Zodiac

For 30 minutes I had a new hero - his name was David Fincher.

It has one of the slickest opening chapters to a movie I've seen in a while. The style, the editing, the shots. All beautiful. To be honest, it continued in this way for the rest of the film, but I found after about 30-40 mins it lost direction, then it just made embarrassing noises hoping we would look away while it scurried off.

To give David credit its based on a true story. We know they didn't find the guy, so you're going into movie knowing that the hero/'s arn't going to get a payoff. So as the audience we don't either. But I still felt that the end could have been delt with better than the exposition text - "John so and so went on to ...." "and he was never seen again!....?". *sigh*. It seemed like a cop out. and after the great direction and acting I felt ripped off.

Maybe it was just the DOP I should be thanking? there were some absolulty beautiful shots in the film. The pan away from the taxi - won't spoil it if you havn't seen it - was simple and amazing I thought. But it could only carry the movie so far. There is a huge amount of info on the Zodiac killer, so I think by trying to capture the entire 30 years it lost its relativity. Shame, since I really thought it was going to be one of my favourite movies from the beginning.

The acting was great. Robert Downey stole the show again, by playing himself pretty much, but alway entertaining.

Beowulf, Horton, Open Season rant and Microsoft

Things have been a little slow but all of a sudden there's some good stuff floating around the interweb.

Beowulf Trailer
First of all can you believe Zemeckis?? I need not say much more other than go and check out the Beowulf trailer, it's something to behold!


Hires Trailer (for higher res go to Dave's Trailer Page)

Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears a Who - Trailer
Here's the trailer for Blue Sky's next film. It's amazing how they inject a "bland Americana" feeling into Doctor Seuss.



Hires Trailer (for higher res go to Dave's Trailer Page)

Open Season Rant - Too Many Cooks


I'm sick of this idea of "let's make a movie with 5 producers 3 directors and 20 writers" rubbish. I went out and bought the art of Open Season the other day. I haven't seen the film but some of the artwork and design in the book is simply stunning. Everyone who's seen the movie seems to agree it's pretty plain which brings me to the rant. So I'm reading the pages of the book but between the lines it reads like corporate propaganda. Here's a snippet

"To achieve that vision, Landau recruited producing partners Penney Finkelman Cox and Sandra Rabbins, who started their career in live action and became two of the most respected leaders in animation. The two were instrumental in building DreamWorks Animation as well as producing or executive producing the company's slate of films beginning with The Prince of Egypt and culminating in the Academy-Award winning Shrek."

So it goes on to say how the cartoonist Moore pitched the treatment to the execs, they bought it then...

"In our first version, we had Elliot and Boog bonded together like brothers and the conflict arises whe Elliot gets the call of the wild and wants to leave town."

Many of the Animals that Elliot and Boog encounter on their journey back to Timberline were created by the artists who subsequently worked on the movie but were not part of the original treatment created by Moore and Carls. Still, the producers are more than thrilled by the changes that were made and with the way that the story evolved. "We set up the bones of the story and then Sony pulled in all the directing, producing, and animation geniuses and they made all the magic happen," says Moore.

Once Sony Pictures Animation committed to Open Season for their first feature, the treatment drafted by Moore and Carls was sent to Jill Culton, who is considered one of the most original storytellers of her generation in the world of animated features.
After honing her craft for more than eight years at Pixar animation Studios, working on blockbusters such as Monsters Inc, Toy Story, Toy Story 2, and A Bugs lifeCulton was ready to make her directorial debut.

One of the most original Storytellers? Yet she hasn't made a film?

She was soon joined by Anthony Stacchi, who came on as co-director of the film. Like Culton, Stacchi has an impressive resume. A story artist on Dreamworks' Antz, he also worked on ILM's 3D animated versions of Curious George and Frankenstien.

So now there's 2 directors

A year later, Roger Allers joined the team of directors. Allers made his directorial debut with Academy Award winning blockbuster The Lion King and has to his credit in various capacities such seminal animated films as Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid, and Aladdin, among many others.

An impressive resume but now the directors total 3. Then another Producer (they like talking up the producers in this book) Michelle Murdocca goes on to say this...

"In animation, we start with a script, but the storyboard artists work hand in hand with the screenwriters and story writers to develop the script to develop the movie. Everyone takes partial responsibility to make sure we're telling the story we need to tell. It's sort of like a big pot, and we all contribute to it."

Or... too many cooks spoil the broth? From what I've read Dreamworks follow a very similar process to Sony. And if it wasn't for Shrek, Dreamworks would be finished too. Does this seem like a mad way of making movies? What ever happened to strong leadership? What's with this making animated movies by committee?? At least Pixar had the balls to give Jan Pinkava a backseat to Brad Bird when Ratatouille was floundering. I know his is common process in Hollywood, to have 20 writers on a script, but it's disappointing to think of the bland muck that this sort of process delivers. I want to hear a voice in a film, a point of view!

(end rant)

Microsoft anti piracy animations
Gasket Studios animates four graphic novel style anti-piracy shorts for Microsoft.
I could only watch one of these but they're worth checking out. This one's for you Alex...
https://www.microsoft.com/piracy/genuinefactfiles/default.aspx

Angry American

It's been a while since a post so here's something Malik sent me the other day. It's not strictly scriptwriting but it's interesting. It seems youtube is building and underground political rep. This movie is a quite powerful edit of recent US politics...

Getting Paid Online Content

Aardman has a new series out, it's called Pib And Pog. So what's different about this series? Well it's completely online at Atom Films, you can watch it for free. It seems as though Atom Films has helped fund the series. The shorts are funded through ads at the start of shows, it's the way of the future!

The series is mature rated, the first show is about Pib and Pog watching Porn.

For more reading about how to get funding online for animations I found this site, seems there's quite a lot of sites funding online video now.

they've done it again...

pablo magazine says "it's the "inconvenient truth" of short films!"

http://www.dailymotion.com/relevance/search/lifted+pixar/video/x2k4i2_lifted

Crazy for Cult art show

Here's one for all you film nerds... how many movies can you name in this poster?

It's for the Crazy for Cult art show . Another related link here .

The future is heading straight at you

Katzenberg says the future is 3d...

Zapped Of Hope

Here's another animatic from my Wisdom Nuggets series. It's based on the real life experiments by Martin Seligman. He noticed that the dogs that were being zapped in 60s experiments were becoming conditioned helpless. So he decided to test out the theory in this experiment...

HOPE ZAPPED

3.4 mb Sorenson QT

The animatic took about 2 weeks to create. I even created my first soundtrack!! It needs a lot of polishing, sorry about the voice over, I would've loved to re write/record the dialog but I'm on a tight schedule.

From Wiki on Learned Helplessness
"A follow-up experiment involved three dogs affixed in harnesses. The first dog was simply put in the harness for a period of time and later released. The second dog was put in the harness, and given electric shocks, which the dog could end by pressing a lever. The third dog was wired in parallel with the second dog, receiving shocks of identical intensity and duration, but his lever didn't do anything. The first and second dogs quickly recovered from the experience, but the third dog learned to be helpless, and suffered chronic symptoms of clinical depression."

Nathan Barley

Al Ferg sent this round the other day I thought it was worthy of a mention. It's funny what can keep you entertained...



http://www.trashbat.co.ck/


(From Wiki)
Nathan Barley is a webmaster, guerrilla filmmaker, screenwriter, DJ and in his own words, a 'self-facilitating media node'. He is convinced he is the epitome of urban cool, and therefore secretly terrified he might not be, which is why he reads Sugar Ape magazine — his bible of cool.

In reality however his 'output' is of no real interest to anyone but him and his immediate friends. The website consists of stupid pranks caught on camera, photos of him with attractive women and photos of him standing on street corners in major cities around the world (purely to demonstrate that he has enough money to go there). He is of the belief that because he has a camera, some knowledge of web publishing and some webspace, this makes him talented.

The humour derives from the fact that since the rapid rise of the internet and the explosion of digital television, actual publishers and broadcasters think that such drivel is worthy of attention. Barley and his fellow idiots are often hired/published ahead of actual journalists and talented writers trying to make intelligent points, such as the earnest documentary film maker Claire Ashcroft, and her brother Dan Ashcroft, a jaded and apathetic hack who, having written an article for Sugar Ape entitled 'The Rise of the Idiots', is disgusted to find that 'the idiots' in question — Nathan and his contemporaries — have adopted him as their spiritual leader.

The Power of Story

Here's an lecture by Chuck Palahniuk. Author of Fight Club. Powerful stuff.

Sunset Boulevard

So in keeping with the Noir films I've been watching, I saw this one the other night. I'd seen it before years ago but hadn't remembered much. For a film that won 3 Oscars and went a long way to defining a genre I didn't think it held up that well. Ok, so it was shot in 1950, and is a character piece, but after a great start I felt it died in the middle.

For those who don't know, its a story about a down and out screen writer in Hollywood who comes across an actress who was the biggest thing in silent film but got left behind when the talkies started. She wants to make a comeback and hires him to edit a screenplay she has written to start herself. From the outset you realize she is mad and seeks the attention of the public again. But since he needs the money he agrees to sort out her ramblings.

Theres a great scene at the beginning with a monkey, and the opening shot of him facedown dead in the pool with the police standing over him had been used many times since. But apart from that I found it slow to watch. Pete's theory is since its a character peice - and defining characters have changed alot since then it becomes unidentifyable . But then the edit and the pacing were quite slow too. Especially after watching Fritz Lang's "M" filmed 20 years earlier which kept you gripped till the end.

It also has the monotone narration throughout the entire film. Anyone know which was the first movie to do this? The dialogue was great, that snappy 50's style - "Are you trying to be funny 'cause I'm all outta laughs". And the acting was amazing, espeically by the crazy Norma Desmond - I think become one of the influences for Cruella De Vil. But have to say I wasn't a big fan. I'd recommend watching it for its historical importance or some great over the top crazy reference. But would go with "M" first.

Great last line though - not a spoiler - but apart from Casablanca I think its one of the most recognisable - "Alright Mr Demill...I'm ready for my closeup".

The Wedding Crashers

Saw this on the weekend and thought it was great. It was like a Ben Stiller cringe movie crossed with a buddy scam comedy (don't know if that's a genre, but it should be). Really fun. The two leads carry it, and do a great job. I've never been a big Vince Vaughn fan, but they're a hell comedy duo, if you ask me.

It was predictable that 'the scammers ended up genuinely falling for girls, and they had to confront the fact that they were fakes and the girls didn't know who they were anymore', but it played out well. The support cast was strong too- Isla Fisher, the Fiance of the love interest, Christopher Walken, and Will Ferrel, who comes in about 10 minutes before the end and is awesome. They give him a great reveal too. That guy is a genius, and he makes it look so easy.

The only let down was the climactic scene, which was a really big jump in style/time/logic after the rest of it had been so together, but it was still great fun. It seemed like they had a mandate to cram everything that had been set up into the last scene, no matter how clunkily it had to be squished in.

For lightweight comedy, I highly recommend.

Designer/Slash/Model

A very polished video spoof of the motion graphics community. From Digital Kitchen, the people who've made openers such as the Six Feet Under title sequence.

"Just saying Z space add 10 points to your IQ"

Designer/Slash/Model Movie

Great Stop Mo Ad

Just got sent this link to a stop mo ad for the new xbox...

The Ad...
http://moostudios.com/mouse/prxbox/

Making Of
http://moostudios.com/moo/xboxtime/moo/

Thorns and All

Last week I was invited to a 2 day workshop with 5 other artist/designers at The Powerhouse Museum . We were to make a 2 - 3 min video for the True Design exhibition. The brief was to use photos to tell a story about our work and or process. Thanks to Gabrielle Eade and George Verghese for helping me out.

Here's my video...

Thorns and All 52meg

Ratatouille Rates High Numbers Low

Ratatouille has open with numbers below most estimates at $47.2 mill. The only Pixar movie to have opened more poorly was A Bugs Life. But it looks like the Rat movie will have legs with its joyous reviews. Over at Rotten Tomaotes Ratatouille is rating 95% fresh.