The Song Fight Bulletin Board

Hoblit wrote:AND, I think that some of the city scenes were enhanced with rendered photography. Right now I'm guessing, but I'll look it up later. If it wasn't, then I'm betting that there were pictures taken and some of the 'set' was modeled after the photography. (which is probably the case actually)

It's a pretty common thing in CG to use various image-based rendering (IBR) techniques to enhance backdrops with actual photography. The car-chase scene in Toy Story was like that too. I don't know how much was IBR and how much was modelled, but there's a HUGE middle ground between modelled and IBR. <a href="http://panoramas.dk">QTVR panoramas</a> are at one extreme end of the spectrum, and at the other end, there's video games which use scanned photographs for their textures and so on.

David Fincher has made a lot of use of IBR in his movies, too... it was pretty obvious in Fight Club with the various impossible camera angles and compositing effects (like the walk-in F&uuml;rni catalog), but what most people don't realize is that pretty much all of the panned/tracked shots in Panic Room were IBR too (and I'm fairly certain that things like the propane torch scene were heavily enhanced with CG as well).

If you have the 2-disc collector's set version of Fight Club, I highly recommend watching the various special features which show how they did a lot of it. Even the penguin was done with some IBR-derived techniques (using lightfield acquisition to get the sheen of the feathers right, etc.).

My point being that it's pretty hard to define what's CG and what isn't these days. It's more of another tool for the effects artist and animator to use, rather than a means to an end. Which is how it should be. CG for the sake of CG is boring and makes things like the Mind's Eye videos and Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within &mdash; exciting to people who care about the tech, not so exciting once the tech isn't new anymore.

I mean, it's only been 3 years since FF:TSW but that movie already looks like crap... yet 9 years later the original Toy Story is still a great movie.

Also, is it just me or does Polar Express look only slightly better than a late-90s video game cutscene? When I watch the trailer I keep on expecting to see Atrus ask me to give him the pages or something.

15-16 puzzle wrote:Well, beyond that, when the mom and dad try and make it in the straight world, they become the exact antithesis of what their powers would suggest: the dad is weak and helpless at work and at home, and the mom is so rigid in her rules that they all must adhere to.

Oh, excellent call. Didn't notice that.

After reading that message from Fluffy I realize I didn't specifically mention anything about the story/characters in my post ... they were all up to the caliber that I expect from Pixar films... seriously, just about everything those guys have done is awesome storywise as well as technically. And this one is no different... nice "literature" comments on the characters' powers, you guys, I hadn't thought that much about those things
-bill

I thought FF:TSW looked pretty ugly when it first came out. Toy Story still looks cool because they weren't trying to look real. And also it had a much brighter feel, and was much more fun in general.

i hope they make a sequel where the baby fights.

i haven't seen this movie yet, but it's being highly recommended everywhere i look.

anyway, i just wanted to toss a couple pennies in and mention that it's unusual to really look forward to a sequel, since they are usually such garbage (even disney spews out some awful crap with all those straight-to-video things) but toy story 2, for example, was every bit as good as the first one if not more. so that's another plus for pixar.

Yeah, too bad Toy Story 3 will undoubtedly be an unmitigated piece of shit.

I saw Incredibles tonight. Great movie.








*spoilers*
The running cape gag was the first new 'wouldn't superheroes be stupid in real life' gag I've come across in absolutely ages. Most of the others, though brilliantly realised, I'd read/seen elsewhere. But for that alone it's worth the price of admission.

Question - when Gazebeam (it was Gazebeam, not Gaybeam, right?) is found, I did wonder exactly what the circumstances of his demise were. Sitting upright and having the time to burn what he does on the wall, suggets he starved to death or something. Clearly that wasn't intended (given the rest of the story). I wonder how people back-visualised that? And how did he know what to burn on the wall? I worry about these things ...
[/spoilers]

tviyh wrote:i haven't seen this movie yet, but it's being highly recommended everywhere i look.

anyway, i just wanted to toss a couple pennies in and mention that it's unusual to really look forward to a sequel, since they are usually such garbage (even disney spews out some awful crap with all those straight-to-video things) but toy story 2, for example, was every bit as good as the first one if not more. so that's another plus for pixar.

Spiderman 2 > Spiderman 1
Evil Dead 2 > Evil Dead 1
as you mentioned, Toy Story 2 > Toy Story 1
Terminator 2 > Terminator 1
The actual number 2 > the actual number 1

j$ wrote:Question - when Gazebeam (it was Gazebeam, not Gaybeam, right?) is found, I did wonder exactly what the circumstances of his demise were. Sitting upright and having the time to burn what he does on the wall, suggets he starved to death or something. Clearly that wasn't intended (given the rest of the story). I wonder how people back-visualised that? And how did he know what to burn on the wall? I worry about these things ...
[/spoilers]

ONE THEORY ON A SPOILER

maybe he burnt it into the wall really fast. that's what it made me think. i'd imagine he wound up in that cave in the same manner as mr. incredible before being vaporized by that robot thing.

More spoilery goodness!

As far as finding the password out, it's quite possible that Cyclops^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Gazebeam was on the ball well before Mr. Incredible was, or even accidentally stumbled across it or whatever. Or maybe Syndrome's wife leaked it to him; she seemed to not be really that heavily into the whole "evil plan" thing. We don't really know how the "exercise" went for the others. Syndrome could have gone about it totally differently for the previous heros, since he probably only had to be "an anonymous benefactor" for Mr. Incredible who knew him as a child.

j$ wrote:*spoilers*
The running cape gag was the first new 'wouldn't superheroes be stupid in real life' gag I've come across in absolutely ages. Most of the others, though brilliantly realised, I'd read/seen elsewhere. But for that alone it's worth the price of admission.
[/spoilers]

I'm pretty sure I came across it somewhere in Bendis's "Powers" comic, which is of course the best 'wouldn't superheroes be stupid (or weird) in real life' story.

dear everybody thank you for the extremely positive comments about this movie. i went and saw it today and was not disappointed at all.

sooo now that i've actually read the posts that are flagged as spoilage i will reply to some of these thoughts..

j$ actually the name was "gazorbeam" (not sure about the spelling though -- but rhymes with "laserbeam"). and anyway -- the position in which he was found seemed to indicate a more peaceful manner of dying than by evil robot, BUT, he was in the index of terminated superheroes that mr. incredible finds on the computer, so apparently he was killed by one of the prototype robots just like the others. however he was the first one to appear when mr. i. accessed the computer -- so my guess would be that he was the first one killed. this could also mean he was the most recent -- and the fact that the newspaper article discussing his disappearance was such a short time before mr. incredible came to the island sort of lends to that idea -- but within that index, it showed superheroes with whichever model of robot they fought against, and in some cases it showed the robot as having been defeated and then the next screen shows a different robot model with the superhero defeated, leading me to believe the list is in ascending order, assuming that it is chronological at all. but argh... now that i think about it, there was discussion of the password being changed later in the movie, so the fact that the password that was burned into the cavern wall was the CURRENT password probably indicates that gazorbeam WAS the most recent victim of the robot. so nevermind. possibly he was trying to find a way to defeat the system and stumbled across the password or (as was suggested) obtained it from the white-haired chick, and just before dying he tried sending a message to whomever came across it. not having seen him in action while he was alive, one can only speculate on the powers he had, but presumably he would be able to trace the letters onto the wall pretty rapidly, if he was anything like cyclops (as fluffy suggests).

so i gave this movie an "A" because it was a very solidly A movie. kind of leaning towards A+, but i feel i should reserve that rating for an OMGWTF BEST MOVIE EVAR kind of thing. and as totally awesome as every minute of this movie was, i wouldn't say it was like one of the top five movies of all time or anything.

oh yeah and also i wanted to point out that samuel l. jackson was totally awesome as fro-zone. he was the only voice i actually identified while watching the movie. jason lee sounded way familiar but i couldn't come up with who it was (i think i was kind of thrown off by the fact that the character looked so much like seth green.) (and mr. incredible looked an awful lot like chris penn.)

Considering that Gazorbeam's corpse hadn't been moved, Syndrome may not have realized that his password was scrawled on the cave wall. Remember that Mr. I had to have his head exactly at GB's position to read it, thanks to the wonderful parallax effects of the nooks and crannies etc.

Excellent flick. Took the kids, and we all loved it. My daughter now wants us to be the Incredibles! She was so stoked on the movie... it's nice when our family can find the time to actually all go to a movie, as Dana and I work opposing schedules...this movie was worth the time. Very clever, and well done!

fluffy wrote:
I mean, it's only been 3 years since FF:TSW but that movie already looks like crap... yet 9 years later the original Toy Story is still a great movie.

Also, is it just me or does Polar Express look only slightly better than a late-90s video game cutscene? When I watch the trailer I keep on expecting to see Atrus ask me to give him the pages or something.

If you haven't yet, I'd suggest you read about the "Uncanny Valley". It basically says that people like fake humans up to the point that they are very nearly realistic, but aren't then they really dislike them.

From what I've seen of Polar Express it falls squarely in that valley, as does most of Final Fantasy: TSW, although some of it is really impressive, like Dr. Sid. Pixar sidesteps the problem by making all their humans cartoonish, which works great.

the people in polar express all looked like they were wearing masks. it was distracting. also, they didn't move right. you wouldn't think they used motion capture. it could look better. yes, the uncanny valley definitely came into play there.
-bill

I just saw this last night, and loved it. It was so dense and rich. All the water visuals really blew my mind, and the lava, fire, smoke, etc. The action sequences were truly amazing. And the themes covered were a bit unusual for a mainstream movie. Pixar does it again!

It ripped off the Fantastic Four a little too much, but I'm alright with it I guess...
Anyways, its a definite A.
Great movie.

I think the relationships between the characters weren't that similar to the F4. Ben Grimm wasn't related to anyone in the group by blood or law, and Johnny Storm was a lot younger than the rest of them. Each person in the group seemed to have their own tensions with everyone else, more so than in the Incredibles I think.

Just saw it today and great, GREAT film. Loved it. Feel good-ness with the awesomeness that computers have done for the animation world. The characters were great and I was blown away at how involved I got. The soundtrack and sound design was very groovy. That may have been what I loved most. Like a cool video game that I was watching over some ace kid's shoulder at the arcade. A +