The Junior Compositor

This was a bit of an interesting one for me as it is the first Harry Potter movie I have seen since actually reading the book. As it turns out, I finished The Half Blood Prince only a week or so (if that) before I saw the movie so the story was fresh in my mind.

To tell the truth, I have kind of dipped in and out of the Harry Potter movies. I recall seeing the first one at the cinema, but to the best of my recollections, I have watched bits and pieces of the others on DVD and on TV when they were on, but haven’t really sat down and watched them from start to finish.

On a story/character note, I was a little disappointed, as I know many fans have been in the past. I fully realise that film and books are separate mediums with strengths and weaknesses and so much of the written exposition simply can’t be translated to the screen. However, and this is a big however, a lot of what made it to the screen (or was left out) was a little baffling. Without giving anything away I felt there were some strange decisions about including scenes that weren’t in the book that could have just as easily been shown by . . . bup budda bahhhhhHHH . . . using the scenes in the book.

Also, while I loved Jim Broadbent in Hot Fuzz, he just was not Professor Horace Slughorn. He physically wasn’t “right” (ie, not rotund enough and his character’s personality was *competely* different to the book, again with no discernible benefit from the change. The unfortunate thing was the when I first read Slughorn’s dialogue, I pictured him exactly like actor Timothy Spall, a bit of a problem as he is already playing Wormtail! C’est la vie, as the Frenchies say.

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I was going to post a video tutorial tonight but a lack of time and watching the latest Star Trek movie led to a review post so I will put the video up on Sunday.

 

 

Firstly, let me say my knowledge of Star Trek is pretty much limited to whatever comedy shows have mentioned in their piss-takes.  I know the main characters catchphrases as I am a child of pop-culture but other than that I don’t really know anything about the story or characters.  Frankly, I kind of wanted to keep it that way as I feel that once you start actively watching Star Trek, you are branded for life.  I may have lost a few readers there, but come back!  I love the latest movie!  I know some Trek fans might hate it, but something like this is what a franchise needs to keep things fresh and moving in new directions.

 

 

This is Sci-Fi done right.  Actually, this is blockbuster movie done right.  Given the recent drought of decent entertainment, I give Star Trek the double thumbs up.  I was interested in the characters, the dialogue was good, there were a few in-jokes, the catchphrases were there and the plot skipped along.  All around, good stuff.

 

 

From a Visual FX perspective I found the movie pretty much faultless.  If you are a matte painter or set designer, Star Trek delivers in spades.  I haven’t seen a decent Sci-Fi movie for quite a long time and Trek delivered some great environments.  Earth was suitably futuristic without being ridiculous and had some great city scenes.  

 

The star ships were excellent and thankfully had more of that “used Universe” feel with banged up edges and grime.  The lack of grime in Star Trek always bothered me.

 

 

 

Personal highlights included the nice matte paintings/set extension in all the Iowa scenes and the snowbeast vs Kirk fight on whatever the glacier planet was (I am sure I will be corrected on this by someone

 

 

Compositing was uniformly excellent.  I admit I was trying to find faults but really, nothing stood out at all.  The integration of set extensions was seamless and the comping in front of full 3D environments looked very natural.

 

An overlooked area in a lot of Sci-Fi movies is all the interfaces for the computer gear and the guys who did the work on the movie did a fantastic job.  Not too over the top, but suitably cool looking.

 

Finally, a nice fan image by Tobias Richter.  A shout out to Tobias as he was a major influence in me getting into computer graphics.  I recall as a young teenager looking through the gallery pages in Amiga Format magazine and seeing Tobias’s amazing 3D images and wanting to do the same thing myself:

 

 

 

@@UPDATE:  Daniel Broadway notes that the ice planet was called Delta Vega . . . that was quicker than I expected.  Also, check out Dan’s awesome spec trailer for Star Trek on his blog over at http://danielbroadway.blogspot.com/