Cinema Tech's Scott Kirsner interviews Jonathan Rothbart and Stu Maschwitz

Scott Kirsner has a great conversation with Stu Maschwitz and Jonathan Rothbart, two of the three that started the SF based effects company The Orphanage.  Stu writes Pro Lost, a blog with great, if infrequent tid bits of knowledge. He has also been busy writing a book: The DV Rebel's Guide: An All-Digital Approach to Making Killer Action Movies on the Cheap.  

I read this long but engrossing interview on the train home last night, and would recommend it to anyone. Scott is a strong interviewer and really gets a lot from these passionate guys at the peak of the industry. Key themes I found interesting are: (Italics have been paraphrased from the interview)

On The VFX / Animation Industry
Orphanage are looking to develop a Feature Animation side to the industry and discuss the convergence and differences between VFX and Animation. One key difference is the way animation relies on similar detail levels as the very realistic needs in VFX, but implores a stylization to take it way from ‘the real’. Stu refers to the ‘Uncanny Valley’ where in Animation the more realistic the better up to a certain point after which it becomes ‘really creepy’.

Jurassic Park: 35 CG Shots
Superman: 1500 CG Shots
Things are continually pushing creative and computer boundaries.
This is right across the board from big houses to small ones. People are expecting a laptop to do amazing things in Motion or FCP. In Post we play a game of offering more service and are constantly on the edge of the technology released.

There is an emerging trend of trading cityscapes. Superman Sydney >NYC. XMan 3 in SF with no shoots in the city, only plates.

On the impact of You Tube, Tivo on the Commercials Industry
Scott asked if Tivo has manifested a culture whereby if the commercial is not big and flash to grab the viewer, they just fast forward.
Stu answered that the goal at the moment is to create commercials that ‘people will  want to point it out on You Tube’.

On Circumventing the Distribution industry
See Four Eyed Monsters
Which screened at Slamdance, where I did my post university internship!

Here is an interesting business model:
Screen the film in free 10 min chunks with the option to pay to get ahead in the story.
A good example of similar tactics here in Britain, channel 4 has ‘First Look’ and BBC does the same. To explain by example, last night I was watch Spooks. When it finished, they promoted seeing the next episode shortly after on BBC3. C4 does this with Hollyoaks on E4. What this does is not only get people to continue watching the show, but drives post prime time traffic to multichannels (Increasing ratings in this fragile market) and maximises opportunity to see.

HD DVD v Blu Ray
Both have missed the boat. Netflix over ip will win. Why? People cant be bothered to buy a new format. HD Content over ip is just around the corner.

One of my fav stories:
“We get a reminder sometimes that we can kind of outsmart ourselves. With “Sin City,” we had a bunch of splattering blood we were trying to do. After two weeks of fluid dynamics development of splattering blood, the guy who was putting the final shot together and the CG supervisor said, “We just need some reference for what this should look like.” They went out in the parking lot with a bowl of milk, and started splashing it. The milk was white enough that they could get a good key off of it, so the compositor put that in the shot, just to see how it might play. He put it in dailies, and we all said, “That’s the best fluid simulation we’ve ever seen.” That afternoon, we were out in the parking lot with a bowl full of eggnog – this was around Christmas -- and a hockey puck. Throwing a hockey puck into a bowl of eggnog became how we splattered the Yellow Bastard’s blood all over the barn at the end of “Sin City.”

Other discussions included:
UGC/Remix Culture. How much is the audience affecting the content they watch.

The manner in which the Studios try to mould video games often unsuccessfully around feature films. These are very different cultural pieces that require different modes of viewer interaction and therefore demand different development practises if they are to be successful.

The importance of Previz. How to use it to pitch.

And much more!
Go have a read, but remember, there is a lot of reading!