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Article
by Estelle Shay
It
took two years for the epic martial arts film Hero -- the
latest work by gifted Chinese filmmaker Zhang Yimou -- to find
its way to American theaters through a distribution deal with
Miramax following its 2002 debut in China and throughout Europe.
But an enthusiastic reception by U.S. film critics, who have pronounced
the film a dazzling artistic achievement of the highest order,
has peaked the curiosity of more than just fans of the genre.
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Co-written
by Yimou, and starring Asian film superstar Jet Li, Hero
is set in ancient China's Qin dynasty, where its first emperor
has embarked on a bold and brutal plan to unify his empire
by invading and conquering neighboring lands. Enter an unknown
warrior who wins an audience with the king, and through
a series of flashbacks, relates how he reportedly has vanquished
the ruler's three greatest adversaries, delivering their
confiscated weapons as proof of his exploits. Though the
film's astonishing visuals are a testament to the vision
of Yimou and the skills of cinematographer Christopher Doyle,
other talented behind-the-scenes collaborators included
a trio of visual effects companies -- Animal Logic in Australia,
and Tweak Films and The Orphanage in the U.S., recruited
by production visual effects supervisor Ellen Poon.
The
Orphanage had a hand in one of the film's most talked-about
scenes -- an attack on a calligraphy school by Qin's warriors.
In the scene, a massive army of archers gathers outside
the school in which two of Qin's adversaries are in hiding,
then launches an arrow attack that literally blots out the
sky with millions of arrows. "The production did not
have a large number of soldiers on hand during the live-action
shoot," recalled The Orphanage visual effects supervisor
Jonathan Rothbart, whose team was charged with the task
of digital crowd replication to transform several hundred
warriors into hundreds of thousands. Compositing in Adobe
After Effects, Rothbart and his crew worked from the plate
photography, stealing from different areas of the plate
to create the illusion of a vast army fanning out as far
as the eye can see. "Our primary concern was to make
sure that the movements of the soldiers didn't look too
repetitive. That involved some retiming and reshaping of
the elements, and using different warp tools to give the
replicated soldiers independent movements. There was dust
all around the soldiers, so we also had to add a lot of
2D and 3D dust particles to further sell the shots."
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For
views of the arrows being launched and arcing in the air, The
Orphanage employed a Maya particle simulation. "The director
wanted the arrows to look like a swarm," recalled Rothbart.
"He likened it to a plague of locusts, a cloud descending
on the school. We had to work out camera angles and figure out
what the arrow 'cloud' would look like." Animators also had
to be precise in their alignment of the arrows with the bows and
archers, making sure that they were in sync. "We had to paint
out real arrows that were in the bows of the live-action foreground
archers, replacing them with our digital arrows so that they would
all fly off the bows the way the director wanted."
(continued
below)
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(continued
from above)
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Inside
the school, a barrage of arrows strikes a hallway where
Qin's adversaries are standing. "There were a number
of real prop arrows that were stuck into the wall of the
set during the live-action shoot," said Rothbart, "but
all the flying arrows were ours." Artists repainted
holes in rice paper struck by the arrows, adding dust and
shafts of light coming through the paper as the arrows poked
through. For many shots, they opted to hand-animate arrows
hitting the walls, rather than rely on a simulation. "We
try to figure out the best way to do a shot -- which is
not necessarily to live off all these cool tools. By hand-animating
the arrows, we could be very specific in the placement of
them. We could work with the director as far as when, where
and how he wanted them to hit. Had it been a simulation,
we would have had to rerun the simulation every time there
was a change."
As
the attack continues, a calligraphy instructor calmly urges
his students to remain at their desks and continue with
their classroom work amidst the chaos. "The instruction
we were given for those shots was to 'go for it,'"
recalled Rothbart, whose crew once again orchestrated the
digital barrage of arrows in the scene. "Our guys were
getting a little carried away. We were impaling people with
arrows all over the place. Eventually, we had to pull back
on that a little." Animators also strove for a realistic
effect in the interaction of CG arrows and live-action characters.
"We had to make sure our arrows stuck to them. As they
were hit, they would fall over; and we had to animate our
arrows to precisely match their movements." Exterior
shots of the post-attack temple featured matte paintings
by The Orphanage and Tweak Films, who also contributed effects
work to the sequence.
Ultimately,
The Orphanage effects crew completed 97 shots for Hero.
A highlight of the project was a personal visit from the
acclaimed director, whose artistic sensiblities have been
likened to those of Bergman and Kirosawa. "The feedback
loop on any show is difficult when there's a geographic
distance involved," noted Rothbart. "But then
you add a language barrier, which in this case involved
two separate translations -- from Mandarin to Cantonese
to English -- and it's that much harder. We were never a
hundred percent sure if we were getting an exact translation.
But having Yimou here in person helped us to get a sense
of what was important to him on the screen, and what was
not."
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Tideland:
Variety reports director Terry Gilliam has
cast nine-year-old Jodelle Ferland as the lead in his
next movie, based on a novel by Mitch Cullin about the
adventures of a disturbed 11-year-old girl who is abandoned
by her drug-addicted father and wanders about rural Texas
encountering strange characters and conducting dialogues
with four disembodied Barbie doll heads. Gilliam collaborated
on the screenplay with Tony Grisoni. The film, which IMDb
states is a HanWay Films production in collaboration with
Prescience Film Fund, will start shooting on September
27 in Saskatchewan, aiming for a 2006 release. Jeff Bridges,
Jennifer Tilly, Janet McTeer and Brendan Fletcher will
also star.
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King
Kong: Click
here for Universal Pictures' official press release
announcing the start this week of principal photography
for Peter Jackson's epic remake. Jackson is quoted: "I
very much want to respect the iconography of the original
film, because I don't believe we should try to change
what worked. Our version of King Kong will reflect
the same sort of dramatic sensibility we employed on The
Lord of the Rings -- placing real characters, with
real dilemmas, in the context of a truly fantastical world.
I'm determined to give the film a gritty reality and to
play the dramatic elements of the story for all they're
worth. Our movie is set in 1933, and this is important
because it means we can invest the story with the mystery
and romance of a bygone era. The Thirties was a time of
discovery, when we did not know the full parameters of
the world and literally, anything was possible."
The New Zealand press is also buzzing with reports as
principal cast members arrive in Wellington. Click
here for a New Zealand Herald account with
quotes from Naomi Watts, Jack Black and Adrien Brody recounting
their first tour of Weta Workshop and Weta Digital. Click
here for a Herald report discussing the role
of Andy Serkis, who has been preparing for the challenge
of providing performance reference of Kong by studying
wild primates.
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The
Spiderwick Chronicles: The Hollywood Reporter
states that Nickelodeon Movies, Atmosphere Entertainment
MM and the Gotham Group have commissioned screenwriter
Brent Forrester to adapt this children's fantasy novel
series by Holly Black. The story concerns the adventures
of three siblings and their single mother, who move into
the dilapidated Victorian Spiderwick Estate and "quickly
find themselves sucked into a world of goblins, griffins,
fairies, trolls and other magical creatures." The
first of Black's five-book series was published by Simon
and Schuster in 2003, illustrated by Tony DiTerlizzi.
Mark Waters will direct the adaptation.
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Red
Eye: Variety has announced Rachel McAdams and
Cillian Murphy will star in this airplane thriller for
DreamWorks Pictures, to be directed by horror filmmaker
Wes Craven. The screenplay by Carl Ellsworth and Matt
Spease is about a woman held captive on an airliner. Shooting
is scheduled to start November 8, with a tentative spring
2005 release date. This is not to be confused with Touchstone
Pictures' Flight Plan, also in preproduction, directed
by Robert Schwentke, and starring Jodie Foster in an airborne
version of Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes, about
a mother whose child vanishes on board an airliner during
a trans-Atlantic flight.
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Aftermath:
Variety reports producers Adrian Askarieh and Daniel
Alter have acquired film, television and video game licensing
to adapt this series of comic books published by Devil's
Due. The stories include a female Samurai warrior in Blade
of Kumori, a group of college students who experiment
with their own DNA in Defex, the private life of
the world's first superhero in Breakdown, and a
story entitled Infantry, about the survivor of
a military experiment.
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Mem-o-re:
Variety reports Dennis Hopper will star in this
independent film, produced by 3210 Films, about a retired
doctor and a medical researcher who access a murderer's
genetically stored memories. The film is budgeted at $3.5
million, and is scheduled to start shooting in Vancouver
in February.
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Guillermo
Del Toro: Empire Online reports on a slew of fantasy
film projects on filmmaker Guillermo Del Toro's plate,
including a sequel to his recent Mike Mignola comic book
adaptation, Hellboy and a film version of H.P.
Lovecraft's macabre tale, At the Mountains of Madness.
A possible third film project is Crimson Peak,
a gothic Victorian horror tale which Del Toro describes
as 'the mother of all ghost stories.'
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Aeon
Flux: The Hollywood Reporter states Paramount
Pictures and MTV Films have halted production of this
science fiction action adventure for 'a minimum of six
weeks' due to an injury on set sustained by the film's
star, Charlize Theron. The Associated Press reports
production began August 16 in Berlin, where Theron received
a neck injury while performing a wire-assisted stunt.
Aeon Flux, reportedly budgeted at less than $55
million, is based an MTV animated series about an extraordinarily
limber futuristic assassin, clad in PVC. The film is being
produced by Gale Anne Hurd, David Gale, Gary Lucchesi
and Greg Goodman.
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The
War of the Worlds: The Hollywood Reporter states
child star Dakota Fanning has joined Tom Cruise in Steven
Spielberg's planned modern day update of H.G. Wells' science
fiction Martian invasion tale. Variety reports
Fanning will play the daughter of Cruise's character,
a role not in the original story. The Paramount Pictures
film is aimed at a summer 2005 release, with shooting
scheduled to begin in November.
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Area
51: THR reports Paramount Pictures and producer
Christine Peters have optioned the movie rights to this
Midway Games video game. The game features the vocal talents
of David Duchovny as Specialist Ethan Cole of the Hazardous
Materials Division, Powers Boothe as Major Bridges, and
singer Marilyn Manson as Edgar, a 'gray' extraterrestrial,
in a story about a virus outbreak in the U.S. Government
Groom Lake secret research facility.
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Kill
Bill, Redux: USA Today reports that due to
the popularity of his two-part martial arts revenge story,
Kill Bill, filmmaker Quentin Tarantino is considering
a theatrical release combining Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 into
a lengthy roadshow-styled epic. Tarantino is quoted, "It's
not just like slapping the two together. There are slight
changes, and it has an intermission, like a '60s movie."
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Soylent Green, Redux: Variety states screenwriter
David Goyer is in negotiations with Warner Brothers to
adapt Harry Harrison's science fiction novel Make Room!
Make Room! Harrison's novel was previously filmed
by MGM in 1973 as Soylent Green, directed by Richard
Fleischer, starring Charlton Heston as a law enforcement
officer in a futuristic world choked by overpopulation
and dwindling food resources. Robert Hoag and Matthew
Yuricich supplied special photographic effects.
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Harry
Potter 5: The Times of India and the Harry
Potter fan site TheLeakyCauldron.com report Warner Brothers
has offered the directing chores for Harry Potter and
the Order of the Phoenix, the fifth book in J.K. Rowling's
fantasy series, to Mira Nair, director of Salaam Bombay!
and the just-released William Thackeray period piece Vanity
Fair. Mike Newell is currently directing Harry
Potter and the Goblet of Fire for a November 18, 2005
release. Phoenix will be aimed at a June 2007 release.
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