I just watched The Rescuers Down Under, and really enjoyed it. Thanks, BDA.

We need a whole thread just for this.

Don't worry. I'm at the Winchester, having a nice cold pint and waiting for all of this to blow over.

I completely agree with you., but it took this post to make me realize it. The previous one, not so much.

I do find VFX amazing and spectacular. I don't care that it's become a norm. It's exactly like some people who were saying back when Curiosity landed on Mars, "Hmpft. Who cares. It's been, like, done." So what? Does it suddenly become less epic? Robots landing on motherfucking Mars. It still is a marvel, and it will still be for a long time.

But I find VFX amazing and spectacular when they're in their right place. Which is, helping the film tell its story. Most blockbusters nowadays are VFX enhanched with a story. Shouldn't it be the other way around?

When someone asks me what my favourite movie with VFX is, I answer Children of Men. Of course, probably no one ever came out of the theater after watching it and saying "Wow, the VFX were amazing". Children of Men is good at using VFX and not showing off with it. Cloud Atlas might be a better example. It relies heavily on VFX, but uses them to tell something. Prometheus does it too, mind you. Only the story sucked.

I'll go see Gravity because I believe Cuarón is able to tell me a great story with great directing. If it turns out it's just a spectacular eye candy flick, and nothing more, I'll be very disappointed. Wait and see, right?

I love them both equally, in their own style.

Wow, Phonebooth and Falling Down were made by him? I loved both.

I'll take this opportunity to say that I didn't understand one word of what fcw said in this video.

My God, what a terrifying movie. I'm a big fan of the music album, so I watched this with a very particular state of mind. How it holds up as a movie on its own, I have no idea. But the animated parts alone could make someone have trouble finding sleep the following night. The cinematography is at times really good, and some live scenes are amazing (namely, the children being processed into a machine that turns them into faceless puppets sit at school tables).

A complicated movie for a very complex album. Fascinating.

It might be a detail, but when the camera cuts between two characters in the same seat, it kind of breaks the illusion. Specifically, I'm thinking about Zarban's Derek cutting to Otero at 2:06.

Back when I was trying to study computer sciences (eventually failing because I hated them and deciding to study VFX instead) we had some sort of a communication class. At the end of my first year there, we had to make a video we would show to a jury and an audience. Any kind of video would do - picture story, music clip, short film.

It was a group project, so I ended up working on it with two friends, who helped me as best as they could - but this group project was really an excuse to make something I'd had in mind for years, a Lego Star Wars stop-motion movie. That was three and a half years ago.

One of my two friends was a big Star Wars fan too, so he helped me a lot with the story. He also helped me with the stop-motion shooting (three whole damn days locked in my bedroom taking picture after picture). Video shots for the Imperial shuttle and Star Destroyers were done by me later on, with a camcorder I somehow had managed to make my dad buy me.

Everything in post-processing was done by me. I had to redo the whole Star Wars opening sequence (which I think I nailed back then), make background images with Photoshop (planets and such, and the big hangar deck which was a big composition of the same group of Lego bricks shot several times). Lots of keying (which so doesn't work at several points). Compositing, roto, etc.

I really lacked time to finish this (also we sucked at voice acting), and of course I was younger and a beginner at it. But damn, I had fun. I think it was at this point that I realized what I really wanted to do with my life.

Stop-motion Lego videos and I go back a long way. I made a lot of them when I was around 12, and the idea of making a bigger one, enhanced with VFX, was in my mind since then.

PS: if you're wondering, here's a translation of what the opening says:

It actually sounds pretty stupid and has nothing to do with the story that follows, involving a Jedi we pulled out from the EU (A'Sharad Hett).

Gaming? That, I'd be interested in. Do you have specific games in mind?

The curse has gone!

But then... Where has it gone?

Uh-oh. Teague? Everything going well with your music album?