Heavy Metal

Barbara Robertson interviews plenty of ILM'ers for an article for Computer Graphics World, covering our work in "Transformers."

You'll read some great quotes from our visual effects supervisor Scott Farrar, associate effects supervisor Russell Earl, animation supervisor Scott Benza, TD supervisor Hilmar Koch, our digital production supervisor Jeff White, viewpaint supervisor Ron Woodall, our location matchmover Duncan Blackman, and my office-buddy, sequence supervisor Tom Martinek.

Tom was in charge of the lighting of two key nighttime sequences, the Witwicky house sequence (where the Autobots hover around Sam's house while Sam looks for the glasses) and the alley sequence where the Autobots reveal themselves for the first time to Sam and Mikaela.

Tom and the artists involved with those sequences did a phenomenal job-- in the other action sequences, we could get away with certain things. However, for his sequences, there was no place to hide. The robots had to look believable. They had to look perfect.

Read the full article.

Michael Bay and Brett Ratner

Funny. Long, but funny.


My favorite bits: "The editing was distracting and frenetic. How 'bout a wide shot once in a while?" And, Michael transforms into a... well... you know.

Super Giggles

See Me In Montreal

Will you be in the greater Montreal area at the end of September? Then come see me talk about "Transformers" at the ADAPT Conference. It looks like it will be a great conference, with presentations by Phil Tippett, Syd Mead, Carlos Baena from Pixar, and Shawn Kelly from ILM (who will also be talking about "Transformers").


My presentation will be jam packed with sweet breakdowns and works-in-progress. I've got a lot to talk about, and if you're interested in how ILM created the visual effects for "Transformers," you cannot miss it.

Hey, Americans. Dust off your passport and book your flight. It's gonna be awesome.

Visit the ADAPT Conference website.

Bonds And The Record

I love baseball. But this is all I have to say about Barry Bonds.

Philadelphia fans treated Bonds to this wonderful banner in May 2006.

An Interview with Josh Saeta

Read an interview with my old colleague and friend, Josh Saeta, over at VFXTalk.com. Josh is a lead compositor at Rhythm & Hues, and talks about his experiences on "Night at the Museum" and "Superman Returns."

Josh and I go way back - we both started our effects careers at Banned From The Ranch together. He is an extraordinary talent who is genuinely self-taught, an attribute I greatly respect. It was such a blast working with him at BFTR, Flat Earth and Pixel Magic.

Josh, Glenn Cannon and I spent three months on the set of "American Pie" together, and that time we spent together sticks in my head as one of the greatest movie experiences of my career. We laughed so hard and long on that show. We had a blast.

The movie was extremely low-budget ($12 million, but we made it for $11 million), and the stages were in the middle of Van Nuys during a heatwave. Our un-air-conditioned stages were sweltering. (Look carefully at all the actors in "American Pie," especially Jason Biggs. That sweat ain't makeup.) So we had to have fun, to make it bearable. Of course, watching Shannon Elizabeth get naked, take after take after take, certainly took the edge off.

Fun fact about working on "American Pie": I developed a cist on my buttbone from sitting cross-legged for hours on end on plywood stage floors. I would huddle underneath the desk where Jason Biggs was performing his scenes, and between takes, I would rise up and reset his prop computer. Then, I would descend back underneath the desk. For weeks afterwards, I couldn't sit in a regular chair without experiencing butt pain. True story.

Read Josh's interview.
Read what we (Banned From The Ranch) did on "American Pie"

Not Funny: Carlos Mencia

Why in the world does Carlos Mencia dominate 14 hours of programming a day on Comedy Central? And why do I see about 4,927% more commercials for his "Mind of Mencia" program than, say, "The Colbert Report"? I mean "Drawn Together," one of Comedy Central's minor hits, is leagues funnier than Carlos' program.... ahem, I mean Ned's program, which is a ghost of a ripoff of a shadow of a copy of "Chappelle's Show."

Just about every single program on Comedy Central is funnier than his lame program. Okay, maybe it's tied with "The Showbiz Show with David Spade" for lameosity.

Joe Rogan is right. And Joe Rogan is funny.

1-18-08

Apple is now hosting the teaser for the J.J. Abrams-produced film, simply known as "1-18-08."

Watch the trailer here.

Always Awesome: David Morse

Never flashy or over the top, David Morse is an always reliable go-to Hollywood character actor.

There's no doubt that the "St. Elsewhere" veteran visits similar dramatic territory with his roles (usually as a soft-spoken cop, a menacing hood, or as the leading man's old, wise friend), but there is no doubt that he has brilliant screen presence. His steely gaze instantly gets your attention.

Morse in "St. Elsewhere" (1982-1988) and "Twelve Monkeys" (1995)

His roles are certainly getting bigger ("Disturbia"), which is promising, because it might lead him to more diverse, mainstream roles. He has such robust dramatic skills that I see no reason why he couldn't carry a feature, too. At least dramatically speaking-- I doubt the MySpace crowd is itching to see 'the new David Morse movie.' Although someone online put together a rather large website devoted to his work (David Morse Online).

Morse in "The Green Mile" (1999) and "The Rock" (1996)

My favorite role of Morse's might be the creepy, double crossing 'Dr. Peters' in "Twelve Monkeys" (directed by Terry Gilliam) or as Ellie Arroway's father in Robert Zemeckis' "Contact" (that was him talking to Jodie Foster on that alien tropical beach at the edge of the universe).

Read David Morse's IMDB page.
Read all Always Awesome posts.

Nearly $200 Million

"Transformers" is at $197.9 million dollars in domestic box office as of July 13. The film opened on July 3.

Adding foreign receipts brings its total to nearly $300 million.

It's gratifying to see that people are still flocking to the theaters to catch the film. We must have done something right.

Track the box office at Box Office Mojo.

The Onion on "This American Life"

I love the NPR. I really do. But sometimes it makes me want to kick my car stereo into pieces.

I enjoy listening to Morning Edition, Talk of the Nation, Fresh Air, Marketplace, and other fine programs on the NPR. But I never really understood the fandom of This American Life. In fact, this Onion article pretty much sums it up for me, and how I interpret the show:

This American Life Completes Documentation Of Liberal, Upper-Middle-Class Existence

Here's my favorite passage:

"We've done it," said senior producer Julie Snyder, who was personally interviewed for a 2003 This American Life episode, "Going Eclectic," in which she described what it's like to be a bilingual member of the ACLU trained in kite-making by a Japanese stepfather. "There is not a single existential crisis or self-congratulatory epiphany that has been or could be experienced by a left-leaning agnostic that we have not exhaustively documented and grouped by theme."

Any San Francisco readers will also recognize a similar self-congratulatory theme in KQED's Perspective series, played intermittently during Morning Edition. The Perspectives are consistently... nauseatingly... vomitous. Oh, mercy.

Oh, and sometimes I want to strangle the FM dial when I hear Carl Kasell's voice giving the national news in the mornings. His slurpy delivery, his clearly audible shuffling of papers, his monotone readings, they all drive me into a rage.

If anyone ever wanted to torture me, I'll give you a tip. Forget about the thumbscrews; duct tape me into a chair with a radio with NPR playing nothing but This American Life and "The Best of Carl Kasell's Awful Newsreading."

Just thinking about his voice makes me sweat.

Read The Onion article.

That's A Lot of Parts

In the CG Society profile of Alex Jaeger, they published a list of statistics, as gathered by ILM's digital production supervisor, Jeff White. The CG models for "Transformers" were extremely heavy.

That's some serious geometry. But if these stats don't blow your mind, perhaps this one will, as seen on the Trivia section of the "Transformers" IMDb page:

According to one of the CGI artists that created the animated robots at ILM, if you took all the polygons (CGI building blocks) from all the autobots and decepticon models they created at the studio, and strung them end to end, they'd reach to the moon and back and you'd still have enough left over to build the coliseum in Rome two times.

Wow!!! Has you mind been completely blown away?

Alex Jaeger Article

CG Society is running a new article on Alex Jaeger, ILM's art director for "Transformers." Alex had the difficult job of interpreting the flat design artwork done by Michael Bay's production team, translating it into fully three dimensional transforming robots. Alex is an incredible artist, and a great colleague.

We worked together on "Hulk" for a very short time, and then on "Mission: Impossible III" last year, which was a blast. Alex pumped out an enormous amount of work for "Transformers," and he was a fantastic collaborator; he could easily talk to compositors, technical directors, matte artists, and communicate on the same level. It's always fun trading ideas back and forth with Alex.

He is one of the reasons "Transformers" looks so damn cool.

Read the full article here, and read his blog posting about the article here.

ILM's Biggest Fan: My Mom

So, after reading the review of "Transformers" written by her hometown newspaper, the Chicago Tribune, a reader wrote to the film critic, wondering why he didn't spend more time talking about the visual effects for the film.

That reader? My mom.

The other day I got a letter from Tribune reader Nancy Vaziri asking me what I thought of the Industrial Light & Magic special effects in "Transformers," which are essentially the point of the picture. In a nice way Vaziri chided me for focusing too much on matters not relating to the effects. After all, she wrote, "Do we really care who acted in this movie?"

Not much, no, which is one reason "Transformers" is a decently carpentered two-and-a-half-star diversion rather than a terrific popcorn picture. While the effects are pretty stunning in their assaultive way, only occasionally does Bay's film impart some brain-rattling pleasure to go with the noise. For me the highlight comes in the sight of the giant 'bots roller-skating down an L.A. freeway smashing into stuff.

Way to go, mom! (Readers note: I did not put her up to it! I swear!)

Read the full article.
Read all "Transformers" visual effects related review snippets here.

Fantastic

From Wesley Morris' review of "Transformers," from the Boston Globe:

To find the cube, these guys are in a hurry for Sam to fetch an important planet-saving prop from his house. While the kid and his girl slip inside, the Autobots stand around impatiently, only halfway heeding Sam's instructions to stay hidden. Instead, they trample his parents' lawn and peer into the windows, barely avoiding an encounter with Sam's dad and tipsy mom (Kevin Dunn and Julie White), who are anxious to know what their son is doing in his bedroom.

This is a fantastic sequence. For one thing, the effects -- which are state-of-the-art throughout "Transformers" -- are put to brilliant use. Sure, Sam's Craftsman-style house gives us a vivid sense of the Autobots' scale and textures (the contrast of cold, gleaming metal against soft, dark wood). But crowding around it and stooping over to peek inside, they seem incredibly lifelike.

Read the full review.
Read all "Transformers" visual effects related review snippets here.