How Companies Are Abusing VFX Artists

If you are a fan of special effects (VFX)-laden movies, you should read this article about how big movie companies are abusing VFX artists and the consequences that it has for movies.

I've heard quite a bit over the years about how digital gaming companies have turned into sweatshops forcing their developers to work ridiculous and dangerous hours to finish games. It seems that the same pattern is happening with the companies that produce the special effects for movies, especially the films produced by Marvel. 

“[Marvel] is the worst example of a lot of the problems in the industry,” said Sam. “It would be one thing if sometimes it was really bad, sometimes it wasn’t… But with Marvel, it seems like every single time it’s the same thing. So, one, they tend to be as bad as you’re going to get and they’re consistently that bad.”

Hector recalled that during the last Marvel project he worked on, “from my very first day on the project, up until we delivered the shots, we were working overtime and weekends. It was just months of literally being nailed to my desk.” He laughed as he said this, almost like he hated to admit it.

“Even up until the last week or so they still weren’t sure what they wanted this gigantic set piece to look like. We were still doing concept art.” Hector said. Concept art is supposed to be the first thing you nail down before you start working on the pieces that will eventually be composited together to make up the shot. “And various parts of this sequence had already gone through the entire pipeline. You’ve got lighting renders, effects simulations, matte paintings, and animation.” All of this, ready to go, and Marvel still hasn’t approved concept art.

It's a sad situation and I don't know what will change it, short of government intervention. 

How the Webb Telescope's Images Are Processed

In one of the dumber controversies on the internet, people are arguing that the colour in the images are fake. 

Duh. Well of course they are, in the sense that the Webb telescope is imaging colours that the human eye can't see, namely the infrared portion of the spectrum. So the colours in the images that have been released are assigned by the scientists and technicians who process the images to bring out the most detail and show the features in their best light (sorry). 

This article does a good job of explaining what the telescope actually sees and how the images are processed. 

“I think there’s some connotations that go along with ‘colorizing’ or ‘false color’ that imply there’s some process going on where we’re arbitrarily choosing colors to create a color image,” DePasquale said. “Representative color is the most preferred term for the kind of work that we do, because I think it encompasses the work that we do of translating light to create a true color image, but in a wavelength range that our eyes are not sensitive to.”

Longer infrared waves are assigned redder colors, and the shortest infrared wavelengths are assigned bluer colors. (Blue and violet light has the shortest wavelengths within the visible spectrum, while red has the longest.) The process is called chromatic ordering, and the spectrum is split into as many colors as the team needs to capture the full spectrum of light depicted in the image.

“We have filters on the instruments that collect certain wavelengths of light, which we then apply a color that is most closely what we think it will be on the [visible] spectrum,” said Alyssa Pagan, a science visuals developer at the Space Telescope Science Institute, in a phone call with Gizmodo.

Featured Links - August 8, 2022

Links to things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about.

Stephan’s Quintet, a visual grouping of five galaxies

• The U.S. Is Dry, Dry, Dry. "Most of the country is experiencing drought as of early August, and millions are under water use restrictions."
• How to properly clean your eyeglasses like they are delicate camera lenses. I should follow the tips in this article. 
• China could shift to fully reusable super heavy-launcher in wake of Starship. "China’s launch vehicle makers appear to be designing a fully reusable version of the Long March 9 super heavy-lift rocket needed for future megaprojects."
• JWST Shows Gas Around A Supermassive Black Hole Like Never Before. "An in-depth view of the core of one of the galaxies in Stephan’s Quintet has revealed the incredible capabilities of JWST."
• ‘Frankly it blew my mind’: how Tron changed cinema – and predicted the future of tech. "From cyberspace to AI, Steven Lisberger’s 1982 sci-fi classic was way ahead of its time. The team behind it explain how they made a game-changer."
• Default Windows 10 Settings You Should Change Right Now. "If you're not upgrading your computer to Windows 11, you can still improve your experience by changing these default settings."

Photo of the Week - August 7, 2022

Here's a hibiscus from my late mother-in-law's yard, taken with my Pixel 4a.

Saturday Sounds - Taj Mahal and Ry Cooder - Get On Board

Get on Board is a lovely, down-home blues album from two of the greats, Taj Mahal and Ry Cooder. Both of these guys have been around for a while and listening to this album feels like walking in an old pair of comfortable shoes. 

Review: The Genesis Machine

The Genesis Machine: Our Quest to Rewrite Life in the Age of Synthetic Biology, by Amy Webb and Andrew Hessel

If you want a non-fiction book that reads more like a science fiction novel, The Genesis Machine is for you. It's the authors' contention that the current state of modern biological science, referred to as synthetic biology is at roughly the same state as communications technology when Alexander Graham Bell conducted the first public demonstration of the telephone. 

Given that premise, they go on to show just how synthetic biology could change our lives, both for the better and the worse. I'm not as familiar with biology and medicine as I am with physics and astronomy, but I had no problem following their argument. The book is well written and compelling and occasionally rather scary in its implications.

I recommend it highly to anyone who is interested in science and wants a window into our future.

Featured Links - August 3, 2022

Links to things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about.

Swans on Frenchman's Bay

• Deepmind's Releasing AI Predictions for Virtually Every Protein Known to Science. "The expanded database increases the number of known, cataloged proteins by over 200x, from 1 million structures to around 200 million structures."
• 170-Year-Old Coded Newspaper Messages Linked To Hunt For Infamous Franklin Expedition. Coded messages began appearing in The Times from 1850-1855. Turns out, they were related to the hunt for the infamous Franklin Expedition.
• Plotting the Future of the Most Storied Studio in Jazz. "The New Jersey recording space built in 1959 by Rudy Van Gelder is filled with history. Can it regain its glory without getting stuck in the past?"
• How Netflix’s The Sandman Brings the Neil Gaiman Masterpiece to Life. "Neil Gaiman and David S. Goyer walks us through the making of Netflix's adaptation of iconic DC comic book series The Sandman." I am really looking forward to this.
• 10 Common Mistakes First-Time Linux Users Make. "Improve your initial impression of Linux by learning more about the most common mistakes new users make."
• Meet the Exotic Dancer Who Went Undercover to Take Down Domestic Terrorists. "In an exclusive interview, Rebecca Williams reveals her identity and details her work with the ATF to help investigate a racially-motivated bombing, bringing its white supremacist perpetrators to justice."

Movie and TV Reviews - July 2022

Short reviews of movies and TV shows we watched in July. 

Movies

• West Side Story: I've liked West Side Story ever since seeing the movie when I was in high school. (I'm not a big fan of musicals, but this is one of the handful that I like). I wasn't expecting much from the remake, but I was wrong. It's wonderful. While the music and the dancing are top notch, it's the cinematography that blew me away. This is a movie that I could watch without the sound and still enjoy. I really regret not seeing it on the big screen. (Crave)
• The Fifth Element: We watched this on BluRay the night Rogers died when we couldn't stream anything. It's just as dumb as I remember it, but it has a satirical edge that I missed the first time through. Better the second time around. 
• The Gray Man: We were looking for a mindless action flick for Saturday night and thought this might be suitable. Unfortunately, my bad movie self-defence mechanism kicked in and I fell asleep halfway through. It's a standard action thriller but the Russo brothers have opted not to light half the scenes, which made it unwatchable for me. I don't know why so many current movies are so dark, but it's really beginning to grate on me. (Netflix)
• Last Night in Soho: I was looking forward to seeing this as it had gotten good reviews and I wasn't disappointed. What starts out as a typical coming-of-age movie (young woman goes to the big city to find fame and fortune) turns into a gripping exercise in psychological horror. It's a brilliant, bravura piece of filmmaking. (Crave)

TV Shows

• The Hidden Life of Pets: The series swerves over into "too cute for words" territory occasionally but I still enjoyed it. It's not just about dogs and cats, though they get their place, but birds, rodents, and reptiles are also featured. (Netflix)
• Brokenwood Mysteries, season 8: More in the continuing Aussie detective series (filmed in Australia, set in New Zealand). Light entertainment but we are enjoying it. (Acorn TV)
• Monty Don's Adriatic Gardens: Venice, Croatia, and Greece are featured in this series of gardening travelogues. I have no urge to visit Venice, but Croatia and Greece are another matter. (Acorn TV)
• Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. Well, it got better as the season progressed and the last couple of episodes were OK. Still, I just don't see the point of trying to reboot a tired and used-up idea. (Crave)
• Grantche5ster (season 7): It amazes me how such a small English village can have so many murders, and that there are any eligible females that vicar Will has not yet slept with. (PBS Masterpiece)

Taking the Weekend Off

It's another long weekend up here in the Great White North. This Monday is Simcoe Day, as it's known as in Ontario, or just the civic holiday. It's a provincial holiday, not federal, so not everyone will have the day off, but any excuse for a long weekend will do. So I'm taking it off from blogging. See you again on Tuesday. In the meantime, enjoy this flower. 

Featured Links - July 29, 2022

Links to things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about.

A peaceful afternoon at the Topsail Island marina

• A Visual Guide to the Aztec Pantheon. "Through these illustrations, I hope to commemorate the complexity of the Aztec Pantheon, make the academic research more accessible, and show how this civilization is still alive in our global culture. With luck, they will also help you see this society with the wonderment of your inner child’s eyes, just like I did all those years ago."
• Why the Arctic Is Warming 4 Times as Fast as the Rest of Earth. "The loss of sea ice is exposing darker waters, which absorb more of the sun’s energy. It’s a devastating feedback loop with major consequences for the planet."
• ‘There’s no one long Covid’: Experts struggle to make sense of the continuing mystery. "A group of virologists gathered to ask and answer questions about what causes long Covid, how to predict who gets it, and how to treat it."
• The unexpected star of NASA’s Webb images — the alt text descriptions. "A team in Baltimore was responsible for the words that made the stunning photos accessible to everyone."
• Best Practices for Graphics in Modern Publishing Pipelines. "The following best practices for creating and publishing graphics are application-agnostic and can be done in everything from open source software to top-flight, tools-integrated component content management systems."
• Could machine learning fuel a reproducibility crisis in science? "‘Data leakage’ threatens the reliability of machine-learning use across disciplines, researchers warn."
• Tonga Eruption Filled The Atmosphere With Water, Potentially Damaging The Ozone Layer. It could also contribute to global warming over the next decade.

Syd Barrett the Artist

Syd Barrett is best known for being one of the founding members of Pink Floyd, but he was also a very talented artist. Here's a short video of some of his art. I was vaguely aware that he was an artist as well as a musician but had no idea he was as good as this video demonstrates.

 

2021 World Fantasy Awards Ballot

The finalists for the 2021 World Fantasy Awards have been announced. The winners will be announced at the World Fantasy Convention in New Orleans over the November 3rd weekend. I expect that A Master of Djinn will win the Best Novel award.

These are the finalists for Best Novel.  

Black Water Sister by Zen Cho (Ace Books/Macmillan)

A Master of Djinn by P. Djèlí Clark (Tordotcom/Orbit UK)

The City Beautiful by Aden Polydoros (Inkyard Press)

The Jasmine Throne by Tasha Suri (Orbit US/Orbit UK)

The Last House on Needless Street by Catriona Ward (Nightfire/Viper UK)

Featured Links -July 26, 2022

 Links to things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about.

• Famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright designed a cabin in Algoma. "The E. H. Pitkin Summer Lodge, located on Sapper Island, is the last surviving Frank Lloyd Wright building left in Canada."
• Strike! Webb Telescope Report Reveals Micrometeor Damage To Mirrors. "In a commissioning report, the Webb Telescope team included an image of the telescope’s giant, honeycombed primary mirror that betrays the damage inflicted by a piece of space debris that smacked into the Webb sometime between May 22 and May 24, 2022."
• Webb Telescope's Search for Life In Space May Take Longer Than Expected. And if you have image processing skills, you can process the Webb data yourself. 
• Princess Mononoke: The masterpiece that flummoxed the US. "Twenty-five years old this week, the film is Japanese animation master Hayao Miyazaki's most complex work. But how it was mishandled in the West speaks of fundamental artistic differences, writes Stephen Kelly."
• Can Democracy Include a World Beyond Humans? "A truly planetary politics would extend decisionmaking to animals, ecosystems, and potentially AI."
• Manuscripts and art support archaeological evidence that syphilis was in Europe long before explorers could have brought it home from the Americas. "The only problem is that this syphilis scenario is wrong, according to ongoing research by paleopathologists, scientists who study skeletal remains for evidence of disease. After decades of painstaking work, they have concluded that the syphilis-causing spirochete bacterium Treponema pallidum already existed in the Old World long before Columbus boarded his ship and sailed to Hispaniola."
• The Silurian Hypothesis: Could An Advanced Civilization Have Lived On Earth Millions Of Years Before Humans? "If a technologically advanced species existed on Earth before us, they may have left a trace."

A Good Weekly Newsletter

I get quite a few email newsletters but one I always look forward to reading is Field Notes. 

Field Notes is a weekly newsletter of urban nature writing and photography from author Christopher Brown. Subscribers receive every new edition of the newsletter directly to your inbox, so you won’t have to worry about missing anything.

Brown is the author of three near-future science fiction novels and lives in Austin, Texas. While I yet read any of his novels (two of them are sitting in the to-be-read collection on my Kindle), I always read and enjoy Field Notes as soon as it hits my inbox. Here's a brief excerpt from this week's newsletter.

It was a few degrees short of a hundred when I took my next break at mid-day and decided to go for a run despite the heat. An urban trail run that sought out the shade, following the bulldozer paths under the new onramp down to the old jeep roads that traverse the woods beneath the bridge. The young deer whose spotted fur I had seen a couple weeks earlier was gone to bones now, mostly desiccated there a few steps from the exit lane that had killed it.

It made me think about the challenges our automotive habitat provides for young animals to try to survive into adulthood and their own reproductive years, and whether the coming generation of self-driving robot cars will improve the situation. Later in the day, the memory got me thinking about what challenges the planet we have made presents for the survival of our own young.

Photo of the Week - July 24, 2022

This week's photo is a hollyhock that we bought for our backyard. I used the Portrait mode on my Pixel 4a to blur the background. It's such a pretty flower.

Saturday Sounds - Jefferson Airplane - Long John Silver

Through much of my adolescence and early youth the Jefferson Airplane were my favourite band by far. I was lucky enough to see the original Airplane twice and if I could go back in time to experience only one concert again, their 1969 concert in Detroit would be it (although I would bring earplugs as they were LOUD). 

The Airplane only lasted until 1972 when they morphed into the various incarnations of the Jefferson Starship, which I saw four times in later years. July 20th was the 50th anniversary of the last studio album, Long John Silver. Recorded live off the floor at Wally Heider Studios in San Francisco in early 1972, it is a perfect snapshot of the Airplane at the end of its too short life. 

It's been a while since I've listened to this album and it holds up better than some of their earlier recordings. Without Marty Balin in the group, Paul Kantner's anthemic science-fiction-tinged epics ("Son of Jesus" and "Alexander the Medium") get the full blast of the band's power. The high point of the album though is probably Grace Slick's soaring "Aerie (Gang of Eagles") which I drove my parents crazy with by playing it at full volume the last year I was living at home. And you should play it loud too. 

The Space Movie

This Tuesday was the 53rd anniversary of Apollo 11 landing on the moon, certainly one of the most significant events of the 20th century. In memory of that, here's The Space Movie, a 1979 movie directed by Tony Palmer and featuring the music of Mike Oldfield. 

In celebration of the 10th anniversary of the moon landing, director Tony Palmer traces the history of America's space program, from the earliest stages of rocket development tests during the 1920s to the lunar missions of the 1960s and 1970s. Using archive footage and recorded conversations from the NASA archives, Palmer chronicles all aspects of space missions, including preparation, takeoff, spacewalks and finally Apollo 11's arrival on the moon.

 

Stratford's Richard III

Ontario's Stratford Festival has a world-wide and well-deserved reputation for its Shakespearean productions, musicals, and other plays. Earlier this week, Nancy and I attended their production of one of Shakespeare's better-known plays, Richard III, with Canadian actor Colm  Feore playing Richard, and a splendid production it was.

The play was staged in the newly renovated Tom Patterson Theatre, a smallish room seating about 700 people. Like the larger Festival Theatre, it features a thrust stage that brings the action well out into the audience. The theatre has been upgraded with state-of-the-art audio and lighting that was used very effectively during the play. 

Colm Feore is not an actor who I'd have thought of to play Richard, but he was very believable in the role. He doesn't have the vocal power of say, Brian Bedford, who I saw perform Richard III in the 1970s, but he played Richard with a sly charm and physicality that seemed quite appropriate.  (One of my friends commented that he must need a massage after every performance). The rest of the cast was up to Stratford's high standards, notably Michael Blake (Duke of Clarence), André Stills (Duke of Buckingham), Diana Leblanc (Duchess of York), Seana McKenna (Queen Margaret), and even including the actors who played the young, murdered princes. 

The staging took full advantage of the theatre and its associated technology. The historical Richard was brought into the modern era by the framing, at the beginning and end of the play, of the discovery of his body a few years ago. It gave the play an added depth, especially at the end, and I was quite moved. 

It's been a long time since I've been to a play and I'm glad I saw this one. Our digital screens can bring much to life, but there is a special magic to the best live theatrical productions that cinema or television will never have, and this production of Richard III had that magic. 

Stratford is a lovely little town with many excellent restaurants and sights to see outside of the theatre. We stayed at the Foster's Inn downtown, for the second time, and will stay there again if we return to Stratford.

Featured Links - July 18, 2022

Links to things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about.

• How To Ruin A TikTok Trick With Math. "It's a cool trick, but number theory is cooler."
• The Infamous 1972 Report That Warned of Civilization's Collapse. "The Limits to Growth argued that rampant pollution and resource extraction were pushing Earth to the brink. How does it hold up 50 years later?"
• Estimates of long Covid are startlingly high. Here’s how to understand them. You really, really, don't want to get COVID-19. Get your shots. Wear a mask.
• The Gaia Mission Keeps Unlocking Secrets of the Galaxy. "New data from the ESA’s probe, now eight years into its mission, adds significant detail to its portrait of nearly 2 billion objects in the Milky Way."
• America Is Sliding Into The Long Pandemic Defeat. "In the face of government inaction, the country’s best chance at keeping the crisis from spiraling relies on everyone to keep caring." Another not to be missed article from Pulitzer-Prize-winning journalist, Ed Yong.
• ‘Mad’ Mike Hughes’ Last Ride: Inside a Flat-Earther’s Doomed Mission. I find it hard to believe that someone could risk his life trying to prove something so demonstrably wrong, but I guess he never saw a laker sail over the horizon on Lake Superior. 

Photo of the Week - July 17, 2022

Here's a photo of some of the wind damage from the derecho that we had in May. This is in Alex Robertson Park, south of where I live, near the Pickering Nuclear Generating Station. This tree appears to have been cut down after being heavily damaged. Taken with my Pixel 4a.