🇩🇰🇸🇪🎬
Transcendence, due out on April 18th, 2014, will be the directorial debut of longtime Christopher Nolan cinematographer Wally Pfister. From the trailer below it looks pretty interesting and explores ideas around artificial intelligence & the Singularity that seem like science fiction now, but may soon become a reality. I'll go see it.
Join me, Jason Diamond & Mike Seymour as we discuss the visual effects in The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug.
By my estimation, Peter Jackson is to filmmaking what Thomas Kincade is to painting. Click on the image below to listen to the contentious discussion online or subscribe for free in iTunes.
"May the odds be ever in your favor..." Check out episode #176 of the VFX Show where Mike Seymour, Jason Diamond and Matt Wallin talk about The Hunger Games: Catching Fire. You can listen to the show online by clicking on the images below or subscribe for free in iTunes.
In the summer 2011 ILP was awarded a massive sequence for the Norwegian feature film "Kon-Tiki" directed by Joachim Roenning and Espen Sandberg. The film is about the legendary explorer Thor Heyerdal's epic journey crossing the Pacific on a balsa wood raft in 1947. Their sequence takes place during a major emotional peak of the movie, as the crew struggles with internal conflicts while facing a critical situation involving white sharks. ILP delivered 58 shots in total, with plenty of hero shots and some extremely complex fully computer generated scenes. This is a VFX breakdown giving you a closer look at some of shots they made. Read more at http://www.ilpvfx.com
I just watched the film version of the "Kon Tiki" directed by Joachim Roenning & Espen Sandberg. The film is phenomenal and I cannot recommend it highly enough. The film makes fantastic use of visual effects as well in several key sequences throughout. A hearty congratulations to production visual effects and animation supervisor Arne Kaupang and the whole crew. Also, the musical score by Johan Söderqvist is great. I loved this movie.
Synopsis:
On the 28th of april 1947, Thor Heyerdahl leaves his wife and children behind to cross the Pacific Ocean on a balsa wood raft called ‘Kon-Tiki’, with five inexperienced crew members. The Norwegian anthropologist and adventurer travels on the raft from Peru to Polynesia to prove that people from South-America settled in Polynesia instead of people from Asia, as was believed at the time. The crew did not pack any modern technology on board of the raft, except for a simple radio, and were companied by only each other and a parrot. With the world media watching, the crew navigates the Kon-Tiki across the Pacific Ocean using the stars and being driven by the currents and wind.
While taking on thunder storms, sharks and the dangers of the wide open sea, it’s six brave men against nature trying to get the Kon-Tiki across to the Polynesian shore. After gambling all he has, including his marriage, Heyerdahl is determined to succeed. Thor Heyerdahl’s documentary over the journey won an Oscar in 1951 and is the only Norwegian movie to have won an Oscar to date. The book Heyerdahl wrote about the Kon-Tiki expedition was translated into 70 languages and has sold over 50 million copies over the entire world.
Mike Seymour, Matt Wallin and Ian Failes discuss the visual effects in the latest Marvel Film, Thor: The Dark World. Click on the image below to listen online at FX Guide or subscribe for free in iTunes.
Check out the latest Visual Story Podcast with Paul Zadie and Matt Wallin. We go deep into one of Wallin's all time favorite films, Steven Spielberg's "Close Encounters of the Third Kind". Click on the images below to listen online.
Join the gang for the latest VFX Show with Mike Seymour, Jason Diamond and Matt Wallin where we continue working out the bugs on our Google Hangout shows as we talk about the amazing VFX work in Alfonso Cuarón's epic film "Gravity". Click on the Clooney below to watch the recorded "Hangout".
Mike Seymour, Matt Wallin and Jason Diamond go racing with Ron Howard’s Rush. Plus an exclusive video breakdown of Double Negative’s visual effects for the film.
Please note – we are still experimenting with Google Hangouts. Once this is ‘out of beta’ for us, we will publish ahead of time when you can join us. For now we are recording the audio from the test Hangouts, and we will continue to publish the vfxshow as a podcast regardless. Thanks for your support.
Click on the images below to listen online at FX Guide or subscribe for free in iTunes.
Mike Seymour, Matt Wallin and Ian Failes discuss the visual effects in the new film by Neill Blomkamp, Elysium.
Click on the images below to listen online or subscribe for free in iTunes.
The Raven searches over the city of Los Angeles at night.
The Raven makes an unexpected landing on Elysium.Â
An older work by designer Syd Mead that echoes his later actual work on the film Elysium.
Bring on the apocalypse with me, Jason Diamond and Mike Seymour as we discuss the gaping plot holes, monsters, giant robots and the amazing visual effects in Guillermo Del Toro's, Pacific Rim.
Click on the images below to listen online or subscribe for free in iTunes.
Mark Christiansen & New Scribbler Press are hard at work. They've launched a Kickstarter campaign to bring the entire back catalog of Cinefex magazine, THE journal of visual effects, to the Apple iPad. This is no small feat.
They need your help to complete the project. If you love movies please do what you can to support this project. I did. You can get more info and learn how you can help by clicking the image below to visit their Kickstarter page.
Follow the money and listen to Paul Zadie and me talk about one of my all time favorite films, Alan J. Pakula's "All The President's Men".
Click on the image below to listen online or subscribe for free in iTunes.
Pakula and Redford discuss a scene on the Washington Post newsroom set.
Kneel before Mike Seymour, Jason Diamond & Matt Wallin as we discuss the visual effects of Zack Synder’s Man of Steel.
Click on the images below to listen online or subscribe for free via iTunes.
1906 - This view was taken later in the year. It shows the damage and reconstruction starting in the city after the April 18th disaster. George R. Lawrence was an early pioneer in aerial photography. Lawrence was not an artist, but he was a gifted engineer and a canny businessman. In 1900, he built what was then the largest camera ever constructed: a 1,400-pound monster that required 15 operators and took photographs that were eight feet wide and 4 1/2 feet high, in order to capture the Chicago and Alton Railroad's Alton Limited. The following year Lawrence got into aerial photography, taking a balloon up above the stockyards; the basket separated from the balloon, dropping Lawrence 200 feet, when telephone and telegraph wires broke his fall. Soon afterwards he built a system of kites, the "Lawrence Captive Airship": "a kite train of up to 17 Conyne kites on a piano wire cable suspending a camera held by the specially designed stabilizing mechanism." He made $15,000 alone on sales of a picture of San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake, or about $375,000 today. This is only a detail of the original, which shows downtown and towards the west.
The sequel to one of my all time favorite comedies now has its first full length trailer. I can't wait.
Some friends pointed me to this recording of the vocal track from the Queen & David Bowie duet of the song "Under Pressure" from the 1981 Queen album "Hot Space". One of the greatest songs ever if you ask me. Listen to the track below.
Sean Penn, Mary Stuart Masterson & Christopher Walken in James Foley's 1986 film, "At Close Range" is now available for streaming on Netflix for the first time. I love this film as a study in low budget (6.5 million), character driven narrative. Amazing script (based on a true story), great acting and beautifully shot by Juan Ruiz-Anchia.
Check it out if you've never seen it. Click on the image below for more info.
​Sean Penn and Christopher Walken in James Foley's 1986 flim, "At Close Range"
© Matt Wallin. All rights reserved.
