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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?"
It used no actors, only computer generated whiny melodrama
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
"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.
Will she get sued by Apple if the baby ever starts singing?
Jonathanjk.com
Many of the scenes in Star Wars were filmed in Tunisia.
Sure, but how do we know Tunisia isn't computer-generated?
I am Sartre of the Borg. Existence is futile.
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.