Sieze The Day! Tomorrow. Or maybe next week sometime. July at the latest.

I suck.

Action - Reaction

I have been on the internet for a long time. I started way back in 1995, and before that a friend of mine had a BBS Bulletin Board of his own that he had been running for around three or four years, so I have been aware of the social side of the net for nearly two decades.

The biggest problem with posting your comments online is the lack of the context that shows your intent. It's very hard to tell the difference between sarcasm, jokes, dismissive comments, and serious argument. The creation of emoticons help to a degree, but they aren't used as often as they used to be, and tend to be misused. They're easy to forget to use, and easy to overlook.

I have recently joined Twitter. I hadn't planned to, I tend to resist most fads that appear for their own sake and don't have a useful purpose. In this case I thought maybe I could improve my chances of finding some casual work, but it turns out Twitter probably isn't the place for that. However, I've been suckered into its charming simplicity, and will probably hang around on it for a while.

The other day I signed up for Facebook. Even though that has a far more likely chance of garnering me some work, so far it's been a horrible experience, an onslaught of crap that has to be filtered through by hand. I would be surprised if I stay around on that monstrosity for too much longer.

I have realised something about Twitter's limited approach that is both in its favour and potentially its worst problem. Not only does it come with all the trappings of other online conversation, i.e. that it is public, and it invites reactionary responses; it also has the added limitation of only 140 characters per message.

This forces you to reduce your wording, which can be seen as a blessing, simplifying and clarifying your point to its most basic, as long as you don't write in "txt-spk". But it also means there's no room for context. Anything you write will look like a statement, because you miss out emoticons, and can't guarantee anybody has seen the wider context of your previous or next tweets.

As I follow a lot of celebrities I admire, many of whom are comedians, they will often post something that's obviously humour. Obvious to me, at least, but apparently not to some of their followers. This surprises me, as surely they realise that following a popular comedian will mean they'd get jokey posts from time to time.

So here's my advice to Twitter followers: when someone posts something sarcastic about a hot topic, like politics or a natural disaster or current gossip, do not post a negative reaction. It was almost certainly meant as a joke, but even if it's not: if you agree with it, post a response; but if you disagree, say nothing.

The last thing you want to do is a) look like an idiot for assuming a joke post is real opinion; b) say something you'll regret; or c) put that celebrity off Twitter entirely, to the point where they abandon it, so we all miss out.

I have been one of those people who react angrily to something before thinking. I've done some foolish ranting over things I don't understand and end up looking like an idiot. I even posted something just a few weeks ago about ADR that seemed to rile up a few people in that part of the industry, though I think they misinterpreted my point.

It's easy to make people angry, and it's easy to misinterpret. Think twice. Don't ever post in anger. It would save everyone a lot of grief if you take a few steps back, some deep breaths, and either abandon your plan, or write more thoughtfully.

Is There A Draft In Here?

This won't be a long post. I don't want to talk too much about the new screenplay in case I jinx myself into not ever finishing it, just like so many attempts that have gone before.

But I have completed the storyline, to at least a level that I feel can now be attacked and shaped into a first draft script, so have begun the task of writing it.

Its current working title, after floating many different options, is "ShadowGlass".

Assembling the story elements was an interesting development. I had a few sequences in mind when I first came up with the story, and wanted to keep those intact as much as possible. There's often a risk of losing those initial elements after you throw in all the important sub-strata to flesh a story out to completion.

For example, the story may have been inspired by a scene where the protagonist has an argument with a character over something that has a really funny line in it, and you love that idea so much you build your entire plot around that. Then you see holes and gaps that need filling in, so as you flesh those out, other elements start to dominate, until finally after a lot of juggling it all falls into a decent script.

And then you realise there's no place for that initial scene that had the funny line; No matter how hard you try, you can't fit it in anymore.

Well I didn't want that to happen, so tried hard to keep the main elements as close to my initial idea as possible. I did need to find new motivations for some of the characters, but once I found those motivations, they actually added new threads that I could follow, which helped support and strengthen the story, including a whole new scene at the climax, so that was a particularly fortuitous idea.

The first draft is the most important, but also the least precious. The idea is to just write and write and write it all out, no matter how unwieldy or convoluted or boring any given scene may be to read. It will be dry, and perfunctory, and overrun with clichés, and possibly be an absurd load of nonsense.

But then once you have that all on (virtual) paper you have something to edit. The second draft is where characters can develop. By the last scenes in the first draft, you know your characters pretty well, and understand what they are doing, so you can now go back to their earlier scenes and rewrite their dialogue and actions to be more consistent and fulfil their motivations.

The second draft is also where you can see where some scenes are unnecessary, or can be combined into one, or are being too heavy handed with their message, so need to be rearranged or cut or otherwise tweaked to flow. Structure and pace is as important as character.

Third drafts are where you play with the dialogue to make it sparkle, to tighten it so the pacing is right for each sequence, and make it readable. That can often be the draft that you would send around to get reactions or even sell, depending on your skills.

You'd likely get feedback to adjust some things, and they may be small, but they may be big, in which case a fourth or fifth draft may be on the cards. By then you know the story and characters so well, it's usually a simple job to make those adjustments without it negatively affecting what's already firmly in place.

Anyway... I'm not there yet, I'm on page 10 of what will be a 100 page script. Ask me how I'm going after a couple of weeks have passed.

Sounds Different

I posted a query on a messageboard about something, but after some discussion where they answered a question I wasn't asking, I have come to realise there may not actually be an answer.

I thought I would talk about it here, so I can clarify some things in my own head, and cover a little bit of technological development history at the same time.

The saying goes that if you build a better mousetrap, the world will beat a path to your door. The key word in that phrase is "better". Not to invent something out of whole cloth, but to improve what is already out there so it does it more efficiently, perhaps more humanely, and probably more cheaply, but gets better results.

When George Lucas looked at the way visual effects and film editing were done (which was optically, physically, in a linear, laborious way), he knew that it was time for improvement. Somehow he recognised that the technology was available, or coming very soon, to make considerable improvements to workflow, which would increase productivity, reduce frustration with limitations, and ultimately lead to a new way.

He, or rather technicians within the company he headed, invented EditDroid, a Non-Linear Digital Editing system that allowed editors to move clips and frames around the timeline in whichever combination they wanted, quickly, immediately, and without chopping up the physical film (with every cut of a strip of film, you lose at least two frames, one from each end of the splice). This system eventually evolved into what became Avid, the industry standard for editing. Few film editors still cut physical film anymore, and it's a rare one who doesn't use Avid as their NLE editor of choice. There are also low budget off-the-shelf amateur NLE applications, that borrow some of what Avid pioneered, though they have approached it from the digital video camera side, so have distinct variations in interface and methodology. But effectively, it was Lucas's needs to adjust the status quo that set a new standard and forever changed the way we edit film and TV.

James Cameron, in the same industry, is another pioneer who recognises when things are being done inefficiently and require fundamental improvements. He is excellent not only at motivating changes, but pinpointing the exact areas where it's failing, and even has insightful suggestions on how to fix them.

The reason why 3D worked so well for Avatar was because he knew where it was going wrong, and that he had the technical expertise to adjust it so it worked. And he saw where motion capture was consistently tripping up, and was familiar enough with visual effects and camera technology to provide solutions that would address a lot of its main problem areas. I'm sure he has many more planned improvements for his future films, especially as all of them undoubtedly will be 3D and use motion capture. He used the same uncanny skills in bringing forth the liquid metal T-1000 into Terminator 2, and the pioneering of motion capture characters for wide shots of the Titanic.

This kind of innovation has been rare, but effective. To fundamentally change how everyone does things is a huge undertaking, but it has to be done, or we will remain stagnant, and trapped in an ever-increasingly limited pocket as other technologies pass us by.

So if digital editing and digital visual effects can have such a transformation of technology, the next step has to be with digital audio.

I think there are flaws in the current standard of digital audio editing and manipulation that are being overlooked, overshadowed if you like by the visual, and it is time for them to be addressed.

Here's my problem. When filming takes place on location, the sound is always at risk of being interrupted by real world interference, such as traffic, wind and weather, creaky floorboards, aeroplanes, and a hundred thousand other things. I once was trying to film something so went hunting for a quiet spot out of the way where nobody was going to interfere, and as soon as I clicked "Record" a big truck pulled up, playing its radio really loud, tuned to Salsa music. It was absurd.

So the answer to that, often unavoidable, problem is to record the audio again later, and the most popular way is in a soundproof recording studio. This is called Looping, or ADR, which stands for Automatic Dialogue Replacement (or some think it's Additional Dialogue Recording; they're wrong, but whatever).

The problem with ADR is that in a real location, there's an open air quality that is distinct and unique. The sound bounces off nothing but the ground, or a wall that is a particular distance away, adjacent to another wall that is made of a specific wood of a particular thickness, and there's one (or five or two hundred) people nearby all wearing clothing giving a unique dampening quality, etc. It never ends what makes not only the location, but the way the sound reverberates and is recorded, unique. Even the brand of boom microphone can make a difference. So when they go back into the studio and record the ADR, it does not sound the same as the live location. It instead sounds like a carefully dampened soundproof booth.

Actors are getting increasingly adept at re-creating the exact phrasing and timing for matching their dialogue, so I cannot lay the blame on them. But the dialogue audio editing needs a serious shake-up, because there's no excuse for the shoddy mismatching of audio quality between location and ADR anymore.

We have recording equipment of astonishing quality, and unbelievable digital manipulation tools with unparalleled fine tuning controls. Surely they can analyse waveforms and re-create the effects. After hundreds of tests, they should be able to put together a thousand macros and new filters to make the ADR audio sound the same as the surrounding audio.

What is holding them back? Why are they stuck with such useless software that cannot achieve what, in my mind, is simply manoeuvring waveform peaks and troughs to be anything we want?

If we can have pixel control of the visual image, then surely we can have similar fine control of audio waveforms.

The technology is still stuck in an analogue mode of thinking, and it needs a kick up the arse to break free, a whole new approach, rebuilt from the ground up, to finally see the infinite possibility it has at its disposal.

No more limitations!

I've Started, So I'll Finish

I am very good at starting things and then never finishing them. I know I am not alone in this skill, but it is frustrating how many good ideas I begin and then abandon, even though they would probably be really brilliant if they'd been completed, maybe even fortune-inducingly good.

Since completing my first screenplay, I've been aching to write another. Each time I think I have a good idea, and it will thrill me to start on it, I get lost about halfway through and interest starts to wane. This is a bad thing on many levels, not least of which is if I ever want to dabble in it as a career, not motivating myself enough to finish it is not encouraging for prospective Agents or Producers. But then, if I had time and money as part of my motivation, provided by said Producers, I'd be sure to make it a priority and do a better job of it.

But that's a poor excuse for my appalling level of non-completion. My motivation should lie in the strength of the story, and the entertainment I get from creating the characters and sending them on their adventure. Being discouraged at a plot hole is no way to operate. I really have to kick myself into gear if I want to be a writer, even on an amateur level.

When I grew up in the 80s, a series of movies for young teenagers came out with a similar structure and setting. Not the Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink series, though they were certainly significant for many. I am instead referring to the Fantasy/Science Fiction movies where young kids in a small town go on a fantastic adventure, with no interference from adults except as potential enemies. Goonies, Gremlins, E.T., Explorers, Back to the Future, Time Bandits, etc.

But films like that just aren't made any more, and it's a shame. The fantasy films of today are all based on book series. I can understand how Harry Potter might influence a few incidental releases, but every single one, bar the occasional unique animated film? What's going on with that?

I want to write a film like I remember from the 80s. With kids having adventures, involving a small fantasy element, but with only a localised threat to contend with. None of this "Saving the World" nonsense. Just saving their own lives or their neighbourhood is enough of a challenge for most kids, so just leave it at that.

So while I was watching a DVD of one of the recent kids movies, inevitably based on a book series, I wondered if I could come up with even just an original concept that would fit my wishes. Could I come up with a story with a solid beginning, middle, and end, with all the potential for comedy, thrills, and threats, plus a few fantasy elements, something original, that has not been done in a film before?

And rather surprisingly, I thought of one. As I considered each individual element I wanted to include, it all began to fall into place remarkably quickly. I was so excited, I started to write it all down.

So far I have about 60% of the main plot, but the other 40% has to be sorted out before I can begin the script writing itself. Crucial elements aren't yet determined. But as I piece together what I do have, I can see plenty of opportunities for fun sequences, both action and comedic, which hopefully will only strengthen the plot, and lead to ideas to fill in the crucial blanks.

I am so excited by this story, and its originality, that I feel as giddy as I did when I first started putting together my first screenplay, Pegasus Rampant, though I had the bonus of being in recovery mode from my wisdom teeth surgery, giving me time to seriously concentrate on one thing. Nevertheless, it feels very much like I'm in a similar place for this project, so I hope I can maintain that enthusiasm and follow through to a finished screenplay, even if only a first draft. I really want to complete this one, because if it works it will serve as an excellent second example of what I'm capable of.

An interesting thing happened when I was looking through the Thesaurus for some keywords to create a title from. I stumbled on another word, not appropriate for this film, but perfect for another story idea, a short film in fact. So I took the opportunity to scribble down some notes on that idea too. I may revisit that one when discussing our next big project, whatever and whenever that may be.

I Lament The Loss Of Beige

I am a night owl. That is, I prefer to work in the afternoon and evenings and into the night. I do not like getting up early, even though that is a very pleasant part of a day.

This means I tend to work when it's dark outside, and it goes further, in that I prefer to work with the lights out. I will probably have the TV on, which is four or so metres away from me, and my desk will be illuminated by the LCD monitor, but otherwise it will be completely dark, just the way I like it. I don't even have a lamp.

In the days of CRT monitors, the illumination afforded by the screen was enough to let me see everything on my desk before me. It helped that all the items I use are in a lighter tone, beige or grey. But two things have changed in computing that has caused me some bother.

LCD screens no longer have illumination power. They light themselves up, but as for my desk, I can barely see my own fingers.

And computer peripherals have foregone beige entirely, and are all almost exclusively black.

So with no light, and a dark keyboard, I cannot see what I am typing (Yes, I am a two finger typist who still needs to look at his keyboard to type. I am far from alone in this, so get over it).

This has not been a huge bother to me, because I still possess my favourite keyboard, a quiet cheapie I got from Dick Smith that has held me in good stead these past ten or more years. I even remember which store I bought it at. And it is beige, so is a light enough tone to be seen when barely illuminated.

But my other computer, the one I use for my 3D Graphics work, has a black keyboard. Not only is it impossible for me to read the keys in the darkness, but the arrangement of keys is slightly different to my other one, which I am much more familiar with after ten years of constant use, so I often hit the wrong key or have to go hunting at close quarters to find my way. Believe me, hitting "Delete" when you wanted "Page Up" is not a fun mistake to make.

And worse still, my favourite keyboard model is now discontinued. There are other beige or silver keyboards here and there, but with a different arrangement of keys, and there are properly arranged keyboards out there, however they are all black, at least so far as I can find locally.

I remain vigilant, and if I ever stumble upon another keyboard of the right colour and key situation I will pounce on it. But I fear it may be a long time before beige ever comes back into style.

Gosh Darn It!

So about six months ago I messed up with my blog design by accidentally saving over it with a template, completely losing everything I had tweaked it into. Took me four hours to get it back into shape.

Today I decided I would back up the design so I wouldn't make the mistake of doing that again, and had a look around for the link I knew was available to save my template. And there I found a button that said "Save Template".

Did it have an explanation next to it? No.

Did it have a warning after clicking on it? No.

What did it do? IT CHANGED MY TEMPLATE TO THE DEFAULT.

Turns out, the button should actually be labelled "Save OVER My Template".

Fuck shit damn.

So I spent two hours restoring it to something close to what I had before, found the real link that actually backs up my template, and now I have it sorted. Except I'll probably tweak it as I discover things that just don't sit right and need a-fixin'.

House of God

Since beginning modelling in 3D with any earnest, i.e. after I had gotten over the initial stumbling blocks of figuring out how the hell I can make all the myriad of options available to me in Lightwave actually do what I want, there have been a few things that have been near the top of my "want to try making" list.

I have been lucky enough to have had the opportunity to model very cool, and sometimes intricate, things for various projects, such as a steam locomotive, an old truck, a jet fighter plane, and an Imperial Shuttle. I have learned new modelling techniques, how to texture and light things to be as realistic as possible, and what most of the buttons in the menus actually do.

But there are a few things that I have yet to try my hand at, those that I plan to make, one day, when I have some time to spare. These include a steampunk airship, an accurate mediaeval castle, and a fully articulated robot.

But top of the list has always been to do a cathedral.

Cathedrals are arguably the most spectacularly beautiful examples of architecture in mankind's history, and personally are about the only thing I allow the Catholic Church to have gotten right. With huge towers, embellished with spires, and long vaulted halls supported by tall flying buttresses, and a multicoloured rosette window, they are works of art like no other.

There are thousands of cathedrals worldwide, of various designs, but they all have a standard layout they conform to. After all, if they didn't adhere to certain architectural consistencies they'd just be churches or chapels. But these are cathedrals, the grandest and most impressive of the faith-related buildings, and they have a job to do. Which mostly seems to be as tourist attractions.

One cathedral I was particularly impressed by is St Mary's in Sydney. I had a look around inside and out, and was in awe of its scale. Previously all the cathedrals I had visited had been comparatively small, though still with all the prerequisite features. The cathedral I have decided to base my CG model loosely on was randomly chosen from pics online, but turns out to be one based in Washington DC, called the National Cathedral. However, I am taking some liberties, and fudging the design when it's faster and easier to cut corners.

The interesting thing about assembling the model is how intricate and detailed it looks, but really it's very repetitious, with fancy delicate frilly bits and bold statement parts, all being repeated multiple times, sometimes hundreds of times, throughout the design. That means I need only model one spire, and then can copy and paste it 24 times to flesh out the tower details.

The bad things about this approach include that the repetition can sometimes look obvious; and that the high level of detail slows down the computer display, making adding each new level of detail slower and longer.

But in the end it will be worth it.

Alessandra, Magda, Caprica

Another desktop wallpaper, this time of two of the stars of the new show Caprica, which is the prequel series for Battlestar Galactica, covering the gestation of the Cylons.

On the left there is Alessandra Torresani, who plays Zoe Graystone, who dies in the first episode, but her video game avatar lives on inside the body of a robot; and on the right is Magda Apanowicz, who plays Lacy Rand, Zoe's best friend who was unwittingly caught up in the terrorist act that Zoe was killed during.

The original pic is a promo image for the show, but was in portrait orientation. I cut them out of the background, which was a wall of the set from the show, and layered in my own gradients to blend it into the landscape-oriented blank space to the right of the image. Then I just added in the title and their names.

The reason I chose this image is because Magda Apanowicz played my favourite character in the show Kyle XY, and after it was cancelled I was immediately interested in what she was going to do next.

It occurred to me as I was putting this pic together that Magda would be ideal to play Wren in Pegasus Rampant. If it were ever to get made (and it won't, this I know) she would be the kind of actress Wren would have to be played by: the tomboy-next-door.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Caprica star rooting for the robots (cbc.ca)
• Has Caprica lived up to the promise? (guardian.co.uk)

Socialising Without Meeting People

I value my solitude. I like the quiet, insular, solitary life I have made for myself. Sometimes I miss a little bit of interaction with others, but I could happily stay indoors and never meet another living soul for days at a time, with no ill effects.

Eventually I know I need to get out there and talk to someone, it's unavoidable, but I try to keep it minimal, enough to keep me happy, and then I can get back into my solitude again.

I don't even like talking on phones. The awkward pauses, the lack of a face to gauge expressions and intent, the crappy reception quality, the inability to do anything else at the same time without it being seriously inconvenient.

Link: 10 Reasons to Avoid Talking on the Phone

That's why I like email as a way to interact instead - it gives me the time to say things clearly, rewrite, rearrange, attach images or links, and generally express myself comfortably. Unfortunately, most of the people I email are really bad at responding to them at all, let alone to every point I need a response about. Maybe three of my regular correspondents give me good emails in return, the rest are horrible at it. Or they can't spell, which also gets on my nerves sometimes.

It seems email is not going to be the primary choice for communication in the future, like I would have expected. For one thing, mobile phones are more prevalent than they ought to be, and still dominate as the method of choice to talk to others. Much to my annoyance.

I do like to use instant messaging. Back in the late 90s, I joined up to ICQ and have been using that ever since. It was really big and popular, at the time, and I "met" a lot of people, some of whom became great friends. However, Instant Messaging has taken a tumble, replaced by SMS texting and Twitter.

I also regularly post on discussion forums, but it's rare to establish a decent community of regulars that way. You'll make friends, perhaps, or at least acquaintances, but generally it's just a big miasma of faceless names, each easily mistaken for another, and also more prone to serious confrontational arguments. This is where flame wars began, and sometimes they can be so serious the forums have to be shut down entirely.

The impending arrival of the live version of Google Wave may make some impact on online communication, as it seems to be a way to concatenate all existing forms of chat into one system with ultimate adaptability and control over how you involve others. But I don't think it's social media as much as corporate. It behaves more like a chat room or virtual meeting, but using existing, recognisable methods like email and instant messaging to interactively communicate with large groups, so it will be perfect for meetings, or discussions, but not so good as a social networking tool.

The two biggest social networking and communication tools currently in action, though, are Twitter and Facebook. I have not joined either, but the world and everyone in it is desperate to get me to be a part of both. And I am wondering if my reluctance to join is justified, and if I should give up on my stubborn refusal, as there may be some small benefits.

I still hesitate.

Every new buzzword widget that gets put out there tries to be the next big thing, and I am always wary. I have seen too many of them burn up and die, usually very soon after ignition, or more likely just after someone like me joins them at long last only to see they missed its peak and it is about to tumble into the abyss of forgotten nothingness.

I am lucky in that has never been me, but other people, though I have witnessed it happen. I can usually predict the inevitable failures with 80% accuracy, so stay away from them. MySpace, for example, I could see would inevitably fall by the wayside. It's no longer the phenomenon it once was, mostly brought on by its horrendously revolting interface and unacceptably bad HTML.

Facebook, on the other hand, was pretty, and gentle on the eyes, and had some actual substance behind its façade. Though I haven't joined it, I at least saw that it had a better future ahead of it. Except, as so often happens, they've started to change some of the fundamentals, and there are rumbles amongst the faithful. If they don't fix some of these issues soon, it could all collapse.

Facebook's singular purpose seems to be to hook up with long lost friends and catch up on what they're all doing with their lives, maybe renew friendships, or make new ones through a chain of "people who know people". I can't see that being very appealing. I moved to Australia to get away from my old life, I don't want to expose myself to them all again. It's almost intrusive. But having said that, there are some friends I truly miss, and wish I could hang out with them again, or at least touch base. I am almost tempted.

Twitter seems to be a way for strangers to talk nonsense, and hopefully occasionally one of them will say something profound with their 140 characters and they'll become a flash-in-the-pan phenomenon for 15 minutes, which might lead to a book deal and an appearance on The View with Barbara Walters and Whoopi Goldberg. I am not a very profound person, especially in 140 characters. My humour is usually absurd or esoteric, my contributions minor and inconsequential. I am a quiet achiever, and don't usually say much in a conversation between more than three people, though I am absorbing everything. I'm not sure if I'd involve myself much.

However. My life is currently in a state of flux. I am running out of money, so I need work - website designs, visual effects, or even writing if I am lucky. Where do I find the people who can help me get those kinds of jobs?

It seems to me I need to network. Socially.

Aha.

Maybe I should join them after all; maybe that's where I'll find my next step in my working and social life that I need to survive.

I think I may have succumbed. But hopefully it's for the right reasons.

Piece By Piece

I made another babe-related wallpaper today, and I thought I'd show how I made it.

To look at it, I hope that you'd think it was a genuine untouched photo. That's certainly my plan most of the time. Whenever I make a matte painting, I try to get it as seamless as I can, so it's sort of become my default approach, though I don't always achieve it (I am notorious for cutting corners and cheating).

So I started with this original photo of actress Missy Peregrym (from the TV show Reaper, and a brief role on Heroes). If you look her up on Google Images, this is the pic you'll find most often.

But there's a minor problem with adapting it directly into a wallpaper - it's in a profile orientation; that is, it's taller than it is wide. I could crop it to fit, which I did try, but it cut off too much of her lower half, which was a great shame; plus, she's so centralised in the framing, it was not as nice a composition.

I took the highest resolution copy of it I could find, kept it full length, and scaled it to the vertical height of my monitor, which is 1050 pixels. Then I expanded the width to 1680px, leaving a huge block of empty space to the right.

There was a second pic I found online, from the same photo shoot, which had a little more of the door behind her, so I knew I could match that up if I distorted it to align the perspective. This filled up about a third of the empty space, but still left a lot more to fill. So I took that same pic, flipped it, and, after more distorting, joined it up like a mirror image. An overlap and a soft edged eraser blended the mismatched edges.

Because simply flipping didn't match exactly, I extended the edges of the panels with the clone stamp tool, maintaining their angle. Then I deleted the light on the wall, eliminating the obvious repetition, and mixed in a dark gradient to keep the corner in shadow. That not only drew the eye to the lighter part of the image, where Missy is standing, but also helped hide the fact that there's no door handle. I bet you didn't notice that.

I removed the word that was painted on the door, and added Missy's name there instead.

But a couple of days later I was looking at it again and I realised a couple of things. One is it had a horrible green tint to the image, presumably as a stylistic choice. I am red-green colour blind so it wasn't as obvious to me as it might have been to others. I have adjusted the tint back to a warmer red.

Then the other thing I did was changed the opposing wall. As it stood, it looked like a door at the end of a narrow corridor, but I think it was more likely to have been a corner of a larger room, so I took the rail and skewed it to be straight, and re-textured the wall to remove the corner-ish nature to it, so now it looked like the room was bigger.

And that's how I did it.

It was a relatively easy pic to put together, too. Some that I have done in the past have been ten times more complex than that. Always fun, though.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Peregrym: 'Heroes end would be a bummer' (digitalspy.co.uk)

Unjust Criticism

Avatar has ticked over to be the biggest box-office hit in the history of film, beating James Cameron's previous movie, Titanic, and in a faster timeframe. Now, despite its achievement being trumpeted far and wide, box office take is an unfair measurement, because many other factors helped it to reach this milestone.

Firstly, this number is based on money earned, and not ticket sales; it doesn't accurately compare how many people have actually watched the films. Inflation of ticket prices, for one thing, make a difference. Plus, the ticket prices for 3D showings are higher than 2D, so compared to Titanic, for example, the 3D tickets in 2010 cost nearly twice as much as regular 2D tickets did in 1997.

The novelty of 3D is also a drawcard. Many people, both established fans and newcomers, are drawn to Avatar's cunning use of 3D to enhance the experience, rather than dazzle like a flashy gimmick, and those who have not gone to a 3D film have been enticed into letting Avatar be their introduction to it. More 3D showings coupled with it requiring more expensive tickets, is a potent combination.

On top of that is the fact that Avatar was released worldwide at the same time, a rarity now but virtually unheard of in pre-1995, so it has been less impacted by piracy, and is lucky enough to capitalise on the immediacy of online buzz and promotion. So, though it certainly does have a role to play in the machinations of movie production, you and I can't judge its success just on box office income.

Avatar has its fair share of critics, though. They tend to pick on its simplistic storyline, borrowed as it is from many films of the past, such as Dances With Wolves, The Last Samurai, Ferngully, and even The Smurfs.

They claim it has borrowed liberally from standard tropes, reducing it to a simplistic retelling of a familiar, and flawed, tale. "The Noble Savage" trope is the one I see mentioned most often, which is the assumption that a primitive culture, with its connection and reverence to nature, is inherently good and honourable, as opposed to the cruel and selfish nature of "civilised" man.

The problem with that is the movie clearly shows that the Na'vi have a literal link to Eywa (Gaia), through a biological connector that all the native creatures possess, which they use to join their body and mind to each other. Plus the planet has a literal central nervous system, actually physically located in itself. They do have a connection with Nature, and there it makes sense for them to be more respectful towards it.

Other tropes include the weapon- and destruction-mad military leader, the corrupt corporate executive, the turncoat within the ranks, and, most obvious of all, the interloper who falls in love with the Chief's daughter. But every story has its tropes. They say there are only a few storylines anyway, and every story ever told takes elements from those and twists them into something new.

James Cameron had a few agendas he was trying to fulfil. First and foremost, he had a feast of visuals he wanted to showcase. The easiest way to do that is to have a simple, and not a complex, storyline to let us explore the world as we watch. Second, he had new technology he wanted to play with, and utilise as fully as he could. He managed to do that by having 75% of the story take place in Pandora's jungles, where all the characters are virtual CGI creations. And, by definition, the Na'vi lead simple lives, and therefore have simple characterisations.

And he was also trying to entertain. There's a fine line between complex and complicated. In the past decade, there have been only three movie series that have seriously contended the Titanic throne of success. They are The Lord of the Rings, Pirates of the Caribbean, and Harry Potter.

Lord of the Rings had the toughest job, in having to take a long and multi-layered storyline, revered amongst nerds everywhere, and reduce it down to nine hours of solid entertainment. This required heavy excision, rearrangement, and simplification.

Harry Potter was based on simple storylines, but very very long books, so had to take out huge swathes of subplot to keep them down to watchable lengths.

Both of those plot-altering decisions were lambasted by purists and nerds who have too much time on their hands. And yet, despite this: box-office slam-dunk blockbusters, every man jack of them.

But Pirates of the Caribbean had almost an open canvas, and used that as an opportunity to prove that complexity can have a place in a fun fantasy adventure, if you want. This was not the best thing it could have done, as the last of the trilogy was generally considered the lesser, simply because its complex characters and storyline confused and irritated too many (Though I do not count myself among them, as I absolutely loved it, especially after watching it repeatedly on DVD where the plot starts to straighten itself out more).

What does that, and Avatar's success, prove? That simplicity can be great, and is often better than unnecessary complexity. Complicated multi-layered plots and characters are perfectly suited for a family drama or political thriller, but all a fantasy adventure needs are simple, straightforward, excuses for fun and excitement. Anything more is just inviting criticism and confusion, and, worse, impending box-office failure.

Having said that, I have no doubts that James Cameron's plans for the sequel, which will inevitably arrive sooner than you'd think, is to amp up the ante in both visuals and storyline. He won't fall back on a rehash of what he's already told, and will need to develop a few extra levels of complexity to keep everyone's attention. And, just as I was with the expectation of Avatar's runaway success, I am confident that he will deliver it again.

As Far As The Eye Can See

There is a disproportionate number of Australian blokes called Lachlan.

I mean, what's up with that?

I'm Watching Big Brother

My older brother is well known amongst his peers. He was the head of an organisation significant amongst the Maori population, known as Te Runanga o Ngai Tahu, and was the visible face and spokesperson whenever there was a need for comment on Maori issues. In that role, he had opportunities to meet dignitaries and visiting celebrities, and interacted directly with political figures. It was quite impressive to have a family member so prominent in the news, especially for such good reasons.

He doesn't have that job anymore, but after leaving for a brief semi-retirement, has returned to that same organisation in a less prominent position. He now represents the Maori people just for the localised region of Otago, and he figured he needed to communicate to the people he represents, so wanted a website, where he can update folks on Tribal matters, as well as air a few of his personal thoughts.

As I am a website designer (and always looking for new work) he asked me to build the site for him. I put together a few design samples, which he liked, and I found a good CMS software to host it in. ExpressionEngine is easy to figure out (after a bit of head-meets-keyboard bashing to distinguish the various levels of hierarchy involved) and gives ultimate power to the designer, not rigidly adhering to template structure for the HTML.

After working for a couple of weeks within the original design idea I had put forward, I realised it just wasn't working. It didn't look as good as most modern websites, and there wasn't enough room set aside for expansion, so I sat back and rethought it. Over a couple of days I figured out a complete redesign, which gave the text more space to breathe. And I've also dripfed new features in, every couple of days.

In the end, I am very pleased with how it came together. My brother seems to like it, too, and he's shown it around to some people and they've given positive feedback.

I think there's a likelihood I will be getting some more work out of this, fingers crossed. And you can't hope for better than that.

Wallpaper-palooza

I'm an arty sort. Kind of. Well, people think I am. I just bugger about clumsily until something starts to come together. It's not very efficient or a display of a particular amount of talent, really.

So what I like to do is dress my computer monitor with a nice desktop wallpaper background, and change them regularly every week or so. I troll around online for either ready-made wallpapers from movies or comic books or video games or just nice photography, or just cool images that I can adapt into wallpaper-sized images.

My desktop is fairly high-res, at 1680x1050 pixels. It's a common ratio, so most newer wallpapers are available at that scale, but the older ones are still at maximum 1280x960, or more likely 1024x768. These can often be wonderful images, but you can't scale them up without distorting them, Standard Def ratio doesn't work for a Widescreen monitor.

The other problem with a lot of amateur made wallpapers is the very low quality work that's gone into them; either the original image is poorly matched to its background, or there is horrible "artefacting" (speckling caused by high compression), or it's just an ugly mess of styles and bad composition.

As I am very grateful for the work others have put into some of my favourite wallpapers, I thought it was past time for me to put up my own work, all adaptations of images, with a lot of effort gone in to make them look sharp and nicely composed.

This bunch is an eclectic collection, with no specific theme. Except maybe attractive women, which, in my experience, is quite a popular subject amongst a certain crowd.

And as I say, these are all at 1680x1050.


First up is a pic of actress Sandra Bullock. I didn't do too much to this pic - I straightened it, rescaled it to fit, then added a bit of white space to follow the rule of thirds. It's also a good idea to put the main image slightly to one side to make way for the crazy way people stack their icons.



Next up is Selma Blair, as her character Liz Sherman in the Hellboy films. This is a promotional photo, used in posters and the like, but the only one I could find even closely resembling a wallpaper sized pic was badly cropped and with messy artefacting. So I found a larger scale of the original pic, and made my own.



Anne Hathaway, who is something of a star du jour recently, is next up. This image was already used on somebody else's wallpaer in full scale, but it was badly blended into their white background, and I also didn't like the composition they chose. So I moved her over to the right, and then tidied up the ragged edge of where the photo met the background. Then I added in her name, just to fill in the blank space.



The most recent one I made is of Josie Davis. Who's that, then? She was an actress who started out as a kid in the show Charles in Charge back in the 80s, and has worked steadily into adult life. And though she played the nerdy character in that sitcom, she sure didn't maintain that image into adulthood. I was looking through her images after she appeared on my favourite TV show, Chuck.

The original picture was taken in a room with a dirty wall and floor, so I eliminated most of that and gave her a new white background. I added her name, because otherwise you wouldn't have a clue who she was. I really like the colours in this pic, especially her blue top, so I maintained that colour with the gradient and text.



Beginning to move away from the hot chicks motif, but following on tangentially from the previous pic, is a promo pic of Yvonne Strahovski and Zachary Levi from Chuck that I adapted into a wallpaper. I decided to add the red strip behind the characters, which I think works well. I may have overdone the saturation, though; they look like they've just come out of a tanning salon.



One of my favourite video games series is Myst. It started out so uniquely and cleverly, then as the series went on just got better, then it tailed off disappointingly. I couldn't play the last game at all, my computer wasn't powerful enough to handle even the lowest settings.

In Myst IV, which was made by a different team to the other games, the opening of the story occurs in Atrus's home, which is a fantastic steampunk-like series of buildings, clinging to rocks surrounding a pool and waterfall. This image, which I found available online in a huuuuge resolution, has just been scaled and cropped to fit the desktop.



Last up is an adaptation of an Alex Ross painting of the Joker and Harley Quinn, from Batman. I didn't do much, apart from sweetening of the image and adding enough black background to fit the screen. That's the beauty of working with astonishing artwork like that of Alex Ross. I experience similar perfection with Adam Hughes's work.

I was sure I had more than this to upload, but I think I must have lost some of them over the years in various crashes. But I'll put up some more in a few months time, once I have gathered them together.

Anatomy 101

Whenever I model something in 3D that I've never done before, it's an education.

When I first modelled a building in any level of detail, I had to look at the structure of it as though it was real, and piece together all the elements in much the same way you would to build it in the real world. But without the heavy lifting.

So I was acutely aware of how walls meet the roof, and what makes up the details of window frames, or how the door latch works. And now whenever I look at a house, I have a new appreciation of how buildings look and what went into its design and construction.

The same for modelling a car. I learned a lot about how the steering works on front wheels, and how the suspension attaches to the chassis. Even the curve of the windshield is a complicated feature that you don't really appreciate until you see how neatly it has to fit into a very specifically curved slot, unique to each and every make of car.

I have found the same newly discovered fascination with big complicated things like aircraft, right down to small domestic items like computer keyboards, and organic stuff, like trees and birds, which have a whole other level of sophistication.

For the past few days, for a Pick Up And Go production, I have begun modelling a human skeleton, which will eventually be animated as a sword-wielding skeletal warrior and composited into the footage we shot a few weeks ago.

The human skeleton is something we're all very familiar with, but few of us will have had an opportunity to look at one closely. There are 206 bones in the human body, and I have to model each one of them (though some are fused together, and some, like ribs and fingers, are very repetitious) and then piece them into place, at the right scale and proportion to not only look exactly right, but also to be able to move in a way that looks cinematically appealing.

And it's amazing to me how cleverly the bones interact with each other, how the range of movement is so wide, but with limits that suit our needs so well. Admittedly, we push them right to the edge sometimes, and occasionally wish we had more flexibility, or the ability to adjust them, or had a couple of extra limbs (even wings), but what we do have is a miracle of evolutionary engineering, and it was fascinating to see that, as I am putting the skeleton together piece by piece.

So far I've been quite happy with how it's looking. I have been building most of the parts individually, from memory, then comparing it with an image of the real thing including the joint assembly, so I can adjust my model to match closer. However, I haven't yet compared it as a whole to an image of a complete skeleton; I expect I may have to slide the knees or elbows around a bit to get them right.

Though, of course, no two skeletons are the same. It's part of what makes we humans distinct from each other, and the differences go as deep as the bones themselves. Therefore, as long as I have all the bits approximately correct, that will likely be close enough to be acceptably believable.

Cinematic Catch Up

I have not had a lot of money to spend on frivolities lately, so have not splurged on DVDs on days of release for a long time, instead waiting for them to halve their prices later in the year. But last week, I decided I wanted to finally catch up on movies I had missed, movies that had been praised at their cinema release, so I bought three movies to watch: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, G.I.Joe, and District 9.

Goodness me, what an entertaining week I've had watching them.

G.I Joe was first. I missed out on most of the toys that were turned into cartoons, during the 80s. Partly because I was just a little too old for the toys themselves, and partly because the cartoons were such poorly animated, badly acted, horrendously written dreck, I just stayed away for my own sanity's sake.

G.I. Joe is a very old toy franchise, however, and inspired the UK equivalent of Action Man, which was more popular when I was a kid, even though none of my friends or I had an Action Man toy either. But I was aware of the storyline, generally, that was used as the basis for the TV series. It amounts to nothing much more than good guy US military vs bad guy Foreign military, with fancy weapons and vehicles that did lots of flashy foldy shooty stuff. Basically, standard violence-based boy's toys.

Movies based on toys and games and video games are, as a rule, awful. The main problem seems to be the interactive and single-player nature of a game is impossible to translate into a story that really encapsulates the experience each person has with it. It's hard enough to adapt a book and fulfil the imagination of the author, let alone the imagery concocted by the reader, but to re-create the individual experience of a kid who plays with his toys in a particular way peculiar to their own approach, is not universal enough to work properly. Couple that with the inherent ridiculous and fantastical nature of something like G.I. Joe, and any attempt to take it seriously is a waste of everyone's time.

So how do you deal with those issues and still make an entertaining and successful movie?

Imagine you're an eight year old boy, and you have four or five of the G.I. Joe (and the enemy C.O.B.R.A's) action figures and vehicles. How do you play with them? Do you slowly drive the car along, and watch as you characters exit the vehicle and wander along to a house where they sit on the couch and watch TV? Do they have tea parties with your sister's teddy and dolls? Do they sit on a shelf gathering dust as a potential collector's item?

No, they do not.

"And then Joe runs to the helicopter, and they fly over a cliff and go RRRRRRRGGGGHHHH, and then the tank comes up over the dunes and it goes BBBKKKKHHH POW POW POW AKAKAKAKAKAK!!! And then the helicopter goes WEEEEEEEEEE BAAAABOOOOMMMM!!! And then COBRA arrive in their submarine, and attack all the divers in the boat POW SPLASH! CRASH! AAAAAARRRGGHH You got me, Commander!!! AAAARRRKKKKHHH. But they don't know that Joe's got an army of jet fighters, WWWHHHOOOOOOSSSSSHHHH!!!!! POW!!! BAAABOOOOMMMM!!!!"

And that, in a nutshell, is how they made the G.I. Joe movie.

And because it re-created the way kids played with the toys in precisely the right way, the movie works. Against all odds, and despite its absurdities throughout, it knew what it was, what it was trying to be, and it achieved success. If you want to see a completely over the top mind blowing blast of a movie, G.I. Joe is worth a look.

The next movie I saw was District 9.

I had seen the trailer, and when I had ever seen the reviews the implication was always "Don't read this review, because what you think the movie is about, it's so much more, and not at all what you are expecting." So I kept away from as much promotion for it as possible, until now when I finally saw it on DVD.

Also, I love visual effects, and the things I had seen for District 9, the casual approach, where whole sequences had a dismissive feeling of the effects being not "special" at all, just accepted as real, it so intrigued and impressed me I was completely drawn to it, even if the movie turned out to be bad.

Luckily the consensus has been that it's a wonderful film, of great impact and handled with astonishing, seemingly effortless, dexterity.

And I agree.

It starts out as a documentary, following a dorky Government official in South Africa, where Aliens had arrived in their spaceship, twenty years earlier, and now he has to convince them to relocate to a new location outside of the city. Cleaner, but smaller, but more importantly...

Click for spoilers

...far away from a buried spacecraft, which only needs fuel to allow the Aliens the opportunity to go back to the Mother Ship and head home again.

But when the Official accidentally sprays himself with the fuel so carefully collected and distilled, he begins to go through a metamorphosis that completely turns the story around into something new. And not even that is what you might expect.

It truly is an amazing film, and may even be up for an Academy Award, if reviews are anything to go by. I urge anyone who hasn't seen it to not read my spoilers, and just go and get the DVD and watch it as soon as you can, because you will be at turns revolted, amazed, thrilled, energised, and inspired, by what unfolds.

And the visual effects are really cool, too.

The last one I watched this week was Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

I started reading the Harry Potter books way back before they were a phenomenon. Well, maybe right on the cusp of its beginning. And though I've never felt they were great literature, or particularly worthy of the praise and crazed mania that they ended up in amongst, they are nevertheless entertaining reads, with a great grasp of character, and with very well woven plot threads that leads to an ending that fits all that had come before.

Half-Blood Prince, as a book, comes at a difficult point in the over arcing plot. The main characters are fleshed out, the main plot threads are in play, and the end game is yet to begin. But the main bad guy and his motivations are left as something of a mystery up to this point, and so Jo Rowling set aside this book to finally tell Voldemort's tale, and provide the final clues to his reign, his return, and his motivations to kill Harry.

But there has to be more to the story than that, and both Rowling, and director David Yates, managed to find a good backbone to carry the characters along. Yates has exploited it in a better way for the film than was portrayed in the book, even though all the beats matched. As he was the director for the previous film, he had set up a few threads that carried through, and that continuity, coupled with the unexpectedly subtle performances, brought it a sincerity that resonated throughout the length of the film.

Basically the kids have grown up. They're teenagers with raging hormones, and are making stupid decisions based on instincts obscured by unimportant things they think are crucial.

The actors have likewise grown up, their acting has improved in every way, but they still have an amateur performance element, which sort of gets on my nerves. But that's being picky, because it's drowned out by spectacle, wonderful relationship moments, and a stylish flourish that bodes well for the next movie.

Which, incidentally, covers one book, but will be split into two films, because it's so long and can't be easily trimmed back.

So I definitely recommend all three of these films for a great evening's entertainment. They are fun, provocative, and spectacular. What more can you hope for?

Doctor Who: The End Of Time is The End Of An Era

A two part episode to end the year, also ended the reign of the Tenth Doctor, as David Tennant bows out of the iconic role he has so assuredly made his own.

It was, of course, an epic load of silly pseudo-science-fiction, an over-abundance of drama and melodrama, and a healthy dose of unnecessarily tortuous story call-backs. Couple that with celebrity cameos, enigmatic character cameos, and more cliffhangers you can shake a plunger at, and you have a typical Russell T Davies television feast.

It was as entertaining as you can hope for. Yes, it went over the top rather too many times, but that's no different than the original series, which any fan will tell you was an embarrassment as often as it was a triumph. Russell persists in thinking of Doctor Who as a show intended for kids, which though is true, doesn't mean you should be too patronising (like the Sarah Jane Adventures) or you should ignore the adult fans and the Whovians who obsess over it.

Which is why I love to listen to the episode commentaries that Russell participates in, where you get an insight into his intent, and why he makes some of his seemingly sillier story decisions. Really, he knows what his audience wants, and who they are. He is masterfully in control, of so many difficult aspects of writing and Producing scripts, and all he has to reign in is the absurdly over-the-top edge-of-your-seat disastrous cliffhangers. End of the world? End of Reality? End of Time? Who would want to wreak such havoc, realistically? What is the point of ending everything so you have nothing left to rule over?

Anyways, it was an excellent production, wonderfully acted, quite moving, and the appearance right at the end of the Eleventh Doctor was written by the new showrunner and head writer, Steven Moffat, and even those scant few lines of dialogue was marvellously entertaining. It bodes well for its future.

Which is only weeks away, as it is scheduled to return sometime around March or April.

I can't wait.

End Of The Decade

So. That was 2009. And, indeed, that was the first 10% of the 21st century.

It wasn't quite the successful year I had hoped it would be for me. But neither was it utter failure and despair. However, I am not in a very comfortable state at this point, and I need to ramp up the change and get my life sorted out.

2009 started out pretty well, with a lot of possibility. I had been organising my first short film, Horizon, and was figuring out how I was going to pay for the cockpit prop, and get permission for all the locations I wanted. But for every step forward, something caused me to go two steps back. I lost a lot of confidence in how I was dealing with it, and after a tough decision, gave up on the whole shebang.

However, something else took its place. After a great job at editing Checkpoint, we realised something was missing, and now the booked camera gave us an opportunity. We decided to add in a whole bunch of new shots to the opening sequence, to show some of the detail that we had originally planned on only implying. This meant calling in our main actor, and a few mates to be wranglers and extras, and some equipment and costume hire. We bought a greenscreen, set it up outdoors in the sun, and set to filming around forty shots that would be almost entirely reliant on CG effects and digital compositing to work. I knew it was a lot of work to take on, requiring the creation of all new CG models, and some learning of new techniques, but that was the point, and where the fun would lie. It took the rest of the year, with a lot of interruption and distraction, but I recently completed the last of the shots I was assigned, which I will hand in soon.

Then, not being able to stop ourselves, we came up with a new idea to make films with very little preparation and hassle, to avoid the stress and nightmare of organising things, but would give us an opportunity to learn new visual effects techniques and skills. For example, we might run out to a forest, and film a couple of friends having a sword fight, and we'd edit it together to make it as exciting as we could. Or we'd film an empty road and then I'd model and animate a science fiction hoverbike race. We called it Pick Up & Go and so far we've muddled along with it quite well.

I also moved house, rather unexpectedly. It came at a very inconvenient time, but it led me to a place I like a lot, where I have peace and quiet and a real feeling of independence I've not experienced before. It is a long way from a lot of things I wish it was closer to, but at the same time it's closer to a lot of things I used to be far away from. So that evens out.

I completed my first script in late 2008, and by the beginning of the year I tried to locate people who could give me general and broad feedback on it. I didn't manage to find too many who seemed willing to read it, and the few who did gave only a tiny and incomplete amount of feedback, if they even remembered to reply. That was disappointing. I lost a little bit of enthusiasm and encouragement because of that, but I have attempted to write more scripts all year. None of them have really come together as well as the first one, with huge gaps staring at me in the face, that I am struggling to fill in.

I have no illusions that my first screenplay is a thrill ride that would be a box office smash hit and win awards, if it were ever to be made. I'm really just looking to learn how to improve. There are professionals that will read screenplays and give advice of varying levels of detail, but you have to pay them a sum of money, which I don't have to spare, so that route is currently closed to me. I can, however, get an Agent to represent me. Or so I thought. In fact, the real arrangement is the Agent has to find me, which means I need to already know people who know people in the right side of the Industry, and I can't see how I can manage that magic trick from the arse end of the world where I live. I am quite disillusioned.

I was hoping that after I put together my showreel, I would be in a good position to find work in the visual effects industry. After sending it out, though, I have gotten no response at all (I did get one single acknowledgement of receipt). I can't tell if that's because I wasn't good enough, they weren't looking for anyone at the moment, or some other reason. It is very frustrating to be in the dark, when I was expecting at least a ripple of something to point me in the right direction.

I think I'm being too passive. I think that's what has to change for me. I have to be more proactive in 2010.

Hmm. Is it "twenty-ten" or "two thousand and ten"?

Darn. I have no idea.

The Most Spectacular Movie I Have Ever Seen

There is a new bar for visual effects, and it is Avatar.

I don't see movies in the cinema very often anymore - it's expensive, a hassle to get there, and the viewing experience is usually a lot less pleasant than watching a DVD at home. To counter the drain of theatregoers to their own home cinemas, they have reintroduced a superior version of 3D to films, which are widely accepted and are, against my expectation, going gangbusters at the box office.

I personally don't see that 3D adds anything to the experience, and I have only seen two 3D movies. One was Pixar's UP, and the other was Avatar. I decided that they were both worth the expense and inconvenience because of their expected entertainment value for money. I was not disappointed, both times.

There's no doubt the 3D works well, and is a pleasing added dimension, to use an obvious pun, to the movies, even if it is wholly unnecessary to get the same amount of pleasure from the film. It's much improved over earlier versions, and as long as the film doesn't have in-your-face nonsense all the way through it, it just adds depth and a degree of realism that 2D doesn't already offer.

But Avatar is more than just a 3D experience. Widely dismissed by many nerdy geeky types who have seen the trailer and disregarded it as merely a retread of Dances With Wolves or Ferngully: The Last Rainforest, but with blue fake-looking CGI aliens, they have unfairly cast judgement on something that has much more to offer than just that.

For one thing, the Ferngully plot is only a backdrop to a wonderful journey of discovery of a completely alien, yet familiar, world. Filled to overflowing with unique creatures that really feel like they genuinely could really exist, rather than as mere nightmarish monsters, and lush with new foliage that borrows much from familiar tropical (and ocean bed) plants but have an all new twist (sometimes literally a twist), it is a dazzling tour de force, a visual symphony, of glorious vivid colour. At moments I genuinely believed it was all real, and I wished I could have visited it.

The biggest leap in CGI technology wasn't the landscape, though there were leaps and bounds made in the believability and interactive nature of that too. No, instead we saw the best motion capture, both for the bodies and especially the face, than anything we have ever witnessed. It's made leaps and bounds even since Gollum and Kong. Robert Zemeckis will be tearing his hair out at what James Cameron has managed to develop, and I'm sure we'll see it reflected in his next epic (rumoured to be, incidentally, a new Roger Rabbit film).

Apparently, the biggest, and yet simplest leap in motion capture was that the facial capture happened at the same time as the body capture, so they moved in tandem, rather than needing to be married together from separate performances. That, and an improvement in smoothness and accuracy, has finally abolished the flaws that marred the technology for so long, and opened up a more reliable way for actors to inhabit CGI bodies.

I came away from Avatar absolutely breathlessly stunned. Though the movie is long in minutes, it feels exactly the right length because there's just so much to see. Perhaps repeated viewings, and familiarity after watching on DVD, will make it seem a tad long, but for now it felt just perfect.

The characters you're supposed to hate I really hated, the characters you're supposed to cheer for I loved, and the characters that could've gone either way were nicely nuanced and were handled just right.

It's not the most original story, and borrows a lot of its ideas, both visual and narrative, from many sources, but as a whole, it is a spectacle like you have never seen, and sets the bar for epic adventure fantasy that won't be matched for a long time.