Deze techniek wordt echter ook gebruikt in de filmwereld en veel vaker dan je zou denken. Bij veel scenes waarvan je denkt dat ze buiten op straat zijn opgenomen wordt gebruik gemaakt van chroma key. Het onderstaande filmpje illustreert bijzonder goed hoeveel bedrog er wel niet in een film kan zitten.

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After watching Outbreak there have not been a lot of movies that dealt with the contagious virus idea. At least non that I felt were decent. Then in 2008, game developer Valve released the game Left 4 Dead, which revolves around a highly contagious Rabies infection that turns people into mindless killers. The story is told during the course of the game in the form of wall writings by other non-infected who try to make their way to safety as well as other details integrated in the maps that tell you what happened. Ever since the game came out I have been loving Left 4 Dead. Each time I play through a location I notice new things and a new part of the story gets revealed. Then I found out about the movie this game was partially based on.

28 Days Later

Apparently there has been an awesome movie in existence since 2002 which I had no clue about. 28 Days Later tells the story of the incredibly dangerous Rage Virus. Originally meant as an experiment in primates, the virus is unleashed onto the United Kingdom when animal activists try to set the animals free. From there the virus spreads incredibly fast and within two weeks the government starts a nationwide evacuation. The UK is left abandoned, now home to thousands of infected and just a handful of survivors. 28 days after the initial infection we meet Jim, who wakes up in a hospital after having been in a coma for over a month.

Besides having a story I really like, this movie has other qualities I can respect. For instance the shots of a completely deserted downtown London are creepy to look at to say the least. Especially because there were no sets used for a large part of those shots. They actually sealed off parts of downtown London for 20 minutes at a time to shoot the footage.

Also the music in this movie is extremely good and well placed throughout the movie. It really sets the mood in a lot situations, particularly the mansion scene near the end of the movie. I love it when image and audio come together like that and the director of this movie, Danny Boyle, did an outstanding job on it. I have just found another favorite director.

28 Weeks Later

Obviously I’m not the only one who thought this movie was great, otherwise it would not have spawned one of the best movie sequels I have seen in a long time. Normally a sequel sucks compared to the original, this sequel is probably even better than the original! I will not give away too much of the story for those who still want to go and watch it, but you’ll be pleased to know that the awesome London scenes are still there, the awesome music is still there and the amount of gore in this movie has been increased quite a bit from the original. I loved it and hated it at the same time, haha. The only grudge I had against this movie was the ending, which was kept open and incredibly sucked. When they were making this movie they did not even know if there would be another sequel, so making it that open ended really pissed me off.

28 Months Later

Luckily Boyle is not done with the 28 movies yet. A third movie is said to be in development and is likely to hit the theaters in 2011. What it will be about is unknown up to this point, but Boyle has stated that it will try to move the story forward from where the second left off. If Boyle stays up to his standards then we can expect a movie which is even better than the second one, which should be great.

Trailers

Words can not really describe the mood these movies are set in though, watch the trailers below if you really want to experience what these movies are about.

Robin

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The reason I’m bringing this up is because I just had my 12-year-old niece over for two days and she just loves horror movies. She thought it would be a great idea to have a movie night consisting only of horror movies. And I HATE horror movies. I’m not scared of horror movies, I genuinely hate them because the quality of the story in such movies is almost always puke worthy.

If it’s a story about a serial killer there is always a group of young kids who get slaughtered and by the end of the movie we still have no idea who the killer is or, even more important, why he became a serial killer to begin with. There is no real story to begin with, there is no hidden plot, it’s just a group of people who keep getting killed in hilarious ways without any real motive and the movie is over once they are a) all dead, or b) if one manages to survive in which case you can bet your ass there will be a sequel.

If the story features monsters it’s even more stupid. Often you get the same type of scenario but instead of a serial killer the group gets to deal with unnatural monsters of all kinds. What these monsters are, how they came to be, where they came from or why they are attacking the group remains unknown for ever, they are just in the movie to make it scary and not to support some sort of  interesting plot line. Again the movie ends when either everyone is dead or if the last person makes it out alive.

This brings me to the movie my niece brought over; The Decent. When we started watching I was pretty skeptical about the story since the description on the cover didn’t leave much room for interpretation. Group of women in a cave, scary monsters, the end. I was surprised however when the story started to climb to an okay level at some point when there was still no sign of the monsters 45 minutes into the movie and small signs of back-story and subplot started showing up. But it soon dropped back to the ’stupid’ category as soon as the first monster showed its face.

Spoilers!
The monsters in this case were blind cave dwelling creatures who hunted based on sound, much like bats. When one of the women finds an old piece of cave exploring equipment, while the cave is supposed to be new and unexplored, the suggesting is made that the creatures are actually evolved humans, evolved from the explorers who set foot in the cave over 100 years ago.

When that theory is first told in the movie you are left with a lot of questions. Why didn’t the explorers starve to death? How can something evolve in just 100 years time? With any other movie you’d laugh at the theory itself, but because up to this point the movie had a pretty solid story, you tend to think that you’re going to get an answer to those questions as the story progresses. But from the moment the monsters show up the movie drops down to a classic ‘hunt down and kill’ scenario. No back-story of any kind is given about the creatures from this point on. The creatures simply serve as the means to killing the victims and nothing more while there was plenty of potential to tell more about these creatures and the explorers who came before.
End of Spoilers

Like with any low grade horror movie, though, this movie also gets a sequel which will be released (or has been released) this year. It will offer the original writer and director of the movie a chance to fix his early mistake, though from what I’ve read so far I doubt the second part will be any better than the first part. Most importantly, I think the writer created an impossible scenario to create an explanation for which is something you should at all time avoid. If you’re going to create something, at least make the back-story something that could have happened in that particular universe.

I will be watching the sequel, I want to find out if the writer is going to make any effort into explaining the things he left untold in the first part. But like I said, I suspect it’s going to suck just as much.

Robin

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It’s not surprising many people have gone out to write fan fiction about Half-Life. Many great writers out there have come up with endless ideas for the Half-Life universe. If you’re into the Half-Life series I’d like to point you to the Half-Life section of FanFiction.net.

So why would I mention this on my media blog? Because Half-Life fanfiction has since spread to much more then just writing. Youtube has a number Half-Life related videos, but I’d like to focus on two in particular that really stand out.

Escape From City 17

This particular video was made by The Purchase Brothers and has become insanely popular with over two million views in less then two months. The short film, which is supposed to be the first of three, is set during the events in Half-Life 2: Episode 2. With the city in chaos and the Citadel about the go sky high, the film follows a group of rebels trying to get out of the city.

The editing and special effects in this film are great and the acting, while not of Hollywood standards of course, is not to shabby either. Escape From City 17 is a good example of the things you can do with a green screen and some powerful editing software.

What’s in the Box?

This short-film was made by a Dutch duo. The film is set in a Half-Life 2 like environment. While the direct connection to Half-Life 2 is not made, there are a few things that point in the direction such as a gunship and Combine looking soldiers.

An air of mystery surrounds this film, as it is accompanied by a website that can only be opened with a code of sorts. Many people on Youtube have been trying to break the code and if you want to have a run at it go to whatsinthebox.nl. According to hints on the website something is going to happen regarding the box in November. Whether this is a sequel of sorts is unknown at this point.

So what kind of fan fiction do you prefer? Do you like written or visual fan fiction?

Robin

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The funny thing about this story is that the entire thing was recorded, by accident or on purpose, who knows. Be advised before listening though, it’s a pretty intense audio clip and not exactly safe for work unless you’re allowed to swear a lot.

Download the audio clip here.

I’m kind of two sided on this entire thing and here’s why. I go to school to learn about stuff like backstage work particularly, so I understand how this guy must have thought “let me just check the light real quick, otherwise they have to redo the entire scene just because I screwed up a light”.

That right there is doing more then you’re hired to do. If the director thinks the view of the scene is bad because a light is busted or aimed wrong then he’ll tell you and THEN you can go fix it. Unless you are specifically told to get on the set to fix something you should be as far away from the damn thing as a possible. And according to the audio clip this guy walked right onto the set twice in a row, in my books you’re just dense if that happens. As if everyone on the set being in position to shoot isn’t enough indication for you to stay clear.

So does that justify how Bale reacted? No of course not, but it’s understandable. Acting isn’t an easy job. As much as we all like to bitch at people for bad acting, we couldn’t do it any better ourselves if we tried. So when you spent a week memorizing a scene and have to do it for real it would be nice if things could go right in one try. Can you imagine some dude ruining your scene twice in a row? I think I would be pissed too.

Anyway to make something good come from a bad situation someone took the above audio clip and used it to make a remix. It’s quite nicely done, you can download it here.

Robin

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Yeah, that’s my general opinion about this movie. Wow…

Mind you I don’t use the term “Wow dot dot dot” lightly. That term is only used for movies that are the best of the best and managed to get me so excited or moved that the story stays on my mind for hours, days or even years after leaving the theater.

Now it’s probably not really objective of me to use the “Wow dot dot dot” term so soon after seeing a movie but I swear that I have never seen a movie that moved me emotionaly in this was. Will Smith’s performance alone was very good, but the story itself was so incredibly touching that I don’t have words to describe it. I can praise it all I want or try to explain what was so moving about the damn thing but I can only advise to go see it for your self. It might not be your cup of tea, to each his own of course. But anyone who likes to try and relate a bit to the characters when watching a movie WILL come out of the theater with at least one tear on their cheek.

You know how certain movies get you on the edge of crying? Especially guys will know what I mean. We’re to manly to show that we cry while watching a movie so we always try to hold it in the best we can and that usualy results in a lot of teeth grinding and swallowing while trying to keep your eyes dry by keeping them open. Well I’ve had about three movies (from the top of my head) that got me on the edge of crying. Those being The Truman Show, The Lion King and Australia. And I’ve seen a lot of movies, even a lot of drama’s, but only those three got me on the edge.

7 Pounds just pushed me over, goddamnit. Near the end of the movie I felt an actual tear roll down my cheek and I didn’t even blink! I wasn’t alone though, as the credits started rolling I noticed a lot of guys specificaly taking some extra deep breaths and quickly peeking away that tear before the lights came on.

In my honest opinion this movie is an absolute must see, maybe even if you don’t like drama tear jerking movies. All I can say is that you missed something very special if you havn’t seen it.

Kudos to the writers of this very special story!

Robin

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“Yea don’t mind those Iraqies, it’s Christmas afterall and we can’t bomb them untill it’s over. Christmas is a time in which we need to love each other, afterall,”

It’s a stupid tradition in my eyes which comes with the biggest non-sense ever created. We pretend to love each other, give each other expensive presents, invite each other to Christmas dinners where we eat food so classy we don’t dare touch it. And most of us don’t even like the Christmas dinner but we keep eating and smile nicely to the hostess while in reality, we keep thinking back to that frozen pizza in the back of the freezer. At the end of the night half of the food gets thrown out and ends up on the landfill and at the end of the month December we will have spent millions of dollars extra around the world on presents and food.

Yeah you go Christmas spirit. Be nice to each other, think about others, help each other out! I wonder if they have Christmas trees in Africa.

Anyway, I’m getting a little caried away. I meant to write a simple intro about Christmas and here I go ranting about how it sucks. Oh well. Like I said, I’m not really a Christmassy type, but my girlfriend loves it and so I’m forced to participate. We had it all, lights in the yard, fancy food (frozen, but fancy (and unedible) non the less) and a sort of Christmas tree (we just moved, afterall). So not to be outdone I decided to take the girlfriend out to see a movie on the second day of Christmas. I kept her in the dark about which movie exactly, so I hoped I made a good choice when I reserved the tickets for Australia. I had read a good word about the movie here and there on the internet and since there weren’t a whole lot of other movies that seemed worth my money I decided on that one.

Reserving the tickets was a good idea by the way, because the theater was packed right up to the very last chair and I was sitting somewhere near the front row, which doesn’t make for nice viewing might I add. But despite all that I did have a great time. It’s an absolutely great movie which mixes a bit of everything. If you’re ever in a dispute about wanting to see an action movie or a romantic movie with your girl or boyfriend, then Australia isn’t a bad choice to go with.

I won’t go into the detail of the storyline, since this movie deserves to be seen without any knowledge of what it’s about. That way, you’ll be blown away a couple of times by the constant surprises and adventures. I was kind of sceptical about the movie I had chosen, since I chose it primarily for my girlfriend. But I came out with a smile and a tear on my cheek so for me it was a great experience. One which I can absolutely recommend.

Robin

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