Tag: 3D

Tron Night: Something to Feast Your Eyes On

Geek Buzz has really become important for movie marketing. Last year’s Avatar was the first film to actually preview around twenty minutes of footage for audiences several months before the film’s release in the hope of building up a positive word-of-mouth vibe for the film’s release (a strategy that seemed to have worked; even though audiences on the whole weren’t too thrilled about the preview footage). The maker’s of Tron Legacy, a late sequel to 1982’s Tron, tried the same tonight.

They did a good job. Even though the storyline for Legacy looks as preposterous as that of its predecessor, the preview footage shows that the new film will definitely be something to look forward to for lovers of excellent imagery. As could be glimpsed in the trailer, Tron Legacy stays true to Tron‘s original backlit, “black theatre” look while adding some more CGI-cool. This world of dark grey tones, nerved by fluorescent lights, is really something you haven’t seen for a while. It manages to conjure up 80s nostalgia while still looking pretty nifty by today’s standards.

In addition, director Joseph Kosinski and his team really seem to get 3D and use it in the narrative way Alice in Wonderland inexplicably didn’t. The non-computer-world is 2D, making the 3D world of the computer system (ironically, the “simulated” world, of course) exquisitely hyperreal. However, they go beyond that: The preview footage included the scene in which Sam (Garrett Hedlund) discovers the old lab of his father Flynn (Jeff Bridges) but left out the actual transition scene from Earth to Grid. However, when Sam discovers the secret door behind the “Tron” video game and descends into the lab, i.e. gets closer to the computer world, the image slowly but steadily gained depth while staying 2D, cleverly anticipating and foreshadowing what’s to come. The only other movie that used 3D in this psychological way so far, was the amazing Coraline.

The verdict: “Tron Night” worked for me. I am definitely looking forward to Tron Legacy, at least for a good two hours of fun in the cinema.

Legend of the Guardians: Five Notes on the Owls of Ga’Hoole

1. This is what 3D is supposed to feel like. Zack Snyders trademark style, which basically lets the camera rule the space-time continuum it inhabits, lends itself perfectly to the new way of telling stories. While Snyder hardly makes use of z-axis space to convey information he couldn’t bring across in 2D, his great advantage in Legend of the Guardians is that he actually has three dimensions to move in. Almost all of the film is spent either in flight or in trees (which also means movement in three dimensions) and this is where 3D really shines. Add to that Snyders famous slo-mo-shots and some sweeping vistas and your eyes can’t stop ogling the beauty you are presented with on screen. Watching Legend of the Guardians really makes you wish, 300 and Watchmen had been in 3D. 300, especially, a film without a plot to speak of that lives purely by its visuals, could have been enhanced no end by stereoscopy. If he carries on like this with the movies he has lined up (Sucker Punch and Superman), Snyder might become one of the most prolific 3D directors around.

2. Snyders treatment of Kathryn Lasky’s novels confirms my earlier thesis that we have a lot to look forward to, if more live action directors with a clear thematic profile take to animation. Legend of the Guardians overtly reflects Snyders preoccupation with the fascist imagery and ideology of grandeur and fights of the weak against the self-styled strong. It is probably owed to the fact that Legends is aimed at kids that the lines of good and evil are drawn in an extremely simplistic way here.

3. Kudos to Animal Logic for their pitch-perfect creature and effects animation. They got to practice beaks and feathers in Happy Feet and really make the most of it in Legends. Owls, with their round faces and crooked beaks, probably topped the list of animals least likely to be anthropomorphised as heroes until this point, but the animators really did a superb job in making them believable, likeable and distinguishable. Much of this can be attributed to the realistic fluffiness of the feathers, which really serve their purpose to give every owl its individual character.

4. I have not read Kathryn Lasky’s book that the film is based on, but it wasn’t difficult to glimpse the detailed and imaginative world that Lasky has probably created in her series of novels through the bric-a-brac script that strives to cram every bit of Ga’Hoole mythology into 100 minutes of film while still leaving enough time for action sequences. The result is a desaster: The film jumps from one scene to another with hardly any transition, introduces new characters and plot twists by the minute and leaves no time at all for contemplation in much the same way that The Golden Compass or Inkheart did two or three years earlier. When will Hollywood finally stop turning fantasy novels that live by their worldbuilding into movies that pale in comparison? Hasn’t film history proven over and over again that – when it comes to fantasy genre films – short stories, novellas and graphic novels make much better source material? TV minseries are a much better medium to capture the intricacies of novels as this one, even if it means sacrificing some visual kablooie.

5. Even Rocky had a montage. But the training/getting to know their new home montage of Legends is an incredibly weak piece of filmmaking the film could have totally done without. It adds almost nothing to the exposition monologue which one of the characters, who is probably important in the novel but extremely flat here, just gave a few minutes earlier. The montage is also accompanied by a pop song which breaks with the whole atmosphere of the movie, but had to be included because it makes tie-in money and because it fits perfectly with this artist called Owl city. Get it? Because they are in a city of owls. Mercy! Please!

Addendum: Zack Snyder talks quite detailed about his 3D-ideas here and there is an extensive series of interviews with the key creatives of the film here.

In 50 Jahren um die Welt – Sammys Abenteuer

“Sammy’s Avonturen: De geheime doorgang”
Belgien 2010. Regie: Ben Stassen. Buch: Domonic Paris. Musik: Ramin Djawadi. Produktion: Gina Gallo, Mimi Maynard, Domonic Paris, Ben Stassen, Caroline van Iseghem.
Sprecher (deutsche Fassung): Matthias Schweighöfer (Sammy), Lena Meyer-Landrut (Shelly), Axel Stein (Ray), Achim Reichel (Slim), Thomas Fritsch (Erzähler).
Länge: 88 min.
Verleih: Kinowelt.
Kinostart: 28.10.2010

Sammy ist so etwas wie der Forrest Gump unter den Meeresschildkröten. Er schlüpft 1950 aus dem Ei und ist von Anfang an ein bisschen langsamer als seine Geschwister. So wird er schnell zum Einzelgänger, entwickelt aber gleichzeitig eine magische Anziehungskraft für schicksalhafte Begegnungen. Erst wenige Minuten alt rettet er seiner zukünftigen großen Liebe Shelly (auch als Synchronsprecherin enorm knuffig: Lena Meyer-Landrut) das Leben, hinaus aufs große Meer treibt er ebenso zufällig wie er später seinen besten Freund (Axel Stein) kennenlernt, wieder verliert und einer Gruppe von Hippies in die Arme schwimmt. Deren Lektüre von “In 80 Tagen um die Welt” weckt in ihm die große Abenteuerlust, die er erst in Richtung Südpol und dann auf der Suche nach der geheimen Passage in den Atlantik – dem Panamakanal – auslebt.

Der belgische Regisseur Ben Stassen ist eine der treibenden Kräfte hinter dreidimensionaler Computeranimation im europäischen Raum, sein erster Langfilm FLY ME TO THE MOON kam etwas zu früh in die Kinos, um den großen 3D-Hype im vergangenen Jahr wirklich mitzunehmen. Stassen stammt aus der IMAX-Tradition des 3D-Kinos, und auch SAMMYS ABENTEUER ist an vielen Stellen noch sichtbar von “old school”-3D-Denken geprägt. Der Film verlässt sich statt auf eine stringente Story und glaubhafte Charaktere lieber auf effektreiche 3D-Inszenierung mit Pop-Out-Effekten und Flugsimulationen, pendelt im Design allerdings trotzdem merkwürdig unentschlossen zwischen Realismus und Abstraktion (beispielsweise in der Animation von Wasser und Sand). Die Handlung kommt indes ähnlich sperrig daher wie der umständliche und irreführende Titel. Die Suche nach dem Weg in die Karibik ist eben nur eins der vielen Abenteuer, die Sammy im Laufe seines 50-jährigen Lebens mitnimmt. Charaktere und Schauplätze wechseln im Zehnminutentakt, viele von ihnen haben keine andere Funktion, als dem merkwürdig eigenschaftslosen Hauptcharakter (passenderweise gesprochen von Matthias Schweighöfer) einen Schubs in die richtige Richtung zu versetzen.

Dass es diesem Hauptcharakter ein wenig an Motivation fehlt, erklärt vielleicht auch den überflüssigen Voiceover-Kommentar des alten Sammy, der auf sein Leben zurückblickt und das gerade Gesehene regelmäßig zusammenfasst und kommentiert. Eigentlich besitzen die ökologisch-pädagogischen Motive des Films rund um Erderwärmung und Artenschutz eine angenehme Ambivalenz – denn die menschlichen Spuren in der Natur helfen Sammy und seinen Freunden fast genauso oft wie sie ihnen schaden. Statt jedoch auch den jüngeren Zuschauern des Films ein wenig eigenes Urteilsbewusstsein zuzutrauen, verlassen sich die Filmemacher lieber darauf, diese Ambivalenz immer wieder in ungelenken Formulierungen hinauszuposaunen. Als hätte nicht gerade der Animationsfilm in den letzten Jahren immer wieder bewiesen, dass Filme, die Kindern gefallen ohne Erwachsenen auf die Nerven zu gehen, kein Widerspruch in sich sind.

geschrieben für Screenshot Online

eDIT 2010 – Three Quotes (and what they might mean)

A lot of interesting aspects of filmmaking in the current era were discussed at the recent eDIT Filmmaker’s Festival in Frankfurt and I could only cover a few of them in my podcast. However, I picked a few select quotes from some of the other panels during the festival that, I believe, offer some insight into the film industry as it stands right now, wedged between 3D, digital imaging and a marketing-driven economy.

It’s been a pretty crappy time for imagery in the past 10 years.

John Mathieson
Director of Photography, Robin Hood

John Mathieson said this in response to my question about whether he considers the digital intermediate process a part of cinematography these days. I guess he pretty much doesn’t. Before, Mathieson had given a presentation on Robin Hood, in which he spent most of his time making fun of the movie and championing Gladiator, which he also photographed. Mathieson, born in 1961 but apparently a bit old school when in comes to filmmaking, not only lambasted Robin Hood for being shot on uninventive locations, he mostly criticized its look – for which he was partly responsible.

Films shot in the digital era, he said, look overly grey and desaturated, featuring ashen flesh tones and lighting that, while it’s a lot more cohesive than before, is boring and lacking life. He blamed not only the Digital Intermediate process, which is a popular target for ridicule and worry but also the newer film stocks that, apparently, no longer result in satisfying images. I would love to explore this topic further and see what other cameramen think.

I didn’t change my cutting style one iota for 3D.

Ken Schretzmann
Editor, Toy Story 3

Ken spent a lot of his excellent presentation explaining the inside-out process of editing animated films. While everyone sat glued to their seats watching him piece together dialogue from dozens of takes and laughed at the opening scene of Toy Story 3 as it was originally planned, the fact that the movie was planned and executed in 3D didn’t seem to enter anyone’s mind. It certainly didn’t enter mine until after the Q&A, but I managed to ask Ken afterwards and the above quote is what he told me.

This was news to me, especially since I have heard a lot of people tell their stories about how 3D demands a different style of filmmaking. Come to think of it, though, producer Mark Gläser, just two days earlier, had said that while he did wear a t-shirt saying “NO FLARES, NO WIPES, NO WINDOW VIOLATION” on his first 3D-shoot, the team quickly found out that in fact they could make a lot of things work which are supposed not to work in 3D.

Ken Schretzmann added that 3D at Pixar was handled in a completely different department. His editing of the film happened in 2D, he said, not least because everyone knew that the film would spend most of his lifespan on 2D media (i.e. DVD and BluRay). So: will 3D be “only” an evolution or will it be a revolution in cinema – apparently, both approaches work.

In animation featurettes, animators always explain that they desperately need the footage of the actors recording their lines as reference. It’s all bullshit!

Pierre Coffin
Director, Despicable Me

I loved the fact that Coffin debunked one of the favourite myths about animated filmmaking with a wave of his hand. His witty, self-deprecating presentation was definitely one of the funniest of the festival, and brought some welcomed European chaos to the well-ordered Hollywood parade that took up a lot of the spaces before him (nothing against well-ordered Hollywood filmmaking, by the way, Despicable Me suffers immensely from the fact that it’s all over the place in terms of storytelling).

While I don’t believe that it is really “all bullshit” – there are always moments where you can see that the voice actor inspired the (animated) acting of a given character – it does shed some light on the fact that the production of films, as presented to the audience in featurettes, has become immensely streamlined in terms of the story it tells. The production of almost every movie, it seems, does have a certain stereotypical narrative that is repeated over and over again for marketing purposes until it perpetuates itself. The story of “We need the footage of the actors to develop our animation” has been told so many times now that it has become a truism, making a chaotic artistic process like animation both more accessible for audiences and more flattering for celebrity voice actors.

The marketing of movies has never been as important as today, especially with every studio eyeing every movie for the possibility to turn it into a franchise. Marketing gone stale can not only result in promotion sickness, it can also, on a less annoying note, produce these kinds of narratives that journalists are all too happy to repeat over and over again.

Alice in den Städten – Resident Evil: Afterlife

Deutschland/Großbritannien/USA 2010. Regie und Buch: Paul W. S. Anderson (basierend auf Capcoms Videospiel „Resident Evil“). Kamera: Glen MacPherson. Visual Effects Supervisor: Dennis Berardi. Musik: tomandandy. Produktion: Jeremy Bolt, Paul W. S. Anderson, Robert Kulzer, Don Carmody, Bernd Eichinger, Samuel Hadida.
Darsteller: Milla Jovovich (Alice), Ali Larter (Claire), Wentworth Miller (Chris), Kim Coates (Bennett), Shawn Roberts (Wesker), Boris Kodjoe (Luther), Spencer Locke (K-Mart).
Verleih: Constantin.
Laufzeit: 97 Min.
Kinostart Deutschland: 16. September 2010.

Der vierte Teil der Resident Evil-Saga ist vermutlich der erste Film überhaupt, der primär mit einem Kamerasystem beworben wird. Nicht Hauptdarstellerin Milla Jovovich, nicht Autor/Regisseur/Ehemann Paul W. S. Anderson stehen hier im Vordergrund, erklären uns Trailer und Plakate, sondern die Cameron/Pace Fusion 3D-Kamera, mit der auch Avatar gefilmt wurde, ist der wahre Star von Afterlife, wie Resident Evil 4 betitelt wurde.

Der Film bestätigt diese Annahme auf ganzer Länge. Schon die Eröffnungssequenz in der Jovovichs Alice, nahtlos anknüpfend an das Finale des Vorläuferfilms Extinction, mit einer Horde von Klonen das Hauptquartier der finsteren Umbrella Corporation stürmt, macht sehr schnell klar, dass es völlig egal ist, wer hier lebt oder stirbt, solange es cool aussieht. Wenn zentrale Charaktere verwundet oder scheinbar getötet werden, hat das keinerlei Relevanz. Ganz wie in der Videospielserie, auf der die Filmreihe basiert, steht fast jeder nach kurzer Zeit bestimmt wieder auf, um sich fröhlich in 3D weiter von Level zu Level zu ballern und zu metzeln.

Man möchte das fast „konsequent“ nennen. Afterlife ist Exploitation-Kino der reinsten Natur. Genau wie Zombiefilme der Kategorie Resident Evil immer schon die Standards des Horrorgenres ausgeschlachtet haben, so schlachtet Afterlife in seiner kompletten Konzeption auch die Standards des 3D-Kinos aus. Es gibt zwar nur wenige ausgesuchte Pop-Out-Effekte, dafür aber genug große Hallen, Flure mit starken Fluchten, Flüge durch weite Landschaften, Kämpfe in Zeitlupe und jede Menge regnendes Wasser, notfalls halt in einem Duschraum. Keine Angst: Milla Jovovichs Mascara kann auch unter solch widrigen Umständen nicht verschmieren.


Positiv zugutehalten kann man der ganzen Resident Evil-Reihe immerhin, dass sie ihr Geschehen tatsächlich seriell fortschreibt statt in die Fortsetzungsfalle zu treten und immer nur die Handlung des Ur-Films zu wiederholen. Ähnlich wie schon Extinction zeigt auch der neue Film eine kontinuierliche Vision der Welt im titelgebenden Afterlife der Zombie-Apokalypse. Gelegentlich bringt er dafür sogar eine Portion Humor auf, wenn etwa das Trüppchen Überlebender, das sich in Los Angeles auf das Dach eines Gefängnisses geflohen hat, aus Hollywood-Stereotypen besteht, inklusive einem windigen Verräter, der verächtlich als ehemaliger Produzent von Blockbusterfilmen charakterisiert wird.

Solche Lichtblicke können aber nicht darüber hinwegtäuschen, dass Resident Evil:Afterlife insgesamt nicht mehr als ein matschiges Etwas von aneinandergereihten Schlachtfesten ist, das von Dialogzeilen zusammengehalten wird, die ebenso dumpf daherpochen wie der Steroiden-Soundtrack des Komponisten-Duos tomandandy. Alice und ihre neuen und alten Kumpanen kämpfen in einem großen Teil der 97 Filmminuten mitnichten nur gegen Zombies, sondern vor allem gegen merkwürdige Mutantenmonster, über deren Identität und Sinn man am Ende ebensowenig weiß wie über die mäandernde Handlung, die sich schließlich auf ein hanebüchenes Finale kapriziert. Nicht ohne dass dann eine kurze Sequenz nach dem Abspann noch einen draufsetzt und eine kaum weniger sinnentleerte Weiterschreibung ankündigt, die Jovovich in Interviews auch bereits bestätigt hat. Es gibt eben noch viel zu töten da draußen.

geschrieben für Screenshot Online

Five Ways in which 3D Will Change the Face of Cinema

I’m an advocate of 3D, always have been, and I firmly believe it will take over the way colour once did. But especially after speaking to Ludger Pfanz for my last article about 3D-TV, I have thought a lot more about how I believe 3D might actually change the way moving pictures will look in the future.

It basically comes down to this: You will get to see less shots and they will be more beautiful – until, that is, 3D has become so accepted that visionaries come along and turn it on its head again in maybe ten to 15 years. Here is how I would break it up:

1. Editing: Less and more Deliberate Cuts

I’m sure David Bordwell has numbers instead of a gut feeling about how fast films have become. Intensified continuity has taken over almost every genre now and action scenes in particular have become muddled and confusing (I just watched The Expendables and man was that anti-climactic and devoid of any money shots). 3D, which wants our minds to sink into the picture, will return to longer shots and more of an overview of what is happening on the scene, maybe souped up with slow-mos and time compression the way Zack Snyder tried in 300 and Watchmen.

2. Cinematography: Goodbye, Shaky-Cam

What was still pretty radical when it was boosted by the Dogme film makers in the nineties has now become a staple of every film that wants to look in any way “gritty”: hand-held, shaky cameras that appear to be right in the thick of it, thereby (like the fast cutting) often hiding what is actually going on. I expect more swooping, elegant camera moves in the future, especially because digital compositing allows the marriage of many shorter shots into one impressive one so well nowadays.

3. Mise-en-scène: The Return of Staging

3D means z-axis information, cultivated for our viewing pleasure. How better to make use of this than by going back to arranging actors on screen – their position sometimes telling us a lot more about their relationships than the words they say. In the last twenty years, talkative situations were solved mostly either by cutting or by static shots that made an artistic statement through their very immobility. The future might bring back moving actors again – a more theatrical way of movie-making, certainly, but not for the worse.

4. Composition: Artistry triumphs

Since its Grand Return, 3D has mostly been associated with fantasy, horror, dance and animated films. For good reason. These paradigms of cinema offer the broadest canvas on which to paint that otherworldy, uncanny feeling that stereoscopy (rather than holography) spreads throughout the cinema, where the viewer can experience space without being able to move within it as he pleases. Designed, precisely choreographed images allow for a much greater control of this feeling than captured, “realistic” images do. This applies even to documentaries, who, while photographing “real life” might just take more time to set up their images in the future than they did in the past.

5. And Finally: The Power of the Close-Up

This will be the big selling point of bringing 3D to genres that few can imagine in 3D at the moment: romantic comedies, melodramas, movies about people rather than images. The close-up, carefully and glamourously lit, was what put the stars right in our grasp. 3D can rely heavily on that idea. Watching the latest star-studded love film with your favourite poster boys and girls larger-than-life in 3D will make you want to sink into their baby blue eyes, their weather-lined faces, their luscious lips more than ever before. Better get the smelling salt ready for the faint of heart.

Do you agree? Let me know in the comments.

Nichts zu sehen – 3-D-Fernsehen zwischen Erwartung und Realität

Wie wenig das Marktschreiertum der Elektronikhersteller, das sich auch deutlich im Programm der bevorstehenden IFA widerspiegelt, insbesondere mit der deutschen Realität zu tun hat, merkt man schnell, wenn man mit hiesigen Fernsehmachern telefoniert. 3-D-Fernsehen „ist für uns auf absehbare Zeit kein Thema“, heißt es beim ZDF. Man beobachte die Entwicklung „mit Interesse“, aber ohne „konkrete Planungen“, lautet die Auskunft der Mediengruppe RTL.

Weiterlesen in epd medien 67/2010

James Cameron erklärt die Beam-Splitter-Kamera

In diesem Video erklärt Avatar-Regisseur James Cameron das “Cameron-Pace 3D Camera Rig”, mit dem sein Regenwald-Epos gedreht wurde, wenn schon nicht für Profis, dann doch zumindest für interessierte Laien wie mich. Das ist nicht nur amüsant anzusehen, sondern dürfte auch dem ein oder anderen die Augen darüber öffnen, wo die Probleme bei schlechter und die Chancen bei guter 3D-Inszenierung liegen, wie sie Cameron bei Avatar bewiesen hat.

Sometimes, four dimensions just aren’t enough

Vampires of Vienna

I saw this marquee in Vienna’s Prater amusement park last weekend and was amazed at the promise of a “5D” experience. Conventionally nowadays, three dimensions means stereoscopic vision while the fourth “dimension” is practical effects like shaking chairs and water attacks. Apparently, the fifth dimension here denotes smell-o-vision. Oh brave new world that has such people in it.

The nerd in me can never stop imagining a film made in five actual mathematical dimensions – impossible of course, but exciting: “Come closer everyone, and see the amazing orthogonality that couldn’t be represented – until now!”

Worte zur Wochenmitte

These flights that aim to give their spectators the same sense of motion through space have fast become the signature image of the 3D feature film, the sign that it has yet to transcend its theme park tendencies to assimilate the technology with the usual dramatic imperatives (or that 3D will always have limited applications).

Dan North , Spectacular Attractions
// How to Fly in 3D

As I settle down to try to unravel the eight centuries of myth and legend that have accreted around the outlaw, I am looking at a still from the new Ridley Scott movie, which will open the Cannes film festival on 12 May. Russell Crowe – looking the spit of Maximus, the hero of Gladiator, with cropped hair, bloodied cheek and an expression of furious determination – is astride a horse. The horse, naturally, is white: what else would a hero, about to save England from French invaders, ride? I fear there may be some historical disconnect here.

Stephen Moss , The Guardian
// My Search for the real Robin Hood

Ganz klein hat sich die ARD mit dieser Geburtstagsdokumentation gemacht. So klein, dass sie sich selbst riesig finden musste, schon wegen der vielen Leute! Und der ganzen Mikrofone! Und der blinkenden Lichter!

Stefan Niggemeier , Fernsehblog
// Der sechzigste Geburtstag, oder: Der ARD geht’s wohl zu gut

You’re watching “Commentary: The Movie”

“Dan Masters” , College Humor
// DVD Commentary: The Movie
[via Cinematical]