Vi vet ikke hva som skjer.
Vi vet ikke om gutta kommer levende fra det.
Vi vet ikke hvem som kutter tauet.
Vi vet heller ikke om hun i vinduet hopper.
Vi vet ikke hva som skjer.
For dette er ingen film.
Dette er en reklamefilm.
For DnB NOR.
Og vi vet ikke hva som skjer.
Akkurat som i livet.

(Nowegian text at the end of the movie)

Very clever. I’m curious to see if they are brave enough to NOT show it on tv. Just use the site and the viral world to spread it.

Why? Because TV advertising is STINKING expensive. And why hassle people with ads on tv if they come to see it on your site because they WANT to see it?

Special invited guests saw the NBA All-star game in 3D HD on February 18th, and now attendees to the NAB exhibition in Las Vegas, get to see the game and hear about the advanced technology behind it.

“Thomp”, at NowPublic saw the All-star game. And is convinced this is the new thing:

…made me feel like I paid 6,000 dollars to sit among the stars on the floor of the hardwood court. The up close FUSION 3D HD action made me forget I was miles away in a theater wearing 3D glasses and the sound was to as if I sitting at courtside. I felt I was so close that when Jay-Z bent over to whisper to Beyonce, I wanted to tap his shoulder and say she with me! Action seemed so close that when a loose ball flew in to the crowd, several people in the theatre (including me) put our hands out to catch it!

He also has some thoughts on the future of the system:

In summary I can see this technology being a big hit in the future especially to the common folk like me who can not pay the large sums of money to partake in these events live. PACE should not limit itself to major sports events like the Super Bowl or the NBA. This technology can be used to see high priced concerts or highly publicized Las Vegas shows. This can be another viable revenue stream for artist and promoters. Instead of booking a plane and hotel ticket, you can jump in your car, drive to your local IMAX Theater and save a couple of thousand dollars.

And – saving the planet while having a great time, I might add.

How is it done?

The technology behind this is exciting. James Cameron is shooting both his forthcoming movies with the same 3D cameras. The $200 million “Avatar” (2008) and the movie adaption of the manga series “Battle Angel Alita”, called “Battle Angel” (2009), are both shot in 3D HD. Cameron and Vince Pace are the founders of Pace 3D technologies that makes the special versions of the camera. Vince Pace is also director of photography, second unit on both movies.

The cameras are customized versions of the US$115,000 Sony HDC-950, in a specially designed rig. The camera sensors are placed 70mm apart to capture left-eye and right-eye imagery seperately. Pace is also developing the camera system to include the newer Sony HDC-1500 HD cameras.

NBA used six Sony cameras to capture the All-star game:

These camera feeds were distributed via fiber to a portable HD fly-pack system (provided by Bexel) in the arena that included a Sony MVS 8000A switcher and an EVS XT[2] server.

The Sony switcher includes a feature that allowed the director to aggregate multiple camera feeds and lock them together. The director then switched the multicamera production as he would a typical game broadcast; but, to get the full 3-D effect, he often held on shots longer than usual. Instant replays and graphics were also presented in 3-D, using the EVS server.

The output of the switcher (two uncompressed HD signals at about 3Gb/s) was sent to the Mandalay Bay ballrooms via fiber cabling. The larger ballroom was set up in a stadium-seating configuration, on risers to give the full effect. The smaller space was standing room only. Images were displayed with two stacked Sony SXRD 4K projectors in each room on 47ft and 30ft screens. The projectors were fitted with a special polarizing filter supplied by 3-D specialists Real D. Audience members wore special polarizing glasses to get the full 3-D effect.

Sports and concerts

Both Marilyn Manson and Gwen Stefani has used this new technology for music videos, and Universal Music Group’s Interscope Record has signed a deal with Pace to use the technology for concerts. Expect to see Dr. Dre, Eminem, U2, Gwen Stefani, 50 Cent, Sheryl Crow and Pussycat Dolls doing their things in 3D at your local cinema soon.

That is, if your local movie theatre can show 3D. Only 700 of 37 000 US movie theatres have 3D projection screens (I have not been able to numbers for the rest of the world). But Sony do of course want to change that:

“We are ready to roll into any theater with the two-projector system.”

…said John Kaloukian, director of Sony Electronics’ professional display group to Reuters (note: Some Reuters articles only stay up for three weeks so this link may go dead after some time).

Most of 700 movie screens with 3D projection, are delivered by Real D, which even has a blog with interesting articles like this one about “Composing for Stereo: The Filmmaker’s Point of View”:

The other concern I call the strength of the stereoscopic image. That is determined by two interrelated factors. One of them is completely new to the stereoscopic cinema, and has no direct counterpart in the planar cinema – and that is the distance between the spacing of the cameras or the camera lenses. Whether we’re shooting live action, or we’re in a CGI virtual space, the distance between the camera’s lenses is a critical factor. We’re going to call whatever we’re shooting with a stereo camera. A stereo camera, unlike a conventional camera, captures two perspective viewpoints. So we’re not going to refer to stereoscopic cameras. We’re going to call it a stereoscopic camera, and we’re going to say it has two lenses – a left lens and a right lens.

The distance or the spacing between the two lenses is called the interaxial spacing – that is, the distance between the lens axes. If you think about it, if the lenses are superimposed – in other words, if the axes had zero spacing – you’re shooting a planar movie. The farther apart the lenses go, the deeper the image looks. The use of this control is closely related to the focal length you use. Wide angle lenses tend to stress perspective, because objects that are closer to the lens appear to be proportionately larger, and the background appears to be smaller. The stereoscopic depth sense, which is technically known as stereopsis, is weighted or scaled by extra-stereoscopic cues – that is, by non-stereoscopic or monocular cues. One of the strongest of these is perspective – and perspective is often determined by the choice of focal length. So it turns out that with wide angle lenses you can use a reduced interaxial, and for telephoto lenses you can use a larger interaxial.

New tools = New ways of thinking! This also may be technology that take people back to the cinemas. If you have a 50″ plasma/LCD screen at home, a blu-ray or HD-DVD player, a great chair and your kitchen nearby – why go to a movie theatre? With 3D HD you have a new reason, as I don’t think there will be a home version of Sony SXRD 4K projectors anytime soon. Not to mention the players delivering the actual movies.

Editing?

I’m curious, how do you edit this? HD with two seperate cameras, one for each eye? What are your options for post processing? Do you need special software or do you edit in “normal” tools like FCP or Avid systems? Feel free to comment below if you know!

Update

Camcorderinfo.com made a video from the Sony/NBA event at NAB, as seen below (you may have to click through to brilliantdays.com/3d-hd too see the video if you read this in a newsreader).

Now, mr. boss of huge movie company: Let me buy the movies! I have my credit card ready. I’m willing to let my computer download all night to get the movies in HD. I would even tolerate DRM (but would prefer not). I find it absolutely amazing that here we have an industry that doesn’t want to make money.

And when (if ever) you start putting whole movies in HD in iTunes… check your atlas. Or wikipedia. There are 6.5 billion people on earth. 300 million in the US. You do the math.

After reading all the six Harry Potter books – a number of times – for my daughter, I consider myself quite an expert. I’m writing a longer post on what I think will happen in the final book. Coming up after christmas some time.

Harry Potter movies at Amazon.com

Watch the screencast to have an idea of what it does. I just imported the whole iTunes library. Wicked fast and no problems.

Kate Winslet about to get her left foot removed.

Notice the cool sound effects…

28 chapters is – or rather will be – a movie with 28 parts (“chapters”) that will be made by 28 different people or groups from around the world. The story is developed along the way, but will progress more or less in the same way as a regular short movie will, even though the actors and setting will change every 30-45 second. That is: Even though the actors and setting change every chapter, the story of the movie continues like nothing had changed.

28 chapters is one continious movie with 28 actors playing the same main caracter in 28 different locations around the world made by 28 different moviemakers.

As of today, six chapters are finished. So you can still have your 45 seconds of fame.

Or download it in better quality from Internet Archive (left sidebar).

The opening music is the beautiful Symphony No. 8 in B minor by Franz Schubert. Listen to it alone here.

…you just kind of figure everybody ought to have seen in order to have any sort of informed discussion about movies. They’re the common cultural currency of our time, the basic cinematic texts that everyone should know, at minimum, to be somewhat “movie-literate.”

- Jim Emerson

Here are the ones I have seen (a star in front of them):

* “2001: A Space Odyssey” (1968) Stanley Kubrick
“The 400 Blows” (1959) Francois Truffaut
* “8 1/2″ (1963) Federico Fellini
“Aguirre, the Wrath of God” (1972) Werner Herzog
* “Alien” (1979) Ridley Scott

“All About Eve” (1950) Joseph L. Mankiewicz
* “Annie Hall” (1977) Woody Allen
* “Apocalypse Now” (1979) Francis Ford Coppola*
* “Bambi” (1942) Disney
* “The Battleship Potemkin” (1925) Sergei Eisenstein

“The Best Years of Our Lives” (1946) William Wyler
“The Big Red One” (1980) Samuel Fuller
* “The Bicycle Thief” (1949) Vittorio De Sica
* “The Big Sleep” (1946) Howard Hawks
* “Blade Runner” (1982) Ridley Scott

* “Blowup” (1966) Michelangelo Antonioni
* “Blue Velvet” (1986) David Lynch
* “Bonnie and Clyde” (1967) Arthur Penn
* “Breathless” (1959 Jean-Luc Godard
“Bringing Up Baby” (1938) Howard Hawks

* “Carrie” (1975) Brian DePalma
* “Casablanca” (1942) Michael Curtiz
* “Un Chien Andalou” (1928) Luis Bunuel & Salvador Dali
“Children of Paradise” / “Les Enfants du Paradis” (1945) Marcel Carne
“Chinatown” (1974) Roman Polanski

* “Citizen Kane” (1941) Orson Welles
* “A Clockwork Orange” (1971) Stanley Kubrick
* “The Crying Game” (1992) Neil Jordan
“The Day the Earth Stood Still” (1951) Robert Wise
“Days of Heaven” (1978) Terence Malick

* “Dirty Harry” (1971) Don Siegel
“The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie” (1972) Luis Bunuel
* “Do the Right Thing” (1989 Spike Lee
* “La Dolce Vita” (1960) Federico Fellini
“Double Indemnity” (1944) Billy Wilder

* “Dr. Strangelove” (1964) Stanley Kubrick
“Duck Soup” (1933) Leo McCarey
* “E.T. — The Extra-Terrestrial” (1982) Steven Spielberg
* “Easy Rider” (1969) Dennis Hopper
* “The Empire Strikes Back” (1980) Irvin Kershner

* “The Exorcist” (1973) William Friedkin
* “Fargo” (1995) Joel & Ethan Coen
* “Fight Club” (1999) David Fincher
* “Frankenstein” (1931) James Whale
* “The General” (1927) Buster Keaton & Clyde Bruckman

* “The Godfather,” “The Godfather, Part II” (1972, 1974) Francis Ford Coppola
* “Gone With the Wind” (1939) Victor Fleming
* “GoodFellas” (1990) Martin Scorsese
* “The Graduate” (1967) Mike Nichols
* “Halloween” (1978) John Carpenter

* “A Hard Day’s Night” (1964) Richard Lester
“Intolerance” (1916) D.W. Griffith
“It’s a Gift” (1934) Norman Z. McLeod
“It’s a Wonderful Life” (1946) Frank Capra
* “Jaws” (1975) Steven Spielberg

“The Lady Eve” (1941) Preston Sturges
* “Lawrence of Arabia” (1962) David Lean
* “M” (1931) Fritz Lang
* “Mad Max 2″ / “The Road Warrior” (1981) George Miller
* “The Maltese Falcon” (1941) John Huston

“The Manchurian Candidate” (1962) John Frankenheimer
* “Metropolis” (1926) Fritz Lang
* “Modern Times” (1936) Charles Chaplin
* “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” (1975) Terry Jones & Terry Gilliam
* “Nashville” (1975) Robert Altman

“The Night of the Hunter” (1955) Charles Laughton
* “Night of the Living Dead” (1968) George Romero
* “North by Northwest” (1959) Alfred Hitchcock
* “Nosferatu” (1922) F.W. Murnau
“On the Waterfront” (1954) Elia Kazan

* “Once Upon a Time in the West” (1968) Sergio Leone
“Out of the Past” (1947) Jacques Tournier
“Persona” (1966) Ingmar Bergman
“Pink Flamingos” (1972) John Waters
* “Psycho” (1960) Alfred Hitchcock

* “Pulp Fiction” (1994) Quentin Tarantino
* “Rashomon” (1950) Akira Kurosawa
* “Rear Window” (1954) Alfred Hitchcock
* “Rebel Without a Cause” (1955) Nicholas Ray
“Red River” (1948) Howard Hawks

“Repulsion” (1965) Roman Polanski
“The Rules of the Game” (1939) Jean Renoir
* “Scarface” (1932) Howard Hawks
“The Scarlet Empress” (1934) Josef von Sternberg
* “Schindler’s List” (1993) Steven Spielberg

“The Searchers” (1956) John Ford
* “The Seven Samurai” (1954) Akira Kurosawa
* “Singin’ in the Rain” (1952) Stanley Donen & Gene Kelly
* “Some Like It Hot” (1959) Billy Wilder
“A Star Is Born” (1954) George Cukor

“A Streetcar Named Desire” (1951) Elia Kazan
* “Sunset Boulevard” (1950) Billy Wilder
* “Taxi Driver” (1976) Martin Scorsese
“The Third Man” (1949) Carol Reed
“Tokyo Story” (1953) Yasujiro Ozu

“Touch of Evil” (1958) Orson Welles
* “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre” (1948) John Huston
“Trouble in Paradise” (1932) Ernst Lubitsch
* “Vertigo” (1958) Alfred Hitchcock
* “West Side Story” (1961) Jerome Robbins/Robert Wise

“The Wild Bunch” (1969) Sam Peckinpah
“The Wizard of Oz” (1939) Victor Fleming

Lots of movies to see…

That’s 67 of 102. Which means that I have lots of great movies to see. If you see the post at Kottke, you’ll notice that some people think you’re lost in space if there’s a movie or two you haven’t seen. Lame thinking. It’s for fun.

How many did you see? Feel free to link to your own site with your results.

You also might want to try something similar with books.

Reuben Lucius Goldberg (July 4, 1883 – December 7, 1970) was a cofounder and first president of the National Cartoonists Society. He is one of the most famous cartoonists in history. He earned lasting fame for his “Rube Goldberg machines” – devices that are exceedingly complex and perform very simple tasks in a very indirect and convoluted way.

…

A Rube Goldberg machine or device is any exceedingly complex apparatus that performs a very simple task in a very indirect and convoluted way. Rube devised and drew several such pataphysical devices. The best examples of his machines have an anticipation factor. The fact that something so wacky is happening can only be topped by it happening in a suspenseful manner. A Rube Goldberg machine usually has at least ten steps.

So I learned something new today too. The Wikipedia article has lots of references to Rube Goldberg machines in movies and tv series: Wallace and Gromit, 4400, Final destination, Tom and Jerry, Looney tunes, Back to the future, Home alone, Delicatessen and The city of lost children.

The famous Honda ad (download) is an example of a Rube Goldberg machine.

And then you have this wonderful collection:

If you want to download it, use KeepVid, and paste this YouTube URL into KeepVid. There’s also a bookmarklet to directly download videos from most videosharing sites (Google video, YouTube, iFilm, MySpace, PutFile etc.)

Update

The TV series spin-off of the Stars Wars film franchise will run to at least 100 episodes, according to producer Rick McCallum.
He told BBC Radio 1 the writing team would soon be meeting to start on the project, which would begin filming in 2008 and be ready the same year.

BBC has more here and here. Seems like each episode will be an hour.

The series will be set between episodes three and four of the film saga. It would cover the 20 years in the life of Luke Skywalker growing up that remains a mystery to most film-goers.

Also check out Walker, Brokeback Ranger on YouTube…

This is awesome. I think it justifies the whole thing, and I’m only four minutes into it. The first appearance of Palpatine in TPM and AOTC is ON THE SAME FRAME. And at the same time in ROTJ, Vader is telling Moff Jerjerrod that the Emperor is coming.

And, as you can see, a nice description, movie poster icon, director and cast.

The next – and final step – would be to add the actual Quicktime movies as enclosures.

(from the HD version of the Ice Age 2 movie)

There’s now an RSS feed (as Lifehacker wrote about yesterday). But the posts in the feed doesn’t point to the individual movie pages, but to apple.com/trailers.

I asked the Mac trailers team about this:

“We are still shuffling the content around and want to make sure you have a
clear landing point from our new RSS. As soon as we finish with the
movement, we will take another look at the links in the RSS.”

Ok, so we’ll wait. I hope they will fix it. It would be quite strange if news sites pointed all their posts to the main page, and not the individual pages.

Dave Winer didn’t like it. I haven’t seen it yet, but saw the first nine minutes on Vividas today. More movies should be promoted this way: Put up high quality clips on the web. The first 10 minutes is an honest thing to do. It gives quite a different impression than the promo.

Return of the jedi was Times Roman, Rocky was Franklin Gothic and Titanic was Trajan. Nice to know when you’re making posters for your latest iMovie piece of art…

Number two: Success in the 80s
Both had tremendous success in the 80s. Duran Duran released their first single “Planet earth” in 1981, and made their last performance for years at the Live Aid concert in Philadelphia, July 13, 1985. They sold over 70 millons records and had a 18 Billboard hot 100 hits in the US.

Their biggest hits were:

• Girls on film
• Hungry like the wolf
• Save a prayer
• Rio
• Is there something I should know?
• Union of the snake
• New moon on monday
• The reflex
• A view to a kill

The first Star Wars movie is the most successful movie at the cinamas worldwide from the 70s and the 80s. It has made whopping $800,000,000! George Lucas made the smartest move so far in the movie history by getting the rights for merchandise. The Internet Movie Database (IMDB): “George Lucas insisted that he have merchandising rights to the film. Studio executives, seeing little if any profit from such merchandise, gave him the rights for free. Star Wars related merchandise has since generated many millions of dollars in sales, allowing Lucas to make movies completely independent of the studio system he decried. Merchandising rights are now a major part of any film contract.”

The Star Wars movies are:

• “Star Wars: A new hope” (episode 4) IMDB | Starwars.com | Amazon US
• “The empire strikes back” (episode 5) IMDB | Starwars.com | Amazon US
• “Return of the Jedi” (episode 6) IMDB | Starwars.com | Amazon US
• “The Phantom menance” (episode 1) IMDB | Starwars.com | Amazon US
• “Attack of the clones” (episode 2) IMDB | Starwars.com | Amazon US
• “Revenge of the Sith” (episode 3) IMDB | Starwars.com

Number three: Gained weight
Both have gained weight. Lead singer Simon Le Bon is not the slim, sexy guy he was in the 80s. Of course he isn’t. The man is almost 48, but tries hard to still be 25. He calles himself “the sexiest singer in the world” when presenting the band members at the end of the concert. Not. But he has a charm and an appeal that still is there, even though in a more “Harry” way. He tried two spins on stage, and didn’t try number three, as he was close to falling on the second.

The first Star Wars movie were made with small models and layers of celluloid. In the battle scenes you see a couple of space ships at the time, or maybe 15-20 if they’re far away. The whole movie has “only” about 200 FX shots. And there’s even a potato and shoe used as asteroids. The movie costed about $18,000,000 to make.

In “Revenge of the Sith” (episode 3) you see like 2 000 space ships outside Akakin and Padme’s penthouse everytime you see a window (which is about all the time). And in the battle scenes there are literally thousands of elements whoosing around, making your head spin almost as nice as Simon Le Bon does. The movie has about 2 200 FX shots and costed $115,000,000 to make.

Number four: The 80s were the best
Both have a history of albums/movies ranging from the 70s to this day. But most fans and critics would rate the albums made in the 80s highest, and the two Star Wars from the 80s highest. On the IMDB top 250 list, the first two Star Wars movies are rated 8.7 out of 10, at 8th and 10th place. “Return of the Jedi” is number 127 with 8.1 out of 10. Episodes 1, 2 and 3 are not on the list.

The new Duran Duran album Astronaut has got some nice reviews, but nothing similiar to the reviews and sales of the golden 80s.

Number five: Both feature a wookiee
Chewbacca and Andy Taylor. Say no more.

And here’s the list of every single Homer ever said “Mmmm…” (I’ll throw in the D’oh! list for free as well).

When Lucas picked the number four for the first episode he’d film, he may have made a mistake. He locked himself into three prior episodes and he simply didn’t have the content to fill three movies.

Randsinrepose looks forward to Star Wars III, the movie where all the good stuff is put.

Also have a look at Millimeter’s article Mixing a masterpiece. Did you know that Chewbecca is a walrus? And that Luke Skywalker’s landspeeder is the roar of Los Angeles’ congested Harbor Freeway, recorded through a vacuum-cleaner pipe? Sven at Filmsound.org has lots of other articles on the sounds of Star Wars.

“I have officially retired from the business of explaining what I meant by 42. It was just a joke. End of story.”, says Douglas in the netmeeting. Douglas also answers why he has a “thing” for Norway: “You live here. You tell me.”.

So podcasting it is. Add Paris Hilton, and trio is complete: Horror movie, overhyped young female star that does “late night” home movies, and technology that bloggers love to talk and blog about.

House of Wax podcasts – featuring Paris Hilton – coming soon to an iPod near you.

“It seems odd, don’t you think, that the quality of the food should vary inversely with the brightness of the lighting. Makes you wonder what culinary heights the kitchen staff could rise to if you confined them to perpetual darkness. Could be worth a try, I think.”

A Korean family watched me wiping my tears of laughter, and couldn’t resist coming over to me, asking what I was reading that made laugh and cry.

So you can guess that I was a bit worried when I heard that a new film was in production. The 3rd trailer from the movie is out. I’m not worried anymore.

The trailer is very funny, and if you ever are going to make trailers for blockbuster Hollywood movies… Well, there you have your recipe. If I should be sleeping outside a cinema for six weeks, I would rather do it for this movie than “Star wars III” (which I propably will like a lot too).

Hopefully, cinemas will be serving Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters on the premiere night, which is described as “having your brain smashed out by a slice of lemon wrapped around a large gold brick.” We’re not talking Gin Tonic’s here…

BTW, Marvin looks excellent too!

UPDATE: After reading about how Hugh MacLeod found a former friend of his through blogging, I’m gonna push my luck, and try for the impossible. Do you know the South-Korean family that asked me about the Douglas Adams book in Copenhagen in… it must have been 1989? The man told me he was working as an engineer. That’s all the information I have (I told you: Impossible).

The Connery films were too slow, Roger Moore made the whole thing look like a cartoon, and Timothy Dalton didn’t have the right combination of macho and style that Brosnan has.

Tarantino wants to direct the next Bond movie himself, but didn’t get the job. I wonder if he could make a good Bond-movie, or just a Tarantino-movie – with Bond running around in it?