"2007" Update Part I: And The Beat Goes On

The music video for "2007" will have several different strands, dreamed up at meetings with Tenderstar's songwriter and their lead vocalist. I love the paradox of the music video: on the one hand, as they take their structures from the music they're probably one of the most freeform and varied forms of filmmaking out there; on the other hand, however creative and artistic, they are by definition commercials as well and there's a need to hold in mind the target audience and the image the band want to get across.

One strand of the video will be a visual representation of the sounds and rhythms: for example, the bass chords and the beat will look something like this.

To be continued...

Guess She's An X-Box, I'm More Atari [Review: Tron: Legacy]

My own Cassandrean prophecy has come to pass: Tron Legacy does indeed have no plot, no characters and no dialogue (or at least none worth speaking of) and is indeed just a two and a half hour flythrough of the virtual city - and I probably will see it again. It's visually inspiring, lots of fun, surreal, bonkers, true to the spirit of the original - and utterly lacking in point.

First casualty: that beautiful Comic-Con Trailer sequence where a man finds himself hiding amongst some rocky buildings by the side of the digital highway.



You know - that one.

In one respect and one respect only the world of the Grid still symbolizes cyberspace: Moore's Law. Computers have doubled in power, and therefore the Grid has doubled in coolness, every 18 months since the original Tron was released. So now it admittedly looks pretty cool, and by pretty cool, I mean... words fail me. The neon landscape of the Grid is the most beautiful place the cinema has ever taken me. Ever. I want to live there, with or without Olivia Wilde, and unlike dear sunrise-obsessed Cora I am gutted to find myself back in the boring old real world.

But cyberspace has changed in other ways. The Internet happened for one thing. The original Tron was about a kind of war between users, programmers and the system itself for ownership of the programmes: Kevin Flynn's original victory was the proof that he was the author of some computer games, while security programme Tron's victory was to prevent the corporate computer from controlling everything.

This war hasn't gone away, and the lines of power are still shifting: who really controls the Internet now? We the users create content and think we're in control but (for the most part) we're not really the programmers. Around us are companies we rely on - facebook, YouTube, Myspace, wikipedia, blogger that appear philanthropic yet are still turning a profit somehow, and are still fighting each other tooth and claw for dominance - and watching over us, the All-Seeing Eye of the aptly named Google.

Gaming has changed too - multiplayer immersive worlds, themselves heavily inspired by Tron, are ten-a-penny, The Sims still manages to eke out a meagre living for itself, and families gather round the Wii or the SingStation while the most hard-core gamers of all are out on street corners playing ARGs on their mobiles.

What has the above to do with Tron Legacy? Nothing. The Grid never seems to have signed up to the Internet, it's running on a separate computer underneath an arcade and just happens to have rather a lot of processing power. And rather than taking over the Internet where the real power lies [SPOILER] the best plan that its corrupted leader can come up with is to somehow invade the Real World with Real Physical Force. That's so 1940s, man! Meanwhile, the Grid's gladiator arenas are still playing host to the same two Atari games: Pole Position and Pong.



If you can appreciate a thing of beauty for what it is, and you can forgive and forget the missed opportunity to make this anything more than a show, then like me I think you will enjoy this light cycle ride. It's great seeing Jeff Bridges in action and the play-off between his older and younger selves makes for an interesting cat and mouse game; heroine Cora is captivating, perhaps because she's played by Wilde as a geeky ingenue rather than, say, another Trinity. Sam Flynn's character is more of a standard action hero type thing and he doesn't stand out in the same way, also there's always the feeling that he's out of his depth and the real game is being played by his father and his former digital best friend.

Tron excels in another way too: the sound. With the help of a Daft Punk score and the kind of attention to sonic detail that made Wall-E sound outstanding, this is a powerful, recognizable and potentially award-winning soundscape.

[edit 31.12.10: not actually Sam in the Comic-Con trailer]

Hard To Kill [Review: Starship Troopers 3 Marauder]

The Starship Troopers films tend to divide viewers: are they simply fascistic and pro-war, or is it all a clever work of satire? ST3 won't end this debate, which actually started with Robert Heinlein's novel long before the films were conceived. However there are definitely some satirical elements to this film as in ST1: particularly the over-the-top propaganda films and commercials. Would you like to know more? Sometimes it's a bit too obvious - referring to the war as the Araq-nid conflict for instance is not very subtle.

It struck me, watching this straight to DVD threequel, that the production values here are only a few notches above the Asylum films or similar low-budget dramas. The sets are a little better, the effects are a little better although still hit and miss - the bugs are as good as ever but the CGI Marauders that appear later in the film just look like toons.

As far as the acting goes, Casper Van Dien reprises his role as Johnny Rico and, having very little to do, does it quite well. Instead of Denise Richards as Carmen Ibanez, Jolene Blalock plays Lola "hard to kill" Beck - and is a million times more convincing. Amanda Donohoe as Admiral Phid is also excellent.

The series does have something to say about war. In this conflict there is (almost) no doubt about the motives of the arachnid enemy - they're a swarm of bloodthirsty creatures out to kill us all. So the films can take a look at cynical war politics and politicians, propaganda, intolerance, paranoia, stupidity and the resultant waste of life which all take place even when there's no doubt that the war itself is justified.

While I think the film succeeds in skating along the edge of war satire, unfortunately there is a complete lack of religious satire - instead the religious message of this film is actually quite worrying. Air hostess Holly (Marnette Patterson) and Sky Marshal Anoke (Stephen Hogan) both seem to be turning to Christianity when they are stranded on a bug planet. It turns out that the bugs also worship God - but it's OK, they're still evil, because "it's the wrong God."

Having completely forgotten that earlier in the film Holly's religious beliefs made her dangerously gullible and led to the death of half the squad, the film suddenly becomes obsessed with the Lord's Prayer and this leads into an ending where violent military intervention is presented as a miracle. Together with the mass hanging of dissidents that the Citizen Federation seems so keen on, it reminded me a little of the historic witchcraft trials.

Alien Vs Mockbuster [Review: Alien Vs Hunter]

Isn't copyright law interesting! It seems you can copyright and therefore protect the name "Predator" but not "Alien." This gives me hope for the future of the cross-over spin-off: I'm looking forward to "Alien Vs Mega Shark" "Alien Vs Forrest Gump" and "Alien Vs Thomas The Tank Engine" in 2011.

Alien Vs Hunter is an Asylum-produced film with a DVD cover designed to mimic Alien Vs Predator - while the film bears almost no relationship to the original. So it's a mockbuster of a cross-over spin-off from two movie franchises. The plot is simple - two meteorites land, and a small town is caught in the crossfire between a giant spiderlike creature and a mysterious armour-clad human figure. The staff of the town newspaper form an uneasy truce with the local NRA survivalist militia to defend themselves.

The film is mildly enjoyable in places. Rare praise from me, I know. However by rights it should be unwatchable - rudimentary special effects, an overwritten script, and some dodgy cardboard sets. As in some other Asylum productions it's made bearable by strong performances from the main actors - particularly Hillary played by Dedee Pfeiffer and Valentine played by Randy Mulkey.

I particularly enjoyed the making of mini-doc on the DVD extras, something that would usually bore me to death. Instead of a mutual congratulatathon, this mini-doc gives you a glimpse of the Asylum approach to filmmaking - the twelve day shoot. I wonder if, paradoxically, something about this pressurized process actually brings out the best in some actors.

Tellingly, Randy Mulkey lets off steam by making fun of the director, albeit in a good natured way, while Dedee Pfeiffer talks about the challenges of the project. Dedee's professionalism is also inspiring - treating this hit-and-run production as a job like any other, and holding tight to her character's thinly written backstory (Hillary is apparently an ex-biker chick trying to get away from her past) to give a good performance on the first or second take. There's rarely time for a third take on an Asylum set.

There's A Shark In The Park [Review: Doctor Who A Christmas Carol]

A Doctor Who Christmas Special that snatches the sonic screwdriver of success from the shark-jaws of failure. The concept made me groan: do we not all agree that a) the definitive version of Charles Dickens' time travel epic has already been made, and b) that it had Muppets in it? There was no way this was going to be anything but contrived, boring and unnecessary.

Contrived? More than even I imagined. Boring and unnecessary? I was so wrong.

Why does it work? The settings are brilliantly realised, for a start: scenes on the shiny bridge of a crashing starship are ripped from the J.J.Abrams school of sci-fi, complete with lens flare; beneath them, a fog-shrouded semi-steampunk world where schools of fish fly in the clouds.

Secondly, Moffatt's script is definitely one of his better ones, with plenty of twisty timeline changes in addition to the ludicrous and surreal settings he so loves to create. The spaceship is doomed as the local oligarch is the only person with the power to control the planet's atmosphere and let the ship land - but he's a bitter, lonely miser and doesn't care in the slightest whether they live or die. The spark that turns the script from contrived and unnecessary to something more interesting is that the Doctor realises that pleading with the old man won't be enough, he'll have to change his entire history to bring out his better side - and chooses deliberately to play Ghost of Christmas Past to do it.

Kathryn Jenkins is cast as the heroine - whether the part was written for her before or after casting I don't know, but for me no future Christmas will be complete without someone singing beautifully to comfort and calm a dying air-shark. This brings me to the final, obvious point about what is so good about this episode: the shark.

Red Weed

"Looking towards the river, we were astonished to see an unaccountable redness mingling with the black of the scorched meadows.

"The red weed grew with astonishing vigour and luxuriance. It spread up the sides of the pit by the third or fourth day of our imprisonment, and its cactus-like branches formed a carmine fringe to the edges of our triangular window. And afterwards I found it broadcast throughout the country, and especially wherever there was a stream of water.

"On the fourteenth day I went into the kitchen, and I was surprised to find that the fronds of the red weed had grown right across the hole in the wall, turning the half-light of the place into a crimson-coloured obscurity.

"Slowly I thrust myself out through the red weed, and stood upon the mound of rubble.

"I stood on a mound of smashed brickwork, clay, and gravel, over which spread a multitude of red cactus-shaped plants, knee-high, without a solitary terrestrial growth to dispute their footing. The trees near me were dead and brown, but further a network of red thread scaled the still living stems.

"The neighbouring houses had all been wrecked, but none had been burned; their walls stood, sometimes to the second story, with smashed windows and shattered doors. The red weed grew tumultuously in their roofless rooms.

"(I) went on my way through scarlet and crimson trees towards Kew - it was like walking through an avenue of gigantic blood drops...

"Directly this extraordinary growth encountered water it straightway became gigantic and of unparalleled fecundity. Its seeds were simply poured down into the water of the Wey and Thames, and its swiftly growing and Titanic water fronds speedily choked both those rivers.

"At Putney, as I afterwards saw, the bridge was almost lost in a tangle of this weed, and at Richmond, too, the Thames water poured in a broad and shallow stream across the meadows of Hampton and Twickenham. As the water spread the weed followed them, until the ruined villas of the Thames valley were for a time lost in this red swamp...

"The red creeper swarmed up the trees about the old palace, and their branches stretched gaunt and dead, and set with shrivelled leaves, from amid its clusters." - H.G. Wells

[photos: Sci-Fi Gene]

And Silent

"Wondering still more at all that I had seen, I pushed on towards Primrose Hill. Far away, through a gap in the trees, I saw a second Martian, as motionless as the first, standing in the park towards the Zoological Gardens, and silent." - H.G. Wells

[photo: Sci-Fi Gene]

The Chances Of Anything Coming From Mars [Review: Jeff Wayne's The War Of The Worlds]

Following my close encounters with Skyline and Monsters, I completed an alien invasion hat-trick with a return to the source: Jeff Wayne's musical adaptation of The War Of The Worlds. It was bitterly cold at London's O2 arena on Sunday so I was glad of frequent blasts of hot air from the Heat Ray.

You probably already know that Jeff Wayne composed The War Of The Worlds in 1978, basing it on H.G.Wells' novel, and that it was released as a concept album narrated by Richard Burton and sung by Justin Hayward and other artists. You may also have seen the iconic album cover and other illustrations from an accompanying booklet, with their easily recognizable depictions of the Martian Fighting Machines. And you may well be aware that a stage version of this composition is currently touring arenas and stadiums around the world. The leitmotifs and musical movements of this rock opera are also very familiar.

This production is conducted, with typical high energy gesticulation, by Mr. Wayne himself, and thanks to the magic of CGI is narrated by the detached, floating head of Richard Burton. Also returning from the original recording is Justin Hayward, accompanied by six more stage players including Liz McClarnon in a brief but heartbreaking appearance as the doomed parson's wife, and Jason Donovan as a superbly demented Artilleryman. The stage is dominated by a giant tripod Fighting Machine and the performance is accompanied by film incorporating new animation, as well as the previous illustrations. This remains primarily a concert performance and all the arena show trappings add to the experience - and are a lot of fun - without overshadowing the music at all.

Of all the adaptations of The War Of The Worlds - including at least three films and a radio mockumentary that sent Americans running for the coast in fear - Jeff Wayne's is both the most inventive, and the most faithful to the novel. The narration is taken wholesale from the text, the story remains set at the turn of the century, the creatures - bigger than a bear, made entirely of brain, building machines that take the place of bodies - are unchanged, and Wayne's powerful music takes its cues from H.G.Wells' soundscape including of course the triumphant cry of the Martians.

[pictures are courtesy of The War Of The Worlds production team]

All Alone - More Or Less [Review: Pandorum]

Two astronauts wake from cryogenic suspension to find themselves on board the malfunctioning and dimly lit spaceship Elysium. They must find a way out of a locked chamber, discover the fate of the ship and their crewmates, and reset a nuclear reactor before it does something really, really naughty. They also need to figure out their own identities - the prolonged sleep has scrambled their memories and the only clues are the code numbers tattooed on their arms. And guess what? It turns out they are not alone.

Pandorum, directed by Christian Alvart and starring Dennis Quaid, Ben Foster and Antje Traue, has a narrative structure more typical of a computer game than a film: Bower (Foster) has to make a series of action-led journeys through different sectors of the giant spaceship, punctuated by brief encounters with other survivors such as paranoid warrior Nadia (Traue) and conversations that reveal bits of the backstory, while Payton (Quaid) feeds Bower directions and information from a computer terminal. The film is therefore similar to watching someone else play a particularly linear FPS, and there's fun to be had in kibbitzing and watching the characters ignore your advice.

However what is gradually revealed between bouts of jumping, climbing and melee combat, is an incoherent mash-up of ideas, as if the scriptwriters had brainstormed the plot and then included everything. The ideas themselves are OK and just one or two of these could have been made into a much more elegant plot. A climax at the ship's nuclear reactor is another weak point as the reactor itself is just not credible as anything other than a dramatic device.

Pandorum is yet another entrant in the Most Claustrophobic Starship open competition. It faces stiff opposition from classics such as Alien and Event Horizon and has been heavily influenced by such films. A nice feature of Pandorum's visual style is that it does not overuse or rely too heavily on overt CGI for most of the locations - it's pleasingly low-tech and it's nice to see there are still artists out there who know how to build a non-virtual set and make it look solid and satisfying. This in turn helps to make the action sequences feel a bit more realistic. Of course, blue lighting covers a multitude of sins too.

Independent Day [Review: Monsters]

You've read enough about Gareth Edwards' budget, micro-production crew and unconventional methodology on all the other websites. Here at Sci-Fi Gene we're not afraid to think outside the box, and this review of Monsters will take the unusual step of talking about the film.

The plot: photo-journalist Calver (Scoot McNairy) is forced to escort his editor's daughter Sam (Whitney Able) across Mexico back to the U.S. border after she is caught up in an airstrike. Their journey takes them alongside and eventually through the Infected Zone where, thanks to a NASA re-entry failure six years earlier, there be monsters.

Calver and Sam are three dimensional characters: Calver has to make a living but is ill at ease photographing tragedy. He's a complete failure at relationships and is in touch with his son but is not allowed to be his father. Sam is from another world, the rich editor's daughter who turns out to be made of stronger stuff than your average heiress - she speaks perfect Spanish, is able to make friends and put locals at ease while Calver rubs them up the wrong way, and seems to take the situations in her stride including Calver's drunken antics that leave them stranded at the seaport. She's engaged but is there perhaps a little ambivalence? Calver clearly resents the class divide between them as well as his unsolicited babysitting role. He sees Sam initially as some kind of rich wastrel, asking her "Do you work?" a question she never answers.

Calver and Sam's relationship develops - believably - as their journey takes them to stranger places, but this is no Hollywood love affair - they are brought together not by love at first sight, nor by Calver's inept flirting, but as the witnesses of awesome and terrible sights. There's a war of the genres going on here with post-apocalyptic sci-fi, survival horror and even political satire showing their heads from time to time, but it's the road movie and quirky indie romance that carry the day.

Monsters is a sensitive film with a lot of intimate hand-held camerawork and equally intimate performances. It's also very traditional in some ways: there's no camcorder or mocumentary formatting, and overt special effects are minimal while much of the backstory is told through the signposts and ruined helicopters in the background. Visually it's gorgeous, making the most of Mexican landscapes, rivers, sunsets and the occasional ziggurat. The Monsters themselves (that is of course, assuming the title refers to the aliens) are presented as creatures of both horror and beauty.

Romantic Comedies Of The Dead

I have, on occasion, gone on record as being somewhat critical of the romantic comedy genre. To "celebrate" the DVD release of Sex And The City 2 - and personally I think The Onion got this story right - I set myself a challenge to come up with a list of ten romantic comedies that actually have some merit as films. I admit I set the bar pretty high - to my mind a "romantic comedy" needs to be romantic, and it also needs to be funny.

It took me a while. In no particular order:

1. When Harry Met Sally

Ah, the classic, genre-defining rom-com. To quote the Muppet re-make: "I'll have what she's having - but without the pepper."

2. Breakfast At Tiffany's

Between them, When Harry Met Sally and Breakfast At Tiffany's contain pretty much every single trope of the genre: they are endlessly, and needlessly recombined by some kind of scriptwriting machine to create mindless tripe such as Serendipity and You've Got £&*!%#? Mail.

3. Everyone Says I Love You

Poor Woody! He tries too hard - and there have been so many mediocre films in the last decade or two that we forget just how much he's capable of. Everyone Says I Love You is Woody at his surprising, understated best, with gentle humour plus moments of perfectly deployed magical realism such as the floating dance scene.

4. Bad Day

The music video for Daniel Powter's song Bad Day is in many ways the perfect rom-com archetype: two characters living parallel lives, destined to be together but separated by circumstance until they start to reach out; great soundtrack; and best of all, it's less than four minutes long. The link above is to the official video. Bonus points for featuring er... Screech from Saved By The Bell.

5. Four Weddings And A Funeral

This film spawned an entire sub-genre of copycat British films - Wimbledon, Notting Hill, and so on - every single one of which missed the point about what made Four Weddings so great. It's not the swearing. It's not the provincial sidekick or the comedy dance routine.

6. Up In The Air

A recent entry and I'm surprised I enjoyed it so much but it's a great script and there's enough cynicism and black humour to give it some bite.

7. Adam

Many films have tried to get this kind of thing right, few have succeeded: Adam is a romantic comedy about a young man with Asperger syndrome. I would be interested to know how it has gone down amongst those with Asperger or other autistic syndromes but for me it was genuine and sensitive although there are a few awkward moments.

8. The Wedding Singer

Probably the most lightweight entry on this list. However this film plays it's 80s revival card at every opportunity, from the financial backstory right down to the buzz of the doorbells, to great comedy effect.

9. Shaun Of The Dead

The definitive rom zom com.

10. High Fidelity

Nick Hornby writes romantic comedies for men. Transplanting this peculiarly English novel about the life and loves of a list-obsessed record store owner to the United States should have been a spectacular failure but John Cusack pulls it off.

Two honourable mentions:

Sliding Doors: a film that attempts to rise above it's rom-com status with a Many-Worlds-Interpretation/Schroedinger's Cat storyline - A for effort.

Brief Encounter: definitely romantic, one of the overall best films of all time, and while it's not a comedy it has some comedy moments.

Bomb The Bass [Review: The Hurt Locker]

I tend not to watch straightfoward war films as a rule, but I made an exception for Kathryn Bigelow's Oscar-winning film The Hurt Locker. The film follows an army squadron through a tour of duty in Afghanistan, counting down on-screen the days until their return. Their mission is to locate and disarm hidden roadside bombs, using remote robots, protective suits and sometimes their bare hands.

It's a documentary at war with a drama: there's no sense of overheating the story, dialogue or explosions, and the switches between action, tension and relief are unpredictable, so the Afghanistan setting is very much realism-led. On the other hand the characters themselves are still larger than life and their relationships are very much drama-led, for example the new team-member who is stepping into the shoes of a bomb victim and who feels he has to prove himself, and who is also a bit of a maverick - he takes a highly unconventional, hands-on approach to his first explosive job while refusing to tell the rest of the team what he's up to.

Taking into account the sharpness of the camerawork and editing as well, the augmented reality of the fictional drama wins out over the reality of the setting.

The film also appears to portray the relationship between soldiers and locals honestly - the soldiers are well intentioned, always carrying their phrase books and trying to do the right thing - but when there's an explosive device on the scene all this gets dropped as they have to force the residents out of the blast zone - sometimes at gunpoint as they lack the language skills to do it any other way. There's also no getting away from the difficulty of trying to be friendly to a crowd of locals when you know that one of them is carrying the mobile phone trigger for the bomb.

I am cautious about drawing any conclusions about how realistic this film really is as I have never seen action myself. Nevertheless I get the sense that Kathryn Bigelow may be one of the few non-combatants who actually gets what the Afghanistan war is really about on the ground - this is an action movie that seems to show a great deal of understanding. I would find it interesting to see what the real Middle East soldiers make of it.

Factory Filmed

Monsters is released in cinemas across the UK from Friday. I'm looking forward to it - watch this space for the review. The movie has received a lot of positive advance press, mostly focussing on the low-budget and atypical production model: this article from the Guardian is typical. Two actors and a tiny crew took a road trip across Mexico seeking out atmospheric locations and shooting scenes along the way, a lot of the dialogue was improvised, and director Gareth Edwards then edited and post-produced the film, tentacles and all, in After Effects on his laptop. More or less.

Gareth Edwards entered Sci-Fi London's 48 Hour Film Challenge three years ago, seeing it as an opportunity to test out a depth-of-field adaptor he'd just built for his camera. The result was the 2008 winning entry Factory Farmed - which surely must have helped when Gareth was pitching the Monsters concept. Inspired by the 2008 entries including Gareth's, I had a lot of fun making films for this competition in 2009 and 2010 and plan to enter again in future.

Factory Farmed: winner of SFL48 2008

For the benefit of all the journalists who are enthused about Monsters: while I share your excitement about this particular release, indie and low-budget films are not new, and Danny Boyle is not the only respected director who started out using guerilla filmmaking techniques. Also it has always been possible to spend a massive Hollywood budget and end up with a box-office flop. It is true that post production and effects tools have become more accessible - including many freeware applications such as my preferred tool Blender - but it's not really about the tools: a good script, good direction (both theatrical and artistic) good character performances and good editing are as key as ever.

Low budget filmmaking is different though. For example, in a more traditional studio there is a tension between the director and the producer, whose role is basically to persuade the director that he can still achieve his artistic vision with only three elephants instead of six. If the director has always come from the angle of what he or she can achieve without spending anything, then this tension is not needed in the first place and there might not be a need to separate the director/producer roles in the same, rigid way. I suspect the ideal arrangement is for two people with a fairly close relationship of some sort to hold both roles but play to their own individual strengths, and this might be why there are so many successful brother-brother partnerships in cinema.

Would You Buy A Second-Hand X-Wing From This Man?

Over at UGO.com Robert Hoffman published a list of 100 greatest cinematic spaceships which has been troubling the blogosphere for a few days. I took the io9 challenge and tried to predict the top 10. Suffice it to say I was not at all surprised by the number 1 entry, and in addition, I correctly predicted that Discovery, Enterprise the Close Encounters mothership and of course Serenity would make the top ten. It was inevitable that Star Wars and Star Trek would be prominent in this list - and I applaud Hoffman's attempt to stop them from dominating altogether.

The nostalgia is strong with this one: E.T.'s spaceship and the X-Wing (both just missing out on the top 10) but also further down the list were Max from Flight of the Navigator, the unexpected yellow spaceship from Life Of Brian, and a certain Interstellar Circus Tent. Recent films with iconic spaceships such as District 9 also get a mention.

Not iconic enough?

I was, however, surprised to see that the Nostromo and Sulaco only clocked in at 36 and 44, and there are also some interesting omissions: although it's only had two cinema outings plus one TV movie appearance, surely the TARDIS ranks somewhere in the top 100. Also I thought the Martian Flying Machines (complete with string) deserved more of a place than many of the entrants, as did Jane Fonda's inexplicably carpeted interstellar RV from Barbarella. Possibly the Flying Machines were excluded on a technicality as they were aircraft rather than spacecraft.

Ready To Feel The Sunshine

The b-roll shoot* took place for a music video last night - the song is "2007" by Tenderstar and the video will feature two members of the band. We turned a local community hall into a bluescreen studio for the project, which will combine live footage and CGI, and the treatment includes a number of effect challenges including teleportation, artificial mirror shots and a weightless scene. This is my second music video project - I previously made an animated video for David Novan's composition Soupremacy.

The shoot was successful in that we covered all the material in about three hours (plus an hour to set up.) The dolly performed OK but there's still some wobble over the joints even though the tracks were taped into place: as it should only affect 5-10 frames of action in each shot I'll be able to correct this by hand in the video sequence editor.

James Cameron dreams of a high tech studio set-up like mine.

Oops - accidentally included one of Roland Emmerich's photos from the making of "The Day After Tomorrow" there. My bad.

Tim Burton's version of "The Commitments" will be a re-imagining and not just a re-make.

Learning points:

Lighting: always check your lights - that way you won't set up a new floodlight only to find it has a faulty transformer and blows every bulb you put in.

Direction: This is important although I'm sure it's obvious to anyone more experienced. "Turn away, move your arms like this, step back" doesn't help the actors. "There's an explosion coming from this corner, so cover your eyes and turn away from the blast" is the way to go. Don't treat them as robots, give them a situation or an idea and trust them to create a response.

*Performance roll - the band performing the song. B-roll - interpretative footage or any other footage used in a music video.

Floating In A Most Peculiar Way

A few weeks ago io9 published their list of the greatest zero-gravity sex scenes of all time. They're NSFW so I haven't embedded them here but it's an interesting list. Now I'm nowhere near ready to direct my first sex scene, but I am planning to shoot a weightless scene later this week - so that probably makes me the only person on the whole Internet who watched these videos purely for research purposes. At least, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

There are some common techniques:

• smooth rotation
• shots taken from a progression of angles
• extreme close-ups
• shallow depth of field
• slow motion
• drifting props

My budget won't stretch to either an Inception-style rotating set or a high-altitude flight. I do have space to set up a large bluescreen plus a camera dolly, and I have a few other tricks up my sleeve I'm dying to try out - so let's see how we get on. Meanwhile, here's a music video with freefall that's work-safe and still awesome - thanks to Dyeve for the suggestion.

I, Go-Bot [Review: Transmorphers]

This is why I love The Asylum!

You may be surprised to hear that Transmorphers has nothing to do with the Transformers movie at all, taking its cue instead from The Matrix: Revolutions and the Terminator films. Following Earth's complete subjugation by an army of robots - possibly of alien origin - the last humans cower in an underground city, hatch their plans to take back the planet, and generally argue, bitch and catfight.

These robots don't actually transform into mechanical disguises, with a couple of exceptions (and incidentally, did the scriptwriters never see Tom Hanks in Big? Turns out he was right about something) but they do morph between flying, walking and heavy weapons configurations.

General Van Ryburg (Eliza Swenson) has a cunning plan - but naturally it's doomed to failure unless Mitchell (Matthew Wolf) - a revolutionary placed in suspended animation by Van Ryburg - is thawed out to lead the squadron. Complicating matters is Mitchell's former girlfriend Nadir (Amy Weber) who is now married to the General. The General was originally written for a man, and Eliza Swenson has been switched into the part with no changes to the plot or script - creating an interesting dynamic between the lead characters, plus a society that no longer bats an eyelid at either gender roles or sexuality - Captain Jack Harkness would fit right in.

Eliza Swenson as General Van Ryburg

Of all the Asylum movies I've sat through, this one probably has the highest production values - in that it has actual sets, many of which don't resemble painted cardboard. There are also a lot of giant robots, although sadly CGI and bluescreen footage are both overused and poorly executed. By contrast the acting, while not devoid of ham and cheese, is generally good - certainly the best thing about the movie. In addition to the leads, Matthew Tower stands out as the loopy Professor Alextzavich, and his sidekick Suzy the supercharged cyborg (Erin Evans, aka Erin Sullivan, half of the reason I enjoyed Monster so much) is woefully underutilised.

Death By Lens Flare [Review: Skyline]

"God I hate L.A."

Independence Day was - amazingly - a decent date movie and a real crowd pleaser: something for jingoistic Americans, USAF hardware enthusiasts, conspiracy theorists, chess players, and fans of The Fresh Prince Of Bel Air - I mean, that's just about everyone, right?

Skyline is not a date movie. It's a solid B movie with an A ending, for alien invasion enthusiasts and other sci-fi-gene deficiency sufferers only. While imaginative captions such as "Day One" mark it superficially as an ID4 clone, it's actually closer to War Of The Worlds or Cloverfield in telling the story of everyman heroes caught up in the sidelines of the invasion rather than the leaders, movers and shakers.

The aliens, a menagerie of biomechanical horrors with orifices in curious places, come armed with a variant of the War of the Worlds death ray: a hypnotic blue lens flare that gives you a serious case of acne, then sucks you up into the mothership. The humans fight back, naturally, with automatic Venetian blinds, bad driving, handguns, fireaxes and a Canon EOS 5D.

Avoiding the aliens and their hypnotic weapons, the cast are confined to an apartment block, the rooftops and a few streets, and the style switches between claustrophobic interior and action-heavy exterior scenes. Two thirds though there's a sequence where an alien mothership gets taken down by a drone-launched nuclear missile: what happens next isn't particularly believable or well done, but it does mark a departure from the ID4 storyline - and from this point onwards things get steadily better: the last third of this film more than makes up for earlier weaknesses, and the last few minutes are unexpected and very moving.

I wondered whether the film was a metaphor for parenthood - Elaine (Scottie Thompson) is pregnant, and both she and her boyfriend Jarrod (Eric Balfour) are unprepared for either parenthood or alien invasion, a situation brought home by their visit to eternal playboy Terry (Donald Faisal) and reinforced by constant talk of accepting the reality of the changed situation, stepping up to the mark and taking responsibility for others than yourself. No. It isn't.

Bonus points are awarded for having the heroes actually worry about radiation exposure after the nukes go off - however points must also be deducted for the crude way in which that DSLR (gorgeous as it is) is hammered into the plot as a semi-McGuffin. Sorry, but if it ain't subliminal then it's just advertising.

The Cat Who Doesn't Walk Through Walls [Review: Her Fearful Symmetry]

Audrey Niffenegger's second novel that is not a picturebook is not a sequel to The Time Traveler's Wife but a completely new ghost story and a worthy entry in the Creepy Twins novel subgenre. The story centres on a small block of flats which the recently deceased Elspeth finds her ghost self unable to leave. Elspeth has signed her flat over in her last will to her twin nieces Julia and Valentina, who are the daughters of her own twin sister Edie. The block of flats is also home to Robert, Elspeth's former partner and tour guide/attendant at Highgate Cemetery, and to Martin and his long-suffering partner Marijke. Later it becomes home to the Kitten Of Death as well.

As with the "time travel genetic disease" from the previous novel, Niffenegger takes her supernatural concept seriously and writes with far more precision and internal consistency than many science fiction authors do - in many ways this is a hard sci-fi ghost story. Elspeth's predicament becomes clear as she explores the parameters and boundaries herself. She takes a scientific, trial and error attitude to her new existence, which it is hinted at is somehow electrical in nature. Elspeth also gradually works out different ways in which she can or cannot interact with the others, and thus takes an increasing role in the proceedings. The author has considered fully the potential consequences of the ghost concept - an impossible love triangle that develops between Elspeth, Robert and Valentina is particularly poignant.

Martin's struggle to overcome his OCD after Marijke finally leaves him becomes a symbol for the central theme of the novel, control and letting go. Martin's condition also reinforces my idea that Niffenegger as a writer is particularly interested in mental illness and this is one way of reading The Time Traveler's Wife. The two pairs of twins depicted here are very much dominant and submissive pairs: interestingly they are physically "mirror twins" rather than "identical twins" - this has a bearing on their characters as Julia is healthy while Valentina has situs inversus (a problematic reversed heart.) We come to understand Julia's desire to care for Valentina and Valentina's desire to escape at any cost, and the dynamic between Elspeth and Edie, which is even more twisted, comes to light too. The characters are never simplistic or purely good or evil, for example Julia's overprotectiveness of Valentina is completely consistent with her tenderness towards Martin.

The book is also about love and how intense it becomes when the relationship is unequal. Towards the end of the novel many characters, driven to extremes by intense emotions, participate in some atrocities - with a surprising twist in the outcome, perfectly foreshadowed by earlier hints about the personality of one of the participants. Despite this, and as with The Time Traveler's Wife, the ending brings together both pain and hope.

Bell Jar [Review: Under The Dome]

Under The Dome is set in Castle Mill, a small town in Stephen King's Maine that is completely isolated by the appearance of a mysterious invisible forcefield.

The novel is a continuation of themes of isolation and group dynamics from King's previous novels and novellas, particularly The Mist; also, like Albert Camus' The Plague there is a strong element of Nazi allegory (Camus' novel describes the Nazi occuaption of France as a bubonic plague outbreak leading to total quarantine, as well as being a rich and powerful disease-horror novel in its own right.) King signposts both of these aspects of the novel rather obviously through conversations, and the parallels with the Third Reich are also very direct - the similarity between the Hitler Youth and the Dome's teenage police recruits, and Big Jim's eventual confinement to an underground bunker are two examples.

The Mist was mostly about how regular people can make errors, and find themselves driven to terrible acts due to isolation, stress and ignorance. The Dome complements this by showing just how evil and influential people can control such a population and turn the situation to their own ends - and this time the issue is not a lack of information but the inability of external forces to intervene. The Dome has appeared around a town where the leaders and some other individuals and groups are already corrupt and twisted - and they quickly act to consolidate their hold on power. It's not a subtle plot, and this is probably not a book for young children: hot-tempered and amoral youngsters are drafted onto the police force and quickly learn to abuse their power, getting away with brutality, rape and murder, while a series of accidental and deliberate acts leads to disaster upon disaster for the dwindling population.

Apart from the network of cynics who are already running the town, most characters start out neutral but quickly turn to either good or evil. In a situation like this King is probably correct to describe the group polarizing to extremes, taking on the roles of guard or prisoner. Rather than allow human ingenuity to defeat both the barrier and the fascist-like evil that has taken hold, the heroic characters barely manage to cling on to life, and the ending is not a triumph but a War Of The Worlds humbling.

Digital City

When I see an effect shot in a film, I can't help myself. The first question is always, how did they do it? and the second, naturally, is, could I do something like it? I'm not alone: when the trailers for this film started to appear, the online CGI community got busy making its own versions. The most impressive I've come across so far is this one by Blender artist Ted Malaska:



Here's my own, more basic attempt at this:

Animation created in Blender 2.5. The rider is Low Poly Female from the Blender Model Repository.

Rajni's Universal Robots [Review: Endhiran]

Endhiran (Robot) is a Tamil production starring Tamil superstar Rajnikanth and Bollywood's Aishwarya Rai Bachchan. Given the size of the Indian movie industry - and audience - I don't think I need to point out the significance of bringing these two names together in one film. Rajni plays android Chitti and also his creator Dr. Vaseegaran who would rather spend his nights in the lab with a soldering iron than with his long-suffering girlfriend Sana, played by Aishwarya Rai.

Even though the film is shorter than Return Of The King there is a hell of a lot of plot: Chitti goes from failed military prototype to superhero to love rival to supervillain, and the film rolls together ideas from RoboCop, The Terminator, I Robot, Bicentennial Man, very heavily from Short Circuit and probably every other robot movie book or play since Rossum's Universal Robots, while adding one or two twists of its own.

Endhiran also utterly disregards Western genre conventions combining elements of action, thriller, romantic comedy, slapstick comedy and black comedy and of course musical theatre, and there is absolutely no conflict between any of the styles: you get to have your cake and eat it.

I have one complaint: the subtitles. Endhiran has the worst English subtitling grammar I've ever seen. Sorry. I'm often disappointed in fellow cinemaphiles who miss out on some great films because they find subtitles too irritating - but this is exactly the kind of thing that gives subtitling a bad name. Incidentally, and just to drive the message home, you can see the best subtitling ever in this film.

As a Westerner with little experience of Bollywood or Tamil cinema I can report Endhiran is very watchable and I would recommend it to others outside the traditional audience. It has captivating stars and catchy music, it's full of ideas whether original or borrowed and it's fun from start to finish. I sincerely hope this leads to many more Bollywood-style sci-fi epics.

May Be Side Effects

May Be Side Effects, a short film starring two of my favourite sometime collaborators Molly Brown and Tammy Sander, also written and directed by Molly Brown. One of the props in this film seems strangely familiar to me - I wonder how many WeightWatchers points it's worth?

License To Wash The Dishes [Review: Moonraker]

Ian Fleming's novel Moonraker is a well-written thriller and a great read, and another reminder of just why 007's adventures first caught the public imagination, but in many ways it's not what I expected.

The first seven or eight chapters show a side of James Bond that never appears in the films - in the months resting between Bond's dangerous missions overseas, which only happen two or three times per year, it turns out Bond shows up at the London office and does his paperwork! He goes on training days! He goes home to his little flat! He goes out for an evening of card games with the boss and his pal, society philanthropist Hugo Drax! Admittedly this last encounter is plot-relevant: it's the source of some clues to Drax's real nature, and a clever literary device - the bridge game serves as an allegory for the plot as a whole.

Bond also flirts with all the secretaries in the building, not just Moneypenny who turns out to be a bit boring, and of course he has his own secretary - Loelia Ponsonby - who definitely needs to appear on film in future as she is quite a character herself. She works for Bond and the two other 00 agents (008 and 0011, naturally) and her apparent cold and aloof nature conceals her desperate love for all three - she won't let herself get involved with any of them as she is terrified they will die on the next mission.

Despite all this flirting Bond doesn't actually get past second base with any of the secretaries although it is tangentially mentioned that he has a few friends with benefits in London. His relationship with Gala Brand, an undercover police agent, develops through the novel and is full of Mulder-and-Scully tension, leading to a surprising (but expertly foreshadowed) conclusion.

Fleming takes pity on 007 and he doesn't actually do his washing up - instead from chapter eight the action gradually hots up and becomes more like the movies as Bond and Gala get a little too close to the truth about the mysterious deaths at Hugo Drax's rocket installation, and (most sinister of all) the reason why all his employees have such elaborate moustaches.

Review: The Social Network

The Sci-Fi Gene blog is two years old. Last weekend I was at Howl At The Moon shooting footage of a live performance. Other current projects include finishing post-production on Bast, and a music video that is slowly coming together. Plans for the next year: more shorts and perhaps music videos. A feature lurks at the edge of my mind but realistically this would be a massive undertaking and is still several checkpoints away.

The Social Network has a witty, intelligent, non-condescending script and perfect delivery by the cast: Jesse Eisenberg is riveting to watch as Mark Zuckerberg - it's a lesson in how an actor can portray superintelligence and social naivete - but this is very much an ensemble piece. It's tense and exciting despite there being no action whatsoever. Finally a film has been made with accurate portrayals of websites and operating systems, hacking and computers in general.

The film also features Justin Timberlake as Napster founder Sean Parker and could pave the way for a whole series of spin-off films based on other websites: I look forward to a docudrama about Ikea's Ask Anna.

I think that, while this film is one of the best-made and most enjoyable dramas I've seen for a long time, it should be treated with caution in terms of historical accuracy: it's taken from "The Accidental Billionaires" a book by Ben Mezrich written in consultation with Zuckerberg's former colleague Eduardo Saverin, so may well be a one-sided interpretation. If you also enjoyed this film you might want to check out Micro Men, the BBC's dramatization of the rise of the microcomputer and the rivalry between inventors Clive Sinclair and Chris Curry.

Life Will Find A Way [Review: Next]

Michael Crichton's novel Next is about genetic engineering and has an unusual structure, somewhere between a short story collection and a novel, as the minor characters from one chapter become the heroes or anti-heroes of the next. While there is a clear narrative, timeline and ending, each chapter deals with a new consequence of genetic science or a new twist on a previous event. This structure is perfect for the topic as it suggests that genetic science is running out of control with each development leading to several others, and as with Jurassic Park there is a sense of chaos overturning order.

I'm not going to go into Crichton's beliefs about global warming in this article except to make the general point that, despite being a highly intelligent writer, Crichton isn't always right. For example, the world hasn't been taken over by robot cowboys. Yet. Next takes a scattershot approach so no doubt some of these wild predictions will come about - indeed, some may already be happening.

A recurring theme is the legal status of genetic science - the point about how far behind the law is and how little it reflects reality is exaggerated heavily. Another is the creation of transgenic animals with human genes - such as Gerard and Dave the intelligent parrot and chimp respectively - they're not at all realistic but make for a great read, and ultimately the comedy wins out over the scientific or thriller elements.

The novel Next by Michael Crichton bears no relation to the film Next, which stars Nicholas Cage as a Vegas conjurer who actually does have magical powers. I will be returning to the theme of psychic powers and reviewing this film in a later post.

Voodoo Doll

A second trial with the DIY camera dolly, with miniDV footage tracked in Voodoo and then post processed in Blender 2.5 including CGI elements and colouring. I've included some timelapse footage of the creation process in the video. Voodoo performs well with slow, forward motion, but there was some loss of tracking during a faster, lateral movement, so I had to base the second animation around a shorter clip than I'd hoped for.

Physically there are still some wobbles on the camera dolly but greatly reduced by using paint rollers at the track joints. A further addition to the dolly is an eye at the front so it can be pulled along from the side with a pole and hook.

Motion capture data taken from the Carnegie-Mellon Graphics Lab Motion Capture Database via cgspeed.

Howl If You Want To Go Faster

A clue to the next filmmaking project.

All Just A Little Bit Of History Repeating [Review: Titanic II]

“Let’s make history.” Captain Howard (D.C. Douglas)

“The watertight bulkheads were designed for a head on collision. We never anticipated being hit from the side.” Hayden Walsh (Shane Van Dyke)

“Women and children first?” Hayden Walsh
“Looks like history’s repeating itself.” Captain Howard

“That’s half the lifeboats!” Hayden Walsh

The bridge crew take their places. Champagne is served. The Titanic departs on it’s historic maiden voyage, the four steamless funnels shining brightly. Passengers wave at the Statue of Liberty as it glides past. Hang on. Statue of Liberty? The date is April 13th 2012, and this is the Titanic II, a replica ship departing on a memorial cruise that will retrace the original ship’s voyage. In reverse.

For the record, Titanic II may not be The Asylum’s finest hour. There are no sharks… at least no literal ones. Celebrity engineer Hayden Walsh (Shane Van Dyke) is the designer and owner of the Titanic II, which outwardly resembles the first Titanic but is in fact the most advanced ship ever built. He arrives on deck via helicopter with his four girlfriends in tow. Remind me - who wrote and directed this film? Oh yes.

Production values are varied. The Titanic II itself is pretty good – the Queen Mary doubles for it in dock, with a detailed CGI model taking over at sea. The whole replica ship concept has been given a lot of time and effort – non-functional funnels, hanging lifeboats which apparently don’t even float (instead there are some hi-tech submarine lifeboats below deck) and a reconstruction of the original bridge controls above the real, high-tech bridge.

Marie Westbrook and the Queen Mary as Amy Maine and Titanic II respectively

On the other hand, production values hit a spectacular low in a couple of scenes: Kim Patterson (Brooke Burns) exploring the collapsing polar ice shelf via some dodgy bluescreen, or Hayden and Amy (Marie Westbrook) climbing "up" a lift shaft Batman-and-Robin style.

This film is short – about half the length of Titanic I, and as with many Asylum films it’s quite enjoyable even though flawed. It’s not a spoof or comedy but nor does it take itself too seriously - it's a melodrama and the acting is suitably over the top. Shane Van Dyke does capture his role (half Leonardo Di Caprio, half Richard Branson) but the best performances come from D.C. Douglas, Marie Westbrook and Bruce Davison all of whom are very watchable and entertaining for all the right reasons.

Bruce Davison as Captain Maine

That Bruce Davison is an unsung hero. He deserves a knighthood for his services to science fiction through mastery of the Supporting Role. You might remember Mr. Davison as Senator Kelly in the X-Men films, or perhaps as George Henderson. If you were really lucky then you might have seen him play George Orr in the well-received 1980 TV movie Lathe Of Heaven. But check out his IMDb page where you can see he has taken occasional parts in Lost, Voyager, Enterprise, Sarah Connor Chronicles, V, Battlestar Galactica, Knight Rider, and The Outer Limits - no doubt adding that extra bit of credibility and richness to each episode.

Dolly Golightly [Skateboard Dolly Part II]

You can read Part I of this blog here.

The base for the skateboard dolly is two sheets of 12mm plywood bolted together. You need something to hold the tripod in place - I've used furniture coasters.
I reversed the direction of the wheel bolts for better spin. The wheel trucks have to be positioned accurately so they keep the rails parallel. For this step you will need : one Doctor Who Series Three box set and one Woody Allen box set.Welcome to the future of high-tech filmmaking.
First test run footage:

OK. Runs smoothly except for wobbles where the pipes join - at the moment I only have very loose joining plugs for them (next on the to do list.) The wheels are completely silent, track is self straightening and there's no lateral roll.

Digital Scavengers!

AUTUMN

FUNNY

LOST

ENERGY

DANCE CONCRETECONFUSIONSMILE

Lifting Me Up's Digital Scavenger Hunt coincided with a visit to Birmingham. Check out these other Digital Scavengers who will also be posting photos on the same themes over the next few days:

Lifting Me Up

FreakSmack

Photography by Hank Plumley

Joocy Bits & Wotnots

Water Cooler, The

Soul Energy

Pink Dandy Chatter

The Sci-Fi Gene

Kent Today & Yesterday

Be Your Own Detective

Jerome Aoustin Photography

Jay.Me

Life, The Universe...

Click 'N Light

[update 12.10.10: final list of participants with direct links to their scavenger hunt photos]