Tears of Steel

Fusobotic

So the latest Blender Foundation short movie just came out. What are your impressions? How about that VFX, compositiing, and camera tracking? Love to hear all of your opinions on the quality of it.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6MlUcmOul8"]Tears of Steel - Blender Foundation's fourth short Open Movie - YouTube[/ame]

Ace-Angel

The CGI is impressive, but the actors could have used a few acting books/movie/sessions ;P

Gmanx

I'm loving the enhanced colour grading features built-in for this project. The live action integration was really well done. More a tech-demo than a film, but an achievement none-the-less.

R3D

Very cool. Any chance we're going to get a VFX breakdown?

Fusobotic

Ryswick wrote: »

Very cool. Any chance we're going to get a VFX breakdown?

Probably, at least on the last film they released some videos on the blender foundation channel. If not, then they'll most likely put some making of videos on DVD collection, which has all the project files on it anyway.

megalmn2000

Gmanx wrote: »

I'm loving the enhanced colour grading features built-in for this project. The live action integration was really well done. More a tech-demo than a film, but an achievement none-the-less.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGthOHgiGFU&feature=related"]Workflow demo: Tracking and Compositing the Captain's eyepatch - YouTube[/ame]

Andreas

They just need to completely avoid emotional films IMO. They come out really naff. Just stick to making awesome stuff like Big Buck Bunny. The effects etc. are all top notch.

notman

It's an amazing example of how powerful blender has become, but the story kinda sucked (no idea what just happened). Seemed like a loose/weird story, just to demonstrate blender, and that's it. It would be cool to see them take the next step, and make a short that is so good, that you forget you're watching it for the effects.

R3D

If I understand correctly, asshole boyfriend left to go be awesome in space and he left his pissed off robot-handed girlfriend on earth. Girlfriend then became GladOS and took over the earth. so now he's an old man trying to get her to forgive him so that she'll stop killing everyone.

Zwebbie

I think I'm the only one, but I enjoyed the Dutch accented melodramatic acting far better than the CGI. Combined with the absurd premise, I thought it was pretty funny, as were the over the top '80s aesthetics of some of the designs. It's the robots and explosions and shooting that I'm less than enthusiastic about, that's all so generic.
It's a pretty sad state of cinema when people actually try to take a movie at face value even after a line like "I just want to be awesome in space!"

Also, the in-universe real world Amsterdam is CG, whereas their CG Amsterdam was filmed in our real world. That's clever.

notman

See, it looked to me like they were trying to film a scene, before they were caught by security probes (the robot cats). I could go for your explanation Ryswick, but I don't understand why the text was there for him to read, and why did it seem like that guy was directing them? I don't know, maybe that's the point. It's vague enough to let people come up with their own concepts.

R3D

notman wrote: »

See, it looked to me like they were trying to film a scene, before they were caught by security probes (the robot cats). I could go for your explanation Ryswick, but I don't understand why the text was there for him to read, and why did it seem like that guy was directing them? I don't know, maybe that's the point. It's vague enough to let people come up with their own concepts.

Because they're trying to fool the robot, and the text is there because they're trying to get the guy to try different lines on the robot.

Gmanx

IMO Ryswick has it more-or-less. I think they're trying to reach whatever remnant in the AI is recogniseable as human (the girl) and reason with it by replaying the encounter that turned her, and alter the outcome. That's why they have the different lines of dialogue on the chalkboard, and they remark on the guy's ad-libbing.

Still not an epic storyline by any standards, but for an indy film-maker like me, with zero budget; the tracking, compositing and grading opportunities are what really stand out.

R3D

Gmanx wrote: »

Still not an epic storyline by any standards, but for an indy film-maker like me, with zero budget; the tracking, compositing and grading opportunities are what really stand out.

To be fair, they had well over 20,000 euros for their budget :x http://mango.blender.org/sponsors/

Ninjas

yeah, I liked the the story and acting and thought they were pretty good. Maybe it depends on what you expect. I have watched enough low budget shorts to know what genuinely bad stuff looks like.

I thought the story was easy to understand.

R3D

Now, is it tear as in tear drop, or tear as in a scratch?