Avatar Poster? Ice Age 3 Poster? Perhaps...

** UPDATE (Feb 20th): Jim Cameron emailed AICN and said that this Avatar artwork is fake. Here is the link. Time for me to get Cameron's direct email it seems.

Andrea over at BadTaste have sent me what they are calling authentic promotional material for both "Avatar" and "Ice Age 3". They have also quoted my previous exclusive post regarding James Cameron's upcoming March announcement that is intended to generate some PR and update the VERY hungry public with anything Avatar.

I do not know their sources and I do not read Italian so fill your boots if you can by checking out their link. My opinion is that it is more than likely authentic - a smuggled scan(s) presumably - they do have an older version of the Avatar poster that was resident on the internal Weta "creative board" along with other items found here.

I would have posted sooner, but I was finally checking out "Juno" which stars my hometown heroine Ellen Page (Oscar Best Actress Nomination no less!). Rock on! Yeah, its only 2D - will have to talk to her about that!

So yeah - this is kinda cool if genuine - certainly it is fitting in close to my original time line of a major James Cameron announcement in March. We shall see what we shall see! :-)

Thanks for the note Andrea.

OUTTAKES #004

Last of the Cold Warriors

And just like that, an entire era in the history of the modern world comes to a close: Fidel Castro announces he will resign his post as President of Cuba. http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/americas/02/19/castro/index.html

So departs from the world stage the last grandly important living figure of the Cold War political scene. Castro held on to power through nine U.S. presidents and a punishing American embargo, so the fact that this comes after his recent health issues should tell you the rest: Odds are his outlook isn't good, and he's splitting now to avoiding dying in office and thus not having the chance to engineer the trajectory of his successor (likely to be his brother Raoul.)

Castro will unquestionably be remembered as one of the most fascinating political figures of the post-WWII age. His transformation from charismatic Marxist revolutionary to saavy, sabre-rattling leader to murderous dictatorial tyrant is the stuff that legends are made of... even legends of ultimately evil men which I don't think it can be argued is what Castro finally wound up as even if the innevitability of such may be less certain. Point is, now the legend has an ending.

In other words: Actors of note - particularly those of Latino descent - wishing to win an Oscar about four to five years from now, please start getting chemically-acclimated to aging makeup and beard appliances ASAP.

Secrets of "Avatar": Photo Realism and Lighting Compensation For Dark 3D Scenes

I just got some very interesting insider info about "Avatar" and one that I have been pondering for quite some time. Lighting. Its different for 3D movies...

In 3D movies, effective lighting is quite often an issue and the end result is that sometimes the movie can appear much darker than originally intended (Beowulf at times had lighting issues). This is a result of what happens to the light beam AFTER it leaves the theater's movie projector. Essentially it is divided for both eyes, so the light that we see is reduced at any given time. The screen is 'refreshed' extremely quickly - once for each eye with slightly different perspectives. We see the awesome 3D, but it could be dimmer than intended.

So of course, Jim Cameron has come up with a way to work around this and it is simply elegant. Once again I have heard from one of my "Avatar" sources and he has passed on the secret of just how Cameron is doing this: Radiosity / Global Illumination Techniques.

Ok - now in English - what does that mean Jim? :-)

Well, allow me to SHOW you. Let me underline that this is not the 100% solution that many 3D cinematographers are looking for, but believe me it helps a great deal. I would also imagine that the 2D movie files for "Avatar" may not use these techniques as lighting would be adequate. So until such time as there is a technical 100% solution in the theater, the best answer is to compensate while filming.

Here are several images: The first image is the baseline - this is what we want all actors to look like (regarding lighting). The second image is what was actually captured during shooting. The third image is what was processed and the final picture is what was finally rendered!

This process is the great equalizer. It will maintain uniform lighting even after shooting has been completed - in post-production. Why not use this process to AUGMENT lighting uniformly for 3D? You got it. Cameron now has the ability to shoot as his vision dictates without worry of lighting as long as he has a reference baseline image of what he eventually wants - AND apparently he can integrate this into his real-time performance capture viewing that we have heard so much about! Something called: "Real-time Post-production Illumination Editing" could be adapted for his purpose. It also has the benefit of producing "Photo Realism" too which is what all this extra processing time is for - remember shooting for "Avatar" ends shortly and they will have almost 2 years of post production time for this process!

Wow. Awesome stuff and of course the master himself is using it. Avatar is gonna seriously kick ass and look great doing it.

Digg This!

INTERMISSION: A WEEK, A MONTH, A YEAR, HALF YOUR LIFE

Another meme seems to have found it's way to my lobby, this time by way of The Sci-Fi Catholic. According to the rules, I'm supposed to pick various locales in which I'd like to live for a week, a month, a year, and half my life, and explain my reasons why. That's a dicey proposition when you're confined to a low budget universe like I am. While others get to pick places like The Matrix or Middle Earth, I'm stuck with choices like Boggy Creek, Frogtown, and wherever the heck it is Beastmaster is from. Still, with a little effort, I think I can probably come up with a few interesting B-type places in which to kill some time. So, let's see, how about...

A WEEK... on Monster Island. Introduced in 1968's Destroy All Monsters, this is the place where the U. N. dumps all those giant monsters which occasionally pop up and stomp Tokyo into dust. Not really a place you'd want to stay for any great length, but for a week it might be fun to watch Rodan and Mothra do fly-bys, see Anguirus do that rolling ball thing, and maybe even catch the Big G himself teaching Manilla how to blow smoke rings. The childlike wonder of the experience would be great. Of course, it might be really creepy if they still had the zippers up their backs. Exactly what kind of thing would choose to wear a thirty story tall lizard suit? Maybe I should change this one to the Land of the Lost.

A MONTH... on location with Roger Corman's production company in the 1960s. Not only would I have helped make about, oh I don't know, seven movies during that time period, I would have likely gotten to work with Vincent Price. We could have talked about fine art, the original version of The Fly, and what Chuck Heston was like on the set of The Ten Commandments. Too cool.

A YEAR... at the Banzai Institute for Biomedical Engineering and Strategic Information. Sure, I'm not really qualified to hang out with a bunch of adventuring neurosurgeon samurai rock stars, but with my college degree in Commercial Music & Recording, I could easily make it as a roadie  for Buckaroo Banzai and the Honk Kong Cavaliers. Helping invent cool stuff, putting on a good concert, and saving the world from Rastafarian aliens... not a bad way to spend a year.

HALF MY LIFE... on the Satellite of Love, of course. Do I even need to explain this one?

So, there you go. Not a bad itinerary for such a tight budget. The price tag doesn't really matter though because, as Buckaroo Banzai always remarked, "Remember, wherever you go, there you are." What he was referencing, of course, was the section of The Catechism which states, "The heart is the dwelling-place where I am, where I live; according to the Semitic or Biblical expression, the heart is the place "to which I withdraw." The heart is our hidden center, beyond the grasp of our reason and of others; only the Spirit of God can fathom the human heart and know it fully." Heart trumps budget any day of the week... or month... or year.

HEADLINE: Atheism Empirically Proven Incorrect

Here's a partial list of things I haven't done lately:

• I have not saved any infants from burning buildings.
• I have not retrieved my great-aunt's cat from a tall tree.
• I have not helped give soup to the homeless.
• I have not read "Peter Rabbit" to child cancer patients in the Terminal Ward.
• I have not air-dropped medical supplies to Darfur.
• I have not given one red cent to the collection plate of any church anywhere.
• I have not martyred myself in the Colosseum.
• I have not slain the Dragon imperiling the local serfdom.
  I have not given up all worldly possessions to walk the Earth proclaiming His Word.

So, then... someone want to explain to me what I did to earn THIS?:




That would be Natalie Portman and Scarlett Johansson on the red carpet for "The Other Boleyn Girl," doing something they could previously only be seen doing in my imagination 20-30 times a day. News item here: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/showbiz/showbiznews.html?in_article_id=515051&in_page_id=1773

OUTTAKES #003

The resident pantsuit wearing nun at my own parish is actually one of the first people to have befriended me on my return to Catholicism. She also happens to do a lot of the best, and least recognized, charitable work at our church. But the numbers are the numbers, and I worry about the future of her order.