War Of The Worlds

John_Hudson said:
88 years old; this woman was a sage.
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It doesn't work with everybody, John... Sad but true.

Sage people are rare and precious.

One thing is sure, Life teaches you ; and if you're enough open in your heart and in your mind you can learn.
(and write better screenplays !!!)

ps : condoleances for your grandma
 
She was gold. The stories this woman would tell me; the depression, WW2, the 60's, my mother.... Haha

And when I said that Portman did nothing; I did not mean nothing. She has some talent (and those photos are cool) just comparable thats all.
 
Great movie. Great special effects. The end was wrapped up kind of fast. Most movies have scientist working out some plan. But you know we couldn't beat something like that anyway. ..

Still I wonder way the force fields stop working?

I liked the train going by on fire. The crossing gates coming down and the dinging made me thing of Close Encounters.

My wife thought the movie sucked. But she doesn't like alien movies.
 
Zim said:
Still I wonder way the force fields stop working?
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Thats a good question and this is what I came up with....

The Aliens did their invasion thing. They figured they had us beat and turned em off. They come out of the Tripods and start looking around. Whats to fear?

Makes sense to me
 
Let me see if I understand this.

Some people don't like this film because it DOESN'T use conventional narrative structure? WTF?

If it did, you'd STILL complain that it was too Hollywood.

Some people are cranks who just like to get attention by complaining. Nothing is good enough for them because they're soooo above everything. They think that if they can slam Spielberg or anyone else that actually does something, they are somehow greater than them. This attitude betrays insecurity more than anything else.

If you're going to critique something, point out what works as well (as many people here are doing), otherwise shut up -- we're not impressed.

(Okay, my chest feels lighter now.)
 
At the halfway point I thought to myself “wow, this is a ten, easily!” The movie starts off so strong, so scary, so well-made! Cinema at it’s absolute greatest! My mouth had to have been hanging open for about a half an hour.

When the aliens first show themselves and begin obliterating everything in sight and vaporizing humans into dust – oh my! Just really downright scary and amazing. When Tom and family board a minivan and go barreling down the highway – some of the best camerawork I’ve ever seen (goes for the whole show)!

When the same van is attacked by a mob resembling zombies I was just shocked with happiness (“is this a Spielberg movie?”) I can totally see this happening. People would just go nuts and not give a **** about anyone. Sure they would destroy the van just to get it, because like someone said earlier, we are just a bunch of animals, and in that situation we would lose our minds and go bezerk! We would be a complete mess as a race and that makes me a bit sad, but anyhow...

What a let-down then to get to the last third of the movie, lead by a loony Tim Robbins spouting off post-9/11 political commentary (this has to be the only reason he joined the cast), with a sugar-coated ending that doesn’t match the tone of the rest of the film.

I am disappointed in the end, but I could watch that first two-thirds endless times. Nice work Speilberg, but you know there is NO RULE that says everything has to be so bright and shiny at the end of every movie.

The family waiting in the doorway, grandma standing there with her new right-back-from-the-salon hair ready to say "soup's on the stove!" why? why? WHY!?

8 outta 10, but man I wanted to give it a perfect!
 
everybody's marking on how the FX was phenomonal, but the real question (for me as an aspiring editor) is what did they use to edit the film? and what program was used for the CG? !!!!!Cause after seeing that movie, I'm about to buy the CG program regardless of the price!!!
 
I guessing that they cut the film on an Avid. It's also likely that the FX were done in Houdini. The only way to find out for sure at this point would be to find out which FX house they used, and then see what the facility uses.
 
Chance is quite right. I talked with a compositing artist who had a friend who worked at ILM. They model using the standard tools: XSI, Maya, Max, etc. then do the rest in a combination of other software (renderman, I think) and proprietary tools. He said that the final product was made about "35% on availible software, 65% with custom code" or something....

Jlucan, you can probably buy most of the software needed to create similar effects (ILM actually struggled a great deal with this one because of the camera movement and cinematography style from what I've read, though, but you can always shoot differently). I'd assume any major 3d program, boujou or an equivalent motion tracker, z-brush, rendering in mental ray (included in most packages), then shake/fire/after effects for compositing and photoshop for textures would be all you need and availible all together for under 10 or 20 thousand, but the skills you need would be WORTH hundreds of thousands a year to even approach that quality of visual effects. The render times would also hurt.

I wish it weren't true, but there's a reason this movie looks so amazing and it's not magic. The special effects were a massive undertaking in terms of technical and financial resources put into them.

Also, I don't know that much about visual effects so take this all with a grain of salt. I have a friend who's really into 3D and reads up on it and we discuss it sometimes, I also talked with the son of the guy who did the special effects for the X-men movies (he uses Maya), and I've had a few conversations with random peope I've met, but all this information is second hand. Also, I can't do 3d modelling for my life and I've tried. So hard....so very hard. A very frustrating and rarely rewarding experience for me, but I have trouble thinking in three dimensions, or even editing in two.

As always, cgtalk.com is the best for visual effects information and a great starting point for finding out information on how movies were made.
 
THanks for the info....reason being is that I work with 3ds max 7 and after effects 6.5 and even did a neat project in it that amazed alot of people. I just want to expand on my skills using the software the pros use so maybe one day I could work in Hollywood.
 
Jlucan said:
THanks for the info....reason being is that I work with 3ds max 7 and after effects 6.5 and even did a neat project in it that amazed alot of people. I just want to expand on my skills using the software the pros use so maybe one day I could work in Hollywood.
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Max is a good program, I don't do much, but have had a lot of contact with it (lived with 3 CGI guys).

Isn't Maya stills the core for photorealistic GCI? But like Policar said, they will be using a huge amount of specially written software and massive render farms! There is little chance you could beat them, so sounds like a good idea to join them! I should think it is a pretty good wage being a top CGI guru.

Can we see your project? Sounds interesting. :)
 
Max is mostly used in the gaming industry, Maya is more prominent in film work.

I prefer Max, have used it since version 3.1.

I'd also like to see your animation. I was an animator before I decided what I really wanted to do was tell stories as a filmmaker.
 
John_Hudson said:
Thats a good question and this is what I came up with....

The Aliens did their invasion thing. They figured they had us beat and turned em off. They come out of the Tripods and start looking around. Whats to fear?

Makes sense to me
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Or the virus made them go loco and forget to activate/maintain them, like driving a car - if you go loco your gonna crash!
 
ST_ said:
Or the virus made them go loco and forget to activate/maintain them, like driving a car - if you go loco your gonna crash!
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the blood they sucked out of humans made them die. The aliens and their machines worked together somehow and when they started to die so did the machines.

I also like the part where the people were in the little baskets. Then one by one they got pulled into the tripod to have the blood sucked out of them. Aliens vampires!!

The sound for the movie I thought was really good.
 
I loved the film, minus the end. But I had two big questions:

1) It's revealed somewhere in act 2 that the aliens buried the tripods millions of years ago, before there were even humans walking the planet. What would be the point of burying the tripods in an attempt to take over earth by force if there were not even any humans around at the time?

2) Why was the van the only car that worked? Maybe it did after the first tripod arrived because the car was in maintenence. Perhaps the battery was out and it was put back in afterwards. But, seeing that the "lightning storm" knocks out the electricity, how did the van or the news truck work after the storm came to Cruise's wife's house, where the plane lost power and crashed?
 
vertigo said:
I loved the film, minus the end. But I had two big questions:

1) It's revealed somewhere in act 2 that the aliens buried the tripods millions of years ago, before there were even humans walking the planet. What would be the point of burying the tripods in an attempt to take over earth by force if there were not even any humans around at the time?

2) Why was the van the only car that worked? Maybe it did after the first tripod arrived because the car was in maintenence. Perhaps the battery was out and it was put back in afterwards. But, seeing that the "lightning storm" knocks out the electricity, how did the van or the news truck work after the storm came to Cruise's wife's house, where the plane lost power and crashed?
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Remember Steve is looking at this from a evolution view point. I would have just said about 5,000 years ago they buried the tripods. There were people here who would breed and in a few thousands years the aliens would swing back by and fire up the tripods.

Why the van and TV crew van worked? They replaced the celinod.

Also this whole story takes place over about 48 hours or less before the tripods and aliens start to die. So really they didn't have time to destroy the whole earth or Boston.
 
vertigo, I like your first question.

You'd think if they wanted our planet, it'd be much easier to take it over 5,000 years ago before an 'intelligent' life form had evolved. Of course germs would still take em out... Silly aliens!
 
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