• THE HOBBIT Shooting At 48 Frames Per Second!

    // Gradly // blog, LOTR, Movies, News, Rants & Raves, Tech. 2 Responses

    James Cameron recently talked about how the future of filmmaking will be shooting films at a higher frame rate, which will up the visual presentation of the film. This is something he plans on doing with Avatar 2 and 3. He talked about how Peter Jackson was thinking of doing it for The Hobbit and now it looks like he’s actually going to move forward with it. It was recently discovered that the director is currently shooting The Hobbit at a higher frame rate of 48 frames per second. The industry standard has always been 24 frames per second, but it looks like that is all going to change.

    All of this come from The Hobbit‘s cinematographer Andrew Lesnie:

    – Being shot on 30 RED EPIC cameras
    – Using Zeiss Ultra Primes, Master Primes and Optimo zoom lenses (would expect no less)
    – Shooting at 47.96 frames per second
    – Using 3ality Digital rigs.

    So why 48 fps and not 60? Cameron had said that one of the reasons why Jackson didn’t choose the higher frame rate was because he didn’t want to select the wrong frame rate if the industry went to the alternative. So it looks like the industry is going to move forward with 48 fps, which mean Cameron will most likely be shooting Avatar 2 and 3 in 48 fps as well. The fact of the matter is “60 fps would be significantly more expensive to implement for the modest visual gains.”

  • Harry Potter Finale To Get Four Different Endings For Malfoy Family

    // Gradly // blog, Movies, News, Rants & Raves 1 Response

    It looks like the second part of the final installment in the Harry Potter saga will turn out to be more surprising than we thought, even for the actors themselves.

    Four different endings have been shot for the Malfoy family, as revealed to MTV by Helen McCrory, who plays Narcissa, mother of Draco and wife of Lucius Malfoy (Harry’s biggest antagonists after Lord Voldemort).

    Spoilers Ahead

    Whoever has read the final book knows: the story is complicated, there’s quite a lot going on, and we can only guess that the producers must be having a tough time trying to piece everything together and make it look as striking as the audience expects it to be. It’s the last of seven hugely successful movies; it has to be perfect.

    However, Harry Potter fans will be chewing their nails with worry after these news (well, at least the hardcore ones will) thinking what “four different finals – and three different battles!” could imply. Slightly modified lines? Different outfits? Harry screaming “levio-ssa” instead of “levio-sa” (yes, we know, we never got that either)?

    In truth, they know that something much worse lurks behind those words, in the form of the ominous fairy of literary adaptations who could end up changing the ending of the story – or any other part of it. It has happened before, and it didn’t leave fans particularly impressed.

    The movie is out in July this year, and the anticipation is growing exponentially. Helen McCrory remains quite tight lipped, and swears she doesn’t know which ending will eventually make it onto the big screen -and far from wanting to spread rumours, we don’t know either.

    Bonnie “Ginny Weasley” Wright says it’s “really weird”. Let’s just hope the only shock we have will be due to seeing Harry, Ron and Hermione made to look like they’re 40.

    Report by Margherita Pellegrino

  • New Photo of Hugo Weaving as Red Skull From Captain America [Updated]

    // Gradly // blog, Movies, News, Rants & Raves, Superheroes No Responses

    Paramount Pictures and Marvel Studios have debuted a new photo of Hugo Weaving as the Red Skull in Joe Johnson‘s Captain America: The First Avenger. Weaving looks like a total bad ass as this villain and I love the character design and costume.

    In this summer’s Captain America: The First Avenger, Chris Evans plays a scrawny, sickly wannabe soldier during World War II who gets an injection that turns him into a super-warrior. A similar experiment was also established by the Nazis, but turned their test subject — the weapons developer Johann Schmidt (Hugo Weaving) — into the ghastly Red Skull.

    The action adventure war film stars Chris Evans, Hayley Atwell, Weaving, Sebastian Stan, Toby Jones, Samuel L. Jackson, Dominic Cooper, Tommy Lee Jones, Stanley Tucci, Neal McDonough and Samuel L. Jackson. It’s set tobe released on July 22nd 2011.

    Update:

    A Higher-resolution Image added

    [via EW]

  • New Autobot ‘Sentinel Prime’ & More Spoilers of Transformers: Dark Of The Moon

    // Gradly // blog, Movies, News, Rants & Raves, Superheroes No Responses

    We still haven’t seen an actual trailer for Michael Bay’s Transformers: Dark of the Moon yet, just some awesome Super Bowl spot & TV spot.

    In the meantime, Empire debuted a new cover featuring an Autobot called Sentinel Prime, who’s a “big brother and mentor to Optimus Prime.” Obviously he’s going to have to come in and help out. Other news from the mag is that TF3 won’t have “dorky humor” or “sand“, but they will give “weight” to the bots again: “when robots die, they’re really going to die and we’re gonna show that.” Damn.

    Bay describes this third installment as “kind of like a spy movie.” Bay also reveals the Ferrari is a Decepticon named Dreadbox, and there’s a bot that “the scale on one of them is jawdropping.” Can’t wait for more!

    Sentinel Prime – An Autobot who will debut as a red/black Rosenbauer Panther fire truck. Optimus Prime’s brother & Mentor.

    Transformers: Dark of the Moon is again directed by everyone’s favorite explosive director, Michael Bay, of the previous two Transformers movies as well as Bad Boys I and II, The Rock, Armageddon, Pearl Harbor and The Island. The screenplay was written by Ehren Kruger, who co-wrote the Revenge of the Fallen script but went solo this time, and also worked on The Ring, The Skeleton Key and Brothers Grimm screenplays. Paramount is bringing Transformers 3 to theaters everywhere in 3D starting July 1st, 2011 this summer!

    Michael Bay shared some plot details for Transformers: Dark of the Moon and they contain some pretty big spoilers.

    Spoilers

    • There will be no sand.
    • There will be no dorky humor (“We wanted to make the movie much more serious, more adult.”)
    • When a robot dies, it will actually die. And that death will be shown onscreen.
    • The robots will be given more ‘weight’ in the story (“They were missed in movie two. We’ve given them a strong back-story and pathos.”)
    • Sentinel Prime is “A big brother and mentor to Optimus Prime”.
    • The Ferrari is a Decepticon nicknamed ‘Dreadbox’.
    • Starscream and Shockwave will have new companions. “The scale on one of them is jaw dropping” – “It will be ‘what the Hell was that thing?”
    • The Apollo 11 ‘incident’ show in the teaser is a big government secret.
    • There will be no army. Chicago is left in the hands of the Autobots (but some heroes sneak in through the back-door so to speak).
    • The human gliders are used because they slip under the Decepticons’ radar – as do humans – so they’ll be the people who can hammer it to the ‘Cons and create an opening for the Autobots.