Film: May 2005 Archives
While everyone was getting their Episode III on this weekend, I saw the new Jet Li /Luc Besson film, Unleashed.
I've gotta say, I haven't been this thrilled to see a Luc Besson film since The Fifth Element and Leon. The storyline is simple. What happens when you take a young child and train it to behave and follow you as its master? Jet Li is that child all grown up, and is now doing the bidding of a thug boss.
The opening scene is very powerful and extremely violent. The hits and acrobatics done by Li are amazing, and he's certainly kept his agility up over the years! Some extremely well done wire work, which I think are kept in a much lower profile than other films, just because Li makes the wires do less of the brute work than he does. The fight choreography is amazing. From the aforementioned opening scene, to the swimming pool battle (Li against four armed opponents), to Li and Michael Lambert dueling it out in VERY close combat in a bathroom stall, this film has some great action. Needless to say, the choreography was directed by none other than Woo Ping Yuen, who also did Kung Fu Hustle, Kill Bill Vol 1 and 2, and the Matrix trilogy. He's also done some great HK films that starred Jet Li and company.
The acting in the film was on par with what I'd expect. Bob Hoskins as the thug boss, Bart, does an excellent job, and all the secondary characters are fairly well portrayed.
Overall I'd give this film a 9 out of 10. I'm a fan of the genre, and of Jet Li and Luc Besson's previous work. Now only if they would stop putting the soundtrack to rap, and I'd be happy.
Last week we received our newest schwag from production. And guess what, it was truly free!
I had the good fortune of catching a screener of this episode of Star Wars at Pixar this morning.
I'm going to try and describe the film without giving too many spoilers, if any. As I wrote above, I saw this film this morning at Pixar with my good friend and former instructor. Seeing it projected digitally with amazing surround sound is truly impressive. If you do see this film, see it in a DLP cinema.
My first Siggraph 2005 news update! We just got word that one of our lead compositors for Constantine will be doing a sketch at Siggraph 2005, in LA.
Matt Jacobs, who was one of the Constantine lead compositors along with Dan Cayer, will be at Siggraph 2005 to talk about his role in creating the hell highway sequences for Constantine. You can read more about his and Dan's role as Constantine leads in this VFXTalk interview. You can even ask more questions!
Well, almost. Since we've delivered Sharkboy, and everything has slowed down quite a bit, we're back to doing some R&D and cleaning up the shots and archiving everything.
Yesterday was pretty exciting. As the show neared it's official end, we had some minor cleanups and internal notes to fix that would make our work that much sweeter. I don't know if you'd actually notice while watching the movie, because it will be in glorious 3D. And that crazy red/cyan 3D, not that cool polarized 3D.
I was going to wait until next week to discuss some of the trials and tribulations of the show, but I'm going to do that now while it's fresh in my mind.
We had approximately six weeks to accomplish 38 shots. Given our tight production pipeline, we really had to hit the ground running. Luckily most of the crew are studio veterans, with a couple animators hired on to complete the tight animation deadline. Given this, we were able to do minimal training. During the first couple of weeks, animation had a hugh task or blocking and creating animation for most of the 38 shots. While they were doing that, TD was doing look development on an accelerated scale, texture and model artists were busy painting and creating props, and comp was busy at work cleaning and pulling greenscreen keys for use later in the show. We had six compositors on the show, which eventually blossomed to six full time, two part time. The part-timers were brought on at the last week, and were internally TD/comper trained. They also lit several shots. A couple of the compositors, myself included, had been trained in our TD pipeline earlier in the year, and it helped tremendously during these tight deadlines when all available TDs were busy on shots.
During the beginning, every compositor was pulling greenscreens for shots that they eventually may or may not comp. This proved difficult in adjusting our keys since what the background would become is an integral part of keying a foreground. We really started picking up speed around week three, with compers working closely with TDs and matchmovers to get the stereoscopic nature of the shots down. We relied heavily on the matchmovers for this show, particularly because it was entirely greenscreen! There was a lot of cross pollination of shots between comp artists since there were so many looks to be created. One comper would pull a greenscreen, another would do the background effects, and yet another would comp the final shot. One of my shots near the end of the show had all the compers touch upon it!
Luckily we had an excellent production team, which really made it wonderful to get the shots done in a timely manner. I didn't have to work extreme overtime until the last week of the show. At other houses and shows I've been on, the production wasn't nearly as well planned.
Well, here we are, the last day of visual effects production.
The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3D will be wrapping up this evening, at 7pm Pacific time. I've got a short bit of time to write while I'm testing one of my shots. This show has definitely been an adventure! Thirty-eight shots in less than six weeks. What a rush!
