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Post by architect on Apr 19, 2012 22:09:58 GMT -5
Brad Bird on Mission: Impossible, 3D and IMAX Q: Given that there's been so many Hollywood films that are presented in 3D or shot in 3D, what was the decision behind choosing the IMAX camera for certain scenes?
A: While I'm very interested in 3D, and I'm very curious to see what people like Peter Jackson and James Cameron are doing next, I have some technical issues with 3D, and I feel that people are forgetting the power that really big, bright, sharp images on a massive screen have. Simply seeing movies presented the way they used to be presented, in the top theatres, is an unbelievably powerful experience. But most people see them in multiplexes now with small auditoriums and small screens with dim projectors. Part of what I liked about IMAX is that people are forced to sit forward, the screens are huge, the bulbs are turned all the way up, the sound systems are good and they're getting the experience we intend them to get rather than the one they often get.
Q: You've brought in a lot of real-world elements to Ghost Protocol, particularly when technology fails. Was there any particular experience of yours that prompted this?
A: It's kind of a thing that I am interested in and amused by. It more approaches how we interact with technology in our real life. I like it when those sort of unpredictable aspects rear their head in fantastic films. I was always very impressed when I saw Disney's Cinderella that the fairy godmother started to do a spell with her magic wand, and the wand didn't work and she had to whack it against the palm of her hand a few times to get the magic to come out, almost like it was a pen that was clogged. I thought that was a wonderful thing because it told me something about the world of magic, that things don't always work.
I love it when Han Solo is trying to escape with his Millennium Falcon in The Empire Strikes Back. He starts it and the engine doesn't turn over. He has to whack the side of the control panel in order to get it to come back online. Even though they're in a fantastic world, the mundane aspects of gadgets and reality rear their head. It's something that I myself really have enjoyed in movies that I've seen and I have fun with it in the movies that I direct.
JJ Abrams said to me early on, "are there any things that you have always wanted to see in a spy film", and I said, "Absolutely". One of them was, "I want the gadgets to not be totally reliable". They embraced that idea, and we got a lot of it in the film.
Q: Is there one particular technological tool that would make your film-making life easier?
A: Yeah, I would love an app that created automatic financing for a movie idea. That would be great. I would be using that very often (laughs) . . . read the rest.
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Post by architect on Apr 19, 2012 22:19:12 GMT -5
Director Brad Bird on Making the Leap to Live Action Q: After working in animation so long, what led you to the "Mission: Impossible" franchise?
A: I'd known J.J. for a long time, and we'd been looking for opportunities to work together, but the timing never worked out. And I met Tom right after 'The Incredibles," and we had this long conversation about what we loved about movies. So they were both on my radar in terms of guys I'd love to work with, and here was a way to work with both of them in one fell swoop, so I jumped at it.
A: This was such a great ensemble; what was your involvement in casting this installment?
A: Well, Tom was cast, obviously, and so was Simon Pegg. They knew they wanted [Pegg's character] Benji back. He made a really strong impression on everyone in a short amount of screen time in the last one, and J.J. and Tom wanted to bring him on with a big role this time. So those two parts were cast, but all the others I had a hand in picking. The great casting people had worked with J.J. on "Star Trek," so they knew how to help us cast the film.
Q: It seems like all it would take for Josh Holloway to come in for a small role was for J.J. to say, "Hey, here's my friend, cast him."
A: No, not at all. We were just looking for someone who could make an impression, again, in a short amount of time, and Josh was up for it, so it worked out. We were really happy he could do it.
Q: Were you concerned the screen would blow up with both Jeremy Renner and Tom on the set? They're pretty similar in terms of their screen presence.
A: It was funny, too, because Jeremy happened to be suddenly available for a short window of time right when we needed him, but we kind of thought he wouldn't be able to do it. Suddenly he was coming in to talk to J.J. about "Super 8," and J.J. thought he would be perfect for "Mission." So we had this very quick, "He's on the lot! He's here for another meeting, let's get him!" And we basically cornered him in a room and feverishly pitched the ideas to him. Literally he was signed the next day, like that . . . read the rest.
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Post by architect on Apr 19, 2012 22:21:57 GMT -5
Brad Bird took chances with “Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol” Tom Cruise’s blockbuster spy-fest, “Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol,” arrives on Blu-ray and DVD today, and its technical mystique involved more than an occasional exploding message. Director Brad Bird made his feature-length jump to live action for the film after winning Oscars for Disney and Pixar’s “Ratatouille” and “The Incredibles.”
Bird knew going in that the “M: I” franchise thrives on wacky technology, and together with Cruise’s self-performed stunts, those gadgets attract audiences. Nevertheless, Bird first had to ask his own crew to suspend belief while filming the Kremlin scene.
“I think the [gadget] that took the biggest leap—meaning that some of the people in the crew came up to me later and said, ‘To be honest with you, I don’t think this is gonna work’—was the e-screen in the Kremlin,” Bird told IFC at a tech-heavy pre-launch event at Washington DC’s Spy Museum. “When we were making it the projected image was not there, and things didn’t fit as tightly.”
Although much of what made the final cut in theaters is real in “Ghost Protocol” was accomplished without extensive CGI effects, the e-screen, which renders a hologram of a fake hallway, had to be fully integrated after shooting.
“It was a little more wonky, and everyone was having to suspend disbelief and believe that we were going to pull this off,” Bird explained. “So they were very gratified when the sequence was finally done.”
Meanwhile, Cruise and his co-star for the scene, Simon Pegg, have had plenty of professional experience performing with animated props and set pieces.
“The actors are a little more willing to go there,” Bird said. “They don’t want to look foolish, but they’re playing pretend, which is essentially what a director does; he’s got his little toys, and he’s going [makes pistol-shooting sounds].”
Dale Shelton, a technical consultant on the film, helped Bird to keep things believable. Even when they were playing around with remote-control vehicles and bio-metric scanning devices, they tried to make Cruise’s espionage arsenal seem like it could exist sometime in the next few years—that is, if it doesn’t already.
“That’s what’s great about this film—there is that basis in reality, and you leave thinking, ‘Maybe that does exist . . . read the rest.
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Post by architect on Apr 19, 2012 22:27:25 GMT -5
Bird tried hard with ‘MI4' DVD Like many filmmakers, Oscar-winning director Brad Bird is torn between preparing his movies for big-screen theatres, including in spectacular IMAX, and giving in to the home entertainment experience.
"Ultimately, I make films for the theatre. I think that's probably the best way to see them -- with an audience when there's no pause button and the phone is not constantly ringing and all of that. That said, and it's been this way since movies began, I recognize that their time in the theatre is relatively short and they will spend an eternity where people can watch them in the confines of their homes."
"You can have a really amazing experience at home if you want to," Bird says of watching Ghost Protocol. "So I think we worked really hard to make the Blu-ray great and, if you have a good system, it will just rock it! I don't take that lightly. I want it to sound as great as it can sound and to look as great as it can look.
"We also worked hard on the special materials (the Blu-ray extras). I didn't want it to just be where the studio has an EPK crew (for electronic press kits) that they always assign to these things, where they just do it by the numbers."
Instead, Bird insisted on hiring Anthony Giacchino, brother of Michael Giacchino, the movie's music composer. Bird had worked with Anthony Giacchino on both The Incredibles and Ratatouille, the Pixar animation that earned him his two Oscars for best animated feature and two other Oscar noms for screenwriting.
"He came and shot all that special material and was with us when we were doing of lot of this stuff -- and his point-of-view is the point-of-view of a filmmaker. So the extra materials are wonderful little films of their own. Again, I didn't want to take it for granted."
That means that you get to see exactly how the death-defying Cruise did his own stunt work on the now-famous, breathtaking sequence on the outside of Dubai's Burj Khalifa tower, the world's tallest building. More than 140 storeys up, Cruise swung out on cables pretending to do his Spider-man routine. Cruise even gave Bird a scare during his joyous and seemingly reckless practice runs, especially one in which he yelled like a supernova Tarzan.
"Great!" Bird says now of the memory. "It's my first live-action film and I thought I had killed my leading man!" SOURCE
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Post by architect on Apr 19, 2012 22:30:32 GMT -5
Brad Bird: Modern Action, IMAX and How the 'Simpsons' Informed 'Mission: Impossible' The fourth installment of Tom Cruise's passion franchise recruited Bird for the director's chair and he shot the heck out of it, plain and simple. His imagination, never constrained in his animated films, was on full display in Ghost Protocol, through crazy stunts, explosive action choreography and the film's stunning IMAX work. How'd he do it? The special features on the movie's Blu-ray (available now) she a lot of light on that very subject, but I had a chance to sit down with Bird to dive even further into his philosophy, influences and the idea that the theatrical version of M:I—GP was the definitive version:
The definition of an action movie has never been in more flux. With on-going debates on practical effects vs. CG, film vs. digital, the idea that "spectacle" may be its own brand of film…is there a definitive form of action filmmaking?
I think it all comes down to what you do with it. Anything can be done well, poorly. Some people have commented on shaky cam. I think in the hands of someone like Paul Greengrass and the Bourne films it's really effective and great filmmaking. Very adrenalizing. I think a lot of people…what's a diplomatic way of putting it — far less ability then Paul Greengrass — have used it as a way to cover up hacky filmmaking. I think it gives opportunities for vague directors to put in fake adrenaline. But there's nothing wrong with the technique if it's done well.
The original Die Hard is an amazing action movie. It's about caring for geography and having enough confidence to stay with a shot rather than cutting every eight frames. Because a lot of action films cut every eight frames, and that's fine if you need it, but if you do it too much it diminishes the power of the cut. And it diminishes the power of fast cutting. If everything is cut with a fast edit, a dialogue scene cut with fast edit, then the effect wears off after awhile. An audience builds up resistance to any rhythm that becomes too regular. One of the tricks that I admire, from Raiders, Die Hard and a lot of James Cameron's films, is that the pace is always varying. It's never settling in to one rhythm. That's like life because even when you run, you can only run a certain while before you need to take a break. You feel the acceleration more if you've had moments to slow down.
The special features on this disc give you a clear picture that Tom Cruise is committed to his craft. But he still feels like a mysterious presence.
He has two settings: 400% or off. When he gets into it he gives it his all. That's apparent in [the climbing sequence] and every other sequence in the film. He trained very intensively for them. He is incredibly knowledgeable about the film process. I would be composing a shot close to him, and I'd tell him, 'Tom, your chin isn't exactly lining up…' and he'd say, 'What lens is it?' and I'd say, 'it's a 40' and then he'd [Brad shifts his head] — and it'd be perfect. He knew it that well.
I think he's afraid of making a bad movie. I think he respects the cinema-going experience. He's always pushing to make the films as good as he can before the clock runs out. If there's anything that motivates him is that he never wants to give less than his all. That's one of the things that makes him such a pleasure to work with . . . read the rest.
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Post by architect on Apr 19, 2012 22:56:57 GMT -5
MIGP: Jeremy Renner on Surviving To mark the arrival of Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol on Blu-Ray and DVD, Movie Fanatic brings you a conversation with one of the film’s stars. Jeremy Renner was new to the Tom Cruise franchise, and seamlessly fit into the action, thrills and spills. After all the incredible stunts featured in the fourth Mission Impossible film, Renner for one was thrilled to still be well… amongst the living. “It's good to be alive,” Renner said. “There are some amazing set pieces, my friend.”
That is saying something as the action sequences, particularly atop the tallest building in the world, are breathtaking. “The Burj Khalifa is the tallest building in the world. It's twice the size of the Empire State building in New York. We were on the top of it and it is so high that when you look down it is like the view from a plane. It's intense,” Renner recalled. “All the stunts are practical and that made that a lot of fun. There's a lot of challenges to overcome, but luckily we had a man like Tom to lead the way.”
Cruise, as he often does, insisted on doing his own stunts -- therefore audiences get that incredible sequence in Dubai. Although he appears quite serious during those scenes, Renner tells us that Cruise was having the time of his life. “He was smiling ear to ear between takes,” the actor said.
Meanwhile, inside the room from which Cruise was propelling to and from, Renner, Simon Pegg and Paula Patton were content to admire the view. “We just had to sit inside and sip on some tea,” Renner said and laughed. Cruise’s co-stars knew that the franchise’s star was more than equipped for the dangerous stunt. “He has a lot of mountain climbing experience and one of the stunt guys behind him was one of the top mountain climbers, so being on a wire, he was as comfortable as hanging on a rock. That's strange enough in itself. But hanging off a building like that? Maybe it's not new to him. Maybe it is, but he certainly was enjoying himself. . . read the rest.
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Post by architect on Apr 19, 2012 22:59:41 GMT -5
MIGP Screened in Space! It looks like Tom Cruise is over the moon, literally. Well, almost! The Hollywood superstar's comeback vehicle Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol was screened for astronauts aboard the International Space Station recently.
Confirming the news, the film's director Brad Bird tweeted, "I am happy to report that MIGP has been recently viewed in outer space, on the International Space Station. (Weightless is the new IMAX!)." SOURCE
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Post by architect on Apr 19, 2012 23:03:54 GMT -5
Mission Impossible is . . . The Artist? I love the way film critic Richard Corliss sums up the attributes of The Artist, the silent French romantic comedy that, with 10 nominations, is both an Oscar front-runner and, if the pundits are correct, a shoo-in for the prestigious Best Picture prize.
“Its achievement should be both an inspiration and a reproach to le nouveau Hollywood,” writes the Time magazine pundit. “How stories can be eloquent without words, and how the most elevating emotions can be conveyed in a mute smile, tear or caress.”
To which I can only respond: good god, man, have you not seen Mission: Impossible 4 . . . read the rest
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Post by roxthefox on Apr 30, 2012 19:41:23 GMT -5
What's the DVD features for this one?
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Post by architect on May 3, 2012 20:55:38 GMT -5
Depends which version you get. The Best Buy one has the most extras and comes recommended by BB.
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Post by architect on May 3, 2012 21:39:07 GMT -5
Brad Bird Talks to Flickering Myth “In the period before The Iron Giant [1999], when I was trying to get movies made, and running against all the walls a lot of filmmakers run up against, half the projects I had on the runway were live-action,” reveals Oscar-winning American filmmaker Brad Bird who won Best Animated Feature for The Incredibles (2004) and Ratatouille (2007). “It’s something that I’ve been circling for a long time.” When the Great California Earthquake tale 1906 failed to get made, the native of Kalispell, Montana was offered an opportunity to helm the fourth installment of the Mission: Impossible franchise by producer J.J. Abrams (Super 8). “With animation you’re pushing people toward a finished state,” states Bird who decided to direct Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol (2011). “You keep pushing the shot forward whereas live-action you’re rolling the dice on catching the shot. You get a lot more tries at bat but you have to work more quickly.” He explains, “In animation, it’s a problem of having to build everything and then being able to describe what you want to artists; when it doesn’t reach the mark being able to be very specific about what will get it there, down to lift an elbow one inch and snap it a little more, take two frames out kind of direction. You’re still struggling to capture a moment only you’re gaining the ground at an inch at a time whereas in live-action you can not hit it and then hit the perfect take on take six and gain 20 yards all of a sudden.”
“If it’s not working you have to have a solution right then,” states Brad Bird who had to adjust to the quickness required during the principle photography for the action thriller starring producer and actor Tom Cruise (Collateral). “We had a deep bench of really good people so if something didn’t work you had the best people who are probably prepared for it not to work and have an option for you. It wasn’t like a super low-budget film where you’re prepared to do it one way and if it doesn’t work you’re screwed. You could jump on options but the options had to happen fast. If something wasn’t working you had to figure out why it wasn’t working very quickly. In that sense my work on The Simpsons [Fox, 1989 to present], even though it was animated, was very instructive because even though you were doing animation we had to do 22 to 24 episodes a year; you couldn’t linger on any decisions they had to be made quickly.” His experience on the longest running American television series left a lasting impression on the young writer and animator. “Even though the characters are goofy looking and the stories are crazy storytelling wise, a lot of the episodes were pretty sophisticated. They had A stories and B stories. You had to tell the stories quickly and efficiently. Sometimes the ideas were challenging to put over quickly and cleanly. It was a great training ground. When stories didn’t work people had to stay in a room, figure out why, and come up with a revision before you left the room. Because whatever we decided by two o’clock in the morning, on the night the show had to be locked, was the way it was going to be forever.”
While promoting Star Trek (2009) in the Middle East, J.J. Abrams became fascinated by Dubai. “I don’t think J.J. had anything specific in mind but he did want to have something there,” states Brad Bird as to the origins to the sequence where Tom Cruise climbs the Burj Khalifa in Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol. “When Mission came you’re always looking for a set piece and they happen to have the tallest building in the world there. It became this thing. I think that was the first thing that we decided upon for stunts in this film.” Logistical issues had to be sorted out. “The biggest challenge was physically getting to do so much of it on the actual building and I made it more difficult by filming it in IMAX.” The decision was inspired by Christopher Nolan shooting about half an hour of The Dark Knight (2008) in the format. “We said, ‘If everything goes wrong what is the minimum number of shots that will be okay with.’ It was something like four or five shots.” Complications ensued when the film crew of the $140 million production wanted to make alterations to the landmark structure. “We started talking about taking out windows and at first they were like, ‘What? You want to take out. This is a building. There are businesses here we can’t.’ We said, ‘Well, look. If you can take a thing out you can put it back. We’ll put everything back. What do you guys think? We won’t wreck anything. We’ll put it exactly back it was before.” In the end 27 windows were removed to get the necessary camera angles of Cruise and his vertigo inducing escapade.
The Robotic Parking Garage Sequence was also shot in the IMAX format. “It was financially impractical to build the entire thing,” states Brad Bird. “We figured out what we needed to get all of our angles. We could get it with moving some cars around but we really leaned on John [Knoll] and ILM to finish out the set to give us all of the stuff that wasn’t there. We had the bottom floors built all the way around and then it got smaller as it went to the top. It was another sequence that we did film largely practically meaning that we had real people there jumping and doing all that crazy stuff. Being able to put stuff outside the windows and do it at a resolution that was staggering, I give ILM huge props for making the sequence have the visual size that it does. It’s a lot of exceptional work. They had a lot of stuff to do with cars being invisible and I think the very fact that it doesn’t look that there are any effects in there is one of the great things about it.” SOURCE
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Post by architect on May 3, 2012 21:43:04 GMT -5
The IMAX Old Wave: How Audiences and Filmmakers Are Embracing the 2-D Mega-Screen Call it the IMAX Old Wave. Led by last weekend's $155 million Hunger Games windfall — $10.6 million of which came from the giant-screen format — more and more evidence suggests that audiences are both showing a preference for IMAX and happily forgoing often-reviled 3-D visuals. Just as important, and perhaps far more telling, blockbuster directors like Christopher Nolan and Brad Bird are making influential use of IMAX technology to augment their creativity. Those results have been roundly embraced by critics and crowds, all while 3-D continues generating negative feedback and diminishing returns. Are the studios finally ready to follow filmmakers around the corner?
Maybe, if cinematographer Robert Elswit's recent experience is any indication.
“3-D was never a choice for us, so the matter never really came up," said Elswit, the Academy Award winner who served as Bird's director of photography on last year's IMAX-intensive Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol. "As for the IMAX decision, Brad certainly decided to go that route, but he was basically unproven as an action director. Having somebody as influential as Tom Cruise supporting the idea meant it was more likely to happen. Once he was completely in agreement that IMAX would benefit the film as a result the studio never fought it – Tom really influenced them to agree on spending the money, and ultimately it was not such a major expense, budget-wise.”
The move underscores both the creative and commercial advantages in turning away from the muddy visuals of the ongoing 3-D "renaissance" in favor of the optimal experience of regular, two-dimensional IMAX viewing. Currently the company is well into a project that will add 15 new venues into China. Meanwhile, as Hollywood rebounds from last year’s dismal box office, IMAX has actually outpaced that success. Even before Hunger Games landed the third biggest opening weekend of all time, Hollywood had seen a 20 percent increase in year-to-date grosses over the same time frame in 2011. During this same time IMAX has enjoyed a 45 percent surge over last year’s numbers. Even the bomb John Carter boasted a healthy 17 percent of its meager opening from IMAX theaters. IMAX has such a busy slate this year that despite clearing 270 screens for Hunger Games' debut in North America (and an additional 19 venues in the U.K. and France), it has to edge out the blockbuster after a week to accommodate its commitment to today's Wrath of the Titans.
This is not a fluke. The Canadian juggernaut has cultivated a following among viewers and filmmakers alike for four decades, with the more of the latter gravitating towards the 65mm format in recent years. Nolan, a longtime proponent of the technology, was instrumental in ushering in the IMAX Old Wave with his 2008 megahit The Dark Knight, while Bird and Elswit followed suit in 2011 with Ghost Protocol.
“Brad wanted to use IMAX right from the start, and that was mainly due to Chris Nolan’s success in using it for sequences in his Dark Knight film," Elswit told me. "We decided that we wanted to use IMAX cameras to shoot four or five of the action sequences” — most famous being the thrilling Burj Khalifa scenes, featuring Tom Cruise actually scaling and bounding around the top of the world’s tallest building.
“Initially the plan was to construct a massive set replicating the tower and then digitally inserting the ground shot behind what we filmed," Elswit explained. "Tom, however insisted that he actually go outside the actual location, and that enabled us to take IMAX cameras to the tower and film him scaling the building. That meant we were able to deliver those shots that could cause vertigo when watching in an IMAX theater.”
The global reach of IMAX also provided an unforeseen benefit to their location shoot. “As it turns out Dubai has an IMAX theater,” Elswit said. “So we were able to go there and actually view our dailies in IMAX.”
Then, in another unique move, Paramount debuted Ghost Protocol exclusively on 300 IMAX screens five days prior to its wide opening. From the shoot to the release strategy, the format conferred an event status that helped nab the film $45 million in IMAX grosses alone and represented the first wave in a nearly $700 million global phenomenon.
Asked to elaborate on the specific cost differences of producing 3-D versus standard IMAX, Elswit demurred. But the implication was clear for the filmmakers weighing both formats: On the whole, IMAX wields the bigger bang for one's buck.
“When it comes to altering a print for 3-D in post, that is not so expensive," he said. "But if you were to properly shoot in either format, I don’t really see a major difference in the cost. In fact, when it comes to shooting an action sequence — because that is the kind of scene where you would be more likely to use IMAX effectively — you would need to use at least three cameras, in order to film it properly and get the images you want. In that case shooting in 3-D becomes more expensive because there is so much more time needed to properly stage your cameras to get the shots properly filmed.”
If artists' preferences continue to mirror their audiences' tastes, the combination may yield an inescapable influence on Hollywood's decision makers. And once sizable, steady profits can be found on the 2-D side of the ledger, studios and IMAX won't have any choice but to listen as the money does the talking. SOURCE
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Post by roxthefox on Jun 14, 2012 10:37:31 GMT -5
Ah man, I got the Walmart version of the DVD and the extras sucked. Just a few deleted scenes. That's it. I was hoping for a featurette on the Burj sequence.
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