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Wednesday, 23 December 2009 17:33 |
Evolving with technology
'Avatar'
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With the release of James Cameron's "Avatar" today, the helmer introduces new motion-capture technology that would seem to make the job of stuntmen obsolete, but in fact, the opposite has resulted.
Not only have directors like Cameron continued to use stunt crews on their pics, but stuntmen have adapted to the new technology and found new ways to contribute to a shoot.
Garrett Warren, stunt coordinator for "Avatar," says that stunt crews have undertaken new responsibilities that weren't part of their job description 10 years ago.
The stunt crew's job on a film like this is trying to help create and facilitate all of the action and movements you would see in the real world," Warren said. "One example I can give is if one of our actors is suppose to ride the back of a bear, it may not look like a stunt, but it's our job to help create that look and movement of that bear for the motion capture team since we can't have a bear doing all the movements. So we do all the research and development on what the movements are and then create an apparatus of some kind that would give off all the proper movements of that creature."
Warren has been a stuntman for more than 15 years but as of late has been the go-to guy to for stunt work on any film dealing with motion-capture technology.
Warren has headed up the stunt team for "Disney's A Christmas Carol," "Avatar" Steven Spielberg's upcoming "Adventures of Tintin."
Warren says it was Robert Zemeckis who brought him into this world during the filming of Beowulf" and says it was his creativity that helped lead to future jobs on other motion-capture films. "With being a stunt coordinator on a film like 'Avatar' or 'Beowulf,' I had to be as creative as possible and really use my imagination for coming up with stuff like the Grendel fight scene," he said.
Having worked with several different filmmakers in motion capture, Warren says Cameron brought a meticulous, scientifically oriented mind, which helped since they weren't researching movements but practically inventing them for each alien species.
Besides being a great storyteller, Jim knows every screw to what's going on this film," Warren said. "He would give us his ideas for how he wanted a particular creature to move or act, we'd begin working on it, and then later he would come in and put his tweaks on it, so he was very hands throughout the whole process."
While films like "Avatar" haven't eliminated stuntmen by any means, they have decreased the number of jobs available for each film.
With "Titanic," Cameron used close to 150 stuntmen; on "Avatar" the number was a shade over 50.
Warren doesn't worry too much about this predicament, adding that the past may have already given us an idea about how technology and stuntmen can work together in the future.
For years now they have been using 'massive-capture' in films, which is a process where you shoot something like a big battle scene and, since you can't have thousands of men fighting, they add a lot of them in digitally. A lot of those digital doubles are stuntmen performing all of the movements," he said. "It may not be quite the same as what Jim is doing, but it is a whole lot smarter to be using this type of technology on such large-scale films like 'Avatar' when extras are sparse."
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Wednesday, 23 December 2009 17:31 |
First it was Noise Vision, then the Virtual Vehicle Sound Simulator. Now, Ford is touting its use of motion-capture software as an example of using technology to make vehicle development quicker and cheaper than ever before.
Motion-capture software is used in films like "Avatar" and "Shrek," but in Ford's case, the technology is used to engineer a vehicle's design, comfort, and ergonomics to be the best they can be without resorting to an actual prototype.
“Just like in the movies, we hook people up with sensors to understand exactly how they move when they are interacting with their vehicles,” said Gary Strumolo, manager of Ford research and engineering. “Once we have all that motion captured, we create virtual humans that we can use to run thousands of tests that help us understand how people of all sizes and shapes interact with all kinds of vehicle designs. It’s an incredibly efficient way of engineering tomorrow’s vehicles.”
To really understand how people of all sizes fit into and interact with Ford's vehicles, human test subjects are fitted with up to 50 motion-capture sensors and asked to perform a series of movements you might make while in a car. Data from the sensors is then loaded into a database, which helps create digital human models.
The technology helps Ford avoid the "time and guesswork" that comes with asking people subjective questions on how comfortable they find any given interior. Then there's the Immersive Virtual Evaluation lab, which also aids Ford's move into the virtual realm.
“This technology enables us to evaluate many vehicle exterior and interior alternatives in a virtual environment from any location -- in the driver’s seat or hundreds of feet away from the vehicle – with animated characters and vehicles,” said Elizabeth Baron, a technical specialist in Virtual Reality and Advanced Visualization at Ford.
One room in the lab projects images onto three walls and the ceiling, producing interiors and exteriors at actual scale. If this technology really makes developing vehicles easier and less expensive, look for Ford to use it even more over the next couple years as it continues its drive to return to profitability by 2011.
Source: Ford
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Wednesday, 23 December 2009 17:26 |
Now that Avatar has raised the bar thanks to its cutting-edge visual effects, the folks at Pixar are taking notice. Their next big picture is the other-worldly epic John Carter of Mars, and Avatar just changed the game for them.
In an interview with Collider actor Mark Strong discussed how Avatar made everyone at Pixar sit up and take notice, mere days before they go into production in January.
Strong, who plays Matai Shang, the God-like ruler over the Fern people who spends his time being ripped and keeping tabs on the Universe, shared his thoughts on how Pixar's Andrew Stanton is ready to dominate James Cameron's Avatar with their own mo-cap/live action scifi film.
I mean it's "Avatar" type territory, and I think the point I was making before [is that] these Pixar guys are always wanting to be in the vanguard. They want to be leading from the front. They're giving the public stories that the public don't even know they want. I mean a story about a fish? A story about an old guy keeping his house? On paper, these must seem like, you know, how on earth are you going to carry those things off. Talking toys? Come on. But they... I think Andrew said they're in the business of giving the public what they want before they know they want it. So I can totally imagine he's gone to see "Avatar" and that'll just set the cogs whirring in his brain and the twinkle in his eye because he'll just want to surpass it, no question.
James Cameron Versus Pixar — it doesn't get much better than that. Sure Pixar, will have to upgrade their live action assimilation, since the Toy Story humans still reside deep in the uncanny valley. But story wise? Pixar, hands down. It should be interesting to see what they pull out.
As for Strong, he's signed on to make the entire John Carter movie trilogy that Pixar has planned as the heroes nemesis, if it beats Avatar, that is.
Shooting will last five months, before two years of post-production FX work that will see the film released in 2012.
PIxar's first live-action, John Carter of Mars stars Taylor Kitsch in the title role, with support from Willem Dafoe, Thomas Haden Church, Dominic West, Samantha Morton and James Purefoy. Filming kicks off in London in January.
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Tuesday, 22 December 2009 06:39 |
 MULTIPLE CITIES: James Cameron’s “Avatar” netted more than $236.5 million at the box office over the weekend, the biggest global take for a non-sequel movie, according to Variety. The film generated more than $77 million domestically, bumping “I Am Legend” for the all-time December weekend domestic record. The Will Smith vehicle did $77.2 million its first December weekend two years ago. Rich Greenfield of Pali Capital predicted “Avatar” would outdo “I Am Legend” with around $100 million domestically.
The 3D, mocap spectacle’s worldwide take was a record setter, and the sixth largest international launch, taking in $159.2 million overseas, Variety said. The entertainment news outlet of record cited a major blizzard on the Eastern Seaboard for possibly dampening the domestic outcome. The picture made $27 million on its first day. Early estimates placed weekend box office at around $73 million. Final weekend numbers were still be tallied this morning.
“Avatar” opened over the weekend in 3,452 theaters, with 2023 showing the film in 3D. Total take in Imax theaters around the world was a record $13.6 million.
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Wednesday, 16 December 2009 21:53 |
Terahertz (THz) radiation, or far-infrared light, is potentially very useful for security applications, as it can penetrate clothing and other materials to provide images of concealed weapons, drugs, or other objects.
However, THz scanners must usually be very close to the objects they are imaging. Doubts have lingered over whether it is possible to use THz waves to image objects that are far away, because water vapor in air absorbs THz radiation so strongly that most of it never reaches the object to be imaged.
At the upcoming CLEO/QELS meeting in Baltimore, an MIT-Sandia team will demonstrate the first real-time THz imaging system that obtains images from 25 meters away. The technique takes advantage of the fact that there are a few "windows," or frequency ranges, of the terahertz spectrum that do not absorb water very strongly.
The MIT-Sandia group designed a special, semiconductor-based device known as a "quantum cascade laser" that delivers light in one of these windows (specifically, around 4.9 THz). They shine this light through a thin target with low water content (for example, a dried seed pod), and a detector on the other side of the sample records an image.
A cryorefrigerator maintains the laser at a temperature of 30 Kelvin, where it produces 17 milliwatts of power (as opposed to the microwatts of power typical of pulsed terahertz sources) in order to provide enough terahertz radiation to obtain a decent image. Increasing the power of the lasers and sensitivity of the detectors can potentially enable imaging of thicker objects or imaging of the reflected light, which would be more practical for security applications.
In addition, the development of high-operating-temperature quantum cascade lasers, which operate without the use of cryogenic materials, may also increase the availability of this approach. In the closer term, however, this approach may enable sensing of chemical residues or contaminants in the air.
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