Well this was my third year attending the spark festival which was once again really well put together. With a great array of topics and speaker covering everything from titling graphics to miniatures it offered a unique picture of our current effect industries past present and future. Some of the most famous people in FX have attended this event such as last year’s Dennis Muran

to this year john [Photoshop, ILM] knoll.

The topic of highest interest was of course the James Cameron hit avatar, over half the events had some sort of segway into this film.

Other speakers such as the awesome young artist Dyan Cole covered his work on this film, some of basic techniques and personal projects to one of my favourites, two of the heads of new deal studios miniatures, elements and now production studio.

Matthew Gratzner was great to hear talk about what worked and doesn’t work with models after years of experience on huge calibre films right up to the current dark knight. I’ve been a fan of their work since alien 4 which I still think has some of the most stylish space ship shots ever done, period. When I started a few years ago to try and use models for my own work I would research Cinefex’s which covered movies they had done specifically. And as recent as the movie “Shutter Island” I have seen their continued use of these methods done at a very high level of look, detail, realism etc.

 His business partner was a good kick in the nuts to hear someone on the business side who seemed to genuinely love the artistry of her companies work and yet had a firm grasp of good business practices. A real eye opener I was not expecting to be as engaging or informative.

This was also the case with the titles graphic artist from prologue films who did a superb presentation on his work, with some insight to what he looks for in some one applying for this kind of work to interesting methods of collecting ideas that can lead to a titling concept.

a online version of his lecture...

On a personal note it was kind of a depressing event for me as I think "Avatar" is going to move any sort of fx movie more and more into the digital realm. I still think that things like miniatures have a place, it’s not like in other art forms they were using water colour paints got to say bas relief sculpture or oils and said wow ok we can’t use those paints any more.

But that aside for now I loved seeing the “fifth element” for the last time on a 35 mm print. I’m guessing if I see it again it will be on some digital format. This year’s movie selection was weaker than last year’s but still enjoyable. I think they should show blade runner every year, but that just me. The one that got away was Sunday’s showing of “wizard of oz” which I had a ticket for but due to a work thing could not attend sadly.

My request for next year would be something on low budget film making, and HD DSLR. For guests I would still love to see Lorne Patterson or If was able Ralph Mcquarrie, to cover the HDDLSR, Shane Hurlbut or Jamin Winan and Kiowa Winan to cover low budget indie movies. A showing of their film INK could be part of that. For an interactive event one of my favourite hot button topics games as interactive stories or we could talk 3d. I love these ideas to bring out some strong opinions.
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I’m attempting to put this idea into practice so I’m going to lay out as much of its concept as I can. The idea over all to bring a different style in method and story ideas that I feel is missing in sci/fi films and the sub genre of space opera. While it’s called a space opera manifesto a lot of the concepts are for use with sci/fi of any style.  

Effects.

Every planning attempt is made to find an In-camera method. Effects should be planned in advance and unless there’s a story reason at a later date, committed to. Miniatures are also to be used whenever you can. Digital compositing is used to aid in this whenever that line is needed. CGI is a last resort. Use of image models or projection maps from miniatures, locations is also to be tried before resorting to CGI. Shot elements should be used as much as possible as well for smoke, fire etc. For example the water falls in “Phantom menace” used salt poured over black cloth comp’ed into the scene. Artists should research older methods and experiment with updating them with digital fixes to minimize the artifacts or tells of these methods. The idea is not throw away 100 years of movie making for quick fix of CGI. This is not a manifesto against CGI its simply for not using it. This is a cost motive as well due to the increasing budgets for complete digital effects as well as the important aesthetics of the above.

Story.

Stories are to emphasis concepts of plot and character over single story drives which fuel most b stories. Set up should be natural involving as little exposition and title carding as possible. Non linear stories and other structure methods are fine as long as the first part is maintained.

Other elements

In terms of style, theatrical elements are encouraged. Such as Francis Ford Coppola experiments in “Tucker” or Baz Luhrmannin’s “Romeo and Juliet”, “Molin Rouge” etc.

This is more of an outline and I’ll try to add any other elements as they come. Any suggestions will be considered.

This new sci fi film staring Sam rockwell looks very cool. Reason i mention it is the fact that its shot with models for the majority of the exteriors and vehicles. check it out smart hard sci fi.



Moon at IGN.com