VFXhack

The site bmovies.com offers hundreds of streaming b-grade horror, Sci-Fi, Kung-Fu and Western flicks. All you need is a broadband connection and countless hours of free time (come on your a geek you’ve got nothing better to do). Aside from some awesome retro-VFX (Attack of the Monsters) there are some early gems from today’s film-making giants (Peter Jackson’s Bad Taste and Coppola’s Dementia 13) and some oldies that might remind you of some current box office hits (Vincent Price in The Last Man On Earth was later remade into The Omega Man and I Am Legend). Video quality is at a youTube type level good enough for extended viewing for sure. Along with the tons on great movies you’ll find some really bad ones that are just a scream to watch (try White Pongo or The Killer Shrews) .

LINK to B-movies (thanks to Nyarlathotep)

Those of us blessed enough to have children know what a struggle it is to have to sit through agonizingly long hours of the pure crap that passes for kids entertainment these days. VFX pros also know how hard it can be to describe to young people exactly what it is that Mommy or Daddy do at work every day. To top it all off, a lot of the time the stuff we do work on just isn’t appropriate for the eyes of innocents. To that end, here’s a list of five of my favorite VFX flicks that you can watch with your kids and hopefully get them interested in finding out more abot the craft. By the way, if your children are really interested, I could always use some help with roto.

The Wizard of OZ - 1939 (Unrated)

Why it’s great It’s the one that started it all. Matte Paintings, wire work, make-up, pyro and much more combine to create a fully realized fantasy world.

You might want to skip Parents of male children might want to gloss over some of the more sappy musical numbers for fear of creating an “over-attachment” to Judy Garland. Not that there is anything wrong with that.

Prepared to be annoyed by High-pitched little people singing peppy songs. Not quite that bad compared to the insanity inducing Alvin and the Chipmunks (2007) but close.

Mary Poppins - 1964 (G)

Why it’s great Shear volume of innovative VFX techniques. Sure there is quite a bit of piano wire and bungee chord practical type stuff but you can also see some choice matte painting work and compositing on the “Jolly Holiday” sequence still holds up. DVD extras on the 2004 DVD include an informative “deconstructing a scene” section.

You might want to skip The song “Feed the Birds” is a about a homeless woman who tries to sell you groady bird seed to feed diseased pigeons. You should probably teach your kids to steer clear of such folk.

Prepared to be annoyed by… Dick Van Dyke’s “english” accent. In some scenes I swear I can see Julie Andrews wince.

Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back - 1980 (PG)

Why it’s great What’s not to like? Stop Motion, Motion Control, Yoda, Solo in Carbonite, this one is firing on all cylinders. Tons of techniques to explore with interested young ones. 2004 DVD comes with the Ken Burns Directed doc “Empire of Dreams” to get you into the behind the scenes mood.

You might want to skip The Wampa. It freaks out some youngsters, especially in the special edition. Luke’s kiss with Leah might bringup some tough questions.

Prepare to be annoyed by Billy Dee’s ’stash. It’s almost like you want to slap it right off his face.

Apollo 13 - 1995 (PG)

Why it’s great Incredible example of effects that look real, lots of great CG and compositing to obsess over. 2-Disk Anniversary DVD includes documentary footage of the real space race for comparison. Heck the kiddies might even learn something from this one.

You might want to skip All the scenes of the worried hair-dos back on planet earth. For your convenience, the 2-Disc set has a shorter version of the movie originaly made for IMAX with the back at home cut-aways removed.

Prepared to be annoyed by Repeated use of the phrase “Huston, we have a problem” by your kids to announce everything from potty related accidents to unintentional glass breaking. Wallace & Grommit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit - 2005 (G)

Why it’s great The amount of character that this film squeezes out of a couple of lumps of clay must be seen to be believed. The Rube Goldberg contraptions are great launching pads for discussions of cause and effect and timing in animation. The simple yet extremely effective composition and lighting in this film is also something the deserves a close look.

You might want to skip You should probably skip the movie all togther if you are worried that this film might be a gateway to more British humor. If your kids like this I see lots of Monthy Python and Black Adder in your future.

Prepared to be annoyed by Puns. “Anti-Pesto”, “24-carrot” bullets, “PC Mackintosh” it sends chills up my spine just writing these.

Have a fav of your own? Feel free to leave comment and tell us what is is.

A lot of times I’ll be watching a VFX sequence in a film or on TV and something will cause my toes to curl as if my nose was just held under bag of 6 week old sheep intestines. A bad visual effect has a certain bump that takes you out of the fantasy that it was created to fulfill. Sometimes a shot goes astray due to a lack of technical skill or a feeling that the people involved just didn’t have enough time or money. But most often my VFX gag reflex is triggered by a lack of story in a shot or sequence. By story I mean an internal logic to what is happening on screen. You may be saying to yourself “Logic? WTF this is a visual effects movie for God’s sakes. We don’t need no stinking logic!” But before you do, let me tell you what I mean by logic. When it comes to the fantastic, we VFX folk are trying to get the audience to buy off on a completely outlandish scenario that we all know could never really occur. Even in the case of so-called invisible effects, all you are really seeing is a combination of many techniques put together in just the right way so that they make a reasonable approximation of what a real event looks like. In a lot of cases, effects don’t look real at all (what does a talking pig look like anyways?) they look the way you think reality would look. Get it? Or did I just blow your mind? What I’m driving at here is that a successful visual effect has to have a well thought out and unique existence all it’s own. In other word,s each VFX shot has a story to tell. Say you are tasked with designing the magic effects for the latest swords and sorcerers epic. Where do you start? Well, I’d advise not placing a single pixel until you’ve asked yourself the following questions. How does this magic spell work? What is the magic made of? Who brought the spell into being? The story of VFX sequence gives you a framework to build your artistic and technical achievements around. Visual effects without a beginning, middle and end can look like just a bunch of dancing lights with no cool-factor or emotional connection at all.

Be an obsessive observer

This is particularly important when you are working on a CG shot that simulates natural phenomenon. Take a look at the world around you and break down what you see into discreet actions. Working on a commercial for a beer company that needs CG bubbles created? Head on down to your local tavern and ask the barkeep to set you up with whatever is on tap. Wait! Don’t drink it. Watch the bubbles and mean really watch them. Where are they generating from, the bottom of the glass or the sides? What is the character of their motion as they travel through the liquid? Do bigger bubbles move in a different way than smaller ones? What happens when a bubble reaches to surface? Write down the answers to all these questions and bring them back to your workstation (after you finish the beer of course) and assemble the steps into a story of how each bubble is born, live and expires. Now you can get down to the brass tacks of breaking your story down into packets and generating vfx elements that describe them.

Create a flexible reality

Any VFX artist that has ever done a make-up fix or a rain enhancement shot (and that should be most of us) knows that there is a difference between reality and movie reality. The story you create with your work has to be dynamic and interesting, it is being created for entertainment after all. There are VFX people in this world who take the concept of “what would really happen” way to seriously. Take it from me, you don’t want to be one of these people. Listening to an half hour long diatribe on the way a spaceship would really fly or how a raindrop would really fall can cause a creative vacum strong enough to liberate your eyeballs from your skull. Don’t forget, a big part of your VFX story should cover how to make your effect cool and interesting. Getting too caught up in the physical reality of an event can cause you to miss the big picture.

Chart it up, write it down

A lot of times when you are brainstorming about how the elements of your VFX shot should come together, orgainizing your thoughts can be a little bit daunting. Scribbling notes on paper can be just to random and hard to decipher if you need to reference them later (especially if you have my handwriting). Creating an outline in a word processor can be too rigid and throw a big wet blanket on the old creative flow. Enter a little thing called Mind Mapping. First you get a big piece of paper and a bunch of colored pens or pencils. Write down the kind of effect you are trying to create in the center of the page, then just start free associating and writing down the components of the effect radially around the center. Then break it down further into sub-steps also arranges radialy around the new components. At any time start drawing lines and images connecting your ideas together. Use different colors and line weights to make connections. What quickly emerges is a visual organization of the effect. Mind maps are a great way to brainstorm and let the story of a visual effects emerge organically.

View your shots in context

As anyone whose gone to film school or watched the DVD extras on their favorite film will tell you, cinematic storytelling is about editing. Odds are that your VFX story will not be contained in one shot but play out over multiple cuts. It can therefore be extremely dangerous to work on individual shots without constantly checking to see how they look in the edit. Once you have a clear idea of the theory behind the VFX you are going to create it’s time to look at the cut sequence to see which parts of the effect work best for each shot. For example close-ups are a better showcase for the more subtle details of an effect while wide shots are great for accentuating broad motions. You also want to make sure that you effect builds properly from cut to cut and matches up with all the non-VFX reacation shots and cut-aways. I also suggest taking matters into our own hands when it comes to updating the edit. Instead of waiting for an editorial department to cut your stuff in for you quickly put the shots together yourself. You can use something as complex as Final Cut Pro or as simple as cutting and pasted clips in Quicktime. In any case, it’s essential to see how your shots play over time.

Don’t rely on suspension of disbelief

For those of you unfamiliar with the term, suspension of disbelief refers to the willingness of a person to accept as true the premises of a work of fiction, even if they are fantastic or impossible. This concept bodes well for the VFX artist (especially those of us who are often budgetarily challenged) but there’s a limit to everything. When a viewer enters a theater or fires up the Tivo they are entering into an implied contract with the makers of movie magic. It’s as if the viewer is saying “O.K. Mr. Visual Effects Man, go ahead and dazzle me. Just give me a little credit here. This isn’t a magic show for first graders.” Today’s audiences are more than willing to sit back and enjoy the ride as long as you have done your homework making sure that each shot makes sense on it’s own terms. If something is not working in the story of a visual effect it is not acceptable to just look at it and say “C’mon, suspension of disbelief dude!” There is only so far you can push a viewers imagination. And it’s easier than you think to tip the scales from awesome to suck. In other words, don’t be lazy and count on the gullibility of your audience to make your shot.

LINK to more info about how to make your own Mindmaps

 UPDATE: Disney has already had this clip removed from YouTube! Guess you gotta be quick these days.

This incredible piece of retro-future starring William Katt from tee-vee’s Greatest American Hero was originally broadcast to showcase the state of the art in 2D and 3D animation. The series has been posted in seven parts on YouTube and has some great clips of the early pioneers including a young John Lasseter. The bad VHS transfer of the clips makes the whole thing that much more adorable.

LINK to Beyond Tron Part 1

Another reason why every Visual Effects nerd should carry a pair of anaglyphic (red and blue) 3D glasses with them at all times. Santiago Caicedo, has created this pretty nifty short. A mixture of live action footage and CG elements. It gets a bit repetative but the 3D effect works quite well.

LINK to the full movie

LINK to Santiago’s main page (not really in English)

 My buddy Azathothx turned me onto this great article about the technical struggles involved in creating the VFX for the first Star Wars flick. It’s got some great pictures (see above) and some real nuts and bolts descriptions of the techniques used and their history. It also has some juicy quotes like this one from Richard Edlund.

“A problematic visual-effects shot has its own special clunk. Whether it fails in design, execution, or the final composite doesn’t matter. The audience doesn’t necessarily know exactly what’s gone wrong, just that something has, and it can drop them right out of the movie.”

Jar-Jar anyone?

LINK to the full text of the article

The folks over at OneHitMaster have cooked up this gem for your viewing pleasure. Before anyone gets all bent out of shape, the disclaimer at the beginning of this number sez that no kids were hurt during filming. That being said, prepare to laugh you lungs right out of your chest cavity. This clip goes to show you that a bit of clever editing, a pinch of vfx and whole butt load of sound effects CDs can go a long way.

LINK to mirror of 56MB movie file

Now that all the Comi-Con hoopla has died down, I thought it would be a good idea to mention a few standouts in the field of graphic sequential art that have yet to sell their souls to the great Hollywood comic book ruining machine. So, while we’re waiting for the big two to finally scrape the bottom of the character licensing barrel (ROM Spacenight:The Movie can’t be too far off), let’s look at some yet to be defiled gems that would make great VFX flicks.

1. Ed the Happy Clown

From the pages of Chester Brown’s Yummy Fur comes the tale of a Clown whose penis tip gets replaced by the head of Ronald Reagan from an alternate universe. Interested? You should be. This one is a VFX bonanza with vampires, aliens, spaceship and Frankenstein’s monster. Rumors of an Ed movie have come and gone since it was published in 1989. I think Harry Dean Stanton would make a great Ronald Reagan penis tip.

Further Reading: Chester Brown’s autobiographic I Never Liked You (1994)

2. DMZ

Written by Brian Wood with artwork by Riccardo Burchielli, this is a modern day take on Escape From New York mixed in with a little Network to boot. Matty, a news network intern, is stranded in a Manhattan torn apart by the new American civil war. Imagine CNN footage from Iraq taking place in the good ole U S of A. Scary stuff.

Further Reading: Transmetropolitan by Warren Ellis, another dystopia from a fake journalist’s POV

3. Pride of Baghdad

This has got to be the easiest pitch of all these. Lion King meets Reservoir Dogs. This is the “true” story of four lions who escape the Baghdad zoo during the American invasion. Written by Brian K. Vaughan with artwork by Niko Henrichon, this is one of the best graphic novels ever and would no doubt whop Aslan’s ass all up and down the multiplex.

Further Reading: Y the Last Man, Vaughan’s ongoing series about a plague that wipes out every man on earth, except one.

4. The Walking Dead

Although the initial set-up is blatant rip of 28 Days Later, this meat opera follows a small group of people who struggle to survive the crisis of the undead day by day. The scope is personal and epic at the same time focusing on the intimate details of the “lucky” characters lives. The series, written by Robert Kirkman, contains black and white illustrations from Tony Moore and Charlie Adlard. Of course the film would have to be in black and white too. I hear Woody Allen might be available.

Further Reading: Kirkman’s Marvel Zombies gives the flesh eating treatment to the House of Ideas. Excelsior!

5. Wormwood:Gentelman Corpse

Ben Templesmith’s comic follows the adventures of an animated cadaver that is being controlled by a satanic maggot who lives in his eyeball. Oh, and there’s his sidekick the homicidal Victorian Robot too. The mood is great, dark and sticky, with enough ectoplasm to fill a giant bucket of popcorn in nearly every page.

Further Reading: The Goon is Eric Powell’s take on the loner set adrift in a paranormal town without pity

Well true believers, there you have it. I’m sure some young, hip studio exec will eventually pick these properties up and turn them into watered down, mind numbing drivel. But hey, as the guy at my local comic shop sez “At least they can’t take the comics away, we’ll always have those”.

Hans Bacher’s blog Animation - Treasures is mostly known for it’s collection of painstakingly recreated backgrounds from the golden era of Hollywood studio animation. There’s lots of great eye-candy for animation buffs here but also more than a few lessons for VFX folks and heck, anyone in the visual storytelling business. Hans covers a plethora of topics from the use of color to composition, using a wide variety of examples. The visuals are just plain splendid so make sure you take the time to browse the site directly and skip the RSS reader.

1. If you are a robot of African-American decent, make sure everyone can tell by giving yourself a name with cultural connotations like Jazz. For added clarity make sure you talk “street” and throw in a few breakdancing moves. WARNING!! Once you have revealed your heritage, it is now certain you will be killed later in the film.
2. If you see an object the size and mass of a skyscraper collapse in on itself like a brown dwarf, do not be alarmed. The resulting object (about the size of a shoebox) will magically shed 99.999976% of its mass. This will allow you to carry it under your arm heisman trophy style while you jump from rooftop to rooftop.
3. If you want to be a computer “Hacker” make sure you stare at the screen blankly and rapidly type random characters on your keyboard. This will allow you enter any computer system no matter how advanced. TIP! It also makes you more intellegent if you are extremely dorky and have a very hot female friend. This is ofter referred to as the “Inverse Law of Attractiveness” or “Bay’s Paradox”.
4. If you are an pretty young lady hankering for a stroll through downtown Los Angeles, you should dress for the occasion. Preferably in a lowcut sun dress, one like you might wear at the beach. If you happen to come across several large alien robots fighting for the fate of the human race, make your move to the middle of the street and sit relatively motionless on a pile of rubble. That way a robot can step over you in slow motion while you look up aghast.
5. If you need to start a vehicle that you don’t have the keys for in order to save the future of the planet Earth, DON’T PANIC. Just follow these simple instructions. First, make sure that your father is a car thief, you will need to power of irony for this to work. The rest is easy. Break the driver’s side window with your elbow, then reach inside and open the door. You will see two dangling wires, one red, one blue. They will be pre-exposed for your convenience. Last but not least, touch the wires together. After a bright blue spark the vehicle will start right up!