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Pushing the Envelope For Matrix Reloaded SFX
BenTheDewpendent writes "I just read Steve Silberman's article on the Matrix Reloaded over at wired. I was only slightly anxious to see it previous to reading the article but what they are able to do technicaly now will put bullet time to shame."
I disagree, it will put nothing to shame.
Do we shame Star Wars, of course not, we put it on a pedestal as an acheivement for it's time, same applies here, just because it's gonna be better dosen't mean it's gonna put anything to shame.
p.s. The icon for the matrix is lame.
Posting useless rant since 2003.
... I naturally assumed that the movie would be chock full of rockin' sex scenes.
Ah well. I was thinking "18A", not "14A". I'm depressed now.
Is it just me or did the graphics on this game seem dated and bad... Not what I had expected from this group I hope the movie isn't as disappointing.
A few months back Newsweek did a cover story on the Matrix movies.
read it here
So I'm totally pumped to see what they do now.
After watching all the gay movies that copied the Matrix, i'm ready to see em innovate some more.
Hell, just maybe it will be so cool and complex it won't be on the next GAP commercials before December.
I got nothin'.
It's the big intrusive flash animation at wired.com that puts all other pop-up ads to shame.
there is no troll.
...hey, it worked!
The wise follow a damned path, for to know is to be forsaken.
They did the matrix it with so little cash flow compared to what they have this time around. So whose to say that it can't be great again, take another step and but another standard in cinematography. I loved Matrix, it was one fo the few films that kept me really intranced with the movie through all of it. I really hope that Reloaded will do the same, if not i'll be sad
You see, for the last 4 years, I've had to eat everything with a knife and fork.
"There is no spoon" indeed. Bleh. Have you ever tried to eat Grape Nuts with a knife and fork? Or even better, chopsticks???
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
If there is a Bullet-time shower scene starring Carrie Anne Moss's boobs then this would be the greatest movie ever. Lets seem ILM do that.
"I am a kernel in the linux army"
it's like cool and stuff...
They're going to have to do better than a lame plot and cheese-bag special effects to reach today's sophisticated viewing public, I'll tell you that much for sure!
Read the article, or any number of other articles about the sequels - the Matrix was MEANT to be a trilogy. They aren't stretching the original story, they're telling more of it.
In bullet time, the actors were the only thing that were real. The entire set was CG.
Methinks you are talking out of your ass.
ZFS: because love is never having to say fsck
This time, it takes half an hour for neo to finish saying "whoa".
Considering the "real" agent smith's body woul have to be able to withstand all of the forces involved from car hopping, maybe that's exactly what such a creature would look like?
So, you're basing your opinion of the movie's effects on a 45-second trailer that came out almost a year ago?
:)
Mmmkay.
But this time they've resorted to the Lucas path of "Let's just DO IT ALL IN 3D!"
Did you even RTFA? The stuff they're describing(and have pulled off, it seems)is a physical impossibility to be done with live actors and equipment.
How would you suggest they do it? Sock puppets? Peeps leftover from last Easter?
Just wait and actually watch the movie before you lambaste it
Methinks that's exactly what I'm talking about. The things we focus on the most, the "people" stayed real. The rigs were real. A few backdrops being faked arent as noticeable, but the new trailer shows all these 3d "people", that don't move "quite" right. Mister plastic-man jumping from car to car is a great example, look at it. It's all hokey looking.
I'm Rick James with mod points biatch!
yes, but you are forgetting the wonders of sporks
The full story is here: http://www.arenafootball.com/around_the_afl/afl_he adlines/352498.html
"the Matrix raised the bar for action films by introducing new levels of realism into stunt work"
Somebody hasn't seen enough Jackie Chan movies from the seventies and 80s.
The original Drunken Master. Police Story, SuperCop.
Actually *doing* the stunts is way more realistic that looking like you're doing it.
Not sure what this is about...topless women in leather pants. (SFW)
What's cooler than a Toyota Matrix, all decked out in racing stickers?
Oh yeah, baby...Matrix, the board game
How about the Matrix folding bike? Before or after
The Vic-20 fans out there might appreciate a look at the Matrix game for that platform.
Flashback to math class! Matrix multiplication!
So you see, taco, you're only limited by your imagination. Of course, that could be like saying your writing is limited by your spelling and grammar but still...maybe someone can help you come up with something better.
j
I am reminded of why I enjoyed the original Matrix so much, why I saw it three times in its opening week.
I am the only real programmer/computer-nerd/technophile in my circle of friends. The rest live primarily in the realms of literature, audio engineering/theory, and studio art. This fact is only important, because I remember them chiding me about the somewhat cliche plot and often hammy acting in the original Matrix. I couldn't exactly explain to them why I found the movie so thoroughly enjoyable. I didn't claim it to be a masterpiece, but I couldn't make them understand why I could and can still watch the movie so many times and still find it so entertaining.
If you read the article, you instantly feel the passion for innovation, Gaeta's and the Wachowskis' hunger to create new and beautiful cinematographic standards. And I think I can finally explain that to my snobby friends.
Sure, the story is a little trite. The acting, while strong in many places, has some definite flaws. But anyone who has a similar desire to understand complex systems and improve upon them, sees these hopes in the original Matrix. They are just a bunch of skilled and creative geeks trying to innovate new and beautiful tools. And as I'm sure many slashdotters understand, that fact makes me feel all warm and cozy inside.
Source: Warner Bros. Pictures thinks the Arena Football League and its upcoming film "The Matrix Reloaded" are a perfect match.
The studio has partnered with NBC Sports to show the trailer for the "Matrix" sequel for the first time on broadcast television during NBC's Arena Football League coverage April 13. The 2-1/2-minute trailer will air at 3 p.m. EDT across all of NBC's regional games. The film opens May 15.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Hmmm, how can something be overrated? just because you don't like it it's automatically overrated? excuse me, you are the oracle of all movie opinions.
There are MANY people who think that the Star Wars trilogy is a great set of movies, hence it is not overrated, it's rated properly, overrated would be something that one person thinks being thrown out of proportion. This is the majority opinion, big difference, hence not overrated.
Posting useless rant since 2003.
Wow. I'm thinking the Wachowskis missed a incredibly opportunity here. Imagine seeing "There is no spork." on thousands of nerd-sites and in thousands of signatures. Ahhhh. It would have been priceless.
No story sullied the first one, so who would notice?
Give the people what they want!
Talented Keanu Reeves (grimacing): I am stuffed inside a coffee shop philosopher's febrile ramblings.
Talented Wachowski #1: Excellent! That's a wrap!
Talented Wachowski #2: What he said.
Laurence Fishburne (as Samuel L. Jackson): I fell down the stairs today. There was one survivor.
Keep your packets off my GNU/Girlfriend!
They developed a ton of cool stuff that AGAIN is going to be ripped off by every damned sf-movie, commercial, and friggin Shrek II. Therefore they decided to do both films at once and release them this year. Then they don't have to work so hard to create even better effects in another 4 years from now.
Do really dense people warp space more than others?
See if I can precis here, for you:
A splinter faction ("ESC") of renegade uber-compositors and animators, originating at Mass.Illusion (founded by Douglas Trumball), led by some guy with the superhero name of Gaeta, has created the first true photogrammetric virtual cinematography technique, using gobs and gobs of technology and expertise. This technology has been put to good use in the new Matrix movies; the team works at a decommissioned 250,000-square-foot hangar in Alameda. Up to 500 artists have been hired.
Here's an example of what these people are like:
How deep did the rabbit hole go? A cast of each actor's head was sent to a company called Arius 3D, makers of ultrahigh-resolution scanners employed in 1999 to archive the works of Michelangelo. The Arius scanner is accurate down to 25 microns - the diameter of a mold spore. To get the clothing simulations just right, ESC sent swatches of Reeves' black cassock and Weaving's jacket to a company called Surface Optics, which builds devices to measure a property of light called the bidirectional reflectance distribution function. Surface Optics happened to have one machine on hand scheduled to ship to Lockheed Martin a month later, where it was to be assigned to its usual task: evaluating the reflectivity of paint on stealth bombers.
Wow. That is... just... nuts. There's other good examples, like the mock highway they built, or the world's biggest motion-capture dojo.
It's definitely worth reading if you haven't. Particularly interesting are the bits where Gaeta talks about the in-joke he shares with the Wachowskis regarding the potential subversive uses, particularly for the military.. who have already directed DARPA funds towards such and end. (And before you yell about innefectual gov't spending, I'll remind the reader that DARPA gets shit done.) Even the possibility that this work they've done opens the door that much wider for nightmarish Orwellian realities. Fate, it seems, is not without a sense of irony.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
so, by making movies about it, we are slowly bringing the possibility of something like the matrix closer to reality!
would anyone on /. object to "Matrix" prisons for criminals? what about for the severely physically disabled? just for research?
"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." - Rahm Emanuel
from the article:
In the thick of it, Neo is dancing, chucking black-tied bodies skyward, pivoting around the signpost, and using shoulders as stepping-stones over the raging river of whup-ass.
If "raging river of whup-ass" isn't on a t-shirt at ThinkGeek yet, it damn well should be.
"Forget the can, visit the source - swim my raging river of whup-ass".
Seriously. Who is a good actor?
Mel Gibson? Vin Diesel?
Arnold Shwartzenegger?
Clint Eastwood?
Jack Nicholson?
Val Kilmer?
Or the 'mob guys': Pacino, Deniro, Pesci
Tell me that any of these brilliant actors dont just play every character with the exact same intonations and mannerisms.
Hollywood acting is just reading lines and looking pretty. Everything else is post production.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
The in the article above was valid when the story was first postedm, but is no longer. The story is now at http://www.statesman.com/metrostate/content/auto/e paper/editions/monday/metro_state_2.html.
apparently those weren't her boobies, everything apart from her face was CGI.
for a second I thought I reading an AICN thread. C'mon folks. Its just a movie. No one's forcing you to watch it. If you get put off but the CG, leave it be. Stay home. Please don't start "organic web-shooters robbed me of my childhood" syndrome.
This trilogy is a unique movie concept that set a precedance on how movies are made. What more can the Wacho bros do?
Watch the movie if you want and then pass judgement. Otherwise, leave it be.
Good job, too, on the latter count. The PR guy told us that the game has some *major* spoilers for Reloaded, and he was kind of pissed off at having had to see the footage to do his job! Thankfully he didn't spill his guts to us, though from the name of one of the levels I have a feeling one of the big twists involves Morpheus.
There was also a real "WTF?" moment as well when he was describing some of the enemies you meet (and the only way to kill them) in the Chateau level (the place with the fancy staircase from the trailers). Is this The Matrix or Buffy?
Actually, the game itself is like a cross between Xbox Buffy and Max Payne, with some Driver/Chase HQ sections in between. (Reflections supposedly worked on the car physics.) Combat in bullet-time (called 'focus' here, though it works just like in Max Payne, somewhat ironic considering where Rockstar ripped the idea off from!) is a good laugh, and your character picks up skills as they go. And yes, you can run up walls. There's also a neat 'hacking' (ie, cheat) mode where you can find codes online and enter them into the game to download new moves into your character. Looks pretty damn good overall, though hopefully the Xbox version will have slightly less jaggy graphics on some of the levels, as that's what I'll be playing it on!
All the main Matrix characters supposedly show up in the game, crossing over with events in the film, though I only saw Trinity and Agent Smith. The character models looked good for the most part, though some of the non mo-capped character movements were a bit wobbly.
The bad news - Jada Pinkett Smith's voice acting was really quite lousy! [Shopgirl monotone] "Let's get the hell out of here." Very wooden. I hope she's not like this throughout the film!
Since the film and game come out on the same day, I'd strongly recommend seeing the film before playing the game if you want to avoid having the ending of Reloaded spoiled...
You must think in Russian.
It's not a matter of how good the effects are. It's a matter of how they are used. Special effects should help you see something that is either impossible or difficult to film and make you believe it. The special effects in the Matrix pulled you in. In their corner was the fact that they were in VR most of the time so a lot of stuff was possible that was unlikely in the real world. However, for an example of effects killing a movie, look at Daredevil. Not that there wasn't enough wrong already, but they made this almost ordinary human jumping around like a a cartoon. I don't care how much the effects made it look just like Ben. He didn't move like a human, the character didn't move like the comic book character, and the results showed a reality that was far too seperated from what the audience could stomach.
I think the Matrix movie hinted at the obvious pitfalls of special effects when they described the first Matrix, a world so idyllic that it was unbelievable to the point that humans couldn't accept it. Those words may be prophetic because if Matrix 2 comes up with a bunch of effects that constantly remind me that I'm watching CG movie instead of watching something that might really happen, I wont accept it much either.
i have lost track by now, but last time i was vaguely aware, i think they had bought between 2000 and 3000 mental ray licenses from us. they are using mostly dual-cpu boxes, if i recall correctly. i am sure there will be a followup article on the technology at some point, straightening out these points and more. which o/s, which hardware, what rendering software (okay, mental ray), and so on. one thing is sure: they've got a big, hot room full of machinery somewhere.
They did Star Wars it with so little cash flow compared to what they have this time around. So whose to say that it can't be great again, take another step and but another standard in cinematography. I loved Star Wars, it was one of the few films that kept me really intranced with the movie through all of it. I really hoped that Phantom and EPII would do the same, if not i'll be sad.
...what they are able to do technicaly now will put bullet time to shame.
Am I the only one hoping for "breast-jiggle time?"
I seriously hope you were joking when you mentioned Deniro.
Yes, he has been in quite a few gangster flicks (all of which were critically acclaimed) like Goodfellas, Godfathers, Mean Streets, etc.
But go check out Taxi Driver, The Deer Hunter, Cape Fear, Raging Bull, etc.
There is a reason he is considered one of the greatest film actors of all time.
"Orthodoxy means not thinking--not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness." --Eric Blair
The title should read VFX, not SFX, because we're dealing with VISUAL effects here. Dagnabit.
I am from a small, grease-loving country in the north called Ca-na-da.
I think the fact that it was subtitled Episode Four lends some believability to the claim that there was more than this one segment to the original story.
Ah, but originally Star Wars was just that, Star Wars. There was no Episode 4 crap until it was re-released.
See this UseNet post for Details.
'Your brain is God.' -- Dr. Timothy Leary
I trust the Washowski brothers to stay fidel to the kind of movie they delivered with The Matrix, just watch the extras on the DVD's and you will understand how passionate about it they are.
The original Matrix was very strong in the FX department but it didn't prevent it from having a good story, it added to it and I don't see why it should be any different for the sequels with the bro. at the helm.
And, more importantly
The Washowski tried to sell it as a trilogy to the studios from the beginning but Warner took a wait and see how well the first movie sell before doing the other ones.
Of course, given the huge success of the first they got the green light to do the sequels and the necessary funding and they probably have more pressure on their shoulder in many ways (although given that they have shown their directing talent both in Bound and The Matrix the studio probably was less nervous about working with them) and of course there is a possibility that they will bite more than they can chew and it will suck but all in all I am much more confident in that sequel than in about any other sequel to a great movie with the exception maybe of LOTR (whose sequel, TTT, I found inferior to FOTR).
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers." Bill Gates,