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]

How Not To Train Your Dragon

Sintel, a short film produced by the Blender Foundation. The purpose of these "open movie" projects is to drive forward the development of the Blender open-source animation software - new features are programmed in order to meet the needs of the filmmakers. Sintel has now appeared on io9 and several of my other favourite blogs - you've probably already seen it and commented elsewhere, but I still want to give it a place here. Sintel is also the cover girl for this month's 3D World Magazine, where you can also read more about the film's development.

I've followed the development of this film with interest as I rely heavily on Blender as a filmmaking tool. It's an awesome software suite if frustrating to learn. Watching the film demonstrates that Blender 2.5 is now capable of creating a film that is not only beautiful or technically impressive, but also deeply emotional. It seems many viewers at io9 agreed.

The same comment thread also refers to some weaknesses in animation of hair and eyes. Boosting Blender's built in hair simulation system was a major development target for Sintel, but despite this there was a constant struggle to avoid unexpected behaviours from the simulator. The end result is OK but hair movement has been restricted in many scenes to avoid difficulties, and this is one of the few areas where Sintel's animation does not compare well to commercially produced features.

Eyes are another matter. It's extremely difficult to animate them realistically - perhaps because they're under greater scrutiny than other features, and "dead eye" is a complaint levelled against animated films or CGI characters at all levels of animation. Even Avatar is not completely immune. There are so many different aspects to get right - the textures and transparencies, and the constant, tiny involuntary movements of the eyeballs and the surrounding skin. Sintel's eyes hold up well to scrutiny and certainly manage to convey a lot of humanity and emotion even if they're not always perfect.

Augmented Reality Part II: Imagine Greater

As well as the settings there are also differences in the history of the two media: Cinema was invented and popularized by conjurors and showmen and has always been about the spectacle. In the first ever public showing of the Lumière Brothers’ Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat, audiences were thrilled and terrified by the image of a steam train heading towards them. Fans of all the recent 3D films should agree that little has changed since those days. Special effects have been a crucial part of the cinema experience since its origins in the 1890s.

Please put on your 2D goggles now...

Scottish inventer John Logie Baird, who built the first working television system, was a scientist and humanitarian and was said to believe that if viewers could see how their fellow humans lived in other countries and societies, war between them would no longer be possible. The biblical quotation “Nation shall speak unto nation” remains a catchphrase at the BBC. Television has since been driven forward by governments and a wide range of commercial interests, and has been as much about the news agenda, documentaries and public service broadcasting as it has been about drama and the arts.

So you could argue that television is more about reality or realism and cinema is about hyper-reality or augmented reality. This is why "reality TV" makes sense as a trend - love it or hate it, it's a logical evolution of the TV medium and takes it in the opposite direction to cinema.

Documentaries are made for TV and cinema but differently. Cinema documentaries are often driven by strong beliefs and provocative agendas. Take Morgan Spurlock, Michael Moore and Al Gore’s work as examples. Television documentaries often seek to appear (sometimes misleadingly) neutral either by presenting balanced, opposing views or through reality TV.

Movements in cinema to reject augmented reality have arguably failed to do so: instead reality becomes augmented in new and exciting ways. Gritty reality films such as Fish Tank tend to expand into exaggerated, gritty hyper-reality. The camcorder viewpoint and mockumentary styles have led to a fresh way of making fantasy films, as seen in The Blair Witch Project, Paranormal Activity, Cloverfield and District 9. And if you can’t see that dogme films are the most augmented realities of all then I’m sorry but I can’t help you anymore.

My point is, far from converging, these differences between cinema and television are still very valid - in some ways they're actually moving further apart. And perhaps this is something to accept, encourage or even celebrate.

Black Dog [Banned Book Review: Cujo]

Stephen King occasionally writes about large-scale horror, for example in Cell where he imagines a zombie pandemic spreading through the mobile phone system. Most of his writing takes place on a smaller scale with individuals, families or small towns isolated and under siege. Cujo is one of King's most minimalist novels, the tale of a large but friendly and faithful dog who becomes rabid. There's a small cast and less than a handful of gory deaths. Just a tiny hint of a supernatural element - Cujo might be possessed by the soul of a serial killer, but cleverly this remains speculative so adds colour to the story while the horror remains grounded in reality. Out of these basic ingredients King bakes a perfect two-act horror novel with a build up of suspense followed by Cujo's killing spree.

The author is on record as being a dog lover and perhaps for some readers the real horror is the unthinkable: man's "best friend" turning to bite the hand that feeds. For those of the cat persuasion there's a different payoff - schadenfreude.
This book has been banned from a number of school libraries across the U.S. apparently due to profanity and strong sexual content although I suspect the pro-dog lobby may have had a hand in it too:

'In April 1998, Stephen King's novel Cujo was thrown in the trash can by the principal of Crook County High School in Prineville, Oregon, after a parent requested that the book be removed. Principal Chris Yeager said, "It's not what most parents would want their child to read." In a written complaint to the school district, Sue Baca cited profanity, violence, and sexual content in Cujo as justification for its removal. She also asked that all of King's books, as well as any other horror novels, be removed from the county's middle and high schools. "I object to any book by Stephen King as he writes horror fiction, which has no value," said Baca.' - Banned in the USA: A Reference Guide to Book Censorship in Schools and Libraries, Herbert N. Foerstal.

It's easy to criticise Baca's attitude but does horror fiction have value? Some ideas:

• Firstly, entertainment and escapist value is perfectly legitimate. I am not alone in getting a great deal of enjoyment from Stephen King's novels.


• Secondly, think about artistic value which I often think of in terms of emotional response. Well written horror does exactly that - in addition, horror that originates in the everyday has the power to stop you taking the world around you for granted and instead see it from a different angle.


• Thirdly, consider artisan value. Stephen King is sometimes portrayed as a writer of trashy fiction - usually by those who haven't taken the time to do any more than skim-read his novels. Being generous I think the confusion stems from his highly accessible writing style - short paragraphs, straight-into-the-action. However this "hides" a skillful writer who controls the reader's emotions as both composer and conductor of a symphony. The writing is also full of literary and cultural allusion and there is often a philosophical undertone: writing as Richard Bachman King went futher and wrote The Long Walk and several other novels with strong allegorical themes.


• Fourthly, the way to fight real fears and phobias is confrontation. Books that help us learn to face fears and master them contribute to personal development. This sense of mastery might be the reason why children grow up loving fairy stories, which until recent decades were traditionally the most horrific of all fiction.


• Finally, let's consider economic value. King sells! So by definition his work is valued by some - this also means he is contributing to the income not only of himself, but of printers, cover artists, bookshop assistants, and so on - plus Cujo was made into a film too.

The next Stephen King is out there somewhere, ignoring her teacher and daydreaming new and terrifying plots in the back row of her classroom. When she emerges as a fully fledged novelist she will no doubt be valued, feted, criticised harshly and loved just as intensely, and I look forward to being scared silly by her priceless writing. Thanks to Sue Baca she probably won't turn out to be an alumnus of the Crook County High School in Prineville, Oregon.