The travel photos continue with the Neuschwanstein castle in the Bavaria region of Germany.
Monthly Archive for March, 2009
The Where the Wild Things Are trailer is now out and is looking great. Directed by Spike Jonez (Adaptation, Being John Malkovich) is one of those movies that you know there would be a good documentary about the making of. At the beginning of 2008 I had heard that there were issues with the production centering around the way in which the movie had been shot and how it was making the life of the vfx team very hard. This meant that a lot of the tracking of the CG faces onto the monster costumes was being done by hand and the stunt costumes were so trashed that extensive warping effects were needed to match the acting versions of the costumes. Major changes wanted by the studio, shoots cancelled, extensive re-shoots were done, at one point it looked like Spike was leaving the project… All sorts of stories, rumours and delays surrounded this production, so it’s good to see that it’s finally nearing completion, looking nice and looking very Spike.
Knowing – the latest film from Alex Proyas who brought us great movies such as The Crow, Dark City and the nothing-like-the-book and poorly-capitalised i, Robot – is now out. As a matte painter on the film at Animal Logic, I was fortunate to work under the wise words and eyes of David ‘Woody’ Woodlands the lead matte painter on the challenging production. Some of the shots that I worked on in the film will be up in the portfolio shortly.
Most of the reviews I’ve read have been spot on, mostly focusing on the – shall we say – controversial ending. The VFX shots of the film, however, have been well received and stands testament to the hard work put in by the guys and girls at Animal. There is a small write-up over at VFXWorld mostly focusing on the plane-crash and train-crash sequences.
On a side-note, Ben Goldsmith – a former lecturer of mine and general movie academic extrordanaire – has a blog post about the ongoing confusion over the Australian government tax incentives and how that has impacted on Knowing. Yet another Australian based production that doesn’t look like it will get the rebate because it doesn’t look or feel ‘Australian’, whatever that means.
Prague
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Nearly a month ago I visited Prague for a few nights as the first stop for a road trip that I dubbed the “Prague to Portugal” road trip. A round trip of some 5000km and passing through seven countries, photos from Zürich, Neuschwanstein, Barcelona, Cordoba, Portugal and places in between will gradually be uploaded over the next few weeks. But first up, Prague.