2004 Year in Review.

Today we had a little something special at work, a 15 minute montage of our past work that we have done over the past year at Tippett. Shows like Hellboy, Stepford Wives, and Constantine were prominently featured. We did five movies, three commercials, and Phil's directorial debut, Starship Troopers 2.

I was browsing both CGtalk and OffTopic, and noticed a posting about ILM's work in the upcoming EP3.. If you haven't heard anything about it and prefer not to be spoiled, don't read the next paragraph.

There seemed to be several screen captures of the footage that ILM is apparently working on, where Count Dooku fights Anakin with Palpatine in the background. Even though this may have been shot digitally, it stood out as an extremely fake shot. I'll hold judgement until the movie comes out, but I noticed this on the previous films as well. Where is the bounce light from the lightsabers? The cast from the windows into space? Where is the integration between the actors and the set? My goodness! I mean, there's smoke in outer space! Wow.

I think that if you're going to make a film grounded in pseudo-reality, at least do it right.. No smoke in outerspace, lights illuminate and dim appropriately, shadows are as dense as the real ones.

We're trying to make something that needs to be believable. Compositing is all about making it look like it was shot in-camera.