Author: ryan
-
The ILM magic behind The Mandalorian – this is amazing!
I was going to write about the Industrial Light & Magic’s technology for The Mandalorian in this week’s This Geek in Review, but I was too excited to wait. It all starts with this behind the scene look at the production of Disney’s The Mandalorian. As you watch the videos and look at the pictures, it’s hard to see the tech. The backgrounds are created from the screens, not out on location.Unfortunately, the behind the scenes look isn’t as indepth as I would like, but The Mandalorian: This Is the Way and Forging new paths for filmmakers on ‘The Mandalorian’ has more information behind the technology. In a nutshell, over half of The Mandalorian is recorded on a stage. And not just any stage. This stage has LED panels 20′ tall that circle the stage 270 degrees. That’s all well and good, productions have been using projection behind the actors since the beginning of movies. The difference now is computers and videogames.
Powered by Unreal
Using Epic’s Unreal game engine, the production is able to create realistic looking backgrounds for the actors. The difference between this and using the older projection technology is the ability to change the perspective relative to the camera.
In real life, as a camera moves through a room, the background perspective also changes. This is why you notice pretty quickly if the background is a static image, like a matte painting, or a projected moving image. For The Mandalorian, the Unreal game engine knows where the camera is, and what it is looking at, in 3D space, and can modify the background to match.
Advantages
The sets also used practical effects, adding tables, chairs, etc. to the stage, which helped make the different locations feel real. Using LED panels and Unreal also offer other advantages. The actors didn’t have to imagine where the horizon was or where they should be looking. Since the panels emit light, adjusting lighting on the set used an iPad app. This was a process that was pretty time intensive in the past.
Getting sunrise or sunset shots are tough. Go watch Aquaman if you want to see a lot of CGI generated sunrises. The technology used here allowed the director to take as long as they wanted to record a scene during a sunset.
The director could also change the components of a scene on the fly, adding or removing items from the background easily.
Game changing
As I watched the first season of The Mandalorian, I was impressed by the varied locations and set work. Both gave the impression of a very expensive production. I assumed this was because it was Disney and Star Wars, which one would assume would get as much money as they need. How wrong could I be, it was this new technology.
I can’t wait to see what they can do with this.
I have spoken.
-
Are video games art and more – This Geek in Review for 21 Feb 2020
What happens when your 75 year old mother plays through Red Dead Redemption 2? You get an incredible essay on videogames and the concept of art. There are spoilers in the article, so beware if you don’t want to be spoiled about RDR2.
I guess one way of taking revenge against a former employer is to try to sabotage their self-driving cars. Not the smartest way, but one way.
This original arcade game looks frustrating as all get out, but also, very fun. Both features of great games.
Apparently, there is an internet service call Chaturbate. No comment on the service, but I find it interesting that real life models are being threatened by a computer generated girl. Interesting times, especially once the computer generated girls can be driven by AI. Instead of one model broadcasting to many, one model would be able to carry on one-to-one conversations with as many people as possible. Remember the movie Her? The computer with the voice of Scarlett Johansen was carrying on a relationship with hundreds of guys.
Once the romanticism of the first city on Mars wears out, reality will set in.
Did you ever wonder how the motions of groups of zebrafish larvae affected each individual animalâs brain development and behavior but didn’t want to read a Ph.D. thesis on the matter? Well, wait no more because you can watch an interpretive dance on the subject instead!
Sometimes, you’re Dwight, other times you’re Jim. Here’s for the times you’re Jim. Be sure to put the browser window into full screen before clicking on the site.
No arm, no problem
-
How to use Facebook without using Facebook
It was a cold, dark day, November 24, 2006, when I joined Facebook and posted this gem:
I’m assuming it was cold and dark since it was November. The date is the day after Thanksgiving, so I’m blaming the turkey.
For several years, it was all fun and good, but I’ve become disenchanted with FB over the years. I’ve moved to my personal site for sharing and only push links out to social media. The final straw was Facebook’s decision to let anything go in political ads. These can be total fabrications and Facebook will let them run. I will not promote such terrible behavior.
If you are on Facebook, know that ads you see and posts that are shared are not what they seem. These posts are designed to enrage you for maximum engagement. They are not for information. You are being treated like a trained dog, being offered treats for likes. Facebook wants you to keep scrolling.
Unfortunately, I still need to have my account and I also have others that send me messages through Facebook. Over the last year I’ve been working on ways to use Facebook without being on Facebook.
For starters, this will not allow you to see any friends posts. Since Facebook has changed their algorithm to keep you scrolling, the only winning move is not to play. I rarely go on FB anymore, and I’m happier for it. If you want me to see what you write, create a blog and let me know. I’ll subscribe to it!
Messenger notifications are also hit and miss. I don’t like Facebook giving me ads based on what I say in a chat anyway, so I don’t use it and I don’t recommend you use it either. There are better options.
Filtering Facebook notifications
The first step is to set up a filter for emails from Facebook. I use Gmail, so I created a filter that will take emails from Facebook, skip the inbox, and label them.
For bonus points, you can set the label for your FB notifications to only show if there are new emails. Out of sight, out of mind.
Tame FB notifications
The second step is to get Facebook to only send notifications if someone messages me or if I’m mentioned. Go to your Notifications page and turn off almost all notifications. This is a good time to trim down the notifications from Facebook.
To set notifications, go to Settings (the little triangle in the upper right corner) and click Notifications on the left side.
I turned off everything except for the first two, Comments and Tags. There isn’t an option for Messenger, but as of December I was still receiving notifications for new messages.
FB also doesn’t seem to send out notifications when someone comments on a thread you are in either, which is unfortunate. See that Updates From Friends notification? Wouldn’t it be nice to get those in your email? Yes, it would be, but FB will only send them to your logged in browser.
Enjoy life!
Go, enjoy your life! The internet is a great resource, and you are in control.
-
Deactivating Facebook and more – This Geek in Review for 14 Feb 2020
There are good discussions going on now about mental health and wellness, but not enough talk about the little things that one can do to help themselves. By deactivating Facebook one can not only increase their happiness but also decrease their political polarization on the issues. Sounds like a win-win. I read so much about how everyone sucks in politics, but not anything on what we can do to fix it. The scariest realization I have on politics is that many voters will vote against their self-interests if it means people they believe are undeserving will get something. We saw this with the rise of the Tea Party. “Too many people are on welfare, but don’t you dare touch my Social Security and Medicare.” Wow, that’s enough of a rant today!
Finally, you can turn off those lousy Netflix previews! I didn’t understand why they were so long in the first place, they are basically a mini-version of the movie, giving away way too much about the movie. Unfortunately, to de-activate the preview you have to do it from the website and not the client.
What happens when you give Chrome 1.5TB of RAM?
Programmers re-use code all of the time for games, and now we benefit. Some very smart people figured out how to put Star Fox 64 Arwings for the Nintendo 64 into Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of time. An amazing hack.
If you have bought an Apple device in the last 6 months, you get Apple’s Streaming service, Apple TV+, free for the year. It’s estimated that less the 10% of purchasers have done so. I’ve only watched (and liked) a few episodes of For All Mankind. They base it on an alternative history of the first moon landing.
I’m not a big fan of articles that should be a blog post instead of spread across 11 tweets, but I liked Ally McBeal. One of the first “viral” moments in internet time was the dancing baby. Well, the model has been found and rendered in full 1080p glory.
Dates are hard on the computer, but I would think after all the Y2K shenanigans that storing only the last two digits for the year would be in the past (see what I did there?). That is not the case for a 101 year old man in the UK. The computer would like his parents to confirm his ID.
I’ve read that Tesla’s Cybertruck is a good rendition of what we thought in the 80s cars of the future would look like. And now an SFX company has given us this gem:
A New Time Machine? Cybertruck 2020 in Back to the Future – YouTube
-
Let’s talk about the Oscars (2020)
This was not a film up for an Oscar I’ll start off by saying, no I haven’t seen most of the movies up for an Oscar. But, this is the internet, so where has the lack of knowledge ever stopped anyone from posting. I love going to movies, and I love when a movie hits me just the right way. Unfortunately, I don’t get to go as much as I would like, so I missed out on a ton of movies this year.
The Oscars lost their luster for me when they expanded the number of movies up for best picture. Nine movies? Come on, eliminate 4 of those. The number expanded just so producers could add “Oscar nominated” to their film’s tagline. I do want to see the winner, Parasite.
For best picture, I don’t really have an opinion. I only saw two of those movies, Joker and 1917, neither of which were best picture material. But, I totally agree with Joaquin Phoenix winning Lead Actor for Joker. He was amazing. For Lead Actress, Supporting Actor, and Supporting Actress, I didn’t see any of those movies this past year. Looking at the list of nominees, they are all amazing, so I’m sure it was a tough decision.
I only saw one award given, Animated Feature Film. Mindy Kaling is amazing, but the winner of the category was… for lack of a better word, unnecessary. Toy Story 4 was not worthy of a best animated feature film award. The third movie in the Toy Story saga was perfect, and 4 did not live up to any of its predecessors.
Finally, 1917 won for Visual Effects. It was pretty good, but I wonder if blockbuster fatigue has set in since it was up against Avengers: Endgame and Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.
Anyway, here’s to the movies of 2020. I can’t wait to see what’s in store.
