VizWorld.com

A new report from Slate takes a look at the last year of 3D theater revenues and finds them not just down, but actually doing worse than their 2D counterparts.  The list of reasons is a long one including the higher cost of 3D tickets, the poor selection of movies, low quality conversions, and the significant percentage of the population that is unable or unwilling to view 3D content.  All of these together have have created a dangerous perception of 3D as “low-quality”.

A larger problem appears to be that the quality of 3-D films is, on average, lower than the quality of 2-D movies. This is perhaps the most dangerous explanation–if true, it implies that consumers may have begun to link “3-D” and “lower-quality”, even if the link isn’t concious. From 2004-2010, the average Rotten Tomato rating of a 3-D film was 57 percent. From 2010-2011, it’s dropped to 41 percent.  That includes the impact of all the extremely well-rated films also released on 3-D.

There’s always the possibility of 3D gaming, but even that doesn’t seem to have really done much to save 3D.

via 3-D Theater Revenues Decline, Though Root Cause Remains Uncetain – HotHardware.

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If you saw the new Green Hornet or Voyage of the Dawn Treader in 3D, then you’ve already seen the work of the newest entry into 3D Conversion in Hollywood.  Coming out of “Stealth Mode” operations, Venture 3D is now officially launched and already has an impressive resume of work from some of the biggest recent hits in the industry.  How do they do it?  Well, they won’t really say aside from the use of proprietary and worldwide patented software-technology.

In order to cost-effectively convert large scale and technically intricate film projects such as The Green Hornet, Venture 3D also employs a highly-skilled and dedicated team of stereographers and artists in Los Angeles and Korea to convert shots into high-quality 3D. Todd Cogan, Venture 3D’s senior vice president of operations and one of the most sought-after and experienced 3D producers within the industry, is overseeing the company’s 3D stereoscopic production.

Read the full release after the break.

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CoolInfographics brings us this great chart of RottenTomatoes scores of several movies and their sequels, trying to determine which movies have Great sequels vs garbage sequels.  I also agree with this comment on the design:

I especially like turning the chart 45°, which puts the best score possible for a sequel to improve on the original at the top center of the chart.  If both the original and the sequel scored high, the bubbles are located towards the right instead of the top.  I’ve done this with a number of 2×2 quadrant charts for clients.

via Cool Infographics – Blog – The Sequel Map – Is Part II Ever Better than the Original?.

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FXGuide has a great article up on the visual effects of The Price of Persia, discussing how Cinesite, MPC, Framestore, Double Negative, and NVizage all worked together to create the many VFX shots in the film.  In particular, I love the part about the similarities between crowds and cities.

Drawing on the underlying structure of MPC’s existing proprietary ALICE crowd system, Town Planner gave MPC an initial pass at the city that could be augmented with other surrounds like gardens, streets and trees, as well the surrounding mountainous environment. “Buildings are pretty much a crowd that doesn’t move,” noted Ceretti. “We already had layout tools for the crowds – why not make it similar? In the end, we stripped out everything we wouldn’t need in terms of simulation of crowd motion and just used it for layout, but it was still a huge render so we had to split up parts of the city and bake out different renders in RenderMan to make it possible.” In the end, this amounted to about 20,000 buildings and 180,000 props – things like canopies, piles of wood and pots. For shots of the invading army and other crowds in the city, the ALICE software was used to generate 10,000 agents made up of soldiers, flags, citizens, horses and camels, and then integrated into the city shots. Further projection work was done in both Shake and Nuke to allow for 3D space adjustments and other details to be added, along with the layering of atmospheric dust, mist and rays of light.

via fxguide – vfx knowledge – Prince of Persia.

Science cinesite, doublenegative, framestore, movies, mpc, nvizage, vfx

The cost of going to the movies.

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At NAB this week, Dreamworks Chief Executive Jeffrey Katzenberg spoke about the recent advances and problems with 3D, highlighting the success of “Avatar” & “How to Train your Dragon” and the failures of “Clash of the Titans”.  He believes, as many do, that the key to 3D is not to simply use it as a gimmick but to embrace all of the new psychological effects and utilize the new composition and camera tools this enables.  In his words, “This will be as transformative as color”.

And that transformation extends, he believes, not just to epic dramas, spectacles that lend themselves to a large scope. He pointed to a scene in the 3D film “How to Train Your Dragon”, in which a father enters a room with a too-low ceiling and must bend over to get in. “Stand in back of the theater and you can actually see the audience bend their heads down. They feel that sense of claustrophobia. That amplification of emotion is why 3D is not a gimmick.”

via Katzenberg Talks Up 3-D at Broadcasters Convention – Media Decoder Blog – NYTimes.com.

Science 3d, movies, stereoscopic, vfx

CGHeute has an interview with Jeff Campbell, VFX Supervisor on Legion.  Bringing an army of angels to life, hellbent (no pun intended) on bringing about the extinction of the human race is no small task, but Jeff was able to tap into previous experience from the Orphanage’s work on Max Payne to bring these larger-than-life characters to the screen.

There were many complex shots in this film.  But one that stands out is a moment when an army of angels descends from the heavens.  The shot begins in a medium close-up of Michael silhouetted against a sunny sky.  The camera then tilts up to reveal thousands of angels in formation.  The angels break formation and dive in a steep swirling vortex before flying by very close to camera.  The shot combines greenscreen footage with matte painting, crowd simulation, effects animation, and hero keyframe animation by Lead Animator Marc Schreiber.  It was a challenge to render and pull together so many elements but in the end it turned out very nice.

Jeff Campbell – VFX Supervisor “Legion” | cgheute.

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Several sites have lists, but one good roundup list is the one at MakingOf.com which lists all of the nominees with the Oscar recipient in bold.  No surprise, Avatar won Cinematography, Art Direction, and Visual Effects.  A bit of a surprise, however, that The Hurt Locker won most of the other awards Avatar was nominated for (Sound Editing,  Film Editing, Best Picture, Directing).

Do you agree with their decisions?   I saw several people on twitter talking about Poor James Cameron having lost the Best Picture award to his ex-wife.  I said it then, and I’ll say it again:  I’m sure he’ll spend tonight wiping the tears with the Billions of dollars he’s made.

• The Hurt Locker – Gross Revenue: $21,356,139
• Avatar – Gross Revenue: #2,564,689,342

MakingOf – Insider Blogs – MakingOf News -.

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Mistakenly thinking that 3D alone drove Avatar to it’s $1.3B paycheck, studios are rushing out to recreate the magic by taking previous classics and converting them into 3D.  One thing we might see is a re-issue of “Lord of the Rings”:

Peter Jackson, director of The Lord of the Rings, said last spring that he wanted to reissue the trilogy in 3-D if Avatar persuaded enough cinemas to put in new 3-D projectors. Last week technicians at Weta, the production company that had worked on the trilogy, said they had experimented with 3-D battle scenes and proclaimed them to be “gob-smacking”.

The Lord of the Rings is expected to be re-released after Jackson has finished producing the two-part version of JRR Tolkien’s The Hobbit over the next two years. This would mean that a 3-D version of The Fellowship of the Ring, the first part of the trilogy, could be in cinemas by Christmas 2012.

That is, unless George Lucas beats them to the punch:

It may be beaten to the screen by a revamped version of Star Wars. George Lucas, the director, spent $13m filming the original in 1976, added special effects in 1997 and 2004, and will now spend another $10m to change it into a 3-D spectacular.

“George cannot leave it alone,” said an associate. “He is salivating at the opportunity to play with it again. This time the Death Star is really going to explode all over the audience and leave them gasping.”

I really wish GL would just leave his masterpieces alone. Personally, if they’re in 3D I’ll probably go see them again, I’m a sucker for both films.  However, I seriously doubt their ability to rake in Avatar-level cash with nothing but a postprocessed 3D gimmick.

via Avatar sparks 3-D makeover for action classics – Times Online.

Graphics movies, stereoscopic

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences have announced their Scientific & Technical Awards winners, and lest you think there’s no science in Hollywood, check out the winners:

Technical Awards Winners:

• To Mark Wolforth and Tony Sedivy for their contributions to the development of the Truelight real-time 3D look-up table hardware system.
• To Dr. Klaus Anderle, Christian Baeker and Frank Billasch for their contributions to the LUTher 3D look-up table hardware device and color management software.
• To Steve Sullivan, Kevin Wooley, Brett Allen and Colin Davidson for the development of the Imocap on-set performance capture system.
• To Hayden Landis, Ken McGaugh and Hilmar Koch for advancing the technique of ambient occlusion rendering.
• To Bjorn Heden for the design and mechanical engineering of the silent, two-stage planetary friction drive Heden Lens Motors.

Scientific Awards Winners:

• To Per Christensen and Michael Bunnell for the development of point-based rendering for indirect illumination and ambient occlusion.
• To Dr. Richard Kirk for the overall design and development of the Truelight real-time 3D look-up table hardware device and color management software.
• To Volker Massmann, Markus Hasenzahl, Dr. Klaus Anderle and Andreas Loew for the development of the Spirit 4K/2K film scanning system as used in the digital intermediate process for motion pictures.
• To Michael Cieslinski, Dr. Reimar Lenz and Bernd Brauner for the development of the ARRISCAN film scanner, enabling high-resolution, high-dynamic range, pin-registered film scanning for use in the digital intermediate process.
• To Wolfgang Lempp, Theo Brown, Tony Sedivy and Dr. John Quartel for the development of the Northlight film scanner, which enables high-resolution, pin-registered scanning in the motion picture digital intermediate process.
• To Steve Chapman, Martin Tlaskal, Darrin Smart and James Logie for their contributions to the development of the Baselight color correction system, which enables real-time digital manipulation of motion picture imagery during the digital intermediate process.
• To Mark Jaszberenyi, Gyula Priskin and Tamas Perlaki for their contributions to the development of the Lustre color correction system, which enables real-time digital manipulation of motion picture imagery during the digital intermediate process.
• To Brad Walker, D. Scott Dewald, Bill Werner and Greg Pettitt for their contributions furthering the design and refinement of the Texas Instruments DLP Projector, achieving a level of performance that enabled color-accurate digital intermediate previews of motion pictures.
• To FUJIFILM Corporation, Ryoji Nishimura, Masaaki Miki and Youichi Hosoya for the design and development of Fujicolor ETERNA-RDI digital intermediate film, which was designed exclusively to reproduce motion picture digital masters.
• To Paul Debevec, Tim Hawkins, John Monos and Mark Sagar for the design and engineering of the Light Stage capture devices and the image-based facial rendering system developed for character relighting in motion pictures.

Full details of their contributions can be found on the AMPAS website, linked below.  Congratulations all!

Scientific & Technical Awards Winners | Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences.

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