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A Tour of Pixar
Jellybob writes "A little something for those of you who aren't happy with where you work: just go and work at Pixar." This is apparently part of the Finding Nemo hype machine; here's a BBC story talking about deploying metal detectors and night-vision goggles to stop people from camcording the movie.
I read the first part of the article but stopped after "But first comes the sound: a blast of blues-rock from the four-person band playing in a funky bar-lounge area called "The Animation Pit." "
Now I am thoroughly depressed because the closest thing we have to a blues-rock band is the annoying lady here who plays adult contemporary from her one speaker radio.
100% Insightful
Every time they release something we're treated with another "behind the scenes" story about pixar.
I remember when "behind the scenes" features were cool. The giant life sized dinosaurs used in the first "Jurassic Park". The enormous sets for "Honey I Shrunk the kids". The model mine cart and track for "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom". The thousands of horses and riders used in Braveheart. Actors spending 6 hours in make up to shoot a 5 minute scene.
Even if the movies sucked, it was really cool to see how it was made.
Now we watch some nerd sitting in front of his console. And so its not boring, they all force themselves to act zany and wild throughout the special. Of course it's so obvious they're under orders to ham it up for the camera.
Just face it. With CG, Hollywood just isnt cool anymore.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
That wasn't enough for Pixar's CEO, Steve Jobs. "He thought it was really important that there only be one bathroom in the building, for all 700 people who work here," Greenberg says.
There is no way my bladder could survive the trauma of working there given the amount of coffee I drink
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
Sounds like some other companies geared towards a lifestyle, such as Adidas.
:)
I played some basketball on their fullsize court in the middle of the office complex, indoors
Cool, half a soccer field. So they can ... play with themselves?
-- Thou hast strayed far from the path of the Avatar.
What what I understand, it's not a problem going to a movie with a video camera in hong kong. Piracy is common place, can buy films on the street or see them in the theater.
While you can sorta impose these rules in america, you can't always impose these rules in other parts of the world. Besides, I have never thought it was a serious threat with a cam corder as they look crapy anyway. A cam edition of a film atleast here in america has NO comercial value what so ever.
Now a DVD screener on the other hand, will why bother buying the DVD if you download the screener, that's something they should actually be concerned about. Fortunatly for Hollywood the equipment required to copy films onto the small screen is pretty costly and not something typical home users own.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
Most of the people I've met from there are just big kids, although I haven't had a chance to see them work. Dylan for example, reminded me of a few of my fith grade classmates.
Wish I was talented enough to work there.
He tried to kill me with a forklift!
No... that would be one toilet for 700 people in a convent ;)
:P]
This is just a load of shit.
[OT: Yay! My first accepted submission
There's a great easter egg on the Monsters, Inc. DVD.
Second disc, Humans Only, Pixar studio tour, highlight the logo at the bottom, press left (a black circle should appear around the airplane). I think then you click on the airplane.
It's a short film of a paper-airplane contest they held in the atrium, with lots of crazy contraptions either flying the distance, curling into the sides, or plummeting straight down. All set to an appropriate classical soundtrack.
Why is it that all the really cool places to work are on the left coast? (Pixar, Google, etc.) All we've got out here are the CIA and the Pentagon, and those sort of lose their luster after a bit....
A projectionist, a kid who works at the theater with a camera behind a wall, somebody with a camera in their glasses, all it takes is ONE.
All this is a waste of time, because you can't be everywhere at once. If broadband was available to areas with pirate flea-markets, I'm sure it would kill more of that market than anything else.
THis article talks about a high quality rip of Matrix Reloaded. That sure as hell didn't come from a theater-goer with a sony..
Clean your own house before you tell me how dirty mine is.
Here endeth the nitpick.
When Pixar started in 1985, Greenberg says, it took 8 hours to render one frame (or 1/24th of a second) of computer animation. Now, it still takes 8 hours, because the artwork in each frame is far more complex.
...the RenderFarm. Behind a large window is a wall of blinking lights, a collection of some 300 machines, each with eight processors. Together, Greenberg says, they perform 400 billion computations per second.
105 minute movie (approximation)
105 * 60 = 6300 seconds in the movie
105 * 60 * 24 = 151200 frames in the movie
151200 * 8 = 1209600 hours to compile complete movie (?!?!)
1209600 / 24 = 50400 days
50400 / 365.25 = 137.9 years
I suppose however assume that..
105 minute movie (approximation)
105 * 60 = 6300 seconds in the movie
105 * 60 * 24 = 151200 frames in the movie
151200 / 300 = 504 (one frame per machine) 504 * 8 = 4032 hours to compile movie with one machine per frame 4032 / 24 = 168 days to compile movie with one machine per frame (46% of a year)
Ok, so I suppose it could work...
Informatus Technologicus
"It's estimated we lose between $3bn (£1.8bn) and $4bn (£2.4bn) a year to this problem despite strong anti-piracy actions by the movie industry," said Rich Taylor, a spokesman for the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA).
I love these estimates. Where do they pull these numbers out of? Realistically, 95% of this figure is revenue they'd never have earned anyhow. People who are willing to pay to see a movie will not settle for a low res DivX viewing on their PC. I think the $3-4B figure is based on pirated DVDs, not camcorder captures available on the net. Even then, these figures would be based on selling a DVD at $20 a pop for each pirated one in countries where $20 is half a month's wages. You have to admit that $3 billion loss is far more impressive a figure than a more factual $150M loss since that's about what they swallow on a big budget movie flop. I'm not saying piracy does not exist but the scale of the problem is being way overstated.
Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws-Plato
I know a guy who was selling Camcordered copies of Matrix Reloaded from the boot of his car at £15 a pop, even after it was released.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Deploying metal detectors and night vision goggles will not help. Given a few days, movies are ripped with high quality sound and video without any audience being heard. This means that there are people that run the projectors, or even possibly the owner themselves ripping the movie after the theatre has shut down.
Think an employee is going to turn themselves in when they can bypass the checks and go directly to the film reel or digital stream themselves?
I'm not going to say it..... I have standards.
'He was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher... or, as his wife would have it, an idiot.' - Douglas Adams
is it just me or are these people taking it a little to far, metal detectors and night-vision goggles? They have more security at the movie theatre then at school, what type of statement does that make?
In April, a 33-year-old California man was arrested and charged with illegally videotaping films - if convicted, he faces up to 26 years in federal prison.
if I pay to go to the movies and contribute to the million and million of dollars of profit, if I wanna take a peice of crap video recorder and have a grainy, shitty sounding, bad quality copy of the movie, WHO FUCKING CARES?
Now if I go and sell it to my friends, or share it on kazaa, then great, ORDER ME TO STOP, AND GIVE ME A FINE. 26 years in a federal prison is fucking insane, drunk drivers dont get that much time.
Selling software wont make you money, selling a service will.
Places that work on top-secret military-related projects often times have "vaults" in which workers must complete projects without any real connection to the outside world (anything outside of the room). So, this means no Web, email, IRC, FTP, Instant Messaging, etc.
Perhaps if Pixar adopted something like this, and built a large room in which workers could work without contact with the outside world, their problems would be eliminated.
Of course, you would also need a security team set-up to monitor what employees are bringing home with them at night, as well as during their lunch breaks. It's very simple to fit something as small as a CD-R inside a coat pocket or similar clothing item. All you'd need is one mistake, and suddenly the newest Pixar film is released to the wild.
I feel, however, that these early releases don't really hurt the companies as much as they think they do. If anything, perhaps it generates more excitement about the film. Many people may not ever go see a film, but if they catch an early release of it, their minds may be changed.
Just some thoughts from a fellow industry insider (not Pixar, though).
Night-Vision Goggles? You know, it's bad enough that the movie industry is going bankrupt, but now, thanks to rampant piracy, I won't be able to sneak in a bag of gummi bears! Oh, the humanity!
Ryosen
One man's "Troll, +1" is another man's "Insightful, +1".
Damn, and I thought I show my children how their daddy uses to make captures from stupid movies. Now I'll have to download that crap like everybody else.
I don't know about you, but when I'm sliding into first, and my pants are about to burst, the last thing on my mind is discussing with coworkers what I was doing at the Chinese massage parlor last night.
Get real. Let's not form lines in front of the bathroom and watch the girl from accounting do the funny walk, as we hold ourselves to keep from peeing.
Whatever happened to watercoolers?
When Pixar started in 1985, Greenberg says, it took 8 hours to render one frame (or 1/24th of a second) of computer animation. Now, it still takes 8 hours, because the artwork in each frame is far more complex.
Keep in mind that they don't render everything all at once! Any given frame is bound to be a composite of many different layers.
They'll break up a single element (say, one fish) into multiple passes for diffuse, specular, shadow, and who knows what else.
Then there's backgrounds, z-depth images, shadow maps, and about a bazillion other things that need to get rendered, too.
Then they have to render the composite image, which also takes an obscene amount of time if the composite is complex.
Not to mention all the test renders and placeholder renders before the final.
So this "eight hour" figure has got to be just a ballpark estimate for the public at large. It would be pretty difficult to figure out exactly how many hours of rendering time actually went into one completed frame.
3D Printing Tips and Tricks at Zheng3.com
boring.. next!
Night goggles to beat film piracy
A security firm is using metal detectors and night-screen goggles to search cinema-goers seeing Disney's latest animated movie release, Finding Nemo.
Disney wants to stop people from illegally taping its underwater adventure, made by Pixar Films, famed for Toy Story and Monsters, Inc.
Blockbuster hit The Matrix Reloaded has already been pirated, with copies available to download online less than two weeks after the film went on release around the world.
A high-quality copy of the film was being downloaded by hundreds of people each day via a website until it was taken down on Tuesday.
"Most people think the extra security is just for terrorism reasons," said security guard Robert Kendrick at a recent screening for the film in Oregon, US.
The use of metal detectors and night goggles is still a fairly new practice, having been most recently used in early screenings of X-Men 2 in May and more recently at Down With Love, starring Renee Zellweger and Ewan McGregor.
Security guards use the metal detectors to try to find digital cameras, and then monitor the audience with the night-goggles for 25-minute shifts, to see if there are any strong lights coming from a video recorder.
"These goggles magnify the light and make the image glow," Kendrick said.
Studios are very keen to prevent copies of their films hitting the black market, denting box office takings.
In April, a 33-year-old California man was arrested and charged with illegally videotaping films - if convicted, he faces up to 26 years in federal prison.
Warning on tickets
"It's estimated we lose between $3bn (?1.8bn) and $4bn (?2.4bn) a year to this problem despite strong anti-piracy actions by the movie industry," said Rich Taylor, a spokesman for the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA).
The MPAA represents Hollywood's major studios including Disney and Fox.
Preview tickets for Finding Nemo have a warning about illegal recording printed on them.
Cinema-goers are told that if video equipment is found on them they will be denied admission, and if it is used it will be confiscated.
To make Finding Nemo, Pixar's animators worked with new technology to create a believable underwater kingdom.
It focuses on a fish called Marlin who is looking for his lost son, Nemo, off the coast of Australia.
Pixar and Disney topped the weekend cock sucking charts in North America for the debut of each of their four co-productions, including Toy Story and Monsters, Inc.
Are they going to start taking Video Cell phones too? I know I am tired of people making phone calls in the theatre!
Taken from vcdquality.com Finding Nemo - TELESYNC - FTF FTF Presents: Finding Nemo RlS.DaTE....: 29th May 2003 FoRMat......: Telesync VCD
why show the movie to 3000 people? Limit the number of pre-release screenings and just release the movie when you schedule it to be released. Bruce Springsteen did not have a problem of his new album getting pirated. Why? He didn't sent it to anyone.
-Matt
Finding Nemo is already available via the internet through a crappy cam recording released by WAREZ group FTF.
___ Shout Central - Crushes your nuts!
The use of metal detectors and night goggles is still a fairly new practice, having been most recently used in early screenings of X-Men 2 in May and more recently at Down With Love, starring Renee Zellweger and Ewan McGregor
Down With Love?
Would anyone actually go the trouble to pirate something like that?
some 300 machines, each with eight processors.
That "8 hours per frame" would be for a single CPU.
168 days / 8 CPUs = 21 days.
However, they don't just render the final version of the movie once & then release it. There are countless test renders, animation tweaks, re-renders, texture adjustments, further re-rendering, alternate lighting setups, re-rendering, slightly different camera angles, yet more re-renders, the script for that scene is rewritten from scratch and the whole process repeats until finally the scene is cut for pacing reasons.
It all takes a god-awful amount of CPU time, and it's all completely necessary :-)
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
So if everybody pirates movies, places like PIXAR will not be able to lavish money on half a football field, nor afford employees timewasting 'creative' breaks. So until I work in an enviroment like PIXAR, I'll be doing all the pirating I can... Bastards!
talking about deploying metal detectors and night-vision goggles to stop people from camcording the movie.
As long as the theater tests the film before showing it to the masses, there are going to be cams of it. Having an aquantance who is a projectionist has allowed me to get personal screenings of most recent major films, usually at least two days before the release. I could have easily brought in a cam, probably even tapped into the soundboard. (I can even throw some beer in my jacket as long as I trash them outside the theater when I am done).
I know this is about filming at pre-screenings, but in week one after that, given one of these High Definition Digital recorders mounted on a mini tripod under a sweater, and a matinee that no one else goes to, getting a decent copy could be pretty unstoppable. None of the high schoolers staffing my local theaters for the summer would be up to it.
Now there's progress!
Just more proof that sound bytes can say whatever you want them too.
"From the company that brought you Win98 and WinXP comes Windows Unbreakable!
I've never liked these behind the scenes looks at crazy hip work environments. I mean - the cool office with lots of toys didn't do any good for Ion Storm did it?
I wonder if Pixar will want talk about their offices if their latest movie tanks and stockholders are wonder what the hell their money is being spent on.
Also, in the article Pixar comes off sounding like Saturn or Lotus or something. Those places always kind of give me the creeps. I would half expect to show up for work and see everyone wearing blue reeboks, or drinking magic cool-aid or something.
What? Tighter security not being used for our safety, but everyone's just allowed to think that it is? *gasp* Sounds sort of like the TIA initiative.
And the movie industry loses 3 billion $ to piracy? Right. Next thing you know they'll shut down all the second-run theaters in the country.
Look at the economy, mr. *AA, and I think you'll see that no one has been having a great go at the money lately, y'know with it being in the crapper and all.
what is this boycott?
Losing Nemo describes three boycotts against The Walt Disney Company: one by the church for gay-friendly policies, one by labor groups for producing merchandise in sweat^H^H^H^H^H substandard labor conditions, and one by concerned geeks for extending both the scope and duration of copyright.
Losing Nemo. Losing the greed.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Sources went on to say that unlike in X-Men 2, the night vision goggles in Down With Love were used to identify and apprehend those elusive moviegoes who attempted to escape early.
/syle
... for those night-vision wearing voyeuristic pigs to watch me playing tonsil hockey with my girlfriend during a movie? Last I heard they charged people for that kind of thing...
"I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
-Hoban Washburn
Pixar has one position that should be of interest to the /. crowd: (asks for a unix geek who can program PERL etc.)
MacOS X Systems Administrator
Here is their comlpete listing of current jobs:
Mac/PC Systems Administrator, Systems
MacOS X Systems Administrator, Systems
Security and Safety Officer, Facilities
Software Engineer, RenderMan Products (Seattle)
Quality Assurance Engineer/API Tester, Studio Tools
Project Coordinator, Studio Tools
Film-On-Line Tools Engineer, Studio Tools
QA/Automated Test Engineer, Studio Tools
Good Luck!
Ernie Dambach
"It is no small thing to celebrate a simple life -Tolkien
This is just another one of those "team training" ideas that was popular in the 90's.
I can't count how many of these dumbass ideas I've had to live through and how many team building sessons, getaways, and classes I've endured. It's a total waste of money and employees time.
It doesn't work, it didn't do a damn thing to change anything. Good companies with good people were always successful even with no special team crap. Bad companies with pathetic management and/or moronic employees always failed, no matter what "team building" exercises they put us through.
The ratio of people to cake is too big
This guy (I actually worked at pixar and apple for a time being) is the biggest asshole on the planet. Not only has he had 3 broken noses from employees kicking this shit out of him, but he still thinks he is a "creative" guy at pixar. I feel sorry for the mac zealots that idolize him. the guy couldn't program a for-loop out of a paper bag.
In April, a 33-year-old California man was arrested and charged with illegally videotaping films - if convicted, he faces up to 26 years in federal prison.
I guess the concept of punishments fitting the crime has gone out of style in the USA?
Pixar is the Microsoft of the computer graphics world. They have created some good stuff, yes, but they have not given much of anything back and often hurt the field.
They do things like produce a suposedly open standard like Renderman, then sue anyone who uses it into oblivion. Most small projects get by without them batting an eye, but if competition rises up they are quick to lay the smack down.
They have all these secrets, and keep everything to themselves. Just read some of their licensing agreements (read the agreement for the "open" Renderman spec.. haha). And they provide no public inovation in the field. Rather than help the community at large, they stifle it.
Have you ever seen Pixar release anything like Massive (Weta)? I didn't think so.
Again, they usually produce good stuff, but they also are incredibly self-serving. I just have a bad feeling about the company. They're scary in a Microsoft and Disney (duh) way.
The ratio of people to cake is too big
In the UK Stelios Haji-Ioannou, he who founded easyjet and a dozen other budet businessew called easySomething has opened a new business called easyCinema. A budget cinema offering with minimal staff, not even a box office. You have to print a barcode ticket from their booking website and scan it at automated turnstiles to get it.
With the staff numbers cut to the bone, it ain't going to be too hard for people to smuggle in camcorders, which will no doubt worry the studios.
Its funny how people who try to prevent theft always act like its the poor man doing the stealing. They want to give Night vision goggles and metal detectors to the people to find the criminals, when its these same people that ARE the criminals.
When a movie is camcorded, its NOT by someone in the audience, its my someone that works at the theater, duh!
Same in the auto industry. A car's security devices must protect that car even from the creators of the security device. Security through obscurity is not security because the facts are not obscure to those who know them...
Lasseter gave a talk at my school, Cornell, ten years ago, back when Luxo and 3D animation was fairly new. It was at Cornell where Don Greenberg's team developed the first ray-tracing methods in the 70s. What most impressed me about Lasseter was his 5-step plan to making a computer-animated movie. The first step was developing the story, and the others involved determiing market and budget, and then actually making the thing. This differs from what I understand of how other studios operate, where the box office comes first and the story is just cobbled together at the end, often being written as the film is being shot. I saw Toy Story again recently and was impressed by the quality of the writing and the story. Those aspects are what make the Pixar movies of such high-quality.
every stain tells a story
ok, I'll heartily admit that the 5 titles you mentioned were all great movies. In fact, seeing the name "The Dark Crystal" brought back memories of wonderful times sitting in front of the screen, getting engrossed in the story. Of course, nowadays, if I find out about someone who hasn't seen one of those, I instantly go into this "It's awesome!" explanation with plenty of "the effects rock", etc.
:)
/. decides that the images aren't believable, it doesn't really matter to me. And while many films don't spend a lot on cg and get it horribly wrong (cough*2*fast*cough*2*furious*cough), many others bring the state of the technology farther. And that just means good things in the future.
Here's the thing though... those movies were released when I was the target demographic. When I watch one of those movies now (aside from maybe SW), I'm amazed at how many blanks my brain filled in. The Dark Crystal was one of my favorite movies, and now I can only wonder why I wasn't distracted by the muppettesque job done on all of the characters. Granted, my brain was forced to work, and who knows... that may be why I have an imagination today.
But now back to the topic at hand... to say that puppets are superior visual effects to cg seems a little short-sighted to me. Given that both are separate art forms, it seems like the applesoranges argument.
I personally believe the best mix is when full-size sets, miniature sets, and cg are combined. I loved seeing that Shrek's house was actually a miniature sculpture with Bonsai trees and moss. I loved that some LoTR frames used hundreds of layers to create the environments. And most of all, I love that technology is now being used to bring fantasy stories to life for adults rather than being relegated to 'stories for children'.
If someone on
Its only stealing if you get caught!
A quick search online for those in the 'know' turns up at least 20 download options for 'Finding Nemo'. Oh wait! Its not out yet.
Yea, exactly... All the security in the world to protect things that are stolen before they ever leave the building.
Posted Anon, I don't need Steve Jobs running down my ass.
If you're declared a dangerous offender, your sentence is "indefinite" which means that it's effectively life without parole. Paul Bernardo, who tortured and killed two young teenage girls in Ontario, received a dangerous offender sentence. He likely will never get out.
Then again, I don't trust the monkeys who run Canada either. If he's ever declared not dangerous, he can be released outright too.
I have a plastic camera hidden in my cock. let's see if they find that!
we need DeCss!
mod hints:
-1 troll
-or-
-1 offtopic
must rinse out eyes...aaaaarrrrrgggghhh!!!
You'd need a decent camera, the JVC HD is definately not one. The colors are very poor, there is noticable bleeding and some major white balance problems. You'd be better off using a XL1 with 3 seperate CCDs. Sony I believe also has a camera out that records at 24fps, eliminating those pesky flicker frames from traditional cameras when recording in a theater.
But hey, in a week we'll see a professionally telecined bootleg that was captured directly from the reels of film from our nice friends in Hong Kong.
This Monday, FCC Chair Michael Powell will hold his vote on media
consolidation. There's nothing special about that date -- it's totally
arbitrary. The vote will conclude a process which has shown deliberate
disregard for the views and opinions of the American
people. Powell has refused to even release the actual language of
the rule change -- it won't be known until after the vote. And he's
only held a single meeting to hear the views of the public. Even when a
bipartisan group of Senators requested that he give Congress some time
to discuss the impact of this change, Powell brushed them off.
Chairman Powell still has the power to delay the rule change and allow
time to have a democratic debate about its consequences. Please call
him today and ask him to allow a real public debate on an issue of such
massive importance.
You can reach Powell's office at:
(202) 418-1000
Once you've made your call, please let us know at:
http://moveon.org/fcccall.html
"Moving through the masses like a fish through water." syrup
TotalRenderingTime / NumberOfFrames
How long are we going to allow Hollywood executives to continue to erode our liberty.
Movie theater employees have been directed to confiscate real property?!!
Copyright and copyright infringement have become both surreal and absurd. We need to call for copyright reform and change the law on the books. We need a reasonable process for returning works back to the public domain and expanding the concept of fair use.
Since most CCDs are sensitive to IR as well as visible light, why not just have a a couple of powerful IR lamps positioned around the cinema screen to overexpose the CCD, thus washing out the recorded image...?
Yes. Thanks to movie piracy, the film industry is only making billions of dollars instead of billions and billions of dollars.
(All due respect to Matt Groening.)
"If you have bathrooms that are scattered throughout the building, you use the bathroom nearest to where you're sitting. If there was one bathroom, all kinds of people would come together and talk with one another all the time -- you'd meet different people if you were waiting in line. It would enhance communication, and you'd be talking about things outside of work."
Maybe it's the introvert side of me but I'd rather not have someone talking to me while I'm trying to take a whiz and talking 'while we wait in line' doesn't sound much better. I generally don't want to wait to go to the restroom. It's a nice idea but I think it should be left to other things like maybe a single spot for vending machines or something.
The release on the net of recent movies has more to do with executives, critics and other showbiz figures having to feed their nose-needs, more than with teenagers armed with a Hi8. "For your consideration".
here's a BBC story talking about deploying metal detectors and night-vision goggles to stop people from camcording the movie.
Now if they can just figure a way to stop little punk-ass kids with laser pointers, I'd be happy...
Okay, you've piqued my curiosity, but I'm at work -- what is it?
As for the caste system at Pixar, the disparate culture doesn't surprise me, either. From your less-than-thrilled-with-Pixar-attitude, I'm assuming that you weren't in production. I work at a software company, production apps, not consulting, and the culture, albeit not as extreme as you describe, is similar. I wear jeans to work and can work my own hours so long as my projects are done on time. Certainly there's more of a creative atmosphere fostered on this side of the pond. The accounting and HR people have to wear business casual (at least), and work strict 8 to 6 hours. Legal and sales are even more formal. It's just the nature of the beast. Although, I think it was 'Fire in the Valley' that describes Job's carefully orchestrated tension between the Mac and Apple groups. It wouldn't surprise me if he did the same thing at Pixar.
Hrm, a lot of good that did considering Finding Nemo was available YESTERDAY, a day before the opening. True the ending is cut off, but it's still out there. They don't seem to get that a number of these pre-releases and the really good ones are made by people who work at the movie theater, not people that sneek in. The holy grail for these is a Telesync which uses audio from the RCA jack on the projector instead of a microphone.
i really don't think night vision goggles and other gadgets are going to stop piracy much. considering finding nemo is already on the internet a week before release. i'd say there biggest problem is letting the dvd's for the movie be produced in china. you know the country that has absolutely no regard for intellectual property?
I can't believe that they are advocating Shrek as an alternative to Disney movies.
What alternatives would you suggest? I know the webmaster of losingnemo.com, and perhaps I could give him some better alternatives.
Hello...Lord Farquaad...
I think Shrek portrayed Eisner quite accurately.
Also, what is so ridiculous about wanting to copyright something that you have done
I agree that copyright is the lesser of n evils, but don't you think 95 years is excessive? Do you not see the value of the public domain?
Will I retire or break 10K?
It's usually someone who works at the theater who camcords the movie and puts it on the net. There's more space in the booth, you can do it easier without people noticing, plus you get the direct sound feed from the projector. You need a tripod to get a decent cam of a movie anyway, someone in a crowded theater is gonna knock it over. This won't change anything, the groups who dump these movies onto the net are smart, they'll figure something else out.
Since when companies should be boycotted for having pro-gay-policies?
Not all of Disney's potential customers are liberals like the typical Slashdot reader. Some are religious conservatives. Others are concerned with labor rights. The web site gives reasons for people of many political alignments not to buy Disney products.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Can I see Finding Nemo
If you want to see Finding Nemo, I'd say wait for the DVD release, rent it at Blockbuster Video, and give the same amount you paid to rent it to the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
if I promise to skip Disney's next inhouse 2D animation?
"Inhouse"? Try "outhouse". Walt Disney Pictures has not produced good cel animation since at least the Bono Act.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Disney movies are for kids
The Walt Disney Company owns Touchstone, Miramax, Caravan, and Dimension studios. Do you claim that Dimension's Scream series is for kids?
Farquaad =F***Wad
Is the nude scene in Disney's The Rescuers any better? What about the (accidental) penis-shaped tower on the cover of the first run of Disney's The Little Mermaid VHS and LaserDisc?
momma bear becoming a rug
Is Walt Disney's Bambi any better?
I am too poor to see the value of having something I have copyrighted becoming public domain
Would you want to have to pay a royalty to the descendants of the caveman who invented the wheel? What if Beowulf were unavailable to the public because we could not locate the author?
Will I retire or break 10K?
Is it true that Steve Jobs has a Dell PC on his desk?
This has been discussed several times before. Up until just recently, Steve Jobs had a Dell PC on his desks at both Pixar and Apple. These machines were not running Windows, but rather OpenStep, the OS made by NeXT, his former company. He was also known to have Toshiba and IBM laptops running NeXTstep and OpenStep as well. In fact, Jobs' presentations were originally done off his OpenStep laptop running what later became Keynote for Mac OS X.
He now uses a G4 minitower, apparently Mac OS X is now up to his standards.
It's no longer online, but OmniGroup (makers of OmniWeb for NeXTstep, OpenStep, and now, Mac OS X) once had a quote from a Pixar sysadmin on their Raves & Reviews page. Something like this: "I need to renew our OmniWeb license for Steve Jobs. He loves your application, but the current license is set to expire about a day before he returns, please send me the updated license so I don't have to fear for my life". =)
Did anyone know that Pixar came about as a result of the New York Institute of Technology (New York Tech) Lab Graphics Lab? It is increadible how few people know this!
If I had mod points, that would be +1, Insightful.
So they got cube decorations, mariachi bands, and scooters. Do they also have billions of stock options and zero pay?
In other news, Steve Jobless says a single bathroom forces employees to communicate with each other but in actuality there are two bathrooms. Only people of the same sex communicate with each other.
26 years in a federal prison is fucking insane, drunk drivers dont get that much time.
Drunk drivers don't threaten campaign contributors.
Not to bash Pixar, they make a great product. But so many companies see this and think it's the way to get people to do good work, and its bullshit.
For example the company I work full has tons of games all over the place, pool, foosball, ect. Lots of lounges, casual environment, Come in whenever, leave whenever. But the company is not making money, and the product is a piece of junk. Code is just slapped together, hard coded all the way. It takes forever to make a simple change. The people I work with are the most undisciplined developers I've ever met, and think that 10 - 6 with 1 hour lunch and 1 hour of games (Plus tons of web surfing and instant messaging) is a full day. Any suggestion of refactoring the code (Lets change the call to tempCall to something more meaningful.) or haven forbid having standard indentation, is shouted down. "We have no time!"
Management wonders why the product crashes, and can't handle any load. But they keep on touting our hip work environment while the VC cash dries up.
My point. If you have a cool casual environment like this you have to make sure your getting results. If someone just starts goofing off you need to let him or her go.
Firstly, 8 hours is the peak amount of work (e.g. the "room with all the doors" from Monsters Inc). Most frames don't take quite that long.
Secondly, each frame is generally rendered more than once during the lighting process.
Thirdly, most animated films are only 85 or so minutes long. Shrek was even shorter.
I believe that it takes Pixar about a month to fully re-render a movie from start to finish in one burst. Even quicker for the DVD version.
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>>Even Gollum from the recent LOTR movies, which had some of the best acting by a CG character in a while, was difficult to believe because half the time he was on the screen, it we obvious that he was a CG character.
This is actually wrong. There was an actual actor who played the part of gollum. The CG was placed on top of the actor.
Disney movies are for kids, Miramax movies are for adults
Disney owns at least a controlling interest in Miramax Films. Therefore, all Miramax movies are published by The Walt Disney Company.
Yes Bambi is better, for so many reasons that if you can't see you should not have even mentioned it.
Name three. Both movies involve a character being slaughtered. I haven't seen Bambi, but I'm going on news reports that the Bambi sequence has disturbed many, many children.
Lastly: Slippery slope much.
And how is a copyright term extension from 56 years to 75 years, with a further extension to 95 years, and with a Supreme Court ruling that Congress has unlimited power to extend it further in the future, not a slippery slope?
You will die someday. Why do you care what happens to works you have created after you no longer breathe? Why don't you think that it would be a good thing for the public to be able to appreciate those works fully?
Will I retire or break 10K?
If you buy from The Walt Disney Company, even though you express approval of gay-friendly policies, you express approval of the Bono Act, the DMCA, and sweatshop labor. You cannot separate them. You cannot specify that this many dollars of the ticket price go to Gay Days and this many don't go to lobbying for further copyright term extension.
Vote with your dollars against greed.
Will I retire or break 10K?
There were a few plot disappointments (I was looking out for the previous-generation mechanical dinosaurs from the book series, for example), but the integrated CG, acting and puppets worked out all right.
If I had a critcism of the mechanics of the film it would be that the beasties' centre of gravity was often unrealistic, especially for the two-legged species. There were certain allowances for the mix (e.g. people walking down one side of an alley, dinos down the other, I guess because that was easier than integrating the two) but you had to be watching for them, they didn't intrude into the movie. The Americanisms and sometimes-dodgy acting did more of that. (-:
The other criticism I had was that the characters didn't abide by their own principles. They had armed guards when one of their rules was (effectively) "no weapons". They were supposed to be calm and thoughtful but stood outside in droves while the flapping nasties arrived and attacked them (indoors? we don't need no steenking indoors). One of the club-tailed beasties first defended him/herself (effectively) against a flapping nasty with his tail, then didn't the second time around when it would have been the obvious move) and so on. They also had a "prayer for hope" but no divinity to pray to. Que? That's as silly as an Atheist blaspheming ("Random fucking Fluctuations!" "Oh, my Coincidence!" - yadda yadda, you get the idea).
But again, the CG and integration went well.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
...before the RIAA start requiring watermarked cinema screens and/or cinema footage so that they can process the telesync'ed versions to discover which cinema and/or "reel" were used in its making, and so zero in on the individual pirates?
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Move here. Swap Dubya and telephone chaos for Howard and Telstra. Admittedly not a great improvement, I know, but nevertheless an improvement.
If you're prepared to hedge on the weather a bit, move to Albany or Denmark, both in the South West of WA, and get scenery, peace and fresh air (straight off the southern ocean) instead. We have smaller, prettier places down there too but don't expect much by way of connectivity.
If you want something more tropical and don't mind the odd cyclone (I think y'all call them hurricanes), Broome's your pigeon. The beaches have to be seen to be believed.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
I agree, the film industry isn't exactly "dying". Maybe those new self destructing DVDs that are coming out will result in less downloading and more renting.
do you know if they have had a hand in making the technology for these new disposable dvds i keep hearing about.