Tim Burton's Secret Formula Proven Correct... Again

An old story that was already creepy + Johnny Depp + buckets of white makeup + Helena Bonham Carter + they're all dead (vampires) + black costumes + Danny Elfman score = Tim Burton's new film, "Dark Shadows", based on the cult TV series, coming May 2012.

All of this was prophesized by the prescient College Humor video from March 2010 titled, "Tim Burton's Secret Formula".

See more at CollegeHumor

Ghost Protocol

I’m overwhelmed by the positive response audiences have given “Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol”.  The folks that had a chance to enjoy the film in a real IMAX theater were treated to an exceptional experience - nearly 30 minutes of the film is presented in true IMAX, with entire sequences filmed with the large-format camera, giving audiences a unique, immersive experience that is, personally, far more intriguing than 3-D.

I was compositing supervisor for Industrial Light & Magic, which provided around 650 visual effects for the film, and I’m extraordinarily proud of the entire team.  The vast majority of our shots were intended to be invisible -- our goal was to stay out of the way of the storytelling and let the scenes play out without the effects calling attention to themselves.  I had a blast working again with John Knoll, our visual effects supervisor, Lindy DeQuattro, our associate visual effects supervisor, Hayden Landis, our Digital Production Supervisor, and our teams at ILM in San Francisco and Singapore and all our facility partners.  I offer humble thanks to all of them for a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

I’ve never had a greater impact on a film before, and I’m so proud to be associated with such a great film.  I was lucky enough to catch a screening in IMAX, and really enjoyed the movie.  In visual effects, we consider ourselves lucky if we get to work on one really, really good film in our entire career.  I’ve been lucky enough to work on a few of them, and “MI4” ranks among my favorite films to which I’ve contributed.  It was my second "Mission: Impossible" film, my first IMAX film, and my tenth anamorphic film.

Here’s a snapshot of how Brad Bird’s directorial debut has been received by the public:

Box Office

As of January 31, 2012, the film has grossed nearly $572 million dollars.  Its $203 million dollar take in North America makes it the seventh highest grossing film of 2011.  (It will most likely overtake “Fast Five” at number six, with $209M.)   “MI4” is the highest grossing “Mission: Impossible” film, globally, and will most likely become the highest grossing Tom Cruise film of all time, toppling “War of the Worlds”.

Critical Acclaim

For the fourth entry of a franchise based on a television show, “MI4”’s 93% Tomatometer rating is through the roof.  The Rotten Tomatoes summary is as follows:  "Stylish, fast-paced, and loaded with gripping set pieces, the fourth Mission: Impossible is big-budget popcorn entertainment that really works."

Visual Effects Coverage

We were blown away when we were invited to present our film at the visual effects Academy Bake-Off, which featured ten films competing for five nomination slots.  “MI4” was included in a list that also featured “Transformers 3” and “Rise of the Planet of the Apes”. Although we didn’t get a nomination, we were grateful for the opportunity to go to the bake-off and show our reel.

Cinefex and Jody Duncan will cover “MI4” in its April 2012 issue, which should make for a great read.

The Daily interviewed John Knoll to discuss the film’s visual effects.

FXGuide and Mike Seymour expand on The Daily’s coverage with a more extensive interview with John Knoll.

Vincent Frei at Art of VFX also talks to John about the film.

Over at The VFX Show podcast, Mike Seymour, Matt Leonard and Jason Diamond go over the visual effects of “MI4” with a fine tooth comb for nearly 70 minutes, and have some really nice things to say about them.

And if you’re at all interested in how the film was shot, please read this profile of cinematographer Robert Elswit, the man behind the photography of “There Will Be Blood”, on how he shot “MI4” on film with 35mm and IMAX cameras.

The VFX Predictinator, 84th Academy Awards Edition

It’s that time of year again.  Time to feed The VFX Predictinator.

For the uninitiated, The VFX Predictinator is a formula my wife and I developed in 2010 that accurately predicted the winner of the visual effects Academy Award from 1989-2010 based on quantifiable data points.  Last year, we expanded the formula to accommodate five nominees with success -- The Predictinator accurately predicted the winner ("Inception"), just as it did for the previous 21 years.

The 84th Academy Award nominations were released last week, which means it’s time to run the numbers!  As a reminder, the nominees for the visual effects Oscar are “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part II”, “Hugo”, “Real Steel”, “Rise of the Planet of the Apes”, and “Transformers: Dark of the Moon”.

And here’s The Predictinator in action:

And if you're not interested in squinting at the final scores, here they are:

• 8.39 Hugo
• 6.21 Rise of the Planet of the Apes
• 5.34 Harry Potter 7.2
• 2.91 Real Steel
• 1.04 Transformers 3

The Predictinator predicts “Hugo” will win the Academy Award for visual effects.

Before running the numbers, I was certain that “Hugo” would post some big numbers, especially because of those 11 (gasp!) total Academy Award nominations, but I was surprised at how gigantic its final score ultimately was.  Its score was even slightly higher than 2009’s “Avatar”.  "Hugo" had an extremely high Tomatometer score (although slightly below "Potter 7.2"), and combined with its late release date (November) and its additional Oscar nominations, it walks away a score of 8.39.

Since “Apes” was the only film among the nominees with organic character animation as well as facial animation, I was fairly certain that “Apes” would have ended up with the highest point tally.  But there’s “Hugo” sitting on top with that huge score, a higher point value than any film since the first “Lord of the Rings” film in 2001.

Some notes: we didn’t classify “Apes” as a sequel, since the film is a reboot, creating a new franchise, personality and mythology from the ground up. “Transformers 3” ended up in a distant fifth place with only 1.04 points -- the lowest Predictinator score in the history of the Predictinator (1989-2011).  The robot sequel was severely punished by its low Tomatometer score (the lowest since “Poseidon”), the earliest release date of all five nominees, and its existence as a sequel.

We’ll see what happens when the winners are announced on February 26, 2012.

update: We were right.

84th Academy Award Nominees for Visual Effects

Congratulations to all the nominees for Best Visual Effects in the 84th Academy Awards.  The winner will be announced Sunday, February 26, 2012.

VISUAL EFFECTS

"Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2"

Tim Burke, David Vickery, Greg Butler and John Richardson

"Hugo"

Rob Legato, Joss Williams, Ben Grossman and Alex Henning

"Real Steel"

Erik Nash, John Rosengrant, Dan Taylor and Swen Gillberg

"Rise of the Planet of the Apes"

Joe Letteri, Dan Lemmon, R. Christopher White and Daniel Barrett

"Transformers: Dark of the Moon"

Scott Farrar, Scott Benza, Matthew Butler and John Frazier

James Bond: "Somebody's Gonna Die"

Inspired by The Talk Show #71 hosted by Dan Benjamin and John Gruber, I just had to make a poster for the rhetorical film, James Bond: "Somebody's Gonna Die".  Hear the context of the title around 1:31:31.

update:  John Gruber (@gruber) apparently liked this enough to retweet it, and Dan Benjamin (@danbenjamin) wrote me a nice note about the poster.  Love those guys.

"Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol"

I can't tell you how happy I am that the early reviews of Brad Bird's "Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol" are so positive.  We worked very hard on this picture, and Bird was an ingenious and gracious collaborator.

Industrial Light and Magic provided the film's visual effects, supervised by John Knoll, with Lindy DeQuattro as our associate visual effects supervisor. I served as the film's compositing supervisor.

The project was an exhilarating creative experience for me, and I hope I'll be able to talk more about it in future posts.

Oh, and if you plan on seeing the film, try to make it to an IMAX screening.  Several of the film's big action sequences were filmed with IMAX cameras, which includes lots of ILM effects work as well.  It will be worth the extra effort.

The Visual Effects Supervisors of ILM

The visual effects supervisors of Industrial Light & Magic, 2011. Standing in the back row from left to right, Roger Guyett, Grady Cofer, Russell Earl, Ben Snow, Craig Hammack, Lindy DeQuattro, Dennis Muren. Seated from left to right: Bill George, Tim Alexander, Jeff White, John Knoll, Pablo Helman, Scott Farrar and Kim Libreri.

Photo is from the new book "Industrial Light & Magic: The Art of Innovation" coming soon. Read a review of the book here on FXGuide.

Photo credit: Brent Bowers.

Then and Now

Two very different techniques, two very different contexts. At the beginning and end a single epic narrative.

How Siri Could Work With AppleTV

click here for a larger image

I was inspired by the discussion on 5by5's excellent podcast Hypercritical (episode 38), hosted by Dan Benjamin and John Siracusa, to create this extremely quick and extremely dirty mockup of how Siri, the amazing new feature on Apple's iPhone 4S, could be implemented on the AppleTV. My idea is adding a dedicated Siri button on the AppleTV remote, as well as a microphone that sits at the top of the remote that transmits your voice commands to the AppleTV.

This solution bypasses the problems Dan and John discussed, such as shouting at the AppleTV from a distance. Plus, with the remote control/microphone only about a foot from the user's mouth, ambient noise is a much smaller issue than with a microphone attached to the set top box. Plus, it eliminates the need for an expensive iOS device (like an iPod touch or an iPhone) to be the sole input for voice commands. I suppose the entire remote would no longer be an IR remote, but a full-on Bluetooth remote. If I spent more than an hour on the mockup, I would have removed the little IR window at the top of the remote. With complete ignorance of how much power consumption Bluetooth requires in a remote control-sized unit, or what technical requirements might be necessary for this kind of functionality (not to mention the additional cost required, in order to hit that $99 sweet spot), I hacked together this quick mockup of what it might look like. I admit I rushed the on-screen interface - it's not very polished and is almost a direct lift from the iPhone Siri interface. My idea is that the regular interface would blur in the background, and a custom AppleTV Siri interface would appear. Anyway, there ya go.

"LaGuerta!" is The "Dexter" Spinoff No One Asked For

In the grand tradition of television spinoffs like AfterMASH, The Ropers, and Joey, we present Showtime's Dexter spinoff, LaGuerta!

Maria LaGuerta and Angel Batista from Dexter take their steamy romance and spectacular detective skills to the Windy City of Chicago, where the bad guys don't stand a chance.

Get ready, Chicago. Here comes LaGuerta!

Always Think Different

From the 'Think Different' 1997 Apple Computer commercial:

Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. 

They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. 

And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.

Rest in peace, Steve Jobs.

MI4 in IMAX

As noted by this Hollywood Reporter article, a large chunk of Brad Bird's "Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol" was filmed with large-format IMAX cameras. 

IMAX is also to include around 30 minutes of scenes shot with its proprietary cameras when it rolls out the fourth installment of the Mission: Impossible franchise.  One featured IMAX sequence includes a stunt performed by Cruise as he scaled the world's tallest building, the Burj Khalifa Tower in Dubai.

I hope to talk more about this film in the future, especially in regards to the visual effects, produced by Industrial Light & Magic under the supervision of John Knoll.

Be sure to check out the film when it opens early in IMAX theaters on December 16, 2011.  Unlike most films exhibited in IMAX theaters, this one will be worth seeing on the big-big screen.

This video illustrates how far the fringe right wing has taken over the Republican party. Can you imagine any one of the GOP hopefuls for President saying something like this?

Doomed!!!

Here's a wonderful comic from 2009 that sums it all up.  Created by Barry Deutsch.

More Excuses

Well, here we are again. Very few FXRant updates have occurred in the last few months. The time, we spoke, I had a pretty good excuse.

Well, before that excuse even finished, I moved on to some more excuses.

Now, almost changing the subject entirely, here are some random images from the teaser of "Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol", directed by Brad Bird, and featuring visual effects by Industrial Light & Magic.

(In the meantime, your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to follow me on Twitter @tvaziri.)

Images selected by Randomizer Lion Edition software.