November 19, 2008 
 
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5 Clips from Next Week’s HEROES – The Eclipse Part 1
Plus an interview with Breckin Meyer and Seth Green
TWILIGHT has joined the list of Top Ten Advance Ticket-Sellers on Fandango
Currently #6, above Lord of the Rings: Return of the King
What Was the 1991 version of BEAUTY AND THE BEAST missing?
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Disney Lives Large with IMAX 3-D
Begins with A CHRISTMAS CAROL in 3-D
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A clay animation feature film featuring the voices of Philip Seymour Hoffman and Toni Collette
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THE SOLOIST Shuffle
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BOLT – 4 Movie Clips, a Featurette, the Trailer and a Music Video
This is the first Disney animated movie that was Executive Produced by John Lasseter. And it shows
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Seth Rogen Makes Another Porno
What can we say? The guy loves pornography.
 
ARCHIVE - ENTERTAINMENT NEWS
Take a Look at Some Images from SURF’S UP
4/7/2007
Posted by
Frosty

About a month ago I got to go to Sony’s Culver City Studios to see a Surf’s Up presentation and interview some of the cast. While I’ve been meaning to get all of the interviews and photographs from the event up on the site much sooner than now… one thing lead to another and it kept on getting pushed back. But with no junkets or screenings this weekend….I’m catching up on a lot of things.

 

So what is Surf’s Up?

 

It’s a CGI animated penguin movie that Sony is putting out this summer. Now I’m sure a lot of you are thinking another penguin movie…didn’t we just see Happy Feet? The answer is while it is another penguin movie it’s nothing like Happy Feet, or for that matter, anything that’s been done before in animation.

 

When filmmakers make an animated movie they follow certain rules. The biggest one is to never have two actors recording their lines in the same room. They always record each voice actor separately, and sometimes two people who are acting in the same scene never meet until the day they’re doing press for the final product. It ends up that the editor of the film has to find a way to get an emotional performance out of the voice tracks, which can be quite a challenge.

 

What the filmmakers of Surf’s Up did was highly unconventional. Instead of having each actor record their lines separately, they would get everyone in a scene together and have them record their lines at the same time. What would happen is people would go over each other’s voices and the end result was a much more organic scene, one that sounded real.

 

Now with certain animated films this might not work. But Surf’s Up could allow this process due to what the film is about. The film is done like you are watching a documentary. You have characters talking to the camera, getting interviewed, it’s unlike anything I’ve seen from a big budget CGI film and I’ll say it looked great.

 

For the first time when watching an animated movie I thought the characters sounded real. The way they recorded the voices absolutely added to the actor’s ability to craft a performance.

 

Also when I interviewed the directors they said that tons of the movie was improvised and they would only tell the actors the outline of the scene, allowing them to bring their own ideas to the characters they were portraying.

 

One of the great stories they told was when Shia LaBeouf was supposed to be at the recording session with the people who played his parents and family. It ended up he was a bit late but the rest were already in the booth recording. When he arrived they sent him in and told the actors to act like his character was late for an interview that they were all supposed to do in their family home and what would they say to him. That scene was one they showed us when we saw some footage and it’s one that absolutely used the way they recorded the movie as an asset. You had voices over one another, yelling, it felt like a real scene rather than an animated one.

 

While we only got to see about fifteen minutes of the film I was really impressed with not only the animation but the way they are going to tell the story. Having the frame act as a camera is a great stylistic choice and it’s also quite original. Also some of the shots went in and out of focus as the person who was supposed to be filming was running to try and catch up with a character. Another great shot was when Shia LaBeouf’s character was on a surf board and the camera was mounted on the board with him so it couldn’t move but sometimes water would splash on the frame. It was a little touch but it worked quite well.

 

So to get you ready for the film I’ll be posting a few articles today and tomorrow. I’ll be posting some images from the movie, some images from the Luau where we got to meet the filmmakers and the cast, and some of the interviews I did.

 

Also Sony has posted a trailer for Surf’s Up and it shows what I’m talking about with the camera and how they’re going to tell the story.

 

This article is for some images from the film. And before you see them you can read the studio provided synopsis:

 
Surf’s Up is an animated action-comedy that delves behind the scenes of the high-octane world of competitive surfing. The film profiles teenage Rockhopper penguin Cody Maverick (Shia LaBeouf), an up-and-coming surfer, as he enters his first pro competition. Followed by a camera crew to document his experiences, Cody leaves his family and home in Shiverpool, Antarctica to travel to Pen Gu Island for the Big Z Memorial Surf Off.  Along the way, Cody meets surf nut Chicken Joe (Jon Heder), famous surf promoter Reggie Belafonte (James Woods), surf talent scout Mikey Abromowitz (Mario Cantone), and spirited lifeguard Lani Aliikai (Zooey Deschanel), all of whom recognize Cody’s passion for surfing, even if it’s a bit misguided at times.  Cody believes that winning will bring him the admiration and respect he desires, but when he unexpectedly comes face-to-face with a washed-up old surfer (Jeff Bridges), Cody begins to find his own way, and discovers that a true winner isn’t always the one who comes in first.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



 
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