -- which was supposed to be the floor -- became the ceiling! Because what actually gets delivered to theaters might be considered compromised, that may allow lower-end visual effects to fly through without being apparent.

"This situation established a 'good enough' mindset. Theaters have to show higher quality imagery to drive studios to deliver better quality masters."

Given all these pressures, it's not surprising that several vfx suppliers have folded. But Okun said: "Some companies are doing well because they've specialized in particular things. Scanline (which did the Oscar-nominated tsunami sequence for "Hereafter") specializes in water effects. It's like the general practice doctors who are struggling, while the brain surgeons are doing fine."

That's led to an evolution, where producers and studio vfx departments talk about "casting" the visual-effects vendors. It lets a shop such as Scanline, that has a specialty, do what it's good at without having to carry the entire show. John Swallow, who oversaw vfx at Universal for 14 years, said: "Lots of people can get images 80% done. It comes down to having enough time to do that last 20%. And if shots are added, quality tends to suffer."

So what happens when the shots aren't of sufficient quality and the release date is looming? Emergency 911 calls go out to the big shops, who have massive resources and very experienced people -- and charge a healthy markup for the rescue work. But smaller shops can't survive on 911 calls. Feeney said, "All it takes is one project from hell to put them out of business."

Taylor expects we'll see more circumstances like the last "Harry Potter" film, where the studio abandoned 3-D conversion efforts that weren't working. "Sooner or later that will happen to the VFX on movies with cast-iron release dates. Those movies will come out with whole sections missing!" (variety.com)

Posted by dschnee at 11:14 PM

February 23, 2011

The Fantastic Digs of Tippett Studio

Yeah... I do work at a pretty fantastic place. There was a tour rumbling through the studio earlier this week as Tippett was a part of the AWN Oscar Tour Travelogue, and so this was Oscar Tour Day 2: The Fantastic Digs of Tippett Studio:


The main case of model figures from the Tippett foyer.

By Dan Sarto

Tippett Studio is a well-known cg studio that specializes in feature film visual effects and creature animation. Legendary founder Phil Tippett is the creative force behind some of the most iconic animated creatures and characters in cinematic history, including the miniature chess scene in the first Star Wars movie, the animated robots in RoboCop, the breakthrough animated dinosaurs of Jurassic Park, the deadly arachnids of Starship Troopers and the transforming werewolves of the Twilight movies. The studio is located in Berkeley, California, housed in a collection of small buildings nestled within walking distance of each other. Our second day ended with a screening and highly anticipated tour of their main production facilities. We were not disappointed.


Tippett's main lobby. The screening room is right off the far left corner.


A series of signed Ray Harryhausen film scene prints adorn an office wall.

When we arrived, our host, Lori Petrini, was busy setting up a table of refreshments right outside the screening room. Following our established routine, Ron began the screening with a few words, thanking the studio for its support of the Oscar Tour as well as the annual Animation Show of Shows tour he runs every November, introducing Max, Jakob and Geefwee and their films. The screening began, Lori gathered us up together and the studio tour commenced.


A Star Wars Imperial Walker model kept within a case in the foyer.

While most animation studios are filled with posters and toys of all shapes and sizes, the Tippett studio additionally is filled with models, props and other physical reminders of 25 years of movie making magic. While the company works primarily in cg, they still have considerable expertise in model making and stop-motion miniatures – computers rub elbows with fabrication equipment, giving the studio a palpable, visceral “feel” absent from digital-only facilities.


Hell Boy, they've got Hell Boy!

Lori walked us through the main building, outside and down the block to another building that houses a machine shop and stage downstairs, design and model-making stations upstairs. On our way back to the main building, we stopped by another building, an old firehouse, which houses primarily cg workstations and related gear. There are arachnid body parts and various models on almost every spare shelf and open wall – every building is filled with an array of prosthetic and mechanical models both familiar and foreign. The inner geek in all of us came alive as we walked, something cool to look at in every direction. Since we were allowed to take pictures of all but a handful of displays, we all came away with our cameras filled.


One of Tippett's model workshops.

This sign adorns a Tippett workshop wall. Or was it my daughter's 11th grade health class?

We finished our tour and arrived for Q&A. Jakob was asked about the origin of The Gruffalo. He explained that their producer, Michael Rose, had been discussing the project with him since 2003, eventually securing rights and bringing in Jakob’s Studio Soi in 2006. Tom Gibbons, Tippett’s animation supervisor and himself an animated short film director (The Hunger Artist, Still I Remain) remarked that he was familiar with and quite fond of the children’s book the film is based on.


The huge evil robot model ED-209 from RoboCop just sits alone up in the rafters. It has no one to play with.

A Dr. Jekyl model from The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

Sara, Ron and Tippett's Director of Fan Outreach.

Geefwee talked about the origin of his film, how he worked solo until the last 6 months, when he got some help with different areas of post-production. He mentioned that he’s been trying to promote his film for the last year with some success, but the nomination has helped tremendously. Tom asked a number of questions about production time frames, budgets and design. Geefwee explained that he’d had a regular career, working at Disney for a number of years, then Pixar for 7 years, but that he never felt it was a great fit. So, in a sense, he left his career behind to try other things. Initially, he wanted to produce children’s books, but his publishing of “Arrowville” in 2004 never quite caught on despite good reviews and critical acclaim. He got a big laugh when he told the audience that he figured at that point, since he wasn’t making any money writing children’s books, he could make the same amount of money making short films. A question was asked about the look of The Gruffalo and Jakob explained how they’d tested and then decided on practical sets with cg characters based on the production schedule and budget. Jakob was asked about the outstanding voice cast that acted on the film and he explained how they just lucked out, that it was great fun to direct the actors, that they just tried to get everyone in the UK that had appeared in a Harry Potter movie.


Yoda insisted on helping setup refreshments for the screening. I slipped him $5.

The audience at the Tippett screening. Image courtesy of Sara Diamond.

The questioning ended and after some final one on one conversation and last minute snacking, we said our goodbyes and headed out. We needed at least a few hours sleep before we took to the road again for our Friday stops at Pixar and Dolby Labs for the ASIFA San Francisco screening. (awn.com/blogs/)

Posted by dschnee at 10:44 AM

February 10, 2011

First Look at Tarsem's 'Immortals'

The Gods bless us... we have just 3 weeks left to finish up our work on this brutal kick ass of a project, it's fast and furious, but the work is awesome and we are having a blast...

Probably my most anticipated film of 2011 -Brad Vrevet (ropesofsilicon.com)

Entertainment Weekly has just debuted the following four first look images at Tarsem Singh's Immortals starring Henry Cavill who was recently cast in the title role of Zack Snyder's Superman: Man of Steel.

Immortals is very similar to the Clash of the Titans story and finds Cavill playing Theseus, a warrior from Greek mythology, who leads a fight against the imprisoned titans in a story where gods fight alongside mortals. Phaedra (Freida Pinto), an oracle priestess joins Theseus on his quest to prevent the cataclysmic war from erupting.

The EW first look gives us looks at both Henry Cavill (top left) and Freida Pinto (bottom left) as well as Twilight actor Kellan Lutz (bottom right) as Poseidon and Mickey Rourke (top right) as the mad king Hyperion. The film co-stars Stephen Dorff, Luke Evans, John Hurt and Isabel Lucas.

Universal has set a November 11 release for the film, and in other Tarsem news Relativity has set a July 29, 2012 release for his follow-up film, The Brothers Grimm: Snow White starring Julia Roberts as the title character. For those not familiar with the name, Tarsem Singh directed The Cell starring Jennifer Lopez and Vince Vaughn as well as the excellent visual feast, The Fall.

Posted by dschnee at 9:41 PM

February 2, 2011

VES Awards celebrate craft with a nod to tough times in California

The occasion was celebratory, but no one was under the illusion that all is well in California's visual effects industry.

During the 9th Annual VES Awards at the Beverly Hilton on Tuesday night, Visual Effects Society Executive Director Eric Roth touted the industry's accomplishments but also highlighted some of the steep challenges facing California's visual effects industry. Ericroth

"Our industry is in transition," Roth said in opening remarks. "While visual effects is a growing business worldwide, here in California visual effects facilities have had to pay even more attention to their shrinking profit margins or risk finding themselves on the endangered species list, as was mentioned in today's L.A. Times."

Roth was referring to a story in The Times about the bleak landscape facing California visual effects companies, several of which have shut down in recent years in the face of rising competition from foreign rivals armed with steep tax incentives and low-cost labor.

"At the artist level there's a lot of talk about whether or not to form a union,'' Roth added, referring to an effort by the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees to extend its reach into one of the only remaining crafts in Hollywood that remains nonunion. "Whether you think one should be formed or not, most people agree it's time working conditions no longer forced artists to work crazy hours, that everyone should have access to group healthcare and that visual effects and credits should be located in a more respectful place in the crawl -- and not beneath the caterer."

Drawing some applause from the 1,000-plus people in the audience, Roth then switched to a more upbeat message about honoring the industry's best visual effects work. Top of the list was Christopher Nolan's thriller "Inception," which won four awards at the event, hosted by comic Patton Oswalt, the voice of the rat in Pixar's "Ratatouille."

- Richard Verrier (latimes.com)

Posted by dschnee at 10:43 PM

January 26, 2011

Why 3D doesn't work and never will. Case closed.

I like this.

I received a letter that ends, as far as I am concerned, the discussion about 3D. It doesn't work with our brains and it never will.

The notion that we are asked to pay a premium to witness an inferior and inherently brain-confusing image is outrageous. The case is closed.

This letter is from Walter Murch, seen at left, the most respected film editor and sound designer in the modern cinema. As a editor, he must be intimately expert with how an image interacts with the audience's eyes. He won an Academy Award in 1979 for his work on "Apocalypse Now," whose sound was a crucial aspect of its effect.

Wikipedia writes: "Murch is widely acknowledged as the person who coined the term Sound Designer, and along with colleagues developed the current standard film sound format, the 5.1 channel array, helping to elevate the art and impact of film sound to a new level. "Apocalypse Now" was the first multi-channel film to be mixed using a computerized mixing board." He won two more Oscars for the editing and sound mixing of "The English Patient."

"He is perhaps the only film editor in history," the Wikipedia entry observes, "to have received Academy nominations for films edited on four different systems:

* "Julia" (1977) using upright Moviola
* "Apocalypse Now" (1979), "Ghost" (1990), and "The Godfather, Part III" (1990) using KEM flatbed
* "The English Patient" (1996) using Avid.
* "Cold Mountain" (2003) using Final Cut Pro on an off-the shelf PowerMac G4.

Now read what Walter Murch says about 3D:

Hello Roger,

I read your review of "Green Hornet" and though I haven't seen the film, I agree with your comments about 3D.

The 3D image is dark, as you mentioned (about a camera stop darker) and small. Somehow the glasses "gather in" the image -- even on a huge Imax screen -- and make it seem half the scope of the same image when looked at without the glasses.

I edited one 3D film back in the 1980's -- "Captain Eo" -- and also noticed that horizontal movement will strobe much sooner in 3D than it does in 2D. This was true then, and it is still true now. It has something to do with the amount of brain power dedicated to studying the edges of things. The more conscious we are of edges, the earlier strobing kicks in.

The biggest problem with 3D, though, is the "convergence/focus" issue. A couple of the other issues -- darkness and "smallness" -- are at least theoretically solvable. But the deeper problem is that the audience must focus their eyes at the plane of the screen -- say it is 80 feet away. This is constant no matter what.

But their eyes must converge at perhaps 10 feet away, then 60 feet, then 120 feet, and so on, depending on what the illusion is. So 3D films require us to focus at one distance and converge at another. And 600 million years of evolution has never presented this problem before. All living things with eyes have always focussed and converged at the same point.

If we look at the salt shaker on the table, close to us, we focus at six feet and our eyeballs converge (tilt in) at six feet. Imagine the base of a triangle between your eyes and the apex of the triangle resting on the thing you are looking at. But then look out the window and you focus at sixty feet and converge also at sixty feet. That imaginary triangle has now "opened up" so that your lines of sight are almost -- almost -- parallel to each other.

We can do this. 3D films would not work if we couldn't. But it is like tapping your head and rubbing your stomach at the same time, difficult. So the "CPU" of our perceptual brain has to work extra hard, which is why after 20 minutes or so many people get headaches. They are doing something that 600 million years of evolution never prepared them for. This is a deep problem, which no amount of technical tweaking can fix. Nothing will fix it short of producing true "holographic" images.

Consequently, the editing of 3D films cannot be as rapid as for 2D films, because of this shifting of convergence: it takes a number of milliseconds for the brain/eye to "get" what the space of each shot is and adjust.

And lastly, the question of immersion. 3D films remind the audience that they are in a certain "perspective" relationship to the image. It is almost a Brechtian trick. Whereas if the film story has really gripped an audience they are "in" the picture in a kind of dreamlike "spaceless" space. So a good story will give you more dimensionality than you can ever cope with.

So: dark, small, stroby, headache inducing, alienating. And expensive. The question is: how long will it take people to realize and get fed up?

All best wishes,

Walter Murch

From Roger Ebert's Journal posted on January 23, 2011 || 403 Comments

Posted by dschnee at 11:53 PM

January 18, 2011

2010 VFX Motion Graphic Design Census


In 2009 Jake Sargeant and Bran Dougherty-Johnson created a survey for the motion graphics & visual effects industry to get a better grasp on salary in the industry. They have now put together those findings in a very interesting document.

Click Here to Read their Findings

The 2009 Motion Graphic Design Census questionnaire was written by Jake Sargeant and Bran Dougherty-Johnson. The survey was hosted online at Motionographer.com in December of 2009. The results were analyzed by Bran Dougherty-Johnson in 2010. (blog.motionmedia.com)

Posted by dschnee at 9:12 AM

January 15, 2011

New Priest Trailer

The best one yet... click it:
in theaters May 13th

Posted by dschnee at 1:00 AM

January 14, 2011

Season of the Witch Fangorial Exclusive

Though the Nicolas Cage medieval horror flick SEASON OF THE WITCH failed to work box-office (black) magic last weekend, the film at least spotlighted some snazzy CGI FX gags by Tippett Studio (the TWILIGHT and JURASSIC PARK films, PIRANHA 3D, DRAG ME TO HELL, etc.), including (SPOILER ALERT!) the heroes’ climactic battle with a winged demon. The Oscar-winning company shared some exclusive SEASON OF THE WITCH creature photos with Fango (see below the jump), and members of the Tippett FX team answered a few questions about the shop’s infernal contributions to the Dominic Sena-directed movie.

FANGORIA: What were your marching orders on SEASON OF THE WITCH?

BLAIR CLARK, VISUAL FX SUPERVISOR: We were asked to come up with a series of different designs for the demon and a design for a partial transformation of the girl [Claire Foy]into that creature, then complete the shots of the transformation, and the demon fighting Nicolas Cage and Ron Perlman in the final battle. Our visual effects supervisor Eric Leven and data supervisor Eric Marko joined overall visual effects supervisor Adam Howard and visual effects producer Nancy St. John in Shreveport, Louisiana to shoot the additional footage for the third act.

FANG: How closely was Tippett Studio involved in the designs of the demon?

NATE FREDENBURG, ART DIRECTOR: We became involved very late in the film, so we had a very short development phase, but there had been no design work done on the demon when we came on. When we asked what they were looking for, we were told, “You know, a demon.” So it was an open playing field.

FANG: What were the inspirations for the design?

FREDENBURG: The demon was identified as Baal, so we started there. We looked at both old engravings of Baal and more contemporary renditions to familiarize ourselves with the range of interpretations. We decided this demon needed to be derived from old manuscripts to best support the story, so we leaned toward a classic representation.

FANG: Was it difficult coming up with something new and unique? What attributes did you want to give the demon to make it stand out from past devil creatures?

FREDENBURG: It’s always a challenge to find a fresh approach to well-established characters and monsters. Demons are amalgamations of our worst fears, and we expect them to have certain qualities. So we fully embraced the classic horns and wings you would expect. The demon possesses a girl throughout the film, so we decided to give it a more feminine look. It was also supposed to be ancient and [have gone] through many trials and tribulations in its quest to destroy the books, so we gave it a desiccated and tattered look.

FANG: What was the greater challenge: making it walk, fly or talk?

JIM BROWN, ANIMATION SUPERVISOR: Walking was the greatest challenge. Walks are always difficult with bipeds because audiences are very used to looking at walks and will immediately call out something that doesn’t look “right.” Then if you add wings, cloven feet and painful convulsions, it becomes a difficult task to create a believable walk that sells the weight, balance and emotion of the demon.

FANG: How long does it take to create a CGI sequence like SEASON OF THE WITCH’s finale?

CLARK: After the demon design was approved and ready for production, we started working on shots in early September and finished mid-November 2010.

FANG: What kind of stuff will Tippett Studio be creating for the upcoming PRIEST?

CLARK: We are working on shots of vicious, slimy, vampire goodness. Yum!

In regards to other upcoming projects (Tarsem Singh’s IMMORTALS, BREAKING DAWN, etc.), the lips of the FX supervisors are sealed. But you can learn more about these magicians here, here, here and here.

-fangoria.com

Posted by dschnee at 9:57 PM

January 12, 2011

Demonizing Season of the Witch

Tippett conjures a new kind of demon for the latest supernatural adventure starring Nic Cage.

In Season of the Witch, directed by Dominic Sena (Whiteout), Nicolas Cage and Ron Perlman play disillusioned 14th century knights returning from the Crusades ordered to take a suspected witch (Claire Foy) to a monastery to discover if she is the cause of the Black Plague. Later, it turns out that there is a demon involved, which can only be destroyed with an ancient book, Key of Solomon, filled with holy rituals.

Tippett Studio, under the supervision of Blair Clark, was tasked with animating the demon. "We came in at the last minute to work on the demon after they wanted a fresh start," confirms Clark, who worked alongside another Tippett supervisor, Eric Leven. The overall visual effects supervisor, meanwhile, was Adam Howard.

Nate Fredenburg and Mark Dubeau, Tippett's vfx art directors, came up with a whole series of different looks, with guidelines for a classic look with wings and horns. Fredenburg referenced lots of classic demons from woodcuts and other artworks, and they offered a broad range of looks from the animalistic to the hunched over look of a gorilla.

"That's when they came back and asked for something more lithe and feminine," Clark suggests, "so we arrived at something new, which was thin yet still muscular. We also gave it cloven feet, a dog ankle and a fawn leg. You look at a demon and you don't think delicate. From Nathan's key art it was a matter of fine tuning skin texture and coloration. They wanted the skin to appear very warn and the wing membranes to have tatters and holes."

Using Maya, Shake and Nuke, Tippett animated the demon while tackling various physical challenges, beginning with the wings. "Wings are always a challenge," Clark says. "They're either in the way or don't move the way you'd like. They were designed really well and we paid close attention to the design. Since they wanted holes in them, we decided not rip it to where we've got these big, spider web-like shapes that we were going to have to billow every time she moves. So instead we put tears that have holes warn in them rather than ripped. We've had other shows where the wings are more problematic than this and I was frankly surprised at how well these wings behaved themselves."

The dark gray skin proved another challenge given that so much of the film takes place in darkness. "We did a combination of a makeup pass, which is almost like a dry brushing over it, and then just finding places where you need to pull out some of the highlights so it has the modeling you need to be able to read in all the shots," Clark explains. "We played the skin like a rotten, mummy: nothing too moist, with a lot of wear marks on it."

The fight choreography offered placement challenges as well. Leven was sent to Shreveport, Louisiana, where they were re-shooting the third act. "There was going to be a fight scene and they sent us back some cut footage of the stunt team and it was a full-on wrestling match with a lot of hand-to-hand grappling," Clark continues. "So we had Nicolas Cage and Ron Perlman in the main part of this fight and we matched the placement of the stuntman standing in for the demon.

"But Ron Perlman's character has a signature move (a bear hug and then he rears back with a head butt) that was challenging to work with. At one point he tangles with the demon, which does a 180 in his grasp and they're embracing and Perlman does the heat butt into the demon, which doesn't react. And then the demon envelops him in the wings and there's a blast furnace of fire that engulfs him. We had to figure out how to achieve this effectively and economically? We did this with a combination of covering his face with little licks of flame coming up from underneath and did some 2D comp coloration changes of his skin starting to darken. We didn't want to get too grisly, since this is PG-13, so we covered him pretty quickly with flame and played the rest of it out with internally lit flames with shadowy shapes."

There's also a partial transformation sequence that necessitated facial work by Tippett. This was supervised by Leven in collaboration with Aharon Bourland, Tippett's CG supervisor. This was achieved with a blend of warping and coloration techniques. Some of the shots in the sequence were actually shared with UPP in Prague, which previously worked on plates and so there was some back and forth to attain proper continuity.

The final challenge was the death of the demon. Tippett had boards with a rough outline and empty plates with superimposed shot descriptions provided by others. "Figuring it out wasn't easy," Clark says. "We came up with something after conversing with Adam using movie terms and old film references and then turned around and explained it to everyone else in terms they could understand. It was the last shot that we finished, right up to the wire and quite an ordeal. It was a huge assembly of comping elements and animation. The demon turns and explodes and the apparition goes up through the ceiling. We did something inspired by Hellboy where we concentrated on the buildup: the demise of the demon was triggered by the reading of a verse from the book. We built it over a series of shots so it doesn't just happen in one shot. We had little patches on the demon that start to crack and result in a glow that looks like it's burning from within. It turned out pretty well. It's always difficult trying to come up with something that doesn't look too familiar."

-Bill Desowitz, senior editor of AWN & VFXWorld.

Posted by dschnee at 11:20 PM

January 11, 2011

Piranha 3D Blu-ray/DVD Released!


Piranha 3D was released today on
[Blu-ray 3D] / [Blu-ray] / DVD

We did just a handful of shots, but it was a mighty fun handful and one of the best shows to work on in 2010. The one shot I had in the movie encompassed two halves of a bikini clad spring breaker falling into the water, the camera under water looking up at the surface as her upper torso splashes in and sinks past us... so awesome. It was great because went on the stage and shot in a big water tank, bits of bloody cheese cloth sinking toward camera, as well as surface splatter elements that were composited in the shot.

Piranha 3D Old School American Horror

Alexandre Aja managed to succeed where Adam Green failed, by delivering a fun gory and enjoyable horror film that didn’t beat you over the head with wink at the camera moments. Merging horror and comedy is a hard task...

Piranha 3D blends all the aspects of an 80s horror film beautifully. From its gratuitous nudity to legendary beach slaughter scene, it forces you to cringe, cheer and laugh, while never missing a beat. -horroryearbook.com

Even with all of the deadpan dramas and edgy thrillers we watch, it's still nice to relax with a movie that doesn't take itself too seriously. Piranha 3D is definitely one of those movies. Full of grotesque special effects, cheesy B-movie dialogue, clever cameos, and loads of nudity, it's a great for those nights when you want to turn off your brain and turn on the TV — with bonus points if you actually have a 3D TV. -uncrate.com

Posted by dschnee at 9:15 PM

January 7, 2011

Season of the Witch is Released!

in the USA 7 January 2011

visit Season of the Witch @ imdb.com

Box Office Results January 7-9, 2011
Number: 3
Opening Weekend Gross: $10,612,375
Theatres: 2,816
Theatre Average: $3,769
Weeks in Release: 1
Total Gross: $10,612,375
Budget: $40 Million
Running Time: 1 hrs. 38 min.
Distributor: Relativity
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Genre: Period Action

This mega period piece thrilla from manilla opened at 1% and is currently a chart topping %4 Fresh @ rottentomatoes.com is well... Rotten.

"A CGI freakout at the finale can't save this mundane medieval thriller about witches, devils and disillusioned knights." -The Hollywood Reporter

Posted by dschnee at 10:59 PM