Pacific Rim Fan-Art

Artsy pop culture site “blurppy” has a great collection of Pacific Rim movie posters made by various designers. Check out their two-part series by clicking on either thumbnail!

left one by Richard Davies, right one by Doaly
(found via Mech Love Not War)

Funny how many posters in the 2nd gallery take inspiration from Japanese iconography. The movie itself stars a Japanese actress but the plot takes place in Hong-Kong.

I wonder how that movie is received in China or if it is even shown there? From what I learned during my stay in Shanghai, only a couple of western blockbusters are admitted to Chinese theaters each year. Which is probably part of the reason why many big Hollywood productions are cozying up to that market (Emmerich’s 2012 making a statement about Tibet that made the audience cheer, Bruce Willis being married to Qing Xu in Looper).

Maybe there’s a special edit for that market with more shots of the Chinese mecha pilots? Because a Japanese girl defending Hong-Kong might feel to some people like Germans defending Moscow…

And here’s one more treat I found on blurppy: A fan-made trailer for Pacific Rim in the style of those good old Godzilla movies. I love it and vintage grading they put on top of that clip makes the CGI even more life-like in my opinion.

By the way, all of this creativity could be killed off by the ongoing trend of always tougher copyright enforcement and lawmaking. Update: a link on that would be nice, so here’s an article on techdirt that touches on that subject of fair use.

Pacific Rim Rocks

I really enjoyed Pacific Rim. Here’s what they did right compared to other action movies of that genre:

The story may be simple but it’s refreshing to have a movie that is not a “dark and gritty” remake of something. It’s a can-do action movie with an atmosphere of movies like Top Gun or Independence Day.

At the same time, it’s not a celebration of the US military arsenal saving the world (I’m looking at you, Transformers and Battleship). While the main hero and his mecha are definitely western/US and other nationalities are caricatures like in a video game straight out of the 1990s, the action takes place in Hong Kong and the destruction of the Golden Gate bridge is shown as a 5 second byline in the prologue.

Pacific Rim doesn’t waste time on stupid subplots about family drama and teenagers breaking free from their parents to save the world. Nobody felt the need to mention Youtube or Facebook. There’s no romantic subplot although there is a nice kind of chemistry between the main male and female characters.

The VFX are awesome. If giant robots were fighting giant monsters that’s what it would look like. The animation and camera work of the cgi scenes plays an important role here. While the physics of those robots is of course ludicrous, the machines are believable because their moves convey mass and momentum. In Transformers we are forced to believe that giant heaps of metal are somehow able to fold up into regular cars while jumping around like trapeze artists. In Pacific Rim there are actual gears and pistons. The robots can’t fly. They can jump, but you feel the effort it takes to move hundreds of tons of steel.

Pacific Rim also doesn’t succumb to the temptation of shoving a cgi camera anywhere simply because you can render anything you like. Almost all of the shots look like they could have been done by an actual camera man on the ground or in a helicopter. This restraint and the non-use of a constantly shaking hand camera is effective and refreshing.

Only in one particular underwater battle the illusion breaks down. The robots don’t move any slower than above ground, nothing seems to have buoyancy and the scene feels like it takes place in a container of slightly darker air.

It’s completely unnecessary to see this movie in 3D. I hated every stereo movie after Avatar and Pacific Rim thankfully didn’t build its plot around gimmicky shots of stuff flying into your face. I’m sure they took great care to keep the interocular distance in range to prevent the robots from looking like miniature toys. All of which are things that I approve of. But at the same time that diminishes the pros of 3D while keeping the cons: fast moving sparks and water spray close to the camera still turn into a flickering mess.

Conclusion: Pacific Rim is a highly enjoyable action movie about giant robots punching giant aliens that isn’t trying to be something it isn’t.

9/10 (way way better than its genre companions Transformers, Cloverfield, Godzilla…)

Orange-Teal The Movie

coming soon: Orange Teal – The Movie

Just kidding, it’s a trailer for “Trance”. A movie about stealing a painting. Probably that painting:

Mara Drehbeginn

Diese Tage hat der Dreh für Mara und der Feuerbringer begonnen, ein deutscher Fantasyfilm, der auf dem gleichnamigen Buch von Tommy Krappweis basiert.

Fotos von der Mara Facebook-Seite. Produktion: Rat Pack / Constantin Film

Die Abenteuer der titelgebenden Mara sind eng mit der nordischen und germanischen Sagenwelt verknüpft, wobei ein Augenmerk auch auf historischer Korrektheit liegt. Kitschig-gehörnte Wikinger wie bei Wiki und die Starken Männer wird es also nicht zu sehen geben – dafür allerlei germanisches Sagengetier. Starring unter anderem: Christoph Maria Herbst als Loki.

News vom Set gibt’s auf der Facebook-Seite der Münchner Firma BigHugFX.

Wieso ich das poste? Ich werde als Compositing Lead dabei sein und freue mich schon riesig. Denn an Bord ist als VFX Supervisor John Nugent, mit so kleinen Referenzen wie “Lord of the Rings”. Regisseur und Drehbuchautor Tommy Krappweiss hat übrigens auch eine gute Referenz auf dem Buckel: Bernd das Brot 🙂 Das Projekt verspricht also, unterhaltsam zu werden!

english summary: I’ll be working on a German fantasy feature film, vfx supervisor is John Nugent of “Lord of the Rings” fame.

My Shot on fxguide

Just found out about an article on fxguide about White House Down. It mentions a full-cg shot I’ve worked on for Scanline Munich. Scroll down to the pool splash shot, of which I had already posted some stills previously.

Also, check out Scanline’s breakdown of the Air Force One explosion at the end of the article!

I’m hotlinking the vid of my shot from fxguide here, don’t know how long that works though…

Fonotune

Fonotune – Teaser from Jon Britt on Vimeo.

Fonotune is a feature film project by Fabian Hübner (read more about it on twitchfilm). I’ve contributed some small VFX and I’ll do a video tutorial on that in the future.

Teasin’…

An independent film with influences ranging from Japanese Cinema, classic Road-Movies, Graphic Design & Music Videos. Currently In Production.