Hasta La Motion!

Occasionally, one must break the tradition of writing only about work that includes some form of animation, in order to recognize one of the giants of film.

With the loss of Chris Marker in 2012 and the loss of Alain Resnais two days ago, we may be witnessing the end of an era that will forever be inscribed as one of the most powerful and magical in the history of film, and in the history of film-informed mediums. Resnais, whose career sprung from Hiroshima Mon Amour, a film as poignant as it is inventive, often resisted labels and classifications.

Unafraid of tackling difficult topics, he directed Night and Fog, a documentary shot in Auschwitz some ten years after the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps, as well as the bold and mesmerizing experimental film, Last Year in Marienbad. While his films were often perceived as French new-wave emblems, as films about the intermingling of war and memory, about subjectivity and love, about dream and loss, Resnais never made the same film twice. He was a film “auteur” only in the sense that he reinvented himself over and over again, with the same finesse, courage and fearlessness.

His film career may be one of the richest and most diverse ones of the Silver Screen. Exploring every role of production, Resnais seamlessly navigated between the roles of director, editor, writer, even cinematographer. He tackled all topics with intelligence, and tapping into the great minds of writers such as Jean Cayrol, Marguerite Duras, Jorge Semprún and Alain Robbe-Grillet. He was one of a kind.

“Voilà. Maintenant. Je suis à vous.”

Framestore delivers eight million petals in stunning 4K

Following on from Sony’s famous bouncing balls advert for its first HD television, the brand’s latest majestic demonstration of its technology by McCann London has been shot at 4K on its flagship F65 motion picture camera to show off the capabilities of its new 4K Ultra HD TV. For us that meant delivering four times the detail in just two weeks.

“It was really exciting to work on an iconic series of ads because the Sony commercials have been so strong over the years. It was nice to put a bit of a twist on that and take it to a new scale” says VFX Supervisor Russell Dodgson. Russell and CG Supervisor Martin Aufinger led a team of 12 people that worked around the clock to deliver this beautiful spot. It was graded by our Senior Colourist Simon Bourne, who helped the multiple passes fit together by keying and grading them to look the same.

“The director and the creatives wanted to keep the look real and not over grade or saturate it because it already looked brilliant.” adds Simon. Of course, four times the detail meant tonnes of data, especially as it was a multi-camera, high speed shoot. Compositing everything in Nuke was particularly helpful as we had the back-end support of the farm to handle all that data. “It looks fantastic” says Russell. “The thing that’s scary about it is that when I saw a 4K football match on the TV you could see someone in a wide shot getting chewing gum out of his pocket. It’s going to make crowd replacements a lot harder!”

You may have already seen a trailer for a short film called K3LOID in the past years, it’s now finished and it’s very impressive. Spanish-based J.J. Palomo directed the short and his visual FX shop BLR VFX spent over two years developing it with the intent of turning it into a feature.

Palomo isn’t a complete unknown to Hollywood, he and his team have collaborated with Carl Rinsch several times and worked on the director’s breakout short, The Gift. (And K3LOID‘s concept art was provided by Aaron Beck, the concept designer for Avatar and District 9).
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In a not too distant future, societies of all countries come to rely on an intricate network of artificial intelligence devices designed to bring efficacy to man’s life. Yet, man continues to devour himself in useless wars. A strong political hierarchy now divides all powers into three factions, and A. I. devices rapidly gain ground as efficiency becomes a priority.
As social revolts grow worse everyday, authorities seek ways to control their citizens. They decide to carry out a series of tests that will determine not only whether some crucial powers can be transferred to non human entities, but also whether man is ready to yield those powers.
The world has become a cell for all man and women, who withstand and endure their lives, rather than living them. Machines might have found a solution.
From now on, you are set free.

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CREDITS:

Directed by JJ Palomo

Big Lazy Robot Crew :
Hugo Bermudez
Juan Civera
David Cordero
JJ Palomo
Leopoldo Palomo

Concept Design:
BLR
Aaron Beck
Greg Broadmore

Music and Sound Design:
Full Basstards

Online Color Correction and Conform:
Trizz

Manager: Scott Glassgold / IAM Entertainment

Anthony Scott Burns has released two stark, tense teasers in crisp black and white in anticipation of his inaugural short film entitled Manifold…The film will be released at FantasticFest later this month.

Teaser 1

Teaser 2

Royale just dropped a very cool new reel for 2013. enjoy…