The Meaning of Lost (2004-2010)

[update in progress]

I dont always watch a show or movie when it first comes out.  But the ability to download episodes or seasons of important media product (Thunderbirds Are GO!) has transformed my ability to self-medicate chronic insomnia with productive show review.

For the purpose of self-medicating insomnia, I can heartily recommend Lost (2004-2010).  Six seasons of a group of people thrown together seemingly at random on a plane flight from Sydney to LA which goes off course and crashes on a mysterious island.  Indigenous peoples, the struggle for survival, evidence of mysterious scientific projects and ancient cultic influence from thousands of years ago.  It turns out that many of the survivors of Oceanic Flight 815 may have connections to each other in ways that are slowly revealed.  A struggle for good and evil.  An island with the ability to hide itself and move its position.   A paralyzed man who is healed.  A monster that appears to be black smoke.

But what does it all mean?

That was the question then and that is the question now.  There are many attempts to answer the questions posed by this show and below are my two cents worth.

First, I think we are entitled to ignore what the writers / producers say about the meaning of the show.  The meaning of a great work of art (like Thunderbirds) will necessary evolve as our culture evolves.

Second, there are many little mysteries planted all throughout Lost some of which are answered and many of which are just ignored.  That may be too bad but I don't think it distracts from the bigger picture.  To pick just one example, what do the numbers mean?  It doesn't matter.  Maybe it was just supposed to be entertaining.  Maybe it would be better if they did mean something significant.  But I think its meaning is straightforward: they are a device to signal to Hurley that there is meaning in the universe, that there is some structure, even if he does not know what it is.

Third, I think that there are important story elements that can not be ignored but are there to facilitate the next two points.  The Island is clearly important as a place where these various things happen, it has its own fantastic(-al) semi-explanations for its power, pockets of exotic matter for example.  And I dont think that there can be much doubt that Oceanic Flight 815 is iconic and central to the fates of our characters.  Don't get me wrong, these elements are important but they are in a sense details leading up to the primary themes.

And those themes are as follows (a) our interpretation and understanding should be mystical not scientific, (b) our main characters have been brought together to work out issues that need to be resolved before they can go on to the "next place" and finally, therefore, (c) I think that Lost is clearly in that genre of fiction that is loosely described as the journey of the soul on its path from life to the hereafter.   

There is an additional theme that involves our characters involvement in some sort of higher level battle between light and dark, good and evil.  In that, Lost also falls into a genre that we might call Manichean.   The struggle between good and evil.  Maybe even Zoroastrian.

There is also some narrative device ongoing in parallel which suggests that the characters are  experiencing some sort of alternate reality where Oceanic Flight 815 does not crash and where they are not on the island.  Thus there is some parallel universe mechanism ongoing.  I think this is loosely connected to the mechanism by way the interrelationships between the characters is exposed.

The characters work through serious problems as they prepare for transfer for what comes after. Those who are not ready stay on the Island for a while.

Although I am no expert in this, I think that there are numerous mystical belief systems that Lost is a derivative of. Another cinema example of this is Jacob's Ladder (1991) in which our main character is subjected to a number of end-of-life experiences as he is prepared for his death and the soul's journey to another plane of existence. Ghost (1991) is probably another example of this genre. 

Therefore Lost is based on the delusion that there is some sort of system and mechanism for life-after-death, in which important issues can be worked out for those who are chosen, for those who are "candidates".  There have always been fantasies of such a mechanism embedded in many religions that help some people feel better about their inevitable and horrible fate. 

Oh yes, those visual effects.

Lost is an example of a show with huge numbers of episodes where the special photographic effects help sell the story in only a few minor ways.  Even though the story is filled with mystical and mysterious elements and the story advanced with more traditional physical effects, there is basically only one concept that is a special photographic effect.  And that of course is the smoke monster.  The other effects are model effects (plane breaks up in flight), explosion effects, and makeup effects.  There are lighting effects in a few places.  And of course there is set design.  All there to advance the story.  The only "exotic" effect that I noticed was the smoke monster which was one of the only absolutely conclusive pieces of evidence that there was something unworldly happening.

The lesson I want to suggest here is that the show made good use of visual effects.  The effects were not gratuitous.  They were economical and designed to advance the story.  Many modern movies and shows could learn from this example.

Visual Effects and the Art of Explosive Decapitation

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What makes truly great visual effects? Animation, design, attention to detail and many other elements. Rarely does mere story affect the greatest work in the field, as modern technology has proven that plot and story are obsolete and not worth the added expense.

Recently reviewing a much overlooked masterpiece, Pirates of the Caribbean part 18, Dead Men Tell no Tales, I came across a fabulous example of the dedication and attention to the *smallest thing* that can turn merely good work into great work for the ages.

There are few truly great head explosions in the western cinema, and if you look closely at one of the attached frames you will see that "Dead Men" contributes to this canon with a notable entry.

Congratulations to all the artists involved for making our lives that much more fulfilling and enriched through the art of explosive decapitation!

Note on Thor Ragnarok

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I went to the local premiere of Thor Ragnarok. The screening that was most convenient was IMAX so I saw the film in that format, which I regret.

There are spoilers here for the movie.

I watched all available trailers before seeing the film but the filmmakers had reserved enough plot points from the trailers that I did not really know what was going to happen.

As expected, the movie was very funny and good humored. But it turns out that there are some reasonable character development points and even some very dark themes, but you do have to pay attention.

First, Loki's actions to usurp Odin's throne not only was an act of tremendous disloyalty to his step-father, it results in the return of Hela, the banished daughter and step-sister to Loki, and ultimately the destruction of Asgard and most of its citizens.

Second, the remaining citizens of Asgard are now homeless refugees. Take note you haughty, this might be you in the future.

But the final dark theme is also the most important. Hela reveals that Asgard, and Odin, as positive and noble people are living a fraud. They have covered up the conquest of the 9 realms by Odin, and the violence and wars that this entailed. As part of the cover up, Hela, Odin's first born, is banished and forgotten. But she returns and knows where the bodies are buried, literally.

By far the best moment of the movie is when all this is revealed and Hela, in the throne room, asks Thor “where he thinks all this gold came from?”

Technically, it is very good, well-art directed and the art and science of computer generated green rage monsters continues to advance.

The whole time I was watching this IMAX presentation, I thought I was watching some sort of cheap uprez with a sharpening filter. For a while there, the audio was too loud to tolerate but it got better, thank Odin!

And yes, for those who really want to know, our remaining Valkyrie is either gay or bisexual, it is not entirely clear.

The cast of Thor did a live spoof at an early screening of the movie in Los Angeles at the Grove theatres. It is a little goofy but good spirited and fun,.  You can see it on youtube here.

For more information about green people in our society and how they are marginalized, please see here.

Scott Pilgrim and the Perils of Judging a Film from its VFX Reel

The Academy Award (tm) for visual effects is not given for the film that has the splashiest visual effects, or the most innovative, or the most expensive, or even the one with the most visual effects in some quantitative sense. According to the rules of the game, the film that wins this prestigious award and confers on its recipients a competitive lustre, is the film where the visual effects best serves the film.

Sadly it is not the film with the most computer generated robots beating the heck out of other computer generated robots, but rather that film where the robots who are beating the heck out of each other appear to be doing so in a way that contributes to the film's higher purpose.

Of course no award process is perfect and compromises need to be made. One of those compromises is that only films that make use of visual effects are considered for the award in visual effects. Who knew? This is a logical limitation that can have the most unfortunate effect, so to speak, depending on how dreadful the year's visual effects films are. Another issue that must be faced is that the side-by-screening of the different films in competition must necessarily restrict that screening to an edited compilation of the visual effects for each film. Whether that “effects reel” is 10 minutes long, or 12 minutes, or 15 it is by definition an abbreviated version of the larger creative project.

Trust me, when seeing these effects reels back to back, even 10 minutes per film can seem like forever.

It happens though that an effects reel for a creative project may not actually communicate the real value of those effects in context. This is why it is often the case that the selected films (those films that go past the bakeoff and are actually nominated for an award) may seem to go to those films with the largest budget, or the greatest number of giant robots exploding, or even, heaven forbid, the films that generated the most money at the box office.

So, years ago I attended the bakeoff and one of the films in competition was Scott Pilgrim vs The World (2010). Although it was nice to see a film that did not depend on explosions or giant robots per se to communicate its higher vision, I was bored with it. Many of my friends thought it was very original, but I didnt. To me it seemed nothing more than a rip off of the classic genre of the 1 or 2 person fighter games from the world of coinop video games.

What the VFX reel did not communicate, and which I only discovered later, was that this film was actually a pretty good low budget film with visual effects. It wasnt totally successful, it fell apart near the end but the first 2/3rds or so of the film is actually very, very funny. The premise is that a very young man, maybe 23 or so, falls in love with a woman who has moved to Toronto from NYC to escape her previous life. But if our hero wants to date her, he must first defeat in battle her evil former lovers.

It is also a good example of regional filmmaking, being based in Toronto as Toronto, not as Toronto as a film location trying to be some other city.

So if you get a chance to see this film, or the first 2/3rds or so, and if you appreciate regional, low-budget filmmaking, this is a pretty entertaining example.

And I never would have guessed this from just seeing its VFX reel out of context.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0446029/

The Superiority of the Marvel Universe over the DC Universe Explained

Any all-encompassing theory that attempts to explain why the Marvel CInematic Universe is in fact a valid metaphor and framework for expressing the nuances of our civilization must also explain why the MCU appears to be so much better than the DC Extended Universe. I believe that there are three fundamental reasons why this is so and will expound on this today.

But first lets discuss where the differences do not lie. Films in both universes have to contend with world-threatening villains who plan to destroy all humanity, that goes without saying. Films in both universes also have to balance these terrifying cataclysms with threats that are closer to home, thus we see cruel intergalactic forces threatening school buses filled with innocent children or civilians in both movies, in which the occupants are saved in the nick of time. No cheap exploitation of the emotions of the audience here.

Nor does the difference lie in a sometimes bewildering network of plotlines of various meta-human, mutated and/or intergalactic good or bad guys or gals. This sort of thing naturally comes with the territory and both of these universes deal with the narrative implications in an adequate fashion.

And it is not in the quantity or quality of the visual effects per se that we see our major differences. Both of these universes have their share of chair gripping, physics defying, perfectly conceived and choreographed disasters that involve entire cities and thousands of innocents in a narrative of alien hatred or world dominating conspiracy.

Wherein lies the differences between the two cinematic universes?

1. The DC Universe is grim and the Marvel Universe is not.

In the latest Superman and Superman vs Batman films, I counted exactly two jokes in both films. Let me go over that again in case I was vague. There were only two jokes in the entire second film and none in the first, although it is possible that there was a 1/2 joke in the first film. Whereas in the Marvel films, there actually is some humor in the dialogue, and some of it is actually quite funny. For example, doing this from memory.

Dr. Banner: (referring to Loki) You can smell crazy on him.

Thor: Be careful how you speak, he is my brother.

Natasha: He killed 80 people in two days.

Thor: He is adopted.

2. The sheer mayhem of the visual effects in the Marvel Universe is without equal.

Sure DC has a huge quantity of stupid visual effects, like everyone does today. But I felt that these effects, although well designed, and sometimes even innovative (see for example the krypton / machine interface in the first Superman movie) they lacked the sheer exuberant madness of the visual effects of the Marvel films, or at least some of them. Consider these frames from one of the fight climaxes of the Age of Ultron monstrosity. I bet you can not even figure out how many good or bad characters are fighting, let alone who is decapitating whom. I think that it is this out of control mayhem combined with the humor mentioned above that lends a certain quality to the Marvel films.

3. We have seen the DC films before and we will see them again.

The greed obsessed studios behind the DC films have made it clear that sequels and reboots of previously examined properties will continue into the future over and over again. How many times will we see a reboot of Batman and Superman? They will be endless, they will be infinite. We will see Superman's father explain to Superman that he is not from Earth again. We will see the young Bruce Wayne witness his parents getting murdered and be horrified, again.

Whereas the Marvel films give the impression that they are actually going somewhere with their different phases and do not plan to revisit the same old material repeatedly.  At least not yet.

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Notes

1. In Batman v Superman: The Dawn of Justice (2016) there may be two jokes.  One, when Batman rescues "Martha", Superman's mom, he says "I'm a friend of your son".  She says: "I could tell by the cape.". Not too bad. Better still is when Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman are preparing to take on the horrible monster at the end, there is some references to this critter being from another world. Wonder Woman says, "I have killed creatures from other worlds". Batman looks at Superman and says, "Is she with you?" Superman says, "I thought she was with you." I may have this backwards, I am doing this from memory.  These are both pretty reasonable moments of humor but that is it, that is all there is.  Its not enough, IMHO, to alleviate the endless grimness. Yes, comic book superhero movies are important, God knows, but important does not have to mean unrelieved grimness. We are not talking about genocide here, you know.

Oh wait, in the first movie, Man of Steel (2013), we are talking about genocide.  Ok, maybe they should be grim.

Photoshop and the Ethics of Reverse Manipulation

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At this point we are all inundated with obviously and not so obviously faked images that have passed through a photoshop session.  What would Facebook be without a suitably cropped and modified photograph per day with some obnoxious political agenda attached? Even so, although our news media outlets are notorious for manipulating the news and evidence, there are some of us who would like to think that they keep it to a minimum and unconscious level.

But what happens when we have a news story with an attached photograph that is almost certainly, obviously modified?  Should it be used anyway, or modified, faked if you will, to be less apparently false?

Is lying allowed if it increases the likelihood that an otherwise true story will be believed?

We have a particularly egregious example in the photograph used in the Reuters article about a recently convicted arsonist, see German Man Convicted of Setting Dozens of Fires in Los Angeles.

Oh, those fiery eyes! 

This is an entertaining example of a photograph that looks faked for editorial purposes even if, by some strange chance, it turns out not to be faked  How likely is it that the alleged (and now convicted) arsonist should happen to get "red eye" in this circumstance?

Anyone looking at it, though, might reasonably think it had been modified, and therefore, perhaps it should have been modified, possibly for a second time, to make it appear less manipulated even if by doing so it was in reality more manipulated.  Or would this be even worse, hiding from the public as it were the evidence of the original modification?

For those of you interested in the history of manipulating photographs for evidence or political purposes and are unaware that it has a long tradition, you could do worse than start by reading David King's acclaimed book “The Commissar Vanishes: The Falsification of Photographs and Art in Stalin's Russia” which you may find on that great evader of Austrian sausage taxes, Amazon.com.

https://www.amazon.com/Commissar-Vanishes-Falsification-Photographs-Stalins/dp/0805052941

Believe it or else, this is an important topic in the aesthetics and practice of visual effects.  In visual effects we often have the problem that something  that is correct (either in real life or because our simulation says it is correct) looks wrong.  And in visual effects, something that looks wrong will not achieve its purpose with the audience and will call attention to itself in an undesirable manner.

Now on the other hand, if our purpose was to show our convicted arsonist had been possessed by the Devil, then this photograph, modified or not, would have been just fine.

Fight Club, Richard Baily and the Subversion of Reality

It goes without saying that when a genuinely interesting movie comes out in America, that the film critics and media organizations will attack it and lie as hard as they can about what it is about in order to minimize the number of people who see it. That is the job of the media in our oppressive society. Whereas when we have a stupid movie like Avatar, everyone gets damp about it even though it has no content. So I heard for years that Fight Club (1999) glorified violence and so forth and so on and never had any desire to see it. Well I happened to see it the other day, and guess what, it has nothing whatsoever to do with what they said it did.

But we are not here to talk about content, or about the repression of truth, or about how shallow and superficial our civilization is. We are here to talk about something more important. Which is to say, visual effects.

What is the role of the artist? The role of the artist is to manufacture consumer products in order to maximize shareholder value of course. And it turns out that one artist that I knew quite well was the artist who blew up the buildings at the end of Fight Club. My friend Doctor Baily of Image Savant, under the direction of visual effects supervisor Kevin Haug and director David Fincher, blew up those buildings.

Richard "Dr" Baily of Image Savant

Furthermore, eschewing “photorealism”, that grossly abused and misunderstood term, the buildings blow up in a poetic and dreamlike fashion, thus contributing to the telling of the story. As we do not know if those buildings really did blow up, since by that time we are quite sure we do not know what is real and what is the perception of a disturbed individual.

And to do so a mere two years before the real buildings blew up at the World Trade Center! How wonderful for him, to have actually predicted and, symbolically at least, participated in the single event that has caused so much war and misery in our world.

Rarely does visual effects have such an impact.

Fight Club on IMDB

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0137523/

Motion Blur and Atypical Flare Over Syria

The following are images taken from the boom position of a McDonnell Douglas KC-10 Extender aircraft while refueling an F-22 Raptor over Syria. The point of these pictures here is to demonstrate a good use of motion blur and a form of lens flare both “normal” and “atypical” as used by our unwitting photographer for the benefit of those interested in the arts of visual effects.

In our first picture we have the image of a stabilized F-22 underneath the KC-10 with the city in the distance. The F-22 has matched its motion to the boom and our photographer so there is no motion blur (there is actually a tiny amount) but the ground underneath the plane is moving at a steady clip as you can see by the streak of its lights. Additionally both the bright distant lights and lights/reflections on the airplane itself are demonstrating what we might call “typical flare”, e.g. a roughly circular, symmetric and Gaussian glow on top of (double exposed if you will) the base imagery. Also look for saturation blowout where the image “becomes so bright” that the color is attenuated to “a very bright” white.

In the second picture, our eyes are drawn to the green flare on the left side of the image. The conceit here is that there has been some moisture on the lens, whether from rain or condensation or other. The water distorts the otherwise circular flare (as maintained for the red light) into a idiosyncratic and atypical flare such as we might see in the so-called real world, which in fact this is.

Notice that the lights on the ground are far less noticeable as we have moved over a more rural part of Syria.

In our final image, we have a different point of view. The fighter still has matched motion to the boom and hence no noticable blur, but the lights are also seen from a different angle and more in the distance, so there is also less blur.

The funny thing about motion blur done well is that at speed the apparent blur disappears.

Source of Images on The Aviationist

Wikipedia page on the KC-10

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_KC-10_Extender

Bladerunner (1982) Convention Reel Found on Vimeo

A 1982 “convention reel” for the movie Bladerunner (1982) has appeared on Vimeo. It is very low quality, probably a transfer from the 16 mm but has some interesting material in it. In fact it contains some of the first efforts of Hollywood producers to destroy the noble art of visual effects by revealing the secrets of the arcane technology which is better held by a trusted elite and not just thrown out to the great unwashed of the filmgoing public.

https://vimeo.com/38950113

This was still in the early days of “convention reels”, when film producers would pander to attendees of science fiction, fantasy and comic conventions. The success of the marketing of Star Wars (1977) could not be ignored and so studios and filmmakers started allocating money for short films describing the film in progress and sending those films along with a marketing assistant and possibly a star or two to the various conventions around the country.

Ridley Scott in front of a Bladerunner miniature

1982 would have been very early in this trend, before the directors and stars started routinely showing up at the convention.

Highlights of this reel include

-- A discussion by Syd Mead of the philosophy behind much of the production design, which is to say, a layered approach on the lower levels of accretions of technology on top of previous, no longer working, artifacts. I am not sure, but it looks to me as though they were building the set to Bladerunner on top of an urban back lot of existing facades, such as the Universal Back Lot, although I am not sure which one this might be.

-- A discussion by Ridley about why he did not want to use the word Android and instead made up their own word, replicant.

-- A discussion by Douglas Trumbull on the elements required to simulate the interior of one of the Spinners (flying police vehicles).

It is the latter that is the most disturbing as this is one of the earliest cases of the use of arcane technology of visual effects used to sell a film.  What a self-destructive behavior this is!  By revealing how the magic is done, the magic is itself undone, and the audience begins to become jaded and critical.  This process which took 30 years is one of the biggest problems the filmmaker has today.  But it is our own damn fault, or perhaps the fault of the producers who encouraged this kind of behavior out of a desire to market their film, in other words, out of short term greed.

The Mystery of "Now You See Me" (2013)

Two years ago I saw a trailer for a movie about magicians who rob banks to give to the poor.   I never heard much about it and thought maybe it had gone straight to video.  But no, it was released, but with very little marketing and then a number of odd things happened.

I may as well tell you up front that I believe that this film is actually an important and intellectual French film masquerading as a trivial popcorn movie. There are a number of things about this film that reveal that it is not mere cinematic fluff but is of interest to the readers of this blog, compelled as we are by the appropriate and innovative use of visual effects and our study of the esoteric knowledge that is hidden from the average, uninitiated member of the filmgoing audience.

On the surface the movie is an action / caper film about 4 street magicians who are brought together by an unknown person to create a new act, called the Four Horsemen. They nearly instantly become very famous and successful and their shows sell out and become media events not just because they have great style but also because they rob banks as part of their show and then give the money to their audience. Since in fact there are laws against robbing banks, unless of course you are already wealthy in which case you can do what you want, the FBI and Interpol get involved to solve the case and put our heroes into prison. The Four Horsemen have to somehow continue to evade the FBI, continue to rob banks, and somehow do all this in their final show in New York with the whole world watching and the FBI closing in.

But from the very beginning, the film confounds expectations.

A young man stands in front of a mirror practicing various sleight of hand flourishes with a deck of cards (see below). As he does so, there is a voice over, the voice of a young magician and he says to his invisible audience:

Magician: Come in close. Closer. Because the more you think you see, the easier it will be to fool you. Because, what is seeing? You're looking, but what you are really doing is filtering... interpreting... searching for meaning. My job? To take that most precious of gifts you give me, your attention, and use it against you.

So you see, the movie begins with an idea, an idea from the philosophy of magic. It is very unusual for an American movie to begin with an idea, or to even have an idea anywhere in the movie for that matter. That was the first clue that something unusual was going on.

Lots of style and glitz in our magic shows these days.

Superficially, the plot holes of the film, perhaps more appropriately called plot chasms, might signify the film as not serious. But this unusual opening monologue also suggested that there was something else going on, something behind the scenes, something mysterious.  These clues suggested to me that perhaps it was made in the cinematic tradition of another country.

Let us review some of the other unusual things about this film.

First, Hollywood (in this case, an American & Canadian studio) rarely makes movies about magic, that is, the profession of magic in this country. Whether the magicians are stage magicians, close-up magicians, famous escapists, mentalists, whatever, they rarely make films about these people, no matter how fictional. Such films are said to not make money, according to the standard received wisdom. But this movie was made nevertheless.

Step into my bubble, he said.

Second, the film, when released got lukewarm and mixed reviews, and received almost no marketing from the studio and it was expected to die a quick death. But, strangely enough, it didn't. Instead it proceeded to slowly build business by word of mouth and made over $100 million in this country for a total of at least $230 million in first release. That is very good for a film that cost $75 million to make and was expected to flop. In fact, it made more money than several other very expensive summer movies of that year and they are even making a sequel.

Third, this film was made by a relatively unknown French director and it is very rare for this country to finance a film by a foreign director because such films rarely do well in this country. Unless of course the foreign director makes films that are like American films in which case he really isn't all that foreign, now is he? Hollywood from time to time will co-finance a film by a famous foreign director, but that is not what happened here.

She is beautiful.

He needs a shave.

Fourth, the film is very, very French. It is not just an American caper film done by a foreign director. No. From beginning to end, this film feels like a French film in spite of the fact that Canal Plus did not finance it. How could I tell? Well of course there was the opening already alluded to, but beyond that French filmmakers have a very firm grasp of the essence of a film and have no problem sacrificing plot credibility at any time if it contributes to the style of the film or to the film's higher purpose. Plot, character, plausibility? Poof, that is irrelevant. Second, the French seem to have an affection for sophisticated and intelligent women who are not 22 years old as all the women in Hollywood seem to be and who, generally speaking, have an affair with the male lead. Third, they are very partial to male leads who do not shave. Fourth, the French as a culture have a strange appreciation for the big budget nightclub Vegas-type of show, in this case, of Magic. So lots of spotlights and lots of showmanship. Kindof Siegried and Roy without Siegfried and Roy. But most of all it is the cavalier dismissal of reality at any time that just felt so very French to me.

A typical French film might be a romantic action film about a beautiful and well (un) dressed young woman who is secretly a mysterious alien and who knows the secret of the rebirth of the universe and will save the galaxy if only these men in the story would stop screwing around and get out of her way before it is too late. This film is not about that, but it is about 4 street magicians who do the most amazing and implausible things with a good sense of style and outwit the FBI at every turn.

Fifth, the visual effects generally have a lot of panache and are not held back by any old-fashioned concerns about believability. As the French are very much into the meaning and semiotics of modern architecture, the final scenes are a very busy effects sequence with projection on buildings that is actually quite interesting if a little unbelievable.   The problem is that while we can project stereo on a building, I don't think we have the technology to project something such that each member of the audience will have their own point of view and perceive a holographic or stereo image that appears natural and in place.  I think that most of these techniques restrict you to one point of view or at most a very few.   This is a rare example of someone in the film business actually thinking ahead.

Since the police are after them, the Four Horsemen, now reduced to three, make a virtual appearance.

Sixth, the film seems to attribute much of its implausibility to the invisible hand of a secret philanthropic organization from ancient Egypt that may be behind the mystery.

And finally, I normally hate films with plot holes like this. But in this case I did not mind it one bit. In fact in spite of everything, or perhaps because of all the things I have mentioned, I actually found the film charming.

Although nominally the film may be about magicians who rob banks, we also have here a nice Cinderella meta-story about a French summer popcorn film that did well.

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Now You See Me (2013) on IMDB

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1670345/

Hollywood Reporter article on Now You See Me Boxoffice

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/box-office-shocker-you-see-601936

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Notes

1. A flourish is the display of a deck of cards in a way that is designed to impress. It may or may not be part of an illusion. A good card player will often use flourishes when shuffling a deck as a way of intimidating his opponents or perhaps just to show off. In magic, it is part of the entertainment value of a show and is often used to distract the audience's attention. It may also be used by the magician as an exercise to develop skill and coordination.

Should We Abandon the "Rational Actor Model of Filmmaking"?

Is there too much bad computer animation in today's movies?  Is that even possible?

I continue to see people out in the world, on Internet forums and blogs, complaining piteously about the alleged overuse of bad computer animation in film. Here is a recent example pointed out to me by the people at www.io9.com.

Six Reasons Modern Movie CGI Looks Surprisingly Crappy

http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-reasons-expensive-films-end-up-with-crappy-special-effects/

Is it possible that there is too much CGI, particularly bad CGI, in modern filmmaking?

No, of course not. Everything done with computer graphics in visual effects is exactly as it should be and the audience should agree if they know what is good for them. But sadly, some among the audience, a pathetic few, have not gotten the message. Two messages in fact.

The first message that these whiners have missed is that the modern art of filmmaking is all about the bad use of computer graphics: that is its very raison d'etre. That is its highest goal, second only to maximizing shareholder value, of course. When the audience sees computer generated garbage, that so-called garbage is nothing less than the manifestation of the new art which demands new artists and perhaps new audiences as well. Some of these filmmakers, like Michael Bey, may be far ahead of their time. But it is the duty of the real artist to lead and society will follow along eventually.

The second thing to realize about the tsunami of shit that we see in computer-generated visual effects is that it is not merely a lack of skill on the part of the effects providers, although that is often true as well.

Those who kvetch must look further into the heart of the madness itself and realize that it is almost certainly the filmmaker's vision that is up on the screen. If it is ugly, it is the ugliness that the client wanted. Bad computer animation has been incorporated into the filmmakers body of work and sensibility: it is an element of their style made manifest.  Admittedly, sometimes unconvincing or sub-par work is the result of a lack of skill on the part of the VFX supervisor or facility, but even then it may be that this apparent lack of skill is why these specialists in the computer arts were chosen. Their aesthetic matched that of the filmmaker's and a perfect harmony was found in stupid visual effects. It is not accident that things look the way they do.

To paraphrase a gem of wisdom from our friends in Communist China, “The fish stinks from the head”. In other words, when something smells bad to understand why it smells bad, you must look at who is running things because what you are seeing (or smelling) is probably what they asked for or represents who they are in some manner.

Yes, there are details in this vision that we can be critical of. It does seem that many do not realize that a camera must act like a real camera or it will cause the failure of the suspension of disbelief. The failure to embody the characters with appropriate gravity or weight is often cited, although that is but one example of the bad animation which we are regularly exposed to. The failure to realize that visual effects is about sleight-of-hand, it is about making the audience see what you want them to see and not about number of pixels or “photorealism”. The failure to realize that too much of anything is counterproductive.

But in our new Globalized and virtual Hollywood, nothing succeeds like excess. There is something about visual effects done with computers that can cause a producer and/or director to lose all sense of proportion and just throw 3D computer generated shots at their movie in lieu of thinking.  Perhaps this is a way to compensate for their own sexual inadequacy?  Perhaps the filmmakers have developed an anxiety disorder associated with working with a writer?  In the future, will 3D animation be classified as some sort of dangerous drug that causes the victims to peck without restraint at the lever that releases a 3D CGI pellet to the drug-crazed pigeon-filmmakers?

Should we now abandon the "rational actor" model of filmmaking, which says that those who are making this expensive entertainment product are reasonable and talented human beings doing what they think is best for the kind of entertainment they are trying to make?  Have our artists been driven mad by the opportunities which 3D animation have revealed?

Or is it something else.  Could it be that our overly-critical audience swine, who the Germans refer to as negativenpublikumschweine,  must look within themselves to find the real problem?   Perhaps it is not "bad" computer animation per se that they are reacting to, but their own provincial point of view that is not sophisticated enough to understand the director's vision?

The Heavens Have Foretold Your Doom

At one time or another, many computer animation people have worked to create an illusion of the night sky from earth or of its cousin, a “star field”, which is an imaginary view of the stars from space. Whether this was for their own amusement, for visual effects purposes, or for scientific visualization, these innocents would approach the problem with the assumption that it was going to be easy. How hard could it be, its just a bunch of random white dots, after all. Imagine their surprise when they discovered that doing excellent starfields is far from trivial.

A classic traditional technique to create starfields is to create a cyc, or curved screen, painted black and with very small holes punched in it. Then behind this screen was a curved light source, usually florescent tubes. The camera would be at the center of the implied sphere of the screen and when the room was darkened and the backlight illuminated, you had a curved space of very bright, very small light sources which could be photographed with long exposures when the camera was moving. The result was excellent motion blurred, perfectly antialiased, very high contrast star fields. But ultimately there were certain moves that the motion control camera could not easily do, such as tumble end over end for example, so there was a need to synthetically generate these elements.

Another time honored technique which looked excellent was the painting on glass. Most of the times you saw stars in Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) you were seeing an optical composite of a live action element or motion control shot with a matte painting on glass.

Since everyone seems to have to go through the same learning curve, I am providing notes here for what some of the issues facing 3D technical directors as they produce their first starfield and I have written it as a letter to my younger self.

September 19, 1983

Oh, unwary traveler, so proud of your 3D knowledge, your knowledge of geometric modeling, or of animation whether scripted or procedural, and of global illumination; do you think to encompass the heavens with these pathetic tools? Fool, your doom is assured. There are more things in heaven and on earth than are encompassed in your philosophy, or so I have heard, and when you approach the field of scientific visualization you must unlearn what you have learned and embrace the esoteric wisdom. You must open your eyes in order to see the light.

What perils await the unwary, the arrogant, the unlettered?

The first peril is the vast expanse of space. There is the scale of mortal man, then the scale of the solar system, then the scale of one single galaxy, and then beyond. These differences in scales are way beyond what most software packages can handle, so using the 3D positions of everything in a naive fashion is unlikely to work.

And that renderer you are so proud of.  Does it do all its calculations of space in 64 bit floating point or even higher precision?   Most renderers, with a few notable exceptions,  do the majority of their work using single precision floating point which may be adequate for a giant robot or two, but falls apart in the vast distances of space.  

The second peril involves the issue of filtering of what is very untypical samples.  Most scenes render surfaces with various lighting applied.   But a great deal of what you wish to render are stars but what are stars? Stars are huge things, but they are (for all practical purposes) infinitely bright and infinitely small (on the screen). The amount of energy concentrated in a single pixel may be immense, but the pixel next to it may have very little or no energy at all. And what happens under those circumstances when you move the camera? Well, it aliases, of course, terribly. Furthermore, if one has modeled stars very far away and you are using point sampling of one form or another to simulate area sampling, then if you are not careful, some of your samples will miss and you will have aliasing again.

Part of the solution is to use a good filter and lots of samples and in the choice of filter lurks another threat since as we know a "good" filter, perhaps a 7x7 sinc for example, is likely to have negative lobes, and instead of throwing those values out, you should keep them until the end and even then you should not throw them away. What then to do with them is a mystery left as an exercise for the reader.  The best solution of course would be to have a display that could absorb light as well as emit it, but we wait in vain for the display manufacturers to come to our aid.

And what about those overly bright stars? Will you generate glows and other artifacts? After all we are not just trying to simulate realistic stars, we are often trying to simulate realistic stars as the audience has seen them, and expects to see them.

Although the sky is filled with stars, that is not the only thing that there is. There are also great fuzzy areas known as nebulae and sometimes other galaxies. It turns out that if there is any data for that, it is likely to be volume data. But even if there is no data and you create your own, volume rendering is the best way to render a nebula one might argue. Does your renderer of choice do volume rendering?

Review the following image of the earthling's galaxy.

Do you notice the great areas of darkness? That of course is the infamous "space dust", the so-called Interstellar Media or ISM which must surely exist to hide from us the center of our galaxy where no doubt an entity of great evil exists. Surely you do not think it a coincidence that the space dust would hide what is arguably the most spectacular sight in our little neighborhood? Since most star catalogs do not have the ISM modeled, you may wish to develop a model of ISM in your spare time. If not, the galaxy will not look right unless you simply leave out the stars that are in those areas (which may or may not be be in the catalog anyway as they are impossible to view from earth, at least in the visible bands).

Because you are rendering stars, no doubt you have studied scotopic vision.  It goes without saying that whenever the biped mammals have watched the stars they have, generally, been night adapted. And yet they see color sometimes, perhaps they see Angry Red Planet Mars or Betelgeuse and they perceive the color red.   How then are they seeing color? It may help the seeker of knowledge to realize that “scotopic” is named for the Skoptsy sect of religious devotees whose most notable doctrine is of male castration.  (see link below)

Of course I am sure when you move the camera you will motion blur everything. Oh yes, what do you plan to do with the speed of light issue? I am sure you will come up with something.

So, foolish mortal, you have been warned.

These are just the first of the issues you must address for a proper starfield.

Fools may go where wise people fear to tread.

Sincerely,
A Friend.

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Scotopic Vision

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scotopic_vision

The Skoptsy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skoptsy

Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) on IMDB

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075860/