Andy Serkis Talks Imaginarium Project at Cannes

Andy Serkis is promoting a new film project at the Cannes Film Festival.

The British actor is taking to the festival to promote the Imaginarium—a new performance capture facility he hopes will teach filmmakers not to be worried about the growing use of graphics. “It’s a project called the Imaginarium and the idea is that it will be the Europe’s premiere UK based performance capture facility,” Serkis says. “Part of the idea of the Imaginarium is to allay fears—across lots of different communities, not just the acting community – who have in the past wondered if they are going to be replaced by CG characters or robots or whatever.”

The Sex, Drugs and Rock and Roll star hopes the academy will “inspire” European filmmakers to use the technology, which has been popularly used in Hollywood blockbusters such as King Kong and Lord of the Rings. “It aims to be an academy for training and educating young and aspiring filmmakers and independent films that this is an art film that isn’t just niche and applicable to the larger budget movies, it’s about seeing the creative possibilities of visual effects for the lower budget films,” he tells BBC News. “It’s about creating links and a bigger vision. European’s tend to be brilliant at drama, drama which is driven by acting performances but we tend to shy away from the visual effects side of things. The Imaginarium wants to bridge that gap.”

Weta Digital back in the ape business

Wellington's visual effects studio Weta Digital, which won an Oscar for King Kong, is about to go ape again.

Weta Digital will create computer-generated apes for a Planet of the Apes prequel, Rise of the Apes, to be made by Hollywood studio 20th Century Fox.

The film, to be released in June next year, will be set in present-day San Francisco and detail experiments in genetic engineering that lead to intelligent apes and the onset of a war of supremacy with humans, Variety magazine reported.

The studio hopes the prequel, directed by British film-maker Rupert Wyatt, will be the first of a series of new Planet of the Apes films.

Weta Digital will use state-of-the-art visual effects – similar to what it achieved in Avatar – to render photo-realistic apes, rather than the costumed actors used in the original movie series in the late 60s and early 70s, and in the 2001 version.

Sir Peter Jackson is a big fan of the original movies, starting with the 1968 Planet of the Apes, starring Charlton Heston and Roddy McDowall. It inspired him to make ape masks and he paid homage to the movie in his early short film The Valley.

In 1992, Sir Peter heard that 20th Century Fox was hoping to relaunch the series, and wrote an outline for a new Planet of the Apes film with partner Fran Walsh. It followed on from the events in the fifth film and had a part for McDowall, who had first played the ape Cornelius.

McDowall had not wanted to be in any more Planet of the Apes films, but changed his mind when he met Sir Peter and Walsh. However, the Fox studio was lukewarm about McDowall and the project stalled. McDowall died in 1998.

Jackson later met other Fox studio executives. They loved the story, and wanted James Cameron to produce the film and Arnold Schwarzenegger to star, but Sir Peter and Walsh weren't keen. Fox later approached them saying Cameron and Schwarzenegger were no longer involved, but negotiations fell over.

Conquer Your Fear of Creepy Crawlies With Augmented Reality

A lot of augmented reality applications we've seen thus far have seemed a little, well, excessive. But if AR can put me at peace with spiders, snakes, cockroaches, and the rest? That's a feat deserving of a Nobel Prize.

In a study described in an upcoming edition of the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, six female participants, all of whom were totally freaked out by cockroaches in real life, were outfitted with AR helmets and bombarded with simulated cockroaches. They were all still totally freaked out, just like they would be if confronted with the real things. That's as far as the study got.

But it's an important first step in applying augmented reality to exposure therapy, a technique by which individuals overcome phobias through exposure to the objects they fear. Similar techniques have been used for years to treat returning soldiers' Post Traumatic Stress Disorder with virtual reality video games, and this study only shows that in some less extreme cases simulated stimuli can induce fear just like the real thing. But if AR exposure therapy proves to be effective, it could help countless individuals work past their everyday hang-ups: heights, enclosed spaces, subways, rats, dogs, bugs, and the rest. Maybe I'll finally be able to leave my apartment. [Neoacademic via Slashdot

Ryan Reynolds in Costume on Set of GREEN LANTERN

by Steve 'Frosty' Weintraub

Motion Analysis has developed an exclusive new proprietary image processing software which is embedded in the Raptor cameras. The Raptor cameras have an enormous amount of onboard computing power in order to accomplish all of the required image processing computations. This new, exclusive software addresses the various challenges of working outdoors in direct sunlight as well as indoor environments where reflections and lighting conditions can also affect a capture, while maintaining extreme accuracy and real-time capabilities.

“Our objective was to deliver a camera that performed in bright sunlight without compromising the superior accuracy and real-time, high data throughput customers have come to expect from all Motion Analysis cameras,” said Shel Fung, Senior VP of Engineering. “The results speak for themselves - there has been no degradation of performance when these cameras are used in an outdoor setting.”

Although the obvious application will be in the sports market for performance assessment and injury prevention, Motion Analysis believes that the ability to use motion capture outdoors will also be valuable for the animation and industrial markets as well.

“This is a major industry breakthrough,” Tom Whitaker, CEO of Motion Analysis, commented. “Mocap users have always wanted to take their systems outdoors but have been prevented from doing so. Until now.”