Thoughtful Preparations: Media Spin Blog

Some interesting buzz in the news today about Google reaching into eBay, craigslist and classified advertising territory with their search technology. Here is the screenshot of Google Base.

That’s the hazy future, but for now I’m bummed that I was not invited to Google’s Zeitgeist forum. This is the kind of smart brainstorming contact high cluster f*ck that temporarily raises my IQ to rare sub-genius levels. Dear Google, please invite me next time. I promise I will not blog about it. Thank you.

Checking out Google Maps to locate some neighborhoods where I had spent time in New Orleans. They have some post Katrina satellite photos up.

Much more detailed satellite photos showing the path of Hurrican Katrina can be found by going to Space Imaging and at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. From what I can tell, the ocean and atmosphere appear to be way beyond administration.

Read. Learn. Think. This is the introductory line at Literature.org, an online library of literature.

Here is the last sentence from their online text of Charles Darwin’s “The Origin of Species.”

There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.

This last line has the words “by the Creator” added at The Virtual Fossil Museum web site. Thus we see the mystery of the evolution of text.

An interesting thread about U.F.O. sightings was recently started up on a computer graphics forum populated by many practicing professionals and students, CGTalk part of CGSociety.org. (You may need to join this to view the thread. CGTalk Forums are still available without fees.)

The discussion kicks off with member “socool” asking if this video is a real UFO sighting or CG special effects. See either http://www.aboutrealstuff.com/video/real_ufo.jsp or http://www.zippyvideos.com/214500292671265.html.

Most had the opinion that it is a clever fake, and knowing what we know of state of the art of visual effects in today’s movies, why would anyone believe it to be real? Many contributed their own photos and videos. Knowing these photos have been submitted by visual effects artists, casts serious doubts on them.

The last two the artist has Rich Cabrera included “hoax” in the filename.

Trying to get away from hoaxes and to the bottom of all this are organizations such as UFO Evidence and The Disclosure Project. Dr. Stephen Greer of The Disclosure Project is making valiant attempts to clear away the carnival atmosphere associated with UFO research, and speaks throughout the country, including the National Press Club Conference (see video). His work appears to get into the X Files intrigue of big government and media cover ups.

The Donald’s Ground Zero rehash? “Hey Trump, Fugetaboudit, you’re fired!”
Freedom Towers… blah, blah, blah… what’s in a name, more of the same?

My recent excursion to Yosemite National Park was inspiring. Surrounded by strong granite formations and cascading waterfalls, I breathed in a site that is bigger than any band of terrorists.

Here is something lasting and good that Americans can feel proud of. Why should the Prudential Financial company employ the Rock of Gibralter as its corporate symbol, a foreign rock, when we have these beauties here at home? Aircraft hijacking terrorists: go ahead, fly into one of these babies. Bring it on!

Efforts to rebuild at “Ground Zero” are mired in controversy. Glass and metal towers are so 20th Century. We are advanced technologically, let us design a challenging building as strong and great as a Yosemite granite formation. It’s time for a change! Imagine the greatness of a mountain-like structure in lower Manhattan! A truly visionary project would enable creative landscaping and even rock climbing on the structure. Inside it would be a modern office building and commercial park, with all the glory of Superman’s Fortress of Solitude.

This is my challenge to the great architects and real estate developers of New York City. Innovate a strong, enduring and inspiring structure, something undeniably grand and awesome such as Yosemite’s Half Dome.

The American Indians, yes I mean the Native American indigenous human beings, have respect for an almighty creator, a God, or Great Spirit they do not profess to know entirely… they call “The Great Mystery.”

As we live our lives, we see that yes – it is all a big freakin’ mystery. And yet hope springs eternally within the human soul. Our role on this Mother Earth seems to be some kind of dominant, controlling stewardship. We instinctively take care of ourselves, each other, and the planet. That’s right politically correct lock steppers: Instinct. Nature, DNA and heredity has its part to play, despite the academic appeal of behavioral scientific nurture logistics.

1999 saw a Western world fretting over the office manager’s nightmare of a big bad Y2K bug. Poof! January 1st, 2nd and 3rd arrived without major bugs, as though an expected terrorist did not show up. Then the tech boom of the late 90’s took a dive. Wasn’t The Future wonderful?

None of the political mouthpieces or candidates running for President in 2000 made a peep about the real worry on everyone’s minds, “What’s happening to my 401K? My stock investments? It just got cut in half… or more!” Did they not want us to wake up to the frightening new realities too quickly?

And the smoke screens more or less continue. George W is no longer in the baseball business, so keeping your eye on the ball appears to be a bad thing. Diverting attention: good! Trivializing science: good!

A White House official who previously worked for the oil industry’s lobby group has repeatedly edited government climate reports in a way that downplays links between global warming and greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels, The New York Times reported on June 8, 2005. See story.

Much government and private money is spent on scientifically studying and logically estimating the future. Predicting the future is not only for our own defense, it is our pathway to success beyond just simple survival. Here is what is on the horizon for us and future generations:

1. Human Population: A recent United Nations population study (link here) predicts a 40% population increase by 2050. Richer countries’ populations are estimated to stabilize at 1.2 billion, and less developed countries grow from 5.3 billion to 7.8 billion people. This will place an obvious strain on the entire world. In 2000-2005, fertility levels remained above 5 children per woman in 35 of the 148 developing countries, including 30 of the poorest nations. For more information, see The Population Connection.

2. Animal Population: From a January 2005 UNESCO Biodiversity Conference: ” Species are currently being lost globally at a rate that is about 100 times faster than the average natural rate, and tens of thousands of other species are already committed to future extinction because of the recent worldwide loss of their habitats.” See also: UNEP World Conservation Monitoring Centre, United Nations Environment Programme, Defenders of Wildlife, and the World Wildlife Fund.

3. Plants, Ocean, and Environment: “The present rate of global deforestation is more than 14 million hectares (about 54,000 square miles) per year, roughly equal to the size of Greece. Most of the losses occur in the tropics.” – from May 2005, WWF news release. Glaciers in Alaska, Greenland and Iceland are disappearing at an alarming rate, and documented in the excellent “The Climate of Man” The New Yorker articles by Elizabeth Kolbert. For more information about Global Warming visit these links: The League of Conservation Voters, Environmental Defense, Grist Magazine, and Greenpeace.

4. U.S. Economy: No one knows, but large trade deficits, growing national debt and slow job growth do not help. Visit this on line study and survey. The future strength of Social Security benefits has been under question. Most of those now under 55 realize that an easy retirement plan means working hard and saving for a long time, or hitting the jackpot. Investment predictions seem to work out 50% of the time, so you break even. In late 2004 everyone was betting on the strong Euro vs. the weak dollar. In a big surprise, with European disagreements over charters, the dollar has come back. Globalization is a tug of war between rich corporations and poor nations supplying cheap labor and resources. A big question for the future is how this will play out. See the excellent documentary “The Corporation” now on DVD.

5. Fashion: Dance and prance your way to Doomsday at your local shopping mall ecosystem. According to the Diesel ad campaign, The Future is a worn out pop song.

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.

Brad Bird recently spoke at the San Francisco International Film Festival on a topic that was entitled, “State of the Cinema Address.” The Oscar winning writer and director of Pixar’s “The Incredibles” warned that cinema is in trouble due to the deterioration of the movie-going experience.

Coincidentally, Ishared that experience last November on a Friday night trying to see The Incredibles – it was sold out at two theaters that had overflowing parking lots. I vowed to stay clear of going out to the movies for awhile. Instead I settled for Polar Express, after 15 minutes of commercials and warnings, through cell phones and kids theater hopping.

No surprise that Bird spoke of movie productions now factoring DVD material into their schedules as an important component of the overall revenue stream. A nod to the well managed art cinemas still doing business, and yet for many, cinema resides with a home DVD collection, where great movies such as those by The Criterion Collection can be enjoyed in comfort. For less than the price of two going to a movie and buying refreshments, you can own the movie.

P.S. In a timely interview, vanguard of French new wave cinema, Jean Luc Godard, is quoted on cinema, “It’s over,” he sighs. “There was a time maybe when cinema could have improved society, but that time was missed.”