Halo Movie May be Shot on Red

[Gavin Greenwalt]

I'll still never forgive Bungie for selling out and not making it a Mac-only title like it was originally supposed to be when it was introduced at MacWorld.

But hey, I'm just bitter. :)

Uhhh... if by Mac-Only you mean Mac, PC and possibly Linux then that statement is correct.

[Zack Birlew]

Actually, the story of Halo the game isn't too bad, it's just that they left the beginning of it out so that you couldn't understand what was going on. The books based on Halo explain a lot and are very film-friendly, that is if they were going to use the books at all anyways. The beginning story of how the Spartans came to be and what happened before Halo broke out was enough to be its own movie, which would make sense since it was its own book after all. The Halo that we saw in the game was book 2 and, even then, the book had a whole backstory mixed into it that we didn't see in the game.

So, I would hope they would stick to the books at least and not go off somewhere else and potentially ruin it.

[PaulClements]

...I don't have time to play games these days anyway.

I'm in the same boat. There fun from time to time but i don't really have much time these days.

One game that has taken my interest is Crysis though. I like it because they've begun to understand what makes a good film look good. Other video games look like... well video. With Crysis however they're putting in depth of field and other such measures in an attempt to emulate the look of film a little more, something I'm suprised hasn't been done far far more in games. I don't think they're there just yet. They could really do with employing a few DP's when producing these graphic engines and tutoring the games designers on the look of particular lenses and how they'd act in the different situations etc. Games and films share a lot of the same qualities but for some reason they rarely seem to use certain individuals from either genre. CG artists come closest to crossing over seemlessly.

[Zac C]

I remember reading somewhere about the possibility of the film being reexamined after the release of the Halo 3 ad and the storm that followed it. I believe some discussions resumed due to the obvious potential.

i read that somewhere also, ive been trying to find the article. But seeing as Halo 2 beat out everything in Entertainment industry for getting the most money opening day/night. I don't see how a studio could turn it down, well they could see another Doom, but seriously, you have PJ on this, the nobody who made lord of the rings

[Andrew Kimery]

I'm in the same boat. There fun from time to time but i don't really have much time these days.

One game that has taken my interest is Crysis though. I like it because they've begun to understand what makes a good film look good. Other video games look like... well video. With Crysis however they're putting in depth of field and other such measures in an attempt to emulate the look of film a little more, something I'm suprised hasn't been done far far more in games. I don't think they're there just yet. They could really do with employing a few DP's when producing these graphic engines and tutoring the games designers on the look of particular lenses and how they'd act in the different situations etc. Games and films share a lot of the same qualities but for some reason they rarely seem to use certain individuals from either genre. CG artists come closest to crossing over seemlessly.

Technologically speaking adding things like depth of field to a video game is very demanding which is why it hasn't happened yet. Pre-rendering a CG movie at 24fps is quite a different thing from rendering an interactive video/computer game on the fly at 60-120fps using a video game console or off-the-shelf computer. There are a billion things game designers would love to do but can't because the technology isn't there to make it possible w/in the confines of a video/computer game.


-A

[Simon Blackledge]

One games place I know has just had dop's in to show the artists how to set up effective replay cameras.. for best action shots..

DOF.. they put it in the wrong place and stuff looks like a model. Nor do they animate it for pull focus.. shame !

give me a CC and a glow and a grain with some math and games can be made to look better.. just some people really do like the clean sharp look.

.edit..
just seen the above post..
DOF is in.. it's just basically multiple offset renders of the same frame. From looking at the last one I saw.. the motion blur was 4 samples.. dof when subtle, used this.. when not was positional with a mask blur.. but live on replays :-/ just it was in the wrong place to be effective.

[Gavin Greenwalt]

Screw DoPs, hire some compositors. Compositors already know what it takes to make CG footage look real-ish. Not to mention absolutely unsurpassed in their abilities to find quick visual hacks which don't require a lot of rendering.

Give a compositor a bunch of render passes from an average 'next-gen' game and watch can be done to make the visuals shine.