Watch In High Quality (you need to click on it near the rating stars just under the number of views)

Leading up to the events of X-Men, X-Men Origins: Wolverine tells the story of Wolverine's epically violent and romantic past, his complex relationship with Victor Creed, and the ominous Weapon X program. Along the way, Wolverine encounters many mutants, both familiar and new, including surprise appearances by several legends of the X-Men universe.

Posted by dschnee at 7:29 AM

Beverly Hills Chihuahua Teaser Trailer Spot 2, Maybe.

It's the No Mas, Viva Chihuahuas! spot made into a teaser trailer of sorts... check it out over at cineplex.com

As for the post below... TRUE, sad but true. :)

Posted by dschnee at 7:12 AM

July 1, 2008

True or False: 'Beverly Hills Chihuahua' is an actual movie

[EW.com Popwatch Blog]

Great Question.

Heading to the theater to see Disney's WALL-E this weekend, I knew I'd be subjected to previews for a few of the Mouse House's other illustrious confections. But I had no idea of the heinous atrocity the movie gods were going to put before me: the trailer for Beverly Hills Chihuahua. Have you seen this doggone mess?

The clip opens with voice-over from a ferocious-sounding guy who calls himself "Papi," paired with lush images of mist-filled jungles, waterfalls, and ancient ruins that denote some sort of historical-type pic. "Who am I?" Papi (voiced, apparently, by George Lopez) asks. "The question is: What am I?" Natch, he's a chihuahua! Cue dancing hordes of tiny dogs. Lots of 'em. Synchronized stepping. All around the Aztec structures. Wearing funny little feathered sombreros. And then we're subjected to a rap track that sounds a little like Will Smith album filler, circa 1998. (I'm not crazy—it has that "Miami" vibe, right??)

Now I love Chihuahuas as much as the next person (who didn't get a little attached during the Yo Quiero Taco Bell and Paris Hilton-Tinkerbell crazes?), but a schlocky flick all about the little rascals, with a tagline of "50% warrior. 50% lover. 100% chihuahua."? Seriously? Check out the embedded preview for yourselves, PopWatchers, and then tell me: How did this film get made? Or is it possible the trailer is all part of an elaborate practical joke by those mischievous suits at Disney? What say you? (by Tanner Stransky EW.com)

Posted by dschnee at 9:09 PM

Updates?

Or lack there of... all though many things have been on my mind and there has been much to post about, I have been a bit busy the last 2 months. My wife and I bought and moved into a new home, went on a short vacation, was home sick for a bit, other family related things have left me with not much energy to update my blog, but I plan to shortly, and a lot of it will be dated back to some events missed in recent weeks. (RIP Stan Winston)

In short, I have been working on a number of different projects at work, bouncing between them back and forth and back again... still working on Disney's Beverly Hills Chihuahua at times and that project is nearly completed.

I was also working on a project for Texas Instruments DLP. We have been creating a 3D spot for DLP that will run in front of the 3D projection movies in the near future, much like the well known THX sound spots that run before the movies. If you are curious how DLP works then find out here. It's a pretty cool piece and it should look pretty neat in 3D.

Wolverine is coming up shortly and there are a couple of other projects going on I'm not at liberty to state just yet, but I hope to have more about that later.

anyhow... updates will start to show up soon'ish :)

Posted by dschnee at 8:22 AM

June 24, 2008

The Spiderwick Chronicles DVD slash Blu-ray Released!

Extras: So many blu-ray titles have been bare bones of late that I really appreciate it when a company steps up to the plate as Paramount is known to do. In this case, the extras almost outweighed the feature itself in terms of entertainment value, requiring me to take a lot longer to finish the complete review but giving me additional insight as well.

The first extra on the disc was a 7:04 minute long clip called Spiderwick: It's All True! The feature was mastered in MPEG-2 but had a HD bitrate for those that care; the show allowing the director to introduce some of the main characters.

This was followed by the 6:44 minute long It's A Spiderwick World where the original authors gave a head's up on the origin of the stories they wrote, providing the background for the modern day fable that led to the movie.

Then came the extensive Arthur Spiderwick's Field Guide that essentially combined pages from the artistic book with clips from the movie (in high definition) to outline the characters. There is an "in-movie" version of this as well to give you a look at the creatures as they appear in the flick too but I doubt many will need it since they are written so straightforward and commented on at length.

Then came the Meet the Clan extra lasting 15:54 minutes; detailing the human characters and the actors that play them, a self explanatory 20:53 minute long Making Spiderwick, a 14:23 minute long The Magic of Spiderwick that dealt with the special effects (mainly the animated characters), a quick 1:51 minute long comment from the director with "A Final Word of Advice!", an 8:14 minute selection of deleted scenes (several of which added something to the understanding of the movie's characters), and some theatrical & television trailers for the movie. I liked that the content here was presented in high definition (albeit not given as great a mastering job) but the volume of quality material alone was nicely done. (DVDTalk.com Review)

See Also: The UltimateDisney.com Review

Posted by dschnee at 10:18 AM

Saturn Awards Crown Cloverfield Best Scifi Film + Sequel?

Cloverfield won two 'Saturn' awards from the The Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films.

Cloverfield was was the winner for Best Science Fiction Film, and Matt Reeves picked up an award in the The Filmmakers Showcase Award category. (saturnawards.org)

So... Is a Cloverfield sequel dead in the water? well it sounds like it's 'on hold' for now. Check out this interview with Matt Reeves after the Saturn Awards. Matt Reeves is onto his next project The Invisible Woman(2010) so at least for now this means any Cloverfield 2 is on hold for now, and I think this is a good thing, an even better thing is not to do a sequel at all. (collider.com)

Posted by dschnee at 6:32 AM

Enchanted is a big winner at the 34th Annual Saturn Awards

"Walt Disney Studios “Enchanted” proved magical at the 34th Annual Saturn Awards by receiving three Saturn Awards including Best Picture (fantasy), and Best Actress (Amy Adams)." (saturnawards.org)

See also: Best Music, Alan Menken (Enchanted)

A COMPLETE LIST OF WINNERS FOLLOW

THE RECIPIENTS OF THE 34TH ANNUAL SATURN AWARDS

Best Science Fiction Film:
Cloverfield

Best Fantasy Film:
Enchanted

Best Horror Film:
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet St.

Best Action/Adventure/Thriller Film:
300

Best Actor:
Will Smith (I Am Legend)

Best Actress:
Amy Adams (Enchanted)

Best Supporting Actor:
Javier Bardem (No Country for Old Men)

Best Supporting Actress:
Marcia Gay Harden (The Mist)

Best Performance by a Younger Actor:
Freddie Highmore (August Rush)

Best Direction:
Zack Snyder (300)

Best Writing:
Brad Bird (Ratatouille)

Best Music:
Alan Menken (Enchanted)

Best Costume:
Colleen Atwood (Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet St.)

Best Make-Up:
Ve Neill, Martin Samuel (Pirates of the
Caribbean: At World’s End)

Best Special Effects:
Scott Farrar, Scott Benza, Russell Earl,
John Frazier (Transformers)

Best Animated Film: Ratatouille

Best International Film: Eastern Promises

Best Network Television Series: Lost

Best Syndicated / Cable Television Series:
Dexter

Best Presentation on Television:
Family Guy: Blue Harvest

Best International Television Series:
Doctor Who: Sci Fi Channel

Best Actor on Television: Matthew Fox (Lost)

Best Actress on Television:
Jennifer Love Hewitt (Ghost Whisperer)

Best Supporting Actor on Television:
Michael Emerson (Lost)

Best Supporting Actress on Television: (TIE):
Summer Glau (Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles)
/ Elizabeth Mitchell (Lost)

Best DVD Release: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (remix)

Best DVD Special Edition Release:
Blade Runner (5 Disc Ultimate Edition)

Best DVD Classic Film Release: The Monster Squad

Best DVD Collection: Mario Bava (Box Sets 1 & 2)

Best Television Series Release on DVD:
Heroes (Season 1)

Best Retro Television Series Release on DVD:
Twin Peaks (Definitive Gold Box Ed.)

The Life Career Award: Robert Halmi, Sr.
The Life Career Award: Robert Halmi, Jr.
The George Pal Memorial Award: Guillermo del Toro
The Filmmakers Showcase Award: Matt Reeves (Cloverfield)
The Special Achievement Award: Tim & Donna Lucas
The Service Award: Fred Barton

(saturnawards.org)

Posted by dschnee at 6:23 AM

June 3, 2008

Cloverfield on Blu-ray Today

This Blu-ray screening was the first time I'd seen Cloverfield, and I cannot wait to watch it again, especially now with the review complete so I won't be hindered by a computer on my lap and my brain and fingers taking notes. Cloverfield is Paramount's finest Blu-ray disc to date. The video quality is exactly as it should be, and the audio is astounding. The extra features are solid and numerous, and at times fairly entertaining. I cannot guarantee you'll enjoy this movie as much as I did, or not feel any motion sickness, but if you love the movie, are dying to see it for the first time, or need a reference disc, buying this disc is an easy decision to make. Highly recommended! (blu-ray.com review Reviewed by Martin Liebman, May 31, 2008)

The Blu-ray exclusive feature is the "Special Investigation Mode":

This is a clever and entertaining way to watch the movie. The movie plays in a box while the remainder of the screen provides a map showing the current location of the "large scale aggressor," "human subjects," and the "primary military activity." Facts about the characters, the monsters, and various locations around the city also appear at regular intervals in another box.

Posted by dschnee at 6:47 AM

May 27, 2008

CGSociety Artist Profile: Phil Tippett

Some people can walk unnoticed through a crowd yet leave a mark that alters almost everything we know. Phil Tippett is one of those wandering wizards. With his work on the hologram chess pieces in Star Wars to his recent work in ‘Enchanted’, ‘The Golden Compass’, and ‘The Spiderwick Chronicles’, Tippett characters have been walking in our imaginations for years. Yet, if you saw Tippett in a crowd, you might barely notice the slightly rumpled man with intense eyes framed from years of smiling and concentration. He still seems to feel his impact has just been nothing more than luck and endurance. CGSociety sat him down for a yarn while at ADAPT in Montreal after a grueling year on 'Spiderwick'. (features.cgsociety.org)

Check out the full spread with video and pics over @ CGSociety

Posted by dschnee at 6:57 AM

May 5, 2008

Beverly Hills Chihuahua the Teaser Trailer

Posted by dschnee at 7:06 AM

May 1, 2008

Viva Chihuahuas!

So here it is, that Disney marketing spot... it holds up pretty darn well on the youtubes... HEEL! I think this hit the front page of youtube yesterday... It says 96,218 views already? wowow! (9:36am)

Update! I'ts 2:22pm there are now 203,143 Views

See Also: www.heel.la |

Posted by dschnee at 9:36 AM

April 30, 2008

Spiderwick's Blu-ray Details

Paramount Home Entertainment has uncovered the full disc specs for The Spiderwick Chronicles on Blu-ray Disc, the first day-and-date with DVD release from the studio in their Blu-ray market re-entry.

Available on June 24, The Spiderwick Chronicles on Blu-ray will be presented in widescreen 1080p video and 5.1 Dolby TrueHD audio.

Paramount is using supplemental material from the two-disc special edition DVD set to fill up the Blu-ray version as all features will be ported over. They will not, however, be presented in high definition. The full list is as follows. (themanroom.com)

* Spiderwick: It's All True! featurette
* It's a Spiderwick World! featurette
* Arthur Spiderwick's Field Guide featurette
* Spiderwick: Meet the Clan! featurette
* Making Spiderwick! featurette
* The Magic of Spiderwick! featurette
* A Final Word of Advice! featurette
* 4 Additional Scenes
* 8 TV Spots
* 2 Trailers

Posted by dschnee at 7:32 AM

April 24, 2008

Viva Chihuahua... Noo Mas!

I spent this past week helping complete another Disney marketing project for Beverly Hills Chihuahua... this one, titled "Manifesto" will debut directly to interwebs via youtube. Get ready for quality viral marketing coming to a computer screen near you soon.

All told, we worked on this spot for a few short weeks, there were 15 shots, and on the comp side of things there were 5 compositors including me, and we finished it up in just a few days comp time... Not too shabby.

There will be a couple more marketing spots coming up... I'll throw some of this on here as they come online, I imagine the trailer for Beverly Hills Chihuahua will show up in HD on Apple.com, and I'll be able to embed that 'Manifesto' spot here on the blog. I know, this is exciting... stay tooned, ;)

Posted by dschnee at 9:41 PM

April 23, 2008

Enchanted Sequel On Fast Track?

A foxy little birdie cheeped in my ear – the good one, the other one’s clogged with wax - this morning that Disney is developing a sequel to its staggeringly-successful “Enchanted” – and the production has inched forward significantly in the past month or two, as a direct result of those smashing DVD sales.

How does she knoooooooow?....

This one probably doesn’t need its source fingerprinted or lie-detected, let’s leave it at that.
But really, did anyone expect the House of Mouse not to forge ahead with a follow-up to one of its biggest hits of 2007?
Nah, me either – if a cow is there to be milked, it need look into some teat cream, it’s bound to be tugged a few more times.

Kevin Lima, the chap behind the original, has apparently already spoken to Disney about the sequel. It’s not yet known whether the sequel will reunite Amy Adams and Patrick Dempsey – though, if the price is right, it probably will – or fix on a new bunch of characters (who’ll leave toon-town for the bright lights, big city of modern-day America). "That's what the guts of the discussions are about at the moment", we're told. "More soon. Promise".

Something should emerge in the trades soonish, by the sounds… (moviehole.net)

Posted by dschnee at 12:05 AM

April 22, 2008

Cloverfield DVD Released!

Get out there to your favorite general store and pick up your version or versions of the Cloverfield DVD... I think I'm grabbing mine at Target, it looks like you get a unique cover and it comes with that Rob's Party Mix CD.

See Also:Monster film Cloverfield will play even better when watched at home, according to its producer JJ Abrams. (bbc.co.uk)

See Also, Also:www.cloverfieldfiles.com/ - this is semi-slick, you can solve simple puzzles or trivia to unlock 15 more Cloverfield videos and material that's not on the DVD...

CLOVERFIELD DVD DETAILS

VERSIONS:
Target = Rob's Party Mix CD (Only Available In Stores)
Best Buy = TJ Miller's 30min Video Diary Bonus DVD
Austrailia's EzyDVD = Limited-Edition Collector's Tin
Futureshop = Exclusive 'Steelbook' Packaging (HMV, FYE, & Suncoast sells the steel case version as well)
Play.com = Exclusive Cover Edition
Amazon.com = Standard Version
Borders = Exclusive Booklet

See Also, Also, Also: CloverfieldClues.blogspot.com has put up a Cloverfield DVD Buyers Guide with some big images of a few versions, fancy that.

Posted by dschnee at 6:47 AM

April 20, 2008

Cloverfield DVD exclusive video "Subway Parasites"

Another featurette from the DVD out this Tuesday, this one showcases some of the parasite work during the subway sequence... cool beans.

Posted by dschnee at 9:19 PM

April 18, 2008

The Spiderwick Chronicles on DVD June 24th

DVD Details

2.35:1 Anamorphic Widescreen
Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround (English, French, Spanish),
Subtitles: English, French, Spanish
Closed Captioned; Most Extras Subtitled
Release Date: June 24, 2008
Two single-sided discs (DVD-9 & DVD-5)
Suggested Retail Price: $39.99
Black Keepcase in Embossed Cardboard Slipcover
Also available in 1-Disc Widescreen DVD, 2-Disc Special Edition Widescreen DVD, and on On Blu-ray Disc

Special Features:
Disc 1:
Spiderwick: It's All True!
It's A Spiderwick World
Arthur Spiderwick's Field Guide

Disc 2:
Spiderwick: Meet the Clan
Making Spiderwick
The Magic of Spiderwick!
A Final Word of Advice...
Deleted Scenes And More!

Posted by dschnee at 6:52 AM

April 17, 2008

Creating the Monster: Cloverfield VFX Video

Here is a video from IGN.com a clip from the DVD(out next week, April 22nd), it showcases some of our monster work, contains some interviews from some of the artists involved and from our VFX supervisor, Eric Leven.

Posted by dschnee at 5:33 AM

April 15, 2008

Beverly Hills Chihuahua One Sheet

aka South of the Border...

Looks like they have moved the release date from August 8th, to September 26th.

In the Disney comedy, Beverly Hills Chihuahua, a pampered Beverly Hills Chihuahua named Chloe (voice of Drew Barrymore) finds herself accidentally lost in the mean streets of Mexico without a day spa or Rodeo Drive boutique anywhere in sight. Now alone for the first time in her spoiled life, she must rely on some unexpected new friends including a street-hardened German Shepherd named Delgado (voice of Andy Garcia) and an amorous pup named Papi (voice of George Lopez)-to lend her a paw and help her to find her inner strength on their incredible journey back home.

Garcia is playing a German shepherd who was kicked off the police force because he lost his sense of smell and has now given up on life. Hayek is Chloe's spirit guide who helps her find her true heritage. Lopez is Papi, a macho romantic Chihuahua who will do anything for the love of Chloe.

Posted by dschnee at 6:33 AM

April 13, 2008

Ohhhver with Chihuahua! + Red Cliff

We put forth our final efforts this past Saturday trying to polish off the remains of this crazy Disney marketing Trailer for Beverly Hills Chihuahua. I'm so glad it's over, please no more... no more Chihuahua's, Ohh Papi why...

Sounds like Disney is marketing the dog drool out of this one, there are more marketing projects coming up, and the trailer we just finished up is set to run before the following movies:

May 16 Prince Caspian
June 20 The Love Guru
June 27 WALL.E
July 11 Meet Dave
July 18 Space Chimps
July 25 Step Brothers
August 1 Swing Vote
August 8 Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2

It's just dandy, if you happen to catch this one in the theater I apologize in advance. :)

+Red Cliff? We are performing some 911 work on John Woo's ancient Chinese period epic based on the The Battle of Red Cliff. I'm going to help out on this for a short time before moving back onto some more Disney marketing projects... In the meantime check out the Trailer below:

See Also:
Red Cliff wiki
Red Cliff imdb

Posted by dschnee at 8:15 PM

April 9, 2008

Cloverfield No. 1 at the Japanese boxoffice!

Monster Japan bow for 'Cloverfield'
Paramount thriller tops box office with $2.6 million
By MARK SCHILLING

TOKYO -- Monster pic "Cloverfield" hit No. 1 at the Japanese weekend B.O., following its April 5 bow on 235 screens. The pic earned 26.4 million yen ($2.6 million) Saturday and Sunday. This was 30.2% more than "Dreamgirls," which opened on 287 screens and finished with $19.3 million and only 1.2% less than "Babel," which bowed on 351 screens and ended with $20 million.

Helmer Matt Reeves, producer J.J. Abrams and members of the pic's cast and staff came to Japan to tubthump for the pic. Also distrib Paramount mounted an intensive campaign centered on the Web, which succeeded in drawing the target teens and twenties demo, as well as dating couples.

Paramount accordingly expects "Cloverfield," which was inspired by "Godzilla" and other Japanese monster epics, to hit the $20 million mark.

For comparison, here are some other opening weekends in Japan from BoxOfficeMojo: (cloverfieldclues.blogspot.com)

The Golden Compass . $8,001,868
Jumper ............. $4,618,372
Enchanted .......... $4,423,304
Sweeney Todd ....... $3,729,116
Cloverfield ........ $2,580,377
American Gangster .. $1,702,284
Vantage Point ...... $1,482,229
The Water Horse .... $510,516
28 Weeks Later ..... $344,374

Posted by dschnee at 10:57 PM

April 7, 2008

Cloverfield DVD Stuph Galore

Where were YOU when the Cloverfield monster hit?

Target will have an Exclusive Cloverfield Rob's Goin' to Japan Party Mix CD bundled with the DVD that includes the following tracks:

1. OK GO * Here It Goes Again
2. Goldfrapp * Ooh La La
3. Coconut Records * West Coast
4. Scissors for Lefty * Got Your Moments
5. The Vapors * Turning Japanese
6. Parliament * Give Up The Funk
7. Of Montreal * Wraith Pinned To The Mist
8. The Blood Arm * Do I Have Your Attention?
9. Bright Eyes * Four Winds
(target.com)

Best Buy will be offering a bonus disc entitled "TJ Miller's Video Diary". It will include nearly 30-minutes of behind-the-scenes footage with T.J. Miller - the talkative, and resilient, camera operator of the film. (bestbuy.com)

"Austrailia's EzyDVD will have an Limited-Edition Collector's Tin, which will be available Thursday, 22 May 2008. They are also listing a 2-disc collector's set which will also be available the same date. It's interesting that Cloverfield premiered in Australia one day before the US, but they will get their DVD a month later." (cloverfieldclues.blogspot.com)

read More here

One Cloverfield DVD TV SPOT:

and a Cloverfield Featurette: I Saw It! It's Alive! It's Huge!

Official press release:

HOLLYWOOD, CALIF. - Discover more clues and unravel the mystery of producer J.J. Abrams' and director Matt Reeves' monster hit when "CLOVERFIELD" smashes its way onto DVD April 22, 2008 from Paramount Home Entertainment. Earning over $80 million at the domestic box office, "CLOVERFIELD" thrilled critics and audiences alike with its shocking, first-person video account of a horrifying attack on Manhattan by an unknown-and seemingly unstoppable-force. Called "a true milestone" (Harry Knowles, Aint It Cool News), "a real jolt" (Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune) and "a giant shot of adrenaline" (Leonard Maltin, "Entertainment Tonight"), "CLOVERFIELD" delivers "a terrific movie, filled with spectacle" (Peter Hartlaub, San Francisco Chronicle). The "CLOVERFIELD" DVD features revealing bonus material including alternate endings, deleted scenes, "The Making of "CLOVERFIELD"", a look at the visual effects, commentary by director Matt Reeves and more.

The Cloverfield DVD and all of the various exclusives will become available nationwide on April 22nd, 2008.

Posted by dschnee at 8:48 PM

March 28, 2008

"Enchanted" Tops DVD Sales

"It was a tough battle, but in the end Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment's "Enchanted" narrowly triumphed over the Warner blockbuster "I Am Legend" to nail down the No. 1 spot on the national DVD sales chart for the week ending March 23.

"Legend" earned $256.2 million at the boxoffice, more than twice as much as "Enchanted," which grossed $127.8 million.

But the sales appeal of family titles propelled the Disney film to the top spot on the Nielsen VideoScan First Alert chart nonetheless -- though "Legend" did debut at No. 1 on Home Media Magazine's video rental chart, with estimated rental earnings of $10.1 million.

"Enchanted" bowed at No. 3 with $8.5 million. Sandwiched in between the two new releases was holdover "No Country for Old Men," from Disney/Miramax, which pulled in $9.2 million in its sophomore week to bring its total rental earnings so far to $19.4 million, more than a quarter of its theatrical gross.

Universal's "Atonement," which grossed $50.1 million in theaters and picked up an Oscar for best original score, debuted at No. 4 on the sales chart and No. 5 on the rental chart, with estimated earnings of $7.3 million.

"Legend" was the week's top Blu-ray Disc seller, moving four times as many copies as "Enchanted" -- not surprising, given that the next-generation format is still in the early adopter stage, a demographic of mostly young adult men." (hollywoodreporter.com)

Posted by dschnee at 7:31 AM

March 25, 2008

Cloverfield Reel Accepted at SIGGRAPH 2008

SIGGRAPH is evolving....
This year SIGGRAPH replaced the Electronic Theater with it's new Computer Animation Festival Juried Competition screenings. For the first time, the festival will include curated content, panels, and conversations, and all festival activities will be open to the public.

"Our amazing Cloverfield breakdown reel has been accepted to the Computer Animation Festival Competition at SIGGRAPH this year! What this means is our work was chosen among hundreds of other submissions from all around the world and we have a chance to win some awards.

Thank you to everyone who helped make this happen, including all of the artists who helped create the special breakdowns and editorial for putting together such an incredible and fun reel."

Posted by dschnee at 12:04 PM

March 24, 2008

Tippett Studio to create VFX for Wolverine!

In Production | X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE
It's official... were going to be one of the main houses working on Wolverine! Looks like Rising Sun Pictures is performing some pre-visualization services, and I see that Hydraulx is also on the playbill. I hinted at this news a few weeks back, check it out.

Hugh Jackman reprises his role as Logan, the mutant who eventually becomes Wolverine and a member of the X-Men as he seeks revenge against Victor Creed for the death of his girlfriend. Origins allows us to look back at the beginnings of Wolverine and the shadowy Mutant X program, and features the appearances of fan-favorites Gambit and Deadpool for the first time in the X-Men movie canon. Directed by Gavin Hood and distributed by 20th Century Fox. (tippett.com)

Posted by dschnee at 6:31 AM

March 18, 2008

Cloverfield DVD Cover Artwork

This just might be the official DVD Cover artwork... same response though "most cover art seems to be just a simple lame re-hash of the poster art" but it features a shot I completed on the back, ba139010, sweet. DNeg performed the screen pull and provided the city matte painting pano and building bits, I just threw clover in-between the buildings, added some explosions, debris, smoke, broken glass, etc... it was a fun tiny glimpse of the monster. Cloverfield will release on DVD April 22nd. More details right here

Cloverfield on DVD April 22nd

Posted by dschnee at 3:40 PM

March 17, 2008

Cloverfield on DVD April 22

Special Features

• Commentary: Commentary by Director Matt Reeves
• Featurette: The Making of Cloverfield
• Featurette: Cloverfield Visual Effects
• Featurette: I Saw It! It's Alive! It's Huge
• Featurette: Clover Fun
• Additional Scenes: Congrats Rob
• Additional Scenes: When You're in Japan
• Additional Scenes: I Call That a Date
• Additional Scenes: It's Going to Hurt
• Additional Scenes: Alt Ending #1
• Additional Scenes: Alt Ending #2
• Easter Eggs: Slusho!
• Easter Eggs: Person of Interest JLVD Video 2
• Easter Eggs: Person of Interest JLVD Video 5
• Easter Eggs: Person of Interest JLVD Video 9
• Easter Eggs: Person of Interest JLVD Video 11
• Easter Eggs: Rack 'Em & Pack 'Em
• Easter Eggs: Fighting the X

I'm not sure that this is the cover art, but I wouldn't doubt it, as most cover art seems to be just a simple lame re-hash of the poster art these days... This version was floating around the interwebs, but who knows, but April 22, 2008, Cloverfield on DVD, and blu-Ray later I thinks.

Posted by dschnee at 9:47 PM

March 15, 2008

Enchanted vs Classic Disney

Enchanted Stills vs. Classic Disney - To promote the DVD release of Enchanted, Disney has released a bunch of photo stills on Cinematical and ComingSoon comparing the framing of some classic Disney animated films and scenes from Enchanted.
(The Enchanted Visual Guide)

In just a few days... March 18th, Get Enchanted (Widescreen Edition) | Enchanted [Blu-ray]

Posted by dschnee at 10:28 PM

Pip Pantomimes at Katz Deli in Enchanted

Below is a clip from Tippett's CG Pip pantomiming in Katz Deli, there is some great animation in there... and I composited a handful of shots in there, when Nathaniel grabs Pip, and then when he releases him, and a couple of shots when Pip changes back and forth between the princess and Nathaniel using ice as the apple... I actually had done a version when Pip acts as the Princess, we added makeup to exaggerate the fact, eye shadow, lipstick, blush on the cheeks, and as she eats the ice(apple) animated a green flush that filled Pip's face and slightly in the body, so she turns sickly green then I sucked the color from pip as he stumbled and fell dead, he looked like a real desaturated chimpunk dead on the tray, we loved it, but it was too much, so we left just a hint of lipstick back in as Pip was in princess form, but left the rest out... fun stuff.

Posted by dschnee at 7:04 AM

March 14, 2008

Tippett Studio's Monster Destroys Digital Manhattan

Our VFX Supervisor on Cloverfield Eric Leven was interviewed in Computer Graphics World's back drop section, titled "Monstrous Effects"

Check out the .PDF here

Posted by dschnee at 7:12 AM

March 12, 2008

Tippett Studio's Cinefex #113 Ads

Insert Monster Here... so Tippett put out clever ad in the latest Cinefex because at the time, we didn't have Paramount's permission to release anything with the monster in it, so this was the response, nice one! (What sucks is how like 1 week later, they put up HD quicktimes up on Yahoo of the cross fire sequence which has the the F'ing Monster in it, like 1920x1080! weak, weak sauce Paramount, we could have made the cover!!!)

Posted by dschnee at 7:40 AM

March 10, 2008

Prehistoric Beasts, Fantastical Creatures, and a Monster in Cinefex 113

I saw a copy of the latest Cinefex yesterday, it features one of the prehistoric beasts from 10,000 B.C. - I really thought one of the creatures from Spiderwick was going to make the cover, but this one is good, sabertooth tigers kick ass, so... right on. I haven't seen 10,000BC yet, and from what I've seen of the beasts, they look fantastic, MPC and Dneg performed most of the vfx work on the beasts, I'll try and catch it on the big screen, but 7% fresh? and a metacritic score of 36, ouch! Definitely one of those shows to go admire the vfx work and artistry, not the story.

Update: Behind the Scenes of 10,000 B.C.'s Saber-Toothed F/X Realism (popularmechanics.com) - Here is a nice piece on Double Negative's Sabertooth Tiger...

I don't have my copy yet, but I flipped though it, nice spread on Spiderwick, and Cloverfield went from a an Overview to a nice feature as well! I saw a couple shots of mine in there from Cloverfield though, more to come once I get my copy...

10,000 B.C.

Director Roland Emmerich resurrects the prehistoric world -- populated with mammoths, saber-tooth tigers and giant terror birds -- in 10,000 B.C. Visual effects supervisor Karen Goulekas engaged Tatopoulos Studios to supply early creature designs, which were later refined and translated into photoreal CG beasts by The Moving Picture Company and Double Negative. Additional contributors included The Senate, Machine FX and a production-side visual effects team. An expansive miniature environment for the film’s climax was provided by Magicon.
Article by Jody Duncan

The Spiderwick Chronicles

A young girl and her twin brothers tangle with magical fairy folk who invade their rural New England home in The Spiderwick Chronicles, adapted from the popular childrens’ fantasy books by Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black. Director Mark Waters called upon Tippett Studio to develop creature concepts, ranging from goblins, trolls and ogres to a tiny brownie guardian of the Spiderwick Estate. The extensive creature animation assignment was shared by Tippett and Industrial Light & Magic.
Article by Joe Fordham

Cloverfield

In Cloverfield, New Yorkers flee for their lives as a colossal beast of unknown origin destroys the city. Conceived by J.J. Abrams and directed by Matt Reeves, the film put a new spin on the rampaging-monster genre by having all of the action filtered through the shaky lens of a bystander’s handheld camcorder. Visual effects supervisors Kevin Blank, Eric Leven and Michael Ellis teamed with special effects coordinator David Waine to oversee the guerrilla-style shoot, while Tippett Studio and Double Negative handled environmental and creature effects.
Article by Joe Fordham

Charlie Wilson's War

Based on a true story, Charlie Wilson’s War recounts the remarkable tale of how a playboy congressman, aided by a wealthy socialite and a renegade CIA agent, waged a secret war against the Soviet Union, leading to its defeat in Afghanistan, and ultimately to its collapse. Working under director Mike Nichols, veteran visual effects supervisor Richard Edlund and a team at Whodoo EFX contributed shots designed to establish the time period, extend location settings and simulate combat action.
Article by Jody Duncan

OVERVIEWS

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

Tim Burton adapts the popular Steven Sondheim stage musical to the big screen in a moodier and more intimate retelling of the macabre tale, enlisting the aid of visual effects supervisor Chas Jarrett and a team at The Moving Picture Company to re-create a squalid Victorian England.

Jumper

In the science fiction adventure Jumper, a teenager discovers the ability to teleport himself instantly to any locale. Jump effects and action sequences spanning the globe necessitated a major visual effects effort involving more than a dozen vendors led by visual effects supervisors Joel Hynek and Kevin Elam.

Alien Vs. Predator: Requiem

Brothers Colin and Greg Strause, founders of the visual effects company Hydraulx, discuss the highlights of their career in visual effects, culminating in their recent gig as directors of their first full-length feature film, Alien Vs. Predator: Requiem.

Posted by dschnee at 11:08 PM

March 9, 2008

Enchanted DVD Review

Enchanted comes to DVD and Blu-ray in the middle of March, the 18th in fact, just in time for this year's early Easter and just shy of four months since it opened in theaters. (ultimatedisney.com)

Buy Enchanted (Widescreen Edition) | Enchanted [Blu-ray]

BONUS FEATURES, MENUS and PACKAGING

For being a high-budget hit with critics and audiences as well as belonging to a much-storied tradition, Enchanted is dealt a surprisingly meager selection of bonus features on DVD.

First and, for some, most is "Fantasy Comes to Life", a section that gives slick, standard behind-the-scenes looks at two musical sequences and the explosive finale.
Interviews, set footage, and glimpses at visual effects in different stages add up to a welcome but fluffy application of ordinary making-of techniques to three of Enchanted's most memorable set pieces. The short featurettes are: "Happy Working Song" (6:25), "That's How You Know" (5:53), and "A Blast at the Ball" (5:27).

A short reel of Bloopers (2:10) provides mild amusement as finished-looking film comes to a halt on forgotten lines and actor falls.

Next come six deleted scenes, which run just 7 minutes and 50 seconds with introductions by director Kevin Lima. Aside from the extended Andalasia opening seen in storyboards, most of these short deletions are forgettable. The same is true of Lima's enthusiastic but generic explanations for the trims.

Pip and his magical nutdust are at the center of "A Pop-Up Adventure", which does fill in a narrative gap, just not in the most memorable way. Though not advertised anywhere on the set, Carrie Underwood's partially-animated "Ever Ever After" music video is found as an Easter Egg. Some should appreciate the simplicity of the Andalasia-set menus, but one wonders how the designers didn't think to include an option to cross into real-life New York City.

Last is "Pip's Predicament: A Pop-Up Adventure" (5:35), an animated short created for this DVD. Somewhat interesting visually (in spite of cost-saving minimalism), the cartoon is otherwise pretty dull as it tells of how the chipmunk and his... nuts help unfreeze Prince Edward and the rest of nature.

The first of two Easter eggs is bound to elicit groans from those sick of hearing about Blu-ray Disc.

It's an 80-second pitch for the film's concurrent Blu-ray release, specifically the exclusive Disney references guide which could have so easily been included here.

The second Easter egg is a more welcome inclusion: the music video for Carrie Underwood's "Ever Ever After" (3:25), which like the film it comes from juggles 2-D animation with live-action New York footage (that looks suspiciously not like New York). The singer and a stubbly vested young man are at the center of both medium's attentions in this goofy but well-meaning presentation of the film's obligatory pop tune.

Far from inspired, the animated main menu settles on a boring Andalasian waterfall after a brief intro. At least, pleasant score excerpts accompany this and static submenus.

The disc opens with a Disney company promo and, after the standard FastPlay prompt, promos play for Disney Blu-ray Disc, Sleeping Beauty: Platinum Edition, The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, National Treasure: Book of Secrets, and Disney Movie Rewards. All but the first are also provided on the Sneak Peeks menu along with a Disney Parks commercial and ads for The Little Mermaid: Ariel's Beginning, Minutemen, The Jungle Book 2: Special Edition, "Hannah Montana": One in a Million, and Tinker Bell.

The DVD's artwork largely recreates the film's theatrical one-sheet poster while adding an animated Pip and bluebird. Of course, you're given two ways to admire it because it's duplicated in a drastically embossed, selectively holographic cardboard slipcover. Inside the black keepcase are a scene selections insert and a mini booklet that provides the Disney Movie Rewards code and a coupon for $10 off the Enchanted Blu-ray which expires at the end of next month.

Making utterly clear their clashing life outlooks, Giselle carries a heart wreath and summons doves while Robert stares in serious disbelief. (ultimatedisney.com)

Posted by dschnee at 10:09 AM

March 7, 2008

1977-2007, Achievements in Visual Effects

Remember VFX HQ? That Visual Effects Headquarters that's now an archive?

"Every article is still online and searchable. For up-to-date info on the author's work and current projects, visit Todd Vaziri's home page, or read his blog, FXRant at fxrant.blogspot.com."

Todd has updated it... well sort of, he has updated the Academy Awards section of Visual Effects Headquarters that lists every visual effects Oscar winner and nominee since 1939.

See Also: FXRant blog.

1977
Achievement in Visual Effects
CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND
Roy Arbogast, Douglas Trumbull, Matthew Yuricich,
Gregory Jein, Richard Yuricich
--> STAR WARS
John Stears, John Dykstra, Richard Edlund, Grant McCune,
Robert Blalack

1978
Special Achievement in Visual Effects
--> SUPERMAN
Les Bowie, Colin Chilvers, Denys Coop, Roy Field,
Derek Meddings, Zoran Perisic

1979
Achievement in Visual Effects
--> ALIEN
H. R. Giger, Carlo Rambaldi, Brian Johnson,
Nick Allder, Denys Ayling
THE BLACK HOLE
Peter Ellenshaw, Art Cruickshank, Eustace Lycett,
Danny Lee, Harrison Ellenshaw, Joe Hale
MOONRAKER
Derek Meddings, Paul Wilson, John Evans
1941
William A. Fraker, A. D. Flowers, Gregory Jein
STAR TREK - THE MOTION PICTURE
Douglas Trumbull, John Dykstra, Richard Yuricich,
Robert Swarthe, Dave Stewart, Grant McCune

1980
Special Achievement in Visual Effects
--> THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK
Brian Johnson, Richard Edlund,
Dennis Muren, Bruce Nicholson

1981
Achievement in Visual Effects
DRAGONSLAYER
Dennis Muren, Phil Tippett, Ken Ralston, Brian Johnson
--> RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK
Richard Edlund, Kit West, Bruce Nicholson, Joe Johnston

1982
Achievement in Visual Effects
BLADE RUNNER
Douglas Trumbull, Richard Yuricich, David Dryer
--> E.T. THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL
Carlo Rambaldi, Dennis Muren, Kenneth F. Smith
POLTERGEIST
Richard Edlund, Michael Wood, Bruce Nicholson

1983
Special Achievement in Visual Effects
--> RETURN OF THE JEDI
Richard Edlund, Dennis Muren, Ken Ralston, Phil Tippett

1984
Achievement in Visual Effects
GHOSTBUSTERS
Richard Edlund, John Bruno, Mark Vargo, Chuck Gaspar
--> INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM
Dennis Muren, Michael McAlister, Lorne Peterson, George Gibbs
2010
Richard Edlund, Neil Krepela, George Jenson, Mark Stetson

1985
Achievement in Visual Effects
--> COCOON
Ken Ralston, Ralph McQuarrie, Scott Farrar, David Berry
RETURN TO OZ
Will Vinton, Ian Wingrove, Zoran Perisic, Michael Lloyd
YOUNG SHERLOCK HOLMES
Dennis Muren, Kit West, John Ellis, David Allen

1986
Achievement in Visual Effects
--> ALIENS
Robert Skotak, Stan Winston, John Richardson, Suzanne Benson
LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS
Lyle Conway, Bran Ferren, Martin Gutteridge
POLTERGEIST II: THE OTHER SIDE
Richard Edlund, John Bruno, Garry Waller, William Neil

1987
Achievement in Visual Effects
--> INNERSPACE
Dennis Muren, William George, Harley Jessup, Kenneth Smith
PREDATOR
Joel Hynek, Robert M. Greenberg, Richard Greenberg, Stan Winston

1988
Achievement in Visual Effects
DIE HARD
Richard Edlund, Al DiSarro, Brent Boates, Thaine Morris
--> WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT
Ken Ralston, Richard Williams, Edward Jones, George Gibbs
WILLOW
Dennis Muren, Michael McAlister, Phil Tippett, Chris Evans

1989
Achievement in Visual Effects
--> THE ABYSS
John Bruno, Dennis Muren, Hoyt Yeatman, Dennis Skotak
THE ADVENTURES OF BARON MUNCHAUSEN
Richard Conway, Kent Houston
BACK TO THE FUTURE PART II
Ken Ralston, Michael Lantieri, John Bell, Steve Gawley

1990
Special Achievement in Visual Effects
--> TOTAL RECALL
Eric Brevig, Rob Bottin, Tim McGovern, Alex Funke

1991
Achievement in Visual Effects
BACKDRAFT
Mikael Salomon, Allen Hall, Clay Pinney, Scott Farrar
HOOK
Eric Brevig, Harley Jessup, Mark Sullivan, Michael Lantieri
--> TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY
Dennis Muren, Stan Winston, Gene Warren Jr., Robert Skotak

1992
Achievement in Visual Effects
ALIEN 3
Richard Edlund, Alec Gillis, Tom Woodruff Jr., George Gibbs
BATMAN RETURNS
Michael Fink, Craig Barron, John Bruno, Dennis Skotak
--> DEATH BECOMES HER
Ken Ralston, Doug Chiang, Doug Smythe, Tom Woodruff Jr.

1993
Achievement in Visual Effects
CLIFFHANGER
Neil Krepela, John Richardson, John Bruno, Pamela Easley
--> JURASSIC PARK
Dennis Muren, Stan Winston, Phil Tippett, Michael Lantieri
THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS
Pete Kozachik, Eric Leighton, Ariel Velasco Shaw, Gordon Baker

1994
Achievement in Visual Effects
--> FORREST GUMP
Ken Ralston, George Murphy, Stephen Rosenbaum, Allen Hall
THE MASK
Scott Squires, Steve Williams, Tom Bertino, Jon Farhat
TRUE LIES
John Bruno, Thomas L. Fisher, Jacques Stroweis, Patrick McClung

1995
Achievement in Visual Effects
APOLLO 13
Robert Legato, Michael Kanfer, Leslie Ekker and Matt Sweeney
--> BABE
Scott E. Anderson, Charles Gibson, Neal Scanlan and John Cox

1996
Achievement in Visual Effects
DRAGONHEART
Scott Squires, Phil Tippett, James Straus, Kit West
--> INDEPENDENCE DAY
Volker Engel, Douglas Smith, Clay Pinney, Joseph Viskocil
TWISTER
Stefen Fangmeier, John Frazier, Habib Zargarpour, Henry La Bounta

1997
Achievement in Visual Effects
THE LOST WORLD
Dennis Muren, Stan Winston, Randal M. Dutra and Michael Lantieri
STARSHIP TROOPERS
Phil Tippett, Scott E. Anderson, Alec Gillis and John Richardson
--> TITANIC
Robert Legato, Mark Lasoff, Thomas L. Fisher and Michael Kanfer

1998
Achievement in Visual Effects
ARMAGEDDON
Richard R. Hoover, Pat McClung, John Frazier
MIGHTY JOE YOUNG
Rick Baker, Hoyt Yeatman, Allen Hall, Jim Mitchell
--> WHAT DREAMS MAY COME
Joel Hynek, Nicholas Brooks, Stuart Robertson, Kevin Scott Mack

1999
Achievement in Visual Effects
--> THE MATRIX
John Gaeta, Janek Sirrs, Steve Courtley, Jon Thum
STAR WARS: EPISODE I - THE PHANTOM MENACE
John Knoll, Dennis Muren, Scott Squires, Rob Coleman
STUART LITTLE
John Dykstra, Jerome Chen, Henry Anderson, Eric Allard

2000
Achievement in Visual Effects
--> GLADIATOR
John Nelson, Neil Corbould; Tim Burke, Rob Harvey
THE HOLLOW MAN
Scott E. Anderson, Craig Hayes, Scott Stokdyk; Stan Parks
THE PERFECT STORM
Stefen Fangmeier; Habib Zargarpour; John Frazier, Walt Conti

2001
Achievement in Visual Effects
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: AI
Dennis Muren, Scott Farrar, Stan Winston, Michael Lantieri
--> THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING
Jim Rygiel, Randall William Cook, Richard Taylor, Mark Stetson
PEARL HARBOR
Eric Brevig, John Frazier, Edward Hirsh, Ben Snow

2002
Achievement in Visual Effects
--> THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE TWO TOWERS
Jim Rygiel, Joe Letteri, Randall William Cook, Alex Funke
SPIDER-MAN
John Dykstra, Scott Stokdyk, Anthony LaMolinara, John Frazier
STAR WARS: EPISODE II - ATTACK OF THE CLONES
Rob Coleman, Pablo Helman, John Knoll, Ben Snow

2003
Achievement in Visual Effects
--> THE LORD OF THE RINGS: RETURN OF THE KING
Jim Rygiel, Joe Letteri, Randall William Cook, Alex Funke
MASTER AND COMMANDER: THE FAR SIDE OF THE WORLD
Daniel Sudick, Stefen Fangmeier, Nathan McGuinness, Robert Stromberg
PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: THE CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL
John Knoll, Hal T. Hickel, Charles Gibson, Terry D. Frazee

2004
Achievement in Visual Effects
HARRY POTTER AND THE PRISONER OF AZKABAN
Tim Burke, Roger Guyett, Bill George, John Richardson
I, ROBOT
John Nelson, Andy Jones, Erik Nash, Joe Letteri
--> SPIDER-MAN 2
John Dykstra, Scott Stokdyk, Anthony LaMolinara, John Frazier

2005
Achievement in Visual Effects
THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA: THE LION, WITH AND THE WARDROBE
Dean Wright, Bill Westenhofer, Jim Berney, Scott Farrar
--> KING KONG
Joe Letteri, Brian Van't Hul, Christian Rivers, Richard Taylor
WAR OF THE WORLDS
Dennis Muren, Pablo Helman, Randal M. Dutra, Daniel Sudick

2006
Achievement in Visual Effects
--> PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: DEAD MAN'S CHEST
John Knoll, Hal Hickel, Charles Gibson, Allen Hall
POSEIDON
Boyd Shermis, Kim Libreri, Chas Jarrett, John Frazier
SUPERMAN RETURNS
Mark Stetson, Neil Corbould, Richard Hoover, Jon Thum

2007
Achievement in Visual Effects
--> THE GOLDEN COMPASS
Michael Fink, Bill Westenhofer, Ben Morris and Trevor Wood
PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: AT WORLD'S END
John Knoll, Hal Hickel, Charles Gibson and John Frazier
TRANSFORMERS
Scott Farrar, Scott Benza, Russell Earl and John Frazier

Posted by dschnee at 7:11 AM

March 3, 2008

Double Negative's VFX on Cloverfield

Dneg put up their seemless bits performed on Cloverfield, view it on their projects site. ~enjoy

Kudos Dneg, you executed some amazing work! Especially with all the screen pulls and Brooklyn Bridge sequence? awesome.

"Double Negative's main task was to wreak destructive havoc upon New York City. Complex digital environments were built and then attacked with a variety of in-house CG tools. Key scenes involved creating well-known areas such as Park Avenue and high angle views across the city. A detailed digital model of the Brooklyn Bridge was built and then torn apart as refugees from the disaster attempt to flee the rampaging monster and, in the signature shot for the movie, the head of the Stature of Liberty was sent tumbling through the streets of Manhattan." (dneg.com)

Posted by dschnee at 6:39 AM

February 27, 2008

Trailer for Starship Troopers Marauder

Attack of the Toy Bugs, Spaceships on a String, and Johnny 'Cheese Factory' Rico.

I was excited about it, I was anticipating it, I was definitely curious how all of the VFX will be executed... keyword is 'was', this is going to be such a dog of a movie, just Wow. People thought Hero of the Federation was a bummer? This trailer makes Troopers 2 look like an F'ing gem, and a gem it was!

Advice? Animation, Animation, Compositing, Animation!

Ohh No they didn't just use that cliche 'Yebbbisssss' sound when the cheesy fire roars up at the end... Such weak sauce!

remember your roots... the Starship Troopers 2 Trailer
and it just might be so bad it's good below...
sonypictures.com/homevideo/starshiptroopersmarauder/trailer/

Starship Troopers III Actually Based On Heinlein Novel This Time - Some insight on ST3 Marauder from the panel @ Wondercon last Saturday.

Posted by dschnee at 6:44 AM

February 26, 2008

The Spiderwick Chronicles Behind The Magic

Tippett Studio and Industrial Light & Magic create CG creatures
for “The Spiderwick Chronicles.

Behind the magic in Paramount Pictures and Nickelodeon Movies’ “The Spiderwick Chronicles” are the magicians, that is, the visual effects crews at Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) and Tippett Studio. Their slight of hand turned director Mark Waters’ vision of a real world inhabited by fantasy creatures into a finely crafted family thriller.

Tippett Studio founder Phil Tippett, who served as the film’s creature supervisor, “got things going,” as he puts it, on the creature design. “The objective was to take the illustrations that Tony [DiTerlizzi] had created for ‘Arthur Spiderwick’s Field Guide’ and turn them into biological entities,” Tippett says. “We wanted to give them a palpable sense of biology.” (a CGSociety Production Focus)

Full of images and insight, check out the rest of the CGSociety featured spread Here

See Also: Spiderwick Concept Art
J. Paul Peszko talks to ILM's Christian Alzmann about the design of The Spiderwick Chronicle's Brothers Grimm fantasy world and the characters that populate it.

Posted by dschnee at 6:39 AM

February 25, 2008

The VFX Oscar is Golden, Compass

“The Golden Compass” (New Line in association with Ingenious Film Partners)
Michael Fink, Bill Westenhofer, Ben Morris and Trevor Wood

Visual Effects Houses:
Rhythm & Hues (754 shots)
Cinesite (476 shots)
Framestore CFC (323 shots)
Digital Domain (153 shots)
Rainmaker (114 shots)
Peerless Camera Company (78 shots)
Tippett Studio (28 shots)
Digital Backlog (13 shots)
Matte World Digital (7 shots)

Congratulations Jacobs, Petzold, and the GC crew @ Tippett!
Congratulations to Jonathan Knight and Aruna as well!

I didn't see much of the Oscars last night, however I did get to see Daniel Day Lewis receive his Oscar for There Will Be Blood! The man is pretty much untouchable in the craft, completely and whole heartedly deserved.

View a complete list of nominees and winners.

Posted by dschnee at 7:03 AM

February 21, 2008

Cloverfield & Enchanted get Saturn Award Noms

Cloverfield is up for 'Best Science Fiction Film & Lizzy Caplan for 'Best Supporting Actress' while Enchanted's Amy Adams is up for 'Best Actress' and Enchanted is up for Best Fantasy Film & Best Music...

BEST SCIENCE FICTION FILM:
CLOVERFIELD
FANTASTIC FOUR: RISE OF THE SILVER SURFER
I AM LEGEND
THE LAST MIMZY
SUNSHINE
TRANSFORMERS

Sunshine!!!

BEST FANTASY FILM:
ENCHANTED
THE GOLDEN COMPASS
HARRY POTTER AND THE ORDER OF THE PHOENIX
PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: AT WORLD’S END
SPIDER-MAN 3
STARDUST

Cool, as far as 'Fantasy' goes, I did enjoy Enchanted the most...

BEST ACTRESS:
AMY ADAMS
Enchanted
ASHLEY JUDD
Bug
HELENA BONHAM CARTER
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
NAOMI WATTS
Eastern Promises
BELEN RUEDA
The Orphanage
CARICE VAN HOUTEN
Black Book

Amy didn't get an Oscar nom, which is bullshit, so I hope she wins it.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS:
LIZZY CAPLAN
Cloverfield
MARCIA GAY HARDEN
The Mist
LENA HEADEY
300
ROSE MCGOWAN
Grindhouse – Planet Terror
MICHELLE PFEIFFER
Stardust
IMELDA STAUNTON
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

I dunno, I think Lizzy did great, but Rose kicked some major ass in Planet Terror...

BEST MUSIC:
TYLER BATES
300
JONNY GREENWOOD
There Will Be Blood
NICHOLAS HOOPER
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
MARK MANCINA
August Rush
ALAN MENKEN
Enchanted
JOHN POWELL
The Bourne Ultimatum

Sorry Alan (who is looking for his 5th Oscar), Greenwood's score to There Will Be Blood was chillingly great! +Alan has 3 noms in the best original song category for the Oscars...

and the VFX noms...

BEST SPECIAL EFFECTS:

TIM BURKE
JOHN RICHARDSON
PAUL FRANKLIN
GREG BUTLER
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

SCOTT FARRAR
SCOTT BENZA
RUSSELL EARL
JOHN FRAZIER
Transformers

MICHAEL FINK
BILL WESTENHOFER
BEN MORRIS
TREVOR WOOD
The Golden Compass

JOHN KNOLL
HAL HICKEL
CHARLES GIBSON
JOHN FRAZIER
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End

SCOTT STOKDYK
PETER NOFZ
SPENCER COOK
JOHN R. FRAZIER
Spider-Man 3

CHRIS WATTS
GRANT FRECKELTON
DEREK WENTWORTH
DANIEL LEDUC
300

Most likely Transformers...

The full list over at saturnawards.org

Posted by dschnee at 6:10 AM

February 20, 2008

Beverly Hills Chihuahua

is the new South of the Border... Disney? really? really Disney? With South of the Border as the title, you'd get a wider range of demographics, sounds decent, could be about anything, but by cutting out this crap name, who's going to want to go see it besides little girls now? Nice one.

With the writers strike resolved, Disney is the latest studio to rejigger and give more shape to its release calendar through 2009 and the early part of 2010.

Disney retitled two films: "South of the Border" (Sept. 26) becomes "Beverly Hills Chihuahua," (Variety.com)

Plot Outline: While on vacation in Mexico, Chloe, a ritzy Beverly Hills Chihuahua, finds herself lost and in need of assistance in order to get back home.

Posted by dschnee at 10:51 PM

Spiderwick Magazine Articles + Video

Here are a couple of .pdf articles from Computer Graphics World and Animation Magazine below:

Natural Forces
'Industrial Light & Magic and Tippett Studio create delicate, monstrous, and cunning CG faries for the live-action film The Spiderwick Chronicles' page22 | Computer Graphics World | February 2008 www.cgw.com

All Creatures Weird and Wonderful
'ILM and Tippett Studio join forces to create the magical world of The Spiderwick Chronicles' page34 | Animation Magazine | March 2008 | www.animationmagazine.net

On to the Video: New technology from ILM builds creepier, more lifelike characters - via c|net news.com

"Muscle by muscle, bone by bone, the Industrial Light & Magic visual effects designers are using new software to create the scariest and most expressive animated monsters yet. CNET News.com's Kara Tsuboi goes behind the scenes of Paramount Pictures' new kids' film, The Spiderwick Chronicles, to learn more."

Posted by dschnee at 6:11 AM

February 19, 2008

Phil Tippett a special-effects pioneer

The San Francisco Chronicle ran this nifty spread yesterday... nice.

It's not hard to find Phil Tippett, who is waiting upstairs in the main building of his special-effects studio in Berkeley. Just follow the trail of Tyrannosaurus rex models, which are scattered liberally among the memorabilia from scores of science fiction films he's contributed to since his groundbreaking work on "Star Wars."

"Little boys diverge into two groups: One goes into trucks and the other goes into dinosaurs," he says. "I went into dinosaurs."

Among the special-effects pioneers of his era, many of whom have settled in the Bay Area, Tippett is a bit of a dinosaur himself. The Berkeley native carried the stop-motion animation torch longer than anyone else, and was so despondent when computer graphics took over the industry in the early 1990s, that he became physically ill. (sfgate.com)

But a decade and a half later, his studio continues to thrive - known for its superior creature effects. Tippett Studio was responsible for the monster in "Cloverfield," and the studio teamed with Industrial Light & Magic to create various beasts for "The Spiderwick Chronicles." Tippett's resume already contained a toy chest's worth of science fiction geek icons, starting with the animated chessboard monsters in "Star Wars" and the stop-motion AT-AT snow walkers in "The Empire Strikes Back."

"Phil's like this big blustery guy - he's grumpy but he's also funny," says Spiderwick animation supervisor Todd Labonte, who has worked at Tippett Studio for almost a decade. "And then you start talking about work, and he has this great understanding of animation and animal behavior."

Tim Harrington, the animation supervisor for ILM on "Spiderwick," is the latest young special-effects person to work side by side with Tippett, in awe of the living legend.

"I grew up reading about all of these guys in magazines, and Phil's work had a particularly big impact on me," Harrington says. "When I met him, it was like 'Oh my God.' All you want to do is impress him."

Tippett walks into his upstairs conference room with his shirttail out and a wild ring of long gray hair that only adds to the mad professor vibe. Tippett is friendly, but anxious - co-workers say that's his permanent state. He relaxes a bit when he starts a film reel, which is heavy with stop-motion work from two of his biggest influences: "King Kong" special-effects worker Willis O'Brien and "Jason and the Argonauts" mastermind Ray Harryhausen.

"It was this scene right here that I saw at the (Berkeley) Oaks theater, when I was 7 years old in 1958," Tippett says, pointing at the screen as a few actors throw spears at a four-story-tall Harryhausen creation. "This was the thing that inspired me, that scene with the Cyclops in 'The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad.' And I was never the same since."

With no special-effects industry jobs to aspire to, the young Tippett mowed lawns for the money to make his own stop-motion films. After college, Tippett says, he "and the 10 other geeks who were interested in this stuff" ended up at Cascade Pictures in Los Angeles, honing their skills on commercials, including ads for Brawny paper towels and the Jolly Green Giant.

Tippett and his longtime friend Dennis Muren, a six-time Oscar winner, were recruited by George Lucas in the mid-1970s to work on "Star Wars." Lucas made two sequels, science fiction directors including Steven Spielberg, Paul Verhoeven and James Cameron came on the scene, and an industry was born.

"When we first got hired to move up from Los Angeles and go to ILM, George said, 'Well, we're going to make a few pictures, and then people will probably get tired of us, and then we'll have to move back to Los Angeles,' " Tippett remembers. "It didn't happen."

Tippett became the head of the ILM creature shop, animating the Tauntaun creatures in "The Empire Strikes Back" and the dragon in the 1981 movie "Dragonslayer." He formed Tippett Studio in 1984, making the Emmy-winning CBS documentary "Dinosaur!" Tippett and fellow effects wizard Craig Hayes later hooked up with Verhoeven to work on "RoboCop."

Tippett was recruited in the early 1990s by Spielberg to help create the dinosaurs for "Jurassic Park," thinking it would be his biggest project yet. While Tippett took a traditional approach, with puppets and other animatronic solutions, Muren had found ways to use computers to make the prehistoric stars convincing.

"We had mounted 'Jurassic' as if we were going to do it conventionally, and the computer graphics were only going to be used for the big crowd scenes," Tippett says. "And as Dennis pushed the camera in further and further and further, the things held up photographically in a way that nobody really imagined."

Tippett kept working on the "Jurassic Park" team, winning his second Oscar. But even as the crew enjoyed the movie's success, Tippett realized that he was in danger of becoming extinct himself.

"It was really hard for me because I thought it was all over with completely. I got pneumonia," Tippett remembers. "I had people building big, giant motion-control rigs and had hundreds of thousands of dollars floating around. I had to pull the plug on it, and I could see everything going down the toilet."

Tippett says he struggled for a while, but kept the studio alive, investing in new equipment and adapting to the changing times. Not long after "Jurassic Park," he got a big job creating the swarm of space bugs in Verhoeven's 1997 film "Starship Troopers."

More than 10 years later, the studio has spread out into five buildings with 160 employees. Tippett Studio reflects its founder, with a healthy clutter among the cubicles. There's also an apparent prejudice against fresh paint on the walls. During a walk-through two weeks ago, many of the employees were in the middle of a beard-growing contest.

But the company also has rooms stacked with computer servers, for the complex special-effects work being done inside. The forte of the studio seems to be creature design, creating monsters wholesale as they did in "Cloverfield" and "The Spiderwick Chronicles." Tippett has a "creature supervisor" title for "Spiderwick," and the studio was responsible for some of the movie's more unconventional characters, including the bird-eating animal Hogsqueal and a reptilian-looking cave monster.

Even in the age of computer graphics, Tippett has an organic influence on the studio. Labonte says that for "Spiderwick," Tippett had the crew go to the East Bay Vivarium so the animators could understand what a toad's skin felt like. Other animators were tracking down videos of alligators and other real-life creatures to study their movements.

While many working in the special-effects industry will quietly acknowledge that studios are oversaturating summer films with special effects, Tippett openly airs his concerns - lecturing on the subject twice during an hourlong interview. He says audiences are becoming numb to the excess of some effects films, and he often prefers the results in smaller-scale ones, such as "Cloverfield."

"With theatrical feature films, people don't feel that they can really compete with television and other media unless the spectacle level is as high as it can possibly be," Tippett says. "So they just throw as much crap on the wall as they possibly can."

Which may help explain Tippett's recent entrance into low-budget filmmaking, making his directorial debut on the 2004 straight-to-DVD sequel "Starship Troopers 2: Hero of the Federation." Tippett's offices are filled with movie artifacts, including a full-size ED-209 robot from "RoboCop" that is perched on a wall in the studio's biggest warehouse. But he seems equally proud of the more primitive effects, pointing out a small AT-AT walker that is little more than a strip of cardboard with Styrofoam backing - and still appeared in "The Empire Strikes Back."

"We pushed it way in the background. It was really crappy, but it worked," Tippett says. "That's the thing that I miss today, that sort of 'Our Gang' sense of making stuff. You only build what you need for the shot, and it's junk after that."

Tippett has several other movie projects he'd like to direct, with budgets ranging from $5 million to $25 million. They may not be perfect, but he promises they will be unique.

"I'm very much interested in the lower-budget fare, because it's where the opportunity exists to do some original work," Tippett says. "I almost don't even care if it's any good. I just want it to be different.'"

Ray Harryhausen & Friends: With Phil Tippett, Dennis Muren and others. 7:15 p.m. Wednesday. Rafael Film Center, San Rafael. www.cafilm.org.

Playing now: "The Spiderwick Chronicles" and "Cloverfield." At Bay Area theaters.

E-mail Peter Hartlaub at phartlaub@sfchronicle.com

Posted by dschnee at 2:28 AM

February 18, 2008

Cloverfield Monster Toy Fair 08

Posted by dschnee at 10:58 PM

Jumper teleports past Spiderwick

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The sci-fi thriller "Jumper" leaped to the No. 1 spot at the North American box office on Sunday as moviegoers ignored critics' dire warnings for a second weekend.

The movie, in which Hayden Christensen plays a man who is able to "teleport" around the world, earned an estimated $27.2 million for the Friday-to-Sunday period, distributor 20th Century Fox said.

It fended off three other rookies. The urban dance sequel "Step Up 2 the Streets" opened at No. 2 with $19.7 million for the three-day period, followed by the children's literary adaptation "The Spiderwick Chronicles" with $19.1 million. The romance "Definitely, Maybe" opened at No. 5 with $9.7 million, failing to rouse much Valentine's Day passion.

In an unprecedented strategy, all four newcomers opened on Thursday -- a day earlier than usual -- in hopes of pulling in some Valentine's Day business from couples. Including Thursday sales, "Jumper" earned $33.9 million, "Step Up 2 the Streets" $26.3 million, "The Spiderwick Chronicles" $21.5 million and "Definitely, Maybe" $12.8 million.

Here is how The Spiderwick Chronicles measured up at boxofficemojo.com

Posted by dschnee at 6:36 AM

February 16, 2008

X-Men Origins: Wolverine

what? I'm just sayin'

So why am I posting about Wolverine? Well I was a fan of the comics as a teenager, and I dig the X-Men films, and I'm definitely looking forward to this project... but (shhhhh) I might also get to work on it. what? I'm just sayin'

The Story

The Wolverine film is believed to be set approximately two decades before the events of the first X-Men. However, there may be a flashback sequence to Logan's childhood at the beginning of the movie. The story will focus on the character's violent past and his early dealings with William Stryker -- the origins of the Cold War-era Weapon X supersoldier program. The film will chronicle Logan's initial encounters with other mutants, including Victor Creed, who would soon become his nemesis, Sabertooth.

Featured Characters

Logan/Wolverine - Hugh Jackman reprises his X-Men role in this prequel that focuses on the character's origins. We believe the film will show how his skeleton was bonded with the rare and indestructible metal alloy adamantium during the Cold War-era Weapon X supersoldier program (a process he survives thanks to his mutant healing factor). In Marvel lore, the clandestine operation's original test subjects were members of the CIA's covert ops Team X, which included Logan and at least two other mutants that will come into play in the movie: Victor Creed/Sabretooth and Silver Fox.

X-Men's Sabretooth. He'll be cooler.

Victor Creed/Sabretooth - We expect the introduction of Victor Creed into Logan's world to be similar to the comic book history. Logan first encounters Creed when the two are living in the same Canadian frontier community during the 1910s. The man later known as Sabretooth intimidates everyone in the village except for Logan, a young man he suspects has feral mutant abilities similar to his own. He is also resentful of the relationship between Logan and an Indian girl named Silver Fox. Creed makes a pass at the young woman, but she rejects his advances. He assaults her and leaves her for dead. The first of many ferocious clashes between Logan and Creed then ensuses. Creed and Logan part ways, but are later reunited, their memories altered, as part of the CIA's Team X. We anticipate a much less dimwitted version of Sabretooth than was presented in the original X-Men.

Actor Liev Schreiber who had been linked to the role of Stryker, is rumored to be playing Creed. While Live Schrieber was originally slated to play the younger William Stryker in X-Men Origins: Wolverine, it’s now known that this actor will portray the character of Sabretooth instead.

So, who will be filling Stryker’s evil shoes? Danny Huston.

William Stryker - In the X-Men movie continuity, Colonel William Stryker is introduced in X2 (played by actor Brian Cox) as a military scientist who invented the adamantium bonding process that was used on Logan. You'll see Stryker again, albeit a slightly younger version, in Wolverine.

It was initially reported that actor Liev Schreiber would be portraying the character, but that's since been called into question. Rumor has it (source: CHUD.com) that Dexter actor Michael C. Hall is up for the role.

Silver Fox - Silver Fox's movie origins are also expected to be similar to established Marvel lore. She's was a young member of an Indian tribe in the Canadian Rockies when she fell in love with a mutant named Logan. But another member of the pair's remote community, Victor Creed, sought to dominate Logan. When Silver Fox rejected his advances, Creed savagely attacked her, presumably raping her and leaving her for dead. Unbeknownst to both Creed and Logan, Silver Fox survived the attack. In fact, she was reunited with both of them as a member of the Weapon X program. As mentioned, their memories had been altered as a result of the program's memory implants, so it's unlikely that they were aware of their history. In the comics, Silver Fox's only mutant ability is the regenerative power given to her by the Mutant X program.

Maggie Q was initially linked to the role, but more recently rumors of actress Michelle Monaghan's casting have surfaced.

IESB reports that the beautiful Lynn Collins has been cast. Early rumors pointed towards Maggie Q and Michelle Monaghan, but those have since fallen through as well. The 28-year-old actress was previously seen in The Number 23, The Lake House, and 13 Going on 30.

Other Mutants? - There will be plenty of other mutants appearing in the film, however briefly. We've heard rumors of higher profile cameos like Gambit (Yes, Gambit will be in it, played by Bailey Chase) and Deadpool, as well as appearances by lesser known mutants like The Blob (and Yes, The Blob as well) and Beak.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine opens May 1, 2009.
(Wolverine: The Basics - movies.ign.com)

Posted by dschnee at 7:38 AM

February 15, 2008

The Spiderwick Chronicles: A VFX Field Guide

J. Paul Peszko uncovers the secrets of The Spiderwick Chronicles, thanks to Industrial Light & Magic and Tippett Studio.

This is the longest vfx article, ever.

The amount and variety of unusual creatures from the five volumes was so daunting that the visual effects had to be shared by two studios: San Francisco's Industrial Light & Magic and Berkeley's Tippett Studio. Visual effects pioneer Phil Tippett was creature supervisor for the overall production. On set during the entire principal photography, he worked with the visual effects team from his own studio along with the team from ILM to coordinate the nightmarish logistics involved in combining live action with CG.

The team at Tippett Studio included in-house Creature Supervisor Joel Friesch, who also served as co-visual effects supervisor with Blair Clark, CG Supervisor Russell Darling and Animation Supervisor Todd Labonte.

Explains Clark: "We did all of the animation and design work on Hogsqueal, the Troll, Redcap, the goblins and bull goblins, as well as lighting, texturing and compositing and doing the final output."

(vfxworld.com)

At least, they knew what they were getting into from the very beginning. In fact, Tippett Studio openly pitched Paramount to secure the project as Clark elaborates. "We had a lot of people who were very aware of Tony DiTerlizzi's books, myself included, and I always thought they would be really cool turned into a movie... So, we were very interested when we heard that it was being looked at [for a feature film]. We had a little bit of down time after finishing a show (Charlotte's Web), and we had an elite modeler, Sven Jensen. He had some time and we asked him to make a little 3D goblin based on Tony DiTerlizzi's drawings in the books and in the field guide, which pretty much all through the production was always used as the bible."

According to Clark, Jensen "nailed" the goblin. "We had a couple of notes for him along the way, but he did such a good job on it with Mudbox and Maya, and it just looked great. It was very faithful to DiTerlizzi's drawings. We kind of took a little bit of license with his feet and his hands. In Tony's drawings, they're pretty much like chicken feet and chicken hands. We changed them a little bit so he could have an opposable thumb to shift and manipulate things a little easier. We just polished it a little bit so it would be easier to run and rock and stand. But other than that it was really cool."

Next, it was up to the animation team to do their thing. "Then Todd came on. He had a couple guys, and they started doing some tests to play with it and move it around and see what we had. They did a whole vignette of little things with just a goblin and a spear on a primitive platform. It was really promising. We decided to make more of those and finish it off with a little piece that had more than one shot. We ended up with a sequence where these goblins are running through a bunch of trees and then going into the water and swimming across the lake toward the camera. They get sucked under the surface by some shadowy shape and then the one remaining goblin turns pale and starts swimming away from camera."

When Labonte's team showed what they had to Tippett, he was blown away and decided that they should incorporate it in their pitch to Paramount. Labonte explained that they wound up making trips between Berkeley and Los Angeles while they were rapping work on Charlotte's Web. It was their excitement that sealed the deal. "Before we were even awarded the show, we started playing around with goblin tests," Labonte notes. "Get the guy rigged, and then give him a weapon and have him start running around and barking. Just sort of playing around with how do these guys run and what's their temperament. We actually showed that stuff to Paramount before we had the show, and that got them actually really excited that we were excited."

The main point of their tests, according to Labonte, was to work out the goblins' movement cycles. "One thing that Phil likes to do, in order to understand the character from a biological sort of perspective, is to get the walk cycle worked out and you also want to work out what the character does at rest. So, let the animators do a 30-second cycle of the goblin doing nothing. If you could sort of get your head around what he's like when he's sitting and thinking and not having to do anything crazy, you can get a handle on things like his basic metabolism and that kind of stuff. We also did all sorts really aggressive tests on weapons and how he holds a weapon. There was a lot of work in those regards for the goblins and the bull goblins, too. Just working out how they walk. Do they work bipedally or (are they) quadruped? We found that with the goblins that going to a quadruped walk cycle was a lot more threatening than if we got them up on their back legs..."

Their general psychological demeanor was also key to those early tests. "One of the other things that we were trying to figure out as we did pre-production was how silly to make them" Labonte continues. "Are they more comical and blundery or are they threatening and predatory? And the director really pushed us toward the more serious. These guys are the heavies for the movie so we've got to make them really scary. Our initial tests were sometimes a little on the comical side. So we were early on cued in to let's make them scary."
Once their deal with Paramount was finalized, Tippett Studio expanded their initial design phase. "We went into more of a design phase for the other characters and also revisiting the goblins to make sure they were in keeping with Mark Waters' wishes," Clark states. "The goblin stayed pretty much true to form the way we had made him through the run of the show. We made variations on him for the group. We just wanted to make sure it didn't look like the same goblin kind of stamped a hundred times. So, we did variations like fatter and skinnier ones and a little bit of height variations, some markings and a paint job and things like that to break it up."

At that point they also decided to hire more outside sculptors to create 3D maquettes. "It's just really nice in a meeting with the director to have something on the table to look at, to see the light, and to move it around in realtime," explains Clark. "We were so close with the design, and it was so defined in 2D on paper that we had to be able to get everybody in these meetings all on the same page and at the same time have something very tangible that we can all look at."
One of the sculptors they hired was Mark Newman, who lived in Berkeley."The first thing we did was to give him all the 2D artwork we could find on these characters; namely, Hogsqueal and Thimbletack, and some directions that had been passed on to us from the director," Clark says. "He went home, and when he came back, he brought back on Thimbletack virtually the same design that is in the film. ILM took his sculpture that had only gone through a few modifications along the way, and they pretty much translated that to computer graphics and made the necessary changes they needed to. But design-wise, (Newman) nailed it. Everybody that saw it said, 'Yeah, that's him.'"

Hogsqueal was the one character that went through the most changes conceptually. "There are only a few pen and ink sketches of Hogsqueal in the book, and in the Field Guide, there's a water color painting of a hobgoblin, which is what Hogsqueal is," notes Clark. "We decided to go with that one initially. So, Mark sculpted that. He was this little fat guy. He was small and had big fat ears and big eyes. He looked really cool, but when the director saw him, he said, 'No, all the other stuff looks great, but you haven't really got Hogsqueal yet. This guy looks creepy, and he's kind of a buddy to these kids as odd as he is. He's a little bit of a helper and a buddy, so we can't have him too scary.' [Hogsqueal] was always a little more porcine, a little more pig-like, not fat-like, and he should be overweight and just kind of jovial and happy and friendly. Although he's kind of a slob and someone you might question wanting to hang out with, you immediately get this feeling that as unsavory as he is, he looks friendly."

Newman went through several revisions of Hogsqueal, based on the notes that Clark had received from the production team. "Every time I talked to Mark with a little bit of feedback, he'd asked, 'Okay, what are they thinking?' I'd mention the list. It would always be a pretty short list: you need to make his arms a little bit longer, and his feet need to be a little bit bigger and this needs to be adjusted a little bit. And then I'd always have to ask, 'When do you think you can have these changes?' And he would say, 'Oh, I just made them. I'll bring it by at lunch.' Then he would bring it by, and it'd be great."

Aside from the basic body posture, the animators wanted to get a really rough face system morphed out for Hogsqueal, as Labonte explains. "With all of these guys, you've got to work on the face and give them some dialog and see how you have to modify the sculpture to get the concept right, especially with these guys that have to talk. With either concept art or early sculptures, it's hard to deal with when it gets down to actually making them speak. You've got to modify it. With Hogsqueal, he's got a lot of humorous stuff, and it was real fun to play around with."

When it came to the actual production, Labonte says Hogsqueal's performance could be a challenge as far as he was an ally to the kids. "He was a good guy. So you had to make him sort of appealing and give him a believable, friendly performance. Hogsqueal sort of models a raccoon in that he's comfortable in the natural world but he's also really accustomed to the human world. He's one of the magical creatures in the world, but he understands the human situation. So we can pick up a lot more human mannerisms. You have all the usual problems that you have with just the basic face performance and trying to get an interesting nuance and making a believable character out of him. That was sort of exciting. Animators always like to do acting shots instead of shots where you're doing lots of stunts. You have a break from the shots where you have 30 goblins. Instead you have just one guy, acting."
Next, Tippett Studio tapped another sculptor, Martin Munier, who had worked with Clark on the first Starship Troopers. "We hired him to come up with some 3D maquettes that we could have on the table for the Troll, the Red Cap and the Bull Goblins," Clark recalls. "We went through a few alterations on some of those things, mainly the Troll. The Red Cap was pretty much exactly as he was when we got the maquette finished. He didn't change very much at all. Design-wise he stayed very, very close."

The Troll initially started off as a water troll but was completely redesigned for a less ambitious action sequence. "There's a whole scene, where he's kind of like the classic troll under the bridge, and a kid narrowly escapes being eaten by him when they first cross the stream," explains Clark. "Then, when they came back, they have to trick him and trick the goblins that were chasing them, and he ended up eating a whole bunch of goblins. But there's a whole different thing that ended up in the film. At some point, the Troll was changed. He was altered to be a burrowing land creature: a mole troll, I think, he is credited as being now."
Labonte says that the Troll's design changed from a slower metabolism to a higher one when the script changed. "Our initial sentiments were more like a slow (crawl) like alligators. They're real slow and they get into this position where they almost look like floating logs. Then when they strike they go really fast. We were working on those kinds of things, those really creepy, immobile moves and then striking with a really faster action. Overall, he was just much faster. So, we dropped the slow crocodilian aspect and worked for a much more frenetic, big charging rhino kind of aesthetic."

Labonte adds that the same situation existed with the goblins regarding movement and temperament. "We were modeling their motions after amphibians like frogs and also like gorillas when they're moving, which is a really powerful, top-heavy kind of movement aesthetic. Then when they calmed down, they were much more cold-blooded, so they were like really relaxed, and they had these really slow, cool frog legs. Actually, in the movie, you don't get to see them at rest, but we worked out their body as part of the discovery process that we were doing during pre-production."

It also helped to have real life models, as Labonte points out. "Another thing we did during pre-production was we grabbed a bunch of frogs from the local vivarium. We brought them in so the animators and the modelers could touch them and feel their skin. We looked at a video reference obviously as the first step, but it's important if there is a real creature that's close to that to be able to actually feel their muscles in your hands."

Before Tippett Studio actually signed onto the project, Paramount had worked with another artist who came up with a 3D maquette of the Boggart, which is the character that Thimbletack turns into in a Jekyll and Hyde type transformation. Clark says it was very fortunate because it gave all the people that had to sign off on the various character designs the opportunity to view the same model at the same time in the same room. "And you could alter the environment it was in very easily," he remarks. "And once that was signed off on, then you really knew where you were going when you got to the digital end of things. It solved a lot of problems that eat up a lot of time in CG."

The Tippett team didn't do any of the pre-production for actual sequences. Director Waters and his staff handled all that. "We worked more on a free-form exploration of the characters," offers Labonte, "every now and then staging stuff, similar to shots that we read in the script, typical animatic sort of stuff."
He mentions that the only challenges in producing the effects were in the scale of the shots. "We were in this sort of uncomfortable position where a lot of the shots had from 12 to 20 goblins. It was tricky because there were not enough characters that we could really use a crowd simulation (program). But, if you wanted to do it by hand, it was just really daunting and time-consuming. But, we ended up doing it by hand basically."

They did the animation in different cycles with goblins at various levels of agitation populating each cycle. "So you just had to go in there and basically give one animator charge of the shot through the blocking phase so that he can work out what all the characters are roughly doing. Then we would split the shot up into multiple animators once the blocking had been establish, and you take the guys in the left mid-ground, and you take the guys in the foreground and you take the guys in the right background."

Labonte also notes one particular shot with 40 or 50 goblins. "They're all hand-animated, and there's a huge panning shot across them, where they're scrambling to get under the house, and they're tearing at the foundation. At the window, the Redcap is in there barking orders at them. And it's all just hand-keyed by two guys. That was a big challenge."

One of the ways to handle that challenge as far as lighting the scene was to use global illumination, according to CG Supervisor Darling. They start with what are known as point clouds, which are basically points in space. "It's a way to represent something with, obviously, pixels. You can get all kinds of valuable data that way," states Darling. So, we can take those and turn them into basically what are known as brick maps, which is another level of detail where we can kind of sample and get more about the environment. It's a different approach to gathering more information on a surrounding scene and then using that in rendering the character to get more realistic lighting effects with global illumination. But it's much less intense as far as the computing power that goes into it. There's a lot of new research and work that's been done by Pixar and RenderMan to leverage those technologies to make the end results really nice and less labor intensive and render farm intensive."
As an example, in the shot that Labonte mentioned above with 40 or 50 goblins attacking the house, Darling explains how they used global illumination effectively. "It's at the beginning of that where they're surrounding the house and climbing all over the place. Using this technology, we had just three CG lights placed in that scene to light what ended up being 40 or 50 goblins just because it was all driven off the environment. Normally what you'd have to do is be very precise in placing lights for each character, and it would have been very labor intensive. But our new lighting pipeline allowed us to put a light from the moon here and a light coming from the window there and then that was placed in the scene and that actually made for more realistic lighting and actually gave us a real nice result."

As an example, in the shot that Labonte mentioned above with 40 or 50 goblins attacking the house, Darling explains how they used global illumination effectively. "It's at the beginning of that where they're surrounding the house and climbing all over the place. Using this technology, we had just three CG lights placed in that scene to light what ended up being 40 or 50 goblins just because it was all driven off the environment. Normally what you'd have to do is be very precise in placing lights for each character, and it would have been very labor intensive. But our new lighting pipeline allowed us to put a light from the moon here and a light coming from the window there and then that was placed in the scene and that actually made for more realistic lighting and actually gave us a real nice result."

One of Darling's tasks on The Spiderwick Chronicles was to improve the pipeline so that the animators could work more efficiently. This brought about a couple of innovations. "One of my goals was always to make it easier for the artists to work, so that animators can spend their time animating rather than dealing with the render farm. We developed a number of new tools to enhance the pipeline. There was, what we call, the creature manager. Our animators are building various animation cycles, and it gives them a real nice interface to the pipeline so that they have all the cycles and can choose a certain one to, at least, start out as a basis."

The purpose of this feature is to make it as easy as possible for the artist to interact with the pipeline. On the other hand, what if you have technical directors and effects animators that need all kinds of controls? "We have a real nice pipeline where the same tool can appear in different forms depending on who uses it," Darling explains. "If you're an animator, you have a real simple interface to render. On the extreme side, you have a lighting TD that needs absolute control over things. So, the same tool exposes the whole interface to them. But as far as we're concerned, it's the same pipeline, the same tool. That system is called Jet."

Another innovation called Riot Control further improved Tippett's pipeline. "In the wide shot of the goblins around the house, we came up with our own crowd system to handle that because there were 120 goblins in that scene. So, we developed our own tool that we call Riot Control. That was a tricky shot because in the beginning there was supposed to be several shots that ended up only being one. It was one of those situations where you look at it and think that maybe this is a case where we want to use a system like Massive. But there were too many characters to do it by hand and also too few to invest in what it takes to bring a system like Massive up to speed. So, that was one where we decided to go our own route because it fell in that middle ground."

The new system allowed them to make use of particle maps and vary the cycles in order to build the shot. "Those goblins, their actions are actually defined by particles, and then the animators have created cycles where the goblins can run in or they can move to a walk cycle or they can move to aggressive standing movements or whatever. So we had things that we could just build up and create this interesting shot. We could also combine all those different animation cycles with different looks because we didn't want all the goblins to look the same. So, we have a bunch of different painted textures and different sizes for the goblins so they could all appear as individuals, not too different but also not too similar."

Riot Control not only allowed animators to build a middle ground shot between a small group and a massive one, it also helped them to manage the way the goblins behaved and looked. "It also allowed us to choose the cycle and to choose what kind of goblin we wanted like a green goblin here with a weapon and a brown goblin there without a weapon," Darling notes. "That was the one shot where (Riot Control) was used. Everywhere else we had a crew of animators that were really talented. Todd talked about this where we had two animators working on it, and they split things up, and they did a really good job. The actual animation crew, I believe, was 30, which was the largest amount of animators that Tippett has ever had on just one show. But on any particular shot, just one animator could handle it, but the sheer number of goblins (attacking the house) required that the shot be split up."
There were some 15 shots where Tippett and ILM had to share characters. Darling details some of the challenges involved in their collaboration with ILM. "We had to make sure that everything looked correct so that we had our way to manage color and they had their way to manage color. But, when we exchanged the images, we put them back into the original mutual color space.

"There's this scene where their character picks ours up by his head. So what we did was we were able to cache out our animation so that we could give them what amounted to an empty shell of a character that didn't have any of our rigging or anything so we could block out our animation that way. So, it was totally not at all dependent on anybody's proprietary pipeline. In the end, one studio would do the final composite dependent on which one character was favored more than the other that would be the final person to finish it."

In all, Tippett Studio did a little more than 300 shots with a team of 100 artists. It took about 18 months to complete their work. They modeled in Maya and Mudbox then used a 3D paint package and used Photoshop, mostly with Maya and RenderMan. Then they used Shake to do all their compositing.

Now let's move across the Bay Bridge to San Francisco's Presidio where ILM is housed. There, award-winning Visual Effects Supervisor Tim Alexander, whose credits include the last two Harry Potter films, guided the development, animation and integration of the film's heavy, Mulgarath, the ogre, Thimbletack and his mean-tempered alter ego, the Boggart. Alexander's team also created a variety of fantastical supporting characters, such as Byron, the majestic Griffin, a rapacious Raven, the Snake, Sylphs and a host of magical and elaborately detailed Sprites. Alexander also oversaw the effects artistry involved in creating the seamless interaction between lead twin characters Jared and Simon Grace.

All in all, ILM created some 370 shots for a total screen time of 30 minutes. "We had 215 artists working for 15 months to create the shots, and out of the 357, about 230 were 3D shots," according to Alexander. "There were over 203 character animation shots, but then there were also all of the Sylph shots that weren't necessarily animated but simulated. On top of that, there were also all the digital matte paintings and so on."

Other work included creating digital environments for many scenes and all the doubling shots for Freddie Highmore, who played twin brothers, Jared and Simon Grace. All animation was done in Autodesk's Maya, which was then imported into ILM's in-house Zeno, where the team did lighting and simulation work. "All of our cloth sims were done there," Alexander adds, "and we also have our Fez system that lives both in Maya and Zeno, so an animator can choose which package he wants to use." All compositing was done in Apple Shake. "We do have an in-house package as well, but we're mainly a Shake house."

Along with Visual Effects Art Director Christian Alzmann, Animation Supervisor Tim Harrington was a key member of Alexander's team and provided insight into the driving inspiration that earmarked ILM's work on the production. "We've had some films that have a large variety of creatures, but the cool thing about the creatures in Spiderwick or the most challenging thing, I think, was just trying to make them look like they're grounded in reality and a part of nature," Harrington says. "One of the common themes we thought about when we were doing all the research for the project was that each creature had to be based on some kind of creature that we know in nature so they didn't come across as funny, goofy animated characters in a live-action film. We wanted them to be a part of this Spiderwick world that the filmmakers were creating."

The team spent a great deal of time studying animal behavior for each character. "For instance, for Thimbletack," Harrington notes, "we looked at lemurs and small mammals, and for Mulgarath, we researched gorillas and boars and big, ugly hairy creatures."

Another challenge that Harrington cites was the fact that there have been so many fantasy films recently, like the Potter and Narnia franchises for example, that these same type of creatures had appeared in other movies. "We wanted to bring a new spin to them. Traditionally fairies and sprites are just little humans with insect wings. So, with the flower sprites, for instance, we came up with this idea of creating a little fairy that's actually made out of flower petals to do something different. The challenge with that was, okay, that looks different, it looks cool, but how do we make this thing fly because it doesn't really have any wings? So, again we looked at nature, and we found some underwater creatures that kind of propelled themselves like jellyfish. Maybe you could have a similar movement like that to propel itself through the air, and then you use its big flower petals as kind of a glider and just glide through the air instead of flying."
Another area where the team thought they could push the boundaries of the R&D department was facial animation. "We've done facial animation before, and we had a pretty good system," says Harrington. "But we thought this would be a great opportunity to push the R&D department to come up with some new tools for creating facial animation. For instance, Thimbletack, we knew he was going to have to go through a wide range of expressions, and in some shots he would go from happy to angry to confused all within the span of two or three shots because he's kind of a manic character. So, the R&D department created this next-generation animation system called the Fez." It's basically replacing our old Cari facial animation system."

To go along with the Fez, ILM's R&D department came up with two new facial interfaces. "One of them is called Facedon," reports Harrington. "One of the problems that we always run into when we're creating creatures for these films is that you have a crew of 25 animators, so it's really hard to keep the performance consistent because each animator and each artist has their own span and their own style. Sometimes it's really challenging to keep the character on-model. When you watched the first season of The Simpsons, there's something about the drawings; they're not quite there. They're a little off. It's because they're off model."

The idea behind the Facedon interface was to bring back the concept of the model sheet that was used in traditional animation as a reference for all the animators. The sheet would contain various drawings that would illustrate how the character looked in different angles or different expressions. "The animators could reference that and keep everything consistent," Harrington explains. "So, the concept behind this Facedon module was to have something similar to a model sheet except make it more interactive. The idea is that you have a library of preset expressions for a character like Thimbletack created by the animation supervisor and approved by the client or director. So, you have happy, angry, enraged, sad, and the animators can use this tool to bring up all these facial expressions and quickly block in the facial animation for the shot. They can pop in one expression, or they can mix and match different facial expressions. So, they can use the eyes from one expression and the mouth from another expression to create a new one."

What Harrington likes most about Facedon is the consistency that it brings to the facial performance. "It gives the animators the same starting place and the same foundation to keep the character on model, but it doesn't lock them in a box.

"Face Select is another interface designed to go along with the Fez system. "Once you have your animation blocked in, you would use this next tool, Face Select, for fine tuning the performance," explains Harrington. "Before, we just had a bunch of sliders that had a bunch of different names. The animators had to learn what the names meant and what each control did to the face. So, with Face Select we came up with the concept of actually creating an interface for facial controls based on human anatomy. Imagine a Gray's Anatomy illustration of a human face with all the facial muscles. The interface has a little graphic of a human face that's got all the muscles. Say, you want to pull the mouth up, you would actually click on that muscle in the interface, which is Zigomatic Major, and it would bring up the control for that muscle so that you could pull the corner of the mouth up or down."

Harrington also points out that the Face Select interface is quite intuitive to use. "Traditionally, we used to spend a lot of time technically trying to debug shots and learn what the controls did, and the animators spent probably half of their time dealing with technical issues. Most animators are pretty familiar with human anatomy because they went to art school, so now they have an interface that makes sense. It was something that they could just jump right in. Within an hour, they would be up and running animating the face. Now they've got 80 to 90% of their time doing their creative work as opposed to spending half of their time dealing with technical issues."

Another ILM innovation, Rapid Prototyping, was utilized not only to build low-resolution CG models of the characters for study, but also to apply some basic movement, sometimes putting a staffer in a motion capture suit to begin assigning some early moves. As Alexander explains, "The director can actually see the character moving and can begin making decisions about physical proportions and movement early on."

The animators could then make use of the reference video shot during the recording sessions by the actors, in order to include as much of their characterizations in the creatures' personalities as possible. "That kind of thing is extremely helpful," Alexander adds. "We can add in twitches and other body language that we saw when he was making the recording, and we can put all that expression into the character. The Martin Short reference was extremely helpful for Thimbletack's lip synch, for example."
Harrington details the important intermediate role that Rapid Prototyping in creating a character rig. "With Rapid Prototyping, once the characters are designed, we scan the flat art, and then the art department would take these images and scan them into the computer, and they would really quickly mock up a 3D model. It didn't have a lot of detail. It was just enough to flesh out the proportions and the scale of the creature. From there, we use some proprietary software that we have called Block Party. We can run this model (the rapid prototype) through Block Party and within an hour, it creates a rig that the animators can use. If it's a humanoid, you can also map on the human anatomy. We have bones and muscles in the Block Party system that can be remapped onto these creatures based on their proportions. From there we can start mocking up some animation."

He cites Mulgarath, the ogre, as an example of how Rapid Prototyping can quickly fine-tune a character's design. "We did a lot of Rapid Prototyping animation with Mulgarath. One of the concerns when designing that creature was his legs were too short. When you design it in 2D, the image could look fine, but it's not until you get it in the computer and you get it moving around that you know whether it's going to be an issue or not. Doing this Rapid Prototyping, when we got some animation going, we could see how (Mulgarath) was moving. It became an interactive thing with the director where we could get him involved. What do you think? Should his arms be longer? Should his legs be longer? How do you want him to walk? To be more human? To be more gorilla? It's something that you can turn around really quickly and make those modifications and show him what you've done and get more feedback. The big win with that is that you're making all these design choices before you create the final model and before you get into shot production."

Harrington believes Rapid Prototyping is the key to preventing costly redesigns. "I've been on a few films where it looks great in 2D. Then you design it and model it and do a turntable, and nobody is really looking at how this thing walks. Nobody is doing any walk cycles. Nobody is studying if these proportions are going to have a negative effect on how it moves. So, you're actually in shot production when you realize his knees are too high, and it makes him look like he's walking on stilts. The good thing about Rapid Prototyping the model is that you can hit those big design decision head on right in the beginning before you get into shot production and waste any money having to redesign the creature."

Like the animators at Tippett Studio, Harrington says that, in the beginning, they often referred to DiTerlizzi's images. Then things changed. Then everything was up to how director Waters responded to their designs. "He was in the driver's seat," Harrington notes. "For instance, the original Mulgarath design in the book is a lot different. It's more, I don't want to say friendly, but it's not as scary as what we went with. When we got a hold of the design, we were like this is a great opportunity to scare the shit out of kids with this feature. We want this to be a ride for them. We don't want this monster to be just a Muppet that they're not really scared of. So, I think we went crazy and just cranked up the scariness of that guy. When we showed it to Mark, we thought maybe that's a little too scary, maybe that's a little too R-rated. We don't know if Mark's going to go for it. But he went for it. Nick Nolte's the voice, and it just fit. That creature's design and Nick Nolte's voice just came together."

Harrington enjoyed the archetypal aspect of Mulgarath's character. "Mulgarath was one of those creatures that was really fun to do. As far as figuring out his character, he was probably the easiest to figure out because his character was such a one note. He just wanted that book, and he just had to get that book. His motivation was clear. He just had to be a scary monster. He was one of the creatures that we tackled in the beginning. He came together really quickly, and everybody was really happy with him."

Thimbletack, on the other hand, was more of a challenge. "He was a little more manic," Harrington points out. "He was kind of an English butler type of character, and Eric Idle was going to be the voice, but they couldn't get him. So, Martin Short became the voice, and they did a few rewrites, and during the rewrites because he had been in the house for a number of years by himself protecting the book, his character became a little more manic, a little more crazy. So, the challenge with Thimbletack was that he had to go through this wide range of different emotions within one sequence sometimes. He got to explode into anger, and then being scared and then being sad, all within three or four shots. In both animation and acting that was probably the most challenging in that area."
Another major challenge was Thimbletack's transformation into the Boggart. "Transformations traditionally in computer graphics are always extremely difficult," states Harrington. "This was no exception, but we came up with a pretty cool solution as far as rigging. We modeled Thimbletack first. Then we used that same topology to reverse model it into the Boggart so that they had a one-to-one match as far as their topology goes, so you could blend between them. Then we actually created a rig that you could animate the scale of the bones on. If you needed to go from Thimbletack's skeleton to the Boggart's skeleton, you had a slider that controlled each limb, the body, the chest and the head. They were all separate controls so you could actually stagger different body parts to get a more organic, chaotic feel when he was exploding into the Boggart."

Harrington says that they actually decided to downplay the transformations. "A lot of times when people do these transformations in movies, it becomes this big hero movement where the music swells, and maybe the camera stops and starts circling around. We wanted to do the opposite. We didn't want to stage it so that it was this big effect that everybody had to marvel over. We wanted to downplay and make it part of Thimbletack's performance. So we made his performance dominate the shot. When he's freaking out and delivering a line, we wanted to get the performance right. Then on top of that, he just happens to be transforming. Blisters are popping out, and he's trying to keep them back. His arm explodes into the Boggart (arm), and finally he just explodes into the Boggart."

In addition, Harrington explains that the animators approached the transformations with two different philosophies. "When he goes from Thimbletack to the Boggart, we wanted it to be a painful, explosive quick thing because it's motivated by anger. Then when he transforms from the Boggart back to the Thimbletack to be more soothing and calming. It's motivated by being soothed by the honey, which is the only thing that can calm down a Boggart and turn him back into a brownie."

In the Thimbletack transformation rig, the animators could blend between Thimbletack and the Boggart in the shot, and actually be able animate a creature that is half-and-half and be able to pose him. "A lot of time when you do those types of shots, the scales change and the pivots change," Harrington points out, "and his hand might move away from the wrist. So, it gets really difficult to pose him when he's in the in between stage. With this rig his wrist stayed where it needed to. Everything was locked down. The pivots didn't change. Just the proportions changed."

For Alexander, the biggest challenges were creating the sequences with the Sylphs and the Griffin. "The Sylphs had a look that was very hard to define," he says. "We had shots with five of them in it, and shots with thousands, and trying to get a pack of a thousand dots to look like anything proved to be very tough."

Alzmann notes, "They look essentially like dandelion seeds that you might come across drifting on the wind, but with tiny faces on them."

To deal with this, the team used various scale models. "For close-ups, we had a full-rez model so we could see their face, and then each hair was modeled and put on the model and sim'ed," Alexander reports. "Then we'd go down from there all the way to the point where we were just projecting a 2D texture onto the particles, depending on what scale they were to camera. But even the middle rez Sylph had the ability to be either simulated or hand-animated. And on top of that, we simulated the hairs on their head as well."

The Griffin was modeled as a half-bird, half-lion creature. "So there's that underlying geometry," Alexander continues. "Then we have these two, very stubby wings, and then we placed individual feathers, all modeled, for his wings. So there are layers and layers of feathers that were modeled and then hand-placed, and those get simulated and they collide with each other, so that the feathers don't penetrate each other. Then the rest of the body feathers and the feathers on its head were procedurally generated by putting hair splines on the Griffin, and then adding feathers to the splines."
As for the actual flight sequence with the Griffin, Harrington explains how they solved that challenge. "We knew we were going to have to shoot the actors on a rig. So we spent a lot of time with the director prevising that sequence just to work out all the shots so we knew which shots were going to be live-action kids on a rig and which were going to be digital double kids. Once we had the previs all locked down, we took the animation from the previs Griffin and pumped that into the motion rig that was on the bluescreen set, which the kids sat on. So, the kids could actually react to the movement of the Griffin in the previs. For example, when the Griffin banks to the right, the rig would tilt to the right, and the kids could lean with it. The other tricky part about the Griffin sequence was that Freddie Highmore played both twins (Jared and Simon Grace). So, we had to treat two passes when we were shooting the kids on the rig. The first pass was Freddie playing Jared with Mallory. Then we had to do another pass with Freddie playing Simon. Once we had those elements, we brought those into the computer. Then we could pull in our real Griffin animation model and put him on top of that and start refining the animation so that it looked like they were actually riding on his back."

The Griffin ride provides both the fun and excitement of a roller coaster ride. Harrington explains: "Conceptually, the sequence is really cool. In one of the original versions of the film (script) there wasn't really a light moment for the kids where they're having fun. The cool thing about the Griffin sequence was that the beginning of it starts out really fun. They're enjoying themselves. They're riding up into the sky, and it's all beautiful. Then we came up with the idea of it being like a roller coaster ride. It's exciting and you're adrenaline is pumping as you're going up to the top of that thing. Then, once the roller coaster goes over the edge and starts screaming down the other side, that's really scary. That's the concept behind the Griffin ride. It's going to get more and more chaotic and scary and dangerous as the sequence progresses."

Sounds a lot like the overall journey of The Spiderwick Chronicles.

J. Paul Peszko is a freelance writer and screenwriter living in Los Angeles. He writes various features and reviews, as well as short fiction. He has a feature comedy in development and has just completed his second novel. When he isn't writing, he teaches communications courses.

(The vfxworld.com Article with images...)

Posted by dschnee at 11:32 PM

Cloverfield Toy Revealed!

Well here it is... in all it's 'glory'? The Cloverfield Monster Toy from Hasbro. I though I had posted about the toy before, but I guess not, so here are the details and link to the Hasbro site below, ~enjoy.

* 70 points of articulation and incredible life-like detail
* Authentic sound
* 14� tall
* 10 parasites
* Two interchangeable heads
* Statue of Liberty head accessory
* Special Cloverfield collector�s edition packaging

In conjunction with the launch of the highly anticipated CLOVERFIELD movie release, Hasbro, in a partnership with Bad Robot and Paramount Pictures, has produced a super-articulated and highly detailed limited collector�s edition Cloverfield Monster.

The Cloverfield monster is available exclusively through HasbroToyShop.com. Reserve your Cloverfield monster today to have the opportunity to receive it when it ships later this year. Limited quantities are available.

Includes 3 AAA Batteries.

WARNING: CHOKING HAZARD. Small Parts. Not for children under 3 years.

Cloverfield TM & � 2008 Paramount Pictures. All Rights Reserved.

So how much?
Price: $99.99 - heyOhhh! and not until October!

Availability: This product will begin shipping on or about 09/30.
Estimated Delivery Dates
Standard (7-10): 10/09 - 10/14
Priority (3-5): 10/03 - 10/07
Express (1-2): 10/01 - 10/02

Cloverfield Movie Monster Toy from Hasbro

Posted by dschnee at 6:31 AM

February 13, 2008

Spiderwick Reviews + Screening!

Tippett's Screening of The Spiderwick Chronicles is tonight, I can't make it due to a prior engagement, but I'll try and post up the overall reaction tomorrow.

Reviews are trickling in... %78 Fresh and a 61 metascore at the moment...

Here are some of the reviews out there on the interwebs:

"A caution to parents: The computer-generated goblins and ogre -- courtesy of East Bay-based creature master Phil Tippett -- are fairly frightening creatures. My own almost 4-year-old, who flees the room whenever Nemo's mother meets her fate, would not be able to handle these scenes. I'd recommend the film only for the 8-and-older crowd... The Spiderwick Chronicles is a modern-day family film, using swords, magic potions and otherworldly CGI creatures to dispense with divorce demons and adolescent anger-management issues." (variety.com)

"An enjoyable adventure fantasy that pushes all the requisite buttons while still managing to throw in a pleasant surprise or two, Paramount's big-budget gamble has impressive talent to burn on both sides of the camera... along with the other lively sprites, hobgoblins and assorted visual effects -- mesh seamlessly, thanks to the usual state-of-the-art contributions of Industrial Light + Magic and Tippett Studio, while Caleb Deschanel's patented bright, airy cinematography provides a welcoming, naturalistic setting for all the otherworldly developments." (hollywoodreporter.com)

"For much of the movie Waters sustains the delicate balance between scary fantasy and human story. But CGI is a seductive mistress and toward the end Spiderwick bogs down in a crescendo of effects and action, before fizzling into tearful reconciliation on all fronts." (sfweekly.com)

"The Spiderwick Chronicles is actually not as bad as it sounds, though what charm it does have rests largely on Highmore's shoulders. As family friendly fantasy movies go it's pretty solidly in the middle, its resolve to take no chances whatsoever keeping it from ever being more... But not nearly as annoying as the various CG creatures that inhabit the world. While the effects themselves are quite good (not entirely realistic, but it's an aesthetic that actually fits with their out-of-this-world nature) the characterization is awful." (comingsoon.net)

"The Spiderwick Chronicles may not be in the same fantasy league as the tales of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis and J.K. Rowling. Yet the family flick based on the books of Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black is an all-around class act, even if its world of ogres and goblins is a bit stale in the wake of its more ambitious cousins in the over-the-rainbow genre." 2.5 out of 4 stars (canadianpress.google.com)

"The CGI creatures are well-produced, but many of these mythical beasties are scarier when they're invisible. If there's one element of the film that fails miserably, it's the attempt at comic relief from Martin Short (as a honey-addicted house sprite) and Seth Rogen (as a hobgoblin who spits in the humans' faces so that they can see the otherwise invisible creatures)... While 'Spiderwick' won’t necessarily delight parents as much as, say, the Harry Potter series, it still makes for a pretty nifty family outing to the movies." (msnbc.msn.com)

"The Spiderwick Chronicles is not great fantasy, but it's on more solid ground than The Golden Compass and will seem less baffling to some. There's enough here to keep adults engaged, which is an important component of any motion picture that wants to be known as "family entertainment." I would place The Spiderwick Chronicles comfortably in that category. 3 out of 4 stars" (reelviews.net)

"It's a little too incomplete in its storytelling to make adults love it, and far too scary for young children to enjoy. (The screening was not without tears.)
That leaves Spiderwick on an island, without a target audience. Which is kind of a shame - had the story been stronger or the CGI creatures toned down a bit, it might have scored big with adults and children." (azcentral.com)

"This movie probably won't appeal to those lacking in the children department. The artsy crowd will condemn it as, well, not a work of art, and the Lord of the Rings crowd will scream "blasphemy!" and possibly "plagiarism!" But truth be told, this really was an entertaining movie, and it should appeal to anyone looking for an engaging flick." (weeklydig.com)

Posted by dschnee at 6:48 AM

February 12, 2008

Spiderwick Stuff + Toys!

I found this article over the weekend 'Spinning 'Spiderwick Chronicles' for the screen' from the New York Daily Times...

Tippett's studio came up with Mulgarath's goblin army, a menacing cave troll and the slobby hobgoblin Hogsqueal (voiced by "Knocked Up's" Seth Rogen). The veteran Tippett, whose creature credits go back to the original "Star Wars" and include the Oscar-winning "Jurassic Park," has seen his business evolve from puppets and people in monster suits to "150% digital. We used to be limited by physical reality. We're much freer now to play with things in terms of performance. It allows things to be alive."

More stuff here with
Supervisors Series: Phil Tippett, Faries, Goblins, and Character Design in The Spiderwick Chronicles

+3 More Video Clips! these showcase our goblins and Redcap in a couple sequences, head on over to filmschoolregects.com

Also some fun stuff, I found some Spiderwick Toys online! There over at: spiderwick.tystoybox.com and they look... OK, just check out the big old sweet torso cross section point of articulation click on em' below:

Posted by dschnee at 6:41 AM

February 8, 2008

The Effects of The Spiderwick Chronicles

Here's a small article with a big title for The Spiderwick Chronicles...

The last we heard from The Spiderwick Chronicles, we entered a world of goblins, snakes, monsters, and trolls. Now, it's time to actually hear from the people who created that universe.

Directed by Mark Waters, The Spiderwick Chronicles is based on a series of children's books by Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black. Taken from the first few in the series, this film follows the adventures of twin brothers Jared and Simon Grace (Freddie Highmore plays both roles), and their sister Mallory (Sarah Bolger), as they find themselves pulled into an alternate world full of fairies and other creatures. Paramount Pictures and Nickelodeon Films went to two of the only places on this planet who could design these amazing creatures - George Lucas' ILM and Tippett Studios. Each studio split up the duties to create characters and the architecture." (comingsoon.net)

For Mark, it was a different experience for him bringing the animation side to his directing world. "It's actually been fun, because it's been directing animators the way we would work with actors. The nuance that these guys bring to the animation level is incredible. You first put the movie together the way you think it is, and it's just a thimble full of what the movie will become."

After Freddie and Sarah, the voice cast boasts of Hollywood star-power - Nick Nolte as the evil Mulgrath, Seth Rogen as Hogsqueal and Martin Short as Thimbletack / Bogart. "You bring in a Seth Rogen and Marty Short, you do the lines that are scripted, but they do extra lines, and you play around with the scenes. Especially because those guys are great comedic writers and actors as well, they come up with stuff as well. And you can go so much beyond that in the animation. It's great not being able to be constrained with motion capture."

Mark's process for shooting the animation made it a lot easier because of the technology of ILM and Tippett. Their processes were shown to them just a few days after shooting a certain scene on set. "We took entire animation sequences and did them as we were shooting other scenes. And when you're on the set, you've got Freddie Highmore, and he's acting with Thimbletack (the loveable mouse-like creature voiced by Martin Short). First, he's acting opposite a nine-inch mannequin we made, and I've got an actor on set doing the lines for Thimbletack. When that's over, we sent it to these guys, and we wanted ILM to be doing these lines, doing these actions. They would do this rough animation of them doing moves. Through several levels of the process, he looks like this photo-real little creature sitting in your living room. Every time another level would be done, I would be in amazement; I'd be like, 'Oh my gosh, that's magic.' And they would say, 'That's why we call ourselves that.'"

But even the guys at ILM (Industrial Light & Magic) were excited to work on The Spiderwick Chronicles. "We had the privilege of working on this film from the creatures to the environments," noted supervising animator Christian Alzman. "Being that this is a fantasy film, the genre demands that it has its own set of rules, that it has to be based around forest creatures. This is a magical place, we never wanted to leave; the best part about working here is we get to see it all the way through."

The same definitely went for the guys over at Tippett. "This has been a fun ride," says Phil Tippett. Phil's staff echoed his thoughts, notes Anthony Lucero. "As soon as we read it, we had to do it. It's great creatures, really cool script. It was so cool, we did it from the computer, and then had a 3-D maquette model made out of that; this was the other way. We hit it out immediately, and we were able to play with all these toys."

Because "Spiderwick" is based on the book series, a lot of the creatures already have their own look. For the animators at ILM, that was an easy start. "For the actual 'Spiderwick' books, Tony gave us a world that was such a great jumping off point. That makes everything a lot easier, for sure. But his work helps speed up the work."

Both authors were perfectly fine with moving beyond their original ideas when it came to the film, says Mark Waters. "With Tony and Holly's blessing, we didn't want to make a film only for 10-12 years old; we exploded it a bit and went for the more dynamic, a little more action packed. In the books, they have to cross a bridge with a troll; in our movie, they're in a scary chase sequence with a troll. They liked the idea about making it into a grander scale. Just the complexity of this planning - having one actor play two characters, especially with the special effects team on set."

One instance of making this a grander scale flick – Mark built an entire exterior of the kid's house, and had ILM re-create that house for most of the digital effects. "There are lots of scenes of coming in and out of that house. Most houses that look like this are in the historical register, and you have to walk through them with socks on – and they don't take kindly to having goblins attack them. In order to do that, we knew we had to build it from scratch. You just don't want to settle for something where it's just 'good.' The house represents 'Spiderwick' throughout the movie."

With ILM and Tippett Studios involved, you know The Spiderwick Chronicles is going to be amazing. You can check it all out in theaters when it opens conventional and IMAX theaters on Thursday, February 14th. Check out more photos from the film here!

Source: Steve Chupnick over @ comingsoon.net

Posted by dschnee at 10:55 PM

A Crystal Skull Before The Spiderwick Chronicles

Paramount will attach the first teaser for "Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull" to fantasy pic "The Spiderwick Chronicles" on Feb. 14, with the spot to hit the Web shortly thereafter.

Reason for the delay is that the film only recently wrapped, so much of the material that would go into a memorable trailer just wasn't ready until now. (Variety.com)

See Also:
Confirmed: 'Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull' Trailer Arrives Next Week (cinematical.com)

and here's a short article about director Mark Waters...
In The Spiderwick Chronicles, director Mark Waters pumps peril and thrill

"The authors were really supportive. They told [coscreenwriter] Karey Kirkpatrick and I, 'You are spending a ton of money on this movie and it has to play bigger than [the 2006 Kirkpatrick-written film] Charlotte's Web in terms of the audience.' We knew we had to pump up the volume a bit, and they were very supportive of us making the action sequences more visceral, more dynamic, and scarier. Of course, we didn't want to lose the kids. I had this barometer in my mind that I wanted to make it scary enough that my five-year-old would want to grab my arm when she was watching but I didn't want her to run out of the room. She got scared by Ratatouille, so she is a wimp. But if I felt that it would make me cringe or her want to look away, then I knew I had gone too far."

Posted by dschnee at 6:41 AM

February 7, 2008

The Spiderwick Chronicles Fantasy Trailer

Mobile Game... Enter a world of imagination on your mobile device!

here are some comments about the trailer:
"I think the trailer cost more then the game."
"It was good till there was gameplay =/"
"this looks absolutely terrible"
(gametrailers.com)

Posted by dschnee at 7:00 AM

February 4, 2008

South of the Border Marketing + Lead

I mentioned before that we've gone South of the Border and along with this main show going on, we are also doing a marketing project for South of the Border, this is pretty much a spiffy teaser trailer for STB.

So I started on this project today, and what's really cool about it is, It's my first project working as a lead compositor! This is great, I'm totally excited and happy to be given the opportunity. We have a great team working on it, a couple dozen shots, and just a couple of months to finish it up, I'm sure it will prove to be a great learning experience, along with fun and exciting too!

Posted by dschnee at 9:32 PM

Spiderwick's Lovin' It, SK Happy Meals

I'm not sure when these toys will run in McDonald's though. That's all I got, not much else to say. :)

Posted by dschnee at 7:13 AM

February 2, 2008

The Clover is out of the Bag - Monster Revealed!

So I have a lot of info to share about Cloverfield, it's been released in Europe this past week and has been doing really well across the pond. Tippett has sent out this press release 'TIPPETT STUDIO CREATES THE MONSTER THAT DESTROYED MANHATTAN' about our work on the Monster. There is also a great article on the work that Double Negative did on Cloverfield, work that hasn't been getting enough attention, work well worth a ton of attention! It's just that the monster tends to steal the show... hrmmm what else, ohh yeah, so during the season opener of Lost this past Thursday, the came out with this new TV Spot that shows the entire b part of cf045, they actually show the monster stomping his hand into the street and roaring over head, so I guess the cat's out of the bag now... I guess that's what you do when the 2nd weekend drops some 68%... :) I haven't been able to find the new TV Spot online until today, but not only did I find the crappy youtube version, but over on Yahoo Movies! they put up damn near the entire CF (cross fire) sequence online... and in HD!("The Monster Revealed" (1:05)480p, 720p, 1080p) So the 'Clover' is definitely out of the bag...

Just a couple of weeks ago, we were all excited about the Cloverfield Monster making the Cover for Cinefex, but JJ and Paramount wouldn't let us release any pictures of the monster... enough time has passed now and it's too late for a cover, then the release it, well sort of. Were still going to get a small spread in Cinefex #113 but the cover would have been a huge high five.

I only worked on 1 shot in the cross fire sequence, and they only show the tail end of the shot in this sequence, so I trimmed the quicktime to showcase just that shot I worked on, check that out here

How Double Negative Smashed Up Manhattan

'Cloverfield' does well overseas

Press Release: TIPPETT STUDIO CREATES THE MONSTER THAT DESTROYED MANHATTAN

cloverfieldCF010bPart.mov

Posted by dschnee at 2:15 PM

January 31, 2008

The Spiderwick Premiere is Tonight! + reviews

A number of lucky folks flew down to LA for the world premiere of The Spiderwick Chronicles! I'll update this tomorrow with some details from the event. In the meantime, check out a couple of Spiderwick reviews from the nuts over at aintitcoolnews.

First Harry gets caught up in THE SPIDERWICK CHRONICLES! then Massawyrm Digs Into THE SPIDERWICK CHRONICLES!! ~go nuts.

"The effects work by Tippett Studios is again - remarkable. The Brownie Thimbletack is eerily realistic for something so whimsical. But more so, he's a character - one that can blush, get angry, be frustrated and curious. Same with the character of Hogsqueal. He's just a deliciously maniacal friendly creation - and how he blesses a human to see the magical realm - is delightful and grotesque. Very fun."

Actually, ILM did Thimbletack, but it's nice to get an error in our favor once in a while, :) I agree with Harry's comments on Thimbletack though, he looked really good.

Posted by dschnee at 9:42 PM

Cloverfield Sequel Chatter

I'm still with the people that say:
"Leave Cloverfield as what it should be: a thrilling one-off experiment."

"Matt Reeves is in early talks with Paramount to direct a "Cloverfield" sequel, and he has also made a deal with GreeneStreet Films to direct "The Invisible Woman."

Timing of the projects will depend on how quickly Paramount can complete discussions with Reeves, producer J.J. Abrams and scribe Drew Goddard to scare up another monster tale for the "Cloverfield" sequel. There's a good chance the sequel will be Reeves' next film, in which case he will direct "The Invisible Woman" afterward." (Paramount sows 'Cloverfield' sequel)

---
"Bad Robot producer JJ Abrams tells EW that he's in no rush to get a sequel rolling because he wants to make sure it keeps the integrity of the original. "I wouldn't want to rush into it because of the heat on the movie - Id want to do something that is true to the spirit of what we made."

Producer Bryan Burk adds that the creative team "has fleshed out an entire backstory which, if we're lucky, we might get to explore in future films."

EW writes that possible plots include an attack on another city or telling the same New York event from another perspective." (Entertainment Weekly article)

Posted by dschnee at 7:06 AM

January 29, 2008

Enchanted on DVD & Blu-ray

Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment will release "Enchanted" on DVD & Blu-ray this March 18th.

Extras will include: "Pip's Predicament: A Pop-up Adventure," "Fantasy Comes To Life: 'Happy Working Song,' 'That's How You Know,' 'A Blast at the Ball'," "Deleted Scenes including exclusive intros by director Kevin Lima," "Bloopers."

The Blu-ray edition will include all of the above plus, "The D-Files: Enchanted."

You can pre-order Enchanted a low price over @ Bestbuy and Amazon.

Posted by dschnee at 7:24 AM

January 27, 2008

Cloverfield Box Office Collapses

ahhh dammit... what is it?

"Cloverfield (Paramount) has absolutely "fallen apart" in its 2nd weekend. It managed only $4.5M on Friday, and it'll lumber to a disappointing $13.1M for the weekend. That would be a horrifying 68% drop, and it'll be in a 3-day photo finish with 27 Dresses (Fox), which appears to be headed for $13M after a $4M Friday." (slashfilm.com)

So Clover has collapsed from #1 to #4 this weekend, behind 27 Dresses, Rambo, and Meet the Spartans? son of a... boxofficemojo.com estimates a $12.7 million showing dropping some 68.3% from last weekend... ouch.

Somebody keep this fantastic thrill ride going! ;)

Posted by dschnee at 11:42 AM

January 26, 2008

The Spiderwick Chronicles - Review

The Spiderwick Chronicles has all the elements that make up great kids' movies: a haunted house, a family secret, an ordinary child granted an extraordinary skill, and an emotional subplot that anchors the fantasy within real human experience. Though it doesn’t match the immortal greats like E.T., it comes remarkably close, and provides a genuinely thrilling adventure story that never panders or condescends. It’s hard to come by good kids' entertainment these days, as Alvin and the Chipmunks demonstrates, so weary parents should be especially grateful for this fantasy romp.

Freddie Highmore does double duty, and an American accent to boot, playing twins Jared and Simon Grace. The boys, their teenage sister Mallory (Sarah Bolger), and mom (Mary-Louise Parker) have moved into the rural mansion that once belonged to the great-uncle Spiderwick. They’ve moved due to the parents’ impending divorce, and Jared, hit especially hard by his father’s departure, acts out against his family when not snooping around the mysterious house. It doesn’t take him long to discover Spiderwick’s attic, stuffed with creepy crawlies and hosting a very large, very mysterious book.

The book, of course, is the titular Spiderwick Chronicles, the first-ever field guide to the magical realm, compiled by Spiderwick before his mysterious disappearance 80 years earlier. Jared ignores a warning on the outside not to open the book, and immediately raises the hackles of the house “brownie” Thimbletack, an elfin little thing voiced by Martin Short. Thimbletack explains that opening the book has reawakened the goblins who live in the forest, and their master Mulgrath will stop at nothing to get his hands on the powerful secrets inside the book.

A circle of protection erected around the house by Spiderwick keeps the family safe inside it, but, when Mulgrath gets his hands on a few key pages of the book, it’s a race against time before the circle is broken and the family must fight for their lives. Jared, Simon, and Mallory go on a hunt for Spiderwick’s daughter, Lucinda (Joan Plowright), who was unfairly locked in a mental institution after her father’s disappearance, and try to find Spiderwick himself in order to discover how to keep the book protected forever.

That’s a hell of a plot description, I know, and The Spiderwick Chronicles definitely wastes no time in moving from revelation to revelation, and adventure to adventure. There’s battling the goblins, riding a griffin, getting swept up by fairies, and then just your average sibling rivalry. Not only is the adventure fast-paced and exciting, but it’s not afraid to be scary. The beginning of the film, when Jared first investigates the house’s mysteries, could come straight out of Poltergeist, and the goblins take an early innocent victim (not human, of course) that proves they mean business. Adventures are only fun when the stakes are high, and while younger children may not be able to deal with the tension and occasional scares, kids who love The Princess Bride and can handle Voldemort will be thrilled to find a movie that doesn’t think they’re wimps.

Highmore’s double casting is kind of unnecessary, and confusing at first, but he proves his talent once again in playing the very different Jared and Simon. The voice talent works nicely as well, particularly Seth Rogen as the mischievous hobgoblin Hogsqueal and Nick Nolte as the vicious Mulgrath. The on-screen actors are game, too, and unexpectedly touching in many moments (Plowright and David Strathairn as Spiderwick are, true to their reputations, great). But mostly it’s the story, ably directed by Mark Waters and adapted by Karey Kirkpatrick and David Berenbaum, that makes the movie as much fun as it is. Even though it takes a little while getting started, and doesn’t quite reach the emotional climax it’s going for, The Spiderwick Chronicles is more-than-worthy entertainment, a classic adventure with its heart and its sense of whimsy in all the right places.

Posted by dschnee at 1:37 PM

Visual Effects Experts on The Spiderwick Chronicles

With so many unusual and complicated non-human characters in "The Spiderwick Chronicles," the film's producers knew the job of creating them might be best split between two visual effects wizards. And what better wizards than Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) and Tippett Studio?

"We wanted to engage them both, but we wanted to figure out who was best suited at doing what," explains co-producer Tom Peitzman. Tippett Studio, best known for its work on films such as "Jurassic Park" and "Robocop," handled creation of the army of creepy goblins, led by Redcap, the slovenly hobgoblin Hogsqueal, and the menacing mole troll. ILM produced the characters of Thimbletack (both as a brownie and a boggart), Mulgarath (in his many forms), the sprites and sylphs. Between them, the two studios created some 600 visual effects shots.

Academy Award winner Phil Tippett served as the film's creature supervisor. "My job was to wrangle all of the characters across both facilities, to make sure that all of the characters would maintain some kind of continuity within this world," he explains.
The designs for the characters began with Tony DiTerlizzi's drawings, as featured in his original Field Guide in the Spiderwick Chronicles books. "It was a really nice canvass for (Tippett Studio founder) Phil Tippett, (ILM visual effects supervisor) Pablo Helman and our production designer, Jim Bissell, to start with," notes Peitzman.

You can read the entire production notes here

OR

The team’s main goal was to bring DiTerlizzi’s two-dimensional characters into three-dimensional reality. “It’s a matter of taking the drawings, which are the product of Arthur Spiderwick’s observations in the field, and creating what he actually physically saw, to biologize the sketches and turn them into actual creatures,” says Tippett.

“The intent of the original book was a marriage of nature and art – part plant and part human,” explains Helman, giving the characters, particularly those who disguise themselves in the Unseen World, an organic base from which to come to life. “For others,” says Tippett, “studies of animals, such as rodents and birds, were made, anthropomorphisms of which gave some of the creatures their base” (such as the rodent-like Thimbletack).

Characters were developed in 3D using both traditional clay “maquettes,” small detailed models commonly used in the visual effects industry, and computer programs. ILM employed its Rapid Prototyping system to not only build low resolution computer-generated (CG) models of its characters for study, but to apply some basic movement, sometimes putting a staffer in a “motion capture” suit to begin assigning some early moves. “The director can actually see the character moving and can begin making decisions about physical proportions and movement early on,” explains ILM visual effects supervisor Tim Alexander.

During the actual animation, it was imperative for the animators to make use of reference video shot during the recording sessions by the actors, to try to include as much of their characterizations in the creatures’ personalities as possible. “If you don’t,” says Helman, “something doesn’t quite look right, because the soul of the character is missing.”

“That kind of thing is extremely helpful,” explains Alexander. “We can add in twitches and other body language that we saw when he was making the recording, and we can put all that expression into the character. The Martin Short reference was extremely helpful for Thimbletack's lip sync, for example.”

Seeing Nick Nolte’s performance of Mulgarath was crucial for the animators to be able to inject the “cursed being” facet of his character. “ILM animation supervisor Tim Harrington and I were both at his recording sessions, and what Nick did was just an amazing tour de force,” Tippett recalls. “He was up there for 2 ½ hours doing Mulgarath, and I can tell you he was dripping sweat; he just put everything into it. I would have paid money to have seen this in a theater.”

The voiceless characters of the Unseen World – the sprites and the sylph – had their own challenges to give them their “Fantasia”-like magic. For the beautiful flower sprites, notes Alexander, “we just played straight off their environments. Since they come up out of a flower bed, we just matched the flowers around them, so that they would completely blend in and suddenly appear.” The ethereal flow to their movement was based on that of a jellyfish, he says, even using cloth simulations to create the gentle drift of the petals.

While the millions of dandelion-like sylph required the application of “particle generation” software by ILM (onto which the tiny sylph were applied to each particle), Tippett Studio animation supervisor Todd Labonte and his crew went to great lengths to give each member of the goblin mob a distinct character, whenever possible. “It’s a real trick to get a crowd to feel like a crowd of individuals,” says Tippet. “Todd and his team excelled at making each individual in the crowd a specific entity, but while still maintaining the feeling for a crowd.”
On set during the six month shoot – both at the outdoor location and on the stages of Mel’s Cite du Cinema studio in Montreal – Tippett, Helman and special effects supervisor Michael Lantieri made sure the magic continued in front of the lens, in preparation for the later addition of the computer-generated visual effects. “This is where you really sell visual effects shots to the audience, by providing as much physical interaction as you can on set, to enhance the CG work that comes later,” explains Tom Peitzman.

While actors are quite used to looking each other in the eye while performing scenes, it is a whole other matter to interact with characters that don’t yet exist (and won’t for many months to come). “People do a lot of subtle things with their face as they’re talking to another person,” Tippett explains. “There’s a great deal of searching that’s going on – the person’s eyes will move around the face, they might lean in or pull back as they’re trying to assess the validity of the spirit of the other person.”

To assist the actors, the visual effects crews had a variety of visual aids constructed and placed – and sometimes moved – in the location where, say, Thimbletack or Hogsqueal might be sitting having a discussion with a human character. “We built maquettes, complete with wardrobe, or even just a piece of paper with an ‘X’ on it. It’s what really glues the scene together when you assemble the two shots. If someone’s just staring off at a fixed eyeline, the scenes can go very flat,” says Tippett.

The maquettes are also filmed for reference by the animators. The artists can see how the light on the set interacts with the maquettes, enabling them to recreate the same lighting in the computer of their computer-generated character, allowing them to seamlessly place the character into the shot with the live actors.

Much of the mayhem that befalls the Spiderwick Estate happened under the supervision of special effects supervisor Michael Lantieri. “I did all the mechanical effects on set – which entailed any interaction between the actors and the CGI characters. All of it was driven by the specifics of the characters and their performances, even the digital characters,” Lantieri explains.

That mandated constant communication among Tippett, Helman and himself. “The philosophy was to go as far as we could with live action in a practical way because it ultimately sells the CGI. We figure out the mass, weight and movement of the characters and have anything that results because of it happen in the realm of actual physics.”

Each day, Tippett, Helman and Lantieri would view simplified “previsualization” (or “previz,” at it is known) animation depicting how the day’s scene would unfold, showing where the creatures would be in space and how they would interact and react. “How big would their footsteps be, how deep would they sink in the grass, would they grab with the right hand or the left? For instance, a goblin would never do the same sort of thing as an ogre. Mulgarath is quite large and would interact with things that are much higher and would move much heavier objects. So the trick was to figure out the characters first, then decide what they would come in contact with – in this case, a huge assault on the house. Then we’d figure out how to execute the large scale movement and how that would interact with the character and computer graphics later on,” Lantieri explains.

As much as possible, Lantieri tried to wreak as much of the goblins’ and Mulgarath’s havoc on the house on-camera. “We did as much damage to the house practically as we could - so when a wall explodes, we did that for real and put the characters in later. Everything they touch, push, shove or break was actually done on set.”

Posted by dschnee at 10:15 AM

When Goblins Attack!

This is a scene from The Spiderwick Chronicles. (out February 14th) Mallory Grace fights back! Take the first look at the MySpace Exclusive Clip. This is one of our Goblin + Red Cap sequences we completed! It's very lo-fi crappy myspace video, but still sweet though.

Posted by dschnee at 9:58 AM

January 23, 2008

A Tasty Promotion for Spiderwick

Specially marked boxes of Lucky Charms, Cocoa Puffs, Reese's Puffs, Cookie Crisps and Honey Nut Cheerios will include one of three collectible books based on the second title in the Spiderwick series, The Seeing Stone. The three will be evenly distributed among the 10 million boxes, with each store receiving some of each title. The cover is visible through a clear window in each box.

Each book features a third of the original story with a special introduction and conclusion, followed by a brand-new prequel story and illustrations created by Tony DeTerlizzi and Holly Black in conjunction with GM and S&S. The new material, which comprises about 10 to 15 of the 64 pages in each book, is available only through the GM promotion.

Simon and Schuster has partnered with General Mills for a 10 million-box, five-brand cereal promotion tied to the Spiderwick Chronicles. Running from January 1 to March 1, the promotion’s timing is tied to the Spiderwick film being released in February. But its focus is entirely on the books. In fact, when the two companies started talking about the partnership, the film was optioned but didn’t have a green light, so it wasn’t a factor in the deal, according to Laura Ferguson, S&S director of premiums, CDP and corporate sales.

In addition to the wide exposure of 10 million boxes (plus four million more in England and Ireland), the promotion is unusual in that the books themselves are not identified with any General Mills or cereal brand logos. In addition, the premiums involve an large amount of new content for a children’s promotion. “General Mills was looking for a series that was already a success with 8- to 12-year-olds, but also where the authors would add content that would be exclusive to them,” Ferguson explains.

Simon & Schuster is the longtime partner for General Mills’ annual Spoonfuls of Stories promotion. While GM was talking to a number of publishers about this promotional slot, Ferguson believes S&S’s existing relationship with the company may have played into GM’s decision to go with S&S, since the corporation has already approved S&S’s factories and is confident in its ability to meet FDA requirements associated with a food promotion. But the main draw was the content and its appeal to kids. “Spiderwick speaks for itself,” Ferguson says. (publishersweekly.com)

Posted by dschnee at 7:11 AM

January 22, 2008

80th Oscars VFX Down to 3

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS
"The Golden Compass"
"Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End"
"Transformers"

Kudos to the GC crew @ Tippett!
This is a cool FYI: "In Mike Fink's video presentation
at the bake-off, he used half of Tippett's shots to highlight the
work in the film. I'd say that's pretty great considering the number
of fx shots in the show he had to pull from." -Matt Jacobs (visual effects supervisor)

Aruna is sitting pretty as he worked on 2 of the 3 vfx noms! Nice one Aruna, congrats!

I still enjoyed Sunshine's VFX the most last year though...

Enchanted has 3 in 1 with the:
BEST ORIGINAL SONG
"Falling Slowly" from "Once"
"Happy Working Song" from "Enchanted"
"Raise It Up" from "August Rush"
"So Close" from "Enchanted"
"That's How You Know" from "Enchanted"

See Also:
Capturing the allure and excitement of the Oscars, the design was originally conceived by legendary motion picture poster illustrator Drew Struzan and executed by his son, Christian.

Sunshine

Reelz Rating (out of 10): 9

Award(s) It Was Forgotten For: Best Visual Effects

In a Nutshell: Highlighted by gorgeous visuals, director Danny Boyle offers up a thinking man's sci-fi thriller with equal parts Alien and 2001.

Why It's Award-Worthy: The biggest, best sci-fi movie of 2007 that no one saw. Set in the not-too-distant future where the sun is nearing extinction, Earth is in a constant state of winter weather. The only hope to save mankind? Re-ignite the sun. After the first mission mysteriously vanishes, the crew of the Icarus II is sent on a semi-suicidal mission to look for the missing Icarus I and take their own payload (essentially a massive bomb) straight into the heart of the sun.

Full Sunshine Review

Posted by dschnee at 7:42 AM

Cloverfield: Reinventing the Monster Movie

Tara DiLullo Bennett tracks down Visual Effects Supervisor Kevin Blank and Lead Creature Designer Neville Page to get the scoop on the monster hit, Cloverfield.

From the moment a mysterious little teaser attached to Transformers hit theaters last July, an Internet obsession was born. Name-less and featuring no recognizable stars, the minute-and-a-half tease started out by slowly fleshing out the basic concept of a movie shot hand-held featuring some attractive twenty-somethings throwing a goodbye party for a friend. It was all rather Felicity-like until the tease kicked into overdrive with a Manhattan explosion and the head of the Statue of Liberty rocketing onto the streets of Brooklyn. That money shot alone was powerful enough to send fanboys flocking to the web for answers.

Keep reading for some tid bits about our 'Tippett Studio's' work on this as well...

In the seven months that followed, some mysterious and cryptic websites were found (Slusho.jp and www.tagruato.jp), but nothing more of note was revealed other than the fact that it was produced by J.J. Abrams (Mission: Impossible III) and his creative team at Bad Robot, it was a disaster movie in the style of The Blair Witch Project and its title of Cloverfield. Pretty much aside from the creative names involved, Paramount and team Abrams were maddeningly able to squelch just about every other detail up until release, leaving everyone asking up until opening day (Jan. 18): "Just what is attacking New York City? Is it a monster?!"

Damn right, it's a monster, and, as Abrams has stated in press interviews, Cloverfield finally gives America its very own Godzilla. Freakishly huge, impervious to standard munitions and rather pissed off for some inexplicable reason, this brand-new monster lays one hell of an 85-minute smack down on the Big Apple.

While this sounds like the makings of a summer blockbuster, Cloverfield is not. It's a winter experiment, if you will, with a fraction of the budget of a summer movie, no stars and a visual gimmick that is literally sending some audience members running for their barf bags. Yet it broke records with the biggest box office ever for a January opening (an estimated $46 million for the four-day MLK holiday weekend) and a lot of that has to do with the monster. Created by artist Neville Page and Tippett Studio, Visual Effects Supervisor Kevin Blank had the fun job helping to facilitate the making of a monster, both literally and figuratively.

A long-time member of Abrams' Bad Robot family, Blank was brought in while working on Lost. "Cloverfield was J.J.'s idea and then he hired [Lost scribe] Drew Goddard to write the script... J.J. was doing creature design and sketches four or five months before I was involved...Then they brought in Neville, who was doing design work for Avatar [and later Star Trek]...He knows such a breadth of zoology and every type of creature in existence and bringing together a hybrid of lots of different types of reality-based life. So the process of getting to what the creature [looked like] was very, very developed when I showed up. What transpired after I showed up was more skin coloration and style of eyes. There were a few design details that never really manifested, but I think they will come out in the toy," Blank teases.
Considering the style and budget limitations on the film, Blank says from the beginning the visual effects were always about getting the most bang for the small bucks. "The trick was how do you provide this amazing experience and show enough of a really big event, but then get away from that event and don't hang on that event? There is an ode to Jaws and an ode to Aliens where what you see less of is scarier and that's very, very much played to. Also, a big inspiration piece for this is 9/11. We think of the monster as an event rather than a tangible thing like 9/11, which was this horrific day. When you look at lots of YouTube footage [from 9/11], this is where director Matt Reeves started. He kept saying, 'keep it real, keep it real, keep it real.' When you look at that [9/11] footage, there might be a camera pointed at a building coming down and then the camera hangs there for a second, like the person is in shock, but then they run and get behind a car. Then the camera is looking at a foot or a door jam or maybe underneath a car looking across the street to smoke, but the noise and the description is so compelling and drama driven that it's seeing that piece of drama that really gave the project its soul. The visual effects were just about giving large scale payoffs."

One of the key factors in launching the buzz for Cloverfield came from the teaser trailer that ran in the summer of 2007. The striking shot of the Lady Liberty's head landing, scratched and decapitated on the streets of New York really promised something exciting to come. Blank reveals that trailer was literally the start of shooting for the entire project. "One of the biggest challenges of the whole project is that we started [without a script]. There was an outline so we knew the basic beats, but there was an element of the process of discovering locations and that was what [the scene] had to be because it all happened so quickly. The really stressful part for myself was while the movie was being prepped, and being prepped kind of on the fly because it's hard to prep without a formal script, was to do this trailer. We basically had about two-and-a-half weeks to do it from the moment we filmed it to the moment it had to be attached to Transformers.

"In terms of sheer momentum it created, that was amazing. But it's one thing to be prepping a movie that quickly and it's another thing to be prepping a movie and delivering something as high scale as that trailer... Taking things from previs to shot execution and development of the model was really fast and a tough juggling act. It came out great and created a lot of buzz. We went back and tweaked the shots after, so the shots in the movie have evolved from what was seen in the trailer. Mostly, there is a better model of the Statue of Liberty head. The full trailer actually shows the new Liberty head to compare."
While the gimmick of a first person POV witnessing a monster attack is compelling, Cloverfield's success lies in the execution and visuals of the monster. Blank says they were gratefully given enough money to get the right vendors to do the job. "Even though the movie was low budget, the visual effects budget we had was a good size. We were dealing with big movie vendors and we hired Double Negative in London [under the supervision of Mike Ellis] and Tippett Studio [under the supervision of Eric Leven]. Tippett has a terrific reputation as a creature house and they made the monster. They brought it to life. But the thing I was trying to do, though, is that I've always had a philosophy of matching the talent with the task. Tippett is a full-service visual effects company capable of doing lots of things and, obviously, we went to them for their creature work but they ended up doing a lot more. With Double Negative, I was really impressed with their work on Batman Begins and Children of Men."

But the tight budget also meant that more vfx had to be utilized to fill the production gaps. "We were trying to shoot on a small set with a bunch of greenscreen and make everyone believe it," Blank continues. "I give a lot of credit to Production Designer Martin Whist because he had the least amount of resources to produce something believable. We kept saying to him, give us the front 10 or 20% in front of camera for real and we'll do the rest. A lot times you would expect on a movie like this for the set to comprise 50 to 60% of what is going on and visual effects is completing the lower half. But visual effects were doing a lot more than that. For example, we had a very large sequence on the Brooklyn Bridge. What was created was basically a 150-foot stretch for the board planks, a few benches and then lighting fixtures were in place where they would be on the bridge, but the railing, the lamps and everything is CG. In New York, we shot helicopter plates on the side of the Brooklyn Bridge to make the environment, but the actual structure of the bridge was 99% visual effects. The only thing that was not was the ground these people were walking on."

It was so much work that Blank confirms it's not really even quantifiable. "The one thing about this movie is that it's basically a big monster movie done in The Blair Witch style, so there is no traditional camera coverage. You can have shots that go on and on for a minute and within one shot you can have three-dozen visual effects going on. Roughly there were 150 plates in play, but in terms of actual quantifying how many effects, I'm the wrong person to ask," he chuckles, and then pleads that it's the breadth that really counts here.
Blank adds that, unlike traditionally filmed movies, Cloverfield found the bulk of its vfx work in adding elements rather than subtracting them. "We had about 32 days of shooting and a few days of additional shooting and about 10 of those were on a greenscreen stage. What Martin Whist created was very minimal, it was great, but visual effects were adding a crazy amount of additional stuff. Everything we saw looked great, but it was not as much as you would expect to see. So the amount of resources that was given to production was spent really wisely."

Of course the piece de resistance of the film is the actual monster itself and Blank says he is thrilled with the end results and the process of getting him there. "I am really proud of the creature from a design perspective, so a lot of props to Neville Page and for Tippett Studio for realizing something really amazing looking. But the other big thing was there was some shared material between Double Negative and Tippett because they are houses that use similar pipelines -- as they basically use Maya and Shake for everything. That was factored into the decision [to hire them] because it happened so quickly, so sometimes you couldn't think, 'Well, I'll give this here and that there.' I knew there was going to be some shifting. It created a situation where the people were all using the same [systems], so it might be a case of Tippett generating a little piece of a creature but then giving it to Double Negative to put into a broader-based environment piece. Tippett did all the creature work [overseen by Animation Supervisor Tom Gibbons], but they did some environment work too. Double Negative did more shots on the show than Tippett, and I know [it will all be about] 'the monster, the monster, the monster,' but a lot of people will be unaware of the extent of the environment creations going on in the film. Big credit goes to both houses."

With all the hype said and done, Blanks says he knows the movie delivers. "I think everyone will have a wild ride...[and] rather than the monster having a personality [like Godzilla or King Kong], it's more of an entity or an event. This movie is more like a fantastical 9/11 re-imagining. It is a monster movie but an experiential one. I think it is going to be viewed in a unique way and in some ways it may be difficult to compare. Ultimately, there are 60 some creature shots and that's not a ridiculous, crazy amount and many of them are cheating. But trust me: you'll get a good look at him," he laughs.
And after you do, you'll certainly be able to appreciate Page's invaluable contributions, as well as Tippett's. Funny enough, Page says that Abrams initially approached him anonymously by e-mail while he was working on Avatar, mentioning how he adored his Gnomon Workshop training DVDs. Page assumed he was a young student. "Felt a touch clueless, to say the least. I blame J.J., however, for the misinterpretation. His e-mail was so personable and matter of fact that it did not feel like a major director wanting to collaborate on a movie. The moral to this story is pretty obvious."

And naturally what was initially pitched to Page by the filmmakers was short on creature details. "They wanted it big. They wanted it to be something 'new.' It had to adhere to some story points, but it was wide open. I listened; I took notes. I couldn't pass this up. I accepted."

But coming up with something new, especially on the heels of The Host, was an extra challenge. "Whenever I'm asked to design something that is 'completely new,' 'fresh' and 'that has never been seen before,' I get nervous. I have a long philosophy on this, but I will say that 'new' things need to be familiar as well. If not, then they are maybe too difficult to understand and comprehend. The hardest thing, in a way, was to not repeat any of the stuff that I did on previous films. The good news was that Cloverfield's parameters lent itself to developing something 'new'. In other words, the original creators (J.J., producer Bryan Burk and screenwriter Drew Goddard) set the tone and we all developed it together. Furthermore, I was afforded the opportunity to hire a great talent, Tully Summers, to help me out. He is such a treat to work with. And he was an invaluable resource of ideas and execution on both the Big Guy and his parasitic friends. I had heard about The Host during the development of Clover, but did not see anything until I was done with the design. I dug The Host. I thought that it was such a success in so many ways. Some people are drawing conclusions that Clover and The Host are similar in design. They are in that they ravage and seem to originate from the water, but the end results are quite different. However, when I finally saw some of the concept art, there were some very obvious similarities. But then again, I think that we were both channeling similar biological possibilities."

Page suggests that understanding the monster's motivations is key and to do that requires researching as many aspects of the life you are creating. And he starts the design process more as an actor than as a visual artist.
"My preference for doing most design is to start with pencil and paper. Rough sketches. Again, none of us really knew what it was going to be, so I went for the shotgun approach. Generate as many design variations as possible and see which ones get closest to the target. I did floating gasbag tentacular things, sea serpenty things, arthropods, whatever. But, what guided us were the narrative needs. Which is great, because nothing was to be superfluous. I prefer when things are purposeful. Utilitarian, if you will. As for how many sketches it took to get to the center of this tootsie pop? Never enough. I love the process, the drawing, the sculpting, but I had so little time to do 'cool' art. So, I really had to be very efficient with time and process: Maybe 80 sketches to establish a direction, six clay sculptures to assist and then many, many hours of digital sculpting to finalize the design. In terms of efficiency, I try to make every moment count in my days, especially when on multiple projects. The sketchbook is always with me."

Page's design process begins with slowing down and trying to think clearly. But no drawing until the mental images start to flow. "Sometimes I start with big gestural silhouettes, other times with loose, gestural lines. Either way, I am looking for interesting forms. While in this mode, I am tapping into all of the research I have done and keeping in mind all of the pertinent story points and, of course, all of the clients desires and comments. I may do some of these drawing digitally using Photoshop on either a Wacom tablet or a Cintiq. Sometimes I will bust out a lump of clay and explore some ideas there and, other times, I may sculpt digitally using ZBrush. In the end, ZBrush was used for all final development and the final sculptures for use by Tippet Studio."

Not surprisingly, Page insists that he did everything to avoid comparisons to Godzilla: no dragons or lizards in this creature's DNA. "Granted, it is huge, comes out of the water, has a tail and ravages Manhattan, so there were some major elements that kinda screamed Godzilla. But the design and biology and history are very different. For me, one of the most key moments in our collective brainstorming was the choice to make the creature be something that we would empathize with. It is not out there, just killing. It is confused, lost, scared. It's a newborn. Having this be a story point (one that the audience does not know), it allowed for some purposeful choices about its anatomy, movement and, yes, motivations. The hardest thing to accept, in terms of making a truly plausible creature like this, is its scale. Nothing would look like this at that scale [the size of a skyscraper], and that is to assume that anything could ever really be that scale as a living organism on land. Other movies that had gigantic monsters have helped pave the way to the 'suspension of disbelief.'"

Tara DiLullo Bennett is an East coast-based writer whose articles have appeared in publications such as SCI FI Magazine, SFX and Lost Magazine. She is the author of the books 300: The Art of the Film and 24: The Official Companion Guide: Seasons 1-6.

Posted by dschnee at 2:22 AM

January 21, 2008

Your Pal Randy on Cloverfield

Dudes, there are spoilers.

I don't know a lot. I've never been good at math, and to tell you the truth, I can't spell to save my life. But I do know one thing. If one of those parasites falls off the back of a huge thing that is fucking up a city, and it bites you. You are going to pop like a fucking tick.

There are many reasons why Cloverfield fucking rules. And I know that during the film you might have wanted to yell," hold the camera still for three seconds please", I know me too, but then, the city started to land all over you and you started to run down the street screaming.

Ok, here goes.

Why did the Monster go to New York City? Where did It come from? Was it a scientific experiment?

who the fuck cares?

Nobody, when you are running down the street about to get fucked up.

I loved Jurassic Park, but that DNA shit, got everyone and their mothers trying to come up with some stupid logical reasons why their monster was there. It got to the point where you would have some stupid blonde at a computer terminal spitting out lines that sounded like she was reading a Star Trek script.

Here's the deal kids. Run. That is all you need to know. And by the way, we don’t care if you hide under a bridge and love your girlfriend.

When it comes to creature effects, Tippett Studio is like one of those Frazetta paintings of Conan. The ones where there is a pile of people in pain looking up at the sky saying 'Oh Shit!" And Conan is flying over everybody about to deliver the goods.

That shit in the subway, out standing.

You people at Tippett, if you read this, go get yourself a drink at lunch, and make it a double. Because that shit was great!

And I hope all of the fat dudes with ponytails who left the theaters saying stuff like " well they didn’t explain why… beep borp dorp!" get hit by a bus

your pal Randy

Posted by dschnee at 10:44 AM

Cloverfield Roeper & Phillips' Review

2 Thumbs Up! - Not that this is saying much coming from these two, but still. Watch Roeper & Phillips' Review Cloverfield Here

Posted by dschnee at 7:50 AM

January 20, 2008

Early Cloverfield Estimates #1 with $41 million

"Cloverfield" Stumbles, Stomps, Crushes, Crashes, and Eats the Box Office

Friday:
$16,900,000 (estimate)
3,411 (screens) / $4,955 (per screen)

Saturday:
$13,750,000 (estimate)
-18.6% / -
3,411 (screens) / $4,031 (per screen)
$30,650,000 / 2days

Sunday: (It's only 12pm Noon PST)
$10,350,000 (estimate)
-24.7% / -
3,411 (screens) / $3,034 (per screen)
$41,000,000 / 3days

Former Top January Opening Weekend Flicks:
2 Star Wars (Special Edition) Fox $35,906,661 on 1/31/97
3 Black Hawk Down SonR $28,611,736 on 1/18/02
4 Big Momma's House 2 Fox $27,736,056 on 1/27/06

-Cloverfield on boxofficemojo.com

Posted by dschnee at 11:48 AM

January 19, 2008

An Open Letter to JJ Abrams, Cloverfield

This is a pretty cool letter/response to JJ Abrams and Cloverfield...(from chud.com) I pretty much agree.

Hey JJ,

You probably know me as the guy who saw the Cloverfield trailer early and who leaked the final name of the movie. You may also know me as a guy who has been highly skeptical of that same movie, especially of the viral marketing, which I found annoying, stupid and overbaked*. I write this letter for two reasons: to eat some crow and offer my apologies for my skepticism and to ask you to pledge to not make a sequel to Cloverfield.

Cloverfield is a good movie, JJ. Drew Goddard and Matt Reeves did strong work here. I have my problems with the film, and when the embargo on reviews is lifted on Friday I'll detail some of them, but over all you guys made a good movie. It's going to be huge, by the way; I know your tracking is telling you that but I wonder if it's going to be bigger than the tracking indicates. This movie is going to set opening weekend in January records that will remain untouched for a long, long time. And while I didn't have a geekgasm like Harry Knowles did, I think this is a movie that deserves to do well. You guys pulled it off, and as someone who had no faith in the project at all, I'm impressed. I may start approaching Star Trek with a more open mind after this one.

Now on to the second part of this letter: you must promise to never make a sequel to this movie.

This next part may be a spoiler, so people who are peering in on our correspondence should be aware that I will be giving away one minor aspect of the movie, which I do not think will affect their enjoyment of it at all.

One of the things that you guys did most right in Cloverfield is that you never explained where the monster came from. You have the character of Hud give a range of theories, but you never give any answers, and you never give enough context to even let us make an informed guess. I love that. I love that the monster's origins, abilities, name, weaknesses, and favorite color are never divulged. It's part of what makes this movie a little bit special, and more than a little bit different. But in a sequel you will have no option but to explore the monster's origins. Unless you make the exact same movie again, but with different characters, there is almost no way to avoid delving a little deeper into the monster and what makes it tick.

Of course this movie will always stand on its own; technically you could make six more Cloverfields and have the last one be from the POV of the monster as it gets jilted at the prom, leading to the big attack, and this first movie would still exist without a frame being changed. But you understand how what comes later does change what came before. In popular entertainment there's a reverse causality effect, and something that was good can be turned into something that is bad by improper handling of sequels and spin-offs. It's too easy to cheapen things, and the aspects of Cloverfield that make it one of the coolest movies I've seen in some time would be drastically cheapened by a sequel that sheds even the teeniest ray of light on the monster. Leave it as it is.

Again, I'll be reviewing the film in full on Friday, and I hope you come by to read what I have to say. I do understand if you don't - all of that money you're making from this film will not be spending itself, after all - but take my plea to heart, and listen to the inherent wisdom. Shock the world on Monday, JJ. Even after Cloverfield opens to numbers unimagined for a January release, announce to Variety that this is all there is, that there won't be a trilogy or a TV show or a MMORPG or a series of tie-in books. Leave it be. You guys got it right the first time.

Your word eating pal

Devin

*The quality of the film in no way invalidates my opinion on the marketing, by the way. This is the kind of movie that would be amazing to discover, and the core audience never had that chance.

Posted by dschnee at 8:20 AM

January 17, 2008

Tippett's Cloverfield Screening!

OK, so now I DID see Cloverfield tonight!?! Then again so did thousands of others catching the many sold out Midnight screenings... ours was at 7:30pm.

It was interesting though, Paramount security was in effect with night-vision goggles on searching through the crowd for any cameras, cell phones, any sort of device that could be snapping off photos or capturing the event. (did you know on iPhones you can snap off a photo and have it uploaded to your flickr site instantly? so cool.)

What can I say... This monster flick is actually awesome, I'm really excited for it! Look, I knew all of the parts with the monster in it, we worked on em' all, I knew when they were coming... but shit, it was very intense! After the killer sound mix and darker DI treatments, the sequences played out frighteningly well.

It was short and sweet, and one hell of a fun ride. Not sweet like 'whip cream with a cherry on top', but sweet like 'I just saw the coolest low budget monster movie tearing a new one in Manhattan!?!'

And the credits? The credits had the most epic score in movie history! I think I'm gonna buy the soundtrack just for the score to the ending credits... So cool.

Posted by dschnee at 11:00 PM

I got to see Cloverfield last night...

CLOVERFIELD is IN 1 DAY...

OK, I didn't, but a good friend at ILM did. MC is also a Compositor who worked on Cloverfield at Tippett, but is now at ILM. Remember Cloverfield got to Screen for ILM before Tippett Studio, and this was his response watching it with the ILM crew...

"I got to see Cloverfield last night here at ILM and I have to say how amazing you guys are! The shots looked so great.
I'm so grateful to have been a part of it.
People in the theater were gasping and saying things like " daaaammmnnnn" after a big sequence of monster shots.
It was fun to see with an audience that didn't know what the monster looked like and didn't know what was coming." -MC aka 'The Clemmy'

Our screening is tonight, so I should have something up about it late tonight... I can't wait. This is going to be the best night ever!

Posted by dschnee at 3:33 PM

January 16, 2008

The Spiderwick Chronicles [Soundtrack]

Composer: James Horner
Released on: 05/Feb/2008
Label: Lakeshore Records

1. Writing The Chronicles
2. So Many New Worlds Revealed
3. Thimbletack And The Goblins
4. Hogsqueal's Warning Of A Bargain With Mulgarath
5. Discovering Spiderwick's Secret Workshop
6. Dark Armies From The Forest Attack
7. Burning The Book
8. A Desperate Run Through The Tunnels
9. Lucinda's Story
10. The Flight Of The Griffin
11. Escape From The Glade
12. The Protective Circle Is Broken .... !
13. Jared And Mulgarath Fight For The Chronicles
14. Coming Home
15. Closing Credits

Posted by dschnee at 11:06 PM

Cloverfield Reviews

So far, pretty good. A few folks have soured it up as rotten, but all and all...

CLOVERFIELD is IN 2 DAYs...

"Quite frankly, "Cloverfield" is a triumph for fans of the monster genre. The filmmakers create a claustrophobic sense of entrapment that turns the sprawling cityscape of Manhattan into a deadly maze where there is literally no escape. It isn't just a popcorn flick, it's a comprehensive mind-blowing experience.
And for people worried about the film not living up to the hype generated by viral marketing and clever ad campaigns, think again. You will not be disappointed. "Cloverfield" delivers." (moviehole.net)

"Cloverfield is a fun and at the same time Frightening monster movie that goes beyond a simple monster movie. It's exciting in parts, scary in others and does a wonderful job immersing you into the reality of the story in a way that actually makes you believe these horrible events are actually happening. A few cheesy scenes and elements take a little of the glitter off this film, but not a lot. In general, a really good solid movie. Over all I give Cloverfield an 8/10" (themovieblog.com)

"At a breezy 84 minutes long (with credits), the film delivers the roller coaster thrill ride it promises - not the genre-changing action masterpiece that many seem to already be demanding of it. Director Matt Reeves and especially producer J.J. Abrams have a genuine understanding of how to properly pace and convey tension with this kind of material and so keep the action frequent enough to maintain your excitement, but know when to stop and take a breath for some quieter character moments. Ultimately though the secret of "Cloverfield" is that it is simply a clever twist on a very predictable genre, and as such its easy to indulge in the action." (darkhorizons.com)

"Part of my skepticism coming into this film was that it was going to be one of those movies about the people, not the catastrophic action surrounding them. That's not a bad concept but it's been done a lot lately. Luckily, the film succeeds in both arenas and adds up to a monster of a ride (pun alert). Go see it now! In a theater with good sound!" (bloody-disgusting.com)

"Cloverfield is a fun movie. Plain and simple. It's sit back, relax and go. It's a roller coaster ride. JJ Abrams wanted to make an American monster movie, and he has done just that. Cloverfield is not a Godzilla rip-off, it's the reinvention of the monster film. This is the story about characters trapped in a monster film. They aren't the characters that would be in the big Hollywood blockbuster version, or even an D-level take by The Asylum or Troma. These characters are the people running away from Godzilla. They have no urge to defeat the monster, they just want to get away and reconnect with their loved ones. This is a human story which just happens to take place during this gigantic moment of fear. 8/10" (/slashfilm.com)

"But my take on "Cloverfield" is that it basically boils down to a good old fashioned "Disaster Flick", which is well made - and well-acted as well, but ultimately is really as exciting or innovative to me as it was seeing "Independence Day" for the first time - an exciting, ultimately enjoyable picture that I'll grab on DVD for sure, but not that re-defining genre pick that you may have been expecting to see. 4/5 stars" (moviehole.net)

"Putting it simply, "Cloverfield" is a monstrously entertaining motion picture. If you're in need of a thrill ride but can't get to Anaheim or Orlando anytime soon, this is the film that you need to seek out the MLK weekend." (jimhillmedia.com)

"If I'm geeking out too much I'm sorry, I'm not saying it's the best movie EVER, its not. But it is a lot of fun and a hell of a ride. The main thing I'm trying to convey is considering the amount of movies I see in a given year that when something new and interesting like this comes around its like falling in love with the process all over again. Its not meant to be a masterpiece, its not meant to sell toys at McDonalds, its simply meant to give us 90 minutes of escapism and capture our imagination. 5/5 stars" (filmgeekz)

"J.J. Abrams and Matt Reeves have created a classic that I guarantee years from now will be remembered as the quintessential monster movie from this decade. The style is such a brave new step into a realm that no one has really touched upon or succeeded in (George Romero's Diary of the Dead was utter crap compared to Cloverfield), that this is a defining moment in both monster movie history and Hollywood history. Once you finally experience, not watch, Cloverfield, you'll understand how incredible it truly is and you'll never forget finally seeing this soon-to-be classic. 9/10" (firstshowing.net)

"When the film ends, you feel like you've seen a movie that is worth forking over your hard earned cash for - and that is what has been lacking at the cinema for some time. It is a genuine action adventure; more heart-thumping than 'King Kong', more intense than 'The Day After Tomorrow', and simply more realistic than other disaster movies that have used New York as its stamping ground in the past." (thecelebritytruth.com)

"In fact, I'm going to say it one more time. Cloverfield is a great ride. It's exciting. It's enjoyable. It's got a great chase vibe to it. I really had a blast watching it. Check it out. Grade A" (filmschoolrejects.com)

"'Cloverfield' a thrill - and you must see it as large and loud as possible. Minor aftershocks can't crumble this mammoth, rock-'em-sock-'em movie, though. It's unapologetically B, what with its magnificent monster, melodramatic smooches, overly scripted comic relief and unsympathetic pecking order. Yet it also is a thrilling, exhausting tale of an incomprehensibly horrible beast lovingly crafted in H.P. Lovecraft's remorseless style. 3 1/2 stars" (galesburg.com)

"Well, the giant lizard genre has been stripped down and brought into the new millennium courtesy of idea man J.J. Abrams, screenwriter Drew Goddard and director Matt Reeves in the form of "Cloverfield" -- think "Godzilla Unplugged" -- with chillingly effective results." (hollywoodreporter.com)

"But even though "Cloverfield" isn't the Godzilla-for-the-YouTube-generation picture that everyone may have been hoping for, it's still a terrific movie, filled with spectacle and a surprising amount of humor, which makes up for its lack of terror or emotional impact." (sfgate.com)

"Do see Cloverfield; it's an outstanding take on the monster movie genre, kicking the shit out of the last Godzilla flick while also offering a poignant commentary on our modern, media obsessed, terrorist-phobic world. And the odd explosion and fighter jet attack don't hurt none, either." (atomicmpc.com)

Posted by dschnee at 7:27 AM

January 15, 2008

Early Reactions: 'Cloverfield'

"It's wonderful, it's frightening and it's truly a breath of fresh air. Serious props go out to director Matt Reeves and producer J.J. Abrams. Cloverfield ... you have finally won me over. Stay tuned to Cinematical for our official review later this week." -Erik Davis (cinematical.com)


CLOVERFIELD is IN 3 DAYs...

For more early reactions, keep watching:
metacritic.com
rottentomatoes.com

Dude.

I'm still trying to comprehend the film I just watched. It really is like no other monster movie you've ever seen. You know those warnings they give people before going on a rollercoaster (might not be safe for pregnant women, people who have motion sickness, etc ...) -- well, they should give the same warning before watching Cloverfield. It's not a film; it's sort of like an experience. And being able to watch this movie with a New York City crowd was pretty special. There was no random fanboy cheering at any point; frankly, I don't think people had time to cheer because once the film goes ... it goes ... and it goes ... and it will freak you the hell out.

My wife even liked this film, and she hates all things science fiction. She's more of a hardcore drama gal; people killing themselves, killing each other -- that sort of thing. So her liking this movie is huge. I won't go on much longer because I refuse to spoil it for you, but trust me when I say Cloverfield is worth the hype. You'll need to adjust to the shaky cam (won't take longer than 15 minutes, at least for us it didn't), it's a tad melodramatic (but it works because you care about the characters more), New Yorkers will have to suck it up a bit (Spring to 59th in heels?) and you'll need to realize that you won't be spoon-fed the usual Hollywood bullsh*t along the way. Picture you and your friends hanging out one night. Someone has a movie camera. Something attacks the city ... and you're off. That's it. That's the setup. Now strap yourself in, hold on tight and enjoy the ride.

P.S. Weinberg here! As the biggest horror geek on the Cinematical crew, I would like to (enthusiastically) agree with the comments and opinions of Mr. Davis and his lovely wife. This is one of the coolest monster movies I've ever seen. And I freaking LOVE monster movies.

Posted by dschnee at 9:19 PM

Cloverfield to Screen for ILM before Tippett Studio

So wait, why the hell is ILM getting a screening of Cloverfield tonight?

FACT: ILM did NOT work on Cloverfield.
TRUE: In fact, ILM did NOT have anything to do with Cloverfield.
FACT: Tippett Studio DID work on Cloverfield.
TRUE: In fact, Tippett Studio delivered the gosh dang MONSTER everyone has been trying to figure out!
TRUE: ILM is going to see Cloverfield before Tippett Studio.
FACT: This makes me sad.

OK, so I was just informed... (thank you Nathan)
UPDATED FACT: Skywalker Sound mixed the sound for Cloverfield.
So one could say that technically Lucas in fact, DID have something to do with Cloverfield.

But still, WTF?

I heard that Steven Spielberg had seen Cloverfield right... there after he called his friend George Lucas up on the telephone... and after 'raving' about it(ok not sure on the raving part but he liked it), Steven asked if George had seen it yet? George replies no!?! We have to get a screening of Cloverfield over here at ILM then! A phone call later, wam, bam, shizzam... the Paramount Pictures genie grants ILM with a screening tonight!

FACT: Tippett Studio will be having our Cloverfield Screening tomorrow (Thursday 01.17.08) night, one day after ILM who did NOT work on, nor having anything to do with the highly anticipated JJ Abrams viral marketed and produced U.S. monster flick "Cloverfield", yet one day earlier then the general public.
TRUE: I'm NOT upset by this, OK, I admit I'm a tiny bit jealous, but the fantastic part of all of this... is that Steven Spielberg thought enough of Cloverfield to tell George Lucas about it, and this in turn got George Lucas excited enough to want a Cloverfield screening of his own... sweet as.

Posted by dschnee at 8:28 AM

January 14, 2008

Cloverfield Headless Lady Liberty w/ Bits & News

Check out the headless Statue of Liberty replica currently erected on the Paramount Pictures Lot! - This along with a gang of the latest bits and news that is Cloverfield...

CLOVERFIELD is IN 4 DAYs...

:// When monsters attack! Best cinema beasts

:// The Mysterious Origins of Cloverfields Name

:// The rise of low-budget: Paramount spends $25m on 2008 tentpole

:// Cloverfield Predicted to be the Most Profitable Movie of 2008?!

:// On Set Interviews and Behind the Scenes Footage from CLOVERFIELD! Plus TV Spots!

:// Bringing Cloverfield to Life

:// Cloverfield Monster Revealed in Fan Art

:// Cloverfield: Monster update, first review, and NPR report

:// J.J's Viral 'Cloverfield' Diary

:// The Medium Is the Market (review)

:// JJ Abrams Cloverfield Interview

:// Matt Reeves Cloverfield Interview

:// CLOVERFIELD - The Beginning

:// The Accidental Title

Posted by dschnee at 8:05 AM

January 13, 2008

Spiderwick TV Spots!

care of TrailerAddict.com

Posted by dschnee at 7:54 AM

January 11, 2008

Spiderwick's New Release Date

is Valentine's Day! How so very romantic... 02/14/08

"Paramount Pictures and Nickelodeon Movies announced today that the release of the vfx-driven family fantasy flick The Spiderwick Chronicles has moved up a day to Thursday, February 14, 2008. Originally scheduled to debut on a Friday, the movie will instead take a Thursday bow in order to get a jump on 20th Century Fox's Jumper, a sci-fi thriller, about a time-traveling teenager." (awn.com)

Posted by dschnee at 7:43 AM

January 10, 2008

Cloverfield will take your breath away...

See Also:
Harry knows what CLOVERFIELD is!!!

Utterly Brilliant.

What is CLOVERFIELD?

For the past year or so, that's been the question that everyone has been asking. Well… they also wanted to know: What was that trailer? What's the name of this movie? Who are those actors? What is a SLUSHO? What does any of this mean?

Having seen the film, I can tell you – I have completely forgotten the marketing. I no longer care why the film is titled CLOVERFIELD, I don't think it has a secret meaning – other than the fact that the movie that the marketing would lead you to, if it will… will knock your cinema-going mind into the floor of the theater.

CLOVERFIELD is a bold genre-reinvention unlike anything we've ever seen before.

The basic premise that we know is there. The film is found footage, not an assembled film. The footage is recovered in Central Park. From trailers and ads you know that it probably starts at a party, something happens, and we think there is a giant monster. You're pretty sure there's a giant monster attacking New York City… specifically Manhattan.

Well, I've just come home from watching CLOVERFIELD. The security on me and my wife for seeing this movie was un-frickin-believable. I suppose some would have the temptation to snap a pic of the monster and send it out online to end, forever, the "mystery" – but folks… there's no mystery.

The movie is fucking brilliant. It's what we were told it was going to be. An intimate perspective on an impossibly grand scale human disaster beyond most human levels of comprehension.

What is the monster? How do you describe something that doesn't look like anything you've ever seen before? It's not a fucking upright walking whale. It doesn't look like any iteration of GODZILLA that we've ever seen. It is enormous. And even though I've seen it… I am hard-pressed to come up with a comparative creation. You know that big fucking thing in THE MIST? It isn't that. Is the creature a biped? I'm not sure, I think it might've been a four-legged beastie… it has a tail, it has teeth and freaky eyes like that horse that died in ANIMAL HOUSE. It's kinda of a grayish-yellowish-off-white looking thing. But more important than the creature is what this fucker does. He basically goes bug-nuts.

The creature isn't the groundbreaking thing about the film. It is, but it isn't.

You see, what has me so excited about this film is that this is the giant monster movie that isn't at all like any giant monster movie we've seen before… but is exactly that movie.

I guarantee you that as this movie takes place… all the shit that you've seen in Giant monster movies is happening. Somewhere a general is screaming about nuking New York…. Somewhere is a politician screaming that you can't nuke New York. Another General wants to know why our weapons are not affecting this thing. A PRESIDENT wants to know where it came from – and several thousand journalist are trying to figure all that out too.

But this film isn't about the scientist, the generals, the Presidents, the mayors or any of the big people. This time, the film is from the perspective of those people that live in those buildings that the monster is breaking through. This is about the people running in the street that scream, "GODZILLA!!!" and run. This is about trying to survive that insanity. Not just that, but to try and save one life.

Like SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, but instead of Nazis it's a giant monster.

This is a handheld camera movie – knowing this and knowing not to sit too close is probably a good thing… but having said that… you can't sit far enough from the screen to feel safe. As many of you people know, I am in a wheelchair – and while watching movies, I have my brakes on. There was one moment, so unexpected and so intense that I went 3 ft back.

What about the characters?

You learn everything you need about them in the first 20 minutes. Rob is going to Japan to a new job. He has a brother Jason and a best friend Hud who gets strapped with filming testimonials at his surprise party – but Hud has the hots for Marlena and got talked into it by Jason – who was told to do it by Lily, who loves him. Oh – and they're taping over a tape that Rob shot of the morning after he and Beth finally did it – after being friends forever. But now he has to go to Japan for his career and Beth shows up with some dick at his party because he didn't know how to talk with her after they had sex.

It's a fairly real situation that could happen to anyone. These are just regular good people in the rat race – and trying to have a good time. When the shit goes down.

I wasn't expecting to like any of the characters. That changes… a lot.

My favorite character? Probably Hud… our cameraman. He's not a professional photographer, though this "tape" tells an incredibly focused and direct story of epic sweep and filled with intimate reveals. But HUD is "the best friend". But if I could compare him to any character actor, I'd say he's like a reigned in Bill Paxton. He's not going around screaming obscenities… but the shit that comes out of his mouth cracks me up.

The story of this film is actually beautiful though. When the world goes to fuck, you instantly think about the person you love that you don't know is OK or not. That's this story. Beth left Rob's party before the shit went down. They had a fight. When it all goes to hell – Rob and his friends are just trying to get off the island, when a call comes… Beth is somewhere… she can't move, she's bleeding and she needs help. And oddly… 911 is busy.

This group of friends sets off through the biggest sort of hell you can imagine to save Beth. Characters die. Shit goes horribly horribly wrong – and it rules!

There's no score, there's no rules, there feels like there's no script and no movie. It feels found, but it is so huge that you can't ever really believe that… but handheld film just has never had a story of something this fantastical or huge happen. The movie is a landmark genre film. A true milestone in film.

It is all at once art, commercial and grotesquely gleefully gargantuan.

This frankly launches two giant film careers at once. As of this second, I will see and eagerly anticipate every film that J.J. Abrams produces. This sort of stepping back from a genre convention and reinvention is EXACTLY what needs to be done. It isn't simply going, "Oh, I can make a better Godzilla movie," but the audacity of saying I'm going to tell that story from one of the most loathed film approaches – the found footage – and simply make the most fucking amazing found tape ever. It won't just be what it is, but the characters and the story and the emotion and the scope and the journey that the tape takes us on. I can't wait to see what's next.

Then there's Matt Reeves, I don't know this guy. But I'll tell you what. You're gonna mark his name after this. He just came out with a film about as SUNDANCE as you could imagine. This is like an INDIE film – that you'd dream Spielberg would make. Remember the beard's WAR OF THE WORLDS? Now just imagine that, but with the disarming nature of handheld photography. Where if the camera got dropped and suddenly you're looking the other way… you don't see the seams. There's no backlot, this isn't two blocks at a time… it's fucking Manhattan being torn to fuck and they're just smack dab in midtown and midtown has giant lice monsters and some monstrously huge creature… and then there's the fucking military… and they are on target, and buildings get hit, shit is going everywhere – and the man directing this apocalypse is Matt Reeves and the planning to just deliver what this spectacle is – is daunting. But sir, BRAVO!

Folks – CLOVERFIELD is worth the obsession, worth the months I've had to put up with fans wondering what the hell it was – worth having to deal with reporters asking me what it was – and I didn't know either. This is a towering movie. A complete reinvention of the disaster movie, the giant monster movie and even the love story. I absolutely love this film and the only thought I had when it was over was how I wanted to watch it 5 more times today.

I want to see the details, I want to watch this film once I'm so familiar with it that I can appreciate the complexity of the frames and the shots. To try to pull the film apart – but I don't think you'll be able to. It is just that fucking good! And the flaming hobos... holy fuck man... flaming hobos, but not with shotguns!

Good Bad Robot, Good Bad Robot!!!

-Harry @ aintitcoolnews.com

Posted by dschnee at 11:15 PM

January 8, 2008

Exclusive: 30 Second Cloverfield TV Spot

This new TV Spot teases viewers with a glimpse into the dark subway sequence, the shots with the rats running the other way... yeah, some freaky shit goes down in the subway! I worked on some shots down there, trust me.

A friend at work was in New York over the holidays, and he said there is a ton of Cloverfield stuph up everywhere! billboards, buses, on the streets, subways, even in the bathrooms over the urinals, another cloverfield Ad! Maybe all this Marketing is the real Monster...

If anyone wants to share some pictures of Cloverfield marketing that they see around your area, streets, town, city, toliet, etc. Send them to me here and I'll post em up on the blog!

Posted by dschnee at 10:20 PM

Cover Story: 'The Spiderwick Chronicles'

Iain Blair (postmagazine)
SAN FRANCISCO - Based on the best-selling series of books, the fantasy adventure The Spiderwick Chronicles tells the story of the three Grace children — twins Jared and Simon (both played by Freddie Highmore), their fencing-enthusiast sister Mallory (Sarah Bolger), and their recently divorced mother Helen (Mary-Louise Parker) who move into their great-aunt's abandoned home, the ancient and somewhat dilapidated Spiderwick Estate.

Directed by Mark Waters, shot by Caleb Deschanel, ASC, and edited by Michael Kahn, ACE, the film is a tour-de-force of visual effects by San Francisco's Industrial Light & Magic (www.ilm.com) and Berkeley, CA's Tippett Studio (www.tippett.com), who both used cutting edge post techniques to bring the various creatures to life.

Visual effects pioneer Phil Tippett was creature supervisor and oversaw the design and development of the film's fully-digital fantasy characters Thimbletack, Hogsqueal, the Troll, Red Cap and the army of goblins and bull goblins. On set during the entirety of principal photography, Tippett worked in conjunction with the team from ILM to make certain props and materials were available to shoot the scenes with the actors so the digital characters could be successfully integrated by the visual effects companies during post production.

The team at Tippett Studio — including visual effects supervisor Joel Friesch, computer graphics supervisor Russell Darling and animation supervisor Todd Labonte — was responsible for the final animation of Hogsqueal, the Troll, Red Cap, the goblins and bull goblins, and worked closely in tandem with the ILM crew for scenes in which the two companies shared characters.

At ILM, visual effects supervisor Tim Alexander, an award-winning effects expert whose credits include the last two Harry Potter films, guided the development, animation and integration of the film's ogre Mulgarath and the ill-tempered Bogart. Alexander's team also created a variety of fantastical supporting characters, such as the majestic Griffin, a rapacious Raven, the Snake, Sylph and a host of magical and elaborately-detailed Sprites. Alexander also oversaw the effects artistry involved in creating the seamless interaction between lead twin characters Jared and Simon. Other key ILM team members collaborating on the visual effects included animation supervisor Tim Harrington and visual effects art director Christian Alzmann.

According to Waters, whose credits include Freaky Friday and Mean Girls, dealing with a film full of visual effects was "quite an education. Even getting the basic script into shape was a never-ending process. I started working on this back in 2004, and kept reworking it and overhauling all the effects shots for the creatures right up until we began shooting in September 2006. It was a bit like a moveable feast, in that we kept saying, "we can come up with a better version of this scene or this effect — let's not limit ourselves by the fact that we're shooting in just a few weeks. Let's change it now and come up with a great new concept."

Waters and his team ended up doing a lot of previs in order to get a handle on some of the more complex effects scenes. "We'd take an entire effects sequence, like the 'Journey to the Glade,' and as we were shooting other sequences we'd be working at night and weekends doing previs of some of the most difficult visual effects, and that happened all the way during production," he says. "And then we purposely wrapped early in December in Montreal, where we did the bulk of the shoot, and then shot an extra three weeks later in the spring in LA, as we wanted to really study the footage and see what we had, and then come up with new ideas to make all the effects sequences that much grander." Ultimately, says Waters, the post team spent close to nine months, "just man-handling all the material and figuring it all out."

TIPPETT

Over at Tippett, Joel Friesch reports that the studio did a little over 300 effects shots, with a team of 100 artists working for over a year. "I think that from design to end shot, it took about 18 months, and we used Maya as our main workhorse for animation," he says. "We modeled in Maya and Mudbox, then used a 3D paint package and Photoshop'd certain paint in, mostly with Maya and RenderMan. Then we used Shake to do all our compositing."

Although the companies split most of the effects work, Tippett and ILM also collaborated closely on some 30 shots. "Initially the plan was to split the whole show in such a way that Tippett would supervise all the animation and we'd supervise the visual effects work," explains Alexander. "But it didn't turn out that way. In the end, we just split the work so both houses worked independently, and then on the crossover shots we worked very closely together."

"Tim Alexander and I are old friends, and we go way back on other shows, so that made it very easy," notes Friesch. "We could just call each other and say, "I need this or that, or what are you doing about this?" The biggest problem was getting our schedules to line up, so that when their part was done, we could get it right away, and vice-versa. And technically, it all meshed very easily."

The only hiccup in the process came early on. "We had some color correction issues right at the start," he adds. "Every house does their color correction and the handling and color of plates and so on a little differently. So we'd done some tests real early in preproduction, and probably the first thing we did was meet with ILM and get all our guys together and make sure we were all seeing the colors the same way and doing color correction the same way."

For Tippett, the hardest effects shots were of the goblins, when they run out of the woods to surround the house. "It was too big to just hand animate, but not big enough for a crowd program like Massive to take on," recalls Friesch. "So in the end we did some hand animation cycles and used a particle-based system to move particles around the house, which were then replaced by the animation cycles we'd done of running goblins, and that worked really well."

That sequence is "a perfect example" of Tippett and ILM collaborating closely, he adds. "That whole set is a combination of plates, and the house is kind of a 'Frankenplate' of different shots that ILM put together for us so that we could then put in the goblins."

Friesch, whose credits include Enchanted and Charlotte's Web, says that creating the Spiderwick creatures and monsters, "was so much fun, and a relief after doing so many 'fur' shows and furry creatures. And it was also a great test for us, as we had to refine a lot of our existing techniques to create sequences such as the goblins attacking the house, and we're all very pleased with the results."

"This was even bigger than Potter 4, which had about 250 shots, so it was quite a stretch for me," sums up Alexander. "It was a real challenge, but very exciting."

ILM

Over at ILM, their part of the puzzle included creating some 370 visual effects shots for a total screen time of 30 minutes. "We had 215 artists working for 15 months to create the shots, and out of the 357, about 230 were 3D shots," reports Alexander. "There were over 203 character animation shots, but then there were also all of the Sylph shots that weren't necessarily animated but simulated. On top of that, there were also all the digital matte paintings and so on."

For Alexander, the biggest challenges were creating the sequences with the Sylphs and the Griffin. "The Sylphs had a look that was very hard to define," he says. "We had shots with five of them in it, and shots with thousands, and trying to get a pack of a thousand dots to look like anything proved to be very tough." (They look essentially like dandelion seeds that you might come across drifting on the wind, but with tiny faces on them.)

To deal with this, the team used various scale models. "For close-ups, we had a full-rez model so we could see their face, and then each hair was modeled and put on the model and sim'ed," he reports. "Then we'd go down from there all the way to the point where we were just projecting a 2D texture onto the particles, depending on what scale they were to camera. But even the middle rez Sylph had the ability to be either simulated or hand-animated. And on top of that, we simulated the hairs on their head as well."

The Griffin was modeled as a half-bird, half-lion creature, "so there's that underlying geometry," explains Alexander. "Then we have these two, very stubby wings, and then we placed individual feathers, all modeled, for his wings. So there are layers and layers of feathers that were modeled and then hand-placed, and those get simulated and they collide with each other, so that the feathers don't penetrate each other. Then the rest of the body feathers and the feathers on its head were procedurally generated by putting hair splines on the Griffin, and then adding feathers to the splines."

Other work included creating digital environments for many scenes and all the doubling shots for Highmore. All animation was done in Autodesk Maya, which was then imported into ILM's in-house Zeno, where the team did lighting and simulation work. "All of our cloth sims were done there," he adds, "and we also have our Fez system that lives both in Maya and Zeno, so an animator can choose which package he wants to use." All compositing was done in Apple Shake. "We do have an in-house package as well," says Alexander, "but we're mainly a Shake house."

As part of their pipeline, ILM also relied heavily on CineSync. "It's what we used for doing all the reviews with the director," reports Alexander. "We used to do transmissions, which were basically run over either satellites or T1 lines that you had to privately rent. It's expensive and takes a lot of equipment. But then Rising Sun in Australia came up with CineSync, and all you need is two computers. So to do all our reviews with Mark, who was down in LA, we had a Mac set up at each end, and at the start of the day we'd trade the files that we wanted to view with them, as for the system to work you need to have the files at both ends. You don't actually transmit any image data while you're doing the session. All you transmit is sync information. So then we could open up a movie file at our end, and it also opens up at their end, and if we hit 'Play' they see it play, and if we hit 'Stop' it stops on the same frame at their end. We could also draw on the frame and they could see it, and vice-versa." For video chatting, the teams used i-Chat, "so we could see the director on one screen, and on the other we'd have the movie file," he adds. "It worked great."

Posted by dschnee at 6:59 AM

January 7, 2008

South of the Border

So after a couple of weeks on holiday break, I'm back into the vfx grind, and am slated for duty on Disney's South of the Border. I haven't actually really started working on it yet, I'm finishing up some EPK's (Electronic Press Kit) breakdowns from Cloverfield for the DVD, VES, and Siggraph submissions this year, but I will be going South of the Border later this week... so what is it?

"While on vacation in Mexico, Chloe, a ritzy Beverly Hills chihuahua (Drew Barrymore), finds herself lost and in need of assistance in order to get back home."

Tippett Studio will bring the animal sidekicks to life. Chico the iguana and Manuel the rat. They will also create several of the fully CG dogs in many of the film's action sequences. Blair Clark and Frank Petzold will be Tippett's in-house VFX Supervisors.

Manuel: A fast-talking pack rat. Manuel is a con artist who works in partnership with Chico, an iguana. a slippery trickster who tries to work every angle, Manuel offers to help a stranded Chloe - in exchange for her diamond collar. A rat who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing, Manuel stays on Chloe's path, but soon realizes he has too many pangs of guilt to be a true grifter.

Chico: An iguana. Chico is Manuel's partner; he pretends to be eating Manuel, so that passersby will perceive Manuel as a victim, not as a predator in disguise. Chico tends to let Manuel do the talking, but after they make off with Chloe's diamond necklace, Chico serves as Manuel's conscience, pointing out the invisible pangs of guilt from which they both suffer.

I've seen these critters were doing on the show, the rat is voiced by Cheech Marin, and the other is a pretty slick looking Iguana voiced by ??? can't recall at the moment. But the critters are looking sweet.

The first teaser trailer will be attached The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian.

Directed by Raja Gosnell (Scooby-Doo, Big Mamma's House, Home Alone 3) yeahhh! what?!

Release Date: August 8th, 2008

See Also:
South of the Border / IMDB
South of the Border / Wiki
South of the Border / HWR Article
And for way more information then you'd ever want to read about:
South of the Border / stb.meyemind.com

(Barrymore yipping at Disney's 'South')
Drew Barrymore has been cast as the lead voice in "South of the Border," a Walt Disney Pictures comedy being directed by Raja Gosnell.

Also lending their voices to the live-action movie in which the animals talk is a who's who of Latino actors including Andy Garcia, Salma Hayek, George Lopez, Cheech Marin, Paul Rodriguez, Placido Domingo, Edward James Olmos and Eddie "Piolin" Sotelo.

"South" chronicles the adventures of a pampered Beverly Hills chihuahua named Chloe (Barrymore) accustomed to riding in a purse. While on vacation in Mexico, she gets lost and must rely on her friends to help her get back home.

Garcia is playing a German shepherd who was kicked off the police force because he lost his sense of smell and has now given up on life. Hayek is Chloe's spirit guide who helps her find her true heritage.

Lopez is Papi, a macho romantic Chihuahua who will do anything for the love of Chloe. Piper Perabo was previously cast as the Chloe's human owner searching for her lost pet.

David Hoberman, Todd Lieberman and John Jacobs are producing the film, which was written by Jeff Bushell and Analisa Labianco.

LouAnne Brickhouse and Todd Murata oversee for the studio.

Barrymore, whose recent credits include "Lucky You" and "Music and Lyrics," has done voice work in the past, having been heard in last year's "Curious George" as well as on TV's "Family Guy." She is repped by CAA.

Posted by dschnee at 7:04 AM

January 2, 2008

Exclusive Cloverfield Clip for 2008

from Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve.

Posted by dschnee at 2:13 AM