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Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow!
ph43thon writes "The New York Times Magazine has a neat story about the sci-fi nerd, Kerry Conran, behind 'Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.' It's an interesting look at his creative journey starting with a Macintosh IIci. It took him twelve hours just to render individual robot legs. Antisocial, shy people rejoice! Hide in your homes until you get discovered by a movie producer!!"
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It's stories like these that make me regret taking apart my IIgs to use for wall decorations. Well, at least I still have my Equity II.
Antisocial, shy people rejoice! Hide in your homes until you get discovered by a movie producer!!
uh no, getting "discovered" is exactly what us antisocial folk want to avoid. Just for that I'm going to dig an even deeper borrow!
Hide in my home until a movie producer finds me? Dude, the only producer who will ever 'find' me is one who decided to deliver pizzas for a night... otherwise, no way in hell I'd be discovered...
---
Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
The Trailer: http://www.apple.com/trailers/paramount/skycaptain andtheworldoftomorrow/
score for geeks and simpsons characters, but theres no way that movie will ever score with the public.
When I saw the preview in the theater nearly everyone looked at each other in shock and amusement. Some things just don't make good movies.
Will someone please take Michael out for a walk and change his water? i think they've chained him to the uber-secret slashdot console.
IAALS.
According to the article, Conran wasn't really hiding, she did show it to her boss, Jon Avnet, who decided to fund the production until they can find some bigger investors. And they did find Jude Law, and later signed Gwyneth Paltrow and eventually Angelina Jolie.
So the moral of the story is, if you really want to do something like that, make sure you don't just sit there and wait to be discovered, it will never happen until someone see your work.
And as a side note, there are many similar productions with no initial sponsors and low budget, yet able to pull it through at a much faster pace than 10 years - like Blair Witch Project.
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
there's a couple of interviews with the principles behind this (producer, director, etc.) here and here. this definitely sounds like one very interesting film from a technical and artistic perspective.
I mean, it's a World War 1/2 Fighter Pilot Flying around against super-advanced aliens, all the while with the soundtrack as the Stargate SG-1 theme. The writer is a genius.
"...as they track down a mysterious mad scientist named Totenkopf..."
Hmmm, I can see a lot of people out there might get a wee bit pissed off about the fact that his scientist is named after the infamous SS Totenkopf (Death's Head) Division that ran... concentration camps.
Yes, I know it sounds cool, I know a lot of people might think I'm being picky and overtly PC, but Totenkopf isn't a German surname (Dr. Deaths Head!?), and I kinda wonder - given it's background - if the guy actually knows the history behind it.
I can picture someone saying this about The Lord of the Rings:
"Magic rings? Little guys with hairy feet? Twisted little trolls with multiple personality disorder. Please! Nyahhhh, gimme a babe with guns and big tits, yeah, that's adventure, HAWWW!"
If it's good, Sky Captain might be a moderately succussful popcorn movie. If not, it will be out of theaters in a week. But not because it's for geeks.
Stefan
I looked at this headline regarding the "world of tomorrow" and opened this story expecting specious futurism. Where is my specious futurism! There hasn't been a single story making dubious claims about technological revolutions right around the corner on slashdot all day.
my first computer wasn't a IIci, it was a 286. even so, the IIci was certainly my first love. i can remember those romantic hours that i would spend with my IIci, waiting for POVRAY to finish rendering...
of course those days are over, but i don't think that I could ever remove the IIci from its place in the corner of my room.
I've been hiding at home all this time and no one has yet to discover me for my one handed web surfing skills.
1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d
First, don't compare this to Stargate (I know the music doesn't help) or Independence Day. Compare this to the Shadow, Hudsucker Proxy, or the Rocketeer. Second, remember this is one step away from indie. Yeah, I question the mainstream appeal. However, the story behind the movie will probably make me go see it.
I've seen bare stage interpretations of Shakespeare. This isn't that type of flick. However, seeing as how the last movie I've seen is the Segal-like Payback (sorry, Afflick's bravado reminds me of Under Siege), I don't know if this will be so bad. Yes, I know that we get caught up in CGI valhalla. However, this does speak a lot for effort.
Plus, remember the goal is to make money. Not necessarily rake in $300 million at the US box office.
What do you mean my sig is repetitive? What do you mean my sig is repetitive? What do you mean....
Mod me down for being incorrect, but the music used in the trailer is EXACTLY the same music used for the opening of Stargate SG-1. Exactly.
I even went to my TiVo to confirm this, and yes they're the same. I can't believe that they would rip it so shamelessly.
- Sherman
It looks good and all, but I just can't help but think it looks like Crimson Skies with giant robots :s
Moo!
Disgruntled and pendantic!
You work at Blockbuster don't you.
What do you mean my sig is repetitive? What do you mean my sig is repetitive? What do you mean....
The budget for this film is apparently $70M. I looked at the trailer - it looked like a cheesy rough sketch of Metropolis. Compare this budget to the $50M for Iron Giant or $15M for Spirited Away. I'm scratching my head wondering how this approach is either viable for independent productions or a demonstration of any new ground breaking CGI techniques.
I'd be very interested in seeing the short that he first made. My best friend from high school would spend days rendering movies in Infini-D on his LCIII that were very entertaining and choreographed space battles. Anybody got a link to it?
cheese logs keep my wang warm at night.
Wow, that had to be an excruciatingly tedious experience. The IIci had a 25Mhz 68030 and maxed out at 128MB RAM (though all that RAM would have cost nearly as much as the IIci back then, and the standard IIci was 1 or 4 MB out of the box). They used something like 320K of system RAM for video, though 3rd party NuBus video cards were readily available (still, with only something like 2MB or 4MB of VRAM).
There's no mention of which software he used, but I recall that in '94 the big Mac 3D package was ElectricImage, with Strata 3D and Infini-D at the low end of the scale (~$500 or so). Photoshop was at around version 2 or 2.5; it wasn't until 3.0 when layers were implemented.
I remember trying to model and animate on an Amiga 500 with Turbo Silver back in 1989: anything with reflection or refraction would take about 24 hours per frame. Five years later, I was using Autodesk 3D Studio (R3 for DOS) on a 486 and had a room full of PCs for doing network rendering. Watching that red "Rendering" bar creep across the screen became a thing of the past (well, except for previews and such). Those five years were an interesting time, seeing the price point for a computer powerful enough for doing productive animation work (and digital video and audio) fall to where an independent artist could afford one.
Gotta hand it to Kerry Conran: if he had the patience to model and animate on a IIci, he surely paid his dues.
k.
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
All I can say is bravo for the dude. If the movie does well hurray if not atleast he got to fulfill his dream. Im sure we are all a little envious. I'm goin to see it just to support a guy who pushed hard for the perfection of his dream. Also nay-sayers remember Blade Runner wasn't that much a success either when it first came out but its one of the pivotial points in Sci-Fi movies. I think this will be of similar importance.
But still a great movie. Not entirley original, had the obvious old pulp stories inspiration. Not that i cared at the time, i was just a little kid, even went as the Rocketeer for halloween. Spray painted 2 litre bottles and all...
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
The film, in other words, is one long special effect with Jude-Law-size holes in it.
Well, that's better than a lot of movies which have big enough holes in the plot that you could drive a truck through them.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
But the failures to quite ring the bell can be listed endlessly. .
Many, many have tried, but somehow. . . Even those black & white episodes of 'Voyager' were kinda dull despite all the clever and hard work put into them.
If "Sky Captain" can make the grade, it'll be interesting to see how.
I think it has something to do with replicating an old, albeit loved idea, versus taking a timeless formula and doing something with it which makes it vital to contemporary culture. Luke, Leia, Han and Indiana Jones and their worlds were all honest, first generation approaches to old and tired carbon copy ideas.
The difference will be if "Sky Captain's" director is a fan or a visionary.
Fans are stuck in idolizing yesterday. Visionaries are into the creation of the moment. Their beginnings may be the same, but their directions on the path of life are diametrically opposed.
Never work backwards. It's the same as falling asleep.
-FL
Is it just me or has no one noticed that this movie is a rip off of the Japanese Anime movie "Laputa" (by Miyazaki Hayao)...? Maybe the story is original, but the world and technology it is set in doesn't seem to be.
All the works of Miyazaki have a much more European feel to them. At nausicaa.net there is an oft-cited FAQ that directly addresses the question of when and where Laputa takes place: "It is believed to have taken place at the end of the 19th Century or the beginning of the 20th Century, in an alternate universe where flying technology was more advanced (a la Verne). According to Miyazaki, he wrote "Laputa" as a "science fiction novel which was written in the end of the 19th century". The events of Laputa takes place "In an imaginary country. The Slug Ravine, where Pazu lived was modeled after a mining town in Wales. Miyazaki went to Wales for location hunting, and learned that the town had had a huge labor dispute the year before. This story and the scenery of the depressed mining town (he being a former chairman of a union) affected him, and made him put the scene of the townfolk fighting with the pirates in the movie. You can also see a socialist-looking poster in the house of Pazu's boss." It seems thus Laputa has more of a Jules Verne/Johnathan Swift 18th/19th century flavor to it. In contrast, "Sky Captain", from the looks of the trailer, takes it visual cues more from mid 20th century WWII era cultural icons. I'd go so far as to say "Sky Captain" also feels more American than anything Miyazaki has done.
Stay sentient. Don't drink bad milk.
Yeah, my thoughts exactly. For a brief moment, I thought a movie version of Wild Cards had slipped under my own personal geek radar.
:)
Alas, not so. But I'll be cheering for Jetboy all the same
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
Yeah, ditto Tron. The 20th anniversary DVD of that was simply amazing in scope. It also serves to remind you that sometimes a movie can be ahead of it's time.
For instance, can you believe that Tron did not win any special effects academy awards because their 'overuse' of computer generated effects disqualified them??!
If you get a copy of this, check out how painstakingly the movie was done and then realize how badly the Tron artists were ripped off!
Considering how many special effects there are in even non-science fiction movies nowadays, I don't think this will be too much of a stretch for people who get the concept of this kind of pulp fiction.
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
It's not just you. I noticed a bunch of Miyazaki elements: robots from Laputa or Nausicaa, the premise of a lone flying hero whose face is invisible on a retro plane from Rosso (or even Nausikaa). The scenes filled with all-wing flying machines may look like from Conan (if anyone knows this TV series, not to be confused with Arnold movie).
Still, even with all those elements, I wouldn't call the movie a rip off of Miyazaki. Certainly the creators were inspired by Miyazaki's works, which is not necessarily a bad thing. Miyazaki, too, was influenced by many other creators himself--Nausikaa was a Dune rip-off. etc.
It's called steampunk, neo-pulp and retro-futuristm.
"I tend to think of OS X as Linux with QA and Taste", James Gosling, creator of Java
The film, in other words, is one long special effect with Jude-Law-size holes in it.
Kinda like Attack of the Clones or (don't blame me, I didn't ask to watch this) Spy Kids 3-D were? Yeah, I remember those monuments to modern filmmaking -- bluescreens and greenscreens! Practically no sets! Let your actors imagine everything they're supposed to be interacting with and they'll be much more compelling that way!
Didn't anybody listen when we complained that the acting in the new Star Wars films was painfully wooden, and the actors complained that it was because they were working on virtual sets and couldn't place themselves in the roles?
Look, would-be blockbuster-makers: this isn't the way to make a compelling movie. It may be pretty, but it doesn't work well. Go watch the behind-the-scenes stuff for The Lord of the Rings and look at how much trouble they went through to build sets and miniatures whenever possible, and then count the Oscar nominations and wins they got for their trouble. Spend the money on at least some kind of physical set and your actors will thank you for it.
It looks like good fun, although I believe the effectiveness of a few fifty caliber machine guns against alien giant robot spaceship alloys may have been wildly overrated in the movie...