Behind the Scenes 184
JosefK writes: "Film & Video is running an interesting and fairly in-depth article on the technology that's been used by Peter Jackson's crew and WETA for the production of the Lord of the Rings. From satellite video feeds for overseeing remote shoots, to the development of WETA's Massive program for depicting large scale battle scenes with tens and hundreds of thousands of "agents" (and it runs on Linux!), the article covers the gamut of the interesting things Peter Jackson's been doing Down Under." And Salon is running a lengthy article on the increasing use of Linux in the special effects industry.
No Balrog in book 1 (Score:3, Informative)
IIRC, the Balrog's cameo was definitely in 'The Fellowship...', so what's up with this?
Labrie reported that the most difficult creatures from The Two Towers, and Return of the King include Gollum, Treebeard (an ent), and the Balrog. ?We will be diving into those right after the delivery of film one.?
In depicting a Balrog, Jackson will be forced to offer his own answer to a question that has haunted Tolkien fans since the book was released. In the book, it isn?t clear whether a Balrog, which is described in passing by Gandalf, has wings or not.
Will Jackson?s Balrog have wings?
Fans will have to wait until 2003 to find out.
"Weta" in this instance refers to.. (Score:2, Informative)
Peter Jackson? The Peter Jackson? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:No Balrog in book 1--SPOILERS (Score:5, Informative)
From TheOneRing.net [theonering.net]:
The character of Rosie will be expanded slightly, in order to allow us to see the origins of her relationship with Sam before his departure from the Shire....
Also, events that were told through flashbacks in the books will have to be told visually in the movies, such as the defeat of Sauron during the Second Age, Isildur's death, Gollum's history with the Ring, and Gandalf's imprisonment by Saruman at Isengard.
the first film in the trilogy will apparently feature flashbacks that will familiarize audiences with the history of the Ring, and it is safe to assume that any flashbacks of this type will include a summary of the story of The Hobbit.
Gandalf explains Gollum's history at the very beginning of FOTR and describes Sauron's defeat at the Council of Elrond, IIRC, so both of these added scenes will appear in the FOTR movie. The explanation of Bilbo's history with the Ring will probably also occur in Hobbiton at the start, so the movie version of FOTR has lots of added material. No wonder there wasn't room for Tom Bombadil.
Tolkien geek
Re:Windows *ever* used? (Score:2, Informative)
Smaller shops (boutiques) probably use mostly Windows and also Macs. Companies like Blur, Digital Anvil, etc. Probably mot TV FX are done in Windows (Enterprise (Eden), Xena, etc.).
There was one time that Windows was given a chance. When Microsoft owned Softimage and released it for NT, I know that ILM at least did tests with it (a short film). While the short looked good in the end it was a failure. Apparently there were just too many issues of porting their in house software and also integrating it into their *nix network.
Re:Peter Jackson? The Peter Jackson? (Score:5, Informative)
To see how well he can handle special effects, I'd recommend watching The Frighteners. The CGI in it looks a little dated today, but it was pretty impressive when the film was released. It was on Starz last night, so I just had to watch the Lee Ermey segments.
He also directed Heavenly Creatures, which shows how well he can capture dramatic performances. It also has some pretty wicked dream sequences that show me just how creative this director really is.
I'm really happy with this choice of directors. From his past work, it seems that he's up to the task. He's also a huge fan of the book, and it's obvious that he wants to do it justice. Put that together with his sick sense of humor, and his penchant for gore, and we could have quite a film on our hands come December.
Of course, Jackson's taste for gore is going to be toned down a bit for the initial release, as he's been contracted to make a PG-13 film. There is a rumor that the DVD will have a Rated-R cut. I hope this happens.
Ratguy
But of course social geography was never .. (Score:3, Informative)
Americans strong point
EnZed is the Land of the Long White Cloud, and is a good 3 hour plane trip from Oz, which is truly the Land Downunder
But even though I am a skip and not a kiwi, I have to say that it is an awsome place to vist with an astounding variety of scenery packed into a really small place. Pefect for the typical yanks concept of a holiday, as being no more than 2 weeks in duration :-)
Yes I am trolling .. but someone has to do it. :-)
Re:I didn't realize (Score:2, Informative)
Re:A plea to the hard core LOTR fans (Score:2, Informative)
The Scouring of the Shire is indeed in the films, and gets a lot of time. The Grey Havens at the end is appearently something very special for Peter.. he's gone on reacord saying filming the ending nearly broke him. That's good enough for me, last time I heard those words was JMS talking about the final episode of B5, and that nearly broke me...
"2k is our nominal working resolution" (Score:4, Informative)
The Imagica Imager XE digital film scanner mentioned has a maximum resolution of 4096x3112 pixels. It does a 2k frame scan from 35mm in 4 seconds and a 4k in 6-8 secs, counting speed to a remote disk via Fiber Channel or Gigabit Ethernet. It's about the size of a refrigerator [imagica.co.jp] and weighs 400kg. Heavy duty stuff.
Natural fit (Score:3, Informative)
How does this apply to Linux in EFX? Simple- people can talk about how it's difficult to get EFX companies to share their proprietary _application_ code, but have you considered the reverse- how easy it is for such companies to get whatever information they need on the Linux code? Hell, they _own_ their own OS code under the same terms as any of us. They don't have to go hat in hand to Microsoft begging "Oh please fix this graphics API optimization that gets the consumers 5 more FPS in quake but hurts our image quality" or something- under the terms of open source/free software, they have total access to anything they need to know- and being specialists, unlike Joe Sixpack they can _use_ that information. And they do- and they are. This genie ain't going back in the bottle.
How do we make them advance the state of free software in general, rather than just using it as a platform for their proprietary stuff? (for those of us who feel this is necessary- some would consider it an imposition!) Simple, but not easy. Beat them. The only way to do it is to find a specific, incredibly narrow area where you as an individual, or a small team of OSS coders, can beat the best the proprietary world has to offer. Then do it- and put the code out as GPL. If you're the sole coder you can strike deals with commercial, proprietary guys to let them use the same code under a different license, letting them off the hook- but keep the GPLed version up to date.
This can be incredibly narrowly focussed. For instance, clouds. Clouds are a fractal phenomenon that are not easy to render volumetrically. To this day, EFX houses will sometimes handle clouds by use of a huge water tank with paints in it, rather than trying to program them. Figure out a way to do perfect CGI clouds fast, and GPL it. Put it out there for use by the great and small. Figure out new ways to do terrains, or raytracing, or to computer-render realistic fabrics- the tough stuff. Do that, and GPL it, rather than trying to persuade someone to GPL _their_ work to suit you.
Works for me (I write dithers and wordlength reducers).