Hi-Tech Adds Glitz and Glamour to Movie Production

Movies have been a part of popular culture for more than 100 years. Essentially, the movie is a photographic medium which utilizes electronic and computer technologies to the fullest extent possible.

Movies are visions of culture or of place or community aside from being a popular entertainment/art form and a major industry in almost any country. They also serve as a powerful communication medium to highlight the plight of weaker sections of society, and as an eye opener for those behind the velvet curtains to the realities of life. Language is no longer a barrier across cultures, as most movies come with sub-titles or are dubbed to regional languages. Thus even an Indian movie can become famous in Japan.

At one time only movies without audio were possible. In the era of silent films, cameras and projectors were equipped with electric motors to get constant film speed. Studios used arc floodlights and mercury vapor tubes, which later advanced to tungsten floodlights with reflecting surfaces. The early motion pictures were static shots that showed an event or action without editing or use of any cinematic technique. Now movies filmed during night are made to look like daytime scenes and vice versa.

Films are comprised of a series of individual images called frames. When viewed in quick succession, they produce an illusion of motion. Persistence of vision removes the jerks between pictures and the motion is perceived via a psychological effect known as beta movement. The concept of persistence of vision was known to the ancient Romans and Chinese. The phenakistoscope used this principle, where a series of pictures were moved to create an impression of a moving body.

To make movies commercially possible the basic technical requirements were a bright source of light for the projector, photographic film and cameras. The light was produced by gaslights, electric arcs and later by electric lamps. In 1889, George Eastman’s flexible film became popular, making it possible for a long story to be recorded on a continuous reel of film. Soon Thomas Edison and his assistant, William Dickson optimized the motion picture camera and introduced the sprocketed film, which helped control the film position, thereby eliminating jerkiness. Soon a motion picture projector was made which magnified the moving picture on a screen, thus allowing large groups of people to view it. Still, audio was absent up to the early 1920s, and music orchestras were used to play music in the movie hall.

Later that decade, silent movies gave way to sound movies, ad electronics became more important in movie-making. The use of microphones, amplifiers and loudspeakers was critical in giving an authentic feel to video. Each film now came with a sound track of speech, music and sound effects that were in sync with the action on screen, and such films were called talking pictures, or talkies, but they lacked natural color. Soon black and white films gave way to color films, helping to draw viewers away from television, which remained in black and white till the 1960’s.

Neon and colored lighting, projection systems and sound systems added to the entertainment. The invention of an editing machine called Moviola further enhanced movie production. Multi-track sound, stereoscopic sound, cinemascope and widescreen formats, along with magnetic recording and Dolby noise reduction techniques, accentuated movie-making and cinema presentation.

Film schools cropped up in movie-loving societies, and many enrolled to learn the nitty-gritties of film technology beyond acting and direction. The introduction of digital technology brought about even greater changes from the 1990s to the 2000s.

Then came animated movies, hi-tech extravaganzas and digital movies. Digital movies could be stored and reproduced perfectly with no degradation as occurs with film reels and they could be easily distributed. Also the cost of producing digital movies was less than celluloid ones, the only disadvantage being the high cost of the equipment required.

In animated movies, nearly 65,000 pictures are used with around 12 pictures making up a one-second duration scene. Backgrounds are kept constant and only actions of characters are featured on clear acetate film or cell through which the background is visible. Depending on the duration of scene, the number of pictures to be drawn is calculated. Nowadays the use of computer-generated animation has reduced the number of personnel and manual drawing efforts, besides introducing special effects in the animated movies.

3D movies were a craze some decades back with various kinds of stories being written depending on regional histories and culture. To make three-dimensional effects in a projected movie, the camera records two images through lenses placed inches apart. The viewer’s brain reconstructs depth from the images as in normal vision.

To view the movie, the audience uses special glasses allowing the left eye to see the image filmed by the left camera lens, and the right eye to see the image filmed by the right lens. The lenses are made of differing colors or differing polarization to help produce the separation effect. Small theatres also show 4D movies where elements of wind, smell and movement are also included in the total viewing experience.

As of December 2009, there were around 8,500 digital screens internationally of which only 5,200 were equipped with 3D systems. Now there are 10,700 3D screens out of 14,500 total digital screens. Also to be noted is that 38% of international 3D screens are in the Asia-Pacific region.

Some hi-tech movies

The movie Avatar was created using ‘stereoscopic film making’ with cameras that were designed especially for the movie. The visual effects for the amazing graphics displayed in the luminescent plants and animals in the movie was created using Linux and other Linux-based software. Large Linux clusters were used for film rendering, with Red Hat Enterprise Linux as the Operating System. The CGI was created with 64-bit Linux-based software for painting textures and 3D modeling, according to expert sources.

More than 90 cameras thronged the sound stage, and during editing, the studio atmosphere was replaced by digitally created 3D backgrounds and structures. The 3D Fusion camera used in the movie project used two high-definition cameras in one to give depth perception. The lenses can be adjusted to focus on nearby objects or on far away objects similar to human eyes.

A new ‘virtual camera’ was used in the filming of Avatar, which created history in motion-capture film making. The system displays an augmented reality on a monitor, where the actor’s virtual counterparts are incorporated into their digital surroundings in real time. The director can adjust and direct scenes just like in shooting live action. Closer to home, the Indian movie ‘Endhiran’ (or ‘Robot’) was made with a budget of $41,675,740. The Light Stage Face Scanning Technology used in Avatar was used here, based on original research led by Paul Debevec at the University of California at Berkeley and published at the 2000 SIGGRAPH conference. It helps visualise how an actor’s face appears when lit from different lighting directions.

Using this captured imagery, technicians can produce specialised algorithms that create realistic virtual renditions of the actor. This reproduces the color, texture, shine, shading, and translucency of the actor’s skin as life-like as possible, resulting in a detailed high resolution CGI Face.

The scanning was used to create detailed 3D Face mesh OBJ file, 3 Diffuse RGB Normal maps, one Specular Normal map, one Diffuse texture map and one specular intensity map. These images were in High Dynamic Range format. A new proprietary maya skin shader plugin was developed by Indian technicians with the help of Jupiter Jazz to leverage the intense details gathered with high resolution.

More than 2000 VFX or visual FX shots were incorporated in the movie. Animatronics, which involves Mechatronic Objects with motion sensors which can be made to move with the help of remotely operated devices, was used. The motion sensor can capture the movement of the person who acts like the movie character.

The seamless blending of key frame animation, motion capture, animatronics, multi robots and real model/texture scan of the characters enhanced the movie production. VFX was made seamless and consistent with right color timing enabled by the DI team from Reliance Media Works, India.

The Japanese movie Godzilla was first released in 1954. A picture continuity, or pictorial script, for each scene was used to indicate positions and where to position the camera. As most scenes were filmed in the studio, artificial environments could be created and manipulated without outdoor disturbances.

The monster, which looks 60 metres tall in the movie, is actually only 2.2 metres high.

Some scenes like that of the moving Godzilla and the burning city were shot separately and superimposed. Some years back superimposition was done manually frame by frame using an optical printer. However, Digital Synthesis is the norm now, a method which employs a scanner to generate digital data from the film while using a computer for producing the required image. Digital synthesis increases the number of elements that can be processed in addition to enhancing the precision.

Scenes of disaster are usually made by using miniatures. As they require greater precision, multiple cameras are placed in different angles to shoot the scene which is later edited.

Movies of the future

Future films are going to be revolutionary, using technology still as yet unimaginable today. Disruptive technology will enable future movies to be screened in smaller theatres such as in convenience stores, malls etc. These can serve 1 to 8 persons, showing movies on demand from a huge database.

Movies will also be able to be downloaded from booths on to mobile devices for convenient viewing. Future movies will offer virtual experiences with decentralized versions, which viewers can feature themselves as a character within the movie. In the foreseeable future, participatory movies will allow viewers to become part of the cast along with other actors. Perhaps then people will also be able to make their own movies and get them distributed via social media.

Movie industry in the Asia-Pacific

The movie production industry is fast growing in the Asia-Pacific region. China showed an upswing of 23% in 2010 compared to 2009, with gross revenues of $1.1 billion. Other huge markets like Japan and Korea also gained significant growth, with the former leaping over the $2 billion mark and Korea showing $750 million in revenues.

The motion picture industry is served by the CineAsia Summit, which invites delegates to compare notes on piracy, 3D techniques, digital movie making and the future of the movie industry.

Naoshi Yoda, the managing director of T-Joy Cinemas in Japan says, “By pursuing business within the framework of countries, people are restricting themselves...it is necessary to exceed the boundaries that these restrictions allow.”

The T-Joy Co-Marketing Strategy strives to augment the movie industry in Asia. The concept involves opening a market where production companies and distribution companies can ensure stable distribution besides enabling an exchange of high-quality content between nations. T-Joy has also implemented a contentexchange project with CJ Entertainment in Korea.

Movie piracy, also known as film theft, is a growing industry menace which is being dealt with by an iron hand from the Motion Picture Association for the AsiaPacific Region. More proactive and collaborative means are now employed to beat piracy by working with local cinema operators. This has been effective in curbing the menace of camcording in Hong Kong and Malaysia. Thus, technology is the need of the day to eliminate film piracy, so it appears.