The Dark Knight, the latest “episode” in the Batman series, opens July 18 to great anticipation. The film is made more compelling and poignant by the death of Heath Ledger, who from what we can see in the film’s trailer, plays a very dark Joker. But, for aficionados of “behind-the-scenes” stories, The Dark Knight is compelling for other reasons.... »
In this video from AlphaDogs Editors' Lounge, Kevin Stanley of Red explains exactly what RedCine can do and how to optimize the workflow to get your Red files into your NLE efficiently. ... »
Kung Fu Panda has captured critics and audiences with its irreverent mix of kung fu and heart, a tale of a slacker panda who dreams of being a kung fu master. Design and branding studio Shine was tasked with creating a main title sequence that conveyed all this while serving as a bookend to the 2D dream sequence that opens the film, and crediting 900 people who worked on it. The result, which clocks in at nine minutes, is a mini-movie in its own right.... »
Producer Keith Collea talks about the techniques employed on The Gene Generation, from pre-production all the way through to screening the film, to make this futuristic, sci-fi thriller on a shoestring budget. ... »
When M2G Media in Irvine, CA, was hired by a global marketing firm to create a video piece introducing the new design for the 2009 Nissan Maxima at the New York Auto Show, M2G producer Jeff Granbery saw Red.... »
Three years ago director Ryan Humphries shot his feature film Sounds on the Panasonic DVX100, “which was still a state-of-the-art camera at the time,” he notes. He started researching image enhancement technologies turned to Topaz Labs to transform his SD feature into HD. ... »
Avid reps jumped into the fire at the latest AlphaDogs Editors' Lounge to show their latest hardware and software versions. In addition to showing the larger performance improvements and the ability to mix formats in the timeline, they showed off smaller changes that are sure to make editors' lives easier. And there's even some hints about Avid's future plans for working with RED footage. ... »
Gordon's version of the story, which stars Mena Suvari as the driver and Stephen Rea as her victim, is rewritten to give the poor guy a fighting chance. It's a violent B-movie that's as disturbing as it is funny, a black comedy that's genuinely interested in the psychology of a driver who could ignore the dying man stuck in her windshield.... »
Usually PSAs are rather simple talking heads fare. But the :90 spot “Burma Viral” via Ogilvy & Mather Amsterdam, MTV and The Burma Arts Board set its sights much higher and tasked creative production studio Shilo to create an epic CG spot that was photo-real, yet stylized. ... »
Recording and mixing audio on set for reality television is arguably the most challenging situations for a sound department. It takes the unpredictability of documentary shoots, multiplies that many times over with separate lines of action occurring simultaneously and then puts it all under a pressure cooker of time and budget constraints. ... »
When the visual effects crew for Speed Racer arrived in Berlin four months ahead of production, they put systems into play that would rock filmmaking. With visual effects occupying an increasing amount of screen time in films, tasks formerly thought of as post production have moved further upstream and visual effects artists have taken on a more integral role in production. Speed Racer drives that notion to the extreme. “On Speed Racer, I believe post-production began on the very first day,” says John Gaeta, co-visual effects supervisor.... »
For the recent commercial for the new Ford truck Click 3x made liquid chrome coagulate from a cobblestone street to form the vehicle. Watch the exclusive video on how Click3x created the effect reminiscent of liquid chrome effects in Terminator 2. ... »
Director/producer/cinematographer Barry Sonnenfeld took to the stage at NAB to discuss the changing nature of television and film, the visual style he developed with the Coen borthers on Blood Simple, producing Pushing Daisies and why the Internet will lead to the destruction of democractic society. ... »
Whatever you think of Speed Racer, the new alternate-reality VFX fest from the Wachowski Brothers directorial team, you'll have to admit that it doesn't look like anything you've seen before.... »
A major tenet of the production was keeping things real—from the suit to the cameras. By the end of post-production, however, animators at ILM were helping to design shots, including tweaking the camera. “Production drove the bus,” says Academy Award-winning VFX supervisor John Nelson, “but everybody was involved. Jon [Favreau] and I both believe the best idea is going to win, wherever it comes from.”... »
