There are some interesting bits about the effects from STAR WARS EPISODE ONE, and a status report on what is done thus far. Can you even fathom the render time involved with that movie? It's got to be abnormally large eh? Well... here ya go...
HELLO HARRY AND OTHERS CGI reporting in from lala land.... Saturday I went north to Santa Barbara(North bel air) to the 14 th annual film festival.
They not only have a group of indie films but a digital technology day as well...... they show teen s digital film and they had a anel of DPs like Allen Davio ( Empire of the Sun) and John Alanzo(chinatown) showing the difference between film and HDTV cameras- not much
But the real info came when the second seminar started. It was about special effects and on the panel was H B Siegel who is head of ILM and Burt Ward(yes TV s Robin- he owns an effects company and is married to a woman whose family owns 4,000 companies like Arby's- some people get all the luck- but I am not bitter ).
He stated that 1900 effects shots were in Eposide 1 and that they have 200 left to complete. He also revealed that there are 100 different all digital characters(not counting when each character is seen in an army scene and there are 1,000 of them but all different characters-wow) they just rendered the 4 millionth frame of the picture. The other interesting thing he said was at IlM they review the past 24 hours work in front of peers then get thier assignments for the day, yes there is no business like show business. Other than that of course he could not say anything else.
In the Evening MovieLine the magazine had thier first annual awards for Young Hollywood. It was pretty low key because I just walked in with a friend whose client got the Lifetime achievement award-Jeff Bridges presented to him by Max Schnell. Barry Pepper and Reese Witherspoon(who wasn't there) got the Best New Faces award. Best Director and Film went to Don Roos and The Opposite Of Sex who thanked his boyfriend that is a first , I think at least that I have seen.Brendan Fraser got an award from Sir Ian for Best Actor an Best Actress went to Jada Pinkett Smith- by the way these were voted by the reader on the magazines website-Jay Thomas, a bitter old man but semi funny hosted the non-televised event.
Ronin s composer got best score, I cant remember his name much less how to spell it(slavic name with lots accents shall we say) and a song from Velvet goldmine got best tune though the guy stated that his band just broke up. I wish I had something interesting to report about something the stars said but they all just thanked friends and the fans, though not once God they save t hat for TV. SEE YA
