From Industrial Light and Magic:

Not sure where this stuff came from but it’s not from a production we’ve worked on. Looks like someone’s personal work – ILM doesn’t put © lines on our work like in those images – we don’t own the work – the clients do.

The images are a mixture of drawn and rendered photos, and they seem to match up with the review posted of the Jurassic Park IV script. For those unfamiliar, here’s a basic synopsis of the film: Main character Nick Harris travels to Isla Nublar on a secret mission for John Hammond, where he is captured by excavaraptors and security working for Grendel Corporation, who owns the island. Harris is then taken to a facility in Switzerland, where he discovers that Hammond has the brilliant ideal to (illegally) mix dino DNA with dogs and humans, creating some pretty formidable beasts.

The five hybrids are called deinonychus, which kinda sorta resemble a T-rex, only they’ve been laced with dog DNA to make them obedient. In addition to perhaps being loyal, the deinonychus’ are also super strong and fast, with keen hearing and smelling abilities, and improved forelegs, since we all know those are a T-rex’s weak spot. Specifically, the hybrids have longer, more dexterous fingers and stronger forelegs. The best part? They’re bugged with an implant that offers a shot of adrenaline or serotonin when needed.

At the end of it all, the script makes room for Jurassic Park V, and, according to Ain’t it Cool’s review, involves set pieces “much bigger than anything we’ve seen in the other films.” After all this, it isn’t surprising to see why the movie was nixed. After all, human-dog-dinosaur hybrids with adrenaline-shooting implants, ripped biceps, and a face only a mother could love being used to destroy the existing dinosaur population seems both awesome and entirely insane.

[via NeoGAF]

The name of the game comes from a criminal organization based below the surface of the planet of Coruscant by the name of Level 1313 – that many levels from the core of the planet, of course. What you’re going to see is not the same force-stuffed Jedi clone game you’ve seen in essentially every presentation the Star Wars video game universe has shown before, but a reaping of the seeds the fan world has seen sewn since 1977. Here you must traverse the Star Wars universe with your own human gadgets and skills alone.

NOTE: See our talk with Industrial Light and Magic’s Visual Effects Supervisor Pablo Helmen last month as we spoke about the next-level power of ILM on Battleship.

You are a bounty hunter, the woefully smelly lower levels of the city cum planet Coruscant are you playground, and you’ve only to pull the trigger. According to a talk LucasFilm’s best had with GameTrailers, the development behind this game has already been massively extensive. They’ve done motion capture with real human beings that includes not just body movements, but facial features as well. The same technology Industrial Light and Magic used for motion capture on the Avengers – that’s used here too. Mark Ruffalo’s Hulk? Same stuff!

Advanced lighting will also play a factor in the game with LucasArts and ILM working to bring not only an engaging world to the gamer and the viewer of this environment, but extreme realism as well.

How does that face look to you? Crafted and chiseled enough to be your own?

Paul Meegan, President of LucasArts will be helping present the game at E3 next week, and is more than just a little pumped about its release.

“We’re excited to share one of the projects LucasArts has been hard at work developing. Star Wars 1313 dives into a part of the Star Wars mythos that we’ve always known existed, but never had a chance to visit. We are committed to bringing the best gameplay experience and visual fidelity to life and I truly believe the work we are showcasing at E3 will speak for itself.” – Meegan

With an ESRB Rating Pending, you know good and well this game is sealed up tighter than a transport dunking through Naboo. Stay tuned for more action – soon!

The film Battleship was indeed conjured up by Hasbro as they own the rights to the timeless board game. Besides a couple of nods to the fact that the board game exists inside the film, there’s nothing to connect the two – save the battleship, of course. The visual effects in this film are second to none, and there are a handful of excellent or otherwise famous actors onboard, but know this right out of the gate: the most interesting character you’re going to meet is the USS Missouri. Keep that name in mind as we go through a quick summary of the film for context.

Plot Rundown

Take one part Air Force One, two parts Independence Day, and add in about 10 parts patriotic love for the Navy, and you’ve got an idea of what you’re in for in Battleship. One of several main protagonists in the film, Alex Hopper, (played by Taylor Kitsch) gets in a fight several years before the main bulk of the plot of the film, meets a girl, and is convinced to Join the Navy. At the same time in an unrelated event (also before the main plot line’s time) NASA sends a signal to a planet, the signal originating here on Earth in Hawaii.

Fast forward 7 years to the present, 2012, and both Alex and his brother Stone are stationed aboard Navy Destroyer ships sitting comfortably in Hawaii – the plot thickens! The girl from earlier in the plot, Samantha Shane (played by Brooklyn Decker,) is revealed as the daughter of COMPACFLT Admiral Shane (Liam Neeson,) the Admiral being a superior of both of the brothers. Alex is set up for a coming-of-age-type situation, there’s love in the air, and five alien ships plummet to the Earth.

The rest of the film takes place (for the most part) in battle sequences in both Hawaii and Hong Kong – where one of the five ships has made berth. Of course the Aliens want war, the humans want to kill the aliens, and everyone has an awesome time getting blown up. In comes the most interesting character in the whole film as the new improved Destroyer ships prove useless against the alien threat. In comes the USS Missouri, aka the Mighty Mo, aka one gigantic battleship which in real life acted as surrender site for the Japanese fleet in World War II.

This ship is so interesting, one of the viral ads for the movie was dedicated to it alone. Have a peek:

And all the bad guys get killed and all the good guys win in the end and it’s a great time had by all – as you should well expect.

Why you should see it

I can’t overemphasize the idea that this is an effects-driven film. If you want to be impressed by the level at which the film industry – specifically ILM here – is able to operate on here in 2012, jump right in on Battleship. In our chat with ILM Visual Effects Supervisor Pablo Helman, we got an early taste of what we were in for this past week:

“It’s a ride. The visual effects work looks great – it’s a popcorn movie – and in regards to how some people ask me: can I actually turn off that part of me that actually just enjoys the movie? It’s definitely something you want to do here, you want to sit back, turn yourself off, and just be surprised and wowed by the images.” – Helman

BONUS: The soundtrack is headed by Steve Jablonsky, perhaps known best for having this same role on the Transformers series. Jablonsky composed the music for this film’s soundtrack, these compositions featuring guitarist Tom Morello – best known as lead guitarist and activist from the band that once was Rage Against the Machine.

Why you might want to skip it

In contrast with several high-impact science fiction films, action films, and even straight up love stories released this summer, the plot line for this movie has not been put under guard basically whatsoever. You can read the ending to the film on Wikipedia, for crying out loud. As a result, you’re going to get exactly what you payed for: explosions, gunfire, aliens death, and lots and lots of robots. If you’re looking for all the visual effects with an added bonus of a storyline that’s truly engaging, head to the Avengers. Industrial Light and Magic made that film a visual masterpiece as well – double down for the summer!

Wrap-up

Battleship is a movie made for filmgoers looking to pick up some snacks, select their favorite theater seat, and tune out. This film is nearly pure entertainment, with just a hint of storyline twist and love interest to keep all parties attending the film from having a terrible time – that’s your action-hating date we’re talking about here. Make no mistake here though, of course, there is no having a terrible time at this film – it’s all fun and certainly brings on the big-money next-level action film power at right around an hour and a half long – in theaters right this second.

Don’t forget to check out the rest of our ever-expanding [Entertainment hub] for the biggest premieres of the summer and the hottest interviews with the people bringing you the futuristic technology these films need – now and into the future!

Industrial Light and Magic were stationed on the Battleship project with Helman on staff 10 weeks before Principal Photography with Effects Supervisor Grady Cofer on up to a year before that, Helman putting what he describes as essentially two years of his life into the film. Because of technology advancements in communication, especially with streaming and sharing (again, such as we’ve seen earlier this week via NVIDIA), the time they’ve spent is dwarfed by the amount of time they used to spend just a handful of years ago on projects such as Star Wars.

*Pablo Helman worked on both Star Wars Episode I and II, nabbing an Academy Award Nomination with ILM for Best Visual Effects for “Attack of the Clones”, just so you know!

Helman: “We’re moving into this global market where the world starts to be a lot smaller than it used to be. We’re very quickly seeing that we have artists working in other parts of the world – and it’s really good to have access to libraries or databases or assets that are in our servers at ILM as opposed to the different parts [of the world] where these people are.”

The difference between working on Star Wars Episode II back in 2002 and Battleship here in 2012 has the same basic core – getting what the writers and director wants, their vision, onto the screen. Helman noted though that in working on both of those films (and films like Terminator 3, Jarhead, and Indiana Jones in-between,) he’s found the way ILM and th rest of the industry go about making it all happen has changed.

“I have seen a change in the way things are accrued and in how things are reviewed. For instance, the world is a lot smaller place than it was in 2002 when I did [Star Wars] Episode II. Things have changed. Now I find myself working with people across countries and across time zones.

That when I was working on Star Wars was [still] kind of a dream that we had.”

Working across countries and time zones is but one of the elements that is considered relatively normal here on a project such as Battleship, explained Helman. He went on to note that the techniques which allow for quick production we’re seeing here in 2012 are all extremely new – and make for speed like we’ve never seen before.

“When I started in this business 20 years ago, technology was obviously a part of what we were doing, but things change. They change every 3 years or so. About 5 years ago things started moving a lot faster – things would change ever 6 or 7 months, then every 3 months, and now every week there is something different, there is something that’s a new R&D (research and development) project that we have or something completely different [technology-wise] that we are working on.

So now even though we’re doing basically the same thing which is fulfilling the director’s vision, the tools have changed. And the speed at which we accomplish those effects has increased.

The post-production times have also shrunk. War of the Worlds was a project I was also working on that was done in 3 months which is was a record – but because of the volume – War of the Worlds was 249 shots of visual effects, where Battleship has like 1,400, with a post-production period of about 8 months which is on the short end of things. Things are changing very quickly.”

Battleship comes out tomorrow across the United States, many theaters showing it at midnight for those fanatics amongst who simply cannot get enough awesome blockbuster battle action, but it’s of course not the first time the crew has seen the final product in the studio. Speaking on what he’d seen already Helman gave us his first impressions as well as the impressions of those close to him on what the film is bringing to the tablet this week.

“It’s a ride. The visual effects work looks great – it’s a popcorn movie – and in regards to how some people ask me: can I actually turn off that part of me that actually just enjoys the movie? It’s definitely something you want to do here, you want to sit back, turn yourself off, and just be surprised and wowed by the images.

The images look great and I think people can recognize that the bar has been raised in terms of water and creatures and destruction. It’s difficult to do things in a really big scale – it’s very difficult because we are so attuned to water, for example, we as humans know exactly what water looks like so it’s very difficult to do that, but the reaction has been very positive.”

As a bit of a bonus we made sure to ask how it was for Helman and ILM to work with the director of this film, Peter Berg, to get an idea of what we’ll be getting in terms of overall vision. As it turned out, nothing but positive things are coming from the ILM camp on how this film has been directed – passion all around!

“It was great [working with Berg] – he’s a very spontaneous kind of a guy. He’s very organic and goes very much by his gut feeling. He’s got a very much ‘in your face’ sort of a directing way and he put a lot of work into this film especially because this subject is very dear to his heart. He loves the navy and he loves boats, and being on the water and it’s been great to work with such a passionate filmmaker. Also he’s a great actor, by the way, so he works great with the actors and he has a great sense of spectacle as well.”

Again check out the film starting this week in theaters across the nation and let us know how you like it! Also don’t forget to hit our [Entertainment hub] for all things film and more in the comings weeks and on into the future as well. Stay tuned!

What NVIDIA and Industrial Light & Magic had to offer this week on stage at GTC was more than just a couple of videos. Cofer broke down his situation like so: “all of my data is localized at ILM, a lot of my work is presentation, and I need to go to LA and show some film. Now, I need to break everything down, but I don’t have access to how it was made.” He continued that because he needed more often to not to simply show work, not necessarily to work with the video itself, he needed a next-generation solution.

Popping out a MacBook Air, Cofer clicked to get to his simple workstation desktop. From there, he noted, he could “show you a live scene running Maya from ILM’s offices in the Presidio.” Cofer noted that “over the course of the year we [ILM] had five weeks and 500 shots left – a hundred shots a week.” Working with a virtual desktop on the MacBook and NVIDIA Kepler architecture, sculpting these scenes from anywhere on the planet virtually.

Pulling up an application called Nuke next, Cofer showed a running scene from Battleship with “shredders” flying through the air towards a ship in the sea. Cofer demonstrates that he’s able to remotely access the data which allows him to adjust the film that can move the shredder devices through the air in near real time, “accessing terabytes of information remotely.”

Finally, Cofer shows of a display of 100 screens showing streaming video at once, one one workstation. This power of virtualization is made possible with NVIDIA’s Kepler architecture and is made real with technology that is live today. Check out the rest of our NVIDIA coverage from this week through the timeline below and let us know what you’re looking forward to in the world of graphics processing now!

Also take a look at NVIDIA’s live stream of this event where we’ve picked up a couple of images that you see here in this post – thanks NVIDIA!