New Showreel and Other Things

It's about time I wrote a personal blog post I suppose. I've been very busy working on a couple of projects. We've just finished post production on the short film "Another Day" which the team are planning to take on the film festival circuit. Because of this we can't post the film online, but watch this space, it will be up eventually.

I've also started work on a short film called "The Greater Good" which is set in the Harry Potter extended universe. Again I can't tell you too much about this, but it's a lot of fun and should hopefully get a lot of support from the fandom. There's a trailer coming soon which I shall pimp on here once it goes live. Check out their Facebook page: The Greater Good

Watch out for a company called Giant Space, who I've been doing some research and development for here in Cardiff. They do 3D stereo conversion, and I have no doubt they will be popping up in the credits very soon.

I've been putting together a new showreel for a couple of competition entries. Check it out. I hope you like it.

Amy Carpenter VFX Showreel 2013 from Amy Carpenter on Vimeo.

A Highly Spoilerific Review of Star Trek into Darkness

The risk with this film, after being so long awaited by fans, and the continuous advertising campaign, was that there was no way it would ever live up to expectations. I've not felt anxiety over a movie quite like this since the original reboot in 2009 after JJ Abrams admitted he wasn't a Star Trek fan. He didn't disappoint us then, and in my opinion, he has not disappointed us now. It's an exciting, fast paced action adventure, but it also contains the moral and ethical issues that was absent from the last movie, and is at the heart of the Star Trek fandom. It's funny and devastating and incredibly beautiful. It was everything I wanted in a Star Trek movie and so much more. Plus, there were tribbles!

It's going to be nigh on impossible to discuss this film without entering into major spoiler territory, so I'm not even going to try. I'm just going to dive straight in, so you have been warned, there are spoilers ahead.

So let's start with the question on the tip of everyones tongue. Just who is Benedict Cumberbatch playing in this movie? Well, the internet was alight with rumours and theories, and much fun has been had debating the possibilities. The number one thought is Khan. After all he is a monumental baddie, and appeared in the second of the original films. We also had Gary Mitchell and Mirror Universe Spock put on the table. In the end Abrams weighed in himself and announced, "He is John Harrison." The fandom gave a huge simultaneous laugh. If there was one thing we did know for certain, it was that Cumberbatch would not be playing John Harrison.

I said going into the the film that I had a feeling it was going to be a Khan movie, and that I would be very disappointed if it was. As it turns out, Cumberbatch is playing Khan, and I was not disappointed in the slightest. The character is introduced in such a way that all questions of his identity are wiped from your mind instantaneously. Harrison can save any persons life by handing over a vial of his blood, and yet he manipulated a grieving father into committing an act of terrorism, rather than become a doctor. Evil you might say, but then he saves Kirks life and grieves for his own crew, the people who are his family. You get a sense that he will do anything for his crew, including lie and cheat and kill. You convince yourself he's a good man driven to do bad things. When he reveals his true identity, it still completely knocks you for six. You've forgotten to ask the question, and you find yourself wondering how you missed the obvious clues. The answer is that the film is so fast paced and alight with humour that you barely pause for a thought.

Cumberbatch is an outstanding actor. He crawls right under your skin and demands that you care for Khan. He has been wronged, and his vengeance is justified. When he betrays Kirk, you'll feel that same horrible sense of betrayal. He fooled you completely. You placed your faith in him and so he betrayed you too. But then Kirk betrayed him first and for a while it's hard to let go.

This isn't the Cumberbatch show however. I did wonder if he would overpower the entire film with his presence, leaving the Enterprise crew to play second fiddle, but that is certainly not the case. Though he owns every scene he is in with an iron fist, he has surprisingly little screen time. This is the story of Captain Kirk and Commander Spock, how one learns to grow up and take responsibility, whilst the other learns to embrace his human side. Khan is just an antagonist, and a catalyst for the events that will take our favourite Star Fleet officers on their own personal journey.

What I loved about this film, is the beautiful symmetry that it had with the original Wrath of Khan movie. Though the story is self contained, and you can enjoy it as a non or casual Star Trek fan, the true impact of the story can only be felt if you have seen the classic movies. And not just because you won't know who Khan is! In a way this film tells much the same story. The scene is set slightly differently due to the altered time line, but events play out similarly. However, Kirk and Spocks roles are reversed, due to their different upbringings from the original time line. In a way they end up trading places, with both hilarious and heart breaking consequences. You won't see it coming, but once again you will ask yourself why not, because hindsight is 20:20.

Over all the film is very well written and directed. The pace never lets up for a moment, and so the experience is exhilarating. So much happens in just two hours. I had to see it again straight away just to allow my brain to catch up. The mood dashes from brilliant tongue and cheek humour, to high adrenaline action to pure devastation so fluidly you barely know whether you are laughing or crying. I did both.

Once again the cast is on top form, I must give a particular shout out for Karl Urban who often seems to be forgotten in reviews, and yet is the ultimate Bones, right down to the mannerisms. He had some cracking one liners, and brilliant chemistry with Zachary Quinto. Spock and Bones always rile each other up in the Original Series, and this time around it was no different. The crew dynamics was spot on all around.

I could lament for hours about the Visual Effects, particularly the new Klingon Bird of Prey design and the exterior shots of space. I love the warp effects, its nice to see the nacelles being stretched out old school style. I must admit the 3D conversion in the trailer had me a little worried but I felt the 3D in the finished film was outstanding. I have seen in it 2D as well though and I can't say I missed the 3D aside from the scene where Kirk and Khan dive through space to reach the other ship. To be honest it's worth the extra fee just to see that sequence.

I have a few niggles about submerging the ship at the beginning, in fact I'm pretty sure Voyager was the only class of ship that could enter the atmosphere, but I'd have to run that through my brother before I angrily rant about the science fail, he is the utmost authority on Star Trek engineering. But still it was a little ridiculous but a necessary plot device and frankly my only complaint.

This review is becoming ridiculously long winded now. There is so much left to say but I'm still finding it hard to process the level of awesome I have just been exposed to. I recommend you see it, obviously. It has so many nods to the fandom that it has thrilled me to the core. Hopefully I'll get to see it a few more times before it leaves the cinema.

Thank you JJ Abrams, you did us proud.

A few extra thoughts:

• Did anyone else think "uh oh" when Kirk gave Chekov a red jumper?
• "I'm a doctor not a torpedo expert" 
• Very sad that the tribble died.
• Anyone recognise the security guard? Yes Cupcake makes a return
• Spock crying was heard breaking. But then...
• "Kaaaaaaaaaaahn!" I laughed so hard.
• Loved the fact that the audience applauded at the grand reveal. The fandom approves.
• Didn't like the new Klingons, but loved the new ship design.
• A little sad that Kahn didn't do "The Speech" but "I'll walk over your cold dead corpses" was a suitable substitute. 
• Cumberbatch likes to jump off really tall objects doesn't he. Shame he wasn't so springy in Sherlock.
• I'm going to see it again tomorrow.

Iron Man Three (light spoilers)

 So i've just returned from the midnight showing of Iron Man Three, its 3:30am so forgive me if this review is a little choppy but I must blog about this right now.

I am going to start with my one true love, Visual Effects. There were so many great companies and artists working on this film, and they really brought their A game. Somehow they managed to bring a certain amount of gritty realism to FX that ordinarily would be over the top even by comic book standards. There's one scene where a large number of Iron Man suits are involved in battle, and start flying around, shooting and blowing up and yet somehow the viewer can totally accept it as real. This, in my opinion  is the art of good Visual Effects. It's not just about putting CG objects in live action footage, it's about putting it there and no one being able to tell. The level of detail that these guys have gone into, right down to the scratches on the paint work, is phenomenal. Hats off to these guys and gals, not just for proving that VFX is an art form, but for being an inspiration. It's not just about blowing stuff up (though that is cool and there is a lot of that) but making things look real, and it reminds me as a recent graduate and freelancer, that I should never stop learning the craft because perhaps one day I'll get to work on projects like this myself.

I'm not going to spoil too much of the story. I'm an avid hater of spoilers and so wouldn't wish to ruin the experience for anyone. Go and see it, it is beyond worth it. It's probably the cleverest plot line for a action film I have seen in a while, and had some particularly good twists and turns. All the clues are there for you if look out for them, but if you miss them, it all ties up in the end. It's got great Tony Stark dialogue, with humour in dollops, oozing with the same cocky swagger RDJ brings to the role. I was told in a very cryptic fashion before I saw this film, that something about the villain will split the fandom in half, and it most certainly will. I personally think it was a very ballsy move on the writers part, and one that brings an old school, cliched, comic book bad guy right up to date. Others will disagree. Watch out for Ty Simpkins, Starks unlikely side kick, who's a great little actor and bounced off RDJ with the talent of a real pro. They say never work with children or animals, well in this case they got the casting spot on.

What I really liked about this film, is the way they dealt with Tony Stark as a character. In the comic books, he got a bit dark towards the end, and yet they managed to work with that in a Disney fashion that shouldn't disturb the younger audience and yet still manages to deal with the a character post a highly traumatic experience (ie. The Avengers Assemble plot line). It also, quite cleverly, deals with the question that the Captain posed in the Avengers movie. Who is Tony Stark without the suit? The answer, well wait and see, but it is finely executed, with tonnes of symbolism as Stark learns more about himself and love and all the things that made Pinocchio a real boy. It's heart warming really,  and exciting, incredibly dramatic with laugh out load humour, high adrenaline action and just plain awesomeness. I couldn't have asked for more from a Marvel film. If you're not sold, just watch the trailer below!

A few things to finish off with.

1. Go see it immediately. I, in fact, will almost certainly be there again tomorrow night. 
2. Wait until after the credits, there's a nice little gift for you Avengers fans at the end.
3. Anyone else REALLY annoyed at how it's Iron Man 3 in all the promotional stuff but the film is in fact Iron Man Three? I don't know, that just annoyed me. It's really the only thing.

Star Trek Into Darkness - 1 Month and Counting Down!

With little over a month to go until Star Trek Into Darkness hits our cinemas, my level of excitement is hitting warp factor nine. With new teasers and trailers, HD pictures and cast interviews in every magazine, I'm just absorbing everything I can get my hands on through osmosis. It's like a frenzy right now. And it's not just me, the entire fandom seems to be vibrating with the suspense, as we are still no closer to uncovering who John Harrison really is. It's been an incredible run up to the movie, and there is still 5 weeks left to go, I'm uncertain whether I will make it without my brain going supernova. 

But it's the fandom right now that makes me a little sad. I've always found the Star Trek fandom to be incredibly friendly, but lately there seems to be a certain amount of hostility towards the new fans. It's as if everyone is being made to earn their geek stripes before they are allowed into the hallowed halls. I grew up with Star Trek, it was a week night routine to sit in front of BBC2 with my older brother to watch the reruns over dinner. We had the VHS movie box set, bought the action figures and played with a home made cardboard Enterprise D Bridge replica. But why do I need to justify the level of my fandom experience before being allowed to express an opinion about the new movie?

It seems that there has been an influx of new Star Trek fans, because of this guy; the frankly brilliant Benedict Cumberbatch, who is an outstanding actor and quite rightly has a massive fan following online. It is these fans who are infiltrating the Star Trek fandom, and a few of the old school fans don't seem to like it. 

In a way I understand the resentment. Having grown up in an era (not that long ago in fact) where young people were openly bullied for being smart, (boffin!) for liking science fiction or fantasy, (geek!) or being fascinated with Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the occult (freak!) , it can be quite difficult to see those people who hurt you so badly lining up behind you at the cinema once your favourite franchise becomes main stream entertainment. But surely, liking an actor is just as legitimate a reason for wanting to see a movie, as being a life long fan?

As a VFX Artist and Creative, I work for the love and passion of what I do, but I fully understand that at the top of the tree, movie making is an industry designed to make money. If you as a fan wish to see your favourite franchise survive, then you should be encouraging new people to embrace that franchise. At the end of the day, the more bums on seats in opening week, the more dollars are made and the more likely your franchise will survive. 

I want there to be more Star Trek movies. I want there to be a rise in good science fiction and fantasy films. I want the things that I love to be around forever, and that can only happen by encouraging new people to try it out. So rather than shun the new fans, thank them profusely and welcome them into the fold. Opening night for Star Trek Into Darkness is going to be amazing, so lets not ruin it with inter-fandom wars, let's enjoy the journey together. 

Hello World Take Two

Wow I have finally returned to the world after 16 weeks working on Project Duplicity. I have barely left my flat and have become as pale as a corpse. The good news is we finished in time for our deadline, despite the few hiccups we hit along the way. This largely involved technical issues with cameras, microphones and unexpectedly exploding hard drives. However with hard work and dedication from everyone on our team we have prevailed. It has been a hard slog, our schedule was intense and we had so little sleep that at times it was difficult to produce a coherent sentence! However we made it and after a good nights sleep I am already raring to go on a new project.

For more information on Project Duplicity, visit the Project Blog http://project-duplicity.tumblr.com/ or follow us on Twitter @PDuplicity

We require a few days to recover and prepare for our Final Year Show, 62 Degrees, before we unveil Project Duplicity online. In the mean time, you can watch the short teaser trailer which is online now!

I would also like to take this opportunity to invite everyone to 62 degrees which will commence on Monday of next week. If you are in the Cardiff area drop in for a chat at the Atrium. 

In other news, I am currently working on a website which will be a central base for my blog, twitter, videos and photographs. It's still under construction but should be online in a few weeks. Bookmark this webpage people it's going to be great :)

CarpenterVFX.com

Time for a well earned rest I think, keep your eyes open for my next project!

50 Things I wish I'd known in Art School

I found this on Facebook and thought it was really insightful. As a third year about to enter into the work place I found some of the links useful. Enjoy.

http://www.johannabasford.com/blog-article/297

Doctor Who - My Inspirations

Today I read that fans on twitter are sending abusive messages to Steven Moffat. Honestly I don't understand this. Generally I don't understand abusive behaviour at the best of times but this took the biscuit.

For me Doctor Who was a major inspiration, and one of the reasons I decided to enter into the world of Visual Effects. As a six former, young and somewhat naive, I was studying chemistry and opting for a very safe career path as a science teacher. This was who I was when the announcement that Doctor Who was returning to our screens. As a much younger person, I had grown up on classic science fiction reruns, Doctor Who included, so this breaking news sent me into a giddy overload which ultimately resulted in my exclusion from most social groupings. At this point in time I had a love for film particularly visual effects, but to me it was "computer magic" that I would never understand, let alone be able to one day do.

Fast forward a few years and I'm at university, a very good one, studying chemistry and generally unhappy with my life. It was at this time I started building websites for fun and sometimes money, and managed to get sucked into the magical world of the Doctor Who online community. My levels of Geekery massively increased ten fold, but something amazing happened. I discovered photoshop. With this knowledge, practice and development of artistic flare, I learned I could thrill people with my digital art work. I started making banners for other people's websites, members of the Doctor Who community would set me challenges to create wallpapers and blends to meet certain criteria. It was then that I realised chemistry was not the way forward.

The rest as they say, is history. I got myself some formal IT qualifications and went back to university to study visual effects. One day I hope to work on the Doctor Who series. That is my ultimate goal. Of course I would like to work on film and become a millionaire, swan around in a convertible and generally be loved by all, but honestly I would trade this just for one day working on this iconic show.

Doctor Who is a show for the whole family, it frightens children, stuns us with it's beauty and takes us on a moral and emotional roller coaster on a week by week basis. What other show in the world could do that? Russell T Davis brought this show back from the dead. Steven Moffat took it like an olympic relay baton and is racing to take it to new heights of incredible. If haters bring down this show, they would have destroyed something monumental. There are so many of us out here who still love it.

Book Snobbery

When faced with the open choice of what exactly to write my dissertation about, my initial response was: a) write what you know, and b) write about something your lecturer will like. So obviously having already written an essay on him, and knowing my lecturers love of him, I chose Milton Glaser.

Obviously I then changed my mind.

I appreciate that Glaser is in fact one of the greatest graphical minds of our time (and even a previous time) but why should i write about what I already know about? Surely the whole point of this dissertation, and even university, is to learn. I want to be able to research and develop, perhaps find a passion I didn't know I had, and even a whole new inspiration that will blast my practical work into a whole new dimension.

I switched my idea to comic books, and how they translate to the movie industry. This may seem like an odd decision, certainly a more difficult one, and one of no academic consequence. I definitely know what my colleagues think, having put up with their mocking as I sit nose deep in graphic novels as they play countless games of bridge. But I believe this to be the correct choice.

From an early age I remember being taught to read. My mother, brilliant woman that she is, used to play games with flash cards, slightly larger than a deck of playing cards with words and images on front and back. Connect the correct word to the picture is how it all began, and later copying entire sentences, learning spellings and joining up letters. By the time I started first school I could already read. My fondest memory is of curling up in bed with my mother, all jim jammed and surrounded by pastel stripes and brightly coloured pictures of animals as she read to me. My brother, 2 years older than I, would feign disinterest but would eventually end up perched at the end of my bed as the story went on. I never remember picture books, always proper hard back books; The Famous Five, Brear Rabbit, and my all time favourite, The Magic Faraway Tree. As I got older it was I who read to her every night and eventually, I read alone.

It was this advanced reading ability which led to a certain snobbery. I didn't read books with pictures(except for a certain dinosaur book - how embarrassing). In year four when I was just 8 or 9 I remember sitting in class reading Watership Down, a massive 400 page beast that put the other children in class to shame. Whilst they were discovering comic-books and using the pictures as aides, I was far ahead. Perhaps this is why, up until this summer I had never read a comic-book. Now I have developed an overwhelming need to enter this world and find out what I've been missing all these years. I have friends, intelligent people, who know the Marvel universe like it was their own. I watch the new Marvel movies and catch just a glimpse of of that wonder. I'm a decade late, but this is as good a time as ever, and now the otherwise useless information I shall gather will in fact have use.

An Intermission

Constantly behind on the blog posts of late. As it was said somewhere in literature (of that I am sure) "a happy person has no need for a journal" and the same can be said of blogging. That is not to say I have been inactive. My cinema trips are often though pricey with the complete lack on Cineworld situated nearby. I have seen the latest Harry Potter movie, on that I have plenty to say, and the new Marvel movie, Captain America on which I will say simply "watch it" as it is amazing and everything it should be without being overly patriotic and sickening to us Brits.

Currently I am working full time in chemistry laboratory, which isn't entirely interesting though I have met plenty of characters and spend many hours washing up glassware whilst inventing new comic book super heroes and planning my next film project in my mind. I have also become the proud owner on an iPad 2 which is amazing for jotting down notes, quick sketches and brain storming, all of which would be lost in the depths of my pockets on random scraps of paper if it was not for this amazing device.

I'm also trying to read as many books on my chosen dissertation title (which I shall not divulge here in fear of it being picked up by anti-plagiarism software and causing my own title to be flagged as stolen!) as possible, leaving me little time for anything else! Certainly busy times, and I look forward to my return to full time education where I can focus entirely on upping my game and raising those grades of mine.