Well there is still one studio owned VFX facility: Imageworks, by Sony. The other one The Secret Lab (formerly Dream Quest Images) was owned by Disney but Disney decided to close it in the end. Both are on the same level as ILM. Unfortunately it seems studios for the most part don't know how to manage internal VFX studios. Seems Sony learned the lesson and has more or less let Imageworks be.
There are tons of VFX shops in Canada, most doing VFX TV work for a lot of American TV series like Stargate SG-1.
As far as Weta and New Line. Well for one thing Weta will most probably be dissolved after Return of the King, or more precisely they will go to the same size before LOTR (like when they were doing stuff for Xena). After all how many big productions are gonna go to New Zeland. Unless Jackson can find them a steady stream of projects, maybe a Hobbit film and his long delayed King Komg version. But most probably most of the artists will go back home (many are from California) after the last LOTR film wraps. post production. In the future New Line would probably have to get bids like everyone else.
Lucas present move is not about consolidating the VFX market, it's about consolidating his companies in one place. There is no ILM stranglehold. Beside ILm there are tonos of big and small shops like: Imageworks, Digital Domain, Tippett Studios, ESC, Rhythm and Hues, Matte World Digital, Hammerhead, Banned from the Ranch, Cinesite, etc. and lots more. THat is not counting some of the places elsewhere particularly in the UK which has a constant flux of projects, like: Framestore/CFC, Double Negative, Cinesite Europe, Glassworks, etc.
I believe it was more actually like New Line gave Jackdon and the producers a ton of money and they used that money to ramp up Weta among other things. After all PJ is the owner. I doubt New Line has a stake in Weta, and if does it won't be the majority.
Probably a coincidence. Part of the deal entailed that the buildings should architecturally fit the surroundings. After all part of the Bay Area influences are Spanish, and some of Naboo (like the space port in Ep. 2) were filmed and based in Seville, Spain.
Ahhh but what place has he gone to? He probably designed stuff for the Ranch which has plenty of space.
I've been to ILM twice and the space is at premium there. They are really quite tight in there and even a few years ago considered expanding to Pixar's old grounds. The buildings in the campus are filled, and of course you need space for the stages and model shop. They didn't have enough room that they built these wood or prefabricated "bungalow" offices (over a dozen) outside the buildings so that they could fit everyone in there.
I've heard that Lucas' ex, Marcia, owns quite a bit of land in San Rafael including where ILM is now and the rent is high (though I've never confirmed). Also an article a few years ago in one of those newspapers cited that Lucas would get some huge tax incentive or something like that by relocating to the Presidio.
Nope, the campus will be all for Lucas companies, mainly ILM and LucasArts. Just ILM has around 1000 employees (it has balooned to around 1200 aound prequel time). His plans are to put most of his companies there, except maybe Lucasfilm and Skywalker Sound which reside over at the Ranch. Producers, directors and other Lucas firend usually stay at the Ranch which has a guest house.
The incentive is financial though for other reasons. Apparently the land where ILM is right now is owned by Lucas' ex-wife, Marcia, and apparently the rent is a bit high. Also Lucas received some sort of incentive from the city, like a tax break or something, which would save him a ton of money. It was on an article on one of those newspapers long ago.
Movies will not be filmed in a timely fashion, simply because the way studios do things nowadays. Now everything has a release data and all this strategic planning. Movies are released according to this instead of being released when they are ready , like they used to in old times.
As far as Dreamworks you have to make the distinction between Feature Animation (in Glendale) and PDI (in Silicon Valley). Actually not much of a distinction since both use off the shelf and propietary software. PDI is mostly propietary but htye do use Maya and I believe Shake. Feature Animation has also written quite a bit of propietary software for Linux:
The case of Pixar is a bit more subtle. Yes they do make movies but they don't distribute them (Pixar might be looking for a new partner after their last picture on their current deal). Disney distributes them. The big studios like Disney, Sony, Paramount and the like, control the distribution channels and it's them that are members of the MPAA. VFX studios are service providers, much like the food caterers or the ones that provide trained animals. If a company that provides animals, say a film like The Bear, Bethoven, Dr. Doolittle, etc. in essence it's because of them that that movie is possible. Would the animal company be an evil member of the MPAA? No of course they provide the service much like Imageworks, ILM and others. Pixar is kinda borderline, they do make films but are not part of the big mafia of movie studios, they still need to get someone to distribute the movies. Heck you could even see their deal as being screwed, after all Disney only distributes and promotes, but after expenses they split everything right down the middle. Pixar could be doing a ton more money. I see why the argument for Pixar = MPAA = bad could be made, but it's a nebulous argument at the best.
That's what I thought too (about a possible typo) but who knows. A few days ago I posted a story about how ILM was using AMD systems on their renderfarm from RackSaver, which also does Xeon systems. At least it shows that RackSaver knows how to work with those types of customers, and besides ILM and Pixar are relatively close.
Well it's also based on customer demand. I'm sure a lot of studios wanted a Linux port. If there were a large number of customers clamoring for a PPC port I'm sure Pixar would port it right away. But as it is, a great deal of important clients are switching to Linux so that's what was done instead.
Well they had PRMan ported to Linux several years ago, and it certainly ran on SUN machines, even if that port was never released commercially. Sometimes Pixar takes a long time to release some stuff udes internally, like the notorious Deep Shadow maps, which they presented over two years ago and used in Monsters Inc. but just released it on PRMan 11 (probably after lots of customer complaining).
Anyway you can read this old press release from SUN (1997), specifically saying that SUN machines were used in the renderfarm:
If I remember back then they had a suite of test that gave something like a RenderMark number or something like that and they said SUN got the highest marks. Some of their more recent SUN machines were 8 processor racks which also gave them bang in as little space as possible (the old buildings before they moved to Emmeryville were really tight).
Actually there is one hosted at Sourceforge that is very active, called Aqsis. There were a couple of other projects like gman that never took off, or were just University projects. Aqsis is making good progress:
There are a few other implementations that also run on Linux like AIR, The aforementioned RenderDotC (which I believe Cinesite used), and 3Delight. Hopefully a product like Liquid (from a guy that worked at Weta), which is a Maya to RIB translator (kinda like MTOR) will also take off which could help in making a more powerful combo.
I don't know, but isn't this whole news like very old news? That site linked about the Revelations website, I think I saw it like 2 years ago. It was going to be done by Fincher before he even took Panic Room instead. Morgan Freeman went to do Sum of All Fears and Dreamcatcher among others.
There was also a Morgan Freeman video somewhere, where he was at an Intel conference where they presented some test VFX for the film, done by Grant Boucher (from now defunct Station X Studios). They wanted to build their own inhouse VFX dept. (like what was done with Pitch Black, though thta eventually turned to Double Negative) using Intel machines, which I thought wasn't a good idea. Why not get bids from pros and let hem do the work and use what they want, instead of spending more money trying to setup your own?
Fact is Rendezvous with Rama is in development hell or limbo. If it gets done the earliest would be 2004 and I seriously doubt that. Fincher apparently is all set to direct Lords of Dogtown, a skateboarding pic, so he wouldn't be available until late 2003 to do Rama. I believe Morgan Freeman is also doing other movies instead. This movie is long ways off to be actually made.
Well there are a couple of subtle differences, and the article makes a few things confusing.
1) Lucasfilm is a movie producing company, say like Imagine from Ron Howard and Brian Grazer. They develop film projects. They are not a movie studio or media conglomarate ike Sony or AOL/TimeWarner. The fact is that Lucasfilm will continue to work with any studio and actualy needs them to distribute the product. Fox for Ep. 3 and Paramount for Indiana Jones 4. If they develop any projects in the future they will still need to take it to the studios for distribution.
2) Seems to me this is about simplifying the top level management and operations. I doubt if ILM, Skywalker Sound and the other will fill much impact in day to day operations.
3) As far as the ILM example, they'll still continue to operate the same way and different studios will bring them projects, perhaps except Sony since they have their own division, Imageworks. Lucasfilm will not compete with the movie studios. If anything it's the producers and the filmdevelopment companies that might have the problem. Will Imagine like to deal with Lucasfilm just to use Skywalker Sound or ILM. Who knows. But as I mentioned before operations will probably stay the same and someone like Imagine can contact ILM direct and work with them independently.
I do think you have some valid points but I don't think it'll get that extreme.
Yep they use lots of SUN machines for the renderfarm. But probably most of the artist workstations aer (or at least were) SGIs. There was some sort of statement by someone high up at Pixar that they would use Macs, at least in limited roles, when OSX came out. Some people speculated that they might turn the rederfarm to Apple servers but I think it was just a rumor.
That is just perception (mostly I guess). Of course he had to make that decision it's a pretty big one, probably not only legal repurcussions but also economical and business wise. After all this can be seen as ILM give out something that gave them a competitive advantage over others in the field.
Buthis empire is huge I doub't he micromanages anything, with the exception of Lucasfilm at most. I went to VES last year and it was funny, this guy at the opening reception kept pestering Lucas about this software. He said he didn't know about that and he didn't take care of that, he referred him to Jim Morris. Actually sometimes it seems he doesn't know all the details. In an interview (Millimeter, American Cinematographer or something like that), he was asked if he was aware the headaches the ILM model shop had because of using the HD cameras and he didn't, the previous article detailed all that. Actually he seems pretty laid back since he has to take care of his kids, I guess he lets everyone else worry about everything;-).
Well Ep. 2 wasn't done in EXR. It started being used in The Time Machine. On the VFXPro announcement they mentioned it was used in Signs, Gangs of NY, Harry Potter 1 and MIB2. And it lloks like they will be using it at least for half of this year's productions:
It's been tough all around. SIGGRAPH has scaled back but at least they saved enough and reorganized so that the Conference could go on. They actually mention the situation Comdex and others are going through:
Well the "core" staff of ILM is about 1000 right now, and they have recently recruited many folks. But at max I don't think ILM has ever balooned above 1500 or 1600 people. Supposdely when they move to the Presdio, it will be able to house about 2200 people though that would also include LucasArts and any other companies that move in. ILM does indeed keep hold of many of many of their staff, it's not like most of them are freelancers. Most of the freelancers come from the model shop, some from animation and other from compositing.
There are projects that can be done by a large number of houses, as long as the overall supervisor does its job and the necessary resources are available. It'll probably be more common but it won't be the only way to do it.
Of course the base level of barrier of entry has lowered. But then again movies push the envelop. There are many times when this companies have to come up with technology not available anywhere, say like the water simulation used in Perfect Storm.
ILM didn't really farm out shots. Since the first movie one of the deals between Warner Bros, and I suspect Rowling and co., was that a certain percentage of the VFX work had to be done by UK companies. Even if ILM could have done all the work, they couldn't contractually do them.
By the way The Mill was responsible for the miniature work, like all those exterior shots of Hogwarts. Framestore/CFC did the basilisk.
They did work on the first movie. They did the CG python, the ghosts (Near Headless Nick and others), and the Voldermort sequence. Imageworks was the main provider on the first one though.
The point is that it happens all the time. Why niotpick on Lucas if a lot or most films do it with all sorts of things. Credits are given to major influences but not minor ones.
Did xXx had credits thankink, Fleming and Danjaq? Will Solaris have a credit thanking the designers in 2001? Did Harry Potter thanked particular architects for inspirations of buildings. Did the Matrix thanked Giger, or the TNG producers for the virtual reality concept? At one point it gets ridiculous. Yes sometimes there are major rip off or homages. But many times they are acknowledged.
There are even worst cases. A few weeks ago there was an interview with Avi Arad, I think 60 Min. 2. Stan Lee is not getting a single penny from the film. Arad didn't see any problem with that and said Lee was OK and taken care off. Then they interviewed Stan Lee and he was very upset but too much of a class act to really say it.
There was also the interesting case of the sculture on The Devils Advocate which was extremely similar to the work or this sculptor. He sued a lot later when the movie was out and won. They had to digitally alter those shots, though it was too late as many DVDs had the original shots, kinda collector items.
Well my argument was about the techniques and not either specifi implementations, nor larger issues which are much more subjective like personal tastes on the directing or story (and which I agree that some people might like it as much as other despise it). Though I do agree,doing it the Lean way would be great. Too bad you now have to feed extras, and pay them and yadda yadda yadda;-).
As far as crowds, I don't see what looked wrong with the replicated riders in Mummy 2, though I admit a lot of the Anubis warriors crowd shots were not good and can give you a lot of good reason for that. I f anything the biggest problem with the human army is that at the end you didn't see one dead body or anything;-). But there have been many other examples. What about the crowds in the stadium in Episode 1, or the tons of CG crowds in Pearl Harbor?
My point was that some people complained that the clone troopers were CG when they could have been costumed extras. But not many complain that the orc armies could have also been costumed extras, hence the double standard.
As far as some of the comments. As far as Lucas I think he is really trailblazing the way of the future. How many people complained about the advent of color and sound. Same thing with non linear filmmaking. This is separate frmo saying he isn't very good at directing actors, which I do agree is a very valid complaint. Then again you have tons of directors that shoot the usual way and the performances are awful nonetheless. Does that imply that the usual way sucks? Of course not, just the same as nonlinear filmaking doesn't imply bad films. It's not like it's unprecedented, he pioneered and used it extensively in the Young Infy TV series.
As far as Yoda, Frank Oz personally wote a letter to thank Rob Coleman and the animators about the great job they did. He didn't have any regrets. He even said that he thought they shouldn't have copied some of his "mistakes" like the wobly ears. Besides it's the artist behind that imparts the life and emotion to a character, be it Oz with a rubber puppet or the ILM animators behind the computers. No need to disparage animators after all the computer is a tool (albeit a powerful one) and you need as much an good artist behind it as one operating a puppet.
As far as sets, well LOTR was inspired by the English countryside so yes you can get away with using eral environments. In the end Lucas is creating some vistas that almost don't exists anywhere. Lucas also had the standins present, Ahmed Best, Secombe, etc. so in essence Lucas and Jackson are using them the same.
As far as the film complaining, well don't pin it all on Lucas. James Cameron has done his own tests and wants to shoot the next in HD and is convinced, also Steven Soderberg and I believe also Robert Rodriguez. I'm not saying that digital surpases film in all aspects but to this directors and others HD is good enough for their style of shooting. Jackson, Spielberg and many others will stick for film for a long time if not forever. I never really read about Lucas "whinning" about film, but more explaining his point of view of using HD. Hardly surprising since many old school folk and critics just have flatly discounted HD. I haven't heard about any so called "elaborate excuses". At least that's the way I understood all the interviews I read. Besides you could argue the same with Jackson, what about those shots that had the CG camera syndrome of going anywhere (when the birds go inside Orthanc to Saruman). You could argue that is just showing off the tech or personal indulgence, as Jackson has stated that he wanted a rollercoaster ride feel for many of his shots. On the other hand most other VFX supervisors would avoid and use more traditional techniques to give the shot a bit more realism and not the motion ride feel. So would you say Jackson abandoned a tradition there, so Lucas has 100 times the respect of the art of filmaking? That's just a really low blow to Lucas withouit any justification. Both are great filmakers in my book, each with their cons and pros, which I could go on but I ranted enough.
In a certain way you proved my point;-), though it was an interesting post you had there, even if I don't agree with some of it. Enough ranting peace!!!
Yeah I actually heard that from Rob coleman himself. Not actually "dumbed down" but animated so it matched the puppet as closely as possible, in particular the ears as you mentioned, and the lip movements. But as far as other aspects, like skin shaders, compositing, etc. I say both are on about equal terms.
Besides you could make the other side of the arument. I doubt they mocaped anyone climbing down a sheer rock face head down first as shown on the trailer. I think there are articles saying that not al Gollum was mocaped, after all Randy Cook is animation supervisor.
In the end both are fantasy characters and look great.
Ahhh ok, thanks, I didn't have my Cinefex handy. What threw me off was your comment about the company being out of business, after all Centropolis merged with Das Werk. Heck they even worked on Eight Legged Freaks this year.
I thought the baby Zilla's were done by Imageworks, unless some of the work was subcontracted. Digiscope also did stuff for the film as well a VisionArt, though both haven't done a lot of film work lately. Maybe someone else?
Well, the deadite armies in Army of darkness were done more traditionally, mainly costumed extras and also miniature puppets, all in camera with no CG.
Computers were first used to replicate crowds of extras filmed over and over again in different locations, Braveheart is a good example of this. It was a bit later that CG crowds were used, though CG stunt doubles had already started appearing like in Executive Decision and the Batman sequels.
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Well there is still one studio owned VFX facility: Imageworks, by Sony. The other one The Secret Lab (formerly Dream Quest Images) was owned by Disney but Disney decided to close it in the end. Both are on the same level as ILM. Unfortunately it seems studios for the most part don't know how to manage internal VFX studios. Seems Sony learned the lesson and has more or less let Imageworks be.
There are tons of VFX shops in Canada, most doing VFX TV work for a lot of American TV series like Stargate SG-1.
As far as Weta and New Line. Well for one thing Weta will most probably be dissolved after Return of the King, or more precisely they will go to the same size before LOTR (like when they were doing stuff for Xena). After all how many big productions are gonna go to New Zeland. Unless Jackson can find them a steady stream of projects, maybe a Hobbit film and his long delayed King Komg version. But most probably most of the artists will go back home (many are from California) after the last LOTR film wraps. post production. In the future New Line would probably have to get bids like everyone else.
Lucas present move is not about consolidating the VFX market, it's about consolidating his companies in one place. There is no ILM stranglehold. Beside ILm there are tonos of big and small shops like: Imageworks, Digital Domain, Tippett Studios, ESC, Rhythm and Hues, Matte World Digital, Hammerhead, Banned from the Ranch, Cinesite, etc. and lots more. THat is not counting some of the places elsewhere particularly in the UK which has a constant flux of projects, like: Framestore/CFC, Double Negative, Cinesite Europe, Glassworks, etc.
I believe it was more actually like New Line gave Jackdon and the producers a ton of money and they used that money to ramp up Weta among other things. After all PJ is the owner. I doubt New Line has a stake in Weta, and if does it won't be the majority.
Probably a coincidence. Part of the deal entailed that the buildings should architecturally fit the surroundings. After all part of the Bay Area influences are Spanish, and some of Naboo (like the space port in Ep. 2) were filmed and based in Seville, Spain.
Ahhh but what place has he gone to? He probably designed stuff for the Ranch which has plenty of space.
I've been to ILM twice and the space is at premium there. They are really quite tight in there and even a few years ago considered expanding to Pixar's old grounds. The buildings in the campus are filled, and of course you need space for the stages and model shop. They didn't have enough room that they built these wood or prefabricated "bungalow" offices (over a dozen) outside the buildings so that they could fit everyone in there.
I've heard that Lucas' ex, Marcia, owns quite a bit of land in San Rafael including where ILM is now and the rent is high (though I've never confirmed). Also an article a few years ago in one of those newspapers cited that Lucas would get some huge tax incentive or something like that by relocating to the Presidio.
Nope, the campus will be all for Lucas companies, mainly ILM and LucasArts. Just ILM has around 1000 employees (it has balooned to around 1200 aound prequel time). His plans are to put most of his companies there, except maybe Lucasfilm and Skywalker Sound which reside over at the Ranch. Producers, directors and other Lucas firend usually stay at the Ranch which has a guest house.
The incentive is financial though for other reasons. Apparently the land where ILM is right now is owned by Lucas' ex-wife, Marcia, and apparently the rent is a bit high. Also Lucas received some sort of incentive from the city, like a tax break or something, which would save him a ton of money. It was on an article on one of those newspapers long ago.
Movies will not be filmed in a timely fashion, simply because the way studios do things nowadays. Now everything has a release data and all this strategic planning. Movies are released according to this instead of being released when they are ready , like they used to in old times.
As far as Dreamworks you have to make the distinction between Feature Animation (in Glendale) and PDI (in Silicon Valley). Actually not much of a distinction since both use off the shelf and propietary software. PDI is mostly propietary but htye do use Maya and I believe Shake. Feature Animation has also written quite a bit of propietary software for Linux:
DreamWorks Feature Linux and Animation
The case of Pixar is a bit more subtle. Yes they do make movies but they don't distribute them (Pixar might be looking for a new partner after their last picture on their current deal). Disney distributes them. The big studios like Disney, Sony, Paramount and the like, control the distribution channels and it's them that are members of the MPAA. VFX studios are service providers, much like the food caterers or the ones that provide trained animals. If a company that provides animals, say a film like The Bear, Bethoven, Dr. Doolittle, etc. in essence it's because of them that that movie is possible. Would the animal company be an evil member of the MPAA? No of course they provide the service much like Imageworks, ILM and others. Pixar is kinda borderline, they do make films but are not part of the big mafia of movie studios, they still need to get someone to distribute the movies. Heck you could even see their deal as being screwed, after all Disney only distributes and promotes, but after expenses they split everything right down the middle. Pixar could be doing a ton more money. I see why the argument for Pixar = MPAA = bad could be made, but it's a nebulous argument at the best.
That's what I thought too (about a possible typo) but who knows. A few days ago I posted a story about how ILM was using AMD systems on their renderfarm from RackSaver, which also does Xeon systems. At least it shows that RackSaver knows how to work with those types of customers, and besides ILM and Pixar are relatively close.
Well it's also based on customer demand. I'm sure a lot of studios wanted a Linux port. If there were a large number of customers clamoring for a PPC port I'm sure Pixar would port it right away. But as it is, a great deal of important clients are switching to Linux so that's what was done instead.
Well they had PRMan ported to Linux several years ago, and it certainly ran on SUN machines, even if that port was never released commercially. Sometimes Pixar takes a long time to release some stuff udes internally, like the notorious Deep Shadow maps, which they presented over two years ago and used in Monsters Inc. but just released it on PRMan 11 (probably after lots of customer complaining).
Anyway you can read this old press release from SUN (1997), specifically saying that SUN machines were used in the renderfarm:
PIXAR AND SUN MICROSYSTSTEMS CREATE MORE POWERFUL RENDERFARM FOR PIXAR ANIMATION STUDIOS
If I remember back then they had a suite of test that gave something like a RenderMark number or something like that and they said SUN got the highest marks. Some of their more recent SUN machines were 8 processor racks which also gave them bang in as little space as possible (the old buildings before they moved to Emmeryville were really tight).
Actually there is one hosted at Sourceforge that is very active, called Aqsis. There were a couple of other projects like gman that never took off, or were just University projects. Aqsis is making good progress:
Aqsis
There are a few other implementations that also run on Linux like AIR, The aforementioned RenderDotC (which I believe Cinesite used), and 3Delight. Hopefully a product like Liquid (from a guy that worked at Weta), which is a Maya to RIB translator (kinda like MTOR) will also take off which could help in making a more powerful combo.
I don't know, but isn't this whole news like very old news? That site linked about the Revelations website, I think I saw it like 2 years ago. It was going to be done by Fincher before he even took Panic Room instead. Morgan Freeman went to do Sum of All Fears and Dreamcatcher among others.
There was also a Morgan Freeman video somewhere, where he was at an Intel conference where they presented some test VFX for the film, done by Grant Boucher (from now defunct Station X Studios). They wanted to build their own inhouse VFX dept. (like what was done with Pitch Black, though thta eventually turned to Double Negative) using Intel machines, which I thought wasn't a good idea. Why not get bids from pros and let hem do the work and use what they want, instead of spending more money trying to setup your own?
Fact is Rendezvous with Rama is in development hell or limbo. If it gets done the earliest would be 2004 and I seriously doubt that. Fincher apparently is all set to direct Lords of Dogtown, a skateboarding pic, so he wouldn't be available until late 2003 to do Rama. I believe Morgan Freeman is also doing other movies instead. This movie is long ways off to be actually made.
Well there are a couple of subtle differences, and the article makes a few things confusing.
1) Lucasfilm is a movie producing company, say like Imagine from Ron Howard and Brian Grazer. They develop film projects. They are not a movie studio or media conglomarate ike Sony or AOL/TimeWarner. The fact is that Lucasfilm will continue to work with any studio and actualy needs them to distribute the product. Fox for Ep. 3 and Paramount for Indiana Jones 4. If they develop any projects in the future they will still need to take it to the studios for distribution.
2) Seems to me this is about simplifying the top level management and operations. I doubt if ILM, Skywalker Sound and the other will fill much impact in day to day operations.
3) As far as the ILM example, they'll still continue to operate the same way and different studios will bring them projects, perhaps except Sony since they have their own division, Imageworks. Lucasfilm will not compete with the movie studios. If anything it's the producers and the filmdevelopment companies that might have the problem. Will Imagine like to deal with Lucasfilm just to use Skywalker Sound or ILM. Who knows. But as I mentioned before operations will probably stay the same and someone like Imagine can contact ILM direct and work with them independently.
I do think you have some valid points but I don't think it'll get that extreme.
Yep they use lots of SUN machines for the renderfarm. But probably most of the artist workstations aer (or at least were) SGIs. There was some sort of statement by someone high up at Pixar that they would use Macs, at least in limited roles, when OSX came out. Some people speculated that they might turn the rederfarm to Apple servers but I think it was just a rumor.
That is just perception (mostly I guess). Of course he had to make that decision it's a pretty big one, probably not only legal repurcussions but also economical and business wise. After all this can be seen as ILM give out something that gave them a competitive advantage over others in the field.
;-).
Buthis empire is huge I doub't he micromanages anything, with the exception of Lucasfilm at most. I went to VES last year and it was funny, this guy at the opening reception kept pestering Lucas about this software. He said he didn't know about that and he didn't take care of that, he referred him to Jim Morris. Actually sometimes it seems he doesn't know all the details. In an interview (Millimeter, American Cinematographer or something like that), he was asked if he was aware the headaches the ILM model shop had because of using the HD cameras and he didn't, the previous article detailed all that. Actually he seems pretty laid back since he has to take care of his kids, I guess he lets everyone else worry about everything
Well Ep. 2 wasn't done in EXR. It started being used in The Time Machine. On the VFXPro announcement they mentioned it was used in Signs, Gangs of NY, Harry Potter 1 and MIB2. And it lloks like they will be using it at least for half of this year's productions:
ILM Releases Image File Format OpenEXR to Open Source CommunityIt's been tough all around. SIGGRAPH has scaled back but at least they saved enough and reorganized so that the Conference could go on. They actually mention the situation Comdex and others are going through:
State of the SIGGRAPH ConferenceWell the "core" staff of ILM is about 1000 right now, and they have recently recruited many folks. But at max I don't think ILM has ever balooned above 1500 or 1600 people. Supposdely when they move to the Presdio, it will be able to house about 2200 people though that would also include LucasArts and any other companies that move in. ILM does indeed keep hold of many of many of their staff, it's not like most of them are freelancers. Most of the freelancers come from the model shop, some from animation and other from compositing.
There are projects that can be done by a large number of houses, as long as the overall supervisor does its job and the necessary resources are available. It'll probably be more common but it won't be the only way to do it.
Of course the base level of barrier of entry has lowered. But then again movies push the envelop. There are many times when this companies have to come up with technology not available anywhere, say like the water simulation used in Perfect Storm.
The worked was not farmed out in the normal sense per se, it was stipulated in the deal that certain percentage had to be done by UK houses.
As far as Framestore/CFC they also worked on the basilisk and the pixies.
There is also the other side of the coin about company size. there are things where only the big heavyweights can pull off.
ILM didn't really farm out shots. Since the first movie one of the deals between Warner Bros, and I suspect Rowling and co., was that a certain percentage of the VFX work had to be done by UK companies. Even if ILM could have done all the work, they couldn't contractually do them.
By the way The Mill was responsible for the miniature work, like all those exterior shots of Hogwarts. Framestore/CFC did the basilisk.
They did work on the first movie. They did the CG python, the ghosts (Near Headless Nick and others), and the Voldermort sequence. Imageworks was the main provider on the first one though.
The point is that it happens all the time. Why niotpick on Lucas if a lot or most films do it with all sorts of things. Credits are given to major influences but not minor ones.
Did xXx had credits thankink, Fleming and Danjaq? Will Solaris have a credit thanking the designers in 2001? Did Harry Potter thanked particular architects for inspirations of buildings. Did the Matrix thanked Giger, or the TNG producers for the virtual reality concept? At one point it gets ridiculous. Yes sometimes there are major rip off or homages. But many times they are acknowledged.
There are even worst cases. A few weeks ago there was an interview with Avi Arad, I think 60 Min. 2. Stan Lee is not getting a single penny from the film. Arad didn't see any problem with that and said Lee was OK and taken care off. Then they interviewed Stan Lee and he was very upset but too much of a class act to really say it.
There was also the interesting case of the sculture on The Devils Advocate which was extremely similar to the work or this sculptor. He sued a lot later when the movie was out and won. They had to digitally alter those shots, though it was too late as many DVDs had the original shots, kinda collector items.
Well my argument was about the techniques and not either specifi implementations, nor larger issues which are much more subjective like personal tastes on the directing or story (and which I agree that some people might like it as much as other despise it). Though I do agree,doing it the Lean way would be great. Too bad you now have to feed extras, and pay them and yadda yadda yadda ;-).
;-). But there have been many other examples. What about the crowds in the stadium in Episode 1, or the tons of CG crowds in Pearl Harbor?
;-), though it was an interesting post you had there, even if I don't agree with some of it. Enough ranting peace!!!
As far as crowds, I don't see what looked wrong with the replicated riders in Mummy 2, though I admit a lot of the Anubis warriors crowd shots were not good and can give you a lot of good reason for that. I f anything the biggest problem with the human army is that at the end you didn't see one dead body or anything
My point was that some people complained that the clone troopers were CG when they could have been costumed extras. But not many complain that the orc armies could have also been costumed extras, hence the double standard.
As far as some of the comments. As far as Lucas I think he is really trailblazing the way of the future. How many people complained about the advent of color and sound. Same thing with non linear filmmaking. This is separate frmo saying he isn't very good at directing actors, which I do agree is a very valid complaint. Then again you have tons of directors that shoot the usual way and the performances are awful nonetheless. Does that imply that the usual way sucks? Of course not, just the same as nonlinear filmaking doesn't imply bad films. It's not like it's unprecedented, he pioneered and used it extensively in the Young Infy TV series.
As far as Yoda, Frank Oz personally wote a letter to thank Rob Coleman and the animators about the great job they did. He didn't have any regrets. He even said that he thought they shouldn't have copied some of his "mistakes" like the wobly ears. Besides it's the artist behind that imparts the life and emotion to a character, be it Oz with a rubber puppet or the ILM animators behind the computers. No need to disparage animators after all the computer is a tool (albeit a powerful one) and you need as much an good artist behind it as one operating a puppet.
As far as sets, well LOTR was inspired by the English countryside so yes you can get away with using eral environments. In the end Lucas is creating some vistas that almost don't exists anywhere. Lucas also had the standins present, Ahmed Best, Secombe, etc. so in essence Lucas and Jackson are using them the same.
As far as the film complaining, well don't pin it all on Lucas. James Cameron has done his own tests and wants to shoot the next in HD and is convinced, also Steven Soderberg and I believe also Robert Rodriguez. I'm not saying that digital surpases film in all aspects but to this directors and others HD is good enough for their style of shooting. Jackson, Spielberg and many others will stick for film for a long time if not forever. I never really read about Lucas "whinning" about film, but more explaining his point of view of using HD. Hardly surprising since many old school folk and critics just have flatly discounted HD. I haven't heard about any so called "elaborate excuses". At least that's the way I understood all the interviews I read. Besides you could argue the same with Jackson, what about those shots that had the CG camera syndrome of going anywhere (when the birds go inside Orthanc to Saruman). You could argue that is just showing off the tech or personal indulgence, as Jackson has stated that he wanted a rollercoaster ride feel for many of his shots. On the other hand most other VFX supervisors would avoid and use more traditional techniques to give the shot a bit more realism and not the motion ride feel. So would you say Jackson abandoned a tradition there, so Lucas has 100 times the respect of the art of filmaking? That's just a really low blow to Lucas withouit any justification. Both are great filmakers in my book, each with their cons and pros, which I could go on but I ranted enough.
In a certain way you proved my point
Yeah I actually heard that from Rob coleman himself. Not actually "dumbed down" but animated so it matched the puppet as closely as possible, in particular the ears as you mentioned, and the lip movements. But as far as other aspects, like skin shaders, compositing, etc. I say both are on about equal terms.
Besides you could make the other side of the arument. I doubt they mocaped anyone climbing down a sheer rock face head down first as shown on the trailer. I think there are articles saying that not al Gollum was mocaped, after all Randy Cook is animation supervisor.
In the end both are fantasy characters and look great.
Ahhh ok, thanks, I didn't have my Cinefex handy. What threw me off was your comment about the company being out of business, after all Centropolis merged with Das Werk. Heck they even worked on Eight Legged Freaks this year.
I thought the baby Zilla's were done by Imageworks, unless some of the work was subcontracted. Digiscope also did stuff for the film as well a VisionArt, though both haven't done a lot of film work lately. Maybe someone else?
Well, the deadite armies in Army of darkness were done more traditionally, mainly costumed extras and also miniature puppets, all in camera with no CG.
Computers were first used to replicate crowds of extras filmed over and over again in different locations, Braveheart is a good example of this. It was a bit later that CG crowds were used, though CG stunt doubles had already started appearing like in Executive Decision and the Batman sequels.