Last month I talked about an animation that had a huge effect on the internet world.
This month I am talking about a big animated film that is going to have an even huger
effect on the film going public.What I am talking about is Final Fantasy.
If you haven't heard of this before, let me explain. Final Fantasy started off on the
gaming consoles (the Famicom Disk system to be precise). They were Role Playing Games
(RPG) that involved massive adventures and character based game play. Very involved and
detailed, they became massive hits. The current installment 'Final Fantasy 8' plays on
the Playstation and PC. I think the West enjoys these games not only for the huge amount
of adventuring one does, but also because there is a strong Eastern cultural influence
involved. When I happened across these games, they hooked me and my imagination instantly.
It is nice to see the East being able to export its culture around the world and it sure
makes a change from the American way of thinking.
Anyway, I digress. About a year or so ago, Squaresoft, the company who publishes the games,
decided to do a film version. But the difference with this film was that it was going to be ,
if not the first, a photo-realistic computer animated full length film. The information
about this event has been very thin.One of the most alarming is their budget which Square
have not announced. The rumour mill suggests it is in the hundreds of millions of
dollars. The main reason being the huge amount of R&D going on to be able to realize
this momentous film.Things like hair and human skin are very difficult to create, let
alone things like clothes and facial movement. Huge amounts of human effort is being applied
to the look and movement of humans. We, meaning the viewers, will easily be able to see
false looking or animated humans; we know ourselves too well. So this is going to be quite
a challenge for the film makers. A combination of motion capture / traditional animation
and probably some new unspoken of techniques are going to be used.
From the pictures and clips I have seen, this is going to be an event that will define a
new avenue of film creation. The level of technical and creative abilities is going to be
increased dramatically. The ancillary effect, a film that will do justice to a game license
( remember those flops like Mortal Combat, Mario Bros, etc.). For the West, people and film
producers will also start to see animation as a viable medium for Mature or adult themes
The headquarters for the project is in Honolulu, Hawaii and is being distributed through Columbia
Pictures. The director is Hironobu Sakaguchi (he produced the Final Fantasy games). Some great
voice talents have been procured: Ming-na Wen (Voice of Mulan), Alec Baldwin, Steve Buscemi,
Peri Gilpin (Frasier), Ving Rhames, Donald Sutherland and James Woods.
Now rather than try to describe the awesome look of the film, go and check these sites out.
The first one is the official Final Fantasy site - www.finalfantasy.com
. It has pictures and
quite a few clips that are updated regularly. The others are:
http://scifi.ign.com/news/2166.html
http://upcomingmovies.com/finalfantasy.html
http://movies.ign.com/news/3643.html
http://scifi.ign.com/movies/3957.html
http://www.squareusa.com/
http://www.ff8.com/web/index.html
For us as film makers, it pays for us to look at films like this and Star Wars -
The Phantom Menace. They are breaking gound as to how movies are made, and we can
learn how to use and better these techniques.
Any questions or comments to : [email protected]
