Ohhh tough day at work today. I had to watch the new LOTR to get some ideas for some stuff I'm working on. Kick ass movie. It is long so be sure to empty the bladder before you sit down. I won't spoil anything but just want to say, the huge battle is amazing. Job well done.
Is that little guy with the prison pallor that looks like my neighbors hairless cat in it?...he was kinda cool...very schizophrenic...just like the Alley.
Saturday night.Can't wait. Is it over three hours?
I believe it was around 3 hours and 45 minutes. I watch movies as research for work which is a nice although I am picking the movie apart as I watch it so it's not total relaxation... anyway, a normal movie is a nice get away from the office but damn near 4 hours of movie is a great get away.
I mainly went to watch the battle sequence which was really, really well put together sequence. Peter Jackson was pretty good for the most part about not getting to quick with the cuts or too blurry with the action shots which happens waaaay too much in movies (ahem, The Last Samuri) now. There was great action that for a change told a story with each shot rather than just having shots because they look cool in a trailor but fail to tell a story like Underground was plauged with.
Comeing from a CG background, there were a lot of times that a composite would get on my nerves or I didn't feel that the lighting matched up quite right. Some of the CG characters didn't move perfectly all the time, Gollum included, but considering the amount and complexity of shots, WETA should be given a huge ovation for their work. There was one close up shot in particular of Gollum when he was talking to himself in his sleep that for the first half of the shot, he looked real. I'm not talking about, "yeah Gollum looks really good" or "I love Gollum's animation in that shot". I'm talking about Holy Shit, Gollum is real. It is very rare that I look at a CG character, close up no less, and believe that it is real. Great work. I want to get it on DVD asap to go over a few sequences over and over. Job well done.
I think it's cool that the movies are long...I can't get enough of those flicks.
The hobbit would be cool as well.
makara...how about giving us some examples of some cool animation...like pics or sites where the good stuff is. [img]/images/graemlins/supergrin.gif[/img]
Just got home from seeing it and it was indeed seriously kick-ass. Best of the three, which was surprising given how good the first two were. Also managed to go to the "special screenings" of the extended versions of the first two movies (Fellowship and Towers) at the local theater over the past two weeks. Amazing what didn't make the first theater screenings (but are on the extended DVD's). And also amazing that the theaters were pretty much empty for those screenings other than a couple dipshits that said, "Hey, this isn't the new one!" about halfway through The Two Towers....
BTW, I believe the official run-time of the movie is 201 minutes...
I think it's cool that the movies are long...I can't get enough of those flicks.
The hobbit would be cool as well.
makara...how about giving us some examples of some cool animation...like pics or sites where the good stuff is. [img]/images/graemlins/supergrin.gif[/img]
I don't know of any sites off hand with spectacular animation. For examples of cool CG images, try www.highend3d.com which was once known as lumis.com. some of the stuff is good and some is not. Really amazing CG has never existed through out an entire live action movie, it exist in shots or parts of shots. When I mean amazing, I'm talking about a really high bar. Organic anthropomorphic characters are the hardest to perfect. There are parts of shots with Gollum that are amazing. Parts of hulk are fantastic. What pops into mind is a shot of the Hulk with his back towards the screen and he turns towards camera. The first part of that shot was just amazing. The shoulders, head, arms, torso... everything is just right. It feels real. There are moments of genius that surface every here and there in movies but time and money do not allow every shot to be worked to perfection. You have to choose your battles. Even with an unlimited amount of time and money, the skill involved to take something that last few percent is very rare and hard to come by. Nonanthropomorphic characters are easier but still a huge challenge. The Jurassic Parks have examples of wonderful animation. The fact that we have never seen a dino move before allows a certain amount of fudge room for the animators and technical directors which makes things a bit easier in one aspect. In another, they have never seen one move either so they have to figure out how to make them move. Scientists actually revised some thought on the way dinos moved after animators got a hold of the virtual skeletons and really tested out different way of locomotion in a way never before possible. Another movie with some good nonanthropomorphic animation is Red Planet. I have to admit that I am biased as it was the first movie I ever did character animation on but we did some cool stuff with that robot. AIMEE was able to move in ways that no creature could ever move and to take full advantage of that fact, we had to get a bit creative. Look at the unfolding of AIMEE to see how creative and how much fun we could have with her. Another example of some interesting, creative animation was her flip over when Val Kilmer was checking her batteries. She was a lot of fun to animate. Actually, I have an animation I did of her riding a mechanical bull somewhere that I did as a joke for dailies.
I should not leave out Pixar's work. They do not do live action movies so realism is not as much of an issue which frees them up somewhat. However, they do a first rate job putting character and life into animation that is really in many ways beyond what anyone else has been doing. I am always very anxious to see thier movies and have never walked away disappointed. We will continue to see very great things from them for many years to come.
makara - I want to let you know that I think it's freakin' amazing that you do this kind of work and can analyze this stuff so in depth. Really cool stuff, reading posts like this are like opening little windows in Hollywood.
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