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Live-Action Anime: Casshern
Silverhammer writes "Apple Japan is hosting the trailer (Quicktime required, of course) for an upcoming movie called simply CASSHERN. There have been many attempts at so-called 'live-action anime', but this is possibly the most impressive attempt I've ever seen. Part 'Final Fantasy', part 'Brazil', with CG and green screen work that puts even 'LoTR' to shame. (Hat tip: Penny Arcade)."
More impressive than the original matrix?
The Wachowski brothers were very much anime-motivated in that movie...
Anyone else think slashdot should always include a BitTorrent seed when pointing to a huge file?
-Colin
The future of the film industry is going to be amazing as filmmakers are finally unshackled from the limitations of physics in creating special effects. Imaginations are going to run unchecked, and thousands of great stories that have been trapped in the realm of books and cartoon will be unleashed.
LOTR, SpiderMan, and Xmen (as well as numerous other great CGI movies) were just the appetizer for the feast of fantasy we'll be dining on during the next 20 years. It's going to be fantastic.
Ok, I call BULLSHIT on your post. Do you have any idea what you are talking about? Are you just pulling numbers out of the air?
Or perhaps a better explaination is that you're confusing internal representations with output formats. My younger brother tells me that LightWave uses some 192-bit internal format, but I'm not going to be some wannabe loser and claim that it creates "192-bit color". Gee, perhaps they're using floating point numbers. 3 x 64 = 192, oddly enough. Or maybe they're using single precision, which gives us 6 x 32 = 192. I don't know exactly what the six numbers are, perhaps RGB with a surface normal.
Also, lets look at your numbers. Firstly, you're always counting an alpha channel. But alpha is only needed for compositing, not for final output. Secondly, most of us here are using 24-bit (8,8,8) or even 15/16-bit (5,5/6,5) true-colour display modes. Have you noticed any colour ringing or banding because of the lack of precision? I rarely have, and even then it was back when I used a 16-bit mode. 24-bit (i.e 8 bit components) is just fine for almost any work. About the only place it would be inadequant is perhaps doing X-ray or some other type of medical imaging. Now you're not only trying to tell us that Hollywood currently uses 32 bits per component but that the human eye can see 128 bit components? BULLSHIT. You do realise that for every bit you double the number of possible values? So 96-bit colour (3 x 32) has 16 million TIMES the number of values PER COMPONENT than 24-bit colour? My god, can you even comprehend how many different shades of colours that would produce?
Sorry to come down hard on you, but I think you sound like just a confused adolescent with bit-inadequacy issues. You're confusing internal representations with output formats. For internal work, sure you need extra bits to guard against rounding errors. You'd probably scan any film with a 12 or 16 bit scanner (i.e 36 or 48 bit colour), render to either a similar precision or even HDRI formats (floating point, 96 or 192 bit colour) and keep any intermediate images at the highest precision you can. And for compositing you'd have an alpha channel (or three for chroma-key work). But when you process it for final output, you throw away the alpha (which hopefully equals 100% by that stage) and round everything down. For DVD, that means converting to the YCrCb colour space, subsampling the croma channels to half size (i.e 4:2:2 sampling) and encoding. For a film "printer", it might take 36 (3x12) or 48 (3x16) bit RGB, or maybe just 24 bit.
</rant>I agree, though I believe it goes far beyond special effects.
A lot of people would point to the "Old Hollywood" as the golden age of movie making, but I believe we are on the threshold of what will be seen as the real golden age.
Movie making, special effects or not, is becoming much, much cheaper. What we're going to see in the coming years is an explosion of non-Hollywood movies (U.S. and non-U.S.) that are first-rate in terms of polish. So-called "independent" films are going to look as good as any other and have far more impact than they do now. Hollywood will no longer enjoy the position it has enjoyed since its inception.
There is a wealth of talent out there -- actors, writers, directors, cinematographers, makeup and set designers, computer graphics artists -- that exist on the fringes (especially the actors, writers and directors), ignored by the money-chasing, unimagintative, group-think of the Hollywood studios. The talents of these professionals will finally be able to find a vehicle for their expression that will have a world-wide impact.
Even more amazing than filmakers being unshackled from the laws of physics will be the results of filmakers being unshackled from the "laws" of MGM, Newline, UA and so forth.
quiquid id est, timeo puellas et oscula dantes.
Enjoy a movie like this? Are you kidding? OF COURSE!
The USA has been exporting massive amounts of 'cultural products' for the last 100years. To everyone *outside the USA* (or english speaking countries), it is in a 'second language', yet, its still they eat it up.
Now, consider this trailer again, imagine that it wasnt in Japanese -- what would you be thinking of this movie? It frankly looks terrific. If this movie were coming out of America, it would be MASSIVE. One of these days soon IMHO, Japan is going to drop a blockbuster on the USA. Its cultural products are very much palatable to the American Cultural Sensibilities (for bad as well as good, the USA->Japan post WWII influence is imense) -- Japan is very much due to have its own modern Culture play well in Peoria.
Maybe this movie is it, maybe not, but Japan is becoming a more influencial player in international 'style' and culture. And really, being a fan of Anime is not a pre-requisite. Im sure this movie will stand well no its onw.