Cities of the Future

You know, we got quite a few complaints about our alien city from Millennium Crisis (which is available at most Best Buy stores but right not is not available yet in Manhattan -- you have to go to Jersey or Staten Island to get it) and my response was "Well, I thought it looked as good as the city in the title sequence of Battlestar Galactica" to which I'd get a "yeah, I guess it does."

And that brings me to 1. Today's Theory and 2. Why Today's Theory is wrong.

Today's Theory:
Fake cities always look fake because real cities look fake. Real cityscapes look painted because of the occlusion of the atmosphere between you and the city. Looking at Manhattan from Brooklyn is a classic example of how... the city... looks fake. They look like a matte painting.

And not necessarily a good matte painting.

And the weirder the buildings -- the faker it looks.

When I was in High School my dad took me down to Florida during my Spring Break to a jobsite -- the building of Epcot Center at Disney World. It was pretty amazing to look at -- all those huge and crazy buildings all going up at once. And from a distance, they looked fake.

So: real buildings look fake, of course fake buildings look fake.

Why Today's Theory is Wrong:
Ian, who made our robot for us, disproves my theory. The image above is from his latest feature.

The image not only comes off as totally photo-real, but it also looks real. Which are two different things.

The lighting and the texture are perfect. Perhaps the real and photographed foreground helps the image be more real? Perhaps the matched atmospheric occlusion (yes, I've started talking that way) between the background of the photographed image matches the composite?

I have no idea.

But it just looks right. And therefore my theory is wrong. (Furthermore, CGI in the daytime is the hardest though. Because you can see everything.)

One day we're going to throw enough money at Ian and get him on visual effects on a Pandora Machine picture...

Punktown

Just finished Deadstock by Jeffrey Thomas. I even finished it mostly on my iPhone, which seeing as it's a .pdf file that's 399 pages long, is quite a feat considering how the iPhone doesn't let you "jump" to a page so every time you re-wake the dang thing you have to scroll hundreds of pages manually to get back to where you started.

I like that the book is extraordinarily well-written. Given my prejudice that writing is not a solitary effort, I figure the author must have a terrific editor.

There are some great things in the book. Ouiji phones are the cell-phone like things which you can use to talk to the dead. There are plenty of angry clones (because they're second - class citizens) and nice little touches about mutants and other sentient alien species.

What more could you want? Oh, you want the German cover to an earlier novel by the same author.

Quicktime and You

As most of you know, Apple messed up their latest update of Quicktime which will destroy your life if you're doing high-end rendering. This article from fxguide.com talks about that and some work-arounds and suchly.

Street Date

Today Millennium Crisis is on the streets. Specifically, in North America, at Best Buy.

This is our second picture to be released. And, of course, it's already available in Japan. It just feels like we shot it so long ago. We shot another picture in the interim.

Here's keeping our fingers crossed and hoping it does well!

The look...

This is an HDR picture of New York City. Boy, it'd be fun to be able to shoot a motion picture which looked this way. My guess is you'd have to shoot multiple exposures with a locked-down camera and then composite...

Certainly worth thinking about...

Readings

I'm being amused by reading the No Asshole Rule.

I'm amused by the screencleaning kitty. But this little pug is absolutely the thing you need if you're having a rough day and need something to relax you.

There's quite a bit of information out there about No Asshole Rules. I haven't really had to worry about it since I left the Wooster Group.

Also, I'm reading a free online book (I wish it were available in html but it's just a giant .pdf) called Deadstock. It's a sci-fi cyberpunk-ish novel and it's really quite good. And if you don't mind reading on your computer -- it's free. The imprint Solaris (which is giving this book away online in order to promote the sequel) seems interesting. One thing about the book is it is refreshingly well-edited. Unlike, say, this blog.

The iPhone camera is nigh on impossible to operate, especially for self-portraits.

Premiere Sucks.

But first:

Brian Schiavo is both doing a final re-write on his script but he's also building the spaceship which crash-lands on Necrosis 6.

I'm really interested in seeing how we're going to shoot this model. I even got a macro lens! Hope we don't run into depth of field issues...

--

I am engaged in mortal battle with Adobe Premiere. Premiere sucks. My decision to go with Premiere was a bad one. I've apologized to all the relevant parties but ultimately I'll be suffering with it the most.

1. It won't output OMF or any other kind of audio format for editing and mixing audio in another program. That's completely unprofessional and makes the program unusable in any kind of pro post-production environment.

2. It boggs down with creating audio waveform displays when you import any audio. This makes the project files ungainly and huge and causes a lot of "out of memory" errors which are simply stupid and bring work to a dead halt.

3. It doesn't even do the one thing it's supposed to do, and the thing which made me use it on the post production of Solar Vengeance. That is the ability to copy and paste from Premiere to After Effects.

As it turns out, that copy and paste is not the most reliable thing in the Adobe world. On a complex project (like, oh, say, a feature film) some clips don't come over on the first try at all. And not all effects come over with their settings in tact. So what's the point?

One lucky thing is that Premiere will render in 32-bit float. So I can output with Magic Bullet Looks and not lose information (I think).

But next time? We're going back to Final Cut Pro. I forget, will Final Cut import .tga sequence files? I hope so. ..

Sunday Morning

So, apparently, violent movies decreases crime while football games increase crime. That makes sense to me.

Every year I try to see how long I can go without finding out who's playing in the Superbowl. I've made it to the following Monday on a couple occasions. My, er, loving, brother, upon hearing that I try to not know, said "Go Giants." Thanks Dave. You'll be hearing from my representative.

See? Football. It makes me more violent.

Every once in a while I think I'd like to write a book. It'll probably end up being a picture book from a bunch of movies we've made.

0704 Greenlight

Pandora Machine has just green-lit a new feature called The Shriven. The job number is "0704". We're producing with Brian Schiavo, who wrote, will co-direct, and star in the movie.

Brian did our wonderful props and guns for Solar Vengeance.

This is the first of five pictures we're shooting over the next two years.

Other People's Children

Look, I'm prejudiced because the parents are my friends Catie and Mitchell, but let's face reality: this picture of their children Luca and Camilla is simply adorable.

On Target

I'm reading, or trying to read, an incredibly dry book called The Art and Science of Digital Compositing by Ron Brinkman. From Chapter 11, Quality and Efficiency:

"There is an old (rather cynical) adage that states that, given the categories of speed, cost, and quality, you can only have two of the three options."

And all I'm thinking is "Oh, do you mean the 'Cheap, fast, good, pick two' rule?"

Sheesh.

--

And I still can't figure out premultiplied mattes. I mean, how does the computer know it's premultiplied, or rather which black is just black and which is "there's no image here"? What's different about the "black" or whatever color you're using for the alpha channel? What's the difference between that color which isn't matted out from that color which is? I'll keep looking.

--

This is pretty darn funny:

Quotes from Godzilla's own DVD commentaries.

--

I'm color-correcting and sending out bits of video for notes from the editor and writer (who has no notes but who is probably also not working on the two scripts he's supposed to be writing) and producer (who sent me six and a half single-spaced pages of notes).

--

And remember: over the next two years we're shooting 5 pictures (and prepping 6). If I keep saying it, it'll happen.

Meeting Fish

Last night I met the man behind this website. His portfolio is simply amazing.

Am furiously trying to lock some picture on Solar Vengeance.

Over the next two years we will prep, shoot, and complete 5 feature films. That is, we'll be finished with 5 features by December of 2009 and have a screenplay for a 6th film by then too.

All of this means, of course, that very soon we'll be announcing the movie we begin shooting in March.

Here's a blog about the experience of being an effects artist working for a bunch of different production companies over the years.

Google: Evil and Stupid

Would you like to see the images which Picasa censored from my Picasa account this week?

Prepare to be shocked by obscenity...

...Horrified by the incitement to violence....

...Revolted by the promotions of hate...

No, really.

These were the images which they claimed "violated" their Terms of Service.

Perhaps they violated their unbelievable levels of ignorance, but their TOS? I don't think so.

They took down my entire folder of "Prague Spring Images" which are pictures of my band Prague Spring. If I haven't fixed the side bar of this blog you'll see a missing folder of stills there.

That's right.

My band.

In performance.

An ambient acoustic group for the love of Pete.

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking "Ooh. Drew. You're so... so... dangerous."

It's true.

What stupid and petty employee of Google decided these had to come down? I mean really.

Really?

Someone was offended by the paintings? By the dude with the djembe?

I know, it's the girl on the red chair with the flute.

What kind of idiot would insist these be taken down?

You know, this really illustrates the danger of stupidity and ignorance in power. Censorship, in and of itself, is evil. Because it will be used for stupid evil purposes.

Like taking down these pictures.

The paintings, including the odalisque at stage right, are by the great 19th century French painter Ingres.

Everybody run for the hills! Anarchy is coming! 19th - century French masterworks are corrupting your children's minds!

The dancer (whose back you can see on the projection) is Melissa Riker. The people playing instruments are Kevin Keating (drums), Sky Grealis (flute), and me, Andrew Bellware, on acoustic guitar.

I, of course, own the photographs and I created the video projection.

Taking these down is just a spectacular level of censorship and idiocy. What kind of jerktard complained about the images in the first place?

Well, to the ignorant knuckle-draggers in charge of abuse of the Picasa TOS: I fully intend to "continue to violate these Program Policies" as you put so nicely in your email to me. So if these images violate your stupid interpretation of your policies you just better suspend my account.

Just to prove it, by putting these images back on Google, I'm putting them on Picasa too.

You jerktards.

The Works of Jon Ecklund

Lately I've been doing some work with the talented and charming Jon Ecklund at Manhattan Theatre Source. Here Jon plays a none-too-bright cowboy:


And here is a short he directed.