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Let’s talk about VFX, baby!

Monday, August 8th, 2011

I’ve been working on a Computer Graphics heavy features for the last 13 years, and set up a company with my friend and colleague Samuli Torssonen & a bunch of others, focusing solely on visual effects for feature films and advertisements, called Energia Productions, in Tampere, Finland. Now that we’re about to step in to the last leg of the big post-production push of our second feature film Iron Sky, I thought about sharing some thoughts on working with a visual effects team, from director’s point of view. It’s good to know that as a director I’m hopelessly inept when it comes to technology of any kind, so I’m helpless and relying totally on the experience and creativity of my team, and of course, the close working relationship with our CGI producer / VFX supervisor Samuli T.

TAXI RIDE TO THE SHADY SIDE

The relationship between a Visual Effects (VFX) artists and the director is not unlike the one of a taxi driver and a customer. Whereas both have the same goal – to get from place A to place B – their approach to the topic is quite different. Director knows where he’s headed, and a skilled VFX artist knows how to get there, but just like with a taxi driver, it’s usually better to let them choose the route, otherwise you might end up somewhere in the shady part of the town with a nasty bill in your hand.

It’s not always easy to find a good working relationship with a VFX team, because the common language is not the same. It bears striking resemblances, but it’s different. Again, both have the same end result in mind, but the ways to get there are completely different, whether you’re a director or a VFX wiz. So it’s good to get to know the VFX team, but let the VFX supervisor take care of running the team. It’s sometimes absolutely irresistible to burst out into a fountain of ideas when watching someone working on a small bit of the movie on the screen, but usually that ends up with you fighting with VFX supervisor, the artist getting confused and/or budget bouncing up and down and producers starting to call you.


CGI producer / VFX supervisor Samuli Torssonen leading the Lightwave team.

So the key is to work closely with the supervisor, but let him/her do their job. See, as a director, you’ll be free to ramble on your artistic visions as much as you want to the supervisor, and his/her job is to turn it into man hours, polygons, choose of programs and so forth. Supervisor knows the budget, knows the resources and knows the schedule, and can tune up the director’s requests to match the given parameters. Sometimes, it might not be possible, but it’s better to hear the bad news from the supervisor sooner than later.

PREVIEWS ARE THE BITCH

What I always find the hardest working as a director on a VFX heavy film are the previews. It’s always a big guessing game trying to get an understanding on what to look at with previews, what not to look at, and how to comment them the most productive way.

See, in the ideal world at least in my mind the process of a shot (from director’s point of view) is as follows: First, you sit down with the VFX supervisor, the DP, the AD etc., and sort out the shot you want to be done. Then, you get to see a rough animatic of it – something to see to determine that the camera movement, the scale, the length and so on are approximately right. Then, you possibly see a concept art of the environment to be able to judge a bit on the lightning and the general mood of the set. And after that, you see a draft of the shot when it’s 20% done, comment it, see another version with your comments implemented and further developed at around 60% done, and then something just before it’s being determined to be final, at around 90%, for the final tweaks. Then the shot is ready, all is dandy and you have what you came in for.

This is how it works in theory. In practice, it’s unfortunately not this structured. All the talk about percents is completely arbitrary and have absolutely no ties to reality, because with a shot there’s only two possible situations: it’s either ready, or it’s not ready. Anything in between can turn into any amount of trouble, regarding what you are asking, and how it can be done. Usually, the biggest problem is that something in the shot just doesn’t look right or real, but the big task is to pin-point what it is. It can be perspective, the shadows on the ground, the chroma key, light setup with shot material vs. computer-generated material, or any number of smaller and smaller details – usually a bunch of them rather than one. And requesting changes – even just small ones – can suddenly push the shot back to the very beginning, because it might turn out it needs to be re-done completely. In the end, all you have in the schedule is finished shots and unfinished shots, and as long as the schedule and the unfinished shots are in some kind of balance things are good.

And when they’re not, people start to sweat. Yes, you included, herr Direktor. And that sometimes leads into situation where you either need to agree to compromise, or start killing other shots to get this one at hands right. That decision is usually the one you’d like to push as far as possible, but it’ll come in front of you, and then the shot is either in or out, or you go out and find more time and money, which are the two luxuries you usually have absolutely none left at the post production phase anymore. All the reserves have been used, all the tricks have been done. It’s just you, the deadline and the decision.

But much more than that, working on a VFX shots is just absolutely rewarding. As a director, you’re not requested to sit around at the VFX house, waiting for renders to finish and artists to get frames ready, but you’ll pop over every once a week and see as the thing you’ve had in your head is starting to come alive, piece by piece. There’s nothing more rewarding than watching something you’ve only been able to describe to people with words suddenly have lines, and colors and shapes instead of an actor in front of a glowing plain green screen.


Lead Compositor Juuso Kaari leading the composing team

INSIDE A VFX STUDIO

I’ve been to a bunch of VFX houses, travelling here and there, and there’s two kind of joints I’ve stumbled across to. There are the ones crowded with stubbly-bearded ADs chilling by their Macs, sipping latte, with hot receptionists asking if you prefer your Pellegrino bubbly or still (I always go still). And then there are the unearthed nerd caves with poor air condition, with wires and dust fighting for breeding ground in the corners.

I prefer the latter. Why? Because I’ve grown in that kind of atmosphere. I like to think in my mind that a good VFX team is too devoted to their work to really care about the shit laying around, too deep in their work to have time to take the cups to the dishwasher and too busy to even leave home when the day is over. These joints may not look like much, but they are the real powerhouses, at least in my experience. I obviously haven’t visited Pixar, or any of the big big studios, but I’ve worked at Energia, my CGI production house, and as an aesthetic pedantic asshole I’m usually the one complaining about the mess of the place. Well, I was until I realized it’s not going to change anything, because it’s just better that way. What’s around the screens doesn’t matter, only what’s going on on them.

It’s interesting what kind of people end up in VFX business, and end up being masters of their craft, too. In Energia, we have scientists, musicians, architects, graphic artists, familymen – from France, UK, US, Canada, Finland… all working together, sharing the same enthusiasm – to make the best, the most beautiful film possible. The film you’ve had playing in your head for years and years, these guys are out there to make it real.

(One thing we don’t have, though, is women. Every now and then a girlfriend of some of the guys wanders around at Energia, but they never stay long. I wonder why :)

A good VFX artist is devoted, creative, technically skilled, inventive, able to pay attention to details. But in addition to this, he/she is usually also knowledgeable – it’s amazing how much you need to know about combustion engines, space stations, guns, cartwheels, different types of wood, fabrics, nature, light, history, math, physics… you name it. You never know where you need it, but there will be a day when the detailed knowledge you have about nuclear explosions in the lower earth atmosphere, or how velcro works under water, proves highly important to the task at hands.

Working with the team like Energia is highly rewarding, but you have to be aware of the basics of the difference between a film crew and a VFX team. It’s like working in slow motion film set, where every camera move and lightning change takes days to complete, yet everyone around you is busting their asses to get it done.

It’s weird, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. A good relationship with a good VFX house is crucial. Just look at Lucas and Industrial Light and Magic, or Peter Jackson and WETA. Maybe Energia will one day grow to be a house like them. One can hope!


Energia Productions main hall. Altogether, about 20+ VFX artists work at Energia currently, all focusing on Iron Sky.

(Photos by Joni Niva)

Posted in General, Movies, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

Imagine report: Power to the People!

Wednesday, April 20th, 2011

I was asked to participate in an interesting seminar / panel discussion that was part of the Imagine Film Festival program, in Amsterdam, Holland. The seminar was called Power to the People, and it discussed two basic topics: fan fiction and crowdsourcing. Attending alongside me were a New York -based filmmaker and an actor Zachary Oberzan, who had made his own interpretation of the book First Blood, called Flooding with Love for the Kid (2010), Alexandré Philippe, a documentary director who had released a film called The People vs. George Lucas (2010), and a Danish director Martin Koolhoven, who had crowdsourced 60-second edits of his hugely popular film Winter in Wartime (2008).

The Imagine panelists (from left): Zachary Oberzan, Alexandré Philippe, Timo Vuorensola and Martin Koolhoven.

The moderators had prepared a bunch of bold statements, which they flashed on the screen as a discussion starters, igniting the panelists to venture from fan art to crowd sourcing, crowd funding and finally the future of the film industry. Although I was one of the panelists, I felt the discussion was quite thorough, and didn’t degrade into circlejerking or a flame war at any point, which unfortunately can’t be said of every panel I’ve attended to.

Flooding with Love for the Kid is quite an interesting project, of which I had not heard of before the festival, although the film’s been out there quite prominently – just one of those things right down my alley that I’ve managed to somehow miss. The idea behind the film that it was shot with $96 in one apartment in New York, by Zachary Oberzan, who’s playing all the roles himself. Zachary, a big First Blood fan (first, the movie – then, the book), realized his life-long dream to re-interpret the novel, on which Stallone‘s film by the same name is based on. Fact is, he never had any money, equipement or crew to do it, but being an unemployed filmmaker and an actor in New York, he decided to quite waiting around for other people’s permission to make the film, and went ahead and just did it. The trailer is here:

Zachary told interesting stories, as he had contacted the novelist David Morrell who wrote the book, to gain his permission for making the film – and although Morrell didn’t own the rights, he did give his blessing. But still, Stallone has the filming rights for First Blood, and if he wanted to play asshole, he could sue Zachary quite fast. But the discussion of whether it would be either a fan film, a parody or something in between is something the lawyers are not especially enthusiastic to start fighting for.

Right now, Zachary is working on a film/theater project where he’s re-making shot-by-shot his youth fan remakes of Van Damme‘s movie KickBoxer (1989), and he tours around the world on theater stages showing the films and playing Van Damme on the stage simultaneously. A very interesting project touring right now, and goes by the name Your Brother, Remember. Check out the amazing trailer below – if this doesn’t make you think about Samuli Torssonen back in the days when he was working on Andy Bones and Star Wrecks, then nothing:

Alexandré Philippe, a director of The People vs. George Lucas jumps even further down the fan’s mind with his documentary, trying to find out an answer to the question of how far does the rights of the author go, and does a fanbase that’s been feeding the filmmaker for decades have any say on what can be done with the franchise and what not. Although Star Wars is quite unique case, it’s a great subject to mess around the topic; there probably is no fan of the original Star Wars saga who really can say they think the prequels, started by The Phantom Menace (2001), get even close to the original trilogy.

And more interestingly, as Lucas has been tampering with even the original trilogy, releasing new versions loaded with heaps of terrible, already outdated CGI and completely retarded plot twists and needless changes, the question is even more interesting. What version of the original Star Wars trilogy is the version that’s “real”? Who can make the decision? Lucas – who says that the latest remake of the original trilogy, the one where Han Shot First, is the real one, and the original one is obsolete? Or the fans who’ve fell in love during the last 30+ years over and over again to the very original trilogy – they’ve been denied an access to that film, and re-sold time and time again a newer, even worse version every time.

Check out this trailer for the film, it should prove to be quite an exciting watch indeed:

The last guest was a Dutch filmmaker Martin Koolhoven who made an extremely succesful Dutch film Winter In Wartime that’s been spreading on big screens all the way to the States. He was there because as a part of a competition, the fans of his film were asked to re-edit the film into 60 second segments. As it usually happens (he indicated it was especially a Dutch phenomenon), the people didn’t follow the rules and re-made the 60 second versions into a completely different stories that had nothing to do with the original film.

The winning piece was a very innovative 60 second short film where the main character rides a bicycle, and on his both sides jump on and off the characters of the film, thus telling in a very clever, cute and compressed form the story of the film. Instead of editing it, they shot the whole material, so they had really put an effort into making the film.

This led to a question I wasn’t able to give a clear answer to: why did I release Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning (2005) under a license which allows anyone to further distribute it the way anyone wants to, but not to make derivate works of it.

Like Martin said, there’s no better way to promote a film than a fan re-make – or a spinoff – of it – which have happened already so many times in Star Wreck’s case, the biggest of those being Star Wreck 2pi that’s currently in production – so why didn’t I allow, and encourage it further?

I enjoyed taking part in the panel, and liked the way the discussion travelled from defining a fan film to legal issues, and then moving on to separation between crowd sourcing and crowd funding, and eventually asking what’s the business model of a laptop filmmaker using Internet as his or her’s main distribution and marketing channel. I assume there’s not one clear answer to that, but I believe it’s “motion”. It’s impeartive to be able to keep the product alive, keep it spreading in whatever form it most naturally takes, in whatever media it most naturally goes to – whether it’s fan art, merchandise, DVD sales or whatever – and constantly try new things.

And coming back to Hugh Hancock‘s extremely good point he made during a seminar in Singapore – the most important thing in the Internet is to fail fast. Try new things, see if they work – and if they don’t, kill them, move on and come up with another idea. The Internet is in constant motion – the key is to keep up to it.

Here’s a a video of the trip; it’s quite long, and maybe quite confusing, but I wanted to grasp a bit of Amsterdam and a bit of the panel to it. Enjoy:

Posted in Diaries, Film festivals, Movies | No Comments »

Imagine report: Vuvuzelas in a Movie Theater? Absolutely!

Tuesday, April 19th, 2011

Vuvuzelas in a movie theater isn’t normal, but in Amsterdam, it is.

The Night of Terror is a long-running tradition as a part of Imagine Film Festival, the Amsterdam’s own Fantastic Film Festival. The idea behind the event is simple: the organizers screen four horror films during one night, in the most beautiful film theater in Europe, Pathé Tuschinski.

The trick is, that the audience is expected to participate by shouting, commenting and screaming. In addition to this, people bring horns – vuvuzelas, among others – toilet paper rolls, light sticks and other loud and/or throwable items with them, to color the screenings even more.

The rules are simple: if there’s a man on the screen – any man – everyone shouts “HOMO!”. If there’s a woman on the screen – any woman – everyone shouts “HOER!” (Whore”). And whenever anything remarkable happens – like someone is killed, people scream and shout as loud as they can. And during the the rest of the times, commenting by the means of animalistic screaming is more than welcome.

I know we missed most of the content, given that commenting happens in Dutch, but the vibe was certainly there. I don’t think we’ve laughed more in a movie theater since we saw Dead Snow (Død Snø, 2009), but it’s good to know that the films are far from such quality acts. The film we saw (we only lasted through one film, to be honest) was called Husk (2011), which was a big steaming pile of mid-budget horror crap. But the film was brought suddenly alive, when there was a full house of screaming people around you. As a cherry on top, as Pulp Fiction has already taught you:

“You can walk into a movie theater in Amsterdam and buy a beer. And I don’t mean just like in no paper cup, I’m talking about a glass of beer.”

So I assume the party gets harder as the night progresses.

We slipped out of Tuschinski after the first film, no matter how much fun we had, we were completely beat, and I had a seminar the next morning and I didn’t want to be completely offline.

If you are in Amsterdam during Imagine Film Festival, don’t hesitate to get your tickets for the The Night of Terror. It’s definitely worth it, one-of-a-kind experience. But I do feel bad for the director who I heard wasn’t aware of the name of the game here, and left the Night of Terror screening extremely disappointed, because “people couldn’t hear his film”.

The hordes of people waiting for the second screening to begin.

Posted in Film festivals, Movies, Uncategorized | 5 Comments »

The Oscars 2011 Results, and what we think of them

Tuesday, March 1st, 2011

The Oscars have been handed out to their rightful (mostly) owners, and the Zombies made their predictions. This year we didn’t know too much about the films – Essi had seen a good bunch of them, I had only a handful, but compared to last year when we were really, really digging into the bits and pieces of the films, we were really just lost. So much of our predictions were based on something else than really seeing the films – guessing, and trying to make some kind of sense of earlier awards and how the Academy would act like.

Here are our predictions – X is Timo, O is Essi and the yellow with the Oscar on top is obviously the actual winner. As you can see, Essi did much better job than I did – with 15/24 – and I did only 10/24. But next year, the tables will turn.

There’s also a bunch of comments to follow these predictions on the winners and runners up, just under the pic.

LEADING ACTOR – COLIN FIRTH (THE KING’S SPEECH)
I don’t think anybody was hugely surprised by the Leading Actor Oscar going to Colin Firth for his awesome role in The King’s Speech as the stuttering king. He respected the Nr. One Rule of Oscars as stated by Kirk Lazarus from Tropic Thunder: “Never go full retard”. “Everybody knows you never do a full retard.” “What do you mean?” “Check it out. Dustin Hoffman, Rainman, look retarded, act retarded, not retarded. Count toothpicks to your cards. Autistic. Sure. Not retarded. You know Tom Hanks, Forrest Gump. Slow, yes. Retarded, maybe. Braces on his legs. But he charmed the pants off Nixon and he won a ping-pong competition? That ain’t retarded. You went full retard, man. Never go full retard.” Putting that aside, he did an awesome role, in a don’t-go-full-retard -way: I believed him, but I simultaneously saw the enormous acting effort he did to nail down the role. I wouldn’t know who else could’ve really won this; Bardem and Bridges already have their Oscars, and Eisenberg and even Franco will have another change, unless they botch their careers up. So Colin was also the righteous choice.

SUPPORTING ACTOR – CHRISTIAN BALE (THE FIGHTER)
I don’t know anything about The Fighter, but I know that when Christian Bale sets his mind on something, he can be quite awesome. But still, I don’t like him; he’s a bit creepy. We all know the meltdown he had on set, and it’s been largely inspiration for many people in all fields of life – one of our actresses in Iron Sky actually was listening that little freakout on loop with earphones when preparing for one scene. And since I haven’t seen any other films – other than The King’s Speech, and Geoffrey Rush already has an Oscar, I’m fine with this. The Academy gets my blessing. They may rest peacefully now. I know they’ve been very nervous about this, and been flapping F5 on ZR’s website for hours after the award was handed out, and I didn’t return their calls – they must’ve been frightened to death – but it’s OK. It’s a good decision. Thank you.

LEADING ACTRESS – NATALIE PORTMAN (BLACK SWAN)
It’s amazing how beautiful actresses were nominated this year, and the most beautiful of them all – hell, apart from Essi, Natalie Portman is probably the *most* beautiful woman alive – won the award. Neither of us has seen the film, but the small clips I’ve seen are really strong, so I believe the best one won, although Essi has been appraising The Kids Are Alright also quite a lot. But it was not a competition of whether she would win or not – it was probably one of the safest bets on these Oscars. And for a good reason. And always remember, there’s so many reasons to love Natalie Portman. And, just to state it out loud, one of my biggest dreams as a director is to get to work one day together with Nicole Kidman and Natalie Portman.

SUPPORTING ACTRESS – MELISSA LEO (THE FIGHTER)
Essi picked wisely Melissa Leo, I thought of Amy Adams – just because I think Amy Adams is a lovely actress, but Essi saw the trailer and knew instantly who’s going to win. I did like Helena Bonham Carter’s role, and I think she’s absolutely one to win Oscar one day, but this wasn’t her year. That day will come, and we’ll know it when it hits, she’s a terrific actress, and looks like a billion dollars. If that expression is to say she’s beautiful, mysterious and almost cartoon-like in many ways. So, anyway, the Melissa Leo won this one from the Fighter, and I’m bound to think that The Fighter is a film worth to see.

ANIMATED FEATURE – TOY STORY (PIXAR)
Also known as the Pixar price, and it went – again – to it’s rightful owner, Pixar. I didn’t see any other films, and although I do think that The Illusionist seems like a film worth seeing, there just was no competition to the awesomeness of Toy Story 3. To me, it was the best film of 2010, and I would’ve gladly given the biggest Oscar to that (but of course, that won’t happen anytime soon…). Regardless, that’s a damn fine film, and deserves every Oscar going it’s way. This year we won’t probably see Pixar Oscar, since Cars 2 looks like … well, Cars 2. Probably a fine film, but won’t compete for Oscars (unless they come up with the category of Best Merchandise Sales Oscar), but maybe 2012, when they are pushing out their first live-action film John Carter From Mars… Impossible to say, but I have a tingling sensation that another Best Picture Oscar for Scif might be already on it’s way.

ART DIRECTION – ALICE IN WONDERLAND (ROBERT STROMBERG AND KARIN O’HARA)
Art Direction is basically pulling the vision out of the director’s head and transferring it to the screen into real or CGI sets. A good art director is aware of what the director wants, and when he or she is in synch, their ideas become something extraordinary. Tim Burton has always been very careful with the art directors he’s been working with, and no matter what people say of Alice in Wonderland, it was quite a world of it’s own. This Oscar seems also to be the one where they tuck Harry Potter every year, but I think Inception was a real contestant there. The world of Inception was precise and beautiful as well, especially when the city bended on itself… That was filmmaking, I tell ya.

CINEMATOGRAPHY – INCEPTION (WALLY PFISTER)
Yes, there was a lot of super-high-speed camera in Inception, and the whole cinematography of the complex and multi-layered Inception was very well taken care of, so I think the Oscar went to a right person. He shot most (if not all?) of Christopher Nolan’s films, and always with such excellency, such grandness and such Hollywoodness that one can only admire his work. He’ll be out for quite a bunch of Oscar nominations in his career, that’s for sure.

COSTUME DESIGN – ALICE IN WONDERLAND (COLLEEN ATWOOD)
A two-time Oscar winner Colleen Atwood just nailed the third award from Alice In Wonderland, and that’s no wonder. I did for some reason think that King’s Speech would get it, because I did like the way the film looked like, and like the stuff people were wearing, and it felt like it was very well in period (not to say that I’m an expert in early 1900′s British garderobe, but when things are right, you just know it – that’s the magic of details).

DIRECTING – THE KING’S SPEECH (TOM HOOPER)
The reason we need film directors is because otherwise all the films would be like this. There was quite a formidable bunch of very possible winners, and I think the biggest fight of the Oscars was actually the Directing Oscar this year. Fincher’s been evading evading Oscars from day one, and so has Aronofsky and both absolutely deserve an Oscar, but this time it fell on the lap of Tom Hooper from his astonishing work on The King’s Speech. I do think it went to the right address but I wouldn’t have been at all surprised if it were either of the others. But to be honest, we’ll be seeing Aronofsky and Fincher at Oscars in the years to come, and they’ll get their Oscars and lifetime achievements when they’re old – but with Tom Hooper I can’t be that sure. He’s a tremendous director, but maybe not as prolific as his younger older, more American colleagues.

DOCUMENTARY FEATURE – INSIDE JOB (CHARLES FERGUSON)
I was really, really, really hoping for Banksy to win the Oscar, and I think most of the viewers were as well. Exit through the Gift Shop was quite possibly the best documentary I had seen since… I don’t know when. It wasn’t even a documentary, it was a performance and a statement, which most of the viewers managed to miss completely, and this – I think – was its demise in Oscars. Exit Through the Gift Shop went full retard. Inside Job, on the other hand, seemed to be – as the commentators in Finnish TV pointed out pretty well – a safe bet for American audience. A subject where it’s easy to blame Everyone Else, instead of looking into the mirror. It’s the multi-billionaires, not us. But it was, I really trust, a good documentary. Hope to get to see it one day.

DOCUMENTARY SHORT – STRANGERS NO MORE (KAREN GOODMAN & KIRK SIMON)
We picked the best name for the price, and failed. Really, had no idea about the film at all, just… picked one. That’s all. Nice. Good. Very good.

FILM EDITING – THE SOCIAL NETWORK (KIRK BAXTER, ANGUS WALL)
What is a good edit in a film? The one you pay no attention to, yet the film manages to grab you by the balls and push you around for 2 hours, and you’re all in for it. That’s good editing. It’s not split screens, scattered storytelling or whatever the hell you might think, it’s just about rhythm of the whole film and how to achieve it. The Social Network probably deserves it, but there’s great editors nominated there as well, but I wouldn’t have any real idea what else it could be. Well, I suggested 127 Hours because I don’t know why… It’s kinda hard to say, I’m just starting my editing progress of my film and I think I’m going to be wiser after the next 9 weeks about what is and what is not good editing.

FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM – IN A BETTER WORLD (SUSANNE BIER)
The one thing you can count on Foreign Language Films is that there’s always one film you’ve ever heard of, and that film won’t win it. This is what happened this year as well, but it’s great because the price went to Scandinavia – Denmark! Congratulations! A lot of good things have come from Denmark, so In A Better World is definitely on my list of films I do want to see.

MAKEUP – THE WOLFMAN (RICK BAKER, DAVE ELSEY)
The Wolfman didn’t shine, although it had a good cast, but the makeup was quite natural choice for the Oscars. Werewolf transition is one of the most traditional Hollywood special makeup tricks, and here we see it again, this time using the most modern technology.

ORIGINAL SCORE – THE SOCIAL NETWORK (TRENT REZNOR & ATTICUS ROSS)
To me, the Original Score was the most interesting and game-changing Oscar this year. First, I was hoping it to become a competition between Daft Punk (who did Tron), Social Network and Inception, but unfortunately – and out of no real reason – Daft Punk wasn’t even nominated. But more importantly, Reznor won. The old industrial freak who crafted himself through game soundtracks(Quake), collaborating with such filmmakers as David Lynch and Oliver Stone (Lost Highway and Natural Born Killers’ soundtracks) into an Oscar-winning composer outdid himself, but more than that, it was a brave move from the Academy to give the price to him, when Zimmer had simultaneously released his much more traditional but breathtakingly beautiful Inception… But really, Reznor nailed the score with Brian Enoesque minimalistic precision. But Reznor didn’t work alone – one could say that without the help of Atticus Ross, already a celebrated soundtrack artist (Book of Eli), he couldn’t have succeeded in the first place. I’m terribly happy for this Oscar on so many levels – mainly, because this might be a sign that also we’ll get past the typical soundtrack music in the future more easily, and get to hear more experimental soundtracks also in major films.

ORIGINAL SONG – TOY STORY (RANDY NEWMAN)
As it was tweeted, Randy Newman should accept all the Oscars and give all the speeches in the future. His sovereign, relaxed and ironic approach to the price – this was his 20th Oscar nomination, and second Oscar – was fun and to the point. He noted that above all, the Oscars are supposed to be good TV. And that’s what he delivered. He’s a super-professional, and will probably be popping up at the Oscars in the years to come, and his awesome song for Toy Story 3 definitely deserved all the appraise it got.

ANIMATED SHORT FILM – THE LOST THING (ANDREW RUHEMANN, SHAUN TAN)
It’s a shame I didn’t get to see even the short animated features this year, since I’ve so far always loved them quite a lot in Oscars. Of course I had seen Day & Night, loved it, but the price went to another film called The Lost Thing, of which I know nothing but it did look quite beautiful the seven seconds of it that I got to see. Congratulations, I’m sure you’ll get picked up, and have a great career at Pixar. I envy you… Well, thinking it another way, hope to see you around at Pixar one day!

LIVE ACTION SHORT FILM – GOD OF LOVE (LUKE MATHENY)
Another I-Have-No-Idea-What-You-Are-Talking-About -price, we hadn’t seen anything, and had no idea about the winners, so there’s nothing much to say.

SOUND EDITING & MIXING – INCEPTION (LORA HIRSCHBERG, GARY RIZZO, ED NOVICK & RICHARD KING)
I’ve always wondered why are Sound Editing & Mixing a different category, where as Visual Effects and Special Effects are not. Not to say that mixing and editing wouldn’t be a completely different crafts, but so are VFX and SFX. If someone can give me a feasible explanation, I’d loved to hear it. But Inception, yeah, well – what’s there to say? A technical Oscar, and Inception was by far the technically most satisfying movie of 2010, so it was the right address.

VISUAL EFFECTS – INCEPTION (CHRIS CORBOULD, ANDREW LOCKLEY, PETER BEBB, PAUL J. FRANKLIN)
I do have a bit of a problem of this category, knowing how much different worlds VFX and SFX can be. In my understanding and experience, Special Effects means everything that happens for real, and Visual Effects everything that’s created with a computer. So for example, rigging a huge rotating room and total zero gravity would be Special Effects, and creating a fire-breathing CGI dragon would be Visual Effects – and probably these two departments wouldn’t ever even get to meet or know each others’ names. But this year, there was Inception and Alice In Wonderland competing for the same price, and as it is well known, Alice was mostly CGI with so much green screen in the studio Tim Burton had to wear purple glasses to not to go crazy, where as Inception was basically made for real. Now don’t take me wrong, I do think Inception deserves the Oscar, but I’m just confused here – how can these two entities even begin to compete? It’s just two so completely different worlds…

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY / ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY – THE SOCIAL NETWORK / THE KING’S SPEECH (AARON SORKIN / DAVID SEIDLER)
The big fight in these oscars boiled down to The Social Network and The King’s Speech. Since both won their own categories of script, it was really hard to guess who’s gonna win, but as the Directing and Lead Actor went to The King’s Speech, it wouldn’t have made too much sense if The Social Network had won. But I’m sure every one of the scripts were amazing.

THE BEST PICTURE – THE KING’S SPEECH (THE WEINSTEINS)
Essi was saying The Social Network, and out of a brainfart mind of mine I said Inception (mainly because it’s always the movie that I least want to win that wins this price, but I should’ve been a bit more realistic…), but we both were wrong. It was, of course, The King’s Speech. And quite well-deserved one it was. I was secretly crossing my fingers for Toy Story 3 or maybe even Winter’s Bone which was a real indie film, but The King swoop the table and so it should’ve been. And remember, these 10 films were really well-deservedly aiming for the Best Picture, and (maybe apart from 127 Hours, which was fine but really, what was it doing in this category?) will remain legendary films of 2010′s in the years to come.

All together, the road was bad but the race was good. The gala was a bit crappy, but the films were particularly interesting this year. Next year, after we’re done with Trekathon, I’m going to be watching only films and my plan is to have seen every single one of the films of the next Oscars!

Posted in Movies, Oscars, Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

Rare Exports on Apple Trailers – looking very good!

Wednesday, October 27th, 2010

It’s not every day that you go to Apple Trailers’ page, and spot a film promotion there on a Finnish film. Jalmari Helander‘s first feature film Rare Exports, that’s based on the Rare Exports shorts that have been circling around the Internet for quite some time already, just landed a new page for Apple Trailers, and for once I can be proud of how internationally a Finnish film has been promoted. Go see yourself, here’s Rare Exports’ page on Apple Trailers!

Posted in Awesome, Internet, Movies, News Splat | 3 Comments »

A shareware novel gets a filmed by Darren Aronofsky

Wednesday, October 27th, 2010

Writer Max Barry, who has released his book Machine Man in a page-per-day – within the same time he writes it – format on the Internet as a feed (with first 43 pages for free) has just launched a major feature film deal with Mandalay Pictures, directed by the awesome Darren Aronofsky, one of the best out there. What’s even more interesting in Barry’s book is that he allowed people to comment and to discuss the pages he released every day, and partially based the continuation of the story to them – so one could say it’s partly collaboratively created novel as well.

Now there’s Internet for you.

I’m not sure why Aronofsky wants to do Wolverine 2, maybe there’s quite heaps of money involved, but I sure hope he jumps on this film as soon as possible, because it sounds just plain awesome. If a book’s first sentence is about dismemberment, it’s going to be awesome:

“One Tuesday afternoon my left leg was severed. It wasn’t as bad as it sounds. Well, it was. It was agonizing. There was a lot of screaming and flopping around and trying to tear my shirt into pieces to stem the bleeding. While I was busy with this, my co-workers stared through two-inch polycarbonate security glass and beat on the door.”

You can read first 43 pages for free, and sign up for a feed for full book on Max Barry’s website. The novel will be released in 2011, the filming might or might not start after Aronofsky’s done with Hugh Jackman.

(Via GeekTyrant, The Hollywood Reporter, Slash Film and maxbarry.com)

Posted in Movies, News Splat | No Comments »

Michael Jackson’s Thriller will be remade as a feature film.

Wednesday, October 27th, 2010

For reasons that remain to be unclear tome, the plans to re-create Michael Jackson‘s Thriller as a feature film are afoot. I’m not surprised at all, the music video made in 1983 by John Landis and featuring Michael Jackson himself must be one of the greatest moments of Zombies on a screen of any size, and was a remarkably great and important part in making music videos have their golden age in the 80s that lasted all the way to late 90s. So picking a good old idea since everyone seems to be completely out of good new ideas is a natural way to go. Yet, making a remake of Thriller without Michael Jackson is like making The Predator without Arnold Schwarzenegger – and look how well that went…

(By the way, Schwarzenegger stated just 4 hours ago in his Twitter that we should “stay tuned for more info on his next project with James Cameron”. I intend to.

Anyway, now the big film blogs have started to whine about how wrong it is that the short film is being remade. The same people who think it’s just OK to do a remake of a film like Let The Right One In – the main difference there really is that Let the Right One In is a Swedish movie, made in this strange language, so it’s OK to rape the shit out of the film. But when it comes to a Zombie music video, remaking that seems to be one hell of a whining point.

Anyway, I’m not specifically looking forward for the remake of either one of them – Thriller or Let the Right One In – but I’m aware that the latter of thes two was remade only because that’s the American equivalent of subtitles. Anyway, here’s the original Thriller music video, enjoy:

(via GeekTyrant & Slash Film)

Posted in Movies, News Splat, Videos, Zombies | 1 Comment »

The Hobbit: Sylvester McCoy cast as Radagast the Brown

Sunday, October 24th, 2010

One more bit of casting news for The Hobbit has just popped online – Sylvester McCoy, who’s been rumored for quite some time to play the role of Radagast the Brown (but which I didn’t take too seriously, since I didn’t remember Radagast having more than a side notion on the novel). Radagast is one of the Istari, the wizards that were sent to Middle-Earth to set things right – or at least to make sure they don’t go too wrong – but some of them went astray (like Saruman for example), some decided to fight the evil (like Gandalf) and some became wandering old coots more interested in the world around them than the actual big picture they were supposed to look over.

Sylvester McCoy is a Scottish actor, who has a long career behind him, and he’s known for example his role as The Doctor in Dr. Who in late 80′s. He was also considered to play the role of Bilbo Baggins in Jackson‘s The Lord of the Rings.

Here’s the updated cast list for The Hobbit:

At the same time, the makers of The Hobbit are trying to fight to keep The Hobbit in New Zealand, and are mustering a rally for shooting The Hobbit in New Zealand on Labor’s Day on Monday, 25th of October. Here’s a trailer:

Posted in Movies, The Hobbit, Trailers, Videos | No Comments »

The Hobbit marches back to New Zealand?

Thursday, October 21st, 2010

Talk about premature… Anyhow, it seems that the dispute with the Actor’s Union ends, and all is nice and dandy in the Middle-Earth again, and The Hobbit might actually get shot there. Official statement by the Screen Actors Guild states:

“Today, our sister union New Zealand Actors Equity issued a statement recommending all international performer unions rescind their member advisories on the feature film production The Hobbit. In light of this recommendation, Screen Actors Guild will be alerting its members that they are now free to accept engagements, under Screen Actors Guild contract terms and conditions, on The Hobbit.”

Warner playing rough ball on the actors seems to have worked. Yet, I’m not completely sure should we be happy for this? It’s good that the film gets done, yet it would’ve been interesting to see how different it would’ve been, had it been shot in Eastern Europe, and the job opportunities for European filmmakers would’ve been enormous. But now that it’s back in NZ, we’re going to be enjoying the breathtaking nature again. Still, I don’t know what kind of compromises this means to the actors? Are they suddenly being stomped under a huge production with big studios and Sauron wins, or was the dispute just some petty whining about some regulations and making things unnecessarily complicated for any filmmaker to be able to actually make a film there – I don’t know, since I didn’t ever consider this issue being interesting enough to really dig into it. Maybe I should have. Maybe I, one day, will.

Anyhow, the sun is now shining above Shire again, the Hobbits are smoking their big wooden pipes and wiggling their big hairy toes on its grassy hills. And somewhere, under the Lonely Mountain, the big dragon sleeps. But for how long?

Ted Nasmith: Green Hill Morning

Posted in Movies, News, News Splat | No Comments »

M. Night Shyamalan refuses to go away.

Thursday, October 21st, 2010

We had a long debate with Essi the other day about M. Night Shyamalan. I felt that the guy’s work is getting more annoying by every film he does, but Essi thought that although that might be the case, the guy has proven himself as a director, and just needs the right project to re-establish himself. I found myself standing corrected.

Well, One Thousand A.E. just might be that. It’s a film written by Gary Whitta (The Book of Eli), which makes it the first Shyamalan picture not written by the man himself. Maybe, just maybe that’s a good thing. My thinking, although, is that what Shyamalan needs is a budget restrictions – smaller, tighter budgets that would force him to really push his skills to the limit to deliver. A bit of belt-squeezing might be an essential thing to make him re-invent himself, and put him back as one of the directors to look out for. But, given that One Thousand A.E. is a scifi, and the name itself does sound quite epic, it might be another Airbender in the works.

Here’s an article about One Thousand A.E. on The Hollywood Reporter. It just leaves me wonder, where’s the twist? That it’s actually One Thousand B.C., but nobody knew it?

(Via Borys Kit / The Hollywood Reporter)

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