During pre-production, Tom Tykwer, Director of Photography Frank Griebe, Production Designer Uli Hanisch, and Costume Designer Pierre-Yves Gayraud studied the complete works of Caravaggio, Rembrandt, and Joseph Wright, in order to ensure the film’s aesthetic correctly captured eighteenth century France.
The plot concerns a young punk rock enthusiast (Estevez) in Los Angeles who finds himself partnered with a jaded repossession agent (Stanton) and subsequently caught up in the pursuit for a mysterious car that might be connected to extraterrestrials. The soundtrack is noted as a snapshot of the early-’80s Los Angeles hardcore punk scene.
Repo Man received widespread acclaim, and was considered one of the best films of 1984. It has achieved cult status. (wiki)
Lord and Miller wanted the film to feel like “you walked inside a comic book”, and were excited to tell the story in a way that the live-action films could not. Persichetti concurred, feeling that animation was the best medium with which to honor the style of the comics, allowing the production team to adapt 70-year-old techniques seen in comic artwork into the film’s visual language. Completing the animation for the film required up to 140 animators, the largest crew ever used by Sony Pictures Animation for a film to date.
The CGI animation for the film was combined with “line work and painting and dots and all sorts of comic book techniques” to make it look like it was created by hand, which was described as “a living painting”. This was achieved by artists taking rendered frames from the CGI animators and working on top of them in 2D, with the goal of making every frame of the film “look like a comic panel”. Lord described this style of animation as “totally revolutionary”, and explained that the design combines the in-house style of Sony Pictures Animation with the “flavor” of comic artists such as Sara Pichelli (who co-created Miles Morales) and Robbi Rodriguez. To make it feel more like a comic book, it was animated without motion blur, and rather than using animation principles like squash and stretch they came up with substitute versions of them; “so that in texture and feel it felt different, but it still achieved the same goal — to either feel weight or anticipation or impact or things like that”.
The film’s directors all felt that the film would be one of the few that audiences actually “need” to watch in 3D due to the immersive nature of the animated world created, and the way that the hand-drawn animation elements created specifically for the film create a unique experience; Persichetti described this experience as a combination of the effects of an old-fashioned hand-drawn multiplane camera and a modern virtual reality environment. (read more)
Shoplifters (Japanese: 万引き家族 Hepburn: Manbiki Kazoku, direct translation Shoplifting Family) is a 2018 Japanese drama film directed, written and edited by Hirokazu Kore-eda. Starring Lily Franky and Sakura Ando, it is about a family that relies on shoplifting to cope with a life of poverty.
Kore-eda wrote the screenplay contemplating what makes a family, and inspired by reports on poverty and shoplifting in Japan. (wiki)
Hogwarts exteriors, like some interiors, were shot in the historic Lacock Abbey, dating from 1229. This abbey, located in Wiltshire, England, had already been used for the same purpose for the first films of the Harry Potter saga .
As with the first film, animal making required months of graphic, pattern, and animation testing to determine the appearance, behavior, movements, attitude, and personality of each creature. J.K. Rowling was inspired, for many of them, by legendary creatures from different cultures, such as the Chinese Zouwu, the Scottish Kelpie and the French Matagot.
Mid90s (stylized as mid90s) is a 2018 American coming-of-age comedy-drama film written and directed by Jonah Hill, in his feature directorial debut. It stars Sunny Suljic, Lucas Hedges and Katherine Waterston, and follows a 13-year-old boy who begins spending time with a mostly older group of skateboarders while living in 1990s Los Angeles. Mid90s features an original score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross.