Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Entertainment/2011 December 29

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December 29

Michelle Pfeiffer - Power Passion and Murder

Why is Power Passion and Murder not credited to Michelle pfeiffer in the filmography section? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.236.19.35 (talk) 01:36, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Because there does not appear to have ever been a movie under that title, or, at least, none that IMDB can find: see [1]. --Jayron32 01:54, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

It exists. I found it on several sites via Google. It looks like it first came out in 1987 and came to DVD in 1999. Here's the page from Rotten Tomatoes (not much detail). I don't know why its not on IMDB. RudolfRed (talk) 02:03, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Because, like Wikipedia, IMDb is fed by user contributions, although its protocols and access levels are differently organised. If nobody has ever brought a particular movie or actor or to IMDb's notice, they wouldn't list them. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]}

It apparently has another name: Tales from the Hollywood Hills: Natica Jackson. The Mark of the Beast (talk) 03:41, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

AHA. That explains it. Tales from the Hollywood Hills was apparently a series of TV movies made in 1987-1988. If you do some searches for that specific phrase, you can find info on many of them. --Jayron32 04:26, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Getting back to Jack's point, production companies and such often add roles to actor/actress filmographies on IMDb. It would be surprising to me that a company wouldn't put their film on IMDb especially when someone as well known as Pfeiffer was in it. Dismas|^(talk) 17:34, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Surprising indeed. Maybe it's a simple case of human error of omission. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 08:14, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

computer animated movie

Why would it cost so much to make a computer-animated movie? I realise that the film-maker will have expenses for render-farm time and salaries for talented animators, lighters, modelers, etc; but why might the cost of such a film approach the same dozens of millions of dollars as a non-computer animated film?

Duomillia (talk) 02:33, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

You could make a cheap computer animation film, if you film things computers do easily, like geometric shapes and fractal patterns. It's having people and creatures fully animated that makes it expensive.

Looking at it another way: How long would it take you to draw one frame of animation ? How many frames are there in a movie ? Now multiply. StuRat (talk) 04:41, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

If you're making a live-action film (without many special effects) the big labour-intensive and expensive part is shooting it with the actors on camera, which may take 10 or 20 weeks; Toy Story 3 took over 3 years to make, and most of that time was labour-intensive and skilled work. This Wired article summarises the process[2] - there are a lot of steps involved in producing the visuals from modelling to animation to rendering (voice recording and screenplay rewrites were done at the same time). A lot of making a conventional feature film doesn't take many people (e.g. film editing is 1 or 2 people in a small room) but on an animated film you have 3 or 4 years with dozens (more likely hundreds) of people labouring full time. --Colapeninsula (talk) 14:54, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

The amount of man-hours involved in making a cartoon is directly proportional to the quality, or lack thereof. Disney and Warner turned out high-quality, full-animation shorts and features, and they were very labor-intensive. Hanna-Barbera settled on "limited animation" for their TV series (The Flintstones, et al.) and were thus able to crank them out faster. And to really do it on the cheap, you could go with the Clutch Cargo approach. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:33, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Here's a Clutch Cargo episode for those who are curious [3]. South Park is another example of animation done on the cheap. If it's funny enough, nobody cares how bad it looks. And the best part of watching the Flintstones was counting how many times the same background passed by as they walked or drove anywhere. :-) StuRat (talk) 22:29, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

Awesome. With his pals Spinner and Paddlefoot. There's one cartoon where you could actually count the number of individual drawings used. But you learn something new every day: (1) he throws the football-shaped object left-handed, like Tim Tebow; and (2) he's much better than Tebow at hitting the intended receiver. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 11:00, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

This might be an example of the ultimate in cheap animation:[4] ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 10:55, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Yep, funny stuff doesn't really need expensive animation, the cheapness can even be part of the joke. StuRat (talk) 02:44, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

On a related note, the average budget for AAA titles in games nowadays is $10 million to $30 million. Like movies, they also require concept/storyboard/2d artists, art directors, project/team managers, writers, a soundtrack, sfx artists, vfx artists (including shader programmers, etc.), publicity, [voice and/or motion capture animation] actors (which in CG film and games nowadays tend to be actual film actors/actresses), etc. in addition to various coders, UI designers, character/prop 3d modelers and texture artists, animators, level designers, testers, consultants, translators, the time it takes to render the frames, a custom-built world editor, licensing for 3d, 2d, and programming software/stock art or textures/specialized software for realism and/or additional fx (e.g. Terragen; SpeedTree; algorithms/renderers for hyperrealistic hair, fur, and clothing), a lot of the most up-to-date computer hardware, etc.

The main difference is that in games and CG movies, they are actually paying for skilled backbreaking work not for the popularity of an actor/actress. You can pay the annual salary of hundreds of highly skilled 3d artists working full-time (and frequent unavoidable coffee-driven overtime) for the same amount of money you would pay to get a Julia Roberts. -- Obsidi♠n Soul 11:39, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

In other words, you're saying because it take a LARGE number of highly skilled people to make such a movie: (just a hypothetical example) 1 000 highly skilled animators, lighters, modelers, planner, programmers, etc X 100 000 $ = 100 000 000 $. eg Tintin. Duomillia (talk) 14:41, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

frequent documentary/reportage soundtrack song

often it's used as a sonic background for philosofical/religious topics like the future of humankind, life, God, the end of the world and so on, thus is quite ambient and ethereal, new age. At first a woman performs a melody with her voice without speaking words, then she start singing. After I seem a choir of children start to sing. I'd like to find the title.. thanks --192.35.17.21 (talk) 10:58, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Not much to go on but my first thought was "Sanvean" by Lisa Gerrard (which, admittedly, doesn't have a children's choir in it). YouTube clip here. --Viennese Waltz 11:06, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Nearly! Thanks to your advice I found it: Hans Zimmer & Lisa Gerrard - Now We Are Free (no children indeed) --192.35.17.21 (talk) 13:51, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Ah yes, Lisa's the go-to girl for when you want a singer for the future of humankind, life, God and the end of the world all right :) Glad you found it. --Viennese Waltz 14:01, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Boxing

Hi

I wonder if you can help, wikipedia has my brother's boxing history listed under the title all Ireland champion 1985 Gary Muir but when you click on the link, it is another Gary Muir, a footballer and not him the boxer, do you know how I can have this rectified. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.29.247.179 (talk) 23:23, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Irish Boxing Titles (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

I've fixed the link to point to "Gary Muir (boxer)" though we don't have an article on your brother yet, so it's a red link.

Note for other regular editors... Shouldn't the B and T be in lower case? Dismas|^(talk) 23:42, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Yes, and they now are. AJCham 02:39, 30 December 2011 (UTC)