Here’s One We Made Earlier [Review: The Creator]

CONTAINS HUMAN-GENERATED CONTENT

I’ve followed Gareth Edwards’ career with interest ever since his short film Factory Farmed won the Sci-Fi London 48 Hour Film Competition in 2008. He went on to make the low-budget feature Monsters, in which two journalists make their way through alien-infested Mexico, followed by two mega-franchise movies, Godzilla and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, and now by his new film The Creator.

The Creator is a high-budget sci-fi/war movie epic with a cast of hundreds, a globe-spanning plot and CGI effects in almost every scene – but it’s an original story, not part of a franchise or cinematic universe. It concerns the rise of AI and the war between anti-AI Westerners and a pro-AI Asian nation, seen through the eyes of American soldier Joshua played by John David Washington. It’s well cast and well acted, particularly by Washington, national treasure Gemma Chan and child actor Madeleine Yuna Voyles, and together with the consistently good effects it’s an enjoyable and satisfying movie although I would say the plot is a little simplistic and one-sided, setting up a clear good vs evil story rather than engaging with the complexities of AI that we are grappling with in the real world.

I’ve always admired Edwards’ ability to use CGI intelligently to build believable worlds. Here it contributes to the setting of a believable alternative history where robots and AI became commonplace early in the 20^th century, extended into the near future when the action takes place. Although it has its own distinctive visual style The Creator is not without influence from other movies – in particular many of the robot designs have definitely been touched by Star Wars. Roger roger.

Score: Three stably diffused stars out of five.

All movies reviewed on The Sci-Fi Gene blog are awarded three stars out of five.

Update 7.10.2023: The Guardian has also reviewed this film. Their review is correct (apart from the star rating).

Lunacy update #3 [SFL48]

The forty-eight hours have come and gone. "Season of Smoke" wrapped on Sunday, but despite a night of furious editing I was only able to return a very rough cut of the film to the Apollo which is disappointing. I'll post more when I've fully recovered from the weekend's adventures - there is a plan to complete this film in the near future.

[photos: Celia Peters]

Lunacy Update #1 [SFL48]

Sci-Fi London's 48 hour competition started at around noon on Saturday: team Lunar Industries spent Saturday afternoon planning, preparing the set and capturing some establishing footage: right now I'm running some effects tests.

Superheroes Come To Feast

Sci-Fi London 10 will run from 23rd April to 2nd May. The full programme isn't out yet but details of the All Nighters are emerging plus some awesome events are planned above and beyond the films themselves. SFL is a great indie festival with a friendly, sociable atmosphere and naturally I'm looking forward to it. Check out their website or Facebook page for more details.

The Sci-Fi London 48 Hour Film Challenge will be running this coming weekend, 2nd to 4th April, and is bigger than ever - there are 350 teams registered. I am all cut up to report that this year I won't be entering a team - I'm planning to be back next year ;) - but I'm looking forward to seeing any entries that make it online, and if you're in London that weekend and see anyone with a camera, give them a smile!


"Super" directed by James Gunn, confirmed for SFL 2011 closing night.

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.

Read Me, Seymour!

Two short films today: firstly, The Wonderful Present, placed 3rd this year in Sci-Fi London's 48hour film challenge. I saw this film at the screening event, it's got great atmosphere and effects, does a lot with minimal dialogue, and seems to be following the DV Rebel's Guide to the letter - right down to the vignetting. Congratulations also to Shoot The Runner, makers of this year's winner Abducted, and More Reel Than Real, who made the other runner-up The 10th Planet. You can see the other films here.



Today's second film is The Slush Pile, a comedy by Keith Kowalczyck and Martin Ott. This is not a 48 hour challenge entry. It's based on a true story, and another screenwriter friend also confirmed that it is very true to life. Martin Ott writes:

An friend of mine in the entertainment industry worked at a top agency where he dumped all of his "reader" scripts in a "Slush Pile" so that he could network his way out of the mail room (which he did).

So part of it is true enough and part of it is "tongue-in-cheek" - obviously a Slush Pile monster hasn't really eaten Hollywood (yet!). However, a town filled with so much nepotism and "connections" for a script to get read deserves this type of "parody."



[edited 10.5.10]

The City Of Gold And Lead

This week sci-fi has literally been oozing out of the ground all over London. First of all the Tree of Souls sprouted in Hyde Park:
Rumours of the discovery of massive deposits of unobtainium beneath the Serpentine lake remain unconfirmed and I am assured that the excavation works all over London are pure coincidence.

Over in Piccadilly Sci-Fi London is in full swing. Accompanied by my two leading ladies I came to the screening of the 48 Hour Film Challenge entries, just as the All-Nighter survivors were leaving. I say "leaving", but what I really mean is "falling asleep all over the foyer." Brave souls, I will join you in your cryogenic suspension pods next year.

Our non-shortlisted film, Half A Million, received a few giggles and some applause - you're a polite lot, Sci-Fi London! More about this in my last post. It was shown alongside some really good entries made by some very nice people, so I'll round up the links and publish my favourites in another post.

Starcraft II was on display. This is news. Look!

The amazing Science Fiction cupcakes by Chocoloty (pictured) - which tasted as glam as they look. I'm guessing Chocoloty is a fan of Barbarella, Flash Gordon or old-series BSG rather than, say, new-series BSG.

Half A Million intro [remake]

We made a film for Sci-Fi London 48 Hour Film Challenge 2010. The results were shockingly poor - looking back the decision to shoot everything on bluescreen & model all the locations in Blender within the 48 hours was a bit ambitious and should have rung a few alarm bells, and although the live shoot went smoothly post-production was completely rushed. The film will eventually be uploaded at Sci-Fi London & I'll link to it when it appears.

This is not that film.

Here I've completely re-made the first few shots using the original bluescreen footage - took a few nights but the clip you are now watching is closer to how the film appeared in my head.

With thanks to the wonderful cast and crew.

The Day Before The Day After Tomorrow

The 48 Hour Film Challenge is now over - I handed in a finished film for Team Sky's Edge at about a quarter to one this morning, just in time for the deadline.

We finished the production stage in good time - following the Last Zombie model we did the whole shoot on Saturday afternoon and had tidied up, gone out for a meal and got ourselves home all before midnight. The initial plan was to use a friend's urban jungle as a location but unfortunately at quite short notice this wasn't possible so I came up with an utterly foolhardy alternative - shoot the whole thing on bluescreen and leave myself to post-produce everything Sky Captain style for the rest of the weekend, so it's been a race against the clock, particularly with the render time required for every scene. I "finished" at 11.30 this morning and just made the 1 p.m. drop off, and I don't think I want to see ANYTHING blue for some time. Anything arty went out of the window - we went with what our title and prop suggested so ended up making a heist movie which also required one cast member to play an entire army of security guards on her own - which she did brilliantly.

Although I'm temporarily off blue I'll post some more about the bluescreen stuff because I do think it's got some potential & would like to do more of this in future. For this film in some scenes it works well, but if we hadn't been in a competition I would have wanted to re-shoot some scenes.

The Day After Tomorrow - update 2

This is proving to be quite a challenge to edit this year & I'm not 100% certain at this stage how complete the film is going to be when we hand it in. We had a last minute change of plan and the new plan involved a large amount of bluescreenery - a risk as you can end up with completely unusable material if you're not careful. So far it's just about holding up.

The Day After Tomorrow - update 1

Running slightly behind schedule but we did complete our 48 hour challenge shoot this evening, leaving me with a very ambitious editing & post production job. Still think I can do it but we'll see what happens over the next 36 hours.

The Day After Tomorrow

Sci-Fi London's 48 Hour Film Challenge starts in a couple of hours. I'll post updates on my progress. We're going to try something a little different this year...

Late Night Double Feature Picture Show

While no-one was looking, most of the 48 Hour Film Challenge entries have been uploaded to dailymotion.com. This gives me an opportunity to share two more of my favourite humorous entries - one clearly inspired by The Office, the other simply inspired.

60X60
Uploaded by SFLTV. - Watch feature films and entire TV shows.

City State
Uploaded by SFLTV. - Check out other Film & TV videos.

Too Much Too Soon

This was originally an entry in the Sci-Fi London 2009 48 Hour Film Challenge. Nothing can save this film! but this cut includes some additional scenes, my attempt at a soundtrack and credits that didn't quite make the 48 hour deadline. With thanks to all who took part.

Team: Second Foundation
Title: Too Much Too Soon
Compulsory Dialogue: "Choose your spot and mark it with an X - it'll still be there on your return"
Compulsory Props: Three passports from three different countries.
Technical notes: filmed on mini-DV, CGI and titles produced in Cinema 4D, soundtrack mixed in eJay, original cut edited in Final Cut Pro, this cut edited in the Blender VSE.

48 Hour Challenge Shortlisted Films

The ten SFL48 2009 shortlisted films can now be seen on the Sci-Fi Channel website here. Annoyingly you will have to sit through the same 20 second commercial trailer before you can see each one - thanks SyFy. My personal recommendations are the beautiful and stylish "Minute Adjustment" with its' poignant ending, and "Mark Up" which features some simple but well executed special effects and was placed joint second. In different ways I think both these films push the limits of what you can achieve in 48 hours.

Also at this site are the winner "Tracker" and the other second "Glimpse" as well as the entries from the 2008 competition. "Glimpse" features a lot of running - it's exhausting enough just to watch it! - and while the plot is very basic there's some great camerawork and sound and it has plenty of action movie edge.

[update 7.10.09 - link added to Minute Adjustment without SyFy adverts - thanks Rob]

48 Hour Challenge news

Congratulations to Lost Souls, producers of Tracker - the 2009 48 Hour Challenge winner. I'll post a link to the film when it's available.

Knot bad for 48 hours?

Here's a link to "This Is..." a humorous entry in the 48 hour competition that I particularly enjoyed.



This original film was made by team Death Star Holiday Chalets, who include writer Molly Brown. On meeting the team after the screening event I was particularly impressed to learn that they held a dummy run the week before - that's dedication to the cause.

Incidentally, Tube travellers over the next few weeks should watch out - Sci-Fi London festival director Louis Savy will be at large with a hi-tech portable projector screening short films and competition entries indiscriminately. You have been warned.

Popcorn!

Too Much Too Soon premiered this morning at the Apollo Piccadilly Circus, along with a selection of other 48 hour competition entries, to muted applause and nervous laughter. I was kind of dreading this but actually it felt OK. It looked slightly better - on a full-size cinema screen - than I'd expected.

We weren't shortlisted, so I'll try and get the film onto YouTube in the near future. We were rushed for time so entered with a fairly minimal soundtrack - I may try and put together a slightly improved version if I get the chance too.

I enjoyed the selection of other entries I saw, including a few of the shortlisted films. General trends this year: lots of teleport effects, use of Canary Wharf or the Jubilee Line as substitutes for the future (we are guilty of these too), plenty of zombies, and everyone seemed to be using the same Now Thats What I Call Discordant Sound Effects CD. Quality varied but several films were extremely well produced, including a few with awesome soundtracks - overall the standard was higher than last year.

I know at least one other team was also ejected from Canary Wharf and there may be more - Wharf security probably fought a weekend-long running battle against amateur filmmakers. Also, we were pretty tired by the end but the two secret agents who spent the entire weekend running up and down the Westminster Station escalators must have been fairly knackered.

Watch out for the shortlist on the Sci-Fi channel, then all the films on the festival website in a month or so. There were some really funny entries - several of my favourites weren't shortlisted either. I'll post links to them when I can, for now I'll just say watch out for string and kettles.

Three favourite books

Looking forward to a screening of the 48 hour competition short films this weekend - our team, Second Foundation, will be there in force. Last year's event produced a high quality winner and plenty of enjoyable entries - my review here, the films can also be seen here. Moving on:

My relationship with Terry Pratchett's novels seems to be different from most other fans I have spoken to. For me the majority of the Discworld series are amusing and readable satire but not that special. There are exceptions - the recent novel Night Watch is excellent and Sam Vimes joins the pantheon of time-travellers sharing the forename Sam (Sam Beckett, Sam Tyler etc...)

The stand-out Pratchett books are the first Discworld novel (The Colour of Magic) and two other novels, Dark Side of the Sun and Strata. The first is well-liked but quite different from the later, much more satirical books - it's a tale of magic with a semi-scientific feel, reminiscent of Ursula K. le Guin in terms of "hard" magical laws including conservation of momentum - and to my mind the humour is more original and works better.

Strata stands out as an attempt to link Discworld, or a discworld, with the real universe in a sci-fi setting. It's a creationist story with ancient races creating younger races and laying down fossil records to disguise their origins, and this is another book with a mind-blowing, emotionally resonant twist in the tale.

The third book, Dark Side of the Sun is pre-Discworld space opera and I don't know anyone else who's read it although there are ideas in Alastair Reynold's fiction that make me wonder.... Read it. Discworld's gain has been space opera's loss. I may write more about this book another day, if I can find my copy.

Post apocalypse

I gather it's traditional for these film competitions to end with a rush for the finish line. I'd like to say it feels a bit like a marathon but then I've never run a full marathon, so unlike this person I may not be in a position to make that comparison.

I think we finished in entirely appropriate style, after two of us spent the last night editing and compositing, we discovered with less than an hour to the deadline that we don't seem to be able to export the film. Cue much angst, and a real, tense dash across London trying to get the film off the computer and get back to the Apollo cinema for the drop-off. Perhaps one of these would have helped...

Thanks to some really helpful people in Pret and KallKwik we dashed across London with a DVD and made the drop-off with minutes to spare! and since then I've got back in touch with all that tiredness I'd been storing up so it's a bit of a blur now. I vaguely remember being given some book and DVD giveaways and spouting gibberish to the festival documentarists. It's a good feeling to have finished and we could easily have been foiled by those last minute tech difficulties.