Daz 3D is part of 
Connect
DAZ Productions, Inc.
224 S 200 W, Suite #250
Salt Lake City, UT 84101
Licensing Agreement | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy | EULA
© 2024 Daz Productions Inc. All Rights Reserved.Daz 3D is part of
Connect
DAZ Productions, Inc.
224 S 200 W, Suite #250
Salt Lake City, UT 84101
Licensing Agreement | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy | EULA
© 2024 Daz Productions Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Comments
The slow-motion walk away from an explosion without looking back or even acknowledging it happened. To me that's one of the worst hollywood bs cliches ever.
and what about the close up shots on boots or terrible shoes when main actors come out of the car? nothing worst or more puzzling
Pet peeve to me as well is when the cops shout "Stop, police!" when they and a suspect are on foot and at least 50yds apart. Gives the bugger time to get away. And the director/producer has them run down like a fox and hounds. Only sometimes do you get another cop come into the scene to "cut them off at the pass".... sigh. Fake chase scenes. Ugh.
Is your Capt Cook production going to be for the small screen here in the UK or elsewhere? Or is it educational? Please let us know when/where we can see if available.
And what about the hero with just a handgun and no body armor, against a highly trained team of 12 bad guys who are expert marksmen and outiftted with the latest automatic weapons and tons of body armor...
And somehow the one guy ends up killing them all, and only gets one minor bruise...but none of the 12 bad guys manages to land even a single bullet on the guy???
Rule #1 of action movies: "Bad guys can't shoot"
Oh, and Rule #2: "Bad guys are always polite and wait their turn to fight with the good guy"
Silkene,
It will be small screen, posted on a new website. The project started out to cover Cook's third voyage and the discovery of Hawaii..However I soon realized that I would have to included his second voyage...then his first ..and then his early years.... In short it cascaded backwards and it grew and grew. Like most on the forum, I am a one person production.. (with no benefits, no pay - but lots of titles). I have created a fair amount of footage of each voyage but at present I am working on getting Cook's early years completed.. In the meantime I am putting up a tease of a few clips from all the chapters - more or less of an overview. That should be up in a week or so.
Magaremoto,
I think that is called "footage"
Well, I took another shot at trying to watch Anonymous, but this time I couldn't make it past the 1/2 hour mark. Which is an improvement, because the first time I barely made it to 15 minutes before turning it off in boredom. And a little creepiness.
But I do have to give the film credit for the gorgeous visuals. And before you knock the dark, moody, sepia environment, keep in mind that this is a story about a time that was, well, dark. I mean, we're talking about stone castles in an age without any interior lighting other than candles. And it was England, which is by definition cold and foggy and gloomy for most of the year. So yeah, dark and gloomy is kind of appropriate. Not something I personally enjoy, but certainly appropriate. And it certainly fulfills the goal of transporting your audience to that time and place.
As far as me saying that the pre-production team doesn't (or didn't) consider the cost of implementation of their concepts in later phases, well, that's not what I said. And whether it's true on any particular project depends on many many things. But I think it's safe to say that the stuff we're discussing here are relatively minor post production operations, especially compared to other phases and costs of such a huge project.
Anyway, I also think it's safe to say that those decisions on mood and environment made for this film aren't the main cause for the poor reception and box office (BTW, it had a $30 million budget and a $15 million worldwide gross...and keep in mind a film might need to gross almost 2-3 times its budget to break even). I think it's more a function of, IMO at least, a terrible movie. As with anything, there's always some who will love it, but in general it's painful, dull, and uninteresting to watch for most people. But like I say, many of the visuals look a bit like the gorgeous oil paintings of the age.
Oi!
We had a nice day this Summer. July 3rd. It reached 37 degrees (that's 98 in American money). Some of us even took our coats off.
I would have called this "footache"
all you have pointed out opens up a discussion about what producers, and directors as well, are looking for and what they have to do to capture the audience more and more; the already seen never wins at the box office unless the story is really addictive
Joe,
I don't think many people were living in stone medieval castles at least in the Keep in the Elizibethan Age. The additions, for example to Windsor castle were built with a large number of windows -Tudor style, as is shown in the movie. Also, it is the present understanding that most of the great halls of even the early 11th century castles were painted in bright colors. Windows had been invented. It is also true that windows were expensive and I seem to recall from somewhere that the windows were taxed so that only the wealthy had large numbers. And at nightime it was candlepower..and only for those that could afford it..the poor did with a tallow dip... People went to bed early and got up with the first light. ..Healthy, wealthy and wise ? At least well rested. However when it comes to clothing..I agree with you..drab and limited pallette. The fabric was almost exclusively wool..and bright colorful dyes were expensive and for the most part not long lasting. That is why the nobility stood out..their clothes. However the sun was as bright then as now... A bright summer day was the same...And the people of that time did not know they were living in a dull sepia world....If only they had known. As far as the famous London fog - , it is my understanding, that it was a product of the million of coal fires that developed with the growth of London and the increasing cheapness of Northeast coal. The fogs they get in London today are nothing compared to the "Pea Soup" of Late nineteenth and early twentieth Century.
However all this has little to do with the making of the movie..except that it might have been interesting if the pre-pdroduction..had contrasted the brightness of the day with the dull candle glow of the night - How is that for a compromise. Coming back to the main topic..I still think it was a clever device using the limited pallette so as to intergrate the 3D into the live footage. But you also may have a point in that the pre-production staff were designing for not what was but what most people today think it was. After all there is a whole genre of film dedicated to an old American west that never was..or could be, but lives in the minds of the indoctrinated.
Personally I liked the film. Compared to the offerings in the film industry today... Super heros, Super Villans, Super catastrophes, Super car chases, super effects, SUPER, SUPER, SUPER...... Let me get off the Super Highway and enjoy a little historical drama...besides I like Shakespeare.
Msteaka, Please do post links to videos when you'd like to share any of your work.
Shame about Windsor Castle, building it so close to Heathrow Airport..... (yes I know it's a very very old stupid joke!)
I do not miss the hot, humid summers of New Hampshire. If one wants hot, that is what the Costa del Sol is for. I do not miss the cold, bone-chilling freezes of New Hampshire winters, either. That is what Courchevel is for. These are the real reasons for being in the EU.
Now, back to trying to get a ticket for Dismaland. Nothing beats a Banksy exhibition in Weston-Super-Mare on a cold rainy August day.
msteaka said: "I still think it was a clever device using the limited pallette so as to intergrate the 3D into the live footage."
I guess that's one of your points that I don't understand. Using a limited palette to make it easier to integrate 3D with live action? I'm not understanding why you think that's a consideration. Like I said, dragging and dropping a few more color correction nodes in your comp is pretty easy to do. A compositor working for 1 year straight might make something like $100k. The total film budget was something like $30 million. A tiny drop in the bucket.
And I *think* you're agreeing that the overal dark tone of the film was appropriate for the "feel" of that age. There was no electricity or lights other than candle. And England *is* relatively foggy and rainy compared to other countries.
I recall learning, when I noticed that the ocean temperatures when I was scuba diving in California were colder that what I'd experienced on the East Coast of the US, that the reason was a warm circulation of current along the East coast which then circulates to the British Isles and causes the fog. So yeah, it happens, and I presume it's been happening for a very very long time. And yeah, I'm sure the constant coal fires contributed a lot to it.
Anyway, I'll go back to scratching my head trying to figure out what "terrible shoes" are.
Hey, I finally got your joke..."footage".
As a Brit, and living on the west of the British Isles, in Wales, I am so pleased to know that I live in an area shrouded in fog, so well displayed in this Photo taken just a mile from where we live. Nothing to do with realistic 3d I know, as they are a friends horses, so real horses, and real landscape.
Yes, I was tempted to challenge Joe's "England, which is by definition cold and foggy and gloomy" statement, especially the foggy bit. I think Americans have a view of London being foggy like in cliched Victorian melodramas, but I haven't seen a good thick fog in a long time. Cold and gloomy? Well, it depends on your point of view - I can well understand if you live in LA for example, then yes, the UK is by comparison cold and gloomy. But if you live in the Arctic circle, it would feel positively tropical (well, warmer anyway!).
My apologies for the fog statements. I had no idea that anyone would find that upsetting. But I suppose a single photo of a sunny day pretty much puts the discussion to rest. Thanks for clearing up my misunderstandings about the British Isles.
I don't think anyone was actually upset - just setting the record straight.
Okay, well to further "set the record straight", here's a link that shows that London, England historically averages between 10 and 18 rainy days each month, throughout the year. Which means cloudy and rainy for at least 1/3 to almost 2/3 of the month, all year. I think most would agree, that's a lot.
https://weather-and-climate.com/average-monthly-Rainy-days,London,United-Kingdom
And not being at all knowledgeable about the history of England and the time period of Elizabeth which was shown in the movie in question, I assume that those rainy/cloudy days, together with what is described as the "pea soupers" of heavy fog that msteaka described, make depictions of London and surroundings as "gloomy" during the Elizabethan age seem at least reasonable. And I also assume that this film is centered around London, though I didn't pay much attention.
Single, recent photos of a sunny day in Wales notwithstanding, that is...
Again, thank you for setting me straight on my statements that "England" is cold and foggy and gloomy, when in fact perhaps I should have said "London".
Joe,
I hope your taking this all as fun..which is what it should be. You have helped me a number of times on this forum..and I hope you will continue to do so.
I found your reference very convincing until I checked the annual weather data for New York City. Amazing, unless I am reading it wrong..and I have been known to get many things wrong, especially with Carrara, NYC gets more rain fall than London. See the data included. I don't know how to explain the difference in the number of rain days, unless London gets a mixture of rain and sun...such as small rain showers followed by sunshine....In otherwords a different weather mixture than NYC. In short, with respect to total rain fall NYC looks like it is in a rainforest compared to London. And I certainly would not call the "Big Apple" gloomy.
I copy and pasted the approporiate NYC data under the London bar graphs. I did not do a large search..just the one site. http://www.london.climatemps.com
So where does this leave us... I don't think that you can claim that London is gloomy and foggy... I mentioned earlier that you may have a point in that the planners of the movie may have chosen the color range becuse of what they thought the audience imagined Elizibethan London was like. (This is only a guess we do not know what they did) However, my thoughts when I saw Anomynous were that the colors and atmospherics where chosen for production reasons. My earlier quote, "I don't know what the reasons were for the selection of the color cast for the whole movie, but I suspect that it may be that the lack of color and the atmospherics makes the intergration of the green screen and 3D elements more convincing to the eye. For example most of the scenes use diffused lighting and heavy atmospherics.. No shadows to worry about... and only the foreground needs sharp detail." However the largest benefit for choosing the misty atmospherics is that you do not have to build (model) a whole city, but only the foreground. That would have to be a significant labor consideration.
You have said that all they have to do is change a few color correction nodes in the comp and it would fix any of the problems previously mentioned.... I don't know enough about Fusion to go anywhere near that...So I will have to take your word for it... However I still think that they chose the color/atmospherics for ease of production. The irony of these type of discussions, is that if we ever meet someone who was really invoved in the making of this movie..they will probably prove us both wrong.
Thanks, Joe, for getting my juices going, you have made me scramble to justify my position. Lots of fun.
History, fiction and fact are all different things and the cause of many arguments, I have not seen all the comments here, just what was quoted, no I do not view hidden, but "aChristmas Carol" for example was written to be deliberately gloomy. As was some of the art we have seen from the past, art portrays a mood not fact.
i was just expressing my dismay at the continued myth by this and others in past films that it was all grey and colourless when recent findings have revealed otherwise, Jurassic park is just as guilty continuing to show scaled skinned dinosaurs when science has found if not actual feathers usually coloured they at least had protofeathers and T-Rex male almost certainly as most male Avians! Not reptiles would have been ostentatiously arrayed to attract females as top of the food chain.
or maybe big penguins!
but unlikely to be grey lizard skins, snakes and lizards are even brightly coloured.
Erm.... you obviously haven't read A Child's Christmas in Wales, then!
(All those slag heaps and dreary valleys)
I love the Brecons... they are stunning. You are very lucky! The latitude-defying climate here IMHO is much like Oregon thanks to the Gulf Stream. If that packs up, then there will be a problem.
Husband is from Pembs, miles of gorgeous coastal national park.
Below is the most beautiful secluded beach in the UK (because you must walk a ways...quite a ways, to get there from carpark)
http://www.visitpembrokeshire.com/explore-pembrokeshire/beaches/barafundle-bay/
Ah fog.
Warm air being chilled by a cold sea is what produces sea fog (aka advection fog). It depends on how wet the air is, and the difference between the air's temperature and dew point. (Dew point is the temperature at which the air becomes saturated and the water condenses out. 1 kg of air at 30C can hold 27g of water. 1kg of air at 15C can only hold 10g of water...) As the air temperature cools to below its dew point, the water condenses and forms what is essentially a cloud at sea level - fog. Advection fog will creep along rivers and low valleys, and it can be persistant for days - essentially untill the air mass is replaced. River cities like London are very prone to advection fog, so that's partly where the reputation comes from. Add in the polution from coal fires and you get the dreaded (and deadly) pea souper.
The existance of this pamphlet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fumifugium published in 1661 would suggest that pea soupers were likely to have been a problem in Elizabethan times, and not just a Victorian/20th century phenomenon.
There are other types of fog, but that's even more off topic!
I can remember thick fogs in my childhood, the likes of which we just don't seem to have anymore, and I think it is a result of less coal fires and cleaner burning fuels. I suspect that much before Elizabethan times, when wood rather than coal would have been the normal domestic fuel, that the air was generally clearer and less prone to thick fogs, but they got worse and more frequent through the 19th century and the first half of the 20th. Of course we still get mists and lighter fogs - I particularly remember driving along the Wharfe valley here in Yorkshire fairly early one morning with a mist hanging in the lower valley, and it was a truly beautiful sight.
Certainly there would have been a big rise in coal production & use from the Industrial Revolution, making things much worse. But coal smog was killing people way back to the 13th century and probaby earlier. The Great Smog of 1952 (before my time but still in living memory) is probably the most infamous one, leading to the Clean Air Act, and the much better conditions we enjoy today.
Mist, of course is just less dense fog (the definition is that if visibility is less than 1000m, it's fog. Frurther, then it's mist).
Convection fog & mist is the wonderful stuff we associate with Autumn and Spring, and lots of photographs. It needs crips clear skies and still wind, and is quickly burned away by the sun. Makes for great renders in Carrara too with the cloud primitive and various mist/fog tools! (see how he brought it back on topic!
One of the things I love about the VFX biz is that you have the opportunity to learn so much about the physical world. When you have to reproduce it, or even improve upon it, to do a good job you really need to learn a ton about the physical world. You learn about light and how it works, and surfaces and their properties. You learn about motion, and physics, and how people move, and what moves them, and color, and on and on...
And sometimes you even learn about the weather patterns in a certain part of the world.
Anyway, the original issue was whether the environment portrayed in Anonymous, in Elizabethan era London, was reasonable. Comparisons to present day Wales or New York City, while interesting, are fairly irrelevant. I'm sure we can find 1,000 cities with rainfall equal to London, and another 1,000 with rainfall less than London.
As I mentioned before, the point of this exercise (ie, producing a feature film for an audience) is to figure out what it takes to get the audience to hear your story, believe your story, be interested in your story, FEEL your story, and be transported to the world where your story is happening. Even if that world doesn't really exist. That's the purpose of movies and storytelling.
And of course, sometimes you get it right, sometimes you don't.
And I guarantee that the VAST majority of the audience has absolutely no clue what the actual rainfall totals in London or Wales or NYC are, nor do they care. But they generally DO have a notion or sense or feeling about the Elizabethan age in London, whether right or wrong. And it's based on what they've seen and heard about in their lives. Some of it is nonsense, some of it is reasonable. But whether it's factual is somewhat irrelevant. If you want to transport your audience to the world you've created, you have to meet them where they live. And that means meeting their beliefs and expectations, if you can figure them out.
There's an old saying that I find very true: "Every stereotype has a grain of truth". And the stereotype of London back in the old days is that it was generally dark and foggy, for the reasons already mentioned. And the grain of truth is that, yeah, there was a lot of smog from coal fires. And yeah, London is relatively cloudy and rainy compared to other places. It's not the cloudiest and rainiest place on earth, but RELATIVELY.
It's good to understand stuff like this, and study the world you're simulating. But it's also good to understand your audience and your main goal. What's the best way to tell your story?
Joe - I can certainly buy into that.
Phil is right, in Tudor times most of the fuel was wood. However, by 1700 there were some 600 ships carrying coal from Newcastle to London. Quite a change. As far as London fog..stories... In the mid 1940's my family lived in London...Streatham..I was about five and had gone to play in the local common (park) The fog moved in and you could not see twenty feet. It was incredibly dense. I wandered around totally disorientated for what seemed like hours..until I stumbled upon a road. I did not know which way to go..and totally confused I sat down and started to cry..An elderly gentleman came a long and asked what the problem was. He asked where I lived, and I said Telford Avenue. He said to walk up this road and then turn left. I must have looked confused, for he took out sixpence and put it in my left hand and said go to the corner and then turn to the hand that had sixpence in it. And so I got home..But I will never forget the kindness of that man or the density of that fog. Now I live in Buffalo NY ..and instead of fog there is snow - lots and lots of snow - last winter was epic - in this case belileve all that you have heard about Buffalo.
I also agree with what Joe said about the myths and misinformation that most of us carry around with us.. As I mentioned previously, the "Old West" is a stellar example. Hollywood has made a fortune creating this "Disneyland" of misconceptions, until today it is more real than the reality. Do you really think people stood in the street in quick draw scenario or how about the stage coaches galloping full speed all the time...Now those are Super horses. In reality they were lucky to make 25 miles a day and there were no good roads. And so it goes, the movie camera is probably the best media for propaganda ever invented..So what do you believe in and are you sure ?
Small world - I used to live in Streatham for a couple of years (around 1980/81) at Cameford Court on New Park Road, so only a couple of streets away from Telford Avenue! Of course that was all B.C. (before Carrara!)
I started life in Fulham, on the other side of the River, before being moved to Kent at the grand old age of just over a year. Only knew of Streatham because of the ice rink when growing up.
We lived in Streatham from 1944 to 46, then we moved to Swindon...Then later back to Newcastle before shipping out to the "New World". All wonderful memories. I went back to Streatham in the 1980's to see where I grew up.... It is quite a surprise to see the difference in scale between a young mind and the reality. When I think back to the schools of that period..they were very good almost like a version of the Movie, "Mr. Chips" (the 1939 version).
I don't remember an ice rink chohole, but there was a large dance hall on the High Street, I think it was called the Lacarno or such. Perhaps they turned it into an ice rink.