Thoughtful Preparations: Media Spin Blog

Once again, congratulations to Reid on your accomplishment in getting Broken Arrows made. Cannot say enough for someone who manages to realize the long road from the idea to the screen.

Fortunately Reid is one of those people like myself who has been known to take a few risks, but they are carefully calculated risks. On the other hand, there is a man I know of who died by jumping backwards from his roof onto trampoline, only he missed. He broke his red neck; the thoughtless party stunt killed him. For him we have a Darwin Award.

The Darwin Awards:

“We salute the improvement of the human genome
by honoring those who remove themselves from it.
Of necessity, this honor is generally bestowed posthumously.”

Comical tales of the unwitting demise of fools who try to build their own rocket cars, drink from bottles found at the dump, or who drown in their kitchen sinks may have served as inspiriation for HBO’s Six Feet Under, and no doubt for their own movie, The Darwin Awards, to be screened later in January’s Sundance Film Festival. The film version written and directed by Finn Taylor, stars a quirky cast including Joseph Fiennes, Winona Ryder, David Arquette, Ty Burrell, Kevin Dunn, Nora Dunn, Judah Friedlander, Lukas Haas, Tom Hollander, Brad Hunt, Juliette Lewis, Julianna Margulies, Tim Blake Nelson, Alessandro Nivola, Chris Penn, Max Purlich, D.B. Sweeney, Robin Tunney and Wilmer Valderrama.

More details in a San Francisco Chronicle article.

I’ve been out of touch with many of the multi-talented, creative folks I met and worked with on Shrek 2 at PDI/DreamWorks. So, it was with great surprise and delight that I read a front page San Francisco Chronical news story about the friendly, energetic software engineer Reid Gershbein writing and directing an independent film Broken Arrows. The Chronicle knows that eyeballs are attracted to Google, so the headline is more about how the Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin are involved in funding roughly 50% of the making of Broken Arrows. Turns out Reid knows them and successfully pitched his story.

The Broken Arrows trailer looks very promising and I’ll be looking forward to seeing Reid’s first film when it comes out later in 2006. Maybe I’ll even be fortunate to get a pre-screening…. hello, Reid?

There are few places on Earth where the stars in the sky can be seen in all their glory. In most civilized or inhabited regions, the stars’ powers are diminished by the many particles and pollutants in the air. As the population grows greater, the stars grow dimmer.

One would think that with a greater talent pool, there would be greater star actors. But alas, and alack, the stars fade to black.

What I am talking about is the Oscars ain’t what they used to be… they are headed the way of the Miss America pageant. Take a look at this Road To the Oscars list of the Top 25 Stars of 2005 at the Internet Movie Database. Paris Hilton at #5? Perhaps this explains the confusion…

rankings were not based upon critical assessments or box-office performance, but the actual search behavior of over 30 million users of IMDb.com.

From the Sports section, a troubled ex-field goal kicker, Cole Ford told his psychiatrist…

while watching Siegfried & Roy he realized “what was wrong with the world was linked to the illusionists’ treatment, dominance and unhealthy intimacy” with their animals.

“He felt they threatened (the) world, and he began trying to figure out how he could stop them.”

Then in September 2004…

Ford drove past the sprawling Jungle Palace estate owned by Siegfried & Roy. Obscenities poured out of the slow-moving van, then blasts from a 12-gauge shotgun sprayed the entrance.

An obstinate Ford later appeared in a Las Vegas courtroom, demanding to plead guilty to the shooting. Instead, the judge ruled he was incompetent to stand trial and sent him to the state’s mental facility in northern Nevada.

“I’m perfectly competent,” Ford told the judge in January.

Although there is strong evidence that Siegfried and Roy’s DreamWorks 3D TV show Father of the Pride lowered the bar for 3D computer animated entertainment, that is no excuse for Cole Ford’s violent response.

The lighting and shading on the above image is unforgivable, enough to throw any respectable 3D artist into a tantrum. Most folks just changed the channel.

Cole Ford may have perceived part of the world’s problems while watching Siegfried and Roy’s live act. DreamWorks’ choice to outsource their FOTP 3D animation to China is yet another problem. So far no news of California 3D animators morphing into Yosemite Sam and going postal.

Last night the San Francisco chapter of SIGGRAPH presented a screening of the SIGGRAPH 2005 Electronic Theater at the Lawrence Hall of Science on the UC Berkeley campus.

First of all, I had never traveled up to that part of the Berkeley campus, very high up in the hills surrounded by Tilden Park. It was a clear night under nearly a full moon, and view of SF Bay was spectactular. Here is a web cam of the view.

The Hall of Science is was full of surprises: a robotic dinosaur exhibit, lots of hands on science and physics demonstrations, a gallery containing original M. C. Escher (no… not M. C. Hammer!) lithographs, and a very interesting museum honoring Ernest O. Lawrence, UC’s first Nobel laureate and inventor of the cyclotron. On display are early cyclotrons and films of the team working at Berkeley’s Radiation Lab.

One of the standouts of the SIGGRAPH 2005 computer animation festival was Cubic Tragedy, a very clever look at a 3D character learning polygonal modeling tools and giving herself unsuccessful geometric plastic surgery. There were a number of excellent non-commercial technical works, NASA’s MODIS Daily Global Snow Cover and A Semi-Lagrangian Contouring Method for Fluid Simulation. Not as technically challenging, and very funny in a unfaithfully based way, was Learn Self Defense by the wonderfully comic stylings of the Chris Harding Animation Concern.

The men and women of World War II have been dubbed The Greatest Generation by Tom Brokaw’s book. Frank Capra’s World War II war documentaries, Why We Fight on DVD captures the history and urgency of the times. It was a different era before political correctness (the Japanese enemies were referred to as “Japs”), civil rights advances, and there is a spirit of post Depression, can-do American unity. The country was recovering from the Great Depression, and building up its role as a global manufacturing giant. This was before the divisive paranoia introduced by Senator Joe McCarthy and the Red Scare of Communism that dominated U.S. foreign policy for decades. In fact “The Battle of Russia” heaps great praise upon the Russians for beating back the Nazi advance and handing Hitler some of his first defeats.

The 8 films on 4 DVDs are a long hard slog, as good old Rummie our present Secretary of Defense would say. 450 minutes of badly transferred grainy black and white film with rough, tinny soundtracks distracts from a totally absorbing appreciation of the historic experience. All the same, these are valuable recordings of World War II history and our country’s mood.

Crisply narrated by Walter Huston, there is classic footage of Adolf Hitler, Neville Chamberlain, Winston Churchill, Nazi, Japanese and Allied armies. Why We Fight World War II – The Complete Series. American Propaganda Films of WWII, original release 1942-1944, 4 DVD Series, 2005, 450 minutes

• Disc 1: “Prelude to War”, “The Nazis Strike”
• Disc 2: “Divide & Conquer”, “Battle of Britain”
• Disc 3: “Battle of Russia”, “Battle of China”
• Disc 4: “War Comes to America”, “The Negro Soldier”

The Battle of China historically recounts the Japanese attacks and agressions upon China, showing some of the first ever aerial bombings of cities, and the rape of Nanking Massacre.

The War Comes to America includes an idealized corny section narrated by Humphrey Bogart covering the breadth of the American landscape and human melting pot. The sequence begins showing a group of children reciting the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag, in its form of that time, without the 1954 “under God” insertion.

Viewing the war propaganda films of the 1940’s, we see an America that is carefully neutral, at peace, hesitant and humble about entering the world stage of war. These films are crafted to rally isolationist USA into battle, clarifying the moral imperitive to defeat a globe conquering Hitler. Upbeat, cheery anthems such as “This is the Army Mr. Jones”, introducing the Selective Service draft call, practically dance our men and boys off to war.

The Negro Soldier opens with a montage of American churches, enters a large cathedral and a somber chorale, not joyful gospel music. The church minister delivers the sermon and narrates the entire hour of film.

The Germans developed a huge arsenal of tanks and cannons, an air force with advanced aeronautical capabilities and were fully loaded to strike. Many of the aircraft and rocketry plans captured by the British, Russians and Americans were applied in 1950’s and 60’s fighter aircraft and space race technologies. One obvious point is: Saddam’s Iraq was not even close to 10% of Hitler’s Nazi Germany. It was a different time and place, and by today’s standards, it is surprising it took the USA as long as it did to enter WWII.

All images from Why We Fight World War II – The Complete Series.

Congratulations to Participant Productions on reviving the spirit of conscience and meaning in filmmaking with two recent releases: Good Night, And Good Luck and North Country. Thanks to the wall of right wing noise, the past few years have seen a mighty counter surge of intelligent, truth seeking documentaries and fact-based motion pictures, such as The Corporation, The Fog of War, and of course the work of Michael Moore.

Good Night, and Good Luck covers Edward R. Murrow’s confrontations with Senator Joseph McCarthy and his Government sponsored investigations and accusations of Communist activities, a Red scare witch hunt that inspired Arthur Miller’s play, The Crucible. Incredibly, to those of us who truly believed the American psyche had evolved above and beyond those dark days, we now have the likes of Ann Coulter and right wing robot mouths reviving the glories of McCarthy’s delusional deeds. Has she no shame?

Participant Productions was founded in 2004 by eBay philanthropist Jeff Skoll. It is heartening to see capital success put to good use this way. Don’t let the bastards get you down. Keep on fighting the good fight.

P.S. You should definitely support these films by going out and seeing them!

I have an unusual perspective on DreamWorks Animation’s new animated feature, Madagascar, since I was working at PDI/DreamWorks on Shrek 2 while Madagascar was in story and visual development stages.

As Shrek 2 was nearing completion in early 2003, word was circulating around the PDI/DreamWorks production cubicles that Jeffrey Katzenberg, the CEO of DreamWorks Animation, had plans for Shrek 3. Many at PDI/DW, located near San Francisco, were grateful for the surprise success of the first Shrek animated 3D feature. Deep into heavy production of Shrek 2, a number of artists were less than enthusiastic over the prospect of spending another 2 or 3 years with the big, lunking green guy and his perky donkey friend. It was just too much of the same old, same old. Outside one cubicle hung a poster from Mutiny On The Bounty, referring to Shrek 3. The animators were looking forward to trying pushing themselves with something new, something more cartoony in the house that Shrek built.

Rex Grignon (in photo above), Head of Character Animation at PDI/DreamWorks, has been working with computer animation systems since their infancy. Over the years at PDI, Rex provided input to their software developers, and the in-house animation and rigging tools became more powerful. In doing proof of concept animation tests of the Madagascar characters, Rex and many others in the animation department hoped this would be their chance to go wild, and really do the whacky, crazy, fast-paced, extreme moves and poses they grew up seeing in Chuck Jones and Tex Avery 2D cartoons. Fortunately, in early 2004 they got the green light.

With Chris Rock as one of the lead characters, I imagined that Madagascar would get very edgy or raunchy. Then receiving a call out of the blue from a Newsweek writer doing a story (see story online) about Madagascar and DreamWorks Animation projects, I told him that I felt that Pixar goes more for the cute stuff, and DreamWorks in the style of Shrek, more for the gross stuff, perhaps appealing to different age groups. Having now seen Madagascar, I no longer hold that opinion.

The story opens in a New York city zoo with four main characters: Alex the lion (Ben Stiller), Marty the zebra (Chris Rock), Gloria the hippo (Jada Pinkett Smith) and Melman the giraffe (David Schwimmer). Marty the zebra has an attack of wanderlust which eventually lands a number of the zoo animals in the wilds of the tropical island of Madagascar.

Along the way there is a wonderful chase through Times Square and Grand Central Station. The Times Square background is a dazzling composited matte painting job. The 59th Street subway looks about as clean as it will ever be, and cartoon subways are nice, not stinky and full of smelly bums.

From the zoo there are hilarious supporting characters, such as four commando penguins (the leader’s voice provided by co-director Tom McGrath), and two well cultivated chimps who unfortunately don’t make the cut for later Madagascar jungle scenes. In the jungle of Madagascar is a great party scene of the happy lemur tribe, led by King Julien (Ali G.), his advisor Maurice (Cedric the Entertainer), and the cute and cuddly Mort (Andy Richter). So, with this cast of furry creatures, the animators are turned loose to go wild with terrific dancing, leaping, slapping, joking and posing. As with Pixar’s Finding Nemo, perhaps for contrast, the humans are designed to be bland and less detailed than the animal characters.

The lemur party sequences presented some of the largest computing power challenges, since the crowd shots were of hundreds of furry characters. Imagine counting every hair and every leaf, that’s less than what the computer is doing. Real animals are designed to blend into the forest, and in Madagascar the lighting challenge was to offset the characters from the richly detailed jungle plant forms. There were 5 basic lemur character models and 12 different surface designs, providing a variety of 60 lemur types.

The main characters and a number of extras have fantastic tongue animation rigging. Animals can do a lot with their tails and tongues, and these cartoon phenoms do even more, thanks to expert character rigging efforts by the PDI/DW team. Rigs were designed to permit extreme stretching and squashing of the models’ geometry without breaking them, and giving the animators the greatest range of motion and creative latitude.

So, having accomplished all that, the cartoon zoo animals are all set to go wild in the Madagascar jungle. One of the highlight sequences is when Alex the lion’s beast within is awakened. He becomes exhilarated, running and dancing around in a hyper-animated frenzy. His straight mane becomes wild and frazzled, and he lets out a booming roar surprising everyone. Being a carnivorous lion, bloodlust changes his behavior, and Alex is tormented by The Wolfman’s dilemma, “Why must I eat my friends?”

As with classic Universal Dracula and Wolfman “tasteful” horror movies which were not bloody or gory, Madagascar stays clear of tragedy, gratuitous violence or any alarming nastiness causing little kids to run crying to mommie. Even though co-director Tom McGrath worked as a director on “The Ren & Stimpy Show,” Madagascar does not take freakish risks of bad taste. Bizarre stuff that makes weirdos like me laugh til it hurts can wear thin over 80 minutes, and is often too sick for family consumption, so DreamWorks cannot be blamed for playing it safe. At the press conference with the voice talent, they all spoke of showing their new cartoon work to their young children. And so it goes with Alex the lion, he stays mild not wild.

I would like to see Madagascar again, animators and fans of animation will want to study it again and again. The story itself may be mild, but there are animated moments that are extremely wild.

P.S. For more Madagascar stills click here.
For more Lemur images, see recent entry.