See it see it now see it faster

The trailer gave me full on uncanny valley. The movie not so much. I think a couple things had to with that—Spielberg was very, very good in where he put the 3D camera to allow the eye to follow the action and the depths of the spaces he provided, which gets hurt if the editing doesn’t follow that same logical set-up. This is why some parts of Avatar, if you cared to look at the actual blocking critically, did not work—3D changes the 180 rule, a bit, as extreme profile cuts can feel like jump cuts now.

Secondly, I’m not sure the material used for the trailer was all that polished or finished. Almost like the digital equivalent of making a trailer out of the first rushes.

Yes, Kenji, the story is a mixture of the Treasure of Rackham le Rouge and The Mystery of the Unicorn. But it’s one fluid story put together.

@ Jazz “which films do you think are Spielberg’s best?”

Actually, I like Jurassic Park the best of all his movies for a variety of reasons, but I also have much respect for Jaws and Saving Private Ryan and Schindler’s List (yes, I do think they latter two are good movies, despite how much shit they get from people), I thought AI was absolutely great until everything that happened after the long black leader following the Tooth Fairy, and I think Indiana Jones is some of the best stuff that Spielberg has ever done. I have seriously lost interest in Spielberg’s career for a while, found Munich tepid, did not care to see Minority Report but when I did it was better than I expected, just not really great, and am among the many who thought that Speilberg should have told Lucas, “No, no, NO, I’m not adding CGI gophers to Indiana Jones.”

I don’t really know what I think about Close Encounters. I think it was a much, much, much different movie for people when it was first released than it is now. ET is a decent adventure flick. Both of them strike me as something Spielberg could have continued on with, making more and more interesting explorations into the numinous, so to speak, but he really just wanted to have earthly adventures instead.

That is my position with Spielberg.

—PolarisDiB

Have you read Tintin already, Polaris? The Mystery of the Unicorn and Treasure of Rackham le Rouge are one story, in 2 parts, and Tournesol’s appearance is important. It’s the presence of at least one other story in the film that surprised me.

My friends were layering the books on me back before I came out here and showing me some of their favorite snippets. I never got to sit through a whole one. The adventuresomeness and quirkiness and especially how Tintin discovers and reveals things, “Look, Snowy!” and his mind for information and ideas is readily apparent on pretty much any page. It really is classic, old-school high adventure: a person with some interesting motivations goes after another person with an interesting history, and Tintin has to sort through all the interesting characters that get involved and survive the interesting situations they put him in until he reclaims the elixir and returns to the status quo.

The movie continues in that regard, with obvious love from the writers, director, producers, and actors alike.

I did know that some Tintin books had some racist moments in them, and I also knew that there was no way those moments were going to show up on screen.

—PolarisDiB

Despite Spielberg’s presence, I did already hold a fair amount of confidence in this in light of the screenwriting trifecta of Cornish, Moffat, and Wright, and now I am quite thrilled to hear DiB’s comments.

Jazz, you’ve singled out the Spielberg films I feel are not only his strongest, but are also the only ones I truly like. Jaws, Duel, and Close Encounters are easily his shining moments for me. (While it was a childhood favorite, I feel I’d need to see Raiders again to properly judge, as it’s been a few years.)

The early more racist books are among the weakest anyway. Unicorn/Rackham isn’t among the racist ones as far as memory serves, but a grand adventure. Fair enough to mix more than one story- Mizoguchi did it in Ugetsu Monogatari!- it would just take some getting used to for old fans brought up on the books, like me. But the absence of Tournesol/Calculus must surely be a loss. He was a very welcome addition to the Tintin characters, and first popped up in Unicorn

The process involved (filming real actors and basing the expressions off that) is similar to avatar but the visual style is less detailed and more cartoony. weta did both movies. someone who works as an animator might be offended at a movie like this being called animated. its an esoteric area Im not fluent in, but I wouldnt blame audiences for assuming its animated, or not caring.

oh now I remember-animators prefer to be the main visual creators of the characters’ acting. mocap or rotoscoping for them means they have been reduced to tracing or interpreting rather than creating it themselves.

I predict it will be similar to Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit in box office: Do great worldwide except America. Tintin doesnt have the same name recognition as say Spider Man or Superman does here.

http://timesflowstemmed.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/comics_-tintin_-sub.jpg

Whoever was the colorist also was great. I have read a couple of the albums years ago and remember enjoying them.

I think it was released worldwide before it was released in the US, which for a Spielberg film is pretty significant.

Also, this is worth stating again, the reason why “foreign sales” are suddenly so important to studios is because Americans don’t go to the movies anymore. At least, not nearly at the rates people from other countries do, especially developing ones. News to the Western folks: we’re not “the audience” anymore.

But anyway, time to take on this:

“someone who works as an animator might be offended at a movie like this being called animated. its an esoteric area Im not fluent in, but I wouldnt blame audiences for assuming its animated, or not caring.

oh now I remember-animators prefer to be the main visual creators of the characters’ acting. mocap or rotoscoping for them means they have been reduced to tracing or interpreting rather than creating it themselves."

You’re getting a few things confused.

3D or CG is considered animation, even if its composited into live action. However, people working within 3D or CG have to list their specialities because there are so many roles to do. There are modelers, texturers, riggers, mocap artists, and things like character animators and keyframe animators. So for instance my coworker Leon works in CG—as a modeler. If you want a photoreal blackhawk, Leon’s your guy. If you want it to move, you have to hire someone else—he only built the model, an animator needs to be hired to make it move.

Yes, Leon is capable of animating his blackhawk if asked, but it’s not his speciality and you’ll have to pay extra for it.

“mocap or rotoscoping”… these are two different things and I’ve only heard rotoscoping compared to tracing, but lately, especially after AE CS5 came out, it’s not too different from weight painting anymore. You might be confusing mocap with motion mapping, which requires some amount of rotoscoping.

Mocap/motion capture is using a camera array to capture points around an object as it moves in real space in real time. The mocap artist also has to be able to go into the program and fix errant point movements that were recorded incorrectly. Because of the exaggeration required for the movement to get picked up, and because of the fixing of errant point-based animation, is why you have Ehrenstein complaining about featureless faces. However like everything else in the digital world, the level of fine detail is increasing exponentially and the points being animated are becoming more and more minute.

Motion mapping is when you take a 2D live action shot where the camera is moving and you put it into a compositing engine like Mocca or Nuke so that it will generate points based off of contrasting hues on the image and will trace those points as they change position, generating a 3D “camera” which can be imported into a 3D scene for animating CG characters. The point is to put the 3D characters into the live action scene in the correct angle to the camera as its moving. Because the 2D shot typically involves elements other than the set or background, like let’s say it’s a dude running away from a robot and the robot is supposed to be 3D, then it will mess up the 3D camera placement in the engine if the motion of the guy running is point tracked. Thus, he needs to be rotoscoped out so that the program knows only to track the background or set.

Also, motion mapping requires keyframing so that the animators can keyframe in time to the camera movement.

This is one of those invisible jobs where frankly, you just never, ever see the mistakes because they never make it to the final product, so it’s hard to know they are doing it in the first place. It is a tedious job in the sense that you are just drawing a line around a running figure and then letting a computer chug out points and then looking at the points for aberrant movement and deleting the ones that are messing everything up. It’s not an artistically interesting job, which is why character or keyframe animators don’t do it. They’re just making the robot move. It’s someone else’s job to put that moving robot into a frame in a way that matches the camera movement.

3D asks some questions about what is live action and what is animated, but after all they shouldn’t be new questions, they’re merely less definitive. Was Ray Harryhausen a master animator or a master filmmaker? Logically speaking there is no true distinguishing feature between “animation” and “live action”: “live action” is stop-motion animation based off of motion capture of real bodies in mostly real-scaled settings and locations. But since we distinguish between the realism of live action and the enjoyment of the illusion of movement in caricature of animation, some people insist on drawing those lines.

Edit: heh! “drawing those lines”. Pun unintended.

—PolarisDiB

Quelle horreur !! Poor Captain Haddock

“I agree with Kenji, this “adaptation” looks estheticaly : AWFUL !! "

Oh man, some of the lighting and framing techniques they use in this movie are outright gorgeous, the color is pretty great and honestly true to what I’ve seen of the comics, and again a lot of the transition scenes and more surreal elements create this overall comic book framing aesthetic that makes it feel as pulled-from-the-page as Sin City, only more fluid and freed from that literalism.

—PolarisDiB

First of all thanks for writing about your expertise on the subject. It was an interesting read.

““mocap or rotoscoping”… these are two different things and I’ve only heard rotoscoping compared to tracing, but lately, especially after AE CS5 came out, it’s not too different from weight painting anymore. You might be confusing mocap with motion mapping, which requires some amount of rotoscoping.”

I know, I wasnt saying they are the same. I was saying a character animator might be equally disdainful of either one. yeah I also disagree with david, or I would describe it differently. in mocap theres too much subtle human expression (compared to conventional animation), which then has to be filtered through several hands who might screw it up. theres variables in the quality of the performance, whats used to capture it and how the artists finally interpret that. seeing something both realistic and not quite real can be off-putting.

my comments reflect something Ive heard every now and again from animators but I admit its hazy. for instance waking life was disqualified from being nominated for an animation oscar because it was rotoscoped.

I get the sense that Spielberg is trying to balance between striking the right tone that communicates and gleefully playing with all the technological processes he has access to.

You opened a can of worms with your last paragraph. Not going there. :)

Yeah, the grumbles you get from animators isn’t that Waking Life style animation isn’t animation, but that it’s not the job they do. Some of them I could see translating Waking Life as “tracing” as an argument back when it first came out and we did not consider models and image printing animation either (the pre-CG way of making robots chase humans without ridiculous suits, Ray Harryhausen say), I see more where that comes from. I think at this point though there’s just so many varieties and techniques and ways of mixing all these things that those grumbles have become less about what is or is not “animation” and more about what their job description actually qualifies them for.

—PolarisDiB

Not a masterpiece but definitely a MUST watch.A great tribute to Hegre.

You don’t think it is an animated film,not even for a second.The CGI is not at all distracting unlike many films[which goes without saying since it is Spielberg!].It’s sooo immersive!!

Wow. This was great. I can just see Spielberg storing away his best ideas all throughout his obligations to deliver INDY 4. And in spite of that movie’s weakness, it was worth the wait.

One of the rare occasions in an animated feature that I’ve not been emotionally distracted on some level by the stiffness and falseness of the puppets/models. I was stunned in a couple of instances to realize that my brain had been unconsciously mistaking background extras for real people. And the freedom this has given Spielberg to make his “camera” go wherever he wants, wherever will maximize action, is spectacular.

better than hugo ??

Going to see that this week. Many have said no, but my friend who I went to TINTIN with said, “Yes! By MILLIONS of degrees of magnitude!”

k cuz i was a bit disappointed in hugo after all the hype. but i will give this one a chance. i still think spielberg has talent lol

beware the mubi-hype ;)

@ Ruby:

//i still think spielberg has talent lol//

I think I love you…..

aww sweet xD ^

I for one and very excited to see the movie opening day in Canada! I have read all of the books easily a hundred times each (I am not joking) so I should undeniably be a huge critic on what I am about to see. But I am upset with some of the people on here that are making certain judgements and assumptions even before having seen the film. Shame on you and stop reviewing film’s based solely on trailer’s. Lame.

Countdown to backlash . . . .10 . . .

I have to admit that I wasn’t looking forward to this movie one bit (and I like Spielberg when he’s on his game), but this thread has got me excited.

I’ll see it but the preview makes me a bit dizzy. Is the whole film like that?

Does anyone else get headache’s from this 3D technology? I think it’s wearing glasses over glasses that does it. I even had that problem with Hugo which uses 3D better than anything I’ve seen.

Ari, the whole thing is even more over the top than the trailer, but everything is very clear. A real pleasure.

I grew up on TinTin and Asterix, despite the Marvel mania around…and of course looking forward to this!

Me, too, &dy, and not just because I think my kids will love it.

//….unconsciously mistaking background extras for real people//

same here and not just once!

2.5/5

I really wish I could agree with you on this one, DiB, but it was completely unengaging for me. As masterful as the technical aspects are (the lighting, the attention to the eyes—all of this is the best of its kind) the story was flat. I was uninterested in the plot from pretty much the beginning, and there were really only one interesting character in the whole thing (Haddock).

By the way, I did like that Haddock resembled Jackson and Saccharine resembled Spielberg. Funny touch, that. Would that the script was half as clever.

And coming back here I can’t believe it was 107 minutes long. Toward the end I was sure it was over two hours.

Completely agree with you, PolarisDiB. I would say I liked Munich and Minority Report a lot more than this film but compared to Scorsese’s Hugo this year it’s far superior. The 3D was engrossing and the animation stunning. Can’t wait to see if Spielberg can top himself in the same week with War Horse.