Car lovers rally for health foundation
Filmmakers turning to video-game tech, digital recreation of locations to resume projects affected by the pandemic
A charity car cruise through Niagara to benefit Niagara Health Foundation and to help it purchase personal protective equipment for health-care workers raised more than its goal Saturday, says organizer Jett Fleming.
“There were nearly 200 cars in attendance. Donations are now at $3,140, surpassing my original goal of $2,000,” Fleming, who runs CarScene Niagara, said in an email.
People who took part gathered at Bethany Community Church, on Third Street Louth in St. Catharines, before heading out on the nearly two-hour cruise.
Owners took their cars past hospitals starting in St. Catharines, followed by Niagara Falls and Welland, before ending in Port Colborne. Hospital employees were told the cars were cruising past during the day.
Fleming said Niagara Regional Police were completely aware of the cruise, and that drivers were encouraged to drive respectfully and follow all laws. He wanted to put the focus on health-care workers, who he called “heroes.”
Police spokesperson Stephanie Sabourin said driving vehicles, whether in a group or not, does not directly contravene orders under the Emergency Management
and Civil Protection Act. She said there was no enforcement role for police in the cruise.
But at the end in Port Colborne, several police cruisers were watching the cars as they passed by the hospital before stopping at H.H. Knoll Lakeview Park. One of the police vehicles had an Automated Licence Plate Recognition system, which can scan plates of passing vehicles.
Fleming, who was at the front of the cruise, said police seemed very relaxed.
In an interview before the event, Port Colborne Mayor Bill Steele said he was supportive of the fundraising cruise and thankful for what it was trying to accomplish. But the mayor said he preferred the car enthusiasts just head home after passing through Port Colborne. Steele said Port Colborne’s outdoor spaces have been slowly reopening and residents are getting used to the new way of things when it comes to using them. He didn’t want to see that jeopardized.
“As per the mayor’s request, I kindly asked participants not to hang at H.H. Knoll afterwards but, naturally, participants were attracted to park and the beautiful lake view after a nearly twohour cruise,” said Fleming
He said about a quarter of the group ended up staying there in their cars.
LOS ANGELES—When “Good Trouble” returns to screens, fans of the TV drama will reconnect with the two young women, Callie and Mariana, trying to make it in Los Angeles.
But instead of shooting scenes in downtown L.A. — an impossibility during the shutdown caused by the COVID-19 pandemic — filmmakers are digitally recreating the historic Palace Theatre and other landmarks on a set in Valencia.
By fusing the latest advances from the video-game world, using software that powers the hit game “Fortnite,” producers will shift much on-location shooting indoors to Santa Clarita Studios, projecting photo-real imagery of downtown’s skyline on LED video walls.
“We are preparing all the virtual assets so that on Day 1, they can be as if they were shooting exterior L.A., but they will be on a set with limited people in Valencia,” said Sam Nicholson, chief executive of Pasadenabased Stargate Studios, which has partnered with the creators to create the virtual sets.
As Hollywood faces mounting pressure to resume production and re-employ hundreds of thousands of cast and crew who’ve been out of work for months, filmmakers are turning to virtual producers like Nicholson as a route to reboot TV shows and features halted by the pandemic. Some predict the health crisis will accelerate the industry’s use of virtual filming to mitigate risks and reduces costs of on-location shoots.
“It’s the tip of the iceberg,” Nicholson said. “People have to utilize these tools to get back on line. Once they’ve utilized them and realized it’s faster, better, cheaper, you will see a lot more virtual production coming down the pipeline.”
Marco Fargnoli — director of photography for “Good Trouble,” which airs on ABC Spark in Canada — said virtual production will provide a safe alternative to cast and crew as they return to work.
“Once everybody agrees on the protocols that will allow us to get back to work, we just want to be able to maintain the creative freedom that we had before the shutdown, as much as possible,” Fargnoli said. “Not have scenes with only two people in a kitchen talking ... We want to be as unhindered and unencumbered as possible and still be safe.”
Producers expect that in coming weeks, studios and producers will need to comply with new protocols, including frequent testing and handwashing, to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. Virtual production, they say, is one way to mitigate the risks.
“Once you take the machinery of that show and bring it out to successive locations, you are exponentially increasing your risk factor,” Fargnoli said.
The 66-year-old Nicholson, a visual effects supervisor and cinematographer, said his company is fielding calls from streaming companies and studios eager to revive films and TV shows as fast as possible.
“We are bidding six jobs right now that are considering dropping set building and their location work, and using virtual sets,” Nicholson said via Zoom from his Pasadena home. He said Stargate also is preparing to work on a new season of Fox’s medical drama “The Resident,” possibly this summer.
Virtual production isn’t new. But thanks to the video-gaming world, the technology has advanced well beyond the use of green screens, where actors perform in front of a blank screen that is green or blue and later replaced by an alternate background.
Instead of performing against a static, blank screen, actors and crew can interact in real time within a 3D environment projected onto LED screens.
Walt Disney’s hit show “The Mandalorian,” about an intergalactic bounty hunter, is a recent example of the possibilities of virtual technology.
Director Jon Favreau collaborated with Industrial Light & Magic — the special-effects studio made famous for its work on “Star Wars” — and Epic Games and other technology companies, to create a six-metre-high, 270-degree semicircular LED video wall that eliminated the need for location shoots entirely.
On a Manhattan Beach stage, the filmmakers could recreate the dusty ochre-tinged backdrop of a Tunisia-like world.
“To a lot of folks, virtual production can often sound like we are making ‘Avatar,’” said Richard Bluff, visual effects supervisor for “The Mandalorian,” speaking on a panel for the National Association of Broadcasters earlier this month.
About half of “The Mandalorian’s” first season was shot against LED screens, Bluff said.
Sets can be lighted and cameras track action as if in that environment, playing it back for the director in real time, as opposed to having to wait for months after the shoot has wrapped to see the results typically created by visual effects artists after the fact. Backgrounds can be swapped out easily, avoiding costly set construction, Bluff said.
“Our show doesn’t have the scale to be able to go to Tunisia and shoot our TV show, so we sent artists to go photograph various locations and bring the location to the stage,” Bluff said.
But the technology isn’t just being used to create fantasy worlds.
Nicholson, who cut his teeth on the first “Star Trek” movie, highlighted the example of this year’s HBO show “Run,” a drama set largely on a train. Stargate used its virtual system to create the views out of the windows of the train to give the impression that it was speeding along. The screens can also be operated remotely, reducing the number of crew on set, Nicholson said.
Nicholson started his studio in 1989. When 9/11 shuttered production on the popular show “ER,” Stargate jumped into action, tracking across Chicago to capture 25 different locations and recreating the locations virtually so the actors could film against a backdrop rather than go out into the city.
Today, Stargate generates over $26 million (U.S.) globally in annual revenue and employs more than 150 digital artists, producers and technicians. The company has studios in Toronto and Vancouver; Bogota, Colombia, and Beijing, allowing it to benefit from any tax incentives in those regions, but much of its work is handled out of Los Angeles. Globally, sales grew by double digits last year, Nicholson said. He declined to disclose earnings, but said the company is profitable.
Stargate’s growth has been fuelled in part by rapid advances in technology borrowed from the gaming industry. Its proprietary system uses a free software known as Unreal Engine, produced by Epic Games.
Miles Perkins, who works in business development for Epic Games, said the Unreal Engine is being embraced by the film community in a way it hasn’t in the past and interest is “extremely high,” he said. A rival software known as Unity was used by Favreau to create a supposedly live-action “Lion King,” which included only one non-CGI shot. “I’ve been in this business for a long time, since beginning of the ’90s,” Perkins said. “For the first time, I’m having significant meaningful conversations with (studios) heads of physical production.”
Virtual technology recently allowed the filmmakers for the Warner Bros.’ science-fiction movie “Reminiscence,” due out next year, to complete postproduction work through video calls rather than in screening rooms in L.A., said Bruce Jones, the movie’s VFX supervisor.
Jones, who has been able to work remotely from Montana, said the new methods give an insight into how Hollywood may work in the future. Instead of travelling to a far-off location, which involves crews coming together from around the world, visual effects artists can spend months at the beginning of production to recreate those scenes for an actor to step into, Jones said.
“One day you’re shooting a desert scene and the next day you’re shooting a scene in the Arctic and all you ended up doing was some costume changes, but it’s still that same controlled environment that you are going to,” Jones said.
Q: As news of the pandemic gained momentum, I realized that I didn’t want to be separated from my girlfriend of two years whom I loved.
So I invited her to move into my apartment. It’s a one-bedroom with nice views. When there alone, it felt pretty spacious. I’ve since been working from home and still earning the same as before.
But my girlfriend’s retail sales job ended when the store closed completely, so her income stopped. However, money isn’t what’s bothering me. It’s her lack of neatness and organization.
In a living space surrounded by windows, there’s less room for furniture and cupboards in the main living area.
Keeping clothing on the couch, or over chairs just makes for clutter, especially when we each have a cupboard in the bedroom and one to share in the entrance hall.
I use an end of the dining table for the computer, with the printer and other needed items on the wall unit behind me.
My girlfriend just puts her laptop wherever she was last sitting and piles books/notepad/markers on the floor at her bedside.
We also cook very differently, but she makes some great dishes (so I just clean up and shut up).
I know these are unusual stress-laden times.
But I’m left wondering if my girlfriend and I are just not suited to each other since we can’t get through normal living adjustments without arguing and shutting down.
Limited Space, Big Fights
A: Moving in together suddenly sounded alarms for you two. Things had gone smoothly enough while just dating, for you to ignore her messiness, and her to sidestep your controls.
Yes, “controls.” You asked her to move in. That put a new label on the glass-walled haven — it’s a shared accommodation, a home for two.
It doesn’t even matter that you’re paying the shot. I’m not talking ownership, this is about sharing a refuge. And even little kids learn that sharing means give-and-take.
You appreciate her cooking, so you accept her culinary style. Apply that to her as a person.
In considering your future together or apart, the operative clue is “love.” You felt it before you found her books on the bedroom floor, and now must decide whether you still feel it.
She needs to consider whether she can still love someone who’s continually monitoring her. The pandemic will eventually pass. Will you both have learned about your own natures, that future stress is inevitable, and that it takes two to compromise?
If so, you might both be happy together again.
Q: My deceased cousin was conceived through an extra-marital affair of my cousin’s mother, my aunt. Her husband never knew.
My aunt confided in my mother, who told me and no one else. I’m the sole living bearer of this information.
Should I share this with my cousin’s children (we’re in contact) and tell them that the man they thought was their grandfather was not?
I was also told the identity of the late biological father/grandfather and could provide that information.
The only reason to disclose would be, if the living descendants have a DNA test and discover different ancestry from their first cousins, who had the “known” grandfather. But they’ll have no source for the truth.
Should I Disclose?
A: No. I advise against unsought intrusions into others’ lives, unless there’s a direct, necessary request for information.
Or, you could disclose if a serious medical situation arises and makes any unknown genetic history obviously needed.
Ellie’s tip of the day
Stress during COVID-19 is common and unavoidable. Compromise through these times and your relationships will improve.