VFX documentary- Empire Strikes Back behind the scenes

Perhaps the most highly regarded film in the Star Wars saga is The Empire Strikes Back. This half hour documentary by Michel Parbot  has recently appeared on youtube courtesy of starwarsarchives.com. It allows the viewer some amazing insight into how effects and sets were created in the pre-digital age. It shows the stop motion techniques used to create the AT AT and the Tauntaun riding creatures. You can see matte paintings created on glass as well as set constructions of the Hoth base and the swamp planet of Yoda. It's an amazing time capsule of what it was like when problem solving didn't involve the convenience of computers.

You can see the whole documentary here

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=5aS-HIgvANE#!

Where the industry stands: The Visual Effects Crisis in Entertainment

Many viewers of Sunday night's telecast were probably unaware that just outside the ceremony a group of visual effects artists and personnel were picketing the event to raise awareness of their plight. Just recently one of LA's largest and oldest visual effects studios filed for bankruptcy, laying off (Initially) close to 200 employees in the process. The company was Rhythm and Hues, the studio responsible for the visual effects imagery for the film "Life of Pi". Luckily several VFX studios in Los Angles have taken up the slack by providing employment for many of R and H's furloughed artists and staff. Because it is such a rarified occupation, most feature film artists have a difficult time of finding employment in a field whose ranks are closing rapidly. Quite frequently, these artists are forced to find work outside the United States, usually Vancouver British Columbia or England. In the late 90's when Peter Jackson was expanding his digital effects company WETA to tackle the effects work for his Lord of the Rings trilogy, he was forced to recruit talent from the States due to the lack of trained personnel in New Zealand. Now the scales have tipped in his favor. With multiple Oscar wins for his Trilogy, King Kong and Avatar, Weta is one of the largest and busiest effects firms in the industry. It has the support of Jackson and other filmmakers such as James Cameron but it also has support of the studios.  The lack of experienced digital personnel down under is a lot less rare now. If you look at the history of many digital vendor firms, the ones with the strongest half life seem to be the ones supported by filmmakers who feed them with work. If the filmmaker is powerful and successful enough, the studios seem willing to go along. ILM and WETA survive the lean times because they have successful filmmakers backing them up.

Another business model that seems to work are with digital houses that produce their own intellectual property. These companies would be PIXAR animation studios and  BLUE SKY in Ct on the East coast.  They mainly concentrate on creating feature length animated films for families that they produce internally in conjunction with the major studios (In PIXAR's case , Disney) that distribute their product. They manage to flourish because they share in the profits.  In addition, PIXAR and WETA develop their own digital effects software which they license out to other effects firms. PIXAR's  Renderman software is considered one of the industry's top CGI rendering software on the market.

The ultimate solution to this crisis seems to be adaptability. The studios will need to adapt as much as the vendors will. Both want to make a profit. But the only way to truly make money in this competitive often cutthroat industry is to own (or at least partial own) what you produce. Most visual effects companies do not have any profit participation in what they produce. Perhaps a new business model is necessary. In exchange for massive discounts, perhaps vfx studios should offer profit sharing on high profile vfx projects thats would normally be quite costly.  Another solution would be to work with the vfx software companies to offer development deals in utilizing software on their films. In exchange they would field test and promote the use of software.

Additionally VFX companies may want to consider moving away from proprietary software locks that prevents studios  from moving or sharing costly shots to other companies so the productions can save money.

Ultimately , its up to the vendors as to how much control they are willing to relinquish. Most company's have a very weak pulse at the moment and favors are often forgotten quickly by studio heads so underbidding as a gesture seems self defeating.

Looking at the massive amount of profits these big effects films make it's quite possible there's room for profit for everyone. The question is will greed drive the industry, or will innovation.

Coolvfx Facebook archive of VFX technology

One of my adjunct webpages to my blog and twiiter page is my archive of  images recording the history of vfx technology in film and television.

i hope to expand this ultimately into a database website where people will be able to access these images and accompanying information for education purposes

If you are interested in seeing some interesting behind the pictures shots form various movies, Please feel to check it out. Would love to get everyone's opinion on it

If you are a Facebook member and like what you see, Please hit "like".

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Coolvfx-visual-effects-archive-page/394337563989731

Proposal for online presence. What is the future of technology in entertainment?

It seems like the internet is overwhelmed by tech blogs and individuals covering the field of computers and the digital effects field.

What is the purpose of covering it further?

I suppose a more relevant question would be what could I add to the conversation?

My approach in my writing has been a sort of hybrid one. I'm looking at the development of the technology used in entertainment. I plan on examining not only the trends and the technology but the history of the art itself. What are the practical uses of technology in this field? What will the advances be? Will the current economy of the industry do to effect the these trends?

I suppose my thesis on this subject would be to focus on the people who make and evolve the craft. They are the ones who drive the industry. Recent events in the field of visual effects(company closure, massive layoffs at facilities, etc) have played a huge part on how the industry will evolve.

My approach will be to examine the evolution of technology by focusing on the creators and the history. Not just in film but in video, hardware development, software, video games and television. Surprisingly, these varied fields often utilize the same tools and personnel.

Technology in Video Games (part 1)

 

Technology in video game entertainment (part1)

Evolution of the form

The transformation of the modern video game to recreational pastime to social interactive media and real life combat simulation is a complex and controversial one. Video games as entertainment have only existed in the consumer market for a few decades. Compared to other recreational pastimes like golf or poker, that’s a relatively small amount of time. Yet the form has evolved a great deal in that short period. What started as a solitary engagement and test of reflex and motor skill would ultimately evolve into one of the largest entertainment revenue generators of the late 20^th/ early 21^st century. Video games have surpassed motion pictures, literature and music as the predominate revenue generating form of entertainment in terms of gross sales. Video games are distinctive in the world of entertainment because they represent a medium that can be both passive and interactive, they can tell a narrative and at the same time the user can drive the story. This has drawn fans and audiences and divided critics as to the cultural and historical impact of the medium.

The history of the first video game and its actual application in society is often contested but it is believed it began in January of 1947 when inventor Thomas Goldsmith and Estle Ray Mann applied for a United State patent for a device that was identified as a Cathode Ray Amusement device which involved manipulated images on an early television cathode ray tube and a controller which allowed the participant to shoot a moving target on screen. Most development in this field was done at technical Universities such as MIT or experimental laboratories developing the emerging computer sciences. These early tests were nothing more than scientist and engineer’s means testing the technology at their disposal. There appears to be seeds of what would eventually become the modern video game and a definite drive to create interactive entertainment as opposed to scientific research.

Most of the early work in digital interactive entertainment was crude and experimental but many did see the potential as interactive entertainment and this is what drove the thinking of the companies and scientists that explored the potential of computers as mass media and entertainment. The most successful of these early experiments was by a group of student computer engineers lead by Steve Russell who created a game called Spacewar on a PDP-1 computer. The game introduces several major dynamics that would be adopted by many other game designers such as simultaneous multi-player interface, game scoring and early vector graphics.

Introduction to the masses

Eventually a computer engineer named Ralph Baer began experimenting with the computer graphics application realized the potentiality of the medium when converged with the emerging popularity of television consoles in the living room. He along with co-engineer Bill Harrison developed what would become the Odyssey.. Baer and Harrison built an early prototype of their video game console system later dubbed the Brown Box as it was constructed of Brown wood and included an inboard data processor and wired controlled sticks in a crude rudimentary form.

The Odyssey design used a kind of early form of the cartridge-based system later to be seen in the Atari 2600 console. In this case, players would input a printed circuit board into the machine. The PCB card contained code, which included the game data. Another major innovation was the wired joystick controllers, which allowed players to sit back and play the game from their sofas.  

Eventually Baer’s idea was picked up by the Magnavox Corporation, which was primarily known for selling television sets in North America. Magnavox’s campaign pushed the group interactivity value but ultimately the marketing for the system was confusing, as most consumers believed that you needed to own a Magnavox television in order to use the system.

Nolan Bushnell a software and electrical engineer and investor who ran an engineering firm called Syzygy Engineering built one of the earliest stand up arcade machines, Computer space, a game where one or two players pilot a rocket ship and attempt to shoot down enemy spacecrafts flying toward them. It is generally considered the world’s first commercial sold coin operated video game machine and one of the very first commercial sold video games ever. Although it wasn’t a great commercial success due to the high cost of manufacturing the units and low marketing visibility, the game was a gigantic leap forward in terms of technology and accessibility.

He later went on to start Atari, which would ultimately become the world’s largest video game hardware and software developer. The Atari 2600 system would eventually become the first multi million-dollar selling video game console. The 2600 was specifically designed as a social interactive device. It included multiple joystick ports in the front of the unit and many of the their best selling first and third party games were multi-player experiences such as Warlords, Pong, Outlaw and Tank! 

Console, arcade and computer entertainment emergence as interactive social media

The mid to late 70’s saw the emergence of social gaming in the form of role-playing systems such as Dungeons and dragons. The popularity of these of games were fueled by the group experience in which several players would adopt characters

Several software companies expanded on the original ideas from role playing board games such as the fantasy world environments but most importantly the character building aspect. This function would ultimately be adopted into the digital RPG industry and become a staple of almost all computer and console role-playing games.

One of the earliest to adopt these fantasy archetypes was Sir Tech’s Wizardry, an early example of what game players and developers would call a “Dungeon Crawler”

Much of these principals were carried over to personal computer gaming models. Once modems became affordable to the personal computing crowd, game designers began to adapt the concepts of user developing characters within a game. This variable concept is known as “leveling up” and most fantasy games would allow users to ritualistically through the play experience 

One of the most popular genres in the PC gaming field was fantasy role-playing games. An early innovative example of this was Richard Garriot’s ULTIMA series. These games were considered groundbreaking when they were first released for the Apple II in 1981 for several reasons: one they were amongst the first games to recreate in great detail a fictional world or environment. Secondly, it allowed players to develop and keep track of characters records and status. This model would become standard for all role-playing games that followed. 

Ultima spawned hundreds of games that adopted the style and function of the character based systems and helped form the game genre called the MMORPG or massively multiplayer on line role playing game. These games are based primarily on the player’s ability to develop the skills of their own character by leveling up in certain attributes, which assists in the user’s ability to advance in the game system.

One of the most popular of console games to emulate this character development style was Final Fantasy 7 for the Playstation 3. Although not a multiplayer game, FF7 created a realistic fantasy world in which you follow your main character Cloud Strife through the world of midguard, a futuristic amalgam of  middle earth and Blade runner’s future LA.

The Most popular of all personal computer MMORPGs. is The World of Warcraft developed by Blizzard software. WOW is a fantasy-based role-playing game in which user pay a subscription fee. Each user develops and controls an Avatar, which they can gradually level up with additional strengths, armor and attributes. As of October 2012 WOW has sold over 10 million user subscriptions making it the highest grossing MMORG in history.

The World Of Warcraft would ultimately become the gold standard for the on line interactive experience on the web. The designers of the game created a world in which characters are constantly updating their character in terms of appearance in skill. By also designing the game around expansion sets, they continue to renew interest in the software and keep it relevant. WOW also promotes the game as a social experience as well as an escapist one. Gamers form social groups and some players have been known to form deep personal connections . WOW continues to be a popular franchise with PC gamers although it has yet to be ported to the consoles and remains exclusively a PC property.

The earliest example of video games as an interactive social experience could be traced back to the earliest days of arcade gaming in North America.

The popularity of the arcade gaming experiences as a social phenomenon emerged in the late 70’s with Atari’s introduction of PONG and later the Atari game Tank. Both were early examples of arcade that were successful but also games that were interactive with co-players making them the earliest examples of social gaming in the digital age.

Later the Japanese company Tiato introduced the first smash arcade game to North America, Space Invaders.  In the game the player takes control of a small base at the bottom of the screen and is required to shoot down a cascading armada of pixilated aliens who move downward in waves. There was no actual narrative or end to the game. The purpose was simply to score points. However, This game was unique for various reasons but one of the most significant contributions to interactive entertainment was its internal scoring system. Players who scored highly were allowed to enter their initials. Thus began the emergence of video games as popular entertainment. Gaming became a serious hobby and a means of social interaction. Most games allowed for two player competitive interaction. Other games such as Atari’s Gauntlet, allows multiple players to play side by side as a team to reach goals. Later the arcade experience exploded with the introduction of such powerhouse properties such as Namco’s Galaga and Pac-man, William’s Defender and Robotron 2084 and Atari’s tempest and Centipede. These games created the industry’s foundation as a social experience as the arcade hits would later be transferred to the console and PC formats. Despite their somewhat quant and crude graphics by today’s standards these games are still popular and are often ported over to such gaming systems as Wii’s virtual console and XBLA on the X-box