Film: September 2006 Archives
While this movie opens to the general public on October 20th, the cast and crew will be seeing it nine days earlier, on October 11th in Beverley Hills. It'll be my first cast and crew screening here in LA, and I'm not sure what to expect. Red carpet and Clint Eastwood? Subdued mayhem? WWII fans protesting or cheering? I can't wait. We've got a couple more weeks on Letters, and even though it contains less gratuitous effects shots, there are a significant amount of visual effects that we did add into the show. Nope, not gonna tell ya what they are. You'll have to see the film to find out!
Last night I got the chance to see Open Season over at Imageworks.. While the VES turnout wasn't great (Imageworks crew had their screening on Monday night), we still had a good time. We saw it in the De Mille theatre, which is a smallish theatre located on the Culver City Sony lot. I was hoping that it might be digitally projected, but nope, regular old film. The great part about screeners is that there are no commercials or previews! Yay for getting straight to the movie. The humor in the film was spotty, some great laugh out loud moments, dispersed with copious amounts of silence. I wasn't a huge fan of the character design, but the fur rendering and water effects were excellent. The environments were nice, but sometimes lacking in detail. The voice talent was adequent, but I still could picture Martin Lawrence playing a bear, as opposed to a bear talking, if that makes any sense. I guess that's the problem with getting recognizeable voices, you picture the actor, not the part they're playing. I had the same problem with Owen Wilson in Cars, but had no trouble with the actors in The Incredibles.
More Flags of our Fathers pictures. These are from a french site located here. There are about 80 pictures or so from the film. Some really interesting color grading going on, and I'm looking forward to seeing how it all plays out . See a couple more vfx shots in the below link! If you haven't found it yet.. This forum here at The Pacific War contains details about these two upcoming films.
Cinefex 107 is out, covering Pirates 2, A Scanner Darkly, The Fountain, and Flags of our Fathers to name a few! I happened to be browsing through it at work today, and while we don't have as impressive a spread as Pirates 2, we do have a couple pages with some juicy screenshots from the film.. Be sure to pick it up when you get the chance! One of my shots appears in the issue, and it looks much better than I remember it. Not sure what sort of print magic they did to it, but it's on page 46 if you're so inclined. If I can get a scan of it I might be able to put it up for you to see. Here's what Cinefex has to say about Flags.
The iconographic photograph of six young soldiers raising the American flag during World War II's bloody battle of Iwo Jima serves as the focal point of Flags of our Fathers, director Clint Eastwood's latest film, based on the bestselling nonfiction book by James Bradley. Production visual effects supervisor Michael Owens and a team of artists at Digital Domain were challenged to re-create the famous battle and flag-raising, as well as views of 1940s-era New York and other period settings for scenes of the surviving soldiers on a cross-country tour to promote the sale of war bonds. Seeking a gritty photorealism, digital artists augmented live-action, shot mostly in Iceland, with everything from CG environments and set extensions, to virtual ships and assorted atmospheric effects.
The Flags of our Fathers US trailer is now out for your viewing pleasure. Unfortunately it's streaming only, and I can't find a direct download version just yet.. Check out the trailer here, and be sure to comment with your thoughts!
