Director Paul Greengrass, whose frenetic filmmaking style has been popularized by the successful Bourne franchise, revs it up for the Green Zone, a political thriller starring Matt Damon about the futile search for WMD during the chaotic early days of the Iraq War.

Once again, Greengrass chose Double Negative to make it all look convincing with his own version of “shock and awe” (LipSync Post was also a contributor).

Indeed, since shooting in Iraq was obviously out of the question, the London-based studio was tasked with doing the next best thing: making it look exactly like Bagdad in 2003 by shooting in Morocco. This was ideal for all the urban scenes, back street houses and maze-like passages. In fact, in addition to meticulous research, some of the cast members were actually serving soldiers who had toured the real thing and the filmmakers were greatly reassured by how authentic these soldiers found the locations.

READ ARTICLE AT AWN

Related posts:

1. Into the ‘Green Zone’ with director Paul Greengrass and Matt Damon It’s a film genre about as healthy as American...
2. Visual effects outfit Rhythm and Hues opens studio in Malaysia Hollywood is coming to Malaysia. Los Angeles-based award winning...
3. Movies that shock and awe   Lately, Hollywood has turned its lens on the war...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

When an audience at the Dubai International Film Festival today becomes one of the first in the world to don 3D specs and watch James Cameron’s Avatar, a number of things could happen. If the pre-release hype and any number of early reviews are to be trusted, they will leave the screening having seen something that will change cinema forever. Alternatively, they will have sat through the most expensive vanity project in film history; a two-and-a-half-hour-long special-effects marathon with only the power, according to one report, to induce mass vomiting.

READ ARTICLE AT THE NATIONAL

Related posts:

1. Visual effects industry suffers from breakneck pace of blockbusters   If the visual effects industry had its way, the...
2. ‘Star Wars’ the most influential visual effects film of all time The Visual Effects Society has announced the results of...
3. Visual Effects Honor Classic Roots Hell hath no fury like a geek scorned, and...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Creature design in the movies can be done with physical effects or computer-generated imagery. Often it comes down to the designers eye and imagination. Neville Page, the creature designer for “Avatar”  who created the dragon-like banshees that fly through the skies of Pandora, takes us through what it means to create fantastical creatures for an other world.

READ INTERVIEW AT LA TIMES

Related posts:

1. INTERVIEW: Rueben Langdon - Motion Capture Artist for ‘Avatar’ Reuben Langdon is a motion capture artist in motion...
2. The making of ‘Avatar’ Through a combination of new movie technologies, James Cameron...
3. James Cameron Avatar Movie Hits Comic-Con With First Look Writer/director/producer James Cameron was on hand at Comic-Con for...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Hell hath no fury like a geek scorned, and there is no species of geek more dedicated or passionate than the Trekkie (or Trekker, as they prefer to be called). Roger Guyett, the visual effects supervisor for Paramount’s “Star Trek” prequel, knows this all too well.

“Sometimes I wonder if I’ll meet someone on a dark and stormy night and he’ll come at me with a machete because I didn’t do something the way some hardcore fan would’ve done it,” says Guyett, in a deadpan tone that suggests he’s not quite kidding.

Guyett is not the only one facing this fear. From franchise reboots (”Terminator Salvation”) and sequels (”Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen,” “X-Men Origins: Wolverine”) to adaptations of time-honored classics (”Where the Wild Things Are,” “Watchmen”), many of this year’s visual effects spectaculars have mined preexisting works for inspiration, and each one has its own legion of persnickety hardcore fans.

READ ARTICLE AT HR REPORTER

Related posts:

1. Visual effects shoot for realism in explosive ‘Terminator Salvation’   What do you do if you’re a filmmaker trying...
2. Visual effects outfit Rhythm and Hues opens studio in Malaysia Hollywood is coming to Malaysia. Los Angeles-based award winning...
3. ‘Star Wars’ the most influential visual effects film of all time The Visual Effects Society has announced the results of...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Related posts:

1. BEHIND THE SCENES TV: The visual effects from ‘The Fountain’ Visual Effects from Darren Aronofsky’s ‘The Fountain’ starring Hugh...
2. From visual effects to directing: Q&A with Scott Stewart His credits include Sin City, Superman Returns, Pirates of the Caribbean and Iron Man, now...
3. Visual Effects Honor Classic Roots Hell hath no fury like a geek scorned, and...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

His credits include Sin City, Superman Returns, Pirates of the Caribbean and Iron Man, now Scott Stewart - who brought the FX of those aforementioned titles to life via his company The Orphanage - is making his feature directorial debut with Legion, starring Paul Bettany as the archangel Michael. His mission? Protect a mother-to-be in a diner full of people who are under siege by angels sent by God to destroy the human race. Shock caught up to Stewart for an early chat about his 2010 Screen Gems release shortly after he presented a trailer to a San Diego Comic-Con audience.

READ ARTICLE AT SHOCK TILL YOU DROP

Related posts:

1. Entering ‘Green Zone’ visual effects shock and awe Director Paul Greengrass, whose frenetic filmmaking style has been...
2. Visual effects artists get the James Cameron effect When an audience at the Dubai International Film Festival...
3. Visual effects industry suffers from breakneck pace of blockbusters   If the visual effects industry had its way, the...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Outsourcing to India, long dominated by software engineering and back-office work, is expanding in new terrain: special effects for movies.

India’s rise comes at a difficult time for U.S. special effects outfits, some of which have buckled as the 2008 L.A. writers strike cut productions and the financial crisis curtailed financing. Executives in India say cost pressures are pushing studios to send more work to India, where special effects projects are up to 40 percent cheaper than in the U.S.

To be sure, Indian shops are, for now, minor players. Hollywood’s special effects industry is still dominated by U.S. companies like Industrial Light & Magic. Production standards are generally lower in India, and many moviemakers still won’t send creative work thousands of miles (kilometers) away.

But the distance between Hollywood and Bollywood is narrowing, and many say it’s only a matter of time before the gap in skills, trust, and quality is closed. The domestic market is also maturing as Indian audiences develop a taste for high-tech Hindi flicks.

READ ARTICLE AT ASSOCIATED PRESS

Related posts:

1. Bollywood muscles in on Hollywood With India’s entertainment billionaires seemingly blessed with limitless pockets,...
2. Latest trend in matchmaking in India - reality TV for arranged marriages In a two-minute video clip televised here last month,...
3. Fox to take on Indian movie market   Twentieth Century Fox has set up an Asian unit...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Reuben Langdon is a motion capture artist in motion pictures and games — you’ve probably directed his actions without knowing it in such games as Resident Evil 5 and Dead Rising. Most recently he’s been working on James Cameron’s epic CG film, Avatar. He took some time out of his busy backflipping schedule to talk to us about motion capture, having his own studio, and working with Cameron on the biggest and most ambitious CG movie of all time.

READ INTERVIEW AT CRUNCHGEAR

Related posts:

1. The making of ‘Avatar’ Through a combination of new movie technologies, James Cameron...
2. Spielberg and Jackson complete motion capture for ‘Tintin’ Steven Spielberg this week will quietly wrap 32 days...
3. ‘Avatar’ movie cast member Zoe Saldana on making movies as a woman in Hollywood Actress Zoe Saldana has been kicking ass lately. Like...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

A Weta Digital researcher, Iain Matthews, has joined university academics in Britain and the United States to develop a way of “cloning” facial expressions.

The computer scientists have challenged assumptions about human behaviour and what influences that behaviour when people communicate by tracking the expressions of individuals during live conversations on a video conference, and mapping the facial movements to models of faces.

READ ARTICLE AT NZ HERALD

Related posts:

1. Peter Jackson’s filmic evolution Peter Jackson is a busy man. In just over...
2. ‘The Hobbit’ going into production with Peter Jackson producing J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Hobbit” is back on track and headed...
3. Peter Jackson: Spielberg has completed pre-vis on ‘Tintin’ movie In a recent panel at Comic-Con, director Peter Jackson...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

What do you do if you’re a filmmaker trying to capture a scene in which an onrushing tow truck slams into a parked car, sending the car rolling neatly up and over the truck’s back, but you face the reality that the car, vaulted into the air by a cannon shot from below, actually flies high above the truck?

If you’re making “Terminator Salvation,” or T4 as it’s known, the latest salvo in the 25-year-old series, you turn to the visual effects experts at Industrial Light & Magic and depend on them to solve the problem.

And solve it they did. Those who see the film, which opened Friday, will see the collision rocket the car into the air and, indeed, roll right over the back of the tow truck. They’ll never know that in real-life, the car actually soared high and straight up into the air.

READ ARTICLE AT CNET

Related posts:

1. Visual effects industry suffers from breakneck pace of blockbusters   If the visual effects industry had its way, the...
2. ‘Star Wars’ the most influential visual effects film of all time The Visual Effects Society has announced the results of...
3. Visual effects outfit Rhythm and Hues opens studio in Malaysia Hollywood is coming to Malaysia. Los Angeles-based award winning...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.