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Sky Captain and the Films of Tomorrow
professorfalcon writes "Foxnews.com has an interview with the stars of Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. They talk about their experience hugging a green screen for the entire film, and how the movie is 'unlike anything most audiences have seen before. It uses no sets, only computer generated imagery.' So most audiences didn't see Star Wars?"
Tron only used sets for about ... what 30 minutes, maybe, of a 90 minute movie?
Heavy use of blue-screened backdrops isn't THAT new...
"Stupid! Stupid stupid stupid stupid! I touched the hot wire right there - I'm an idiot!"
It used no actors, only computer generated whiny melodrama
If the special effects make you woozy, take some Milk of Magnesia.
Star wars is very different. Sure, a lot of the stuff is CG or green-screened, but a lot of the stuff is done on sets with more than just a few props.
GMail invites for completed freeipods.com of
You're telling me that Star Wars used only computer-generated sets? That there were no physical sets involved at all?
Offtopic I know, but I'm really starting to wish that article submitters could save the commentary for comments...
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Hibbert: No.
Lisa: No.
Marge: No.
Wiggum: No.
Bart: No.
Patty: No.
Wiggum: No.
Ned: No.
Selma: No.
Frink: No.
Lovejoy: No.
Guy hyping Sky Captain: Yes. I mean... um, I mean, no. No, heh.
I saw this last night. I was interested in the visuals, after reading about the filming method. After ten minutes, the novelty of the effects wore off. I could get past the 30'-style campiness, but the actors didn't seem to be interacting with each other. As the movie progressed, you could tell that the actors were acting by themselves in many of the scenes. It was a neat idea, but it got really distracting for me after a bit. I think for a short film, it would have been pretty cool, but a full-length feature? I was bored out of my mind by the end of the movie...just my $0.02.
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Wouldn't a blue screen make it harder for the actors to show any emotion beyond sheer anger?
They are Windows users, aren't they?
I saw it last night -- highly recommended. It will probably will come to be regarded as the "Star Wars" of this decade -- something that changed the entire nature of filmmaking.
:-)
There may not have been any sets, per-se, but there were a fair amount of props used in close-ups (like where the characters were leaning against a railing), so not absolutely everything was painted green.
Chip H.
There's an article about this on Apple's website:
Apple - Pro/Video - Kerry Conran
I would bet that a lot of the digital effects used in this film were rendered and perhaps even designed with Linux. If they were done with Windows they would have used a blue screen.
Think Indiana Jones, but on an even bigger scale. Globetrotting around the world, giant robots, flying aircraft carriers, underwater planes, etc. Yes, you need to turn off your sense of disbelief, but it was an absolute blast. Ebert said it best, it went from Conrad's mind to film without reality intervening. A glorious film about an alternate reality we should've had.
"Sometimes a woman is a kind of religion, she can save your soul & set you free from all your sins" - Bad Examples
actually at a special presentation which I was fortunate enough to attend, Gweneth Paltrow and Jude Law said that the lack of sets "freed" them in their acting. The fact that they had an animatic of the entire film that they used as reference before every take allowed them to "hit their marks" more easily and allowed them to be more creative in their acting. It was like theater acting on a bare set.
As far as the audience reaction, this film was deliberately made in a stylized form. In fact they processed it in black and white and recolorized it to give an old movie feel! (They also didn't use the state of the art capture technology, just plain old Sony HD-CAM 1440x960, 3:1:1, 8bit). It is clear from many other recent motion pictures that they could have made it appear as realistic as they wanted but chose not to.
The main reason why it IS the future is because it is thought that it cost about 1/3 what it would have been if they had shot it on "real" sets! Hate to say it but saving more than $80 million dollars (estimated cost of the film $40M-$70M) would drive any producer to making his film this way, regardless of actor preference or (most) audience reactions.
Yes, it was blue. An on "set" picture shows them in front of the blue screen.
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
You might as well say "Yeah, I like 2001 but why'd they have to put it in space?".
I've always liked the 30's vision of the future: dirigibles, flying fortresses, giant steel robots. And the old serials had a certain charm, you know that crawl at the beginning of star wars? Lucas got that idea from serials, which would use it to catch everyone up on the last episodes. Longtime fans of MST3K will remember "The Phantom Creeps" serials and especially "Radar Men From The Moon".
Sky Captain is a direct homage to these serials. I imagine that this movie would be the dream of any kid who watched those.
I guess it's a very different genre of movie from anything that's been produced in the last 70 years. Sky Captain isn't the best movie ever, but it's a lot of fun to watch the "we-make-it-up-as-we-go-along" style of storytelling. He crashes his plane into the ocean? No problem, Dax fitted it with submersible gear. Who cares if that's ridiculous. It's supposed to be, but it's still exciting.
I mean, how can you hate a beautiful movie like this, a british commander on a hovering air field saying things like "Alert the amphibious squadron!".
"So why did green take over? Is green dye just cheaper or is there a technical reason behind it?"
The technology of blue/green/organge/whatever screens is called "chroma key". The computer knows that anything of the key color is "background" and should be replaced with other imagery. They use those bright, stand-out colors for that reason -- those colors are unlikely to conflict with real actors or props. The computer could replace another color, e.g., black, just as well, but black appears normally all over the place.
They use the same technology for the "magic weather maps" you see the meteorologist stand in front of during modern TV weather reports. The map isn't really there; the meteorologist stands in front of a color screen, and the map is composited in electronically. You can occasionally see a goof where some part of the meteorologist's wardrobe is too close to the screen's color, and the map "bleeds through" and the person appears "hollow".
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
Even given the technology, how many people/effects teams out there are going to have the talent and skill necessary to create and animate a convincing CG actor doing a good, convincing CG performance? Plus you'll still need good voice actors.
The geeks, voices actors, artists and digital puppeteers will be the new "movie stars" with huge paychecks, only without all the glamour. Though maybe this in some ways is better than an average actress with nice T&A getting paid millions, I sincerely doubt it's really going to shake the movie industry to its foundations or anything. I don't really care if celebrities act like babies, I don't have to deal with their day to day attitude... I just have to be able to watch and enjoy their performances.
Besides, I don't think human audiences will ever totally connect with an actor that isn't real. Many movies' success are greatly influenced by how recognizable the stars are. If you're a fan of a particular actor, you're probably more likely to go out and see their movies, right? Will people have this same sense of attachment and "loyalty" to CG characters, even if the same characters are used throughout different movies? I kind of doubt it.
Also, I think your 3 year estimate is a little optimistic. The most lauded, advanced CG character in a live action movie ever created, Smeagol, was still quite recognizably a CG character in many scenes, and Smeagol had many aspects of a "creature" to him, something unrecognizable that our minds can't as easily recognize as "fake" because we don't have anything to compare it to. Unobstructed, unmasked, convincing human CG characters are going to be many, many times more difficult to create than gollum was.
Plus, the Lord of the Rings trilogy were some of the most successful movies ever to heavily use CG, but just as much energy seems to have been put into finding good locations, creating elaborate and convincing physical sets, and finding the right flesh-and-blood actors.
CG is increasingly going to become a more important element of movie-making, and it may trim down costs here and there, but I think it's going to be a long time (decades, at least, probably) before we see another dramatic shift in the way CG changes movie-making. But then, I'm not in the business and I'm not really a great visionary. It would be cool to be proven wrong, but there's always the possibility that the heavy use of CG and digital effects will just create a whole new host of problems and flaws to deal with.
"You're telling me that Star Wars used only computer-generated sets?"
Yah, I thought that statement was bogus.
The interesting part is I've always maintained that the signature look of the original three Star Wars films (Episodes 4, 5, and 6) comes about because they didn't have all the special effects tech they have these days. Computer generated imagery didn't really exist; chromakey didn't exist. Everything was done with models (and paintings for large stuff) and then manually compositited. Even today's best computer models still don't manage to get all the details of a "real" scene completely right. If you look closely, you can still almost always spot the CG models. But in the original Star Wars, every time they blew something up, they actually built something and blew it up.
(Of course, the artifacts resulting from inaccurate hand compositing detracts from the overall quality, but hey, you can't have everything.)
I imagine CG models will eventually catch up, but right now, you still can't beat the "real thing".
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
"Man are you confused. World War One was 1914-1918."
Right. And until they had another one, it was called "The Great War" or "The World War". They didn't know to call it "World War One" until there was a second one.
This reminds me of the gag with the guy who finds a coin dated "50 BC".
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
The upcoming Sin City (based on Frank Miller's graphic novel series, and it's directed by Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller) uses a similar filmmaking technique as "Sky Captain," although not to the same degree. An FAQ is here.
:)
Compare the behind-the-scenes footage to the trailer that was shown at this summer's San Diego Comic-Con (they had originally posted a 640x480 version but it's been replaced by a 480x272 version).
Check it out (there's a brief topless scene, so it's not SFW), if only for the shots of Jessica Alba dancing around seductively in leather chaps.
"So why did green take over?"
Ooops, got so caught up in my explanation I forgot your question had two parts.
The critical element is that the key color not appear on the actors or props. Bright blue works well for many indoor scenes and bright lighting, but does poorer in "outdoor" and low-light conditions, where blues are more common. That green color can provide better contrast then. I've also seen them use an orange screen for spaceship models which contained blues and greens. Again, the computer can key on any color; the important part is that the color not be present on the "real" stuff. I imagine bright purple or yellow would also work well in some cases.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
It's a spoof as much as anything. It was intended to be a "cheesy" type movie...like they used to make in the 30's. It was intended to have stereotypical, bubble-gum-pop acting and gee-wiz special effects...It wasn't trying to be "realistic".
It was a really cool movie....I took my two kids[frankly the target audience!], way past their bedtime and they didn't make a peep for the whole show!! Therefore, it's a great movie!!
You just have to love the Slashdot crowd. Anything new comes along and all you get is "oh, it's been done before... it wasn't quite as fully developed, and was only part of a larger whole, but it was done."
When are we going to stop and think about the fact that all innovation in human history involved taking things that already existed, and combining them in ways that no one else had?
No one had ever fillmed a feature-length movie with live-action actors as the primary stars in which there was only one set and 90% of the film was CG. If hollywood had nixed the idea of doing this, Slashdot junkies would be the first to rant that Hollywood never does anything innovative like this, but when they do, it's all just, "been there, done that."
Tron was an innovative and well-made film. So was Sky Capt. Why can we not celebrate the innovation of both (while lamenting that Hollywood DOES limit such innovation such that it took us 30 years to get from the one to the other)?
The whole thing would be simpler if you could just buy paint that has a zero alpha component.
Okay, I saw it, and loved just about everything about it, except the opening title sequence was so jarringly out of place - it's like a standard opening title sequence for a regular movie, not for a 30s/40s sci-fi homage. Weird.
:)
I thought the storyline was great, the characters were very well realized, and the special effects were fantastic, most especially the designs. The more 30s & 40s sci-fi/action serials you've read/seen, the more you'll realize how effin' brilliant this homage is. If you've never read or seen anything from that era, you're really gonna hate this movie, though you may have enough artistic appreciation in your soul to see the beauty in the designs (though I doubt it, from most of the comments in here thus far).
The effects aren't _intended_ to be realistic. Another movie that did this to great effect was last year's fantastic version of "Peter Pan," which I very highly recommend. Kerry Conran (writer & director) came up with the idea to make, essentially, a comic book come to life, IN THE STYLE OF THE COMICS. _That_ is something noone has done before. The 'set' design evokes a time that never really existed (well, much like most movies do). I love the revisionist history, Hindenburg III, indeed, and docking with the Empire State Building like the original - nice touch! I found out that some New Yorkers don't even know about that.
I think a travelling museum piece about all of the things that influenced the making of "Sky Captain" would be a pretty marvellous thing.
re: the acting
Okay, it wasn't bad, first off. They did what they intended to do, so guess what? You missed the whole point. This is a comic book. Use your brain and think about the things that implies, okay?
The character I was most impressed with was Dex - a character that could have easily have been a helpless little geek character. Instead, he's the one responsible for most of the technical innovation the good guys use. His inspiration? Comic books! Brilliant. And I want that ray gun of his in the worst kind of way! Every time Cap said, "Good boy," I wanted to beat the shit out of him. And I cheered when Cap socked Polly.
I'd say anyone bitching about this would bitch about the original Star Wars (A New Hope) if they were seeing it for the first time now. You've got no soul.
And people are _bored_ by this movie? Geez. I feel really sad for you.