NEWS ARCHIVE
MAIN - IN THE PRESS - CAST - CREW - SHOOTING LOCATIONS - PHOTO GALLERIES
- RUMORS FROM THE SET
- MEDIA - CONCEPT ART - LINKS - DISCUSS
JANUARY 2007
01/31/07 Buy
a Part of the Action!
Apparently, with
the movie finished filming, a number of costumes and armor pieces from the film
are up for sale. Check out Valentine Armouries where apparently
you can purchase various pieces for your own collection. Valentine Armouries was responsible for
making all the metal scale armour, chainmail armour, helmets, swords, and even
the HALGA sword hilt was sculpted by them.
They kindly also
let us use their photos for our galleries and you can find the new page here. You can get a good look at a number of these
pieces and the detail and craftsmanship that went into them.
01/30/07 ***A
bit of a Heads Up***
Tonight’s episode
of CTV’s Etalk is supposed to air a segment on Outlander. For all of you that are in Canada you should
be able to watch it on your local CTV affiliate around 7:00 PM. Alternately you should also be able to watch
the episode after it’s air time online here though you may also have to be in
Canada to view it. If you happen to not
be able to watch it, we’ll try and find a solution for you.
Also we’ve added a
few more pictures to the Cast page.
UPDATE: While we
didn’t catch the entire episode of Etalk on air, it doesn’t seem like tonight
was the night for an Outlander clip at all, so our source may have been
mistaken. As well, there isn’t anything
in todays episode online about Outlander.
However, the show does advertise stories that will play “later in the
week” so keep your eyes peeled as the clip may show up sometime before Friday
still.
01/28/07 Todays minor updates include half a
dozen or so credits in the Crew section.
One of the additions is David M. Breaux Jr. who is listed as lead animator. He joins some of the other talented artist on
the film such as lead character animator Scott Johnston, animator Tal peleg,
texture artists Sherri Rogers and Bo Mosley as well as numerous other talented
artists. You can find David Breaux’s
portfolio webpage Here. He has a demo reel so you can check out some of
the other work he’s done on films such as the Garfield movies and The
Chronicles of Narnia: The lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe Here.
01/26/07 Not a lot to report today. Though considering principal photography for
Outlander has wrapped, it’s not surprising that some of the stars have headed
to warmer climates. Jim Caviezel, who
plays Kainan – the alien that crashlands in Viking times on Earth – in Outlander,
was recently in Australia to promote his film Déjà Vu. We wouldn’t have refused that promotional
tour either after spending 3 months of winter in Halifax. You can find an interview he did there here.
Mostly since the
last updates we’ve managed some general site maintenance and additions that
most people will (hopefully) never notice.
A few things to keep your eyes on:
If you hear about who is going to score Outlander, or see any
promotional material - either online or in print – including posters or movie
trailers, please let us know using the Email link at the bottom of
the main page (this one).
01/24/07 Apparently Sci-fi channel recently
aired a film called 'Grendel' which they deem a "Re-imagining" of the
Beowulf poem. From what we've read it sounds like a rush project to capitalize on
the current Hollywood Viking fever.
We’re not entirely disappointed we missed it as it sounds pretty awful.
Take a look at this review: http://foywonder.livejournal.com/70769.html.
“To
sum it up: dopey interpretation of a classic tale presented way too seriously,
lead actor with a monotone voice playing a poorly realized hero, and monster
action that's pretty much devoid of thrill or chills. Overall, I never felt
bored, but I wasn't all that entertained either. I suppose the film could make
for an acceptable time waster, though surely you can find better ways to waste
that time. GRENDEL’s a film that doesn't earn any praise nor does it deserve
copious amounts of scorn. Mockery, on the other hand, that it most definitely
deserves. BEOWULF may be an epic poem, but the Sci-Fi Channel's GRENDEL is epic
hokum.”
I just hope these cheap "because everyone else
is doing it" cash-ins don't spoil the general populations mood for viking
period pieces.
Pathfinder looks to be kind of silly as well. Yes,
Vikings did come to North America around 1000 A.D. and that could have been an
interesting story but this movie opts to go a more fictional route making the
Vikings out to be menacing conquerors. It
seems that it’s headed to theaters sometime in April. Aint-it-cool-news has
some early reviews in which they pan it fairly evenly across the board. At least, despite being historical nonsense,
it has a neat look to it. Watch the
trailer and judge for yourself: http://www.pathfinderthemovie.com/
More promising are the animated Beowulf movie from
Robert Zemeckis, using the style of animation in The Polar Express, and
Outlander, of course. Feel free to
discuss any Viking movies here.
01/22/07 As we browse the internet for new info on Outlander, a few
things bothered us. Mainly it was all the
fuss over the video footage of the Moorwen maquette. It isn’t that the footage isn’t neat. But the way it’s touted as the “first look”
at the creature is somewhat irksome.
To start with,
though there isn’t a 3d maquette present, back in the beginning of December the
space channel aired a featurette on Outlander and
they also interviewed Patrick Tatopoulos… a full month before the G4
video. In the space channel segment,
Patrick points to the same piece of concept art featured in the G4 video as
well as a revised one that the maquette is based on. He touches on almost all the same points as
the G4 video but is actually more specific in some cases. In both videos he mentions refinements that
have happened to the design since.
In an interview with ugo.com from November 21st,
director Howard McCain also pointed out a number of design features of the
Moorwen:
He's bioluminescent, so when he's in
the woods hunting at night, you can't see him unless he wants to be seen. In
this world, first of all, the Vikings have no street lights or anything, so
whatever is there is the only available light at night, the torches. It's not
like Predator. It's not see-through or anything, it simply uses light to lure
its prey and what Patrick came up with is pretty cool.
In yesterdays
interview with Tal Peleg, an animator working on putting Patrick’s designs on
screen, Tal assured us that Outlander still has aces up it’s sleeves regarding
the creature. In his words “all the
special info is heavily clouded,” and we “will be blown away once [we] see it
in the movies.”
Interestingly the maquette is almost as old as the
original concept drawings. Tully Summers is a sculptor who
works at Tatopoulos studios. According
to his résumé he was working on
this particular maquette back in 2000 – nearly 7 years ago. Tully is a talented artist in his own right
and you can see samples of his work on his web site here though the site
itself hasn’t been updated in a while.
Hopefully we can
put to rest any fears that this stuff has spoiled the experience of seeing the
Moorwen for the first time on the big screen.
It looks to be pretty exciting and we at outlander.solsector.net can’t
wait.
01/21/07 Outlander.solsector.net
Exclusive Interview!
With Outlander
having finished principal photography, outlander.solsector.net decided to sit
down (figuratively via e-mail) with Tal Peleg, one of the
animators working on the computer generated creature effects for the
Moorwen. Obviously contractual
agreements means he can’t reveal many details about the creature itself but I’m
sure you will all find what he had to say insightful and interesting. Often the work of individual animators gets
overshadowed by the principal actors, directors, and screenwriters so we were
only too happy to help provide some insight into the hard work that goes on
behind the scenes. As background, and
for insight into the process of creating the Moorwen, we also highly recommend
you - the reader – visit his web site and have a look at the Minotaur
samples. We’ve also filed this article
in the press articles section for future reference.
OSN: How
did you become invloved with the production as animator? What
special skills do you bring to the table that will help make Outlander a
success?
Tal Peleg:
Prior
to Outlander, David Kuklish (Visual Effects Supervisor) and I carry years of
collaborative expertise on past comparable CG shows. Our latest major project was involving a
very similar idea of a CG built character and overall concept; the LGF feature,
Minotaur. As an animation director, developing the creature closely with
Jonathan English (Dir.), and the VFX supervisor, while being one of the only
creature animators on the show, I was able to acquire a great deal of both
managerial and artistic experience under heavily pressured schedule. The visual
effects on Minotaur were carried out by a small team in Double Edge Digital, on
an incredibly low budget. As a result, towards the end of the animation work I
started compositing shots, extending my coordination with the rest of the CG
departments such as compositors, texture artists and
lighters. Additionally, I am a self taught animator and a painter. As far
as my memory can stretch back, I was passionately painting and animating to a
wide varieties of comic books, cartoons and motion pictures heroes. As a
child, one of my all-time favorite inspiration bomb cartoons was what is known
as La Linea. It was so simple and entertaining that I started animating stick
figures on notebooks and thick school books for years to come. Interestingly
enough, it actually helped me build strong foundations of timing in animation.
Although I had a good natural starting point, constant practicing was always
half the job to reach the higher ground of professionalism. Ultimately, my
portfolio and professional background have pleased Howard, which ensured me a
spot in Outlander as one of the earliest key animators on the film. Of course
past the film's release, I plan on following the theme of Minotaur in my site and reveal some of my
personal animation work of the Moorwen, but this time with a substantial
increase in animation detail, length and character.
OSN: Your
work on Minotaur looked very good in the samples on your
website. How are you finding the work on Outlander compares in
complexity? What all is involved in modeling and rendering each
given scene?
Tal Peleg: Thank
you for the compliments. Surprisingly, the Moorwen's animation wasn't more
complex than that of the Minotaur. In fact, due to
striking resemblances in style and physique, we were able to mimic
the fundamentals of the R&D of Minotaur onto the Moorwen temp-basic build
with few modifications, and skip right into the pre-visualizations phase.
This has been a major help. However, Outlander is a heavy duty CG work. The
main difference in the shows was the overwhelming amount of CG shots in
Outlander as a whole, which required a much larger library of animations and
consistency in triple the sequences. In "Ask the dust" (2006),
for instance, I worked long months with a team on a mere handful of shots. We
had to track in a photo-real matte paintings of an authentic detailed
neighborhood in Hollywood that was originally a 3D render with matched lighting
settings (which is by itself an incredible amount of work), as well as track in
bridges, street lights, tons of electric wires, trains, cars, birds, and
even CG people, all while the original shoot was an unstable camera without any
blue screens. That is an example of how complex shots can get. Additionally,
the Minotaur itself is a far cry simpler creature than the Moorwen. While the
Minotaur was overall a basic beast with relatively limited features, the
Moorwen carries lots of distinctive attributes that require extreme detail work
on many levels, aside from animation. It's a really cool looking creature,
people will love its innovative concept (it can easily make a unique action
figure). If you had the Minotaur and the Moorwen's clay work side by side on a
turn table, you wouldn't be able to tell what's more sophisticated, as they are
both super-terrifying and amazingly designed. But once they are fully textured
and shaded it's a different story. I have already seen images and video footage
of the Moorwen floating around the net, mostly official presentations of the
Tatopoulos Studios, where you can see the entire creature from head to toe, but
(gladly) all the special info is heavily clouded. I think people will be blown away
once they see it in the movies.
OSN: Every
film has it's own challenges. What in particular would you point out as
having needed particular attention?
Tal Peleg: When
David first introduced me to Outlander's screenplay, storyboards and the animatics
in late 2005, he pointed out something extremely challenging with the
implementation of the final look of the Moorwen. Typically there are lots of
challenges involved in a Sci-Fi movie, but this particular one is undoubtedly
the biggest challenge of the entire visual effects production. It's not the
usual required blue screen dust puffs or puddle splashes that are later
composited in accordance with the creature. It's something different, way more
interactive and sophisticated. You'll have to wait and see.
As far as animation, the
thing that required thorough attention was the development of the creature
before and during the shootings. The creation of animation indexes was as
important as hitting the pre-visualization deadlines. Building solid
characteristics in advance, isn't only essential contractually, but is
highly beneficial in the long run for the post production work; to me, the
most imminent benefit is the practice. Animators gain good practice by
using the rig and building animation, which leads to feedback with the rigging
team. Eventually, it narrows down to an approved core look, that can be
imported or referenced, and in rare cases it can even be used as a platform for
further animation evolvement. Most importantly, having assets of
animations approved and ready to import into a scene (like on
Minotaur), cuts the work into half the time. Due to the weight of shots in
Outlander, this has been one of the top crucial challenges.
OSN: It's
our understanding that shooting has wrapped on Ourlander and that SPIN
productions has been working hard on the Computer effects since
October? Can you comment on the level of work done and how much work
there lies ahead before it can be considered complete?
Tal Peleg: Spin
Productions has already shifted gears into post production. I cannot comment on
when the project will be completed, but I will say that the level of work has
been significantly ramping up since October. There is an incredible amount of
technical animation, scripts, particles, shading and lighting, tons of
compositing and matte paintings. A lot to look forward to.
OSN: Thank
you very much for your time
01/20/07 We apologize for the length of time between the last update,
though we hope to have lots of exciting things for you in the near future. Some of the minor updates since the last time
include adding an IMDB link and character name to the Cast page, half a dozen new entries to the Crew page and a couple of new photos.
One of the new crew links is for a Paul Jones who apparently worked on Kainan’s
space age battle armor, which we’ve heard described as a “skin tight crotch and
butt highlighting… wetsuit that isn't wet, and is in fact tricked out to look
like a space battle suit.” It seems like the outside is covered in some
kind of armor panels as it is also describes as a “hard plastic suit” that is
apparently really uncomfortable to wear.
Well, through the magic of the movies we’re confident it will look a lot
more cool than it was comfortable to wear.
Paul Jones Effects Studio’s web site
can be found here. There you can see some of
his other work on films such as Resident Evil: Apocalypse and Silent Hill.
01/16/07 We’ve done a little minor tweaking since the last update. One of the changes highlights why IMDB entries can’t always be relied on at
face value. Part of the problem is the
submissions process. While IMDB entries
are no doubt accurate for most films, movies still in production are a
different matter. In fact, despite being
accurate and documented, various ones of our own submissions were ignored. In other instances, there is one actress
(as of this writing) listed twice and other actors and actresses linked to new
IMDB pages despite they’re already having one under a slightly different
name. Case in point: Outlander lists Tony Ianni as the Art director and indeed he is
but his IMDB page is actually under Anthony Ianni.
Our crew page has been updated to reflect this. For a while Elizabeth Guildford was listed
twice under Production management with one of the entries being a typo, though
it took over a month for anyone to delete the erroneous entry from the IMDB
page whereas it was obvious to us there was no need to include the second
entry. To some degree our cast and crew pages still reflect the IMDB pages
so keep in mind that some of the info is subject to change as we get more
accurate reports.
Also, we asked a friend of ours who
reviews music which websites are the best to watch for announcements about
upcoming movie musical scores. He
suggested we keep our eye on Sountrack.net.
01/14/07 You may have already heard about the French actress Drakaina who got a role as an extra in
Outlander shortly after coming to Canada.
Well, she kindly dropped us a line to let us know about a gallery she has up of photos from the set.
We would also like to thank her for letting us use them in our own galleries. As well
she also had some kind words to pass on about her co-star Jack Huston:
“One thing I may add is that everyone
is raving about James [caviezel], who is indeed a great and sweet actor, buck
Jack… is a very nice guy and very funny too!! He is just a young actor trying
to make the best out of his career, and once again he is a very funny guy and I
really enjoyed working with him too. He
likes what he does and is really trying his best.”
01/13/07 Minor updates: We’ve added at least 8 new entries to the Crew
and Cast
pages. Some of these are visual effects
people working on Outlander at Spin Productions. Almost all the shots of the Moorwen will be
computer generated, and other scenes, like in the Viking village exteriors,
there will be computer enhancements.
This is what executive producer Don Carmody had to say - in an interview -
about choosing the village’s location:
“This was actually the first location
we looked at in Nova Scotia. We actually
went all over looking for other locations but ended up back here. This spot is
a natural valley, it’s surrounded by trees and has water nearby. The clean tree
line will allow us to add some mountains in the background.”
01/11/07 We recently heard of Mondolithic Studios
and their involvement with the Outlander production. Mondolithic is a Vancouver based virtual
design and illustration studio run by Kenn Brown and Chris Wren. They are responsible for some very
interesting computer based art work, and their work has even appeared on the
cover of magazines such as Wired and Scientific American. Their company site seems to have gone through
a redesign and is somewhat incomplete, but they also run a blog and posted the following on November
21st:
We have just finished
our first round of development work for the upcoming Sci-fi epic ‘OUTLANDER’
that is currently in production up here in Canada… Chris had an excellent first meeting
yesterday in which he presented the first round of designs, which were very
well recieved and has set a real positive tone for the next couple of weeks of
development.
We’ve
been speculating about what this means.
The first thing suggested was that they are doing poster artwork and was
referring to a meeting in which they presented the initial concepts. The kicker here is the date. November 21 is well after shooting started,
in fact it’s closer to halfway through the production. Is this related to any other kind of
promotional material? Any Ideas?
01/10/07 Today we have something a lot more
exciting than the G4 video of the last update.
It seems Monday was a busy day for Outlander on TV. MTV Canada
aired a 5 minute feature on Outlander. They
talk to the director as well as the Lead actors. Making comments are Howard McCain, Jim
Caviezel, Jack Huston, John Hurt, and Sophia Myles. Plus we get to see quite a bit of the “Shield
Dance” scene that involves a lot of wire work.
What’s that, you ask? You’ll have
to watch the video and find out! On
their site, scroll down to “Browse all shows” and then find MTVe2 in the
list. It’s the January 8th
episode. Or watch it here.
01/08/07 G4TV has a neat clip up on their site. They visited Patrick Tatopoulos at his studio
and talked to him about the Moorwen creature design. There really isn’t much new info there (in
fact maybe less about the actual creature than the Hypaspace clip,
or the director interview) but the clip does feature a really neat
(life-size?) mock-up of the Moorwen that will give you a good idea of what kind
of presence the creature will have on film.
You can watch the clip at G4 here. Hopefully this link here
will take you to the higher res version but the site is giving us grief at the
moment.
01/06/07 For those of you following the
dealings with ACTRA, we have a slight clarification today. In a press release
dated January 3, they stated that unless a deal is hammered out this weekend,
they are taking strike action starting Monday at midnight. However, they add that “The many producers who have signed
continuation letters with ACTRA will not be involved in this action.” According to Halifax’s The Coast, this includes the producers of
outlander. Gary Vermeir, representative
of Halifax’s ACTRA branch, said “"If a producer signs it will enable him
to continue shooting, to basically get around a work stoppage, and it involves
a small increase of fees,"
You might ask “how does this affect Outlander if –
as far as we can tell – Principle photography is pretty much complete?” Well, an actor or actress who needs to re-dub
lines in studio will still be under ACTRA. Any reshoots involving ACTRA
performers are under contract. If they
have to do some ADR, for example, for a slight increase in their normal fee
they can come to work without hesitation or hindrance.
01/05/07 ALL
DONE?
The
best we can gather principle photography wraps up today. Despite one or two reports suggesting that
shooting continues until the end of the month it seem that today is the
day. So Outlander reaches a milestone
with (hopefully) all the required footage being shot. As production moves out of the soundstages
and onto various editing software and PCs, spin productions
are hard at work generating the CGI creature effect. Some other tasks to be completed on
outlander aside from editing and Computer effects are various sound design
issues, somewhere someone is contemplating what kind of sounds a Moorwen
makes. Plus, there may be dialogue that
was hard to record on set. So some
actors might be brought back for some ADR work.
And we also don’t have word yet on who the contenders are to write and
record the score for Outlander.
In
the mean time I’m sure the cast are having a drink to celebrate right now and
are then heading home for some much deserved rest.
As
far as site related news is concerned, We’ve added a page to the discuss link
to better guide you to the various discussions at Crius.net
that might be of interest to Outlander fans.
For example We’ve moved a sideways discussion about other Viking movies
you might be interested in taking a look at in anticipation of Outlander to
it’s own thread. So if you have a
comment to make, another movie suggestion, or want to post a review of your own
(even if someone else has already) you can do that here.
We’ve
also slightly revamped the Archive page to
accommodate future growth and ease of navigation, and re-written the brief plot
synopsis at the top of the page.
01/04/07 The more we look into the effort that
the set and costume designers put into detailing the world of Outlander, the
more we’re impressed. Iron Raven Metalwork
was also asked to supply
forged and fabricated pieces for the village set. Aside from the pieces The Wareham Forge made,
apparently even more blacksmiths were required to complete all the work on
time.
A
number of other expert craftsmen were employed on the film. As we previously reported, a number of wood
pieces were made as well as costumes, weapons, and armor –including chainmail
and various leather pieces. A lot of
effort was put in to make the pieces authentic to the period, and finely
detailed. Hopefully, this neat touches,
like runes etched into leather armor, or scrollwork on metal pot stands will
give the film a wonderful texture, even if the camera never focuses on them
very long.
01/02/07 We previously reported on how The Schmitthenner
Armory was
contacted to make a number of pieces of leather armor for Outlander. More was needed though, and Adam Smith, who is based in Ontario, was asked
to make a number of custom pieces for the film as well. Adam has worked on a number of movies and you
can see his craftsmanship in such recent films as Resident Evil:
Apocalypse. You can find out more about
his work at his websites here http://home.ica.net/~spike/sword/film/index.html
and here: http://home.ica.net/~spike/sword/
Another area of filmmaking that
requires careful attention is cinematography.
But along with a talented cinematographer like Pierre Gill you need
talented camera operators. Steadicams
allow a certain freedom of movement. As
such, François Perrier, who has worked with Gill before was chosen for his
almost 20 years of experience in the Job.
You can see samples of his work on his website here: http://www.steadiman.nl/.
Here’s a bit about what he had to say about being a steadicam operator:
“I
refer very often to the steadicam as the 3rd person point of view that brings a
scene into motion. By his choreographic movement it can unite actors and the
set into one continuing shot. One shot that tells everything! This is what
steadicam is all about.”
A few other minor site updates to
mention: First, we added 3 more entries
to the Crew page. Second, we revamped the Links page slightly and added a few more links there as well. The links page was a bit disorganized so
hopefully the new layout clears things up a little. Also, If you have a page we should know
about, drop us a line by clicking the email link at the bottom of this page.
MAIN - IN THE PRESS - CAST - CREW - SHOOTING LOCATIONS - PHOTO GALLERIES
- RUMORS FROM THE SET
- MEDIA - CONCEPT ART - LINKS - DISCUSS