Kevin's Watch

Check out the trailer for the film version of Philip K. Dick's "A Scanner Darkly" here:www.ifilm.com/ifilmdetail/2665143?htv=12&htv=12

Now - tell me THAT wouldn't be a cool and unique way to put SRD's vision on screen. The possibilities....Revelstone, Foamfollower, the Colossus, the Fire Lions....

And what better way to capture the root of Covenant's Unbelief - being in a world that LOOKS and FEELS like a dream....

I'm one of the people who loathe what's being done to A Scanner Darkly. The rotoscoping was just icing on the cake after finding out that the esteemed Mr. Reeves was playing the lead.

That being said, the roto process being used in Scanner would actually lend itself well to the real world/Land transition, not to mention help hide the CG necessary for the giants and the like.

Can't watch the clip. Player (any of them, I tried all three) just says 'loading' or 'connecting to media' but doesn't.

Can't watch the clip. Player (any of them, I tried all three) just says 'loading' or 'connecting to media' but doesn't.

iFilms can be weird. It's also up at Yahoo! Movies.

I'm one of the people who loathe what's being done to A Scanner Darkly.

I'd say it coulda been worse, but that's already happened to a PKD story - courtesy of John Woo and Ben Affleck.

Here's another link: movies.yahoo.com/movies/feature/ascannerdarkly.html

It's an interesting effect however I think I'd prefer to see them go with a full animation rather than the rotoscoping. The combination of a semi-animated look and feel combined with readily recognizable actors seems distracting to me. I find myself getting caught up in the effect rather than the content of the story. Just my $.02

Warmark Jay wrote:

I'm one of the people who loathe what's being done to A Scanner Darkly.

I'd say it coulda been worse, but that's already happened to a PKD story - courtesy of John Woo and Ben Affleck.

IMO it's happened to nearly every PKD adaptation. BladeRunner barely resembles the book, ditto with Minority Report. Total Recall was a mess. Paycheck was a good story turned into an action flick. The best two were the two lo-budget ones; Screamers (Second Variety) and Imposter weren't bad, with Screamers being the closest to capturing the paranoia of the source.

Very interesting effect, but looks slightly rough, and I can't help feeling they might as well have gone with full animationinstead of the method they have used. Still, it doesn't look too bad.

It's a neat effect and I can see how it could be used for dramatic effect at points in certain movies, but I'm not sure I could watch a full movie shot that way. It's a bit distracting or something.

Rotoscoping is... different. It can only be used if it fits, like in Linkletter's Waking Life (a movie about lucid dreaming, highly recommend for those interested). I'd have to reread Scanner (I burned through most of Dick a little too quickly), but I'm pretty sure it wouldn't work for the Chrons. Dunno, it's just that, if anything, The Land is hyper-realistic to me, requires extending the senses, not truncating them under animation. I'm thinking Imax 3d at the least (yeah, right).

I didn't care for Waking Life, but yeah, the process "fit" in that movie.

Burned through Dick quickly Syl? Gets lonely at sea, doesn't it....

Well, as proud as I am of it, I don't think I'd use a capital D to describe it.

It seems to me if the intentional ambiguity of the Land is to be conveyed in the film, you can't do something like rotoscoping which makes it clear that it is a dream. It needs to look, smell, and feel real, up until the point where the magic happens, and then the magic needs to feel dreamlike. Then the viewer is on the edge.

I'd like to see the film have a different and unique look; from what I've seen and read of the Narnia movie coming out this Christmas, it looks like a LOTR knock-off (the battle scene, which is about a page and a half in the book, is apparently going to be a massive set piece, a la the Helm's Deep and Pelennor battles in the LOTR movies). Something like the rotoscope process, or even the complete CGI that Kerry Conran did in "Sky Captain", would be a welcome change from the "let's shoot the film in otherworldly New Zealand" mentality that's already becoming the standard for fantasy films.

The rotoscoping definitely looks cool, but I'm not sure I'd like it for the Chrons. The Land needs to look (did somebody say it already? ) hyper-real, maybe a little too bright (to represent healthsense), like in What Dreams May Come (though not as cheesy, and preferably without Robin Williams).

Oh, God. I just had a horrid vision.

Some exec thinking that Robin Williams would be a good choice for Covenant.

"GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD MORNING REVELSTONE!"