Sci Fi Nerd

Hey everyone,

 I am very excited (and terrified) to be in MG&A this semester. I've always been interested in Science Fiction films ever since I was really young and I've always wanted to have animation and VFX in my movies. In fact, my mom took me to see The Matrix at a theatre when I was 8 (even though it was rated R, she went and saw it first, just to make sure it wasn't too scary......thanks Mom!) and after I walked out, I pretty much knew I wanted to make movies, somehow, someday. It might seem a little old and cliche at this point since it became such a cultural landmark like 15 years ago........but right from the very first frame, they start off with my all time favorite credit sequence. I used to dream in the same shade of green. So iconic, so good....

The main reason I'm in MG&A this semester is because I was fortunate enough to help my friends Blake Horn, Zeke Spector, and Ally Cunningham make their thesis film last semester called ASH. Unfortunately, I can't post a link as it's being sent to film festivals, but if you haven't seen it, I highly recommend you snag a copy of this year's Best of Park DVD and give it a watch. It's a fantastic beautiful film.

Anyways, on ASH I worked as a grip on the set and saw the process of building the sets for the interior of a spaceship and then helped film all the miniature versions of the spaceships in front of green screens in Park. It was interesting because we would have to light each shot in relation to where the sun was and where the planets and spaceships were in relation to another. We also did lots of cool camera moves so the ship would move along the Z-axis with the miniatures hanging from C Stands, suspended by fishing line against an evenly lit green screen. Blake then composited all of this footage with matte paintings of Earth and space that Ethan Burnette made in Cinema 4D. And then I bugged Blake to let me watch him make holograms and zero gravity effects in AE and asked him what I should do to learn all of this stuff so I could make a Sci-Fi film for my Senior Thesis. He told me about Arturo's class, said he walked into MG&A terrified of motion graphics but worked hard and set aside time everyday to practice and eventually enabled himself to make ASH. I really hope to do something similar for a film I'm making called Nirvana.



Another big inspiration of late that I saw was a film called True Skin, very very VFX heavy short film....heavily inspired by Total Recall, Enter The Void, Blade Runner, District 9 (the type of films I'm obsessed with.) Check it out. I really hope I can do stuff like this in the near future. 10,000 hours right?

 Ok, just one more link. The title sequence for Enter the Void. Genius. Another example of something I'd love to make.

Enter The Void Title Sequence

I can't wait to work hard and learn as much as I can from this class and all of my fellow classmates. Cheers y'all!

The Matrix Code

Today I decided to write about a tutorial remaking one of the most famous and recognizable title sequences ever.  The movie The Matrix is very well known for the green digital rain, much so like Star Wars is for the text crawl through space.

In this tutorial,  a text grid is arranged so it appears to rain down, and to show differences in distance rained, there is a mask applied with a varied height across the screen.  So while it looks like it stops at a certain point, it is because there is a mask covering up the text.  He also uses a gradient ramp to change the color of the text as it falls.  This effect can also be done with Trapcode Particular in half the time of this forty minute video, but as not everyone has Particular, this will work just as well.  Best of luck!

Welcome back... TO THE FUTURE!

I dunno if you've noticed but the future is here people. Phones, tablets, tvs, computers... the more advanced they become the more integrated they become. Soon we'll be in the matrix. But until that day we must prepare! And we can start soon, once the Oculus Rift comes out later next year.

The Oculus Rift is a head-mounted display for virtual reality gaming developed by Oculus founder Palmer Luckey. That's right. Put on a set of goggles and get whisked away to your favorite video game and be immersed in strange new worlds while controlling the movement of the camera with your head.

It's not the first time that virtual reality has been attempted, but it is apparently the most fluid and natural feeling rendition to date. Its been endorsed by John Carmack, the founder of id software, and Gabe Newell, co-founder of Valve. The Oculus is set to be fully functional with the re-release of Doom 3. I'm upset that I didn't jump onto the Kickstarter over the summer when it began; for those who backed the project in its infancy they will receive a working unit once it is commercially available. The company only asked for $250,000 and was blown away by nearly 10 times that amount. In fact the reason I'm posting about this now is because there has been  a delay of its release due to the overwhelming reception for the product; calling into question the effectiveness of the Kickstarter program and whether it is more helpful or hurtful to these start up companies. But that's another story for a more boring time. Right now too many exciting things are happening! Like virtual reality!

This isn't the only foray into the virtual world soon to be available to the public. Obviously we see things now like the Wii, the Kinect, and Playstation Move (Wii U is up there I guess with its tablet to tv integration... but we'll see about that one). Apparently Microsoft and Sony have been filling out patents for some serious tech. Maybe it won't land at first with the next generation, but you can be sure that add ons will probably come about for the next systems. Microsoft has plans for glove-based controllers, which will enhance and refine motion controls; as well as concepts for a projection screen device that would work on all 4 walls of a square room, to completely immerse oneself into a game. Wow. Some crazy stuff going on.

http://www.ign.com/articles/2012/09/19/is-microsoft-working-on-wearable-xbox-controllers
(Sorry no video)

So keep your eyes glued to your tvs, (and laptops and tablets and phones) and your heads in plastic buckets with pretty pictures painted on the inside in preparation for this glorious event. And in 10-15 years, when we're all plugging into a virtual world, we can talk about the good old days when trees existed.

Extreme Detail Used in Movies

So a few of my friends were sending around this article that Cracked.com just put out. It's called "7 Movies That Put Insane Work Into Details You Didn't Notice"and it shows some rather nice work.

The first one they list is a movie that we talked about in class and actually had a chance to view the process of the title sequence: Se7en. We got to see a little more than what Cracked talks about, but the article does talk about how the creators wrote the journal entries, found and attached pictures, and actually bound the pages together.

Continuing on, Cracked.com talks about a beautiful animation that I have never even heard of. The Thief and the Cobbler, which inspired Disney's Aladdin, was written and directed by Richard Williams. It was about 30 years into the making, but was never finished. Animation World Network Magazine even had an article on it in 1997 talking about the work and background of the story.

Now even if you don't read the article, you should definitely watch this animation because the detail is really quite amazing.

Cracked.com continues on the examine Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, Stanley Kubrick's Filmography, The Matrix, Ghostbusters, and finally Akira Kurosawa's Entire Filmography. 

The article is a bit short and not as detailed as I would like it to be, but it definitely opened up my eyes a bit more to the detail that goes into these movies. I've watched Ghostbusters since I was a kid and while I knew that the terms they were using were real, reading the article really emphasized how each director, writer, designer, creator, and producer should really look into even the simplest details in order to make a production that much better. When creating something, no matter what your job is, the project will always come out better with a little more research. Not only will it make it more realistic, but sometimes it will even inspire you to create something else. Detail may seem futile or unnecessary, even out of the budget, but creating something with such depth can really pay off in the reception of the final product.