The Hobbit loses Guillermo Del Toro

There is a lot to be understood about 3D filmmaking I think too. in terms of composition of shots and editing... I expect Aflonso's Gravity to be the best 3D film despite it being added on in post (not as big of a deal because a lot of it will be CG)... but I expect his style of shooting will compliment 3D perspective better than the traditional formula of shooting/sequencing.

Even though Avatar utilized WETA's mocap studio for most of the main character work, i still think it pales in comparison to most of the visual effects work in Lord of the Rings relatively speaking . I fucking love those movies, i can't deny it. From the bigatures to the amount of insane detail into CGI creatures like Shelob in ROTK. Avatar doesnt look like claymation to me, only a year after it came out the cg looks severely dated to me. Say what you want about LOTR's cgi, but some of the visual effects shots in it, especially of the bigatures look superior to most stuff out today, and especially when it came out it was undeniably groundbreaking on multiple visual effects levels. Even the way PJ cleverly used doubles of all the characters, forced perspective with a combination of green screening for the size perspectives was ground beaking in and of itself. Avatar is a more tricky one. I'd say they succeeded in 2 areas for raising the bar of visual effects

-truly emotive and relatable cgi characters, but imo only about equal to Golem who is more of a weirdo personality wise so the emotion doesnt have the same impact as it does in Avatar<br />

-beautiful fully cgi flora that looks photorealistic

everything else, even the 3d in Avatar didn't impress me as much as i hoped it would. I still give Cameron props for trying to break ground, but i really don't think anyone has come close to Peter Jackson since the original LOTR trilogy in terms of vfx work. When the Ents break the dam at the end of Two Towers, i still have no fucking clue how he did some of what happens in that scene. Some of the trees are obvious cg, but watch closely as the orc wood platforms get flooded and fall off the cliffs. Are those cg doubles running around like ants falling off the platforms or real actors? It's really hard to distinguish what's real and what's not, and i don't think any filmmaker has been able to do that as consistently as Peter Jackson.

what pains me is that like most other filmmakers Cameron talks about 'pop out' 3d being gimmicky, but i think by refusing to add more depth to the CGI 3d the movie suffers. The live action 3d shots at the beginning of Avatar to me feel more spectacular than the rest of the film. It's a bummer that Cameron, who really was on the cutting edge of 3d live action photography hasn't made a scifi or other movie besides Aliens of the Deep with the same technology the whole time (without going into 70% cgi territory). Aliens of the Deep is probably the most impressive real-life filmed 3d i've seen.

  On 12/6/2012 at 9:49 AM, compson said:

I recently re-watched the LOTR trilogy and its amazing how much worse some of the CGI has gotten since I remember it being. Still enjoyed the series, I think the Two Towers is my favorite of the three. The whole thing is corny and heavy handed, but after a few smokes and some good candy or something its a fun film to watch with a few friends. Tolkien laid out a pretty interesting universe that reflects a lot of things going on in the world today, so its also interesting to watch them and pick up on symbolism and themes, add your own sub-text to the scenes.

That's exactly what gaarg and I did last weekend with the second half of TT and it was actually a good experience.

The thing is... it could be done so much better with so much less. It's so dumbed down it's really insulting.

When I retire, I'll take some time and make PJ's LOTR right:

Reedit everything, throw out all the scenes where characters try their best to appear retarded by overstating all the obvious stuff (say 25% of the whole). Replace those scenes with nice nature shots and add some subtle narrations over that instead. Color grade everything so it looks less disneyland and replace the soundtrack with something more appropriate.

Not sure what can be done about Elijah Wood's grimaces though. Maybe just censor them altogether, black rectangle style.

  On 12/6/2012 at 10:06 AM, Awepittance said:

Even though Avatar utilized WETA's mocap studio for most of the main character work, i still think it pales in comparison to most of the visual effects work in Lord of the Rings. I fucking love those movies, i can't deny it. From the bigatures to the amount of insane detail into CGI creatures like Shelob in ROTK. Avatar doesnt look like claymation to me, only a year after it came out the cg looks severely dated to me. Say what you want about LOTR's cgi, but some of the visual effects shots in it, especially of the bigatures look superior to most stuff out today.

I was only criticizing LOTR's CG, as it has dated a good amount, understandably as its 10 years old now. I also love the bigatures, the dam breaking in two towers, the explosion at helms deep, gondors city, the volcano stuff, mordor tower falling and exploding with shockwave. I will agree all that stuff is cooler than stuff in Avatar, but Avatar still is the most impressive "CG" of any film I have seen and Cameron is very close to pulling off something beyond what bigatures offer. I think 3D + HFR will be the key to giving CG its physicality that its been missing, which is another reason why Avatar 2 should be extremely consistent visually.

  On 12/6/2012 at 10:09 AM, kokoon said:

 

  On 12/6/2012 at 9:49 AM, compson said:

I recently re-watched the LOTR trilogy and its amazing how much worse some of the CGI has gotten since I remember it being. Still enjoyed the series, I think the Two Towers is my favorite of the three. The whole thing is corny and heavy handed, but after a few smokes and some good candy or something its a fun film to watch with a few friends. Tolkien laid out a pretty interesting universe that reflects a lot of things going on in the world today, so its also interesting to watch them and pick up on symbolism and themes, add your own sub-text to the scenes.

That's exactly what gaarg and I did last weekend with the second half of TT and it was actually a good experience.

 

The thing is... it could be done so much better with so much less. It's so dumbed down it's really insulting.

When I retire, I'll take some time and make PJ's LOTR right:

Reedit everything, throw out all the scenes where characters try their best to appear retarded by overstating all the obvious stuff (say 25% of the whole). Replace those scenes with nice nature shots and add some subtle narrations over that instead. Color grade everything so it looks less disneyland and replace the soundtrack with something more appropriate.

Not sure what can be done about Elijah Wood's grimaces though. Maybe just censor them altogether, black rectangle style.

 

Yeah theres definitely some glaring inconsistencies with the flow of dialogue and action, PJ is or does have a pretty weak editor / doesn't know how to build up action without gimmick cues/formulas. Cameron is king in terms of action sequences, he just needs better source material.

we're just going to have to agree to disagree. Avatar does have a consistent quality through out, ill agree with you that most films don't come even close to that. However King Kong as a cg character alone i think is superior looking and more realistic than anything in Avatar. I don't think most people would agree with me on this, but when i watch the movie 5+ years later some of the effects in it look better than anything i've seen to date. Some of it looks like absolute shit too, that's part of the problem when talking about how impressive PJ's vfx stuff is. If it wasn't for a handful of the CG creature work in Kong it would be a visual masterpiece.
edit: Pirates 2 deserves some 'ground breaking' credit as well, Davey Jones still stands up as a very impressive use of digital makeup. Shit looks very convincing. I also just watched District 9 again, and the main prawn character is really great as well. At points i feel like i am watching some sort of impossibly constructed Jim Henson puppet.

I haven't seen King Kong in awhile. Will give it another look. Avatar just has a very unnaturally lush color palette and aesthetic that hurts the hyper-realism that you can find in LOTR/King Kong stuff as that stuff is more grounded in real life objects. So I definitely think your perspective is valid, I still think Avatar has more impressive CGI simply based on the vast amount of it and its consistency ... the biggest peeve is that stylistically you know it has to be CG.

So ape textures or bugs is something relatable but Blue smooth skinned people with huge eyes and weird bodies is like some kind of bizarro humanoid. Its almost like Cameron wanted to challenge himself and design the aliens just weird enough that from a wide perspective they clearly are CG but skin surface and muscle animations make us think of prosthetics. Human CG characters like in Polar Express etc are still the hardest to pull off.

Adding fake motion blur by hand sounds like such a pain in the ass!

  On 12/6/2012 at 9:37 AM, Awepittance said:

Although what saddens me about 2 more Hobbit films is its probably very unlikely PJ will ever make another movie as modest as Heavenly Creatures or Forgotten Silver again

The Lovely Bones was relatively low key, especially following a movie where Adrian Brody literally punched a raptor in the face.

  On 12/6/2012 at 10:09 AM, kokoon said:

When I retire, I'll take some time and make PJ's LOTR right:

Reedit everything, throw out all the scenes where characters try their best to appear retarded by overstating all the obvious stuff (say 25% of the whole). Replace those scenes with nice nature shots and add some subtle narrations over that instead. Color grade everything so it looks less disneyland and replace the soundtrack with something more appropriate.

 

I can't wait to see LOTR look more like Gears of War. Desaturated green and brown are the only colors I feel comfortable looking at. That's how you know it's serious. While you're at it, throw in some JJ Abrams lens flares.

  On 12/6/2012 at 5:22 PM, encey said:

Adding fake motion blur by hand sounds like such a pain in the ass!

I'd say it can be automated, using MCFI (motion-compensated frame interpolation) algorithms. You know, like those ghastly "smooth motion" features that you turn off on your TV-set when you set it up for the first time. Use that to create a lot of made-up frames between the real 48p frames, then mash them together and you have something that resembles real camera motion blur.

First reviews in, from a collection of lightweight rag magazines, and they're not good.

When you get mediocre reviews from The Hollywood Reporter, Variety, and Box Office Magazine, you are in trouble.

The Hobbit is still going to make a ridiculous amount of money, no matter what the reviews say.

As long as I can bring dice to roll during the movie, I'll be happy!

lol

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0903624/

i've read almost all the reviews including the ones from Hollywood reporter and Variety. Most of them say they don't like the 48fps, spend a lot of time talking about it (who probably havent seen the film in 24fps) then complain that it's not as good as lord of the rings and has too light of a tone. I don't really know what they expected since the Hobbit book isn't as good as lotr nor is it as serious. They also say it has pacing problems. Plus Peter Jackson already has 2 strikes against him from Lovely Bones and King Kong. Critics were very luke warm on King Kong and very hard on Lovely Bones. While both aren't great or problem free films i feel like there is somewhat of a backlash from the heights he reached in sweeping the academy awards. The only way the reviews are 'not good' is for people who would be on the fence about seeing it or not. For box office earnings they aren't going to have much of an effect, these movies will make billions and there is no chance the studio is going to pull out of the sequels (unlike M Night's airbender or Finchers Dragon Tattoo). The only effect it might have is more careful editing on the following 2 and a possible improvement with the pacing issues. Fellowship of the Ring i see almost as a beta version of the other 2 LOTR movies, they only improved with time. I'm pretty confident the same thing is going to happen after An Unexpected Journey.

edit: not to make any excuses for the movie simply because i haven't seen it, but if PJ is really this strong on 48fps it makes sense why he would make the first part of the movie slow going and leisurely pacing wise. Most reviewers agree on one thing, that it takes about an hour or more to finally get immersed into the 48fps experience due to it's initial jarring nature. If this is correct then the first hour of the film could be designed to just soften your eyes up to some extent for whats to come.

lush

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvwX_ng28Q8

holy shit so much promotion. they're really desperate to hype this.

i dont know about you guys but the footage looks pretty phenomenal, all my misgivings about it looking too cgi or whatever the fuck i was complaining about are gone now. Haven't been this excited to see a movie in years. ps: shane carruth's (primer) new film has a trailer

which footage? gonna ignore that 15 minute sneak peak but I thought that clip on bottom of last page was quite impressive and aesthetically nice

they show almost every money shot from the movie int hat 15 minute special, i would avoid if you want to be fully surprised. But jesus fuck, even just the landscape shots this time around are mind blowingly beautiful, dare i say with all the vibrant colors that LOTR didn't have this film looks significantly more lush.

Entertainment Weekly also just put out a few photos showing The Desolation of Smaug, one in particular of Bilbo looking scared as shit sitting on top of a giant pile of gold treasure

  On 12/7/2012 at 10:02 AM, GORDO said:

holy shit so much promotion. they're really desperate to hype this.

besides the Colbert show, which makes sense since Colbert is a huge fan of Tolkein i'm actually surprised by the lack of promotion for such a big movie until only weeks before it comes out. It is definitely far less than any of the Star War prequels got promoted, and imo this should be seen as an equally big event.