Ben Burtt talks about creating the sounds for the lightsabers in Star Wars. Sound design is a fascinating field, and sounds can come from some pretty random places. I always remember in War Of The Worlds how they made the sound of the martian space craft opening by twisting lid off a mayonnaise jar inside a toilet bowl.
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OOOii
The company responsible for creating the “future user interfaces” for such films as Minority Report and The Island. They develop using a mix of Adobe Flash, the AIR runtime and pre-rendered videos from After Effects, then deploy with head tracking, multi-touch panels and projection. Their latest project was the 360º environment seen on the bridge of J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek. (via Tim Dawson)
Tilt-shift footage taken from a helicopter along Auckland’s waterfront by erstwhile music video director Samuel Peacocke. I’m still amazed at how this effect makes everything look like such a toy town.
A young Peter Jackson interviewed in Tony Hiles’ 1988 documentary Good Taste Made Bad Taste, which chronicled the making of the director’s first feature, Bad Taste. Peter talks about camera equipment used (including a $20 homemade steadicam), special effects, models and makeup. This is total gold, and can be viewed in its entirety at the NZ On Screen site (embedding is not permitted due to rights issues).
I’m a big fan of this sort of heightened-reality website tour, mostly for making its subject matter look even better than the browsing experience. This very slick promo for the redesigned Fubiz was animated by Mattrunks in Apple’s Motion app. (via David Kaneda)
Grace Jones, 1978. Shot by her baby’s daddy, Jean Paul Goude.
Not a single image, either. The Island Life album cover shot was pieced together from a variety of poses, in the days before Photoshop. Says Goude: “Unless you are extraordinarily supple, you cannot do this arabesque. The main point is that Grace couldn’t do it, and that’s the basis of my entire work: creating a credible illusion.” (via Justin Ouellette)
Sony’s motion poster for Terminator Salvation. (via Slashfilm)
