Reality vs Visual Effects: Underwater Alien

The following picture was taken by scuba diver Kyle McBurnie. You can read about it here

here on the New Scientist web site.

Were I to see this in a movie, I would know that it had to be fake. The lighting is too good, the pose is too good, the seal completely convinces me that it is intelligent and is aware of me (the viewer). There are not particular technical reasons why this photograph should look fake unlike others in this series.

The only reason I think it is visual effects is because it is too interesting and powerful an image.

How to Help The Unemployed Even Though They Are Worthless Scum

Most of us have friends who are in serious financial / employment / career meltdown.  I have at least six such friends, seven including myself, at various levels of distress.

Most of the working elite are apparently not aware that there are things they can do to alleviate their friend's plight, should they wish to do so (and for an essay on whether or not they should help, see this.)

Yes, most people are not aware of the techniques described below.  Why?  Perhaps this esoteric knowledge has been hidden by our government who is plotting to force everyone to have health care and give up their automatic weapons.  Or it might just be that the labor market is subdivided into those who work nearly all the time and those who do not. The former do not relate to the latter, and do not give it much thought.  Or maybe people just don't give a fuck. Yes, I suppose that is a possibility too.

In general, people who are out of work can be subdivided into the following broad categories (a) out of work for less than six months, (b) out of work for more than six months but less than a year, and (c) those who have been out of work for substantially more than a year. As time passes, the situation gets worse and worse, and (c) seques into (d), those who may never work again.

The longer your friend goes without a job or a serious project, the more the following ideas can probably help him.

The ideas/topics/whatever are: 

1. Access to current tools and processes.

2. Information and Guidance about Corporate America

3. Affiliation with a player in the field.

4. Recent work credential, even if it is minor.

5. Positive spin, Reccomendations, etc

6. Information about meetings, conferences, events, parties and activities.

7. Transportation, housing, and other.

1. Access to current tools and processes

The longer the subject is out of work, the further they are from what the field is using currently. Many of those things, software, hardware, whatever, are not available to an individual in normal circumstances. If you can arrange for a way for your colleague to have access to some of these tools and processes, and/or watch people work, there is a lot they can pick up to keep them current. (1)

2. Information and Guidance about Corporate America

As the various fields that we all helped invent morph over time, they seem to converge on a small number of very large corporate players, a few medium sized players, and numerous, but fragile, small players. Whereever you are working, you know more than anyone outside how your company works, what kind of people they are looking for, what projects are going to need help. By acting as an intermediary between management, human resources, and your friend, you may be able to help your friend present him or herself at the right time to be considered. Or you might do nothing more than report back on whether a listed open position is real. I have never found that getting this sort of information has any potential negative implications. The worst that happens is that nothing works out.

3. Affiliation with a player in the field

Even the simplest affiliation with a player in the field, even one that does not receive money, can help tremendously towards showing current participation. Lets say you make your friend a $1.00 / year consultant to advise your company in new technologies in some area. Well, that gives your friend something to say at trade shows ("I am a consultant to so and so at this company, trying to figure out where some of this stuff is going. It is very minor"). It gives the subject something to do that looks and sounds good, and who knows, maybe they will have good advice about something.

4. Recent work credential, even if it is minor

Use your imagination, it doesn't have to be much, and there does not have to be any money involved. It just has to sound plausible and it doesn't hurt if you actually need something done and have some money to pay for it, but that is extra credit.

5. Positive Spin, Reccomendations, etc.

By definition, your friend can not be there to defend themselves. Nor can they be there to promote themselves. So if you say something nice about this person, or in other ways create positive spin that keeps the name alive, you may indeed be helping your friend. If you know of a job or a position, or a little project, and your friend can do it, recommend him. Or call your friend and tell him who to call to ask about it. Generally if your friend is having trouble getting work, there is usually some sort of image disconnect (this is what he does but this is what we need) even though in fact your friend can probably do a lot of things. Recommending him, reassuring people that he/she can do the work, can help a lot.

6. Information about meetings, conferences, events, parties and activities.

By definition, your friend is not in the loop. He/she doesn't hear about or is not invited to events that might be of interest and which, by showing up, will help them to be considered part of the mix.

7. Transportation, housing, and other.

Many of the people I know in this situation are seriously hurting for money. Some are physically trapped where they are. If you are driving somewhere and can give them a lift, consider doing so. If they do not snore too badly and you are not meeting your mistress at a conference and you can offer him a bed or a place on the floor, consider doing so.

All of these techniques mentioned above cost nothing out of pocket, should not take much of your time, and yet can be extremely helpful in helping your friend sell out to corporate america in his or her search for a living wage.

No doubt you will be rewarded in a future life.

________________________________________________

1. It goes without saying that the subject will sign a nondisclosure to keep your proprietary information and client information confidential. There may be minor insurance and other issues, there may need to be a release form, etc, etc.

Pearls Before Swine or the Potential Downside of Helping Someone Find Work

In future posts we are going to discuss ways that you, the working elite, can help your friends, the unemployed scum, find gainful employment.   But before we do so, we are going to have to discuss the possible downside of helping someone. Is there a possible downside?  Is it true that no good deed goes unpunished?

Mark Twain once told the following "joke":   Q. What is the difference between a starving man and a starving dog?   A. When you feed a starving dog he does not turn around and bite you.

At various times I have had the pleasure, or misfortune, of helping many, many people find gainful employment.   I think I have been so effective at it for several reasons including (a) the economy was different then, (b) the people I helped were earlier in their career, (c) there were less good people around who knew this kind of stuff (computers and media) back then, and (d) I am good at helping people find work.  But I stand before you today to testify that I have had cause to regret helping people get employment.

I think this is sad.  In all of the cases where this has happened, I had confidence in the individuals involved and wanted to help them get along in life and their career.   What were they thinking when they then turned on the person who helped them?   I believe that there are a variety of answers to this question including insanity, venality, and stupidity.

I also feel that there may be special problems in the field of computer animation and visual effects, particularly since it went 3D and digital in the early 1990s.   Some outside observers have noticed that the field does seem to be particularly made up of ambitious and narcissistic scumbags to an unusual degree.   This is of course rather different from the people who, for the most part, founded this field who both knew what a "zero-sum game" was and did not believe that they were playing one.  I once had an attorney tell me "Michael, we have to get you working with a better class of people ..."

But whatever the reasons may be, a thoughtful individual must ask themselves, what can one do to protect oneself against the behavior of these disloyal scum?  Along those lines, here is a lesson I learned from reading about the so-called Mafia in New York City.  The article was an interview with an anonymous FBI Agent about why the head of the Genovese family in NY, a fellow named Gigante, had not been convicted of a crime.   The FBI agent said that it was because "he had an amazing talent for picking loyal friends".

Gigante aka "Chin" was considered very talented at judging the character of his potential co-workers

So what can I learn from my experiences that I can pass on to you to help make you more successful and avoid some of the irritations and problems that I have caused myself through my own desire to help the downtrodden?

1. Ask yourself how well you know the potential recipient of your beneficence.   If not very well, then be sure to take hostages.  Usually a close family member or two will do.   First born son, favorite pet, that sort of thing.

2. If your management wants you to hire people, or to recommend them to be hired, agree to do so, but only if you have the right to fire them again if they do not work out in your sole judgment. Get this in writing.

3. If you start noticing aberrant or delusional behavior in the recipient of your goodwill, have the right to have them seek professional help, offsite, for several years, in a comfortable "therapy center".  A few years in a disease infected swamp in a country torn by civil strife and revolution would probably help the recipient of our good will build character.

4. Finally, if and when they try and stab you in the back, execute the hostages and have your friend conveniently disappear while you are home at dinner with your family. Be sure to remember the famous rules of thumb for such things: "no weapon, no motive, no body".

I would hope that anyone you helped would be loyal and not be like some of the crazy assholes I have had the misfortune of helping from time to time.  All of this and more leads to the following conclusion: helping someone is a tricky matter, discretion may be the better part of valor.

For more in formation on Vincent "Chin" Gigante, see: his wikipedia page.

Revised 7/2/2013
Revised 4/2/2014

Reality vs Special Effects: The Case of the Deepwater Horizon

One of my favorite photographs of a catastrophe of all time is this photograph of the Deepwater Horizon blowing up in April of 2010.

Boom !

It is part of a series of photographs taken by an individual on a nearby boat, one of the boats which picked up survivors from this clusterfuck of environmental destruction caused by the shallow greed and criminal stupidity of large corporations.

Few photographs are of this quality and drama. It has spectacle, it has detail, it has scope, it has exotic technology. It elicits a sense of awe and wonder at the magnitude of the disaster caught in an instant by the photographer. It ranks with the great images of its type, such as that of the Hindenberg disaster.

When I first saw it, it looked fake to me.   

In fact, it looked so fake, I wondered why the usual suspects did not discuss in public the obvious implications that the event was planned by the CIA / Illuminati / Rothschild organization in order to raise oil prices, declare martial law, and put everyone in a concentration camp underground before Jesus returned and we left with the space aliens.

Here is why the image looks like a visual effect from a movie:

1. The perfect and dramatic point of view and timing

Rarely do we get to see a disaster from a perfect point of view at the moment of disaster. Generally when such things happen and there is a photographic record of it, the disaster itself is a distance away, or the timing is not quite right, or the photograph suffers from technical flaws due to the unexpected nature of the event. It might be shot through a window, or have someone in the frame that obscures part of what is going on, or there is significant camera shake. A beautiful example of this was the Russian "dash cam" view of the meteor through the window of the automobile.

2. The exquisite detail in part of the photograph

For reasons that probably have to do with the unusual lighting, combined with post processing in photoshop, we have here amazing detail of a large civil engineering artifact. Just look at the detail on the side of this contraption... its completely fabulous. I suspect that some variable contrast enhancement and unsharp masking has been applied. It has that look to it. I also happens to look like a painting on glass, as I discuss in the next item. The actual photograph was taken, I suspect, with a tripod and/or with an image stabilization lens. There is no camera shake worth noting.

3. The composition of the photograph appears to be layered.

Visual effects is generally a photomontage of different elements. Those elements might be photography on a stage, model photography, 2D painted elements and 3D synthetic elements. In the history of visual effects some of the most interesting matte paintings consisted of what was called "paintings on glass" where a painting had transparent areas where live action could be composited.

The probable layers front to back are: foreground water, with glint animation, painting of the Horizon leaning at an angle, first smoke layer, fire layer, second smoke layer, background sky layer, for a total of six layers.

4. The appearance of serious image processing.

Lots and lots of sharpening and probable variable contrast and lots and lots of screwing with the color curves has gone on here.

So whats the moral of this story ?   Seeing is not believing, and photography is easier than ever to fake, but sometimes even things that look fake may not be.

_______________________________________

Footnote:

For those who care about what actually happened here, not the photograph but the disaster, the best article I have found was in the NY TImes Magazine and can be read here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/26/us/26spill.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

The story makes the point that most people assume that once the blowout happened that the destruction of the Horizon was inevitable. The article explains what happened and why it was not inevitable that the Horizon would have been destroyed.   The Horizon, it turns out, was filled with all sorts of mechanisms that would have allowed it (in all probability) to have survived the blowout without destruction or loss of life.  (In other words, the blowout underwater would still have happened, and with it the oil leak, but the Horizon would not have exploded as a result of it).

From Capitalist Pigs to Communist Pigs ?

The Red Chinese Communist dictatorship is trying to purchase an important pillar of the Commonwealth of Virginia's economy and culture, Smithfield Foods, for 7.1 billion dollars through their transparent Commie front company, Shuanghui International.

For those of you not blessed to have come from Virginia, we are the home of Smithfield ham, and there is nothing more Virginian than a biscuit with Smithfield Ham at Waffle House or a similar center of culinary excellence.

To a good Virginian, Smithfield ham is as important as soft-shelled crab from the Cheasapeake Bay, right up there with motherhood and Apple Pie.

Sold down the river to the Communists ?

Will good Virginians allow American ham technology to be transferred to the Communist war machine?  Will Virginians enjoy working for their new Communist masters, as this company is one of the pillars of the Virginian economy?    How will the incredibly right wing state legislature enjoy having lobbyists from Beijing in their hallowed halls threatening to destroy employment in the state if Virginia does not start approving China's foreign policy adventures in Washington?  Will Communist soldiers be eating Smithfield ham while they mow down freedom-loving protesters in Taiwan?

Where will it stop? Will Waffle House be next?  I may be a vegetarian, but I am also from Virginia, and I say, no, they must not pass.  Today Smithfield Ham, tomorrow the world.  They should have stopped Hitler at Munich.

I call upon all good Americans to oppose this alarming development and keep ham biscuits American.

The article from the Washington Post is here.

Towards Some Criteria for Judging Movies About War

Different genre of film have different criteria by which they are judged. Westerns are different from romantic comedies which are rarely the same as low budget horror films, and so forth. Each of these have different conventions that connoisseurs of the genre will identify and discuss. A good western will generally have a climax that involves a final encounter between good and evil, usually in the form of a gunfight. A romantic comedy will almost always end with true love overcoming all obstacles. It would be quite rare, I think, to have a successful romantic comedy that ends in a gunfight that symbolically presents the struggle between good and evil. One can go against genre and break the rules, but that is a tricky matter and requires great skill.

This essay proposes some suggested criteria by which a movie about war, or which takes place during a time of war, could be judged. I base some of my criteria in part on the notion that war is a very serious, morally ambiguous phenomenon and that some of the criteria and judgments about such a film, even a comedy about war, must have some sense of the seriousness of the subject matter, even if it is not acknowledged explicitly. One way to look at these proposed criteria is as both story structure and aesthetics that are genre-specific.

War, as I use the term, is organized violence between states, ethnic groups or political movements. Although there can be a "war between individuals", for our purposes we restrict it to between groups of people sponsored either by a state or by a faction, e.g. a political movement. I am excluding gangster and espionage movies, although both may have organized violence, and both may take place during a time of war.

Often times, movies about war are not about the war itself, but take place during a war. Apocalypse Now is a film about the Vietnam war, in part, even though we do not review any of the specific battles of that war in detail.  The Good, The Bad and the Ugly takes place during the American Civil War in the West although it is not a film about that war. Das Boot is certainly about war. 

So here are my criteria.

1. A good movie about war would convince you that you really, really did not want to be there.  This is particularly true the closer you get to the front.  If the movie implies that war is fun, and everyone is just having a grand time, then it is probably a terrible movie about war.   By this criteria, Mash is certainly a movie about war, but McCale's Navy is not. Sure, there were entertaining moments during a war, and some of those moments were very entertaining indeed.  But most of the time the soldiers are bored and miserable, or just bored.  And some of the time they are saying to themselves, please Jesus just get me out of here.

He really doesn't want to be there

2. Details matter, so get them right.  There are a lot of details in war and those details may mean the difference between victory and defeat or between life and death.  Often a filmmaker can not afford to show reality because for practical reasons it is just too expensive.  But most of the time, they just get the details wrong because they did not care to find out what happened. And as a result they present something that is not true or possibly not understandable when they do not have to. Sure you can violate this rule in the interests of farce or sarcasm or for other reasons but at least you should have a reason.

3. It should be real, but not too real, please.  At some point it is better to allude to the issues and leave them as just that, allusions. I am not sure there has ever been a good film about the Ardennes Campaign in World War 2 (the Battle of the Bulge), although I am aware of one pretty good one that was low budget.  Did you ever wonder where 250,000 or so men in the dead of winter who are unexpectedly shooting each other went to the bathroom or who exactly picked up the dead or what a person looks like after being caught out in the open by an artillery shell?  Good.  Real, but not too real, please.

4. If the movie presents or has scenes at or near the front, it should attempt to portray the unbelievable chaos that is the characteristic of essentially all battles I am aware of.  The plan didn't work, no one knows much about what is going on, there is total madness, people are getting hurt and killed all around you. Even when not in a battle it might not make any sense and in a battle itself, forget about it.   I felt that Saving Private Ryan captured some of this feeling at times very well.

Nobody knows what the fuck is going on

5. People exhibit extraordinary behavior during battle that they would not exhibit anywhere else.  A total idiot may suddenly exhibit extraordinary presence of mind when being shot at. Some of the crazy stories you hear about someone in times of war or battle are actually probably true as far as we can tell.  However, if one is going to use that in a film it is probably best to draw from history even if what you are writing is fiction so that you can defend yourself when someone says that what you showed was impossible.

6. Some of the smartest and most ethical people who have ever lived have fought in a war, some of the dumbest and most shallow people who have ever lived have fought in a war.

7. Different cultures fight wars differently.  Some cultures which are believed to be very different may in reality be very similar.

8. Very few of the people in the millitary on either side are evil.   There are some evil people in war and in peace but the military of most countries are not blessed with a particular excess of them.  Military people, particularly leaders, will often seem cruel or uncaring, but that is the nature of the activity, at least as perceived by someone who does not need to deal with the situations they deal with on a daily basis.

It is good to remember that when the movie is over, at best you have an impression of what it was like to be there.

I am going to argue that Apocalypse Now is one of the best and most realistic films set during a war, and that any of the Star Wars films are among the worst films that are ostensibly about or taking place during a war.

Revised 12/27/2015

What Really Happens to Priceless Artifacts in War-Torn Countries

The following pattern has now happened at least three different times in the recent past. The press and the public are told that priceless ancient documents or artifacts are stolen or destroyed by thieves or stolen by an invading army or militia. 

The press reports all this as true and the world wrings its hands in despair and raises its eyes to heaven. 

How could this be allowed to happen, some angry academic screams in the media.

But three different times, that isn't what happened.

Not in Afghanistan when the Soviets invaded.  Not in Iraq when the U.S. was accused of standing idly by while hooligans looted and burned Iraqi museums.  And not in Mali when Islamic militants occupied Timbuktu where ancient Islamic documents had accumulated.

In Afghanistan, the priceless artifacts turned out to be in the back of the bottom vault of the Bank of Afghanistan where some smart people from the national museum had stashed them, and then conveniently neglected to tell anyone.   Hey what happened to all those priceless gold artifacts ?  Oh, those artifacts, they would say, we don't know, they just disappeared.  Maybe the Soviets took them, they would say.   The Soviets say, what artifacts?    Then, mysteriously, 20 years later, they look in the back of the vault and they find these mysterious trunks.

Anybody seen that big gold thingie ?   You know, the one with the dragons and weird guy with the circle on his head?

In Iraq, it turns out that all most of the allegedly stolen artifacts were in the basement of the main museum.  Where they had been put.  Then when people did come by to loot the museum attendants would say, gee, someone must have already taken them.  Better ask the Americans, they would say, its all their fault.

And finally in Timbuktu, we discover that the priceless manuscripts were smuggled out of town in an operation described in the Washinton Post, see "A Daring Rescue in Timbuktu"

What is going on?

What is happening is that when a country or city is occupied by foreign troops, a militia, or descends into chaos, responsible people who love their country's history put the items away, secretly, for safe keeping. Then when the bad guys show up and ask for the stuff, they are told that someone already destroyed them, or stole them, or that they are no longer there. 

And of course the press reports them as stolen or destroyed because (a) that is what they are told and (b) the last thing you want to do is to tell everyone where they actually are because then they might actually be stolen or destroyed.

So the next time you hear about some cultural disaster, be concerned, but do not despair. There is a good chance that things will show up again, eventually.

But one footnote.  Although it would be a shame if a document were lost, how could it be that they had not already been scanned and put in a dozen libraries around the world?  That is the real story, don't count on reading that story in the press anytime soon.  Way over their heads.

Also see:

Hidden Treasures from the National Museum, Afghanistan
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/mission/afghanistan-treasures/

Star Wars Production Stills Circa 1976

Someone has posted over 1,000 production stills from the first Star Wars film on imgur.

http://imgur.com/a/0RmF7#58

They are great. It is fabulous to see photography from the late 70s visual effects production process, back when we had cameras and models and not just a bunch of computer weirdos.

The model photography would probably have been shot at the original ILM, on Valjean in Van Nuys, where Apogee was later located.  There are also photographs from the shoot in England and Tunisia.

This would have been about 1976 for the most part.

Reality vs Visual Effects: The Case of the Boeing Dreamlifter

From time to time, we will review photographs that are real but look like they might be visual effects and ask why that might be so.

In this case, unlike some others we will feature, it is not because of photoshop processing, or unusual lighting, or juxtaposition of elements, or any of a host of other things. In this case, it is because the key element itself just seems implausible. It is huge, it is unusual, it is quite beautiful. We do not see things of this scale around us every day. So when it shows up in real life it looks fake.  The essence of its implausibility is, I think, the cleanliness of its design, combined with the scale.

In a similar way, when I saw an Airbus 380 flying over Los Angeles on approach to LAX, it also appeared fake, probably because of its scale.

This might be an establishing shot of an airport that our character had just landed at. In the background, the giant Dreamlifter would casually be landing

Whereas this would be a more dramatic shot that illustrated a plot point.  Perhaps we are waiting for the Dreamlifter to deliver an important plot device.

But if this does look like a prop, perhaps it is from an older movie about the future.  Perhaps a movie from the 1950s, which might make it more reasonably in black and white.  It would need to be from a time when the future involved jet aircraft technology, instead of more modern anti-gravity or vertical thrust.  Here we have traditional jet technology circa 1990 combined with a futuristic and implausible over-sized body.

The pictures here were lifted from www.airlinereporter.com.

http://www.airlinereporter.com/2013/05/avgeek-photo-dreamlifter-lands-with-an-124-in-background/

http://www.airlinereporter.com/2013/03/boeing-747-dreamlifter-makes-emergency-landing-at-paine-field/

Coming Soon !

We begin a series of essays on some of the facts of life about a variety of topics on the economics, history and morality of various aspects of computer graphics development, research and production. The build up to these essays has been coming for quite a while, since the beginning of this blog in fact, and we now get to some of the heart of the matter.

I have no doubt that in the process of making these observations and recommendations that I will annoy many of my friends and colleagues in this glamourous and rewarding field. That would only be normal as I have managed to do that, annoy people that is, off and on my entire career. The only difference now is that I know it is occuring, whereas early on I had no idea.

Whereas the smart thing to do would be to keep my mouth shut, there does not seem to be much percentage in doing that either. The field has gone to hell in a handbasket, in my humble opinion, there are winners and there are losers and if you are one of the latter, then you have paid a significant price for being in this field. To make the statement a bit stronger and more accurate, you have paid a significant price for helping to create the field.

So why not talk about it?

Among other topics, we will discuss (a) why the business of running an independent production company is not at all like what Walt Disney does, not even a little itsy bitsy bit, (b) what exactly is the business and economics of running a production company, (c) why no US production company could possibly survive in the face of foreign subsidies, (d) why SIGGRAPH can be accused of callously luring children to their doom, (e) why computer graphics is a total and complete failure outside of entertainment, and so forth.

But now I have to run to LA, what fun.