Posts tagged peter
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I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Jeff Goldsmith’s Creative Screenwriting Magazine Podcast is essential listening if you’re at all interested in films and what goes into writing them. For a recent episode, instead of his usual brilliant interview with a screenwriter, he posted the James Cameron & Peter Jackson Q&A from ComicCon 2009 (mp3 link) to commemorate the current releases of Avatar and The Lovely Bones.
As always, some interesting news came out of the show, in this case information that has become more relevant over time. Great comments like the directors’ thoughts on 3D, a detailed overview of Peter Jackson’s King Kong ride @ Universal Studios (apparently set to open Summer 2010, he says), and Peter Jackson elaborating about TinTin’s unique aesthetic (trying to get realistic hair, skin and cloth, while keeping Hérge’s original art and making everyone look believable sounds like a real challenge) are all great and fascinating, especially being chronologically closer to all of the above. But the information that stuck out most to me is the clip I’ve embedded in this post: some of James Cameron’s plans with the Avatar DVD.
From the clip/podcast:
One of the things that I wanna do for the DVD of Avatar is […] a video track that’s the reference cameras that show what the actors did, and cut it in parallel either with a scene or several scene or maybe the whole movie, I don’t know. So you can go all the way through the film, and you can see what the actors did and you can see what it looks like in the final scene. And you will see that it maps absolutely perfectly.
I would imagine that the Blu-Ray would use some of that video commentary track tech that I keep hearing about, but to have at least a few scenes on the DVD would be great as well.
You might remember that Robert Rodriguez did something similar for the Sin City DVD, which had a great special feature of the entire, pre-VFX film cut together and fast forwarded to end up with a runtime 14 minutes, but this would be a whole other deal, not to mention much harder to put together.
If Cameron manages to follow through on this plan, not only would I love it, but the collective minds of children everywhere will be blown and entire worlds of possibility will open up to them, just like when I was 9 or 10 and rented The Phantom Menace on DVD. It honestly changed everything I thought about film, and the immense detail contained in the Lord of the Rings DVDs certainly didn’t hurt, either.
What do you think? Do you want to see Avatar without effects? Do you even care? Or are you the type (I’m not judging) who doesn’t like special features at all because they take away the magic? I, if you can’t already tell, think they add to the wonder, and would love to see the alien world of Pandora replaced with a warehouse in Wellington as soon as I can. It fascinates me, because unlike the Home Tree, I might be able to actually go there.
He also mentions before the above clip that while facial capture was the main problen they had to attack for Avatar, motion capture in terms of body movement was “used extensively in Titanic”. I had no idea.
Peter Jackson sure like his cameos (and I enjoy watching them); there were definitely many in here that’d I’d never seen or heard of. Enjoy!
Another week, another new episode of Sick Feats!
I really feel like this episode is our best yet. It’s District 9, a film that both Ben and I loved a lot but had no shortage of things to talk about. We also get (relatively) in depth about Avatar vs. District 9, and how we kinda prefer… well, just listen to it (and watch the film along side if you can, that’s the point!) and enjoy!
Check it out on iTunes
in your browser
or hit up the mp3 file directly!
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Pete Docter’s 1 min. pitch for the original Monsters, Inc.
I’m a sucker for a great story. Enough that I want to build my whole career on storytelling, in fact. So when someone inherently great at it, like speakers on The Moth, This American Life, or say, Oscar-winning screenwriter and Pixar feature director Pete Docter (Monsters, Inc., Up) throws one our way, I get pretty engrossed and excited about it.
On a new episode of Jeff Goldsmith’s Creative Screenwriting Magazine Podcast (a show great for so many reasons that I won’t get into here), Pete Docter and the eternally entertaining Bob Peterson sat down to talk about Up and their own histories for an altogether too-short 1 hour, 12 minute podcast.
About 22 minutes in, while talking about how much films change over the course of their development, Jeff pressed Pete for what the story of Monsters, Inc. originally was. While I love Monsters, Inc. in a big way, the film he described sounded pretty amazing, and one I’d still love to see in the future. I highly recommend listening to the minute-long audio file in this post, but, if you can’t access it for whatever reason, I’ve transcribed it here below. And make sure to check out and subscribe to the free Creative Screenwriting Magazine Podcast so you don’t miss an episode of insights, stories, and fantastic interviews with screenwriters from every genre. Also in this episode is Pete + Bob confirming that they’re currently developing their next film together.
“Well, my idea was that what it was about was about a 30 year old man who is like an accountant or something, he hates his job, and one day he gets a book with some drawings in it that he did when he was a kid from his mom, and he doesn’t think anything of it and he puts it on the shelf and that night, monsters show up. And nobody else can see them. He thinks he’s starting to go crazy, they follow him to his job, and on his dates, and all this— and it turns out these monsters are fears that he never dealt with as a kid. And each one of them represents a different kind of fear. As he conquers those fears, the guys who he slowly becomes kind of friends with— they disappear as he conquers those fears. It’s this bittersweet kinda ending where they go away, and so not much of that stayed
[…]
it sounds better as a pitch than it did at the time— anyway. “
I’m down.
Other recent Pixar-related stuff on my blog: Pixar University and Wall-E/Buy’n’Large easter eggs in the Toy Story 3 trailer!
The first still to come out of Pixar’s new short film, “Partly Cloudy”. Notice the fact that the cloud is also a full character w/ a nose, eyes, etc. Go on. Notice it.
Urgent Help Needed: Democratic Republic of the Congo Crisis
An important message I received that needs to be shared:
Dear Humanitarians,
Annabel Wong, Sarina Rehal, and I, Tanja Bergen are all University of British Columbia students. We were working on a school project on the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) when the recent crisis erupted. We had been researching Canada’s involvement in the DRC and strongly believe that our government, right now, has a duty to alleviate the extreme human suffering in this region.
We began our efforts last Wednesday by creating a message that outlines why we believe that immediate action from our government is required and how we propose to act. We also emailed a number of NGOs and government officials in the hopes of creating a coalition united in the belief that the Canadian Government must act to address the situation. We have called our coalition the Africa Canada Accountability Coalition (ACAC) to embody this message. We really didn’t know what to expect.
At this time, we have received formal support from the following organizations: Oxfam, Canadian Students for Darfur, UBC Africa Awareness Initiative, Caribbean African Association UBC, Hillel House UBC, STAND UBC, WUSC UBC, and the Alma Mater Society of UBC.
We invite you to read our letter and if you agree with our proposals, you can show support by:
· Replying to this email and indicating your desire to become a supporting organization of the ACAC and to be added to the list serve; please append your name to the bottom of our message.
· Formally endorsing our message and informing your members and everyone you know about the situation in the DRC.
· Distributing our message to all of your contacts and adding it to your organization’s public domains.
· Contacting politicians and expressing your organizations support of our message.
· Contacting politicians and expressing your personal support of our message.
· Personally attending our events.
The crisis is worsening every day and we need your help to create a strong unified voice that will be taken seriously by our government and media. We are issuing a call to action; we beseech you, please respond.
Sincerely,
Tanja Bergen, ACAC Executive Director
C: 604 802 7698
Annabel Wong, ACAC Executive Director
C: 778 995 7014
Sarina Rehal – ACAC Executive Director
C: 604 728 2087
Email: acac.drcongo@gmail.com
Blogspot: http://acacdrcongo.blogspot.com/
Dear ________________________________________________________________:
I am contacting you as a concerned Canadian about the recent events in the North Kivu province in the eastern region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
The situation in the eastern DRC is part of a larger conflict that has to date killed over 5 million people. Recent fighting between rebels and the DRC government forces have caused hundreds of thousands of civilians to flee to the city of Goma in the North Kivu province. United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said the violence was “creating a humanitarian crisis of catastrophic dimensions.” The rebels’, led by General Laurent Nkunda, stated goal is to protect the Tutsi community from attack by Rwandan Hutu rebels, some of whom are accused of taking part in the 1994 genocide. Currently, there is a ceasefire. However, the large volume of displaced persons who have crowded into Goma, the rebels reportedly forcing civilians to leave the refugee camps to which they have fled for safety, and the portion of government troops who are reportedly looting and attacking civilians render this ceasefire fragile. This conflict could kill thousands of more people and has links to the Rwandan genocide. As human beings and Canadians, we have no choice but to act.
There is precedent for Canadian intervention in this region. In 2004, Canada participated in Operation Artemis, an EU/France led mission created at the request of Kofi Anaan to secure the town of Bunia in the Eastern DRC. This mission was deployed within seven days of the EU’s decision to intervene at the request of the UN. Operation Artemis secured the distribution of food aid in the town of Bunia, saving thousands of lives. Infrastructure, such as roads, is poorly developed in the DRC and Canada gave an invaluable contribution of tactical aircraft to Operation Artemis that ensured the successful allocation of aid.
Like in 2004, it is vital that Canada is proactive and offers help in the DRC. Canada may be able to contribute the following:
· Food aid and clean water. Currently Canada contributed $33 million in 2006/07 to CIDA projects in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. This must be increased, particularly to Médicins sans frontières, who are already in the Kivu and Ituri provinces. There are hundreds of thousands of lives at stake and it is necessary for access to humanitarian aid to be secured and guaranteed;
· Tactical air craft, at a minimum level of support supplied to Operation Artemis to facilitate the transfer of aid;
· Desperately needed police officers to MONUC, the United Nations Organization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, using the RCMP’s International Peace Operations Branch. Rape has consistently been used as a weapon of war in this conflict and MONUC has had problems with peacekeepers’ sexual misconduct with civilians. It is crucial that police officers are aware of this and trained to respond accordingly;
· Any political support requested by relevant parties to facilitate talks between the rebel groups and the government of the DRC in the goal of maintaining the ceasefire, finding a political solution, and peacefully ending this conflict.
Canada has been asked to lead an intervention several times over the last ten years in the eastern DRC by the UN, and with the exception of our involvement with Artemis, we have refused. As a major trading partner of the DRC, we must assume our leadership role and respond proactively. As part of the international community, Canada must immediately engage in high-level diplomacy to stop the violence and give a new impulse to the regional peace process. If you do not believe these initiatives are plausible, I would like to know how you think Canada can help to stop the mayhem occurring in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. I ask that you respond as soon as possible, given that crisis in the DRC is imminent.
This letter is created by the Africa Canada Accountability Coalition and has the support of Oxfam, Canadian Students for Darfur, UBC Africa Awareness Initiative, Caribbean African Association UBC, Hillel House UBC, STAND UBC, WUSC UBC, and the Alma Mater Society of UBC.
Sincerely,
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Address:
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