Sam Rockwell For an Oscar
I have written about how much I enjoyed Moon before, and now we are approaching awards season director Duncan Jones is trying to start an online campaign to get Sam in the running for an Oscar. This is something I can wholeheartedly get behind as I think his performance was phenomenal. Whether or not those at the Academy can ever be persuaded to feel the same way on the other hand, is a whole different matter.
There is more info about Sam's role and the Oscars in general at this great Moon fansite which I encourage everyone to go and read, so I won't post too much on here - but please spread the word, and if you use twitter tag your tweets with #SamRockwellOscar and encourage others to re-tweet!
So please - spread the word in as many ways as you possibly can, be it Facebook, Myspace, good old simple conversation - lets get Sam what he deserves!
Update: Go and show your support on Facebook now!
Up
Back in May when I was at the Cannes Film Festival I didn't manage to see Up, Pixar's latest animated feature and their first to be produced in stereoscopic 3D. Of course it was showered with fantastic reviews, and knowing that I would have to wait until October to see it released in the UK (despite the fact it opened a few weeks after the Cannes showing in the US), I was rather annoyed and very worried I wouldn't be able to avoid all the spoilers.
Roll on to October and I had indeed managed to avoid all of the spoilers and went to see the film last night. Now, I am a self-professed Pixar fanboy, and Wall-E is one of my favourite films of all time, but Up really is something special.
Sci-Fi Is Back!
During the last 2 month I have been to the cinema twice, and both of those times I was in complete awe of what was on screen. Even better, both of these films were science fiction epics, and even better than that they each represent the opposing ends of great sci-fi. I am (of course) talking about Moon and District 9.
Lets start with Moon:
The first feature by Duncan Jones, who has spent the last 10 years or so working in advertising and refining his directing skills. Although Duncan is David Bowie's son, this film is no Space Oddity. I won't explain the plot here as its easy to find anywhere online (and if you haven't seen it you REALLY, REALLY should), but Duncan has managed to produce a science fiction epic in the style of the 70's classics, and some of his self-proclaimed influences: Silent Running, 2001, Alien, etc.
Moon is charmingly understated, mainly dealing with the protagonist's internal struggles. It isn't effects-heavy, but all of the lunar effects shots were done using miniatures.
I simply cannot emphasise how much Moon impressed me - in a movie climate where for the last few years science fiction has been all about explosions and big budget effects (not that I'm not a fan of these, on the contrary!) Moon is a refreshing breath of fresh air. The fact that Duncan managed to do this with only $5 million is purely an added bonus!
District 9 on the other hand sits at the other end of the spectrum - it is an effects-heavy action sci-fi adventure obviously dealing with big, difficult issues in the kind of bold way only science fiction can - this, combined with the fact that the effects work with the story (and aren't just there for some eye candy) are what makes District 9 really special. I know a lot less about it than Moon, but will definitely be keeping an eye on Neill Blomkamp, who previously directed the Peter Jackson-led Halo movie visual concepts (take a look here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUcreY0X33k - the man clearly knows what he's doing when it comes to gritty sci-fi). Again, Neill managed to do this all with a budget of $30 million - Michael Bay could learn a thing or two here.
While District 9 has receiving glowing critical reviews and huge box office success ($126 million worldwide thus far), Moon has only had the luxury of the former (although it has earned back its production costs). While Moon's appeal probably isn't as wide as an action-heavy sci-fi epic presented by Peter Jackson, it is a really fantastic film and should be seen by anyone with even a passing interest in film in general. A worldwide viral advertising campaign would probably have helped it a bit more too!
So to sum it all up - if you like film (especially sci-fi), then you simply must see both of these films. Don't wait until they are on DVD either, they are best viewed on the biggest screen you can get into. Lets hope that both Duncan and Neill will have long careers in the movie business - the future of sci-fi is brighter than it has been in a good few years. Roll on Avatar...
Wheels & Wires
So on Thursday I had my last lecture for 3 weeks - short summer holiday here we come! Aside from a dissertation to start, house move to commence, various paying jobs that need to be started and lots and lots of reading to catch up on there is also that tiny compositing project I have going on..
So over the past week I've managed to squeeze in a few hours of compositing for Dark Side Of The Earth, so I'll give a quick update as to the progress of the shot I have been focusing on (which is still very far from being 100% finished, but I will get there soon!)
This particular shot is a little trickier than the last shot I covered as it is roughly twice as long (at 113 frames) and the characters manage a 360 degree turn around eachother as they fight. But, the bigger the challenge the more satisfying the solution, take a look:
The Original Shot
Obviously a few things need to change - namely the puppeteers need to vanish, the ceiling element and ropes must be added in and the whole thing has to match up and play smooothly (to simplify!)
The Current Shot
So this is where the shot is now - puppeteers have been successfully removed (apart from in the spokes of the swordsman's wheels - barely visible here but a real issue when he turns sideways) and the ceiling element has been added into the background. Next I need to clean up the masks that have brought back in character elements (such as The Swordsman's shield and arms) so that they move a little smoother, and correct the edges of the ceiling element so that it seamlessly connects to the background. In order to finish the shot I'll need to add in some convincing rope elements and light them accordingly to make them fit the shot. At least its on its way!
Finally, take a look at the script behind this 113 frame (around 4.7 seconds) shot:
Node Tree
Put simply each 'node' is a single action, mask or object - when interconnected they can work together to mask out characters, bring objects back in and add entirely new elements to the scene. Quite a lot going on but its a lot of fun when things are working properly.
Next time I'll update with a rundown of a completely different shot, in which we had to almost entirely rebuild The Swordsman himself!
Mac Pro + LED Cinema Display First Impressions
Combining the fact I needed a 21st birthday present with a big chunk of cash I've been saving for the best part of the last 2 years for a new computer, I am lucky enough to be the proud owner of an 8 core Mac Pro and 2 LED Cinema Displays. This system should certainly help the 2k compositing I've been doing on my iMac until now! I opted for a dual quad core 2.26 GHz machine with 8GB of RAM and 2 NVidia cards in order to power the LED Cinema displays, in short its my dream setup and I am incredibly pleased with it.
However, there are a few little niggles involved with using the LED displays with a mac pro that I have not read about anywhere other than the Apple support forums, so I'll talk about them briefly here.
1) The cables provided on the LED display are incredibly short (of course it was originally designed for the macbooks but Apple now market it as a display compatible with all of their systems). This is slightly annoying when using dual displays as I can't have them quite as far away from the machine as I would like; I can imagine for anyone wanting the screens further away from the mac pro than simply above it on the desk this could be a major problem. I have however ordered 2 3 foot mini-displayport extension cables from www.monoprice.com at a reasonable $6 each. According to posts on the Apple support forums these work a treat, so thats problem 1 solved!
2) The second annoyance is more of an observation, as it doesn't actually bother me, but I know it would again be very annoying and inconvenient for some - Screen brightness. The f1 and f2 keys control screen brightness on all macs for the last few years, and the mac pro and LED Cinema display setup is no different. However, upon trying the keys I found that they only control the brightness of the screen plugged into the first graphics card. No biggie, I just went to the display preference pane, which displays a seperate brightness slider for each screen. Puzzlingly though, both sliders still only control the 1 display - combined with the lack of physical brightness buttons on the displays this seems to make it impossible to adjust the brightness of display number 2. Personally I like my displays on full brightness, but I know some find this too bright.
My guess is that this is a software issue which will be resolved with the next Leopard update, or in Snow Leopard when it is released. Still a slight oversight on Apple's part here though which could frustrate some users who have opted to buy a fully-specced workstation and gorgeous LED displays!
Aside from these two small issues the machine and displays look and perform beautifully, and I couldn't be happier with them. I'll be getting back to the nitty gritty compositing work on the Dark Side of The Earth again now, so expect an update on that soon. (Also, Neil has just posted a new podcast about the fight choreography over on the official site - go check it out!)