Marcel the Shell

Back this week with some more stop motion animation. Something I find interesting about this particular video is the creative use of random stuff that's laying around. "Marcel the Shell with Shoes On" is an imaginative and humorous (to me, at least) work.

Although it probably cost barely anything to make, this video has over 23 million views. The only things that needed to move were the shell, the shell's mouth, and a couple of other objects. Yet it told a wonderful story. The use of sound in the video also helps it come to life, as you can hear the shell walking around and dragging its lint. There's a second one as well:

There's even a website, and a book about Marcel. It just goes to show how far such a small and simple idea can go.

Toy Story - Live Action

Toy story has become a classic movie of our generation with its cutting edge graphics and editing techniques to tell a story. Two fans Jonason Pauley (19) and Jesse Perotta (21) wanted to visit the facility where it was all created. Unfortunately for them Pixar does not let any visitors in unless they have done something fantastic. So armed with $1000 and 150 friends they created a shot for shot live action remake of the entire movie. The result is quite spectacular and the effort that must have been put forth is immense. What I find to be interesting is seeing this story told without animation. The characters are literally less animated with no facial expressions or fluid movement. This makes the scenes less believable and its harder to connect with the characters. That aside it is a very cool project and definitely worth a look. 

Aside: They learned yesterday they get to tour pixar.

Visual Effects in Unexpected Places: Black Swan

When we think about movies that use CGI the first ones that seem to come to mind are usually flashy action or sci-fi movies that often have quite a hefty budget. One movie that I can think of that has an obvious use of CGI and visual effects is Avatar. You can tell almost instantly when looking at a scene from that movie that a lot of visual effects specialists were needed to create it. There are a number of movies out there, however, which incorporate CGI and visual effects that you may not have even noticed or at least not expected prior to watching it. One example of this technique can be seen in the movie Black Swan.

Black Swan, being a fairly low budget movie about ballet dancers and delusions doesn’t really strike me as a movie that would need many visual effects. One because it had a fairly low budget (about 13 Million) and CGI take lots of time which = money and two because I don’t typically picture a dancing movie needing many explosions or huge green screen scenes. Though in Black Swan, it seems to be the little things that count when it comes to CGI. Watch the video below to see what I mean. I think it shows an interesting inside look into many of the places in the movie that use CGI techniques and how they looked before and after.

I guess I didn’t realize until after watching that video how much of the important elements of the film (rash, feathers, etc) were added with a computer instead of through make-up or costuming. All of the important elements of Portman's delusions (interacting with herself in the mirror, seeing the paintings move, etc) utilized animated components as well. I guess looking back on the movie now it makes a little more sense that there is CGI used in it but it is still not very in your face about it. Some elements such as the face replacement of Natalie Portman’s face over her dance doubles was so seamlessly added that it is not noticeable at all-at least to me (there was a huge scandal connected to the use of face replacement and a dance double in this movie by the way). Next time I watch a movie where I wouldn’t expect there to be CGi I’m going to try to look hard for it because I bet I will be able to find at least one thing. CGI seems to be becoming a staple in movies now and not just in the expected genres.