Teeth on the Floor: Summer 2011

I love going to the movies. I read up on all the latest news, as often as I can. I came upon an article from the LA Times, where director Jon Favreau had said,

It’s Omaha Beach, it’s going to be a blood bath. There’s never been a summer like this next summer. It’s going to be bloody. As we were sticking thumb tacks in a calendar we realized that this is going to be looked back upon as Omaha Beach. [The list is] pretty staggering. There’s not a weekend where there won’t be teeth on the floor.

It seemed a little dramatic. And then, I took the time to actually compile the list.

APRIL
4/15 - Scream 4

4/29 - Fast Five

MAY
5/6 - Thor

5/13 - Priest (based on comic)

5/20 - Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides

5/27 - The Hangover 2, Kung Fu Panda 2, The Tree of Life (dir. Terence Malick)

JUNE
6/3 - X-Men: First Class, Beginners (Ewan McGregor, Christopher Plummer)

6/10 - Super 8

6/17 - Green Lantern

6/24 - Cars 2, Rise of the Apes

JULY
7/1 - Transformers: Dark of the Moon, Larry Crowne (Tom Hanks)

7/8 - Zookeeper (Kevin James)

7/15 - Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part II; Winnie The Pooh

7/22 - Captain America: The First Avenger

7/29 - Cowboys & Aliens, Horrible Bosses (dir. Seth Gordon, King of Kong)

AUGUST
8/5 - The Smurfs

8/12 - 30 Minutes or Less (dir. Ruben Fleischer, Zombieland), Mr. Popper’s Penguins (Jim Carrey)

8/19 - Conan the Barbarian, Fright Night, Spy Kids 4: All the Time in the World

8/26 - Final Destination 5

Damn.

I love going to the movies. But I also love eating meals, and paying rent. Average ticket is $10 bucks nowadays, and that's $50 a month if you're a heavy moviegoer. Factor is 3-D surcharges, family outings and concessions, and you might want to take the gang out to the opera instead.

As for studios, any monies they can hope to recoup from each film is going to be limited to that opening weekend. The trickling effect throughout the weeks will be diminished. It's not as if some small indie movies are opening on their heels, but honest-to-goodness blockbusters.

"X-Men: First Class" opens June 3rd. The fans come out and cheer. Next weekend, the new J.J. Abrams film, with many of his fans being the same as X-Men fans. The next weekend? Green Lantern. So even if these films open big, say $50 to $80 million, the drops will be high-60% if they're lucky. Most of this slate's films will see more than half their gross come from just one weekend. That's insane.

That's par for the course for a Fast and Furious, or a genre film with short legs, but not an entire slate. Any given summer, you may have three, four or five megablockbusters, not ten.

2002 had a Spider-Man film, a Star Wars film and a Men In Black film in the summer.

2010 had Iron Man 2, Toy Story 3, a Twilight movie and Inception.

Now, triple that.

Summer 2011's going to be a tough one.

KJ

The Next New Level

Cameron is a certified genius, or is at least smart enough to work with the right geniuses. And he's right about the higher framerate being the next step. If you've ever watched the 120 Hz mode that some HDTVs display, you can see a big difference in sports or movies.

I haven't seen Showscan or any other high framerate formats, but I can imagine how vivid it'd be on the big screen. 24 fps is the bare minimum for the illusion of motion, and the earliest filmmakers had to make do. But in this digital age, we could and should do better.

A tentpole release like Avatar, or Spider-Man or Disney's Pirates, would see its effects budget skyrocket, more than doubling its render time and processing needs from an increase from 24 fps to 48 or 60 fps. Movies released in 3-D already have a substantial cost added to them for re-rendering the effects for both eyes.

However, if more special effects, not visual effects, were captured in camera, then the increase in framerate would be a non-issue. By now, matte painting, rear projection, miniatures, puppetry, animatronics, and make-up are becoming lost arts, but would become necessities and revitalized in a 48/60 fps production.

Before Pandora's digital forests, Peter Jackson realized King Kong's Skull Island through big-a-tures. Independence Day was a perfect melding of digital and model work, as were Jackson's Lord of the Rings series. And the T-Rex attack in Jurassic Park wouldn't have been as visceral or withstood the test of time if not for Stan Winston's work.

So, to realize a high-def, high-framerate feature in 3-D, and to maintain current costs in effects, concessions would be needed. 2000 effect shots in 24 fps would cost the same as 1000 shots in 48 fps, or 800 shots in 60 fps. And what happens next?

Davy Jones becomes KNB makeup or Henson Shop animatronics? Worked for Predator. Worked for Ninja Turtles. Iron Man and War Machine are 100% Stan Winston suits instead of a shot or two? Worked for Robocop. More in-camera explosions? More live-action footage and plates? Why not? What better way to reproduce photorealism than to use photographic actuality?

What better way to recapture the wonder of cinema? Without the Pace-Cameron Fusion camera to ground Avatar's live-action sequences, the film might have lost its moorings visually. There is still room for magicianship in cinema, and not just at the keyboard. And maybe the new next level is a very familiar one instead.