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The Simpsons Come to Life
musicon writes "Makers of the hit cartoon The Simpsons have a filmed the show's opening titles using real actors.
In the hit viral going around the world we get to see what Bart, Homer, Marg, Lisa and Maggie would look like if they were humans. Simpson's maker Matt Groening has approved the human version of the show's opening credits to promote the brand new series." Amazing attention to detail.
"New series" = "new season"
That's also the reason Marge is driving on the wrong side, it was made in the UK.
This introduction was made by the UK satelite TV channel Sky, although Rupert Murdoch owns both Sky and Fox. If this fil was really made by the makers of the simpsons would the cars drive on the left-hand side of the road as they do in this film?
here just in case there's any trouble with the The Sun's link. As someone pointed out to me yesterday, notice that Homer's car is lefthand drive while Marge's is righthand drive.
Here's a YouTube link (found on MetaFilter)
Hell is not other people; it is yourself. - Ludwig Wittgenstein
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-223127182 7736577327. God bless Google.
Homer drives a Lada, a car made in the Soviet Russia...
Here's the video on Google Video. Google Video's streaming works better than other sites' streaming, and they generally let you download the video as an MPEG-2, as well. You may need to rename the ".gvi" file to ".avi", they rename it for some silly reason.
There's a link inside the small "mov" file. Just open it with a text editor.
That's because it's meant to be a British family coming home to watch The Simpsons , presumably through one of those ghastly Murdochotron devices that adorn so many homes these days.
Come on people, think!
I agree on the main characters, but they did a better job on the bit parts. The music teacher in Lisa's sax scene is spot on. And if you watch Bart zoom by on the skateboard, you can pick out Moe, Comic Book Guy and Bleeding Gums Murphy. They even have Chief Wiggum, although as someone else has mentioned he's a less stout bobbie.
One more thing I thought was interesting was the special effect to get Maggie onto the couch. Instead of having Marge carry her in, they composited her in. It all happens so fast that I missed it the first time.
Dude, it's The Sun. That's like complaining that the Weekly World News got the color of Bat Boy's toupee wrong... just be glad the story isn't ENTIRELY bullshit and move on.
Comment of the year
Instead of having Marge carry her in, they composited her in.
They did it for Bart too, within the time Marge cuts in front of him he goes from rushing to his spot to sitting comfortably. Looks really odd once you notice it.
This reminds me of the house built in Springfield, NV. It brought the house to life. http://www.lasvegassun.com/dossier/misc/simpsons/s tory.html
Now we need this family to re-film this at the house. Maybe then it can be aired in the US.
If anybody wants save the movies to hard drive. Here they are (I didn't bother with the RealPlayer versions):
High
the_real_simpsons_850k.mov
the_real_simpsons_850k.mov
Medium
the_real_simpsons_330.mov
the_real_simpsons_330.mov
Low
the_real_simpsons_30.mov
the_real_simpsons_30.mov
Animated characters can move much faster than real life characters and still stay convincing. The timing on the original Simpsons intro is breakneck. Characters whirl all over the place.
Most of the details people are mentioning as missing simply couldn't be done in live action. They are already running the video at about 1.4 times normal speed, and the humans still move too slowly to work it. Run at a high enough speed to match, things would jerk all over the place, Keystone Cops style.
Part of that is storyboarding cheats, though, which the filmmakers could have done had they known a little more about animation. One of the rules of cartoon storyboarding is that as soon as a character is out of shot, they can move infinitely fast. For example, in the saxophone scene Lisa is out of shot for a moment, and when she comes back she's moved further than a human can. The filmmakers tried to approximate this, but they ended up with a jump cut.
Other times, it just doesn't work because live action takes longer to read than animation. The shot that is supposed to look like Maggie is driving the car is just confusing. Car, baby, car in different place, car turns over the storyboarding axis. Unpleasant. The English countryside doesn't help. It's so detailed and lush that the car seems like a minor part of that last shot.
The whip-pan from Homer tossing his rod to Bart skating is odd.
On the whole, I think they concentrated too hard on trying to match the actual shots, and not enough on trying to match the intent of the shots.