LOTR Special Effects at OSCON

gnat writes "The IT Director for Weta Digital, Peter Jackson's company doing the digital effects for the Lord of the Rings movies, is keynoting at the O'Reilly Open Source Convention. They use a ton of Linux and Perl." FWIW I believe Hemos and I are speaking too, but I'm much more interested in seeing this LotR thing.

Comments

Oh God, we're doomed

[Saint Aardvark]

You just wait...CmdrTaco and Hemos will persuade Peter Jackson to put them into the DVD Director's "SlashCut" as orcs that quickly get killed, pasted in digitally.

I'm taking applications now to form The Campaign for Real Movie History. Who's in?

Translation for non geeks

[sllort]

FWIW I believe Hemos and I are speaking too

FWIW is an abbrevation for "For What It's Worth" - just a little code-talk word that geeks use to communicate with each other. I looked it up on AOL. Hope this helps out all the normal people reading.

Re:Translation for non geeks

[Grape Shasta]

I didn't know that one, so I guessed and ended up reading it Elmer Fudd style: "Fwom what I Wemember" :) Cwazy Taco...

Perl?

[Fastball]

use LOTR::Ringwraith

Get that module to CPAN stat! I want it! ;)

I'm glad Taco & Hemos have made up...

[schwatoo]

But I didn't realise they weren't speaking.

Gandolf did look a bit like RMS

[JeffGB]

I always thought that Gandolf looked a bit like Richard Stallman.
Maybe it was just the beard.
Lord of the Token Ring

Re:Gandolf did look a bit like RMS

[Speare]

I always thought that Gandolf looked a bit like Richard Stallman.

GNU/Gandolf, please.

Oh, the horrors. That one little misspelling, and now all of Tolkien's works will be forgotten. (It's Gandalf.)

Movie magic

[ObviousGuy]

The zenith of movie special effects was reached several years ago by Dan Piponi and his crew. What's happened in the interim? Well, Titanic won the Oscar for special effects. That's got to tell you something about the sad state of affairs in movies today.

Re:Movie magic

[donglekey]

That was certainly not the Zenith of visual effects.

John Gaeta was the visual effects supervisor for the Matrix, if that is what you are talking about. So it was his crew, the artists and the developers. Dan Piponi is head of R&D. It is a simbiotic relationship, don't pretend that one doesn't need the other.

Manex won the Oscar for visual effects for the Matrix.

That wasn't the same year (Obviously) as Titanic. Titanic was before that, not in the inerim. In fact Manex won back to back Oscars for What Dreams May Come and The Matrix, so Titanic was actually in 1997.

Star Wars Episode I should have won for visual effects, but it didn't because the movie was shit.

And finally, it tells us nothing about the sad state of affais in movies today.

O'Reilly conferences are laughably expensive

[Sanity]

$1024 for a conference pass - that is absolutely rediculous given than many of the people who make Open Source happen don't have the backing of a company that could cover this cost.

Even the 65% off that students get leaves the student with a hefty price-tag, I know that during my student days every pound (went to uni in the UK) was valuable and there was no way I could justify spending over $300 to get into a conference just for the privilige of speaking to others who have also had to fork out (I find the people I meet at conferences are often much more interesting than those speaking at them).

Re:O'Reilly conferences are laughably expensive

[ObviousGuy]

The problem is that there aren't enough companies who are interested in Open Source who are also interested in backing a conference like this. If you ever get the chance to go to a conference like Software Development, you'll get to see a very well run conference with sponsors with deep pockets. It all leads to lower fees all around.

But that's the price you pay when you base your business around Free Software.

Re:O'Reilly conferences are laughably expensive

[spaten-optimator]

Well, it was either charge $1024, or $512. Like true computer geeks, they can only think in powers of two. Methinks the organizers have read Snow Crash one too many times.

Check this out.

[dingo]

I came across this the other day and thought it was really funny, make sure you read it in order though.

Perl? What for?

[prockcore]

I wonder what they were using Perl for.

Then it hit me, they must be using this to replay dvd versions of production tests under linux :)

Re:Linux and PERL?

[PhilHibbs]

Why should it be cheaper? They spent about as much on it as three movies, it's over 3 hours long, and it's not as if the theaters are easier to clean up after. And (nearly) everyone went in knowing the plot, it's holes, shortcomings, and excessive rambling.

High end Linux use?

[rgriff59]

They use a ton of Linux and Perl.

Is this the same linux that isn't worth a Quicktime player? I thought that was just for those bottom-feeding free-as-in-beer types who never spend any money. Please pardon my seething sarcasm. Maybe more coffee will help. Sigh.

Re:LotR Graphics

[Sabalon]

From what I remember, they were used to render the ocean and water.

Hemos & Cmdrtaco on special effects

[heroine]

Somehow the image of the handheld device and consumer electronics celebrities lecturing on workstations and computation farms doesn't seem to fit.

A ton of Linux and Perl?

[sharkey]

They measure them by weight? I always thought they were measured by lines of code.