Category: Entertainment

The M-Factor: Motion Capture Talent Show!

Posted by Martyn Drake – August 24, 2010

My other big TV pitch would be for a brand new talent show in which contestants wear motion/performance capture suits and do their piece away from the judges. Then, using visual effects and post-production techniques, contestants’ performances are giving a polish. Imagine the possibilities with magic acts – you’d outdo David Copperfield and Lance Burton something chronic. It’s not camera trickery/cheating – it’s an enhanced performance! The judges then base their opinions on the finished article, with the best contestant(s) and associated production team sent to boot camp. Winner gets to star in Avatar 2 as a talking plant.

Crap dancers can be made to dance like devils, dancing and singing dogs can really dance and sing (with the voice of Frank Sinatra), singers can look and sound like their idols, jugglers can juggle elephants, and so on. The possibilities are endless.

Yes, the M-Factor would be a TV ratings smash hit. Come on – this is Simon Cowell’s dream. Extremely polished “normal” people. I’d call the show, Britain’s Got the M-Factor. Sponsored by Jar-Jar Binks. And the beauty is that you could get two shows out of one. Given the tight fitting nature of the performance capture suits, you could also film Hole in the Wall at exactly the same time!

X-Factor using auto-tune system for select contestants?

Posted by Martyn Drake – August 22, 2010

Update: X-Factor production admit to tweaking voices due to “the number of microphones used during recording”. Which seems utter bull to me, as we’ve never heard this sort of nonsense in previous series. Personally, I prefer my “interview” with the X-Factor sound engineer over the real one.

Watched X-Factor last night and found it very odd that ITV/Syco or whoever is in charge these days appear to be using an autotune/vocoder sound system to improve the voice of select contestants. A select number because we didn’t hear the system kick in for the G in G&S, and the Michael Jackson tribute bloke (who sounded like a wounded mouse).

So just why is ITV/Syco using such a system?

Well, if they’re going to be using autotune/vocoder/digital jiggery pokery – I’m going to enter my laptop for auditions next year. I’ll simply have a table set-up on stage, walk in carrying the laptop, set it on the table, press a button, sit on a chair next to the table and read a newspaper as the laptop starts singing in a Stephen Hawking monotone robot voice about the virtues of believing in life after love by that well known philosopher, Cher.

My laptop would have various advantages over human contestants. The first is that is has no emotion. No begging the X-Factor judges that it’s always wanted a pop career. No crying when told by Simon Cowell that it’s crap. The second advantage is that there is no accompanying sob story about how it’s RAM is a bit dodgy and it’s hard drives have been knocked about a lot by it’s owner. No sir, this is one loved laptop. And the laptop can probably dance better than most human contestants too. And is more photogenic. AND it can take direction.

Better still, let’s get enter of those fantastic Toyota/Hyundai humanoid robots AND a laptop as a group. A sure fire win.

Look out for X-Factor: Rise of the Machines next year.

Inception changes X-Men: First Class – rotating room shocker!

Posted by Martyn Drake – August 3, 2010

Damn that Christopher Nolan (director) and Chris Corbould (special effects), for they have thwarted Matthew Vaughn’s plans for an exciting fight sequence in a rotating environment.

To be honest, rotating rooms haven’t exactly been a new idea. Fighting in a rotating room – still not that new. But I think it’s the scale seen in Inception (which ironically I haven’t seen yet – perhaps in a week or so’s time) that makes it interesting.

That’s not to say Matthew Vaughn couldn’t keep his fight sequence. Spruce it up with visual effects, introduce a floating camera rather than locked off one (or even produce the entire sequence digitally using performance capture and a complete 3D environment – costly, perhaps, but visually you could have a lot of fun with that providing you get it right).

Close sources now say that the fight takes place in a giant blancmange[*] factory instead and Charles Xavier and the rest of the mutants have to eat their way through several tons of the stuff whilst putting up a fight using giant spoons as weapons. Several of the mutants die from heart attacks. Special blancmange effects provided by Walls/Lyons deserts.

[*] See what I did there? Blancmange is also a British Wave pop group responsible for Living On The Ceiling. Rotating rooms? Ceilings? Geddit. Oh, I give up.

Today’s amusement: Universal Studios (UK) searching Google: “Kick-Ass not available on LOVEFiLM”

Posted by Martyn Drake – July 21, 2010

We all know that Universal Pictures (UK) are not selling any new titles to LOVEFiLM, Britain’s biggest online rental company, due to a dispute involving rental fees paid to Universal. So therefore I was almightily tickled by the following when I noticed the following whilst checking Awstats.

From the logs of this very blog:

213.219.37.67 – - [21/Jul/2010:14:58:35 +0100] “GET /2010/02/12/universal-pictures-bullying-the-market-yet-again/ HTTP/1.1″ 200 21940 “http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&rlz=1R2ADBS_enGB339&ei=3PxGTOr7K9W6jAe5zpH1Bg&q=kick-ass+not+available+on+lovefilm&start=10&sa=N” “Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; GTB6.5)”

Let’s confirm where that IP originates from by querying RIPE’s database:

oot@host1 [~]# whois 213.219.37.67
[Querying whois.ripe.net]
[whois.ripe.net]
% This is the RIPE Database query service.
% The objects are in RPSL format.
%
% The RIPE Database is subject to Terms and Conditions.
% See http://www.ripe.net/db/support/db-terms-conditions.pdf

% Note: This output has been filtered.
% To receive output for a database update, use the “-B” flag.

% Information related to ’213.219.37.0 – 213.219.37.255′

inetnum: 213.219.37.0 – 213.219.37.255
netname: TCUNIVERSALP
descr: TeleCity Group Customer – Universal Pictures
country: GB
remarks: In case of abuse please email; nic.admin@ge.com
admin-c: TA515-RIPE
tech-c: TT556-RIPE
status: ASSIGNED PA
mnt-by: TELECITY-MNT
source: RIPE # Filtered

Are Universal Pictures looking to re-evaluate their relationship with LOVEFiLM? I’ve also noticed these two other queries coming from the same IP:

root@host1 [~]# grep 213.219.37.67 /usr/local/apache/domlogs/drake.org.uk | grep -i “google”

213.219.37.67 – - [21/Jul/2010:12:59:36 +0100] “GET /2010/02/12/universal-pictures-bullying-the-market-yet-again/ HTTP/1.1″ 200 21940 “http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=4&ved=0CCMQFjAD&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.drake.org.uk%2F2010%2F02%2F12%2Funiversal-pictures-bullying-the-market-yet-again%2F&rct=j&q=lovefilm%20universal%20kick%20ass&ei=GOFGTObqJMOOjAfl1YC3Bw&usg=AFQjCNFf7NDe2bBMA1464YZ1qzTbiim_EA” “Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US) AppleWebKit/533.4 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/5.0.375.99 Safari/533.4″

Translation: “lovefilm universal kick-ass”

213.219.37.67 – - [21/Jul/2010:14:44:52 +0100] “GET /2010/03/03/glorious-inglourious-basterds-universal-lovefilm/ HTTP/1.1″ 200 19927 “http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&rlz=1R2ADBS_enGB339&q=kick+ass+on+lovefilm%3F&meta=&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=” “Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; GTB6.5)”

Translation: “kick-ass on lovefilm”

So .. just which people (different user-agents you’ll note) doing the searching and what of LOVEFiLM? Right now, if you want Universal’s latest releases via the rental market your choices are (to the best of my knowledge): Blockbuster, iTunes and Blinkbox.

I’ll admit it right now that I switched from LOVEFiLM to Blockbuster because there were titles that I want to see. I’d rather be a hypocrite than a pirate and resort to downloading them from BitTorrent or similar – and Universal do make and distribute some fantastic films – but I still say they are still too aggressive when it comes to distribution. Unfortunately I can’t afford two rental services, so Blockbuster won out this time. If Universal were to start offering titles on LOVEFiLM again, I’d be happy to return.

POW! ZAPP! BOING! SPUNG! Reading comics 21st Century Style: Marvel Comics iPhone App

Posted by Martyn Drake – July 19, 2010

As I’m commuting to work this week by bus while I wait for my bike to be fixed, I’m taking the iPod Touch with me to pass away the traffic jams and the old pensioners. One thing I’ve come across which I kept meaning to install and try, but only just this morning did it – was the Marvel Comics app for the iPhone/iPod. And I love it! Despite the limitations in screen size, reading comics isn’t that bad – and I love the transitions between panes.

How much I’ll actually use the app remains to be seen – I don’t want to spend all my money, and I’m currently going through the free offerings – but I’m impressed that Marvel has gone to all the effort of producing this app. I’ll have to give the DC Comics a go too at some point.

Film directors: don’t bother with multi-million dollar camera systems..

Posted by Martyn Drake – July 19, 2010

.. because Apple and similar device manufacturer’s are, at this time, never going to make your films look as good on tiny screens (I’m awaiting the iWatch in which for the best movie experience, you’ll have to put your wrist right up to your preferred eye – for 3D films, two watches and both wrists to your eyes – just don’t walk along the pavement watching your film!) – especially when you have to do tricks to fit a 16:9 (or better) movie onto a device that does not naturally support such a resolution. And has the screen size of 9.7 inches or smaller. Good to know that studios have invested in the best camera kit available, eh?

Which strikes me as odd that Apple are only offering some movies on it’s UK store as HD for the iPad and Apple TV (which, fair enough, might mean that you do have a screen which is better suited to 16:9 or better ratio). Oh hum. Roll on the iGlasses which can project images the right size and ratio that filmmakers intended for you to see in front of your nose..

No wonder this man who has only been directing movies for a while now has this to say about it:

Also see this amusing take on the iPad’s video playback. Indirectly this also bitchslaps Apple’s PR for photoshopping because if that is the case that Star Trek is displayed as seen in the iPad adverts then something is a bit wrong somewhere..

So I say this to directors – shoot everything for 4:3, keeping all the action dead centre of the screen – but at the same time use the natural resolution of the camera to shoot amusing and secret stuff at the left and right ends of the screen so that iPod, iPad and other devices can’t display them naturally and everybody watching it on small screens will miss out. Oh, people will chuckle at those jolly japes, and pan and scan companies will curse you forever more! People will say, “Did you see that pigeon giving that walrus a passionate kiss in the IMAX remake of Hitchcocks’ The Birds? No? Ah, you must have seen that on an iWrist – they were doing it at the corner of the screen when we saw it in the cinema..”