Have You Seen the “Have You Seen My Sister Evelyn” Video?

For the last couple months I’ve been working freelance on this music video, which was just released today. The video passed through a number of other compositors’ hands before reaching me, but the producers hadn’t yet got quite what they were after and the deadline was looming up. So I worked with them and the final project is now on YouTube:

I’m planning to do an FX breakdown of some kind after I decompress a bit (I need one for my reel anyway). In the meantime, enjoy!

In Defense of Andy Serkis

The recent release of RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES — starring a completely digital ape named Caesar, performed by Andy Serkis — has set off another round of what’s become a perennial argument about whether or not an actor should be recognized, specifically by the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, for performing a character which is ultimately realized synthetically.

The argument began with Serkis himself, when he portrayed Gollum in THE TWO TOWERS and THE RETURN OF THE KING. It surfaced again when he proceeded to portray KING KONG, and has since been raised in conjunction with Bill Nighy’s portrayal of Davy Jones in PIRATES 2, Brad Pitt’s starring role in THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON (for which, it should be noted, he did receive an Oscar nomination), the various Na’vi performances in AVATAR, and now we’ve come full circle back to Serkis for his turn as Caesar, leader of the ape rebellion.

For those not in the film or VFX industry, if the controversy here is not apparent, it’s like this: can an actor really be said to have portrayed a character when none of the actor’s original performance makes it to the screen? It has been interpreted, manipulated, reconfigured and translated into a digital creation, passing through multiple hands — possibly dozens or even hundreds — before arriving on the screen. Does the actor deserve recognition for a performance that has been filtered through so many other peoples’ contributions?

Many in the VFX industry, at least the ones who blog and tweet, say no, and have attacked Serkis for what they perceive as slighting or disrespecting the contributions of the visual effects artists. I disagree with them entirely.

MORTAL KOMBAT: REBIRTH

Considering my previous post, the timing of this video is serendipitous.

Video game movies arguably suffer the most from the attitude “Meh, it’s a video game movie, what do you expect?” We have yet to have a video game-based movie that treats the source material with the respect shown to novel adaptations. Comic book movies used to suffer under the same yoke, but in the last decade or so, some filmmakers have realized what I was talking about before: just because they’re comic book movies doesn’t mean they can’t be good movies.

Video games, sadly, are still caught in the catch-22. Filmmakers don’t take the movies seriously and the movies wind up shitty. Since the movies are shitty, they bomb. So filmmakers get it in their heads that a video game movie isn’t going to do well at the box office because it’s a video game movie, so they don’t bother to take it seriously. And round and round. (It looked like we might be able to break out of that cycle when Gore Verbinski was attached to BIOSHOCK, but alas.)

Which is why this video, titled MORTAL KOMBAT: REBIRTH, is pretty exciting.

IRON BABY

This is pretty damn cute. And an impressive FX piece.

IRON SKY — oh, hell yes.

If you follow me on Twitter you’ve already seen this, but I want to save it here for prosperity (and also give a go, once again, at making more regular posts…).

About two years ago, a group of independent filmmakers put out a pitch trailer for a film they were working on called IRON SKY. I could summarize it for you, but the pitch trailer tells you pretty much everything you need to know:

Now, I thought this was fucking awesome. What a brilliant piece of pulp sci-fi. Space Nazis? Sign me the fuck up.

I was a little concerned, based on the fact that they bill it as a “sci-fi comedy” and they ended the pitch with a bit of lowbrow poop humor, but I reserved judgement until I could see more.

I’m glad I did. They’ve now put together what is still essentially a pitch trailer, but this one contains actual footage that will ultimately be in the film, and…well. There are no words.

That last shot seriously takes my breath away every time, and the music gives me chills.

After they released the original trailer, I actually contacted the team and offered to help them out with the VFX work. They were willing to bring me on board, too, but the catch was I’d have to relocate to Finland for the gig.

I’ve got work going on right now and a feature to be shooting, but if they’re still working on this around the end of the year, and things have slowed down for me then, I honestly might consider it. I love what I’m seeing and whether or not I can lend a hand personally, I wish them every success. I want to see this movie!

100 Years of VFX

I make no bones about the fact that I consider visual effects to be the purest form of movie magic. So this video that goes through examples from the past century of visual tricks is gold.

There are some surprising omissions (where’s Méliès?) but I do understand that you can’t include everything. Of what is included, I find myself taken aback by some of the early stuff. Some of it “holds up,” though most of it doesn’t, but what I find really stunning is just the fact that they had the ideas at all. They imagined something that no one had ever seen, and made them happen, often by processes that no one had ever done.

It’s a reminder that VFX in itself isn’t, in fact, the real movie magic, but a tool. The real magic is the imagination behind the effects.

And for our next trick…

Like many people of my upper-middle class 1990s Californian upbringing, I ran through a number of hobbies/fads growing up in lieu of having friends. And amid the pogs, Tamagotchis, Nintendo systems, ventriloquism and yo-yos, I had a long period immersed in the world of magic.

Every time a magic show was on TV, I watched. Every time a variety show that had the possibility of including magic was on TV, I watched. I wanted to be the next David Copperfield, the next Lance Burton, the next famous illusionist.

Unfortunately, my parents couldn’t afford giant fans and levitating cars. I had to make do with decks of Bicycle cards and silver dollars. When it came to high school, and then especially college, I had to prioritize my time. My magic books went into boxes, and my skills first got rusty and then corroded completely.

But I never lost interest in the idea of showing the audience something amazing — or at least, creating the illusion of showing it to them. So it’s no wonder that filmmaking in general, and visual effects filmmaking in particular, captured my imagination. I like to think of myself as still working to fulfill my dream of being a big-time illusionist, but one of the screen instead of the stage.

Turbo: A Video Game Movie

These guys are totally going to get to make the feature — or at least take a lot of promising meetings.

 

 
Turbo: Trailer from Jarrett Conaway on Vimeo.

USC Graduate Thesis, budget “under $100k,” the film was shot on RED and is about 20 minutes long. 

(via Gizmodo)

So what’s this Sandrima Rising thing?

Over the years since RvD, and especially following RvD2, Ryan and I have gotten numerous proposals to be involved with other peoples’ fan films. Generally speaking, we’ve said no. Fan films take a lot of time, even if it’s “just a saber fight,” and if we’re going to spend that kind of time on a project it’ll be our own.

Then I got an e-mail about Sandrima Rising. As I mentioned before, the actual complete title of the project is The Renaissance Chronicles: Sandrima Rising. The idea was that they were going to pitch it, to George Lucas, as an ongoing Star Wars series about the adventures of this freighter, the Renaissance, and her crew. I’m already on record on several occasions saying that I don’t think that’ll happen, and I don’t, but as I said yesterday, that doesn’t mean I think the project is without value.

One thing that intrigued me about the project is that it followed the Han Solo characters. In point of fact, it’s basically Firefly with lightsabers and wookiees — which is fine by me. I loved Firefly, I love lightsabers, and I can live with wookiees (though dealing with the costume is a nightmare), so it seemed like something that would be a lot of fun.

It was (and is) also an extremely ambitious project. I think everyone who gets into the fan film world — myself included — gets it into their head to do a feature-length fan film, but only a few have been able to see it through. Sandrima Rising is shortly going to join their ranks.

Weezer Video: Pork and Beans

Okay, so you know that “music video from a prominent band” I mentioned?

As some of you have no doubt surmised, it was Weezer, for their single Pork and Beans. That is really us, but since it was shot in HD and then downscaled to YouTube I’ve been cut out of almost every shot.

Fun fact: they apparently wanted Star Wars Kid initially; when that didn’t pan out, they called us. Works for me!

We also managed to talk them into letting us do the lightsaber effects for the video ourselves, although ultimately I did all the lightsabers and Ryan did all the drumsticks (which they wanted in red and then changed).

That is *really* everyone it’s supposed to be. Doing the shoot was incredibly surreal given that we had all seen and enjoyed each others’ videos, and everyone there was incredibly cool and fun to talk to. (And yes, they’d all seen the South Park episode they were in.)We all exchanged e-mails, which may just turn out to be your high school yearbook “K.I.T.!!!” gesture, but hopefully not.

Anyway, we all had a great time and even though we’re not in there for much of it, we’re proud to be a part of it and we hope it gets a bazillion views.