Finally A "Official" Vision of Ender's Game

At long last it appears that the cogs are starting to turn on the marketing machine for the Ender's Game Movie with Summit Entertainment dropping a still from the upcoming release with an exclusive article with Entertainment Weekly. Bask in it's magnificence.

This scene shows Battle School students in their barracks with Harrison Ford as Colonel Graff giving Asa Butterfield as Ender a stern look and probably some chastisement ala Full Metal Jacket style. I can almost hear the scene now:

This image gives us a better look at the scenery for the movie, and yes, it is not like the book. There are a couple of fan sites that delve into that more deeply into the comparison as to what is described in the book. (EnderNews, Ender's Ansible ).

From my interpretation this is how I envisioned the barracks:

I will say that the colors, structures, and room brightness of the official still reminds me of the layout of Avatar. Which is not surprising since one of the Concept Artists for that movie, Ben Proctor, is also one of the two Production Designers for Ender's Game. In the mean time while we wait for more stills if you want to give yourself some insight to the visual style the movie will take see his Avatar portfolio

Here's a little example below. I chose this image because it had beds, bright lighting, and a color scheme like the still above.

Still if you look through further through his Avatar portfolio you can see some designs that would make great looking battle simulators that Ender and the Jeesh use on Eros. For example:

THIS OR THE OTHER BEN PROCTOR IMAGES I DISPLAY IN THIS POST ARE NOT FROM THE ENDER'S GAME MOVIE. Let me be clear about that because I've gotten a note from Summit about some of my previous speculations about the movie artwork before. Since this type of setup was already used in Avatar, more than likely we will see something different for the immersive combat simulator in Ender's Game.

That's it for this post. Until next time remember....

Ender's Game Movie behind the scenes. Khylin Rhambo and 3D capture

For those of us who have been following the developments of the upcoming Ender's Game Movie. We spend alot of time trying to what is going on in decipher pictures that comes from the actors, crew, or production members in order to get some idea of how they will work movie magic to translate the story on screen

At the beginning of production one cast member Khylin Rhambo, who plays Dink Meeker in the film, posted this picture to his Facebook account showing him in a room of light. According to an article on Ender's Ansible he states that the "the technology in the picture was used to scan his face, take costume measurements, 'and other stuff.'” There was not much known about the technology until now.

In my recent internet travels, I encountered a Huffington Post science column called "Talk Nerdy to Me" run by their senior science correspondent Cara Santa Maria. In May she posted a video report called "How to make a Digital Human" which features the technology you see in Khylin's picture called Light Stage X.  Light Stage X is globed network of lights and cameras that was developed by the Graphics Lab at University of Southern California's Institute for Creative Studies, it's purpose, as one of it's creators and lab directors Paul Debevec, Ph.d states is a way of "digitizing people's faces to turn a real person in to a digital person that would be just as realistic as the real thing."

I can spend another 500 words or so giving you an overview about how this thing works, or you can watch the video (WATCH THE VIDEO). It gives a good overview about how it works, how they used it for facial captures for actors in movies and video games, and a example of how they generate a digital version of Cara. Awesome tech.

I can imagine that Digital Domain would be using this capture technology to generate 3D versions of all the kids for integration into CGI effects for the Battle Room sequences. It will be exciting to see how it comes out. This should give you some better understanding into how Digital Domain is spending their money on the Movie!