A movie directed by: – Charles Lemor -Lisa Fenoll -Anais Gresser -Anna Masquelier -Laura Fleischmann Music by: Yann Van Der Cruyssen ( http://www.nurykabe.com ) Sound Design by: Fabien Bourbigot and Kamal Ouazene In a colorful world, a king goes on a crazy adventure to reconquer his queen and fight his sadness ! Enjoy !
Written & Directed by Tom Scharpling http://www.productioncompanyproductions.com/ Produced & Edited by Rob Hatch-Miller & Puloma Basu Starring: Andy Daly, Nick Kroll, Stephanie Twyford Baldwin, Chiz Schultz, John Trowbridge, Ikeem Allen, Richie Rodriguez, Aedn Bowater, Charlie Hankin, Joy Song, Mackenzie Luzzi & Michael Lisk Director Of Photography: Mike Rossetti Gaffer: Danny April Steadicam: Jamie Northrup 1st ACs: Cole Koehler & Rebecca Rajadnya 2nd AC: Samantha Panger Grips: Ethan June & Brian Yankou Art Director: Simone Duff Prop Master: Max Wixom Hair & Makeup: Kristy Strate, Jess Coppa & Lilia Martinez Wardrobe: Meghan Campbell Colorist: Ben Murray, The Room Motion Graphics: Joe Posner Re-Recording Mixer: Dan Dzula Key PA: James Kenny Production Assistants: Barry Marino & Aaron Smith Thanks: Allison Cohn, Nate Dern, No. 7 Restaurant, Tyler Kord, 5050 Skatepark, Ed Pollio, Angelica Popolano, Mick Management, Harrison Woliner, Kathi Scharer & Sean Marquand “God Hates **** Picket” by John Lemieux is licensed under CC BY 2.0: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/
It’s great that the Indian film industry has really started to make optimum use of social media to drive home the message, if there is a new film ready for release.
The latest to jump on the bandwagon is none other than South Superstar Vijay’s next venture ‘Kaththi’ (which means knife in Tamil). The makers of the film recently released a motion poster of the film on the video streaming giant – YouTube – on 21 June and ever since it has gathered over a million views.
If out memory serves right, the first Indian film to use the idea of releasing a motion poster on the online streaming portal was the Salman Khan starrer ‘Ek Tha Tiger’ and once again Yash Raj used the same avenue to create a buzz around the third installment to its hit franchise of bike riding antagonists in ‘Dhoom 3’.
Well, ‘Kaththi’ has used a very unique method in delivering the first look of its protagonist. If one carefully watches the digital poster being formed, it propagates a lot of hidden messages that might be dealt with in the movie. There are political as well as criminal undertones and with the use of computer generated imagery (CGI) the viewer is very carefully led through a maze of news articles erected as buildings and moving objects and finally forming the poster of ‘Kaththi’.
Looks like Indian filmmakers are really exploring the social media to send across the message and create awareness of upcoming films.
There is good news for all the Sherlock Holmes fans; Dean Wilkinson, a comedy writer is coming up with a new comic book Sheerluck’s Mysteries! Supernatural Sherlock Holmes Spoof.
Part factual, but all funny; Sheerluck is a comic character targeted at children and adults alike, upwards of 7 years of age. In this book he investigates supernatural mysteries and solves them with the help of his accomplice Watson (his long suffering sister Jenny).
Speaking exclusively to AnimationXpress.com Wilkinson expounds: “I wanted to do something around mysteries and the supernatural, so I invented a kid investigator on the lines of Sherlock Holmes, called Sheerluck.”
Lee Healey, the character designer of Sheerluck, has had a long standing relationship with Wilkinson of nearly 25 years. “We met while working on the same comic thus teamed up… I wrote, he drew. I thought he’d be ideal for Sheerluck and he is. He’s brilliant at putting little details on which I might have not even thought about,” he added on the association with Healey on this spin-off series.
Wilkinson is looking at crowd funding in order to raise £1000 for this venture. “TV presenter Adrian Mills has also come forward to help us with funds in order to push this comic strip,” he reveals.
Dean’s earlier work was published by the Penguin group, but this time he intends to keep exclusive copyrights.
On the distributing strategies in India, Wilkinson exulted: “I would hope Sheerluck would catch on in India, but I am also doing the Madcap league which is a spoof sports brand. It is themed around football but I have already started work on Madcap League: Cricket and have many Indian characters in it.”
Sheerluck’s Mysteries revolves around the character – Sheerluck, who thinks he’s a Sherlock-like, genius investigator, but he isn’t. He solves mysteries by sheer luck. In this book one will come across ghosts, UFOs, aliens, telepathy, Stonehenge etc and examine the facts. Watson (his long suffering sister Jenny) gives her theory, and Sheerluck gives his which is always bizarre, strange, comedic, but true!
The Mysteries book will be out soon at the price of £5 followed with a digital version, made available at a later date and cheaper price.
Dean Wilkinson began writing comedy in 1989 for children’s comic. His first own publication was a book titled Fizog which lasted a staggering thee issues. He diverted his attention to children’s television and went on to pen episodes and sketches for many shows such as The big Breakfast, Zig & Zag, Byker Grove, Timmy Towers and many more.
Buzz in Hollywood and various filmmaking groups around the world is about performance capture, real time previz, virtual film production technology and more recently in India it became a talk of the tinsel town. No doubt it is one of the new mantra for modern film making or new media globally. Performance capture technology is much matured nowadays and many are embracing it in their productions. Will using this technology make one part of a new breed of filmmakers? Is this mantra for you to become a future proof filmmaker? Many still have a dilemma from the unknown to experiment it. Thus, I thought to let you know the mantra before exploiting this modern tool effectively. You can easily find it on the World Wide Web, but where to start from is the question. This piece may guide you to with the right choice.
Performance capture (motion capture) as we call it now has been around for many decades in the entertainment industry. As we all know necessity is the mother of all inventions, motion capture was invented essentially for the field of medicine to study patients’ illness. Motion capture slowly spread its roots into military, space science, entertainment and so on after that. In the entertainment industry we used it to quench our creative needs and attempt in achieving the unimaginable in competitive media. It was generally called motion capture technology and we gave a little glimse of what can be attained with ‘performance capture’ while producing ‘The Polar Express’. This was the first time we managed to capture the full performance of an actor on a single stage by combining body, finger and facial movements captured together. Thus, according to my hypothesis, since we record complete performance of the actor and not just simple movements or motion, the right terminology for this modern tool should be ‘performance capture’ as against ‘motion capture’ which most filmmakers prefer to call it. So where does India stands on this path of ‘performance capture’ technology in movies?
India is not new to ‘motions capture’ technology. In fact it has been used long back in the Indian entertainment industry varying from animation movies to feature film VFX. India is also credited with the production of the world’s first full motion captured movie (Sinbad: Beyond the Veil of Mists) way back in the year 2000 and subsequently more features followed using the same technology.
India’s first live action movie which utilised motion capture was ‘Jeans’ in 1998 for some VFX portions. ‘Kochadaiiyaan’ (2014) was credited with India’s first full performance captured movie. Around the world motion capture has been used long back in movies since the time of ‘Total Recall’ in the year 1990. The pioneer in full motion capture photorealistic features was ‘Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within’ released in the year 2001 and world’s first full performance capture movie was ‘The Polar Express’ in the year 2004.
In spite of having little history with the motion capture in India, we experiment with this technology almost a decade late in every milestone achieved internationally. But we clearly see this timeline may come down in the future of filmmaking. Although technically it was difficult during that time, we never stop experimenting with it until we find a perfect blend between creativity and technology. Hollywood successfully created memorable performance captured characters like Gollum, Kingkong, Davy Jones, Hulk, Azog(The Hobbit), Navi (Avatar), Caesar( Rise of the Planet of the Apes). Gollum won the ‘Best Virtual Performance’ award in 2003 MTV Movie Awards and was placed thirteenth onEmpire’s ‘100 Greatest Movie Characters of all Time’. Many even debated if these characters were worthy of an Oscar Award for the best acting category. Now we have reached the age of digital technology where any computer generated (CG) characters can be reproduced at a photo realistic level which can be indistinguishable from any live images.
Motion capture has been glorified in the field of entertainment, but it becomes a regular method for many media productions. Video game companies do hours and hours of performance capture to complete one AAA game title. In a common parlance, motion capture has been imagined as people wearing special bodysuits with many white dot markers on their body in a specially designed studio room, but this is true for only certain type of motion capture technology, the one that is commonly used in entertainment is passive/active marker based motion capturing technology. What many of us might have seen is a reflective marker ball which is stickered on top of a tight suit made of lycra. These markers are captured by a special infrared camera that record these markers on a world space and creates 3D data.
Like any other product, this also has many technology focuses on how data has to be captured using various scientific approaches. Some of them are marker based (passive and active), marker less, inertia technology, magnetic, mechanical, depth sensor etc. In a way Xbox Kinect motion sensor camera is a motion capture device at the consumer end.
Over the years we found, what is used for body capturing technology may not be sufficient for facial capturing since it is one of the complex move in the body using muscles. Facial expression also contributes in connecting audience emotionally to the character. With the past experience from experts, one of the reasons why CG characters terribly fall into uncanny valley phenomenon was lifeless expressions. So the new technology replaced in the industry recently and successfully proven in ‘Avatar’ called markerless (some use colour ink dots) facial capturing system using a head mounted camera (HMC). It is possible to capture every emotion of the face faithfully and reproduce them digitally.
So the question of why these performances need to be captured using technology arises over traditional approach? Performance capture leverages the new medium of acting as well as storytelling for creative thinkers. Unlike olden times where actors had to wear hours of makeup on their face which didn’t move like regular skin and made it a very cumbersome process. The limitations were many for olden day makeups, example it is limited to the height, form and body mass etc. Moreover emotional performance is limited in the facial part since heavy load of prosthetic make up cover up the actor’s facial performance and thus the connection with the audience is sacrificed. Now actors can perform any character they desire without the boundaries of their physical nature. Emotional connection is well possible in this technology since every micro level of emotions are captured and interpreted in the digitally created character. This in a way boosts the capabilities of actors and enhances their acting skills as well.
Filmmakers’ creative power is unleashed with this technology by dreaming beyond the limitations. Directors of the modern day are thrown with many challenges in combining several things. In Hollywood most modern and renowned filmmakers choose performance capture or virtual film production technology nowadays. They don’t like to be detached from the heavy multi stage process of the CG world. Earlier directors would use the performance capture and stage the CG character to be added on the live plate in the edit later. Modern day filmmaking is more complex and involves many CG shots. Directors would like to see the result on set in real time so they can better visualise their composition. With the help of modern motion capture technology they are able to see digital characters and directly interact with live actors on the set. It seamlessly integrates into regular live action shoots and that is where every creative filmmaker’s dream comes true where they have a control on CG in real time.
When it comes to usage of technology, most people have reluctance in knowing it. My advice for those creative makers is to forget about technology and concentrate on the creative side of it and technology will be taken care by the expert teams, who specialise in those areas. All you have to do is to take your creative vision to the right experts. A suitable story, which is well crafted for the optimum usage of this very technology, will enhance the final result. This should be a medium of choice and it should be well justified for the story and not to be used for the sake of it. If it is used with the right intention and desire to create a visual spectacle, then it works beautifully. Otherwise it will encounter tremendous loss in the usage of technology, cost and time included.
Sometimes multiple motion capture technology is required to be used for same production or even for one single shot. So planning becomes crucial when one decides to use it in the feature. It is advisable to use it in the multiple shots rather than for single shot. Since the cost of production would be justified for the longer usage of motion capture. If one uses it for hours of performance capture the production cost will witness a huge spike as against a regular live action shoot. But at the end it should be justified why the technology was used in giving a different visual style to the film.
Performance capture/ motion capture can be used for many purposes. Here are some possibilities that one can use it for. A full length 3D movie can be made with performance capture technology and it can be a cartoon animation style like ‘Happy Feet’ or photorealistic style like ‘Avatar’ or mix of both like ‘The adventures of Tintin’. It can be used for live action movies in variety of methods. Motion capture can be used to capture the complex action of actors and applied to a digital double. This is usually where shots are complex or dangerous to achieve in real life, in a movie like ‘Matrix’, ‘King Kong’, ‘Gravity’ etc. But the thing to note is these are merely used for digital replacement of actors and it doesn’t involve any performance capture (mainly facial animation).
It can be also be used as a main casting actor as a performance capture character. As a protagonist or antagonist which has significance in the movie for acting. Usually it will be of different look other than human form. Hollywood nowadays creates number of memorable successful characters in this form. Usually it is not advisable to recreate performance for live human actors as it is in digital human form. This has various reasons and mainly due to ‘Uncanny valley’ effect which was a theory for android scientist and also applies to CG characters. This means that more and more of realism that one is trying to create in human characters, it pushes further away from the realistic feel or eerie feel towards that character. It is a psychological feel that we create hatred towards it or trying to find a fault in the character.
Andy Serkis who pioneered in performance capture acting playing ‘Caesar’ in Rise of the Planet of The Apes also feels the same and during his interview with ‘Popular Mechanics’ magazine said: “…But where it falls down, I think, is when you’re creating a lifelike human being. At the moment it seems to be kind of a pointless exercise, making an actor look like themselves in a very realistic way. There’s always a disconnect…” But technology growth is promising and we expect in few years it could be possible. Until then it is advisable to keep away from it unless some strong reason to do it.
Motion capture can be used for facial performance capture to retarget the performance of the live actor to different look of digital face like in the movie ‘The Curious Case of Benjamin Button’, ‘Tron: Legacy’ etc. But each has its complexities in the way or method of approach and it completely differs from each project.
Other areas where we can use motion capture are in the pre-visualisation stage. The complexity of visual effects is more in the recent movies making it is difficult for the filmmakers to clearly visualise the end result before the final out. With the motion capture technology we can previz the shots using a human to represent a 15 foot tall creature character and a virtual camera to fix angles and so on.
All this are combined together and form a new breed of filmmaking called virtual film production. It started earlier with the digital backlot concept and now it is taken a main stage of most visual effects films by combining motion capture technology to it. Here we can use primarily all CG elements in a real time against the live composition. It can be CG character to sets and live actors can interact with much ease. All this is possible with the various motion capture technology for representing various needs. Virtual film production is a real boon for directors whose visions are unlimited.
After deciding to use motion capture in the pipeline it is important to find the experts in the field of motion capture/ performance capture. Since experience does matter in bringing quality data of your capture elements or characters. There could be a situation where your captured data will be unusable because of less quality or noisy data. Most people think once we capture the data, all things are set perfectly, while it is not true. There needs to be a lot of preparations before and after the capture to get a quality data that can be used in 3D production. The quality differences can be seen in various projects from gaming to movies. Example the quality of gaming motion capture is different than in movies etc. It is also important to check the data after every shot and make sure it has come out the way you desired. The expert team usually does all this as a mandatory checkpoint and keeps notifying the creative team on the progress. Nowadays most studios offer real time visualisation of your 3D character and virtual camera on the set for the directors to have a better control on the shot. But it is limited to the technology that how much data that we can push to realtime, so it is better to discuss with the studio experts on your requirements.
As a creative decision it is important to choose a right actor for the right character. It will show in the end result of motion capture and you cannot do much with it to correct that in animation editing. Example you can’t use a dance specialist for some martial art action shots and action specialist for some performance acting. If the creative crew (director and actors) is new to the performance capture pipeline, it is better to get some rehearsal to understand how you can exploit the technology to a maximum. This will help the team on reducing time during the actual shoot. There is always a chance of fixing some animations during the animation edit using the animators. But it is important to get the maximum result from the performance capture during the shoot. Some points to be noted are the assuming all the occlusion of the characters costume, size of the character, interaction props, distance between characters, casting all main characters in the same shot are all very important aspects of avoiding later fixes that eat invisible cost. So there is a tremendous amount of pre-planning needed for filmmakers along with the technical team. One thing that is needed in this pipeline is patience from the filmmakers. Since what is usually ridiculously easier in regular live action may take longer time in this process. But what is amazing here is the director can play God, since the environment is digital, he has an absolute control over the look of the shot.
India is one of the largest film producers in the world and increasing acceptance of our films in many countries and international award shows mean that our boundaries are growing. At this level we are forced to deliver quality content to the world which has to be on par with the international standards. With the performance capture we can break the boundaries of race and region. Performances previously restricted only to physicality and look will disappear. With the right story it infact makes things possible which were not in a traditional method and thus by making it a cost effective mode of production. Indian audience is now opening up for a new genre of films and this means the supply for this demand has to be equally met.
Digital age of filmmaking lends their hand in every stage of productions by replacing old methods. Like any other new technology equipments, the prices may come down gradually as the number of users increase. Performance capture has already come off the studio volume and I hope it will be more flexible to use it in the future. More users of this technology means, we can see many genres made in this format including drama, comedy etc. We can witness a marriage between live action films to animation and to gaming as well. The thin line between these mediums will disappear in the future and there would be a day when a bunch of filmmakers assemble in a sophisticated room and choose their digital characters, performance, sets and camera angles to direct their own virtual world of storytelling for the audience. As long as the new technology keeps evolving, one day we may not be able to tell the difference between ‘real’ and ‘unreal’. Who can embrace it earlier has the power to withstand the future. I leave the new mantra to the hands of filmmakers who would like to join the race to the future.
(These are purely personal views of Centaurdigital founder Lino Stephen and AnimationXpress.com does not subscribe to these views)
About the author
Lino Stephen is a founder of Centaurdigital, which specialises in various aspects of performance capture including real time facial performance capture, digital humans creation etc. He has many credits including a technical director for Kochadaiiyaan, The Robot etc. and provides solution for movies, games and new media productions.
V/Line’s Guilt Trip campaign was recognised with the Creative Effectiveness Grand Prix at this 2014 Cannes International Festival of Creativity. Launched in May 2012 the Australian campaign harnessed the power of guilt to motivate young Victorians to leave the bright lights of the city to visit friends and family in the country.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7-rHOI3fpU
When running a train company, it’s normal for trains to be at or near capacity during peak periods. The trains hardest to fill are those travelling against commuter traffic and those in the middle of the day. V/Line calls these customers its “Visiting Friends and Families”. They represent a potentially huge opportunity if they can be captured, but they are difficult to isolate and as V/Line discovered, even harder to motivate.
Young Victorians were fleeing rural towns for the big city, and put simply, they were just too busy with their new lives to visit friends and relatives back home in the country. And they felt guilty. They felt they were neglecting their friends and family back in the country.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkeAO7JWIgk
A new product was developed: The Guilt Trip, a pre-purchase ticket that people could send to someone who would feel guilty for not visiting. The ticket was promoted through traditional media and public relations. Online films, regional media and Guilt Trip handbooks were used to get country people to spread the word. Social media was used to enhance the guilt. The Guilt Trip platform was designed to allow users to publicly guilt their family and friends to come home – through Facebook and Twitter.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xn6zLA6o_Nc
V-Line saw a 12% increase in off-peak sales with an additional 123,000 tickets sold, smashing their 5% kpi. Guilt Trips generated $4 Million in additional revenue; exceeding KPI by 167%. Consideration also increased with call-center enquiries for VFR travel rising on average 28%, well exceeding the 10% target. The Guilt Trip campaign helped more V/Line employees to realise that they do not simply drive trains; they help to bring loved ones back home to their families, their friends and their country towns. One Guilt Trip at a time.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SuuyvdJNmso
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOzSCUJpceg
The Guilt Trip campaign was developed at McCann Melbourne by executive creative director John Mescall, creative directors Annie Price and Pat Baron, art director Matt Stoddart, copywriters Natasha Wood and Tristan Graham, group account director Adrian Mills, account director Alec Hussain, senior account manager Tamara Broman, planners Danish Chan and Karl Bates, creative technologist Ash Pegram, developers Cayne Snowden and Rod Levinton, designers Dave Budd and Melody Yeung, and retoucher Ross Goddard.
agency producers Mark Bradley and Cinnamon Darvall
VLine General Manager of Marketing & Stakeholder Relations Paul Matthews, marketing & Communications Manager Daniel Moloney, strategic Marketing & Campaign Manager Lisa Stolt, marketing assistant Monica Barrow, digital communications advisor Simon Lock.
Filming was shot by director Damien Toogood via Come To Mama with producer Rona Lewis. Post production was done at Cutting Edge by editor Joe Morris, colourist Scott MacLean and producer Sharon Pearson. Music was produced at Song Zu.
Print production was done at The Craft Shop.
Design is the art of considered creation. Our goal is to satisfy the diverse spectrum of human needs. As those needs evolve, so too must our designs, practices, and philosophies. We challenged ourselves to create a visual language for our users that synthesizes the classic principles of good design with the innovation and possibility of technology and science.
A material metaphor is the unifying theory of a rationalized space and a system of motion. Our material is grounded in tactile reality, inspired by our study of paper and ink, yet open to imagination and magic.
This is material design.
(Music: “Fa Fa Fa” by Datarock)
Animated music video for Wild Beasts ‘Mecca’ the third single to be taken from the band’s fourth album. Full Credits: Directed, Animated and Edited by Kate Moross Commissioner: John Moule Record Label: Domino Records Art Direction: Kate Moross Assistant Art Director: Guy Field Producer: Harvey Ascott Exec Producer: Jamie Clark Production Company: My Accomplice Post Production Company: Studio Moross DoP: Matt Fox Focus Puller: Mike Linforth Camera Assistant: Daniella Kitchiner Jib Operator: Dan Lobo Pires Gaffer: Andrew McBrearty Spark: Adam Bell DIT: Sarah Peczec Hair & Make Up: Natasha Lawes Runner : Jamie Adams Runner : Tom Coley Background filming by Linus Kraemer & Chelsea White Intern at Studio Moross: Chelsea White
Brett Domino’s quick guide shows you how to make a hit pop song like Jason Derulo. Featuring Brett’s own song, ‘Sexy When You Do That’ (inspired by Jennifer Lawrence) – available to download here: http://brettdomino.bandcamp.com/track/sexy-when-you-do-that
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Synopsis: A young writer, lacking inspiration, comes across a drug that gives artificial creativity. Equipment- Camera: Nikon D5100 with 45mm kit lens and 300mm zoom lens Sound: RODE videomic pro Editor: SONY Vegas Pro 12 Production Details- Ian Tripp’s first student film attempt. Shot in three nonconsecutive days. Starring; Ian Tripp, Jae Bireley, Mikhael Farhat, Jessi Baran.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A. during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
