Screen Arts - Week 3

25/02/2019

Friedman, L., Renaud, D., & Highmore, F. (2019) Risk and reward [television series episode]. In D. Shore, The Good Doctor. Burbank, CA: American Broadcasting Company

I watched the recent episode of The Good Doctor. What I liked about the episode and the show in general is the character of Dr Shaun Murphy, who is a resident surgeon and like myself, has high-functioning autism. After many episodes, his colleagues have come to respect and support him. 

However, a new Head of Surgery is newly employed and  doesn't like or respect Shaun's social quirks, professional capabilities, and disability. This creates tension and conflict between the two characters and ends with Shaun being transferred to another department against his wishes and makes him distraught. 

Daniel Dae Kim, the actor who player the new Head of Surgery did an exceptional job at his performance and a performance that made him unlikable to the audience as an antagonist. In my view, being familiar with his performance as Johnny Gat in the Saints Row video game franchise made it weird half the time when taking the character seriously.

Freddie Highmore, who portrayed Shaun, in fact made his directorial debut for this particular episode.

When making Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Disney developed rotoscoping for the film by capturing live actors and then tracing over them, in order to produce realistic human characters.

We watched behind the scenes of Avatar concerning motion capture used during the production. I have nothing against makeup, but performance capture allows filmmakers to create characters that would otherwise makeup design could fail, or have difficulties, or even realistically could not achieve.

The actors can see in real time during filming what their motion captured performance may likely look like.

Not only Hollywood has used performance capture, but so has Indian and New Zealand cinema. We looked at the behind the scenes of an Indian film that utilised performance capture. In my view, the quality of the motion capture was akin to PS2 cutscenes. It wasn't that great compared to how it is presented in Hollywood movies, possibly because the Indian film had budget constraints.
Visual effect artists and technician must have a big imaginary when producing motion capture, imagining what the sets may look like and so on. But I guess it is likewise for the actors and actresses.

We watched a behind the scenes video from the 2005 remake of King Kong, which showed us that Andy Serkis had to do a range of motion for the performance capture in the film. There were aids put in place for him to overcome limitations or support the illusion of the titular character he was playing. Andy Serkis was usually left alone and isolated to generate his character, doing his job as an actor and bringing a effective performance for the film.

We watched a behind the scenes video from The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug and discovered that motion tests were used to get the movement of speech as correct as they possibly could for the character of Smaug.

We were going to watch Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, but the DVD was Region 1 and we didn't have a multi-region DVD player, so we ended up watching Beowulf.

Beowulf (2007)

Boyd, S. J., Rapke, J., Starkey, S., & Zemeckis, R. (2007). Beowulf [Motion picture]. United States: Paramount Pictures

I respect they tried to make the film look realistic as they could towards live-action and produce creatures unlike from the real world, but you only just notice how fake and animated the performance capture is in the film. I don't think I have seen such graphic content in any film that's solely motion capture and it's something the film doesn't shy away from through the use of motion capture in this film. 

At one point, the quality of performance capture look like that of PS3 cutscenes, which makes sense since the PS3 was released around the same time the film was released and the film itself dated on a technological and retrospective level. Despite the flaws in performance capture, it still manages to tell an engaging story through the medium of film.

I was surprised to find this film as solely motion capture. I hadn't seen the film before and assumed in the past that it was a live-action film.

How Peter Jackson or James Cameron, or Soundarya Ashwin used motion capture to make their film

* Peter Jackson

I have found that he like many modern filmmakers, has used motion capture performance to bring characters to life that would not as effective as say puppetry or not achievable to bring to life in the real world. His visual effects team has managed to achieve a degree of realism and physics by using motion capture and make sure that they are tested, so they can be confident that it will work for his films. In particular, he brings fantasy creatures, a dragon, and a giant gorilla to life on screen using motion capture.

02/03/2019

Bedtime Stories (2008)

Giarraputo, J., Grady, K., Gunn, A., Sandler, A., & Shankman, A. (2008). Bedtime stories [Motion picture]. United States: Walt Disney Pictures. 

I used to crack up at this particular scene in this movie when I was 12 & 13 because in the story Adam Sandler's character talks about a cowboy called Jeremiah and a little girl was like 'Jeremiah wouldn't take money for doing a good deed' and then Adam Sandler's character says 'Uh... I know Jeremiah a lot better than you guys. And believe me, he'd be all over that. He loves money'. It has always brought a smile to my face because my legal first name is Jeremiah and when I was a kid it felt like Adam Sandler's character was talking about me and I was like 'Yep, that is totally true. I do love money'. Nowadays, I have almost forgotten about it. but the emotion that the memory brings is happiness. The scene still makes me smile, but doesn't crack me up like the old days.

I couldn't find the scene on YouTube or the movie on Netflix (it's not there anymore). So I made do with the trailer on YouTube, which has a snippet of a scene close enough to the one I was discussing before.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-6N1NZrQAQ

Disney UK. (2008, December 19). Bedtime stories trailer [video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-6N1NZrQAQ

Step Brothers (2008)

Apatow, J., Church, J., Miller, J., & McKay, A. (2008). Step brothers [Motion picture]. United States: Columbia Pictures.

This is a funny movie I loved watching as teenager and still do. In this particular scene, Will Ferrell and John C. Reiley's character, Brennan and Dale are in one of many scenes where they act like immature adults; Dale notices Brennan touched his drums, which was a rule of the house. Brennan then tells Dale he is going to 'put my nutsack on your drumset'. The whole delivery of the dialogue and performances themselves are what makes this scene funny and timeless. My reaction to this scene has consistently stayed the same, but the level of hilarity has probably dimmed over time. I still remember many lines from the movie.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HaC15_7IRJ8

Akillheals. (2016, May 25). Bedtime stories trailer [video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HaC15_7IRJ8

Sandy Wexler (2017)

Bulla, D., Covert, A., Grady, K., Sado, P., Sandler, A., Sarandos, T., Swardson, N., & Reed, P. (2017). Sandy Wexler [Motion picture]. United States: Netflix

This is a funny Netflix movie I didn't expect to enjoy or sincerely laugh at, but it has a particular scene where the titular character is woken up by a intercom of his Iranian landlord. Like Step Brothers, it's in the delivery of the dialogue and the performances. It's dialogue like 'I see you eat bacon over sink, I see you fall asleep in my chair, watching my Cinemax..." and "Strike Two! Firuz know everything!", which followed by an evil laugh. I gotta say, it was more funnier when I first watched the scene. It had an element of surprise, so it has become slightly less funny now, but is still entertaining.

Here's an original snapshot of the scene from Netflix...

Ant Man and the Wasp (2018)

Bell, M., Broussard, S., Feige, K., Winther, L. P., & Reed, P. (2018). Ant-man and the wasp [Motion picture]. United States: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures.

In a particular scene, Ant Man had to disguise himself as school kid in an elementary school since he was shrunk to the size of a kid that age. He manages to escape, but much to the amusement to his friends, The Wasp and Pym, whom briefly take advantage of the situation and ask him a question about how was school and talks about him like he's a little kid. What makes it funny to me is that I would had done the same thing if I was there with them. It's the execution of the scene that is funny and kind of has to do with dialogue, but less so than the previous examples. The weird thing about this scene is that I remember it being longer in the cinema.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mf6GFsNLvis