With The Dark Knight Rises soon to hit UK screens, and The Amazing Spider-man having done the same only a couple of weeks ago, it’s fair to say that superheroes are at the forefront of cinema at the moment, but is it all becoming a bit too much?
Scene Setters
If you haven’t seen clips of Prometheus yet, or even the film itself, then you are either living under a rock or from Germany (release date is August 8th apparently – unlucky).
The Amazing Making-Of The Amazing Spider-Man
OK, you all know by now how much we like talking about certain CG heavy / animation films, and it might be quite obvious why this is. Yes, generally it's because the film features one of our favourite directors, or we love a certain genre, action hero or story line, but another reason for us to get so excited about a new release is for the array of behind the scenes footage for the making of, on how certain sequences were achieved!
Rise Of The Fairy Tale Creatures...
DreamWorks have released two trailers (second here) for their upcoming animation film Rise of the Guardians.
Happy 10th Birthday V-Ray!
Some of you may, or may not, know that V-ray is currently celebrating it’s 10 year anniversary. So, to mark the occasion, what could they be doing? Are they throwing a week long wild party? A massive shopping spree for all employees? Or maybe a month's extra holiday time to all...
11 Days And Counting
The suspense and build up to The Dark Knight Rises is literally killing us at Escape, we are so excited for the release date it's almost agony how slow time seems to be going. It also doesn’t make it any easier that new footage, trailers and behind the scene sneak peeks keep being released!
From Past To Present
It’s always interesting to see how different studios rank, whether it’s in regards to gaming, films or television. On Wednesday, Develop Online released its top 100 best studios, which, let’s be honest is always good to have a nose at. This time, however, what made it more interesting for us is the fact that two escapees have gone on to work for the number one voted UK game’s developer, Traveller’s Tales!
Scene Stealers
Film4’s innovative new project ‘Scene Stealers’, is one that waters the seed of creative license, and thus, one that is screaming out to our free thinking, boundary smashing escapees. The project is an opportunity to get your work onto a global platform and represent the world of Visual Effects.
Super Trooper
Don’t you just hate it when you watch a couple get together that you’ve been rooting for throughout the movie and then a giant mutant bug stabs her in the stomach and it’s all over? Yeah we hate it too. If you’re um-ing and ah-ing where this scene-setting image is from then it was, of course, the original Starship Troopers film, released in 1997.
Bad Hair Day?
If we are watching a live action film with actors, it’s very rare that one of the main character features we concentrate on is the hair. Occasionally a judgemental comment of whether it looks good or not is thrown out there but that’s the extent of it. The average viewer will fail to notice if the colour looks wrong in one of the scenes or that it doesn’t look realistic enough.
Next Generation Of Sony Entertainment
Huge news was announced this morning that SCE (or Sony Computer Entertainment to those of you not familiar with the Sony department responsible for all things Playstation and games) has purchased the online gaming streaming company GaiKai for $380 million.
Can You ‘Recall’ The Original?
Yes, I really went there. A new trailer has been released for the updated version of Total Recall, and gone are the days of Arnie showing his rippling torso and basking in the limelight. This adaptation follows Doug Quaid (Colin Farrell) on his quest to find something better than his current life. After discovering ‘Rekall’, and being warned against it, he decides to rebel (against the norm, funnily enough) and visit the place regardless. This results in Doug Quaid having to question everything to try discover what is, and isn’t, real. The film boasts robots, a futuristic (yet dark) London and a whole lot of CG from MPC, Double Negative and Prime Focus. So from an industry point of view, it's definitely going to be worth a watch.
Studio Secrets Come Out From The Shadows
During it’s opening weekend, Dark Shadows topped just over $29million at the Box Office. This may not be up to the usual par of some of Johnny Depp’s films but the CG within the film didn’t fail to impress once again.
On The Right Track
Mark Spevick, Visual Effects extraordinaire and current Head of 3D at Escape Studios will be hosting a webinar on 25th July from 5.30pm to 6.30pm online.
Creative Skillset Short Course Approval
We’ve just had some exciting news from the lovely people at Creative Skillset. The creative industries’ sector skills council are currently running a pilot scheme for short courses that provide training in areas such as TV, film, radio, interactive media, animation, computer graphics, facilities, photo imaging, publishing, advertising and fashion & textiles. By making training in these areas more readily available, they hope to open up these industries and create a more diverse pool of talent right here in the UK. And we’re delighted to play a part in that ambition.
B Movie Box Office
Last week was an interesting week for movie fans. Our prayers were answered when Michael Bay's production of Ninja Turtles was shut down (he decided that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles should be neither mutants nor teenagers, apparently, and the world decided to hate him). The Amazing Spiderman had it's London Premiere, another 45 minutes worth of TV spots for The Dark Knight Rises were released and the world was given Abraham Lincoln; Vampire Hunter.
E3, On The Flip Side
As shown in this real time tech demo by Epic Games Unreal Engine 4, there are a host of improvements coming to the next generation of console and PC games. These are notably, real time dynamic lighting and particle effects as well as massive improvements to the UDK itself, enabling developers to leverage all these improvements much easier and faster. Then, just to show off Square-Enix, creaters of the hugely popular Final Fanstasy series, go and show what their latest real time tech is made of, and that really is impressive.
The Summer Must-See Movies Take 2
I have already aired my excitement over the new Batman film The Dark Knight Rises in yesterday's blog. However, after searching through more of the summer "must see" films on IGN I came across another film I am excited to see; Ted.
Gamers Paradise: What Should we be Getting Excited About?
Epic Games released this trailer of the Unreal Game Engine at the E3 Festival last a few weeks back and it got me thinking, what else can we look forward to seeing this year?