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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.
A few months back Newsweek did a cover story on the Matrix movies.
read it here
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.
This time, it takes half an hour for neo to finish saying "whoa".
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
"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."
One of the scenes talked about in the article appeared briefly in the Matrix Superbowl Ad. (sorry, that's the only one I've seen...) He made a comment like "Nobody'll find the transition point from real to CG..."
That scene stood out in my mind because it looked fake. It really did, there was no "How'd they do that?" when that scene aired. But, I'll tell you all something, there's a very real possibility that the reason it looks fake is that we all know on an instinctual level that a human can't do that. Maybe that'll be the charm of it? I dunno.
I'm worried, though, that Matrix Reloaded will overdo it with effects like that. If your brain gets into "Man, everything's fake" mode, suddenly anything that's percieved as wrong (whether it really is or not) will bother the viewer. If they're bothered, they're not enjoying it. Explaination that this is taking place inside of a giant video game may not be enough.
I'm a big fan of subtle effects designed to make something that's not quite plausible happen. Remember Terminator 2? Okay, we don't have the technology to make a 'poly mimetic alloy' that can shapeshift, but we have mercury. Most of us have seen mercury. Seeing it taken a step further into shapeshifting is not totaly unbelievable, and the audience responds with amazement. The battledroids in Episode 1. They have semi-human proportions, but are far too thin to be somebody in a robot costume. Seeing them walking around is a little strainge, but not completely out of the realm of possibility. (as a matter of fact, they have a walking robot today, forget who makes it though...) Anybody remember Lord of the Rings 2? What's his name.. uh.. the long haired dweeb with the semi-automatic bow.. Legolas? Anyway, he mounted his horse in a very peculiar way. He did grabbed it's reins with one arm and with a good yank he rolled up onto the horse's back. That was a digital effect, but most people could see that as a stuntman with a hell of a lot of strength in his arm.
I guess my point is that it's not so impressive to have someting over the top that is too defiant of reality. I hope they'll keep the audience within the realm of possibilty like the first movie did. If they don't, then they can expect a LOT of nitpicking over the effects.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
...what they are able to do technicaly now will put bullet time to shame.
Am I the only one hoping for "breast-jiggle time?"