Saturday, December 24, 2011

Why Nvidia's CEO Is Embracing The Zynga-Fication Of Mobile Gaming ???

Players of the highly popular mobile game Fruit Ninja need a blade to slice watermelons into pieces. And they need a slingshot to exact revenge on evil green pigs in Angry Birds, and a sharp eye to match gems in Bejeweled. But what they do not need to play such games are robust graphics cards for their smartphones and tablets.

That hasn't slowed graphics card powerhouse Nvidia from aggressively going after the market: Earlier this month the company launched its most robust mobile chip yet, the Tegra 3. The chip, says CEO Jen-Hsun Huang, makes devices it runs on "far far better than the PlayStation 2 and first generation Xbox." 

Huang believes that mobile gaming will eventually become as graphically intense as it is on PCs and consoles. Nvidia already powers 70% of non-Apple tablets and more than a dozen smartphone models, which according to Huang is a strong indicator that the rest of the mobile market will migrate to more powerful graphics and not less. 

"I don't expect mobile devices to be any less powerful," he says.
Of course, Huang's business depends on that prediction coming true. Nvidia raked in $3.3 billion in revenue last year, most of which derived from the sale or license of products on desktops and notebook PCs. Processor intensive games like Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 have driven the popularity of Nvidia's graphics cards on PCs and consoles. But on mobile devices, where the size, weight, and energy efficiency of processors is a serious issue, Nvidia's chips have less of a presence. Apple's iPad and iPhone, for example, use in-house designed A4 and A5 processors rather than third-party cards from Nvidia competitors AMD and Intel like its MacBook Pros support.

The question here for Nvidia and competitors such as Qualcomm is whether there's a limit to the types of games that can be adapted to tablets and smartphones. If users are less interested in playing games as immersive as Heavy Rain on the subway, it would limit graphics card makers' ability to crack the mobile market.

"It's hard for us to predict what it's going to be like," Huang admits. "I think you'll see new interesting games. The analog control isn't as good, on the one hand, but [the device] is with you all the time. You have touch, too, so how would take advantage of that? The gyro? The compass? GPS? Camera? All of that is going to get integrated into the gameplay someday."

That's why Nvidia is investing so heavily in the space. It's a bet that the next generation of mobile games will arrive if the technology is there--a bet Nvidia made decades ago during what Huang refers to as the "Atari generation," when he and his cofounders built a processor company before there was anything needed to process. "There were no games then," he recalls. "Only 2-D side scrollers." 

"People are playing Zynga [games] on their PCs, too, not because the PC is not capable of better games. It's because they enjoy playing Zynga. Think of it like video," says Huang. "There are three-minute movies; there are 30-minute TV shows; there are two-hour movies. You have to get that range: video games with low production value to video games with high production value. You're going to get video games that are very easy to play, just like there are books that are very easy to read."

The important point here, Huang adds, is not to let the current catalog of games limit mobile gaming's potential. "You have to get the technology ready first," he says.

Google Earth, Foreign Wars, And The Future Of Satellite Imagery

DigitalGlobe, the Colorado-based imaging firm responsible for much of Google Earth's, Bing Maps', and Google Maps' content, has a new satellite on the way. The WorldView-3 is a super-high-resolution remote-sensing satellite slated for a 2014 launch. Ball Aerospace & Technologies is building the satellite and ITT will be responsible for the WorldView-3's optical imager. However, the primary audience for Worldview-3 pictures won't be Google. Images from the new satellite are mainly intended to be sold and licensed to the U.S. government.

Firms such as DigitalGlobe and their main competitor, Virginia's GeoEye, earn most of their money from their satellite constellations (or, for the rest of us, their satellites in space) custom-snapping pictures for customers or from resale of the regular imagery the satellites make. These clients range from Google to mining companies to, most importantly, the U.S. government. 

Unfortunately, the best imagery that comes out of high-end satellites such as the WorldView-3 won't make it onto Google Earth anytime soon. U.S. regulations prohibit commercial customers from purchasing imagery with anything better than a .5 meter ground resolution. This means that, unless you work for the federal government or for a close foreign ally, you won't be able to see satellite footage of yourself lounging in a hammock just yet.

The best images to make it out of the WorldView-3 will have a considerably better resolution than .5 meters. Once complete, the satellite will have an image resolution that ranges between .3 and .46 meters. Government regulations require images from the WorldView-2 and WorldView-3 to be resampled to a lower resolution before being offered to private customers.

Intelligence services and the Defense Department will be able to use WorldView-3 for satellite imagery that is crisper and clearer than anything currently on the market. Instead of Google Earth's blurry (though admittedly cool) close-up imagery, government customers will have access to images that look like they jumped out of a science fiction movie.

According to DigitalGlobe CTO Walter Scott, the company's three current satellites photograph the earth's surface approximately six times a year, collecting between 2 and 3 pentabytes of imagery annually. Not all of this data is provided to Google, which receives DigitalGlobe imagery through a special service agreement. Microsoft has a similar agreement that provides content for Bing Maps.

While Google is a valuable customer, DigitalGlobe's gravy train is the provision of satellite imagery to government agencies. In an interview with Fast Company, Scott noted that nearly 60% of the firm's business comes from the U.S. government. That is where the Worldview-3's super-high resolution kicks in: It's also where the whole idea of private satellite companies gets really interesting.

The United States government operates the world's finest collection of surveillance satellites. Agencies such as the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) are responsible for running a sprawling intelligence system with staggering technical assets. Another agency, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), is responsible for interpreting and understanding the massive amount of satellite imagery the government encounters from both proprietary and commercial sources.

DigitalGlobe is among the largest of these commercial sources. This past October, the firm inked an extremely lucrative one-year, $37.9 million contract with the NGA. The contract mainly requires DigitalGlobe to make plenty of cloud-free images, supply the NGA with time-sensitive imagery of “high-priority geographic locations,” and with non-stop delivery of daily imagery within 24 hours of collection. In Scott's words, NGA's collaboration with DigitalGlobe is an “affordable way of getting intelligence” for the federal government.

One major advantage for the federal government is that working with companies such as DigitalGlobe and GeoEye liberates them from many of the bureaucratic and legal constraints that the military and intelligence agencies face. The military can share privately obtained satellite images with foreign allies without dealing with Cold War-era restrictions; government agencies can also obtain imagery without having to deal with omnipresent department infighting and bureaucratic inertia. More worryingly, the easy availability of commercial satellite imagery to government intelligence agencies raises a host of civil liberties concerns related to domestic spying.

Despite landing a large contract, DigitalGlobe is worrying that changing defense priorities could alter their government partnerships. Scott expressed concern to Fast Company that budget cuts in fiscal year 2013 to the Defense Department and various intelligence agencies could limit purchases of commercial imagery. In a recent op-ed for trade paper Defense News, Scott claimed that relying on services such as DigitalGlobe saves the Defense Department money.

However, the private satellite industry has one important thing going for it: Continuing geopolitical unrest. Barring a miracle, the situation in Syria will continue to decline and the ongoing conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan will divert U.S. resources for years to come. In addition, there is always the worry that some new nightmare--Iran? East Asia? The Euro collapse?--will cause an upsurge in government purchases of private satellite imagery. And, if not... well, Google might just be able to negotiate a better deal.

In Superhero-Loving America, Tintin Has An Uphill Battle To Become The Next Batman

Steven Spielberg’s animated feature The Adventures of Tintin opened this week, closing out another year full of big-budget movies based on comic books and graphic novels. Tintin joins properties like Captain America, X-Men, Green Lantern, Cowboys and Aliens, and Thor in the seemingly endless cavalcade of four-color characters to make it to the big screen. And 2011 was a relatively light year. For next year, fans are bracing for Batman: The Dark Knight Rises and The Avengers, among many others.

But Tintin is not like these other comic movie adaptations. Despite its big budget and blockbuster pretentions, Tintin comes from a separate branch of the comics family--those quaint Europeans who, unlike Americans, have treated their graphic novels seriously for decades and consider comics a mass medium, not a genre. Can this Old World take on transmedia succeed in the U.S., or is it like asking Americans to put mayonnaise on their frites, when all they want is ketchup on their fries?

This question goes right to the heart of the transmedia boom that’s swept over the entertainment industry in the past two decades: the desire to create synergies between comic-book superheroes like Batman, Spider-Man, and the Fantastic Four, toys like GI Joe and Transformers, genre-oriented literary properties like Harry Potter and Twilight, and videogames like Resident Evil, and megabucks movie franchises. In all these cases, Hollywood has gone straight for the material that has a built-in cult following rather than obvious mass-audience appeal. 

The idea is that the fanboys and fangirls who show up in their rabid, costumed multitudes at events like the San Diego Comic-Con will be uniquely motivated to  act as viral PR shock troops for these kinds of movies, and then show up on opening night, assuring that all-important “winning weekend” that determines box office success. Both the commercial and artistic results of this geek gold rush have been mixed to say the least, but the trend shows no sign of abating.

Part of this is driven by consolidation in the entertainment industry. America’s two largest comic publishers, DC and Marvel, are owned by Warner Brothers Entertainment and Disney respectively, and their stock-in-trade is superheroes. Disney’s $4 billion purchase of Marvel in 2009 was clearly driven by a desire to use Marvel’s stable of action heroes and proven franchise-worthy lineup (The Hulk, Iron Man, Fantastic Four, etc.) to fill a hole the size of a teenage boy in Disney’s otherwise-dominant pop culture portfolio.
DC flew under Warner Brothers’ radar for decades, but now the parent company is mining its IP goldmine (which includes Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Justice League and other household-name characters) strategically rather than opportunistically. The synergies between DC’s recent “New 52” relaunch of its superhero comics and the release of transmedia properties like the Batman: Arkham City videogame and next year’s Dark Knight Rises movie are much more coordinated both from a marketing and timing perspective than in years past.

Spielberg’s Adventures of Tintin (produced by Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson) is in an oddity, based on a comic character who is neither a costumed superhero nor even American. Created by Belgian cartoonist Georges Remi (under the pen name Hergé) in the late 1920s, the boy adventurer and his dog Snowy starred in a series of best-selling graphic novels throughout the '30s and '40s. 

Hergé’s clean-line art style and fast-moving storytelling was an enormous influence in the European comic scene. In English-speaking countries, the graphic novel had to fight for decades to be taken seriously by critics and readers, and even today is still subject to the occasional “Zap! Bam! Pow! Comics Aren’t Just For Kids Anymore!” treatment in the media. Thanks in part to creators like Hergé and others who produced general material for a wide range of audiences, the comics medium enjoys much greater artistic respect and mass-market appeal in Europe.

Ironically, European comic properties have proven much less bankable when moving to other media. Fantomas, Diabolik, Barbarella, and Asterix the Gaul--all blue-chip, well-recognized characters with huge followings in Europe--never made much of a splash as movies. Tintin is the king of this particular mountain and an incredibly popular character throughout the world, but until now has not received a big-budget adaptation on screen.

Is there something about the wonky, cultish aspects of U.S. comic book superheroes that makes them especially well-suited for the cinematic treatment, while characters with superficially wider appeal such as Tintin get taken for granted? The Adventures of Tintin will put that question to the test. If the combined commercial and artistic might of Steven Spielberg, Peter Jackson, and a cast of thousands of the world’s greatest animators can’t propel the boy adventurer into the top tier of box office success, it’s hard to see prospects for other non-genre comics in the transmedia era.

Sunday, December 18, 2011

Some facts about inception one might not know

1. The idea for Inception began with Christopher Nolan about eight years prior to the film. He became fascinated with thoughts of how dreams are created in your own mind, as you experience it. The script didn’t just sit in a drawer, it changed every couple of years; Nolan would go back to it and make revisions. Though written from his own experiences of dreaming, the director felt there were certain things that were common to peoples’ dreams and those are what he incorporated, like the kick—the idea of falling when dreaming.
2. The director gave Cillian Murphy (Fischer) the script to read over and choose a part he thought was right for himself. (Nolan and Murphy collaborated on Batman Begins and The Dark Knight; Murphy will reprise his role as Dr. Jonathan Crane /Scarecrow in The Dark Knight Rises). Of Murphy, Nolan has said, “He has the most extraordinary eyes, and I kept trying to invent excuses for him to take his glasses off in close-ups.”
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3. Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) is also the name of the main character in Nolan’s first film, Following. Both Cobbs are thieves (of a sort).
4. Production Designer Guy Hendrix Dyas was inspired by Nijō Castle and found examples of traditional Japanese architecture that had been recreated as brand new. He and Nolan thought it was really weird and strange and liked it, so that’s where they started with the look of the film.
Nijō Castle walls:
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Inception walls:
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5. Special Effects Supervisor Chris Corbould said doing the castle set was interesting because part of the dream becomes an earthquake. Normally if he was doing an earthquake film, the set would be built onto some sort of rig that would shake it, but because of the size of the set, it wasn’t feasible. Nolan also felt the myriad of devices that can shake a camera looked too mechanical, so all the earthquake effects are done “the old-fashioned way, by (the operator) shaking the camera, combined with special effects. Additionally, a lot of objects were pulled by rope or dropped down from boxes above.
Stunt coordinator, Tom Struthers spoke of pretesting everything so they knew it was safe to put Leo (DiCaprio) in the room. The earthquake scene was choreographed so DiCaprio knew exactly where to be at each moment. Of the actor, Struthers said, “Leo is very focussed; you knew that when you said to be “here” he would be there in that position. From A to B he does exactly what you choreograph, which makes it very easy to put effects around him.
6. Nolan said the flood in the castle was a challenge for Cobold to put on film, putting the performers in the middle of a very real and powerful event. Corbould had a plan to use big metal shipping containers full of water, using a dump tank method to do the scene. But it became immediately apparent that they wouldn’t be able to have the actors anywhere near it, let alone the stunt performers. What the Effect Supervisor and his people came up with was “an extremely clever method of using air cans.” Corbould explained that the flooding was achieved by using underground pressurized containers which were hit sequentially (forcing water out of containers up over the set). Because the water was coming from about 20 feet above, it created the impression of a wave coming towards camera. They wanted an atomized look, rather than a big dump of water and as Corbould explained, it’s a shot you have to get right the first time.
7. Johnny Marr, musician, songwriter and guitarist for The Smiths, Electronic, The The and Johnny Marr and the Healers (among others), played guitar as part of Hans Zimmer’s score. Zimmer also scored The Dark Knight and won an Academy Award and Golden Globe for his work on The Lion King. Of Marr, Zimmer said, “The idea of incorporating a guitar in the score can be a little tricky because guitar and orchestra don’t always gel. But I kept thinking of Johnny Marr, who has influenced a whole generation of guitarists. The great thing was that as soon as Johnny played the first few notes, it was exactly how I’d imagined it…only better. And that’s what you expect from a great artist.”
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8. Nolan based roles of the Inception team on those of filmmaking; Cobb is the director, Arthur is the producer, Aridane is the production designer, Eames is the actor, Saito is the studio, and Fischer is the audience. The director said, “In trying to write a team-based creative process, I wrote the one I know.”
9. Nolan wrote the part of Saito for Ken Watanabe after working with him on Batman Begins.
10. After Evan Rachel Wood turned down the part of Ariadne (Ellen Page), Carey Mulligan, Rachel McAdams, Emily Blunt, Emma Roberts and Taylor Swift were all rumored to have been considered. James Franco was first offered the role of Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt). Brad Pitt and Will Smith were reportedly offered the Cobb role before DiCaprio and Kate Winslet declined to portray Mal (Marion Cotillard).
11. Nolan always loved the work of artist, M C. Escher; loved his prints and said Escher does a wonderful job of expressing paradox and infinity. Nolan wanted to try the concept of the Penrose Steps—the infinite staircase—wondering how it could be built it in the real world. The director originally asked (Production Designer) Dyas if a Penrose Step could be built; Dyas said “Of course you can—but actually, it’s almost impossible.”
The set was fitted into a location (disused games company facility), a modern building constructed of steel and glass. The staircase was designed using the same wood that was in the facility, so as to fit right into the environment. Visual Effects Supervisor Paul Franklin explained, “You have to construct the staircase in such a way that when you view them from one angle, the topmost level winds up at the bottommost level.” Computer models were made and they worked out the exact dimensions of the steps that had to be built, as well as where the camera had to be in three dimensional space, to be able to film the stairs. Director of Photography, Wally Pfister noted, “It had to be done mathematically perfect; it had to be a particular length and particular height and distance and the camera had to drop in a particular way to hide the trickery.” Editor, Lee Smith explained the visual effects requirement was to remove the rig that supported the staircase (because the structure would have been dangerous had it not had a rig on it). “The staircase is visually quite dramatic and very carefully thought out.”
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12. Nolan felt the train scene was going to be important to demonstrating that Cobb could bring dangerous elements into his dream at “the worst time imaginable.” He feels that grand scale events can make an action movie and wanted to take Inception to “the next level.” Because there were no train tracks in the street, they came up with a prefab train (on the body of a semi) that could be driven down the street. The original idea was to use a bus, but needed a bigger carriage. The frame of a Sterling tractor was stretched and the sides of the train made of plywood. The lower parts of the train were all manufactured using fiberglass molds taken from real train parts, so that everything had the correct texture and look. The front part of the structure was built into the steel, with over a ton of steel in front of the truck’s cab so when the train impacted things, it didn’t just shatter—it pushed the cars and smashed them up.
Nolan felt one of the things he was challenged with was to get across was the incongruity and strangeness of the train, so it didn’t feel like a regular train crossing. At first they only had a couple of cars but decided to have the train smash up many more cars and it made the difference. Cracks in the pavement were worked in, last minute, to show the roads being chewed up by the train wheels. Nolan said, “It’s a subtle thing, but it helps you realize the train should not be there.”
13. Christopher Nolan’s cousin, Miranda, plays the flight attendant.
14. Wally Pfister explained that the zero-gravity hallway fight scenes were achieved by using “…massive, rotating sets that twisted and turned and forced Gordon-Levitt to maneuver with utmost caution. Five-hundred crew-members were involved in the scene, which took a full three weeks to complete.” The sets were built in a London airplane hangar, including a horizontal hallway that rotated 360 degrees, a vertical one and a set with steel trolleys to which the actors were attached by wires (later erased using visual effects).
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15. Gordon-Levitt trained with the stunt crew for two weeks and did most of his own stunt work. He had to learn how to do the scenes first straight, then with rotations. Of the disorienting work, Pfister said, “Having rotated on that set myself, it’s really quite challenging and a very strange thing to get used to. If you jump at the wrong time, you could be falling 12 feet through the air.” Nolan called the set a giant hamster wheel; “It was like some incredible torture device; we thrashed Joseph for weeks, but in the end we looked at the footage, and it looks unlike anything any of us has seen before. The rhythm of it is unique, and when you watch it, even if you know how it was done, it confuses your perceptions.” “It’s unsettling in a wonderful way,” Gordon-Levitt remembered, “it was six-day weeks of just, like, coming home at night fuckin’ battered…The light fixtures on the ceiling are coming around on the floor, and you have to choose the right time to cross through them, and if you don’t, you’re going to fall.” Costume Designer, Jeffrey Kurland noted, “The clothes in those scenes could not be hanging down because, without gravity, they would be floating. We had to do things like wire shoelaces to make sure they were standing straight out and tack down the men’s ties so they didn’t flop around at random.”
16. At the Paris bistro (actually a small bakery) where a massive explosion takes place, high-pressure nitrogen was used to create the effect (real explosives were not permitted). Wally Pfister used six high-speed cameras (filmed at the highest possible frame rate, because Nolan wanted the explosions at the most extreme slow motion) to capture the sequence from different angles. Flying debris and further destruction was later added (using visual effects).
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17. The van scene was shot at LA’s Commodore Schuyler F. Heim Bridge; the part where the van goes off the bridge was completed by shooting a van from a cannon. For the underwater portions of the scene, Cillian Murphy spoke of the challenge of not panicking, saying they had to hold their breath for “four or five minutes” in between breathing from scuba tanks.
18. The Cobb chase, filmed in Morocco, consisted of DiCaprio running “full tilt” in 100 degree weather, followed by Nolan and Pfister shooting film (engaged in what Nolan calls “a kind of guerilla filmmaking”) on the back of an ATV with a handheld camera, or shooting on foot, running backwards with a camera on a shoulder, mixed with wide, overhead shots.
19. The Edith Piaf song (“Non, je ne regrette rien” [No, I’m not sorry for anything]) was written into the script by Nolan and given to Hans Zimmer to weave into the score. Marion Cotillard portrayed Piaf in the 2007 film La Vie En Rose ; she won the Best Actress Academy Award, Golden Globe, BAFTA, César Award, Czech Lion and Prix Lumière.
20. The mountains and a built-on-location fortress in Calgary proved challenging for both the crew and actors. Filming took place at a closed ski resort called Fortress
Mountain. Because it was so cold, the paint they were using to create the fortress structure would freeze as soon as it was put on a paintbrush; a small “lean-to” was created to paint parts in a heated area. They couldn’t bring in construction vehicles or heavy machinery, so everything had to be build by hand (using untreated spruce to ensure there wouldn’t be any lasting impact on the environment). Meanwhile, actor Tom Hardy and Nolan recall what happened when it was time for Hardy to do the skiing scenes: “Chris asked me if I could ski and, for a moment, I was tempted to say yes, as any actor would in the situation: ‘So, Tom, can you ride a horse? Absolutely. Can you fly a plane? Yes, certainly. Do you ski? Oh, professionally,’” he laughs. “But I didn’t say that, because I knew I couldn’t ski to save my life and I would be found out as soon as we hit the slopes.” Said Nolan, “Tom never actually told me he could ski. But when I asked him if he knew how to ski, there was that very telling long pause where you realize someone’s deciding whether or not to tell you if they can ski…which I took to mean no. However, he got up to Canada in advance of us and took some intensive skiing lessons. He wound up being pretty good, which was helpful on camera.”
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