Going Green

So I have to admit that I love binge watching TV shows while I work, one of the luxuries of having two iMACs sitting next to one another.  What I usually watch is TV shows on NETFLIX that other people have said "you SHOULD see this..."

Of late, between episodes of "DOC MARTEN" or back episodes of "BIG BANG THEORY" (don't ask) I have been catching up on ARROW, which is a modern take on the GREEN ARROW DC comics I loved when I was a kid. I started reading Green Arrow when Neal Adams was drawing the book, I have always been a huge Neal Adams fan and his work on GA was classic stuff.  That was the initial hook that got me into the series, what kept me is what I have started to think of as "B Movie Television".

When I was going to college, and first wanted to work in VFX, they were the province of epic studios with epic wads of cash.  By combing that dough with creative people the studios made MOVIE MAGIC, with dual packed film in custom optical printers and motion control cameras that filled up buildings and moved 4 pin Mitchell Camera that weighed the same as a VW Microbus.  The stuff those artists, guys like John Dykstra and Robert Abel, did that caught my imagination and I was hooked.  I spent a lot of time and money trying to get a chance to work on films back then.  I never got to, got sidelined by this new industry called "Computer Games" but I never lost my love or desire for that field.

While I was working on TIE FIGHTER for Lucasarts I read an Interview withe George Lucas who said that he saw the next "ILM" coming out of a garage and and staffed with a group of dedicated artists armed with High 8MM cameras a desktop computers.  That was when I found myself agreeing with George, again.  It was the beginning of "B Movie Filmmaking" in my mind.

Through the 1990s and the early part of this century we saw the rise of the new technology, starting with FOUNDATION IMAGING and their wall of AMIGAS to do BABYLON 5, through STARGATE and BATTLESTAR GALACTICA (and most things done on Syfy) the trend has grown  and the ramification of it make me smile like a Cheshire Cat.

Now granted, the huge effects house still dominate films (vis-a-vie the wondrous monster that is WETA) and that will continue to be the case for the most part.  Dollars buy processing power and the CPU you have the more you can get done.  At the same time though shows like ARROW, and THE FLASH and the king of them all GRIMM continue to blaze a trail for the NEXT generation of VFX guys, the kids who grew up doing motion capture on their phones.

I cannot wait to see what they come up with