Millimeter February 2003Editor's NotesWhat is Fun?
Define fun. Grown men (and one grown woman) playing baseball in a make-believe Yankee stadium, while a pretend commentator calls the plays and a pretend... FeaturesNext Generation Digital StudioBy Michael Goldman Threshold Digital Research Labs' (TDRL) CG feature film, Foodfight!, and the company's five-year effort to become a global, digital animation production studio are both unorthodox endeavors, to say the least. ...Children of Duneby Kristinha M. Anding Talk about pressure. In 2001, SciFi Channel's three-part miniseries Frank Herbert's Dune walked away with two Emmys for outstanding cinematography and visual effects and more than doubled the network's previous largest viewing audience.... Sound for StompBy Larry Loewinger In the minds of its creators — Englishmen Luke Cresswell and Stephen McNicholas — Stomp is a malleable idea about rhythm as language, a nonverbal way of communicating through percussion.... Film's Next Century?by Dan Ochiva
Back to SchoolBy S. D. Katz Software, training materials, and resources are taking advantage of new distribution media, namely CD, DVD, and online subscription-based classes. Whether it's information on After Effects, Maya, or Final Cut Pro, there are many suppliers of training materials, including free tutorials available from user group websites.... Step by StepDigital Magic in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secretsby Ellen Wolff A key character in the Harry Potter franchise debuts in Harry Potter and the Chamber Of Secrets, director Chris Columbus' second film in the Warner Bros. series.... ClipsDigital DailiesMichael Goldman The independent film project, Civil Brand, allowed DP Yuri Neyman to finally utilize a system he had been developing for years, in an attempt to retain color and contrast control over the movie's video dailies. ... Digital SurgeryMichael Goldman In order to finish Ray Harryhausen's incomplete 50-year-old short, The Tortoise & the Hare, before its exhibition at this year's Sundance, animators Mark Caballero and Seamus Walsh painstakingly matched Harry-hausen's classic stop-motion style.... Decasia The State of DecayDarroch Greer A whirling dervish spins slowly to ominous orchestral strains; a geisha sits quietly, her robe and skin bubbling with film emulsion as if radiated by an atomic bomb; a boxer struggles mightily against a mutating, amorphous creature on the verge of swallowing him whole.... Hot SpotsHot Spotsby Trevor Boyer A selection of the hottest agency work submitted monthly to Millimeter.... Cool GraphicsFields and Framesfields & framesby Dan Ochiva You might agree that the film industries' anti-piracy measures sank to a new low this past January, when Reuters reported that Malaysian video pirates... HotwareBeta SightCustom Controls Speed Graphics Production
By Vincent Serritella You may not be able to fool Mother Nature, but you can change the seasons — if you have the right 3D tools. At Rhinoceros Visual Effects, New York, we discovered this firsthand while using Houdini 5.5 from Side Effects Software on “Snowman,” a commercial spot for GM's Cadillac Division.... Fade to Black |
The current economic slump highlights the increasingly treacherous fiscal and technological shoals film rental houses navigate. New cameras, lenses, and film stocks appeal to directors and DPs, but where's the money to invest in them?...