meyemind.com - david schnee - vfxlog

Tippett Studio: Immortals Breakdown

Sat, 19 Nov 2011 22:38:25 -0800

Hazard and Ratakonda threw together some sweet break downs for our work on Immortals a few weeks ago, check it out below:

The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1 is Released!

Fri, 18 Nov 2011 00:01:01 -0800

in the USA 18 November 2011

visit Breaking Dawn @ imdb.com

Box Office Results November 18-20, 2011
Number: 1
Opening Weekend Gross: $138,122,261
Theatres: 4,061
Theatre Average: $34,012
Weeks in Release: 1
Total Gross: $ 291,022,261(worldwide)
Budget: $110 Million
Running Time: 1 hrs. 48 min.
Distributor: Summit Entertainment
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Genre: Romance

While it wasn't quite able to reach the series high mark, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1's outstanding $138.1 million opening indicated that the sexy teen vampires are as popular as ever. What does appear to have lost some of its appeal, however, is dancing penguins: Happy Feet Two struggled to even open to half as much as its popular 2006 predecessor. Overall box office was up around 14 percent to over $221 million, and the weekend currently ranks as the sixth-highest on record.

Breaking Dawn's $138.1 million opening is second-best among Twilight movies behind 2009's New Moon ($142.7 million). That's a small gap, though, and Breaking Dawn still managed to claim fifth place on the all-time opening weekend chart behind Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, The Dark Knight, Spider-Man 3 and New Moon. As is typical for the Twilight movies, its weekend was incredibly front-loaded with 51.9 percent of the gross coming from Friday showings (including its $30.25 midnight tally).

Killer visuals: Tippett's God speed fx for Immortals

Thu, 17 Nov 2011 08:15:02 -0800

I was interviewed by Ian Failes of fxguide.com a couple weeks back, and the article went up today, check it out below:

A stand-out sequence in Tarsem Singh's Immortals takes place near the climax of the film, when King Hyperion frees a group of entombed Titans from their cell using the powerful and magical Epirus Bow. But before the released Titans can escape, the Gods descend from Mount Olympus and work to dispatch them. A bloody close-quarters fight ensues, with Tippett Studio combining live action footage, motion captured performances and CG Titans and effects to create the final shots.

In particular, the battle is punctuated by something known as 'God Speed' to emphasize the otherworldly powers of the Gods and Titans. "When the Titans died," explains Tippett Studio visual effects supervisor Matt Jacobs, "they wanted them to take on a slow motion effect. So when you see them get chopped in two or a head chopped off or smashed by Zeus' chain they wanted it to feel more photosonic - around 500 frames per second - so there was a speed ramp as the Titan dies and then goes into slow motion."

We talk to key members of the Tippett team about how they realized the animation, effects, lighting and compositing for the Gods versus Titans fight.

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Compositing

Although the fight combined live action, motion capture, CG Titans and effects, the compositing, according to compositing supervisor David Schnee, remained within reason. "We had your typical re-times, plate clean-up and times when we had to make some of the action a little snappier to emphasize certain moves and strikes," he says.

Tiles were shot all around the set to enable room to move the camera and re-compose certain scenes if needed. Tippett's Christopher Paizis was the matchmove lead. The scenes were all comp'd in 2D in Nuke, and elements later broken out to allow for the stereo conversion. An initial effort to give the Titans and Gods a vibrating look in order to sell their speed was undertaken, but the approach changed to the photosonic feel. Additional comp fixes included adding some more transparency and sub-surface feel to the blood where needed and matching some of the live action Titans with their CG counterparts, occasionally fine-tuning markings on helmets or skirt and sandal trims.

"Our biggest challenge though," says Schnee, "was dealing the projections that we needed to help pad all the wounds that would occur when the Titans were severed and heads lobbed off. They built some nice wound artwork on all the caps for that stuff but there wasn't enough time to go in and do a lot of interesting dressing of paintwork that would have blood splattered onto skin and dripping down the contours of their body and on clothing. So we came up with a pretty cool projection set-up gizmo in Nuke to handle that."

The projection technique began with a key pose of a Titan, fully dressed and mocked up, with a camera target and locator to project onto. "We could then easily place our splatter or drips onto him," says Schnee. "That would get un-UV'd and applied to the animated GTOs for the shot."

In one hero shot, a chain goes through the chest and impales a Titan. "For that there was a little bit of dressing on the Titan for the wound," notes Schnee. "But then he also ends up dropping and stepping towards the chain towards camera. The CG blood that is blasted off from the impact bursts out in front of him and then he steps into it. So the artist on the shot animated certain timings of the projection to time with the CG blood, which we had as a number of effects passes."

The final shot

Tippett's overall shot count on Immortals came to 96, made up also of a CG hyena-like 'mongrel' that replaced a live action German Shepherd for a couple of shots, and CG Titans added to the film's final complicated 'Sistine Chapel' pull-out, which was shared with RedFX in Montreal.

"That shot had been done originally for a teaser trailer," says Matt Jacobs. "It was filmed in photosonic stereo for everything in the foreground and then in the background the characters were on a multi-planes and multi-directions - all these Gods and Titans fighting at the same time. It was literally hundreds of takes on greenscreen that went into the shot. Tarsem wanted to gore it up so we added CG Titans, blood simulations and parts flying in slow motion, taking some cues from the death effects we had done already. We also inherited a massive Nuke script from RedFX and there was a lot of co-ordination with them to get all the assets. Then we integrated our work into it, and passed it back to them to do some finishing."

Immortals is Released!

Fri, 11 Nov 2011 21:50:45 -0800

in the USA 11 November 2011 (11-11-11)

visit Immortals @ imdb.com

Box Office Results November 11-13, 2011
Number: 1
Opening Weekend Gross: $~32 Million
Theatres: 3,112 (70% offering it in 3D)
Theatre Average: $10,283
Weeks in Release: 1
Total Gross: $68 Million (worldwide)
Budget: $75 Million
Running Time: 1 hrs. 50 min.
Distributor: Relativity
MPAA Rating: R
Genre: Fantasy Drama

Immortals debuted to an estimated $32 million, which is less than half of 300's $70.9 million and also way off from Clash of the Titans's $61.2 million. While those are both very similar movies, it's a slightly unfair comparison given the marketing dominance exercised by their distributor Warner Bros. In its own right, Immortals was actually very impressive. It is distributor Relativity Media's best opening ever by a long shot (Limitless was the previous high with $18.9 million), and it's also the top opening for a movie not released by a big six studio since Lionsgate's The Expendables debuted to $34.8 million last August. Finally, it's the second-highest opening for an R-rated 3D movie ever behind Jackass 3-D's $50.4 million, with 3D showings accounting for a substantial 66 percent of the weekend gross. The movie's audience was 60 percent male, 75 percent under the age of 35, and 35 percent Hispanic. Immortals received a "B" CinemaScore, and a "B+" from the under-25 crowd.

"Immortals": Simply put, I've never seen anything like the violence in "Immortals." It's easy to say that the slow-motion style is just a "300" ripoff, but it's not. In that film, characters moving slowly was a stylistic choice. In "Immortals," the time-disorienting motion is inherent to the nature of Gods and Titans, resulting in one of the single most breathtaking battle scenes I've ever seen committed to film, ever. Again, I have never seen anything like those final 20 minutes of "Immortals." It's some of the most beautiful violence I've ever witnessed on the big screen. ('Immortals' Versus '300': Pound For Pound via mtv.com

Immortals TV Spot

Thu, 22 Sep 2011 06:59:42 -0800

Immortals ~ 11-11-11

"Fight for honor! Fight for you future!" If you haven't already seen enough to whet your appetite for Tarsem Singh's fantasy epic Immortals, Relativity recently released an extended 60-second TV spot for the movie over on Fandango. There's a lot of the footage we've seen the second and third trailers for Immortals, and some new stuff, but most just lots of awesome action, badass music, lots to get you hyped up to see this. Henry Cavill stars as Theseus, Mickey Rourke as the evil King Hyperion, as well as Luke Evans, John Hurt, Kellan Lutz, Stephen Dorff and Freida Pinto. I can't wait to watch this, only a few months left. Enjoy! (firstshowing.net)

Breaking Dawn p1 Done, Playing in the Snow Next...

Fri, 16 Sep 2011 07:13:50 -0800

Pretty much wrapped up on the Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1, so that's 1 down, 1 to go, and the Saga ends... It will mark my 3rd film of the series and the 4th show working with the wolves, part 2 should be the most epic of the pack, looking forward to that action early next year.

Taking a week off, then onto Tarsem's Untitled Snow White Project! (Which has since been titled "Mirror, Mirror")

"I definitely have a happily ever after thing going on!" No she doesn't. Relativity let loose the first official trailer for Tarsem's Mirror Mirror, his "sickeningly kiddie" take on Snow White, and you need to see it just to see how bad it is. In this one, Lily Collins stars as Snow White, Julia Roberts as the Evil Queen, and Armie Hammer as the Prince, but it looks as far in the opposite direction of Huntsman as anything could be. It seems like an animated movie come to life, complete with Nathan Lane and silly dwarfs. Even Julia Roberts looks like she's phoning it in, enough to make me want to stay far, far away from this. Enjoy!

Watch the first full trailer for Tarsem Singh's Mirror Mirror, via Yahoo, below:

You can also download the official Mirror Mirror trailer in High Def on Yahoo

An exiled princess enlists the help of seven resourceful rebels to win back her birthright, and an evil Queen steals control of a kingdom, in a magical adventure comedy filled with jealousy, romance, and betrayal.

Mirror Mirror is directed by visionary Indian filmmaker Tarsem Singh, of The Cell, The Fall and Immortals previously, which just opened. The screenplay was written by Melissa Wallack & Jason Keller (Machine Gun Preacher) based on the original story by the Brothers Grimm. Relativity Media is bringing Mirror Mirror to theaters starting on March 16, 2012 next year, well before Snow White and the Huntsman arrives in June.

Breaking Dawn Exclusive Theatrical Trailer!

Tue, 13 Sep 2011 22:09:18 -0800

Recap... a fairytale wedding leads to violent sex which takes Bella into rapid pregnancy triggering angry wolf attacks that ends in a very painful birth... All those wolf shots are ours side from 2 nighttime shots of wolves running toward cam. ~enjoy.

Yahoo has it in HD though.
Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 1 Opens November 18, 2011

Final Week of Breaking Dawn + New Poster w/ Wolves?

Fri, 09 Sep 2011 07:19:05 -0800

We are into our final week on Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 1, and wrapping it up pretty smoothly, I was anticipating a much more crazy final few weeks on this one, it's good to be ending on a less stressful note... Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 2 begins sometime early next year for us.

A first in the saga, that Summit has decided to plaster in our ponies into a Twilight poster, which usually are medium close shots of characters, so same deal, just left some room for our wolves to creep. Click on that sexy image of shark boy to view our wolves big like.

There were actually 2 new posters released, the one to the left, and the other is of newlyweds Edward and Bella, but nothing cool to see there.

...

Twilight Wolves Among Characters Who Actually Look Cool

Wed, 10 Aug 2011 21:45:15 -0800

4) The Wolf Pack, The Twilight Saga: New Moon

The wolves each had to have human eyes but wolf features, and six separate distinct personalities -- not to mention fur that moved realistically. The animators at Tippett Studio went to a wolf sanctuary and spent time with the endangered wolves, getting to know them. They even created their own "Frankenwolf" out of pelts from already-dead wolves. The result was a set of digital creatures which arguably had more personality than any of the humans on the screen.

io9.com ran a piece yesterday that covers the top 10 Computer-Animated or Motion-Captured Characters Who Actually Look Cool. And what do you know? Our Twilight wolves ranked in at #4 on that list, we'll take it. The rest of that list is below:

10) The Owl, Labyrinth

9) Bit, Tron

8) The Dinosaurs, Jurassic Park

7) Dobby from the Harry Potter movies

6) General Grievous, Star Wars

5) Dragons, Game of Thrones

4) The Wolf Pack, The Twilight Saga: New Moon

3) Davy Jones from Pirates of the Caribbean 2 and 3:

2) Gollum, Lord of the Rings

1) Queen Moat, Avatar

Tippett's treasure trove of effects

Thu, 04 Aug 2011 22:27:38 -0800

Tippett Studio visual effects supervisor Matt Jacobs takes us through his studio's work on the treasure vault sequence in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2.

Article via fxguide.com by Ian Failes

fxg: This is a scene that called for a mass of replicating treasure. Can you describe the sequence?

Jacobs: Harry, Ron and Hermione have returned to the Gringotts bank to find another horcrux to destroy, which is in Helga Hufflepuff's Cup, in Bellatrix Lestrange's vault. They enter the vault with Griphook the goblin and another goblin. The first thing we had to do was the lumos effect from the wand tips. That was a mixture of 3D tracking and 2D compositing to create a very specific glow.

Download a clip from the treasure vault sequence

Then as they're wandering through this dark environment with treasure everywhere, Hermione knocks over a golden bracelet which falls on the floor. There's a still moment as it starts trembling, and then it basically pops like popcorn. That was the way it was described to us. It replicates into several different other bracelets. Then Ron is startled by it and he knocks into a silver platter which falls on the floor, and a golden chalice falls. All those things begin to replicate as well. At this point the treasure just starts taking off. So in a very short sequence we had to fill the entire room up with treasure. The volume just goes wild.

Hermione has the Sword of Gryffindor and she throws it to Harry while she is being surrounding by treasure. Harry starts climbing across this ever-expanding pile of treasure and pretty soon it's a mountain. There's a shot where we're pushing in through Ron and Hermione who are up to their waists, and the pile is growing and Harry's climbing up the treasure trying to get to the chalice. So it's actually working for him and against him as he's struggling through it.

At one point the treasure completely covers Harry and you think, 'Has he been buried alive?'. But then he comes bursting through this massive amount of treasure, falling back towards Ron and Hermione and the goblins. Then Griphook steals the sword away from Harry and the kids are left behind to be buried alive again. Eventually the treasure pours out through the door of the vault. So in this scene everything on the floor and the mounds that start growing were basically CGI treasure that we put into the shot.

fxg: How did they shoot this scene - was there some practical treasure?

Jacobs: In the beginning of the sequence, there was some treasure lying around the base of Hermione and Harry. It helped create some of the atmospheric lighting effects because it caused the light to be reflecting back up on them. Then as we go further into the sequence, they had some pneumatic lifts with gold mylar over them to create light bounce. Harry was climbing up this pile, five to six feet off the ground on these lifts. In that wide shot of Harry struggling through the pile, in all those shots he was climbing up these lifts and then all the treasure was treasure we put in the shots.

We had a LIDAR scan of the set and models that were representative of Ron, Hermione and Harry. We had to do match moves of all the kids in the room, and then it was left to the compositors to work out the integration between the kids and the treasure in Nuke. It was really a brute-force roto job, lots of z-depth mattes - especially when Harry comes bursting through the treasure at one point. I know the compositors spent a lot of time making sure the right treasure was in front of Harry and the right treasure was behind. I think down the road we would try and integrate deep compositing into the process, but we really only had six to seven weeks to complete the shots.

fxg: What approach did you take to the animation, especially considering there were so many pieces of treasure?

Jacobs: We had a two-pronged approach to this. We quickly realized that we weren't going to be able to do everything procedurally, say by using particle simulations or rigid body dynamics for everything. So what we decided to do was block out the entire sequence using very rough spheres for the level and the height of the treasure. So we would work out that the treasure needs to start at a certain volume at the beginning of the shot, and end at another.

We knew also there'd be an aspect to the treasure replication where it would be flying in the air and replicating in the air. So the first place we went was, 'What's the volume and how much do we need out of each shot?' Those were things that we could show to production and get feedback on the size of the mounds and have say more treasure flying over camera.

Once we had those mounds defined, we went into Houdini and we were able to do the replications we needed to do - create these piles replicating and growing. The basis for the overall activity and the volume was done in Houdini. Once the simulation was 90 per cent of the way along, we actually turned it back to our animators and they had a tool where they could take the simulation, instance the geometry and see it in Maya. In Maya, they were going in and hand-placing where the treasure was replicating. By the end of the process, the animators were making their own piles of treasure around Harry. It was a lot easier to do it in animation than through simulation, because you could direct the performance and composition of the piles.

fxg: What were some of the compositing challenges?

Jacobs: Getting the right depth of field was a real challenge. It was shot in a dark environment. There was a shallow depth of field. There was a fair amount of back and forth between the compositors, working with the technical directors to break up the scene so that the compositors had control over various layers to play with the focus. One issue you've got when you're pulling z-depth mattes to pull focus is if you've got a highly blurred object in the foreground, it can can affect everything in the background, unless you're using a deep compositing set-up.

fxg: For the treasure itself, how did you approach the look dev and rendering?

Jacobs: Everything was raytraced - a mixture of multiple bounce raytracing and single bounce, depending on the level of detail that we needed and how close the objects were to the camera. The reflective nature of the treasure was based mostly on environment maps of the set and then a few key lights to add a few hot kicks where we wanted them to highlight the metallic nature of the treasure.

The one thing I found that really tied the treasure to the look of the shot plates was leaning heavily on the lumos effect, and creating light pollution onto the treasure from the wands. We tried to create pools of light that mimicked the blue light from lumos onto the treasure. We did this by adding a balanced mixture of diffuse blue light and some really hot kicks with a blue glow around it.

All images courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures.

Immortals Panel @ Comic-Con 2011

Sat, 23 Jul 2011 05:46:35 -0800

@ Wondercon Back in April, we saw the first trailer and footage from Tarsem's Immortals... this time around the Immortals posse came to the largest stage of geekdom at this year's Comic-Con in San Diego. It sounds like they have shown some, if not all of our sequence... crazy.

Various panel action recaps and spoilers below:

SDCC 2011: Tarsem Singh's 'Immortals' Panel

Tarsem revealed that the actual film is quite darker in tone than recent ads have revealed.

Footage shown was an amazing visual feast for the eyes. Imagine a cross between 300, Spartacus: Blood & Sand, or Troy, but completely in 3D, and on an exponentially more epic scale. Diamond arrows, golden armor, and thousands of warriors shed blood across the screen in terrific stylized slow motion. (geeksofdoom.com)

'Immortals' Is 'More Hardcore' Than The Trailers Suggest

The first clip was cut like a trailer and, for the most part, showed what we already knew. This movie looks like 300 if it was renamed "300 Million." It takes that kind of glossy, shirt-off look and puts it on a much grander scale with the story of a human (Cavill) who finds himself somehow embroiled in a battle between the Gods and Titans. We saw action scenes where the main protagonist skillfully distributed violence around the room, leaving a cloudy mist behind them. Bodies exploding as they met with weapons. Severed limbs and sprouting blood. You get the drift.

The second clip, played a bit later in the panel (and, oddly, played twice), showed an massive, massive room with statues of Titans. Five Gods, lead by Zeus (Luke Evans) transport in with a mission to unleash hell. They're fighting a sort of more muscular, lean, orc type creature and the action is exciting but familiar. Long, static takes of martial arts moves that all end in the slow motion destruction of one or the other combatant. One example is a trident is stuck into a neck, rips off the head, the head is stomped on the ground and then flinged up into another enemy. We're talking bloody, cool stuff. (slashfilm.com)

Tarsem Talks 3D Visuals and Screens Fight Scene Footage

Singh, producers Mark Canton and Gianni Nunnari come on stage. Singh says the tone of the movie is darker than what the trailers have shown and the footage we're about to see prove that. We then get to the new footage and this is the first time I've seen scenes from the film in 3D. It looks good and Tarsem, a director who likes to fill the frame, seems suited to the format. The footage we saw is also a lot bloodier (CGI blood, but lots of it). We see giant hammers smashing skulls, tridents decapitating monsters, and we see Theseus fighting a minotaur. (collider.com)

In new Immortals footage, the gods are young, pissed off, and ultra-violent

Later, the panel showed more footage, this time of a climactic fight scene. We find ourselves inside a mountain -- I'd guess the Titans' prison of Mount Tartarus -- in which there is a huge open-air chamber, encircled by huge interlocking statues. A masked figure shoots an arrow that unleashes a huge white orb, attracting the attention of blackened, inhuman creatures.

Then fiery golden rays shine down on the mountain, heralding the appearance of Zeus and his warriors. Zeus tells the waiting monsters, "None of you will leave this place", and, with that, the fight begins. The fight is brutal and bloody, featuring decapitations, disembowelings, impalings, people (and monsters) being chopped in half and hurled into stone walls... basically, every insane thing that could happen in a fight does happen, (io9.com)

For your complete fill of the panel, I've shared 10 clips from the comic-con panel in the extended post from (thehdroom.com)

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Ends with New Records

Sat, 16 Jul 2011 08:34:49 -0800

What an epic turnout, acres, and acres of people came out to see the final cinematic chapter in the world of Harry Potter. Many have been reading these books since grade school, high school, and college, so for the vast amount of fans it's been a 14 year journey coming to an emotional end. Did it pay-off? Yeah, I think so.

Very happy to work a film so many people have seen, will see, and enjoy, even if such a tiny contribution. So while looking at the records below, I stumbled upon an interesting statistic, I have now worked on the top 3 all time box office single day grossing movies, check out the numbers below:

Opening Night (Midnight Showings) $43.5 Million

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 2 earned a record $43.5 million at midnight showings, surpassing The Twilight Saga: Eclipse's previous record of $30 million. IMAX theaters set a new record as well with $2 million at midnight.

The epic finale has already grossed $105.1 million at the worldwide box office with the weekend still to come! Just on Wednesday, the film earned $43.6 million internationally in 26 countries.

Warner Bros. Pictures released "Part 2" in 3,800 theaters at midnight and the theater count expands to 4,375 theaters today, including 3,000 3D locations. (The Hollywood Reporter)

Opening Day $92.1 Million

On Friday, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 soared into the record books with the highest-grossing single day ever. The series finale drew an estimated $92.1 million on around 11,000 screens at 4,375 locations, dethroning The Twilight Saga: New Moon's $72.7 million.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2's first day flew past the previous franchise high of $61.7 million, posted by Deathly Hallows Part 1 last November. It also thoroughly out-distanced The Twilight Saga: Eclipse ($68.5 million) and The Dark Knight ($67.2 million). Deathly Hallows Part 2 is even the champ in terms of estimated attendance. (boxofficemojo.com)

Opening Weekend $169.2 Million

Working its final movie mojo, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 soared into the record books with the highest-grossing opening weekend ever. The series finale drew $169.2 million on around 11,100 screens at 4,375 locations, dethroning The Dark Knight's $158.4 million. (boxofficemojo.com)

Foreign Record $312.3 Million

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 outpaced even the most generous prognostications this weekend, setting a new weekend record with an incredible $312.3 million at the foreign box office. That's 20 percent up on the previous record-holder, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, and 32 percent up on Half-Blood Prince's series record. Add in its stunning domestic take and Deathly Hallows Part 2 also eclipsed Half-Blood Prince to set the worldwide opening weekend record with an astronomical $481.5 million. (boxofficemojo.com)

Harry Potter and the Fantastic Finale

Fri, 15 Jul 2011 00:39:12 -0800

'Deathly Hallows' reaches an intense, satisfying end... says The Wall Street Journal, and so far the reviews are great with records said to be broken. Harry is currently holding strong at 97% on Rotten Tomatoes. The article below from online.wsj.com contains a clip showcasing our '911' sequence on The Deathly Hallows! (full of Lumos and replicating Treasure) The shot below was one of mine...

Watch a scene from "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2," the final film in the series. Video courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures.

So many good films come to bad ends, but not the tales of Harry Potter. The final episode of Harry's epic journey, part 2 of "The Deathly Hallows," is the best possible end for the series that began a decade ago. In contrast to part 1, which was a ponderous exercise in stage-setting and dramatic incipience, this film, directed by David Yates and adapted by Steve Kloves, is a climax worthy of the term. It's a dark and thunderous pageant that sets its bespectacled hero in the midst of vast forces, yet never loses track of who he is--a brave boy, to borrow both parts of Dumbledore's fond phrase, on the way to becoming a wonderful man. (Daniel Radcliffe, in his turn, has grown from likeably bland at the outset to impressively--and still likeably--confident.)

Warner Bros. Pictures

Daniel Radcliffe in 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2.'

Keeping the audience so closely connected with Harry is a remarkable achievement, considering the intensity of the action that swirls around him: a roller-coaster ride down to the Gringotts vaults; a dragon-back ride back up; serpentine menace on a cosmic scale; wands sizzling, towers toppling; Hogwarts besieged, and aflame; and, in the shoot-out that will define humanity's fate, not to mention Harry's future, Voldemort and his evil allies wielding weapons of sufficient energy to put the Hadron Collider in the shade. "Is it real?" Harry asks at one point, "or is it happening inside my head?" You can understand his perplexity, and you can choose your level on which to savor his mentor's answer: "Of course it's happening inside your head, Harry. That doesn't mean it's not real."

The Harry Potter film series is coming to an end but Warner Bros. hopes to keep the magic alive. Kelsey Hubbard talks with WSJ's Michelle Kung about the studio's plan to maintain the popularity of Harry Potter beyond the blockbuster films.

J.K. Rowling's books first hit the screen when computer-generated imagery was coming into the fullness of its power, and the beginning of its abuse. Some of the movie versions used the new technology to create new realities, while others abused it to the point of banality. Until now, the film that struck the best balance between technology and humanity was, by widespread agreement, "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban," which was directed by the Mexican filmmaker Alfonso Cuarón. But all of the movies, like all of the books, were as real as they were, and as successful, precisely because they were happening inside our heads. The books have been rightly hailed for inciting a generation of kids to read. Yet the Harry Potter movies--good and occasionally indifferent, though never bad--deserve thanks for inciting a sense of wonder in a generation of kids who've been shortchanged by the movie business.

As a failed Harry Potter scholar, I must have missed, in my Muggling way, countless intricacies of the surpassingly convoluted plots. That's why I took special pleasure this time from Harry's question to his friends: "When have any of our plans actually worked? We get there, and all hell breaks loose." But I'll also miss my periodic encounters with Harry, Ron and Hermione, and with the small army of British and Irish actors who made these films a distinguished performers' pantheon: Michael Gambon, and before him the late Richard Harris; Alan Rickman, Maggie Smith, Ralph Fiennes, Robbie Coltrane, David Thewlis, Helena Bonham Carter, John Hurt, Timothy Spall, Brendan Gleeson, Gary Oldman and Jim Broadbent. Wizards all. (online.wsj.com)

Visual effects by Double Negative, the Moving Picture Co., Cinesite, Framestore, Baseblack, Rising Sun Pictures, Tippett Studio, Lola Visual Effects, Gradient Effects, and Union Visual Effects.

Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows Part 2 is Released!

Fri, 15 Jul 2011 00:02:35 -0800

in the USA 15 July 2011

visit Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows: Part 2 @ imdb.com

Box Office Results July 15-17, 2011
Number: 1
Opening Weekend Gross: $169,189,427
Theatres: 4,375
Theatre Average: $$20,816
Weeks in Release: 1
Total Gross: $481,489,427 (worldwide)
Budget: $N/A
Running Time: 2 hrs. 10 min.
Distributor: Warner Bros.
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Genre: Fantasy
Finally, the drawn-out battle between Harry Potter and Lord Voldemort comes to an end with the launch of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2. The wizard wunderkind's last stand will play out on over 11,000 screens at 4,375 locations, marking not only the series' broadest release yet but one of the largest ever, and the movie's already set an advance ticket sales record.
Deathly Hallows Part 2's packing final-movie mojo, and the only question is how high it will fly. "It All Ends," Warner Bros.' marketing bluntly declares amidst the intense spectacle of the movie's wizard war. By opening Part 2 on a Friday instead of Wednesday like the past July Potters, Warner is clearly gunning for the opening weekend pantheon, if not dethroning all-time champ and Warner stable mate The Dark Knight's $158.4 million.
Warner Bros. Pictures, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 has already broken several records in the days leading up to the series finale's hugely anticipated release. The announcement was made today by Dan Fellman, President, Warner Bros. Pictures Domestic Distribution.

Advance ticket sales have skyrocketed to more than $32 million, a new pre-opening record. Many midnight and first-day show times are already sold out across the country, despite the fact that the movie will be showing on more than 11,000 screens in 4,375 locations, both marking records for the Harry Potter series, with more than 3,800 locations opening the film at midnight on Thursday night. Breaking another industry record, the film is being released on 274 IMAX screens nationwide.

The very first Harry Potter movie to be released in 3D, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 will be shown in 3D at more than 3,000 locations. In a nod to one of the most iconic features of the title character, special commemorative Harry Potter 3D glasses will be given free to fans attending select 3D midnight showings, while supplies last.

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Season of the Witch Blu-ray/DVD Released!

Tue, 28 Jun 2011 23:08:32 -0800

Now I wasn't able to attend the crew screening of Season of the Witch, nor did I find the time to hit this action up in theaters, a new lovely addition to the family kept me on lock down. But this epic movie inspired echo's of "Nick Cage Mo Fokin' Back" around the shop... and I love that.

Despite the poor ratings, and awful word of mouth response, I'm still excited to see it, the work was fun, we got to go shoot fire, burning steel wool, and ember elements on the stage, come on.

They even sent out a DVD/Blu-ray crew to conduct interviews, and from the bit I saw, I'm in one of the features below: It's hilarious, out of all the things I said, they used a few tiny moments of me stating the absolute obvious, so awesome. I'll have to post that up here at some point.

Season of the Witch DVD/Blu-ray Supplements

Feature commentary
Becoming the Demon <~ this one maybe?
Deleted scenes
On a Crusade
Alternate ending
Theatrical trailer