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Speed Racer's Visual FX Uncovered
Marco Trezzini writes "View exclusive interactive samples of the digital building blocks behind the Speed Racer movie in VRMag's in-depth interviews with award-winning Matrix visual FX guru John Gaeta, Dennis Martin, Lubo Hristov, and Jake Morrison.
Including Virtual Reality panoramas of the movie locations, turn tables of the mach 5 and 6,
and many making of videos unveiling the secrets of the visual effects.
Link to 'Speed Racer uncovered' and to John Gaeta's interview." The first time I saw the trailer for this movie, my jaw hit the floor. Nobody makes live action "Cartoons" that look like this. I guess that makes me believe there is no way the movie can be good.
I don't think that's exactly fair. There is some way the movie could be good. The original Matrix had neat (maybe not original) effects but it also had a very sound core science fiction theme along with a lot of great drama and situations. The dialog wasn't the best but I thought the story was very very strong. My 50+ year old aunt and uncle watched it when it came out and the one thing they remember from it is the story. Not the special effects or dialog or who was in it but the possibility of this Man Vs Machine universe.
I'll admit when I saw the Speed Racer trailer, my brain didn't comprehend anything that happened. I couldn't tell who was what, what I was looking at or even what kind of conflict the movie centered on. I was utterly stupefied. I'm not afraid of admitting that, it was just confusing and I've never seen or read any Speed Racer material so I have no precursor or knowledge of what the theme is.
If this movie is relying 100% on its stunning visual effects, it's going to be a summer blockbuster and nothing more. It isn't going to age well and might go down as being a standard to watch on the latest plasma screen until next summer when a better movie comes out. There is, however, still a very likely possibility that one or more elements comes through to save the movie. Whether it be the directing, the acting, the story or even the music.
My work here is dung.
A little? Every time I see the trailer, I think to myself, I've got to go see that movie when I'm tripping balls. I just hope my eyeballs don't pop out of my head!
Stop looking for realism, stop looking for cartoon - sit back and drink in this wonderful combination of the two. Know the last movie I saw where the special effects and lighting made me go - oh wow, look at this, we're in another world! - Tron. Yep, gotta go back that far to get the same kind of reaction I got when I saw the trailer. I love the vibrant colors (Trixie's ultra-red lips with so much ultra-hot-pink on screen is an image that just sticks in my mind), I love the chaotic scenery, and I love that gravity among other physics are mostly ignored. Even if the story doesn't live up to history, the wonder at which I stare at the screen will be quite enough for me - It all looks ultra-real, and that's got me excited just like Tron used to.
TRON didn't have any preconceptions to work with. As the very first movie with extensive CGI, they had no idea what the viewing audience would or would not like. Also, the rendering technology of the day was so horribly limiting that they had to do the best with what they had.
I refuse to consider anything I say about a cartoon that is 40 years old to be a spoiler. It's like talking about how King Kong dies at the end of the movie. It's been out a while. There's a time limit on this shit.
And really? A Thundercats movie? That's just fucking sad.
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
So, a thread where everyone gets to show how terribly sophisticated they are by turning their noses up at an action film? no way! I submit to you all that the vast majority of this trash talk is little more than fickle ignorance.
This film is certainly about visual appeal. But i can say that with just a teensy bit of knowledge in that domain, it is readily apparent to me that this is a spectacular triumph.
The film captures the recently popular technique called HDR or High Dynamic Range photography, but they manage to do it at 24 frames per second at IMAX resolutions and keep it going for 2 hours. All of the motion blur, lens flares and other camera artifacts are clearly intentional and separate from anything having to do with their cameras, most likely in order to emphasize a sense of scale or motion. Notice how the backgrounds are in focus, crisp and sharp along with the immediate foreground- this is surely the most essential element of creating the live action cartoon feel that the brief snippets of trailer are hinting at.
But the most important thing I'm able to extract from the limited glimpses I've had is that they employ all of this to convey the sense of big heavy cars racing at hundreds of miles per hour and flipping through the air as gracefully as a ballet troop in full deployment.
So what good does the optimistic assessment do me? For one thing, it gives me some joy in the anticipation. More importantly, I get the satisfaction of being truly sophisticated without sitting in a traffic jam down on Snark St.
:)Fudboy
I guess I'm only a Fudboy, looking for that real Transmeta
The sad thing is that the expensive actors tend not to be any better than cheap actors. They make a lot of money because of silly factors like looks or previously held roles, not acting quality. This is especially horrid in animated movies, where "stars" doing voices are the focus of all the trailers, and then each celebrity essentially plays himself or herself. The talented voice actors (for instance, Billy West, who plays half of the characters in Futurama) come in to audition and get rejected, while the director will then coach the auto-hired celebrity based on the improvised performances seen by the talented but unknown actors.
Next time you see an ad for Crazy Animal Doing People Things starring Al Pacino as Every Character Al Panico Has Ever Played and Cameron Diaz as Generic Bimbo, just walk away.
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)