Changing World of VFX

Sandra Bullock as Ryan Stone in Gravity.

The advancement of technology has significantly changed the way film and television visual effects are being displayed. People are demanding a more real life experience from their film and television shows. 

Visual arts pioneer John Dykstra is known for his visual effects work on Star Wars, Spiderman 2, and Star Trek. He is being honored with VES’ Lifetime Achievement Award. Dykstra believes the story determines if the visual effects are good or bad because VFX must blend in with the emotional aspect of the story. To make animated characters believable, they must be brought to life by the persona of the animation director and/or the actor that is playing the animated character. Animated characters like Sandra Bullock’s character in Gravity is an example of how an animated character has come to life.

These high demand VFX require more pre-planning to meet the demands of a tightening budget and schedule. VFX producer on Star Trek Into the Darkness, Luke O’Byrne stated that there was not a perfect recipe for a VFX film business model. The more information you have, the better prepared you are. You can’t put out all the fires before they start, but you can do your best to avoid them.

Over recent years, there has been a debate about who drives motion picture capture-based performance (mocap) especially over characters like Gollum (Lord of the Rings) and Cesar (Rise of the Planet of Apes), both played by Andy Serkis. Mocap should be based on the actor’s performance, but there are a lot of technical aspects to mocap that can make the process complicated. More mocap characters are being used in films like The Hobbit: The Desolution of Smaug where there were digital doubles for hobbits, elves, humans, and orcs.

As a graduate of Full Sail University, I am looking forward to ever changing trends in VFX caused by the advancements in technology. It is exciting to learn and see how we can take the imagination from our minds, and put it out in the world for others to see. Thanks to technology, we are constantly pushing the boundaries of imagination, and requiring personal interaction with stories and its characters. It will not be long before we can stand the middle of the film and/or television show that we are viewing. Just imagine being able to have a lightsaber duel with Yoda standing on the bridge of the U.S.S. Enterprise, or playing chess with Doctor Spencer Reid. You are only bound by the limits of your imagination. Being able to live the full experience thanks to advancements in technology and VFX. That is a day that I look forward to.

Understanding the Producer’s Business

The Producer's Business Handbook 

Abel Ferrara, American screenwriter and filmmaker, once said, “Most filmmaking is about shaking hands and just starting.” Most people do not think or understand what needs to be done before a filmmaker gets to the shaking hands portion of the filmmaking process or what an executive producer is or does. To put it simply, the producer is the businessperson behind the web series, film, and/or television series. This is the person that obtains the funding, creates the business plan and the budget, and is responsible for every aspect of the filmmaking process. To get the reel rolling, the producer must plan on how much funding he or she needs, whom would be a potential investor(s), how to approach the potential investor(s), and obtain the funding. The bottom line is without funding there is no web series, film, or television series.

When I was creating a business plan for my final project at Full Sail University, my business plan was for a film production company. From my research, I had some knowledge on what a production company does. I did not truly understand it until I read the book entitled The Producer’s Business Handbook The Roadmap for the Balanced FilmProducer (third Edition) by John J. Lee, Jr. and Anne Marie Gillen. This book provided a more in depth view of a film production company including sources of funding, production incentives, Internet marketing, and entertainment law. This edition also provided access to spreadsheets including greenlighting worksheets, activity and cash flow projections, and target audience analysis. The chapter on funding included obtaining funding in both inside and outside of the United States. The best feature of the book was that it was written so that anyone could understand its content. By reading this book, I had a valuable understanding of the film production company and the producer, and was able to write a better business plan than I would have without it.  I highly recommend this book to all filmmakers.

The Elements of Fox Network’s Sleepy Hollow

Fox Network's Sleepy Hollow Headless Horseman

What makes a great story for television? Is it the story, characters, or visual effects? Perhaps it is all three elements.

In Fox Network’s new television series Sleepy Hollow, all three elements are present. The modern twist on the old classic tale Sleepy Hollow shows Ichabod Crane (Tom Misen) as a Revolutionary Soldier that is resurrected to solve a two-hundred-year old mystery dating back to America’s origins – The Revolutionary War – and prevents the Headless Horseman (one of the Four Horseman) from starting the Apocalypse. Crane meets Abby Mills (Nicole Beharie), a police lieutenant who has a mysterious past and watched her Sheriff die at the hands of the Headless Horseman. Each week these two characters face various supernatural forces and work through mysteries that will take them closer to defeating Moloch, the Headless Horseman’s demon boss.

The audience can relate to the characters Crain and Mills. Crain is learning about modern technologies and what happened to his wife Katrina (Katia Winter). Mills discovers her family tree and strives to find her place in the world. As the series progresses, Crain and Mills realize their families’ fates have been entwined.

The visual effects enhance the Sleepy Hollow’s story, and draw the audience in. Director and executive producer Ken Olin stated, “The show is complicated because in every scene there’s either visual effects, make-up effects, stunts, or sometimes we have them all. We want our stunts to enhance scenes, not create them.” Senior Supervisor Colorist Todd Bochner uses DaVinci Resolve for the color correction that provides the mood of the show. Richard Cetrone (the Headless Horseman) wears a chromakey green hood during filming, and the hood is taken out during postproduction. Additional visual effects, make-up effects, and stunts of Sleepy Hollow are shown in the YouTube video below.

With the presence of all three elements, Sleepy Hollow maintains an audience of over three million viewers each week. The show is among the television series nominated for the American Society of Cinematographer’s Outstanding AchievementAwards. Fox Networks announced Sleepy Hollow has been picked up for a second season. Sleepy Hollow proves a great television series needs a great story, strong characters, and fabulous visual effects.

Instantly Transform Your Screenplay Into a Movie

Plotagon

Writing a screenplay is not easy. The writer has to transfer the scene from his or her imagination to paper. Once the screenplay is written, the only way to know if the scene was actually complete or needed to be rewritten was seeing the actors play the scene out. Or is it? Now, there is an app for that, and it is called Plotagon.

The creators of Plotagon refer to it as “the magic typewriter”. It is software for Mac and PC computers designed to make it easy to write a story, and immediately watch it as an animated film. Plotagon is still in beta testing, and it is free to download. It is designed to be simple. It allows you to choose from The Sims like characters and locations your story is set in. The characters actions and cues come directly from the screenplay you write in the program. The characters can only speak English, but the creators are working on French, Spanish, and German languages. According to their website, Plotagon will continue to be free even when it is out of beta testing. It is not available for any mobile device. The finished movies can only be uploaded to Plotagon’s website. However, the movies can be shared on Facebook and Twitter. It does not import any screenplays, but it will export them.

What does this mean for Hollywood and the filming industry? Despite its limitations, Plotagon will be a great way to be able to do a test run of a television series or movie. It will provide the writer the opportunity to “beta test” his or her screenplay before showing or pitching the final screenplay. It will be wonderful to know what was wrong with your scene or scenes beforehand. Plotagon will allow professionals and amateurs to create screenplays quickly and more efficiently.

TV Integrates with Internet

TV series streaming on the Internet

Once upon a time, watching TV shows meant you had to set in front of a television set. When you missed the TV show, you had to wait forever until it came out on DVD. Since civilization has moved into the digital age, we can watch television virtually anywhere. As long as you have an Internet connection, you can watch television on your computer, laptop, tablet, or smartphone.

Virtually, every broadcast and cable network has its own website that plays its TV shows. Many networks make the viewer wait a day after the show has aired before he or she can stream the show to his or her laptop, computer, tablet, or smartphone. The networks that allow the show to be viewed almost instantly after it has aired charge a fee or needs to be paid for in advanced (videos on demand). 

When the viewer watches his or her favorite TV show, he or she must watch commercials with the show, and they cannot fast-forward them.  The viewer becomes annoyed from watching the same group of commercials over several times before the end of the show. For a fee, companies like Netflicks stream TV series without commercials. This may become a problem for broadcasting networks like NBC, ABC, and CBS because they depend significantly on advertisers.

The Internet is becoming so popular that networks are developing their own web series. The CW Network has its web series website called the CW Seed. The advantage with web series is a viewer can watch several show episodes within an hour because most web episodes are between 4 to 10 minutes.

The Internet provides all types of filmmakers the opportunity to have their film or web series viewed by people from around the world. If it becomes popular, a network may pick it up. For instance, The CW Network picked up Joss Whedon’s Dr.Horrible, and Comedy Central picked up Tiny Apartment.

The one constant is the demand for television series continues to be high. It is the format that has changed, and will continue to change as technology develops. The networks must be able to meet the demands of the viewers, and adapt to the technological changes of TV viewing.