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It's obvious that the current situation is fragile and the media is changing, but what's the solution?

To recap:

• Demand for online is on the rise and for print is declining
• People don't want to pay
• People don't want to see ads

So how can the newspapers provide content and pay for the bills?

It's easy to dismiss the media as being obsolete and that you can find the information for free anyway, but let's consider something: almost all bloggers and "new media" hipsters get the info from the old media anyway. There's precious little actual content created by bloggers and enthusiasts and it's very difficult to do so.

Case in point, I researched for weeks on info about the software used in the making of Avatar and some technical details. I got the info by finding the companies involved via IMDB, talking to people involved and basically scrapping bits and pieces into a coherent article. Then Cinefex magazine came out with so much more information, all my work looks ridiculous.

The last SF movie claiming to be made with totally analog eFX was Bladerunner. Now *that* was film making.

Comparisons with Star Wars aren't helpful. King Kong has more fur. Rendering fur is hard work.

There is no easy way to compare that. It's highly subjective, even when using the most basic comparison: number of shots. I believe Ep. 3 had 2400+ shots in the final film, although about 2800+ were rendered (about 400 were edited out). Don't remember how many shots King Kong has, though I think it's at least 1,500 though less than 2400. Then you get to the subjective part. for both films how many shots have major 3D work, how many it's mostly compositing, roto and paint, how many are miniature mostly, how many are mixed more or less equaly, how many minutes of digital character animation, etc. So when discussing those issues it's usuallyt a good idea to get as specific as possible and even then you can argue both sides.

It's probably better to wait for the Cinefex issue in January.

http://www.cinefex.com/magazine/next/next.html

This looks to be a good survey of visual F/X oriented films currently in production or pre-production: Upcoming Effects Films
"Jarhead" is based on a sniper's experience in the Gulf War, and a change of pace for ILM.

Did someone mention orbiting Winnebagos? Keep firing assholes!!!

(Apologies to those who've never seen SpaceBalls.)

You should be looking at Siggraph which has a good history section, unfortunatly it's buried somewhere on that site. If you read the first 10 years of Cinefex magazine you'll find what you're looking for.

Issue 89 has over 40 pages of techy-goodies on the making of FOTR. Most of the article is set up as scene by scene breakdown paired with the technical aspects faced on the show (VFX and SFX). Also has a nice cover of Sam facing the Balrog which looks like it came from the Special Edition DVD.

Issue 92 has Gollum on the cover (possibly in the Dead Marshes?) and is an ever bigger treasure trove of detail topping 60+ pages (excluding those lovely full page ads) and is organized in much of the same way.

Both issues have really cool photos of the "bigatures" like Argonath, Mount Doom, the flooded stage of Isengard, stage for the Black Gates of Morder, Ent maquettes and the like.

1..2...3...hmmm....only 9 more months for ROTK!

Am I the only one who feels SFX have ridden the rise of computing (I hesitate to associate 1980-90s SGI hardware w/ intel, but . . .) to a point where the maket is so saturated and competetive that effects have become commodotized. Maybe this is "Score -1 Obvious," but it seems like ever since optical printers have been obsolete, the quality isn't the same as it once was.

Oh, and if you haven't seen heavenly creatures, I highly reccomend it. Very good effects for 1994 and in general a surreal fantastical "true story" based on a 50s murder case.

DEFINITELY start reading the magazines associated with the business!!

Cinefex is a terrific place to start. it's solid jargon, and talks tech easily. that's good, cos you discover most other publications just advertise a lot, and tell very little.

Our pals at google do have a nice listing of other trade publications you can look up.

The latest Cinefex has an article (dead tree only) on Episode 2, and it talks about the fact that Lucas shot the movie entirely with digital cameras. The SFX folks had some troubles because they're used to using high-speed cameras for explosions and model filming. The digital video camera that they used was fixed at 24fps. (I don't think they said what resolution it recorded at though.) My guess is that the SFX folks would love a variable speed, high-rez digital video camera.

Cinefex magazine covers all this stuff in tremendous detail.

The Lord of the Rings issue is pretty impressive.

And it also had the publisher's note about the magazine's redesign. Bla bla bla bla bla. It was a 56 page article on LOTR with the rest of the articles amounting to 34 pages, so it was almost a single-article issue.

Anyway it was a rockin' article. Buy the issue here.

Soon after Lord of the Rings was released, Cinefx (a journal dedicated to special effects in movies) had an issue entirely devoted to LOTR. What really suprised me, was how much of the movie was made conventionally. A large number of the landscape shots (Rivendell, Orthanc, etc.) were miniature sets that were created. As I recall, some of these miniatures were so large that they couldn't fit them inside a studio and required all sorts of special equipment to actually get the shots Jackson wanted (the camera panning up Orthanc was one such shot, IIRC).

As I was watching Attack of the Clones, I was struck with how fake everything looked. All of the setting seemed unreal (particularly the droid factory planet). I would imagine they were all created digitally. Contrast that with the beautiful and (IMO) realistic settings in LOTR and you can see that CGI effects, while nice, still aren't there entirely, yet.

Lack of surprises!!! Well that depends if you look out for spoilers on the Internet. I tried to stay spoler free as much as possible, and I did my "mom" test, I asked her and she didn't know anything except for what she see on the trailers. Some people have a "fast food" instant gratification mentality but there are many others wanting to be surprised. Your other points are subjective they are valid opinions, but they are not certainties. I mean have you ever played with a little brother or nephew? They talk like that aand I don't see how just saying Yipee will later prevent someone from growing up and doing stuff. As I said a valid opinion but there are others. Just let Lucas make his movie.

yeah like the previous poster said, first check the facts before making such bold statements.

Episode 1 was the biggest project the ILM model dept. has undertaken. There are tons of models in there, from battle tanks, spaceships, set pieces, practiacl elements and interiors. Just check out the Beginning documentary in the DVD or better yet the best source of info, Cinefex issue 78:

Too bad the official site is kinda hosed, you could check some there.

Well for one thing PDI uses almost propietary in house built software. They did use Maya for modeling some of the stuff and certain fire FXbut as far as rendering, animating, etc. they used their own stuff. CGW did a report on Shrek. What they have done is that they have po0rted most of their software to Linux. Daniel Wexler, the guru behind their renderer has posted very interesting statistics on their rendering and Linux use. Last years SIGGRAPH had a Sketches section devoted to it and this year there will be a course. VES 2001 also had a talk about some of their technology used. And the current issue of Cinefex, THE magazine of the FX industry covers Final Fantasy in detail:

So it isn't exactly like no info was out before.

I would say that the article in Cinefex pretty well debunks most of the symbolism that is being attributed to the movie. The special effects crew involved in the film recount how many of the "symbols" planted in the movie were accidents or experimentation. That Kubrick would not be involved in the creation of most of the effects elements except in a "I like it" or "I hate it" final approval.

For those interested in movie special effects this article is a goldmine. They invented techniques never before seen on the big screen for this movie. Computer displays and wireframe models before you could just whip it out in a few hours on a graphical workstation. Thousands of hours spend using a photographic animation stand to create the classic computer monitors on the Discovery. A technical description of how they created the stargate light show at the end of the film using a variation of time lapse photography.

Obviously 2001 has alagorical elements built into it, but lets not go overboard. Sometime a cigar is just a cigar people.

I'm just a movie/FX geek and not actually in the industry, but I'm particularly fond of Cinefex magazine (20th anniversary issue on sale now!) and the VFX Pro news site. And, yes, Cinefex is expensive for a magazine, but sooo worth it.

-j

oops- Name of the magazine is Cinefex- their website is www.cinefex.com

It's the best magazine out there on the subject. Cinefex. They finally have a website too.

i think they might have derived it from cinema...

normally i wouldnt pick on a spelling error but when you are citing a source...i mean come on...

matthew