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Monday, 01 November 2010 17:41 |
A look at Spielberg and Jackson's epic |
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Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson have chosen Empire to reveal the first look at The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn. Headed our way next October, the film adapts the enormously popular books by Hergé in performance-captured, 3D form.
Our exclusive and specially-Weta-created cover is a riff on the iconic image of Tintin (Jamie Bell) and his dog Snowy picked out by a spotlight as they are running. Then we have a couple of stills from the film, one showing you Andy Serkis’ Captain Haddock and another with Haddock and Tintin adrift at sea and signalling for help.
“With live action you’re going to have actors pretending to be Captain Haddock and Tintin,” says Peter Jackson. “You’d be casting people to look like them. It’s not really going to feel like the Tintin Hergé drew. It’s going to be somewhat different. With CGI we can bring Hergé’s world to life, keep the stylised caricatured faces, keep everything looking like Hergé’s artwork, but make it photo-real.”
Click the cover above to enlarge
So what can we expect from the story? Here’s what Spielberg told us. “The first part of the film, which is the most mysterious part, certainly owes much to not only film noir but the whole German Brechtian theatre — some of our night scenes and our action scenes are very contrasty. But at the same time the movie is a hell of an adventure.”
The film also stars Simon Pegg and Nick Frost as Thompson and Thomson respectively (“When people first heard that bit of casting they thought that we’d gone barking mad,” says Jackson. Adds Spielberg, “The Thompson Twins can’t be clones of each other. Nick and Simon provided all the differences we needed to foil for each other. They have a wonderful moment in the movie where they start to have an argument about whose sidekick is whose.”) and Daniel Craig as Red Rackham. It also features Cary Elwes, Toby Jones, Mackenzie Crook and Daniel Mays.
And for those of you thinking really far ahead, what has Jackson got planned for his Tintin adventure if and when the planned sequel happens? “One of my favourites is The Seven Crystal Balls, so that’s the one I’ve always been thinking of,” he says. “I also really like the Eastern European ones, the Balkan ones like King Ottokar’s Sceptre and The Calculus Affair. I think it’s a terrific setting for a thriller, the weird Balkan politics and the mysterious secret service agents. I think the Moon ones are terrific, but they’d be good for the third or fourth Tintin film, if we get that far. We want to keep his feet on the ground just a little bit longer.”
For much, much more from Spielberg, Jackson and their entire cast, pick up the new issue of Empire, on sale November 4. Or better still, order your copy online now!
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Tuesday, 26 October 2010 17:59 |
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Inside ILM
The ILM shooting stage, a darkened warehouse-like space lined with computers and esoteric film-making equipment. "Basically the entire room is a live virtual space," explains digital supervisor Mike Sanders. "We can do blue screen, green screen, HD, you name it. It's equipped for state-of-the-art virtual cinematography, so there's a 40-camera motion capture system in here – if we have actors in mo-cap suits we can record whatever they're doing."
This system is used in almost every movie that ILM works on now. The background characters and hero actions in Iron Man, Transformers and Pirates of the Caribbean were captured here. "We also provide a lot of digital doubles of actors for the stunt work," says Sanders. "We'll either do full CG replacements or we'll do a head or face replacement. We have a technology called Clone Cam, which allows us to rebuild the actor's head in immensely high resolution. It's a photographic technique like a scan, but laser scans take too long, and there are a lot of inaccuracies if the actor moves their head. We invented this technique about six years ago because we were doing Lemony Snickett and we needed a digital baby. You don't want to put babies in front of a laser…"
This same technology, the motion capture cameras and the Clone Cam, have also been used in LucasArts' latest games, including Force Unleashed 2. The pipeline is slightly different, and the data has to be scaled down (it can take all night to render a single frame of a movie CG sequence – a video game needs to render 30 frames a second), but it's the same teams and equipment serving both sectors.
And vitally, this isn't just movies leading the way with video games benefiting from a trickle down effect: game technology is ahead in certain areas. "When we've been able to share our real-time shaders and real-time lighting advances with ILM, they've been blown away," says LucasArts art director Matt Omernick. "In fact, they have wanted to adopt it into many of the projects that they're working on. For a lighting artist, there's a huge advantage in being able to get a scene perfectly right, iterate on it 100 times in one day and then send it off as a render. Movies have got to the point where you can do almost anything, and while games still have a lot of problems to solve, what we're good at is doing things very quickly, and iterating very quickly, and that inevitably gets you to a higher quality. That will feed back in to both industries."
It's also a gaming event that helped Sanders and his team to develop ILM's latest technique – real-time movie-making using motion capture systems.
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Thursday, 21 October 2010 18:59 |
First Mars Needs Moms Poster
By Josh Tyler
Disney has unveiled the first poster for their upcoming computer animated movie, Mars Needs Moms.
Mars Needs Moms stars the voice and performance-capture of Seth Green as a 9-year-old named Milo,
who sets out to rescue his mom who gets kidnapped by Martians.
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Thursday, 21 October 2010 18:52 |
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Robert Zemeckis has been very active over the past ten years, working to push forward the art of 3D and motion capture with The Polar Express, Beowulf and A Christmas Carol. But when his 3D company, ImageMovers Digital, was abandoned by Disney early this year, there was great supposition about what the filmmaker’s next move might be. We know he’s making Yellow Submarine, but would he continue in digitized animation?
Now he’s got another possible road back to live-action with a film called Timeless. Warner Bros. just picked up the pitch, which would be the first live-action Zemeckis film since Cast Away in 2000.
Deadline says that Zemeckis and his production company have been making deals with Warner Bros. in the wake of Disney’s turn away from ImageMovers Digital, which Disney will close next year.
WB picked up the pitch for Timeless, which will be scripted by Mike Thompson. Deadline positions the story as a big-budget tentpole time-travel film, but doesn’t offer any particular details about what the pitch actually outlined.
Deadline also says that Zemeckis has been “kicking the tires on live-action projects such as Superman.” That’s an interesting notion, and a direction I wouldn’t mind seeing Superman take. A Christmas Carol had so much flying through London streets it half felt like a Superman movie at times.
There are other possible Zemeckis films, like the possible Roger Rabbit sequel and the film Dark Life, which came to light early this year, but after the ImageMovers shuttering news. Both of those would be Disney projects, so it will be interesting to see how the new Zemeckis / Warner Bros. relationship develops.
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Thursday, 21 October 2010 18:51 |
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THE AVENGERS
Though Marvel Studios is still half a year away from starting production on their highly anticipated ensemble film, the rumor stream surrounding has been continuous.
The Avengers in undoubtedly the riskiest movie that Marvel Studios has planned. It will be the first big-budget film to feature an amalgam of mainstream superheroes, each of which will have their own respective 'prequels,' facing a common enemy on the silver screen. For fans of Marvel comics, it is both highly anticipated and very worrisome. It has already been confirmed that The Avengers will begin production in early 2011, which is still at least seven months away, but the rumors surrounding the project are abundant. If you're having a hard time staying up to date on The Avengers movie gossip, here's a breakdown of what we've heard so far:
 Cast
- Joss Whedon, who was behind many popular television series including Buffy, Angel and Firefly, has been in negotiations to direct The Avengers for some time now. Though no official announcement has been made, several leading news sites have confirmed this information. His Marvel Studios directorial package includes script rewrites for the Captain America and Avengers films.
- So far, the confirmed line up of both primary and secondary characters for The Avengers is Iron Man/Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.), Thor (Chris Hemsworth), Captain America/Steve Rogers (Chris Evans), Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), Black Widow/Agent Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson) and Agent Phil Coulson (Clark Gregg).
- Edward Norton, who portrayed Bruce Banner in The Incredible Hulk, has told the media that his reprisal in The Avengers is up to the fanbase. No official word about any negotiations currently underway between Norton and Marvel Studios has been released.
- Don Cheadle, who portrayed LTC Jim 'Rhodey' Rhodes/War Machine in Iron Man 2, was asked about his involvement in future Marvel Studios films, to which he answered: "I think we'll see War Machine in Avengers, but not necessarily on the team.."
- Late last year, The Hurt Locker star Jeremy Renner told the press that he was in talks with Marvel Studios to portray their skilled archer Clint Barton/Hawkeye for the film. Renner went as far as to see several costume designs for the character, and called them "weird." No word has been reiterated regarding this casting since Renner picked up an Oscar nomination this year.
- Actor and model Kevin Pennington has signed a three picture deal with Marvel Studios, though neither he nor his management team are aware of what the actual role is. He will supposedly be portraying a fan-favorite Marvel Comics character, who has been 'revamped' as a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent in their films.
- Elektra star Jennifer Garner is allegedly being pursued by Marvel Studios for an "upcoming, undisclosed role" in either The Avengers or Captain America.
- Marvel Studios is also rumored to be in final negotiations with either Alice Eve (She's Out of My League) or Malin Akerman (Watchmen) for another role that is "important in their universe and whichever actress gets cast will potentially have the largest female role in the film." The two supposed character options are either Janet Van Dyne/The Wasp or S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent Carol Danvers/Ms. Marvel.
- Two different news sites are reporting contradictory stories that Nathan Fillion is in talks to portray Hank Pym/Ant-Man (or Giant-Man) in the film. While one site claims that Fillion is an official candidate for the role, another says there is absolutely no basis to the rumor.
- LOST star Josh Holloway has been recently linked to a "lead" role in The Avengers. Since he is considered a 'name actor,' the exact details of his supposed role would have to be finalized before he signs onto the film.
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