I LOVE Yellow Submarine. Loooooooove Yellow Submarine. I'm old enough to remember The Beatles upending New York, which remains a pivotal cultural memory of mine. I dove in all the way, too, including my golden, gleaming Yellow Submarine lunchbox, 1968's de rigeur fashion accessory.
(That one's not mine. I wish. I've watched ebay, Beatlebay, Christie's, and others, and have never seen one for sale in even GOOD condition. Most are pretty well banged up and rusted, and still run in the $700 range...if you can find one at all.)
So maybe I'm too close to it to be objective, but I'm not sure I'm ready for Robert Zemeckis to apply the same 3D motion capture technique he used for "The Polar Express" the upcoming "A Christmas Carol" (starring Tom Hanks and Jim Carrey, respectively, in multiple roles), and "Beowulf," to be applied to a new stereoscopic 3D version of Yellow Submarine.
I'll be honest, the Carrey picture looks wonderful, but I found the other two a little disturbing. In fairness, I (stupidly) didn't see them in IMAX 3D, so I'm not exactly giving them a fair shake. The 2D version is the equivalent of foreign language dubbing...but still.
On one hand, whenever I hear about somebody revisiting The Beatles, I think of Robert Stigwood's "Sgt. Pepper Lonely Hearts Club Band," starring Peter Frampton and The Bee Gees. (What's that? You thought The Bee Gees had top billing? No way, man. Frampton. Look it up.)
That was 1978. I LIKE Peter Frampton and The Bee Gees, and there were some genuinely good performances in it that stand the test of time, notably Earth Wind & Fire's "Got To Get You Into My Life" and Aerosmith's "Come Together." Despite the best efforts of these and many other talented people, 1978 was an AWFUL year to be a Beatle fan. I felt like I had to hide.
Until 1978 became a WONDERFUL year to be a Beatles fan. one the kindest, sweetest, most generous and humane movies ever made, "I Wanna Hold Your Hand," told the tale of a handful of teens doing their best to see The Beatles live in the Ed Sullivan Theater on Feb. 9, 1964. The movie isn't about that show, or about Beatlemania. The fact is that no movie can adequately capture how big The Beatles were, and this one doesn't try. "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" shows how The Beatles reached beyond the hype, and touched the lives and hearts of these particular people.
Instead of running to hide from an awful movie, I now felt like I had to run to tell everyone what a wonderful movie this is.
And, as you can see there at the bottom, co-written by, and directed by Robert Zemeckis.
Hmmm, all of a sudden, I'm not quite so worried about him redoing "Yellow Submarine."
"I Wanna Hold Your Hand" was groundbreaking in one small way, and two big ones. The small one is that it was the first movie to show the intimate side of fandom -- including the competition among fans to prove oneself "the BIGGEST fan." It showed in a compassionate and empathetic way the way that identifying with a performer changes your own identity, and in this case, for the better. I certainly feel that way about my own Beatles fandom, and I'm certain Mr. Zemeckis does too.
More broadly, "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" was the first movie to mingle historical events and footage with narrative storytelling on this scale. (He certainly did a bit of it in "Forrest Gump" a bit later.)
It was also the first movie to entirely immerse itself in music. You can take music out of virtually any picture where music played a pivotal role or strongly underscored the cinematic experience -- "Singin' In The Rain," "Blackboard Jungle," "Apocalypse Now" -- and they wouldn't be all that different as movies. You wouldn't even have to swap out the songs for something else. Just take 'em out, and reflow the edit. No biggie.
Without these particular songs, there is no "I Wanna Hold Your Hand." It could possibly be done, but only as a stunt. To tell this real story, you need these real songs -- all 17 of 'em -- by these real performers.
So anyway, if anybody is going to do anything with The Beatles in a movie, I can't think of anybody better than Robert Zemeckis. I'm also not going to be an idiot: I'm going to see this one in IMAX 3D. I encourage you, likewise, to accept no substitutes.
+++
Gratuitous multimedia:
1) The Yellow Submarine 6-sheet. Found this in a UK poster collection. Sorry they didn't have an image any bigger than this to show it, but this bad boy is 81 inches by 81 inches!
The Beatles as "The Forces of Good." Check. Screenplay by Erich Segal, author of "Love Story." Check.
2) The original Yellow Submarine trailer
3) The Robert Stigwood Sgt. Pepper Trailer
Notes: Trailers used to be a lot longer than they are today, eh? The good news is that this covers a whole lot of my favorite imagery from the movie. Bad news for anybody who thought that The Beatles were actually in the movie!
See? I told you it was bad. And that Peter Frampton had top billing.
4) Although this last clip is from December 1967, Jimi Hendrix added "Sgt. Pepper" to his show the week the album was released on June 1 of that year. (Yes, I remembered that off the top of my head. I can allllmost remember my own birthday, but I'll never forget this date.) This was much to the amazement of The Beatles, and to the consternation of the rest of the English music scene, who had yet another aspect of Jimi's talent to humble them.
Seriously, if you're going to don Sgt. Pepper garb and sing a Beatles tune, watch and learn. As the man says, "Watch out for your ears."
Posted by: Tim Wilson on Sep 4, 2009 at 11:39:02 am
More specifically, a review of the rapidly emerging news about the slice of nerd-vana that may or may not be named Tron 2.
Those of us who became devoted some classics of science fiction filmmaking between, oh, I don’t know, let’s say 1977 and 1983, have reasons to cast the stink eye in the direction of latter-day sequels, prequels and such. One of those classics is 1982’s “Tron,” and you don’t need me to explain why.
Yet even in this post-stink-eye era, the word on its sequel is nothing but good so far – including the news that it’s being shot in stereoscopic 3D. As soon as you hear that, your reaction is probably the same as mine – how could it NOT be?
Details have been coming fast of late, so it seems a good time to review where we are so far. Let’s start with a wonderful a bootleg clip of the trailer from 2008’s Comic Con. The quality is pretty nasty, because it’s, well, a bootleg. The clip itself drags a bit (less a well-paced trailer than a look at the “look” of the movie so far, I think), but you can definitely see where they were at the time.
The art and science of the final release will of course be light years (har har) ahead of this, but so far, so good!
A few things to note:
This is still online! Disney is notoriously protective of its properties, yet here this clip remains. I think they get that this barely embryonic footage is worth something, and was, after all shown publicly. I doubt any mercy will be shown for leaks…or to leakers…from here on.
I got chills hearing the roars of approval when the light cars, and especially Jeff Bridges, appear on screen. Even without the pictures, I’d have gotten chills just hearing it.
(Here’s an interview in The Guardian that includes some of Jeff’s very endearing enthusiasm for the project.)
No Bruce Boxleitner in the trailer? No worries. He didn’t sign on until later in 2008, although he’s still listed as “rumored” on IMDb.
It was at the time of the trailer called “TR2N.” Cool-looking, yes, but virtually unpronounceable.
The name has changed a few other times, but IMDB suggests that we may have landed on Tron 2.0 for now. I'm not convinced. Disney released a videogame called “Tron 2.0” in 2003.
It was generally well-received -- both the hardcore game nerds and the gen pop give it roughly a B -- but Disney seems like a creative-enough bunch to come up with a unique name. Indeed, reports as recent as a few weeks ago have said that the title is in fact NOT set. Read on for details.
Did I mention the roars of approval? That for me is the big takeaway from the trailer.
One of the first questions to come up is, who’s involved? One sign of the project’s legitimacy is the presence of Steve Lisberger, who directed and wrote the story for the original, now here as a writer and consultant. Here’s a wonderful intervie... with Lisberger, as well as the best discussion I've seen of the showing of the trailer at Comic Con.
Something to be truly excited about is that two of the screenwriters, Adam Horowitz and Edward Kitsis have done quite a bit of heavy lifting as both writers and producers for television’s “Lost,” my vote for richest storytelling in the history of the medium, by a pretty long shot.
The key name is of course the director, Joseph Kosinski. A speedy look at his IMDb profile shows…nothing, except a pre-production credit for Logan’s Run. To be released in 2010, sez IMDb?! I don’t think so! (Although it turns out that Kosinski did in fact sign to do “Logan’s Run” first.) And no mention of Kosinski at Wikipedia!
I'd actually heard of him a couple of years before he signed on for Tron, when me and millions of other folks were bowled over by his commercial for Gears of War. Hit the HQ button. Watch full screen. Turn it up.
I was actually a little skeptical about the Tron sequel before I found out that the guy who did THAT was directing the movie! And while you may be skeptical about a commercial director taking on Tron for his first feature, I've put together some of his spots and other shorts that relate to what he might be up to with Tron, and some of the striking things he has to say about it. You'll love it. Even if you'd never heard of Tron, Kosinski is one of the most creative people you'll have come across in a long, long time.
In the meantime, here are some more of stories that have put the Tron sequel back in the news of late. First comes this article at /film the week before last, featuring the first picture of a costumed actor. Later that day, a picture from the set in Vancouver, standing in for New York City.
(I’m only including a few photos from the articles I link to at /film. It’s a great resource for folks tracking stories like this for the entire “reel world” that you should check out.)
The fella who sent in the picture is breathless with wonder:
“I was in total awe of how much equipment and gadgets they had. Everything I’ve seen them doing in the last five days is easily some of the most expensive stuff I’ve ever seen. It’s probably is $300 million, even if it’s canadian dollars.”
(Presumably written by an American who hasn’t noticed that the US dollar is getting its ass handed to it by the Canadian dollar…although because they’re Canadian, they’re doing it very, very politely.)
It took Disney only 3 days to tell us that the budget of Tron 2.0 is NOT approaching $300 million, a figure that had also been mentioned in the Vancouver Sun.
In reporting that debunking, /film includes a picture of a camera, and some tantalizing tech details:
“[‘Benjamin Button’ cinematographer Claudio] Miranda has challenged his crew with the task of having all the flexibility of standard 2D cameras including ambitious use of shots as well as Steadicam in 3D.” … “Amongst other setups, we will be rigging an F-35 to a GF-8 crane and Mini-Scorpio head to get a bird’s eye view out over the night streets of Vancouver.”
Remember the stereoscopic part? I recently had a chance to speak to John Daro at FotoKem, where a number of recent stereo smashes have been posted. He was speaking generally about stereo 3D DI…most definitely NOT about Tron, I promise…but he gave me insights into how the Sony F35 CineAlta camera works for stereo features.
Quite a bit of footage from the F35 crosses his desk, most of it shot at 1920x1080, 4:2:2, recorded at 880 mbps to the Sony SRW-1 HDCAM tape recorder that you can see prominently docked to the back of the F35.
Yes, tape. There’s a ton of it out there, even for high-end digital cinema. And yes, 1920x1080. As Russell Lasson noted in 21st Century Cinema for Creative COW Magazine, virtually all digital cinema is 2K, and as Panavision’s John Galt noted for us in The Truth About 2K, 4K, and The Future of Pixels, the majority of 2K is shot at 1920x1080. Even the Academy aperture for a 2K scan is only 1728 pixels.
So don’t get your panties in a wad about the Tron sequel or anything else being shot at 1980 for the big screen. You’ve already seen a ton of movies shot this way.)
At 4:2:2 for a stereo 3D shoot, the SRW-1 takes two HD-SDI feeds, and records them to a single tape: left-eye/right-eye for frame one, left-eye/right-eye for frame two, etc. John digitizes via the Sony SRW 5800 into the Quantum Pablo, which splits out two separate streams in real time as it digitizes.
The SRW-1 records only – only! – a single stream of 4:4:4. Shooting that way would of course call for a dedicated deck for each eye.
So if the report about shooting Tron 2.0 is accurate, that’s almost certainly how it’s being recorded. In any case, John will be going into much, more detail on the 3D DI post process for the upcoming Stereoscopic Issue of Creative COW Magazine.
Another recent report about Tron 2.0 is that it will be scored by the masked electronica dance duo known as Daft Punk.
With the original scored by the iconic Wendy Carlos, they have as much to live up to as anybody involved in the production of Tron 2.0. They can be cheesy – not necessarily a bad thing in this context – but I think they’re a great choice.
The most-viewed Daft Punk clip I found is this bit of genius by a youngster named Austin Hall, set to their song, “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger,” also known in this permutation as “Daft Hands.”
The uber-geeks at Ain’t It Cool News got an updated report on the plot in the last few weeks, which you can take a couple of ways. One is that, far from being mere fanboys, the team at AICN have established themselves as a genuine force to be reckoned with. For example, site founder Harry Knowles emailed James Cameron about some of the “Avatar” rumors he’d been hearing, and Cameron replied.
So this wouldn’t be the first time that AICN has had info leaked to them...sometimes from official sources, intending to whip up a storm. It also wouldn’t be the first time that a studio has leaked something substantially true, but with important details obscured. And as the author points out, anything can change over the next two years. But his one rings true.
You can find plenty of other good stuff at AICN (as well as some adult language – step gingerly). I've been following it since early web adopter Roger Ebert – whose site remains one of the web’s great film resources -- pointed us to AICN back in 1996, when it was just Harry Knowles and his father. (Harry also co-hosted “At the Movies” with Roger a few times.)
And this story includes the news that the name of the movie is not Tron 2, but “something with a colon."
This week they've also posted another exterior shot from Vancouver this week. Below is greatly reduced from the original.
As with the other photos we’ve seen so far, admittedly not much to see, but trainspotters will note that this is in fact another train, and that it has indeed been spotted.
This little summary is far from complete, but it’s enough to catch you up on where we are so far. For more perspective on this news, especially on director Joseph Kosinski, see here.
PS. In an article for Creative COW Magazine, CGI pioneer Steve Wright tells how the effects in Tron actually set the industry back!
This is the sidebar in an article in on how commercials were actually the driving force in widespread adoption of CGI. Pretty slick stuff, and well worth a look.
Posted by: Tim Wilson on Apr 26, 2009 at 9:48:02 am
Jeffry Katzenberg has been a major advocate of stereoscopic 3D for a while. The first place I saw him talk about it was ShoEast in 2007, a gathering of eastern US movie theater owners and operators. The talk was called "The Future of 3D in the Digital Age," and it was among the places that he said that all of Dreamworks' animated features would be released as stereoscopic.
On one count, he underestimated how quickly this would come to pass: he said that there would be "5, 6 or 7 'Super-A' titles" in 2009, 12 to 18 by 2010. So far this year, we've already seen My Bloody Valentine, the Jonas Brothers concert movie, Henry Selick's "Coraline," and just this weekend, "Aliens vs. Monsters," with 10 more slated for release this summer.
Here's the first trailer for Aliens vs. Monsters, which first ran in 3D during the Super Bowl:
Here's the second trailer:
Here's the third. Not sure why YouTube won't let me embed the high-quality version, but it's worth following the link to take a gander.
The next biggie is going to be Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs.
(You can see Entertainment Weekly's preview of the year's 3D releases here, but it's worth trying to track down the print issue, which includes anagplypic stills from most of those features, along with 3D glasses to view 'em. Pretty slick. It also doesn't have much to say about James Cameron's Avatar, opening in December...but I sure will later.)
So for the pace of "Super 'A'" releases, we're well ahead of schedule.
As theater owners pushed back on Katzenberg in 2007, they said that upgrading screens was going to be way, way too expensive. His reply was that they'd make more money on 3D showings, and this week's premiere of "Monsters vs. Aliens" certainly bore that out. Here's how the numbers broke down:
$58.2 million for the weekend, on 4104 screens
28% of those screens were 3D, and accounted for 58% of the gross!
.03% --that's three-tenths of 1 percent -- of those 4104 screens were IMAX (143 to be exact)...and they accounted for nearly TEN PERCENT of the gross! (Again to be exact, $5.2 million, a record.)
To put it another way, 28.3% of the screens accounted for nearly 70% of the money that Av.M pulled in! That is, as the kids say, off the hizz-OOOK! (Actually, I doubt any kids say that anymore.) There's absolutely no question that Katzenberg is being proved right on feature after feature.
However, here's one area he was a little optimistic on: he predicted 6000 3D-equipped screens by March 2009. The number is more like 2000 in the US, with a smattering more overseas. Let's be generous and call it halfway there.
The good news is that there are a total of 8000 screens "committed" (see previous link)...but as far as I can tell, no particular timetable.
When I say 8000 screens, the vast majority are those offered by RealD. Dolby is late to the party, but has a few hundred screens committed, mostly in Europe. The draw is that they don't require a new screen, and sell their gear outright. RealD requires new screens and collects royalties....but c'mon, seriously now, RealD has it locked up. Although as far as overall revenues, all signs point to Katzenberg being exactly right: the real money is in 3D exhibition.
It's true now. It's going to get truer. Expect more details.
In the meantime, our stereoscopic 3D coverage is going to be a wild ride that you're not going to want to miss. If you don't already subscribe, now's a good time to start.
Posted by: Tim Wilson on Mar 31, 2009 at 8:07:06 am
This isn't just huge news for people in the digital cinema business: it's huge for everyone in any aspect of show business, including slobs like us.
I saw the news of Sony's new 4K projectors on the front page of Variety.com.
Variety is barely peripherally related to the projection side of the business. This message is directly aimed at the people who make the movies: 4K is here...and the ideal use of a 4K projector is NOT the projection of 4K images. Its primary intent is for a full 2K for eacheye!! You can kind of get that from the last frame of the animated ad that you can see in the grab above -- and, uhm, the name of the product. The first 2 frames of the animation are even more on the nose, but in case there's any doubt, I saved you the effort of typing in the link to Sony's site as posted at Variety:
And just today (March 30 as I write this) our pals at AMC -- the same ones who committed to 1500 RealD screens just yesterday -- have announced a "commitment in principle" to add 5000 Sony 4K digital cinema systems. They've already rolled out 150 screens at 11 theaters, and 29 of them are 3D-capable. Now it seems to me that dang near every new screen going in should be 3D-capable, and it looks like the next ones will be (at least in principle). I have no idea how this fits in with yesterday's announcement between AMC and RealD, but that's not my problem.
Except, if I'm going to keep writing about stereoscopic production and projection, it kind of IS my problem. This is insane. AMC has movies to show. I have movies (and TV) to watch, and frankly, other things to do. It's clear that there are going to be new 3D announcements more or less every day of the week. I ain't making any promises, but I'll try to at least pass along some the biggest.
Several things to note:
--That Sony intends this projector primarily for the stereoscopic projection of 2K images (that is, one for each eye) lines up exactly with what we reported from both Panavision's Senior Vice President of Advanced Digital Imaging, John Galt (below), and The COW's own Russell Lasson, that 2K is where it's at for digital cinema. (John talks about deployment here, and Russell talks about actually posting 2K for digital cinema here.)
--Not that practical 4K projection isn't perhaps coming. But I don't see the existing thousands of 2K digital cinema projectors upgrading, nor do I think they should.
--One of the big draws of these digital cinema projectors is that they provide an experience that can't be duplicated at home. Here's the problem with that argument: I've seen people actually putting 4K projectors in their home theaters since the year 2000 AND FRAKING FIVE.
There are a ton of great reasons to sign up for an account at the AV Science Forum (aka AVS.com), not least of which is to read stories like this one, of a real-life installation, first reported in January 2006. I'm pretty sure you'll need an account to read the story (the usual name & email form/email activation link), but here's a photo of our happy owner:
You can also read reviews of the Sony CineAlta SRX-R220 and Meridian 810 (pictured below) 4K projectors in HOME THEATER MAGAZINE last year.
--A Creative COW programming note: smack in the middle of the Variety front page pictured above is a note that, after dangling over the precipice almost since the day it first aired 3 seasons ago, "Saturday Night Lights" has been given a 2-year, 26-episode commitment. This isn't just a big deal for fans of quality television, but for The COW's own Todd McMullen, a camera operator on that show. He told a couple of great stories about it, as well as a career that began on Martin Scorcese's Casino (!!! Talk about starting on a high note!), in Creative COW Magazine's Film Values issue. Here's the online version of his article.
I love his thoughts on Cinematic Style. Short version: it ain't shooting at 24P or adding a filter in FCP:
To me cinematic style is big and ballsy. A shot that makes the viewer look at it and think about it. It's tough to explain, but the norm just isn't as interesting to me.
I like to go for what's not normal, especially with composition and lighting. I love a long lens profile shot. I like having foregrounds in a shot, especially a master. I prefer having the camera low, looking somewhat up. I like dolllies and cranes when it makes sense, although most of the time it doesn't. I also like the reverse over, basically, coverage from behind the actors.
And I really like it when a director wants to cover a whole scene in one camera move. Good stuff.
Now, you can't have all this for every shot, but I try to make a frame as interesting as possible. Because, for me, the story is in the surroundings. It isn't always told through the words.
--Well, I've once again veered off topic, so here I'll veer back on. The fact is that there's no clear home standard for stereoscopic viewing. Here's what the world leader in theatrical stereo viewing has to say on home viewing: "We are already working with top consumer electronics manufacturers to bring these new technologies to fruition in the highest possible quality. Please keep checking this space for updates!" In other words, nada. Bupkes. No soup for you. Nice picture though - check it out. That'll have to do for now.
--Except for the two-color glasses, of course. No need to settle for the cheap, cardboard ones. You can get really snazzy ones at Amazon.
Of course, there are two different sets of colors for these anaglyphic glasses, and they're not compatible. At $3 a pair, it's hardly a platform war, but it also barely hints at some of the issues confronting home viewing. But that's another post.
Hey, and it turns out that there's some huge breaking news on that front that came down just today. Patience, patience. I'll get to it soon. After I've had a long nap.
Posted by: Tim Wilson on Mar 30, 2009 at 8:37:55 pm
