New videos for 'The Fate of the Furious' and Target's "Toycracker" mini-musical

On Sunday night, the long-awated trailer was released for The Fate of the Furious, a project for which I was the lead previsualization artist at Proof, inc. Reception to it has been amazing, with many positive reaction videos, as well as over twenty-four million Facebook views alone for the trailer video. At this point, I think it's clear that people have accepted that "yes, they are making another one" and that they occupy their own space in the market for people wanting over-the-top action movies that know when to blow people's minds and when to poke fun at themselves.  You can learn more about my involvement on the Fate of the Furious project page




Also released on Sunday was the "Toycracker" mini-musical my team prevised for Target's holiday campaign. Our work was needed mainly for shots incorporating the various digital characters. For more details on how we did this, visit the Target project page.

This Week in F8 production videos

Universal has made a series of fun mini-featurettes for the latest Fast and Furious movie, for which I was the Lead Previsualization Artist. You can see some of the highlights here:

STAR TREK BEYOND Trailer #3

The final trailer. I look forward to seeing the true impact of these space shots on the big screen:

The latest trailer for STAR TREK BEYOND

This is overdue by several weeks, but here is my blogspot link to the new Star Trek Beyond trailer. I like it much more than the first one:



I was especially happy with how one of my shots in it turned out. The rendering on the environment looks incredible. Hats off to the final VFX artists who made that happen:

"Legend of the Last Lava Pup" commercial

The video for the new Clash of Clans commercial is now online, and is already up to 15 million views in less than a week. I helped previs the animated portions. For a small writeup on the project, click here.

The first 'Star Trek Beyond' trailer is here

I spent a good portion of this year working on the previs team for the latest Star Trek film for Paramount Pictures, both on and off the studio lot. This trailer will also screen before Star Wars: The Force Awakens, so I'm looking forward to seeing those slick finaled shots on the big screen.

Honda's "The Power of Dreams" commercials

Earlier this year I was the Previs Supervisor for five commercials by Honda for their "The Power of Dreams" campaign. Four of them are posted below. For the fifth commercial video and more information on how they were accomplished by my team, visit the Honda page on my portfolio website.

New 'Gods of Egypt' trailer

The work we did at Proof, inc. for the movie mainly focused on a sequence in the third act, which has only a few shots in this trailer. I will be able to share more details as more content for the movie gets released online.

New Extended Look at Furious 7's "Cargo Drop" Sequence (With Posters!)

I'll get right to it:



Suffice it to say that this movie has some wild stunts and sequences like the cargo drop, which was the first part of the movie I worked on when I joined the project two years ago. Those who appreciate how the series is going more and more over-the-top will love it for sure.

Less than a month to go before it drops...

2015 Super Bowl commercials and trailers

At the end of last year, I worked on several commercials at Proof, inc. Two of these commercials, one for Turbotax and one for Pepsi, aired on television yesterday during the Super Bowl. A new trailer for the upcoming Furious 7 feature film aired as well, which contained shots I did previs and techvis for back in 2013.

TurboTax: "Boston Tea Party"
I did previs for the first few shots of the Sons of Liberty storming the HMS Surprise (one of the replica ships in the collection of the Maritime Museum of San Diego), and modeled previs characters for the other sequences. I was a bit surprised at seeing so many YouTube comments showing outrage for the mockery of the founding fathers. I thought it was a funny spoof.


Pepsi: "Halftime Touches Down"
Continuing with their recurring U.F.O. theme that they've done for decades, Pepsi's halftime commercial featured previs by our Proof, inc. team. The segment I previsualized involved teenagers playing music in their garage with a nearby dog:


Furious 7 movie trailer
Coming to theaters April 3, Furious 7 has a new movie trailer to get people excited about the upcoming film. I helped previs and techvis the sequence of a Lykan Hypersport crashing through the Etihad Towers in Abu Dhabi, and did previs for the cargo drop skydiving sequence.


As always, I enjoyed working on the teams for these and learning about new ways to use Maya and After Effects to achieve what our directors were striving for. Each project was a new challenge in its unique way, and I liked how the commercials came out. It will be fascinating to see how Furious 7 turned out this Spring.

MPC's VFX shot breakdowns for GODZILLA

Bloody gorgeous. The buildings drop like Tetris pieces in the later shots.

New FURIOUS 7 trailer is now online

After an emotional roller-coaster of filmmaking, the trailer for the new Fast & Furious movie is here. Entitled 'Furious 7,' the movie will have daring stunts and more of the high-stakes action fans of the franchise expect. Working on it was a fun challenge, and I'm happy with how our previs looks to have transitioned to the final photography.

Here is the official trailer. It starts off with our cargo drop sequence and transitions into the bus rescue. These were the first sequences I worked on when I started on the project last year. I hope the fans enjoy it.

New TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES movie trailer

Another project I helped previs while at The Third Floor, inc. Read more about it here. Releases August 8th.

New trailer for X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST, and a spoilers S.O.T.U.

There was so much movie news the other week, I nearly forgot to write about the new trailer for X-Men: Days of Future Past. It was the second Bryan Singer movie I worked on, after Jack the Giant Slayer, and since the X-Men comics series were my favorites growing up, working with these characters was the culmination of much geeky childhood enthusiasm (like The Avengers and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles projects were). The movie will be overflowing with entertainment for fans of the comic, especially those who read the "Days of Future Past" series.

Speaking of geeky enthusiasm, the guys over at Schmoes Know noticed an unusual trait of the video: it managed to focus on the movie's broad themes, without spoiling any of the actual plot. That's not easy to do, and a relatively rare thing in the field of trailers. Historically, trailers have been heavy on spoilers and intentionally throw the juiciest parts of a movie out to attract viewers. The trailer for 1949's Casablanca is a typical example from its time, using heavy-handed devices like a campy voiceover, sensationalized score, and dominating overlaid text:

Considering the movie is among the best of all-time (and has the best screenplay of all time, according to story gurus like Robert McKee), it's almost odd the marketing for it seemed so desperate--at least compared to the more refined design tastes of today.

Flash-forward fourteen years, and you have Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds trailer (1963), which went completely in the opposite, minimalist direction. Using clips from the movie in a straightforward manner, the intensity it contains comes directly from the movie itself:


When the 1980s hit, computers were offering sleek new digital aesthetics, and the trailers of that decade relied on their eye-grabbing flash to push a new era of action films:


Contemporary advertising companies have taken the art of the movie trailers to another level, in part by creating multiple versions tailored for different outlets. Theatergoers are often treated to a two-to five-minute long trailer, often mimicking a three-act structure of its own. Like this trailer for The Dark Knight Rises shows, today's trailers can be long and story-driven without relying on much smoke and mirrors from the editing of the trailer itself. The quiet opening works well, and Hans Zimmer's score closes it out nicely at the end:



Now, onto the topic of spoilers. Working in previs is entirely about being shown the most dramatic and action-oriented sequences of a movie. You are exposed to a disproportionate amount of movie spoilers, and if you're lucky, they are for movies you are especially excited to see. Squaring this with my passion for helping make big Hollywood movies has not always been easy, and there are times where I try not to have certain moments given away for films I did not work on and am not familiar with the original material (comics, books, etc). It was fantastic to watch something like "Battlestar Galactica" without knowing any of the plot points ahead of time, but I doubt I'll care too much about knowing who the real "Winter Soldier: is when I get my socks knocked off by it.

Marketing for modern movies relies on new material being put out to keep websites abuzz with interest. At some point this is bound to reveal too much. How much is too much in your eyes?



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For further reading on trailers, the New York Times article "Dissecting a Trailer: The Parts of the Film that Make the Cut" is a must-read.

Buzzfeed's 12 Posters that Totally Spoiled the Movie

New TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES Trailer

Featuring the mountainside "batter up!" shots that I worked on (0:59):



This project was unique because of the exposure we had to the director and second unit director. Plus, it provided an opportunity to revisit the Turtles movies that I loved as a kid for work reference. You don't get that every day...

Congrats to the team on another fun upcoming release.

New trailer for THE MAZE RUNNER

Although there have still not been trailers for a few other Third Floor projects I worked on, this was the last project I worked on there. It was a small and fun crew that was given a nice amount of freedom. It's looking good so far, and I'm excited to see how it all comes out.

Release date: 14 September 2014

Colin Stokes: The Hidden Morals of Movies or How Movies Teach Manhood

Today I watched a TED talk by an unassuming dad named Colin Stokes. Using a dry sense of humor, he compared the two favorite movies of his daughter and son: The Wizard of Oz and Star Wars (respectively) and how they have influenced them both. As a new dad who got hooked on Star Wars early, and enjoyed (but never dwell on) the Wizard of Oz, the subject matter was up my alley.



There were many memorable lines, from the then-prescient:

"I think if the Wizard of Oz were made today, the wizard would say 'Dorothy you are the savior of Oz that the prophecy foretold. Use your magic slippers to defeat the computer-generated armies of the Wicked Witch.'"

To the topics of how the heroes in each movie succeed:

"I wonder what my son is soaking up, and I wonder what he is soaking in: is he picking up the themes of courage and perseverance and loyalty? Is he picking up on the fact that Luke joins an army to overthrow the government? Is he picking up on the fact that there are only boys in the universe, other than Aunt Beru, and of course this princess who's really cool, but who kinda waits around through most of the movie so that she can give the hero a medal and a wink and thank him for saving the universe by using the magic that he was born with?

"Compare this to 1939 and the Wizard of Oz. How does Dorothy win her movie? By making friends with everybody and being a leader. That's kind of the world I'd rather raise my kids in. Oz. And not the world of dudes fighting, which is where we kind of have to be. Why is there so much Force--capital F force--in the movies we watch with our kids and so little in the yellow-brick road?"

The conversation goes on from there to address the evolution of the Disney princess yet how male characters have stagnated. Additionally, he cites his informal study of top Hollywood movies rate against the famous Bechdel Test, which powerfully shows how far the movie industry has yet to go to flesh out the character makeup of their stories. From there he extrapolates how an improvement in this area could help to reduce sexual assault.

It was an effective speech at getting me to see these films from a new angle, and I will keep its notions in mind with each children's movie release.

As we enter Oscar weekend...

...here is a reminder of what this industry is going through right now:



I know that it's typical to thank family and agents (and now lawyers?) upon winning an Academy Award, but if Gravity receives the statues for Cinematography and Director, I hope the winners remember to thank the department that they depended on the most to execute their vision. Without their hard work, the result would have ended up with something a bit less impressive:

New GODZILLA trailer is here!

It seems like only a few weeks ago that Godzilla had its first teaser hit the web. Now, there's a full-length trailer for people to enjoy. Bryan Cranston's voice completely puts you in the horrifying atmosphere of the film.



If it wasn't already clear by now, the movie is a complete 180 degree turn from the 1998 film of the same name. I couldn't be more excited for it.

Final DIVERGENT trailer

The final trailer for Divergent is here. Part of my previs work seen in the trailer includes the mirror/dog, hole jump, train jump, and group punch sequences. Release date is March 21st, 2014.