P.O.D. Call Marcos' Departure 'Heartbreaking,' Jell With Their New Guy

LOS ANGELES — After a difficult few months, P.O.D. are feeling, well, so alive.

Guitarist Marcos Curiel's controversial departure in February raised questions about the San Diego band's future, but they were quickly answered when former Living Sacrifice axeman Jason Truby joined the group to write a song for "The Matrix Reloaded" and was a perfect fit.

"With Jason, it's like a fresh new vibe for us," drummer Wuv said on the video set Saturday for the soundtrack single, "Sleeping Awake." "It's something that's welcome and something that we've been yearning for for a long, long time. So it's working out great."

So great, in fact, that the new P.O.D. have already penned 11 songs for their next album, due November 4.

"We've always been like family, so it's jelling up great, and then musically it's jelling up even better," said Truby, whose previous band toured with P.O.D. years ago. "It's a blending, not a changing. I bring what I have to bring to the table, without [compromising] what they are, and it's working out really well."

Singer Sonny Sandoval described the new material as more mature. "I actually thought that with him coming in we might have problems being a little bit too heavy, but the stuff's not really coming out like that," Sandoval said. "I mean, the guitars are heavy, but it's still very melodic, still very beautiful. I think with Jason's influence it actually drives us to step it up a notch."

"When he came into our situation and became our guitar player, it was almost as if he had always been there," bassist Traa added. "We are so comfortable with him playing it's unbelievable, on top of him being an amazing guitar player."

While P.O.D. said Curiel left to join another band, the guitarist insisted he was kicked out, at least partially for differences in religious beliefs (see "P.O.D. Split With Guitarist Marcos Curiel").

Sandoval, Wuv and Traa described the situation as heartbreaking and said they are still supportive of Curiel despite his remarks that P.O.D. were not as righteous as their reputation.

"I love Marcos," Sandoval said. "He's my bro. I've known him for a long time. I thought that this would make him happy to do what he wanted to do and he was doing it and all of a sudden he didn't sound too happy to me. But you know what? Our friendship and all that stuff, it's bigger than that. I'll be better. Right now, I just think it's a healing process."

Part of the process for the remaining members was throwing themselves into recording "Sleeping Awake" (see "P.O.D. Record 'Matrix Reloaded' Single With Marcos' Replacement"). "The Matrix Reloaded" producers originally asked for a remix of a previously recorded song for the movie, but P.O.D. suggested doing something new, even if they only had a week to write and record it.

"What turned them on to us was a lot of our biblical concepts and themes, and this movie has a lot of biblical themes, and so they wanted to keep that vibe," Sandoval said. "I kind of got the concept from Daniel interpreting King Nebuchadnezzar's dreams in the Old Testament and ... then all of a sudden I go back and watch 'The Matrix' again and that's what Laurence Fishburne tells Keanu Reeves, that the Matrix is a computer-generated dream world. So I was like, 'I'm onto something.' "

The Wachowski brothers, who created "The Matrix" and its sequels, had ideas for a video, but scrapped them when director Marc Webb submitted his treatment, which creatively portrays P.O.D. in parallel universes.

" 'The Matrix' has a lot of references to other classical literature, so one of the things I kind of picked up on was this life through the looking glass thing, this 'Alice in Wonderland' thing," Webb explained. "I kind of like the idea of doing something that happens on the other side of the glass. So we decided to do a concept with two identical performances on either sides of a mirror."

Webb even configured the cameras so the two shots look like reflections of each other. In one the band is playing right-handed, in the other, left-handed.

"One setup is like the Nebuchadnezzar, which is the ship from 'The Matrix' in the real world, and the other side is this kind of 'The Matrix' reality, which is a little bit more stylized," Webb said. "Everybody's wearing black and is cool. They move a little bit faster and look a little bit glossier and do some crazy, crazy stuff. We're doing some stunts with the guitar player smashing his guitar against the bass player and Sonny does some stuff with blocks."

Webb's original treatment required the bandmembers to shave their heads, but that concept was quickly vetoed.

"I've been growing these dreads for six years," Traa said. "No way!"

P.O.D. will enter the studio in May and play some warm-up shows with Truby on the San Diego club circuit later in the summer.

—Corey Moss, with additional reporting by Megan Hutaff

Reloaded at Melbourne FX Festival

The Australian Effects and Animation Festival is holding a two-day event at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Federation Square, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia from May 12-13.

Among the speakers will be Greg Juby and Jay Daniels, digital effects supervisors for ESC Entertainment, the main effects company for the Matrix sequels:

May 12: 11.00am - MATRIX RELOADED
Greg Juby, Jay Daniels, digital effects supervisors, ESC Entertainment (US)

The signature visual effects shots for the most keenly anticipated sequel of 2003, The Matrix Reloaded, were created by San Francisco’s ESC Entertainment. Go behind the scenes in this exclusive preview, then watch the movie after the worldwide launch on May 15 with a season pass (courtesy of Roadshow Films).

To book, go to the Digital Media World website below. Cost is $275 (Australian dollars) for a two-day pass and includes a six month subscription to DMW magazine and a free movie pass to "The Matrix Reloaded"

Digital Media World (AEAF 2003)

First Return of the King Trailer with Matrix Reloaded? - Updated!

Wednesday, April 9, 2003 1:10 CDT

It would be a fan's dream come true, but also something that would make sense. TheOneRing.net has recieved word that the first The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King trailer may be attached to The Matrix Reloaded when it hits theaters everywhere on May 15.

AOL Time Warner owns both New Line Cinema, distributor of "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy", and Warner Bros. Pictures, the company behind the "Matrix" sequels. It would be the ultimate synergy.

Stay tuned for possible official word on this, we'll keep you updated on whether this will happen or not. Either way, expect some amazing trailers in theaters with The Matrix Reloaded. Attached at the end of the film will be the trailer for The Matrix Revolutions, so don't leave the theater before catching that!

UPDATE: New Line Cinema has informed us that The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King will not be playing with The Matrix Reloaded. Looks like we'll have to wait a bit longer for a first glimpse at the final installment.

MATRIX2

Bullet Time was just the beginning. F/x guru John Gaeta reinvents cinematography with The Matrix Reloaded.

By Steve Silberman

I'm sitting in a former naval barracks in Alameda, California, watching the digital assembly of a human face. Bones, teeth, glistening eyes. Layer upon layer. Finally the hair and skin, the creases and tiny scars that make us who we are. The face blinks and breathes. Then it snarls, and my skin crawls.

Agent Smith is back, and he's pissed.

Matthew Welch

You'll be seeing a lot of Agent Smith this year. Neo's man-in-black nemesis returns on May 15 in The Matrix Reloaded, the continuing story of a young hacker who learns that the apparently real world is an elaborate computer simulation. In November, a second sequel, Matrix Revolutions, will take up where Reloaded's nail-biting climax leaves off.

Things have changed since 1999. In the last shot of the original film, Neo, played by ex-slacker Keanu Reeves, flew up out of the frame, demonstrating that his mental abilities had become stronger than the enslaving delusion of the Matrix. Now he's a full-fledged superhero, soaring over the skyline at thousands of miles an hour and making a rescue as trucks collide head-on. The bad news: Agent Smith, played by Hugo Weaving, is a rogue virus in the Matrix, able to multiply himself at will. And the last free human city, Zion, in a cave near the Earth's core, is under attack.

What hasn't changed is the dark, richly nuanced aesthetic of brothers Larry and Andy Wachowski, a pair of Hollywood outsiders who wrote and directed what became the most successful movie in the history of Warner Bros. The Wachowskis had always conceived of Neo's odyssey as a trilogy, but to release both sequels months apart - plus the videogame Enter the Matrix and an anime series called The Animatrix - required a year of intense collaboration, as the scripts, sets, and shot designs all evolved together.

The Matrix raised the bar for action films by introducing new levels of realism into stunt work and visual effects. For Reloaded and Revolutions, the Wachowskis dreamed up action sequences that were so over-the-top they would require their special-effects supervisor, John Gaeta, to reinvent cinematography itself.

So what does a visual effects supervisor do to follow up the Matrix trilogy? Gaeta says his next project will be "some combination of Akira, Busby Berkeley, and Apocalypse Now."

With four Academy Award nominations to their credit, the members of the core Matrix team reconvened in February 2000 at a secret location near the beach outside of Los Angeles. There - at the home base of Eon, the Wachowskis' production company - Gaeta, concept artists Geof Darrow and Steve Skroce, production designer Owen Patterson, producer Grant Hill, and the brothers brainstormed around "the most James Bond table you've ever seen," Gaeta says. Hanging above it were pulldown screens linked to 3-D workstations so that art and designs could be discussed collectively. Over the next year, a river of drawings, storyboards, and stage plans flowed into Eon's asset-management network, which was christened (what else?) the Zion Mainframe.

For visual ideas and inspiration, the group cranked up Alien, 2001, Vertigo, Apocalypse Now, Koyaanisqatsi, and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, along with documentary footage of car crashes, robotics manufacturing, 19th-century submarines, glassblowers at work, the drilling of the Chunnel, the heavyweight bouts of Rocky Marciano, and the explosion of the Hindenburg. Madhouse, the makers of Akira and Metropolis, prepared a custom reel of explosions of various types and sizes for the Wachowskis, who were particularly interested in the ways that natural phenomena - weather, water, flames - are depicted in anime as intelligent obstacles, characters in their own right.

As the team tossed ideas around for one hellacious fight scene that became known in-house as the Burly Brawl, Gaeta realized that the innovative technology he and his crew developed for The Matrix's ultra slo-mo action sequences would not be sufficient to bring the Wachowskis' new vision to the screen. Those oft-imitated shots - now universally known as Bullet Time - required serpentine arrays of meticulously aligned cameras, and months of planning, for a brief scene featuring two or three actors. In the Burly Brawl, super-Neo would battle more than 100 Agent Smiths in an extended orgy of kung fu orchestrated by crack martial-arts choreographer Yuen Woo-Ping.

To develop the technology needed for the Burly Brawl, Eon and Warner Bros. launched ESC, a visual-effects skunk works in an old naval base across the bay from San Francisco. ESC ultimately produced more than a thousand visual-effects shots for the two sequels, and the company has operated in stealth mode until now. The word Matrix didn't even appear on the scripts' title pages; instead, they were tagged with a code name, The Burly Man.

For Reloaded's blowout chase sequence - Trinity and a character called the Keymaker haul ass on a motorcycle to the nearest landline, past carloads of marauding bad guys - ESC constructed a quarter mile of new freeway on the naval base. Eventually, Gaeta enlisted more than 500 digital artists from a roster of cutting-edge effects vendors (including Sony Pictures Imageworks, Animal Logic, Tippett Studio, BUF Compagnie, and Giant Killer Robots) to create everything from shimmering swarms of Matrix code to thousands of vengeful robot "squiddies" burrowing toward Zion.

But the Burly Brawl became Gaeta's personal obsession. Like many in the film industry, he has been talking for years about the promise of virtual cinematography, a confluence of technologies that would allow directors to sculpt actors' performances with the ease of tweaking a CAD file. The traditional ways of doing this, however, reduce the world to the kinds of data that computers easily understand, and the result often ends up looking like a glorified videogame. That wouldn't work for the Burly Brawl, a fight that erupts in a virtual prison indistinguishable from the real world.

"People get really preoccupied with, 'Are you going to top yourselves this time? Are you really gonna come up with a zinger?'" Gaeta tells me. "My job has nothing to do with making zingers. The point is not to knock you over with a visual trick. The point is to be able to construct events that are so complex, in terms of what human bodies need to do, that the total 'effect' is impossible choreography. 'My God! It looks real, but it just can't be.'"

The showdown is set in a dingy courtyard in the vast cityscape of the Matrix. A sign on a pole says NO BRAWLING. It will not be a good day for that sign.

Neo and Agent Smith face off as crows flutter into the air. Words are exchanged. Things do not go well. The agent makes a bold attempt to load himself into Neo's body, but Neo's powers are too strong now. What Smith needs is reinforcements, a cavalry. Being a virus, there are potential recruits everywhere.

If the dojo fight in The Matrix was a kung fu sonata, the Burly Brawl is a symphony. Neo tears the sign from the ground and wields it as a kendo sword, vaulting pole, and battering ram. A woman walking by can't believe what she's seeing; suddenly her body is hijacked, she drops her grocery bag, and another Smith charges into the fray. Whole battalions of Smiths arrive, mount assaults, attack in waves, scatter, regroup, and head back for more. (At ESC, one massive pile-on was dubbed the "Did someone drop a quarter?" shot.) In the thick of it, Neo is dancing, chucking black-tied bodies skyward, pivoting around the signpost, and using shoulders as stepping-stones over the raging river of whup-ass.

Fans will wear out their remotes replaying the scene on DVD, but what they won't see, even riding the Pause button, is a transition that happens early on. When Neo and Agent Smith walk into the courtyard, they are the real Reeves and Weaving. But by the time the melee is in full effect, everyone and everything on the screen is computer-generated - including the perspective of the camera itself, steering at 2,000 miles per hour and screaming through arcs that would tear any physical camera apart.

This is virtual cinematography, but the most impressive thing about the Burly Brawl is that it doesn't look virtual at all. The digital faces of Reeves and Weaving could get past a flank of security guards, and the buildings surrounding the courtyard look dreary and lived-in - the grimy, unmistakable patina of the real.

Effects designers have been swapping CG faces onto the heads of stunt doubles for more than a decade, but typically, these faces were seen for only brief moments, from afar, or were occluded by other effects, like flames or smoke. Previous attempts to render faces with enough verisimilitude so that a camera could linger produced virtual visages that had a plastic, androidal quality, like the all-digital actors in Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. Because the faces of Reeves and Weaving are so familiar to the audience - and because, as ESC's effects supervisor Kim Libreri puts it, "our brains are hardwired from day one to look at human faces and not be deceived" - Gaeta's job was that much harder.

The standard way of simulating the world in CG is to build it from the inside out, by assembling forms out of polygons and applying computer-simulated textures and lighting. The ESC team took a radically different path, loading as much of the real world as possible into the computer first, building from the outside in. This approach, known as image-based rendering, is transforming the effects industry.

A similar evolution has already occurred in music. The first electronic keyboards sought to re-create a piano's acoustic properties by amassing sets of rules about the physics of keys, hammers, and strings. The end result sounded like a synthesizer. Now DJs and musicians sample and morph the recorded sounds of actual instruments.

Instead of synthesizing the world, Gaeta cloned it. To make the Burly Brawl, he would have to build the Matrix.

At the end of a desolate street in Alameda, giant cargo cranes rise out of the bay - the same towering machines that inspired the design of the Imperial Walkers in The Empire Strikes Back. When Gaeta and his crew moved here two years ago, there was no heat or air-conditioning, and the hundreds of bunks occupying the main building had been soaked in a flood. Now 270 animators, painters, pyrotechnicians, rotoscopists, and coders buzz around the cinder-block rooms. The hallway between the Trinity Conference Room and the Zion Theater is lined with original prints by the resident artists, 80 percent of them eager ESCapees from other effects houses, notably Pixar and Industrial Light & Magic.

Still boyish at 37, with the scruffy elegance of a rock prodigy who has stayed relevant, Gaeta sports long sideburns that are themselves a kind of visual effect, sculpting his jawline. He speaks with an ironic inflection, elongating vowels so that when he says "Re-loo-oaded" or "Revo-luuu-tions," the titles come with air quotes preinstalled.

Growing up on Long Island, Gaeta was a classic high school underachiever until he discovered photography and what he calls a "dark universe perfection" in the films of Stanley Kubrick and Ridley Scott. After graduating from NYU film school in 1990, he became a production assistant on Saturday Night Live. Then a friend told him that Douglas Trumbull - the effects guru behind 2001 and Blade Runner - was launching a new studio in an old textile mill in western Massachusetts. It was here, at a company called Mass.Illusion, that Gaeta met his mentors and embarked on a quest to seamlessly integrate the digital and the real.

"I was awestruck working with Doug because he was so fearless," Gaeta recalls. "He'd say, 'This camera doesn't exist yet, but we're going to make one. This screen doesn't exist, but we'll build it. Then we'll invent a new format.' Doug was innovating constantly."

Diane Piepol, a digital artist who worked at Mass.Illusion, says Gaeta was equally at home with the camera jocks and the computer geeks: "He brought more long-range technical investigation to his job than I had ever seen. Usually you have the digital people on one side and the camera people on the other, and they don't talk much. But John was fluid in both worlds."

The first step in bringing real objects into the virtual world was to obtain precise measurements of everything in the frame. To render an existing city block, CG artists would seek out blueprints of each building so they could generate wireframe models to scale. When work began on 1998's What Dreams May Come, Gaeta and effects supervisor Joel Hynek headed off to Glacier National Park in Montana, the setting of that film's visual centerpiece - a vision of heaven as a luminous, still-damp oil painting. At night, Gaeta hiked into the mountains with a laser-radar rig to survey the rock faces.

Meanwhile, the Wachowskis were struggling to convince Warner Bros. to green-light The Matrix. Action-movie mogul Joel Silver was enthusiastic about the script, but with its gnostic allegories, Baudrillardian subtexts, and Philip K. Dick mindfuckery, it was no Die Hard With a Modem. To clinch the deal, the brothers hired Darrow and Skroce, two underground comic book illustrators, to draw up art and elaborate storyboards. There was one element in the script, however, that could never be adequately represented with static images: Bullet Time.

This was the Wachowskis' name for a visual effect that didn't exist yet: an action sequence that slowed time to a sinuous crawl and then cranked it back up to normal speed as the camera pivoted rapidly around it. It was the kind of challenge Gaeta had been waiting for. When he read the script, he pleaded with an effects producer at Mass.Illusion, "You have to get me this gig." Gaeta's prototype was so impressive, it got him the job, and the studio agreed to make the movie.

To make Bullet Time happen, Gaeta merged two techniques with roots in the earliest days of photography.

In the mid-19th century, another group of geeks had wrestled with the task of relating the physical to the virtual: mapmakers.

After the invention of the daguerreotype, a cartographer named Aim・Laussedat suggested stringing cameras to kites and lofting them over Paris. By taking multiple exposures of the landscape from different angles and triangulating them with clever algorithms, it was possible to generate a topographical map from flat images, similar to the way your brain generates depth perception from two separate 2-D inputs: your eyes. Laussedat's breakthrough was christened photogrammetry.

Fast-forward to the early 1990s, when another Frenchman, Arnauld Lamorlette, the R&D director for design firm BUF Compagnie, faced a problem similar to Laussedat's. Industrial clients examining buildings for structural flaws needed to see Paris from above. Parisian airspace, however, is tightly controlled; nonmilitary aircraft may fly over the city only on Bastille Day. Lamorlette found that by morphing between two photographs, he could generate a 3-D model: digital photogrammetry. BUF employed the technique to help director Michel Gondry create a music video for the Rolling Stones. Its radical camera moves - zipping through a room full of partygoers frozen in midmotion - caused a sensation in Europe. (BUF also used this method to make a Gap ad called "Khakis Swing" that was most Americans' first glimpse of the effect.)

Gaeta and Kim Libreri pumped up this technique for The Matrix: By triggering a circular array of 122 still cameras in sequence, they were able to simulate the action of a variable-speed movie camera that tracked completely around its subject. Because the cameras located on one side of the array were visible to those on the other side, however, they also needed a way to computer-generate photo-realistic sets so they could paint the cameras out of the frame.

Gaeta found the answer in 1997, at the annual visual effects convention Siggraph, where he saw a short film by Paul Debevec, George Borshukov, and Yizhou Yu called The Campanile Movie. The film - a flyover of the UC Berkeley campus - was generated entirely from still photographs. Like the 19th-century cartographers, Debevec and his team derived the precise shapes and contours of the landscape by triangulating the visual information in still photographs. Then they generated 3-D models based on this geometry, but instead of applying computer-generated textures to the models, they wrapped them with photographs of the buildings themselves. The trick worked spectacularly well. Instead of resembling something out of Toy Story, the buildings and the surrounding hills in The Campanile Movie looked absolutely real.

"When I saw Debevec's movie, I knew that was the path," Gaeta told me. To walk that path as far as the Wachowskis needed him to go, he hired Borshukov, who had written the algorithms used to render the images at Berkeley. Borshukov, Libreri, and a visionary effects engineer named Dan Piponi became Gaeta's core posse at Mass.Illusion, a collaboration that continues to this day at ESC.

"John, Kim, Dan, and I all have this passion for sampling the real," Borshukov says. "By extracting information from the real world, you preserve all the richness and variation, the noise, the unrepetitiveness, the subtleties - the things that are so hard and expensive for computer graphics to achieve. Eventually, computer graphics will be able to build these things. We're jumping the gun by 10 years."

Creating the Burly Brawl, however, is a taller order than inventing Bullet Time. To portray Neo in hand-to-hand combat with more than 100 Agent Smiths in the old way would have required Escher-like tangles of crisscrossing still-camera rigs and years of compositing. What Gaeta needed was a virtual camera that could fly through the 3-D scene - as free from the laws of space and time as Neo is from the physical laws of the Matrix.

"The concept of Bullet Time had to graduate to the true technology it suggested," he says. "For Reloaded, we had to finish the job so that we could get relentless, uninterrupted, and editable chunks of Neo in the zone."

This virtual camera needed to be able to see behind and around things, and to know what was obscured by any particular angle, so that if the Wachowskis wanted to try different passes through the Burly Brawl, the entire scene would already be in ESC's computers, captured in code, as real as if it was a physical set. Unlike a physical set, however, the scene would be moving - alive with the rage of hundreds of men fighting in top form. Bullet Time squared.

The process of creating multiple Smiths was fairly straightforward. First Gaeta and his crew turned a 250,000-square-foot hangar in Alameda into the biggest motion-capture dojo in the world. The punishment was relentless for Yuen Woo-Ping's army of black belts; between the sequels and the videogame, they did hundreds of takes a day. Buffed out with CG muscle, tailored in simulated suits, and animated with collision data obtained from digital crash-test dummies, the torsos of Yuen's warriors were transformed in postproduction into wave upon wave of attacking Hugo Weaving clones.

Then came the real work.

While the topography of the human face is the hardest to simulate digitally, it turns out to be one of the easiest to map photogrammetrically. It has fewer shadows and occlusions than, say, the city of Paris. The language of the face communicates maximum information through the subtlest inflections. The interfaces of our souls are designed to be read in a heartbeat.

To replace the faces of Yuen's men with that of Agent Smith - while retaining the level of photorealism that the Wachowskis demanded - Gaeta and his team built a system for sampling the real at a higher resolution than had ever before been attempted, dubbing this process universal capture.

Gaeta began by making lo-res laser scans of Reeves' and Weaving's heads in relaxed, neutral poses. These scans furnished the basic geometry upon which succeeding layers of real-world data would be applied.

Then Reeves and Weaving each sat down on a stage in front of five Sony HDW-900 video cameras. The massive datastreams from these cameras - one gigabyte a second - were treated like holy water; even the cameras' color-correction software was disabled to prevent any loss of data. Instead of recording to tape, which requires compression, the cameras were modified to send uncompressed data to a bank of high-end PCs that stored it on a huge disk array. "The scene in that room was surreal," Gaeta recalls. "There's this guy onstage, and his face is surrounded with this fucking Cape Canaa-averal backup system."

As Reeves and Weaving acted out a range of facial expressions for their rumble in the courtyard, the cameras captured each twitch of muscle and every change in the blood flow to the skin. This data was then analyzed with algorithms written by Borshukov that tracked each individual pixel as it moved from frame to frame. The tiny irregularities in the actors' faces actually made this job easier, giving Borshukov's algorithms distinctive points in space to grab on to as he reconstructed the actors' features moving through time.

The old Bullet Time rig had produced the illusion that reality was a big CAD file, but it was just an effect, not a three-dimensional world that could be manipulated as easily as if it really was a CAD file. The universal-capture rig enabled ESC to smuggle the faces of Neo and Agent Smith across the border between the digital and the real, into Gaeta's Matrix - a zone where skyscrapers, skin, flames, and marauding machines are all re-created equal.

What this means for moviemaking is that once a scene is captured, filmmakers can fly the virtual camera through thousands of "takes" of the original performance - and from any angle they want, zooming in for a close-up, dollying back for the wide shot, or launching into the sky. Virtual cinematography.

How deep did the rabbit hole go? A cast of each actor's head was sent to a company called Arius 3D, makers of ultrahigh-resolution scanners employed in 1999 to archive the works of Michelangelo. The Arius scanner is accurate down to 25 microns - the diameter of a mold spore. To get the clothing simulations just right, ESC sent swatches of Reeves' black cassock and Weaving's jacket to a company called Surface Optics, which builds devices to measure a property of light called the bidirectional reflectance distribution function. Surface Optics happened to have one machine on hand scheduled to ship to Lockheed Martin a month later, where it was to be assigned to its usual task: evaluating the reflectivity of paint on stealth bombers.

This ocean of information - combined with even more real-world data about the light levels on the set - was poured into the rendering program of choice at ESC: mental ray. (The German firm that created it won an Academy Award for technical achievement in March.) What emerged is real enough to fool Morpheus: effects that are mind-blowing precisely because they're transparent - a world that looks like the world.

For years, employees at ILM have joked that George Lucas is pushing to create virtual cinematography so that he can do away with living actors. It is a point of pride at ESC that its methods are designed to augment the subtleties of human performance, not replace them.

"We're not interested in making Keanu say things he hasn't said," Borshukov tells me. "Our aim was to preserve the most minute aspects - every smirk, every frown - of how Keanu made Neo real."

The ability to create photorealistic virtual human beings raises unsettling questions, especially in conjunction with the means to cut-and-paste them into any landscape. These questions troubled Gaeta himself so much that, a few years ago, he wrote a letter alerting President Clinton to the fact that such technology could be used for purposes of mass deception. (The letter was never answered.)

As it happens, one group deeply interested in the new breed of hyperrealistic CG is the military. Darpa is fast-tracking image-based rendering and lighting for use in immersive battle simulations. In 1999, the US Army launched the Institute for Creative Technologies at USC, where Paul Debevec - Borshukov's former mentor at Berkeley - is now the head of graphics R&D.

Gaeta recognizes the paradox. "You have these paranoid films about the Matrix depicting how people are put in a mental prison by misusing this technology, and you have the military constructing something like the actual Matrix. Or maybe our technology will become the actual Matrix, and we have inadvertently spilled the vial of green shit out onto the planet."

Neo and Gaeta have something in common. In a world of seductive illusions, they became revolutionaries by championing the prodigious chaos of the actual world. It's a role Gaeta accepts with a healthy dose of Wachowskian irony. Before I leave ESC headquarters, I ask Gaeta where the brothers got their codename for the film.

"The Burly Man is the title of the script on Barton Fink's desk. We all loved that movie," he explains. "The lesson at the end of it is that after all these ordeals, all this agony, you finally arrive at the culmination of your entire life's work - and it's a wrestling picture.

"That's what The Matrix is."

How to Be a Real Hollywood Player

And the Oscar for Best Actress in a Supporting Game goes to Jada Pinkett Smith!

by Evan Ratliff

In Reloaded, the Matrix sequel, Jada Pinkett Smith plays the supporting role of Niobe, a hovercraft pilot. But in Enter the Matrix, the spinoff videogame, she's the star. Both will be released on May 15 - a synergistic first for Hollywood. (GoldenEye 007, a well-received shooter, came out a full two years after the movie hit theaters.) The movie industry has promised multimedia convergence ever since Atari's Star Wars hit arcades 20 years ago. But with minimal participation from actors and directors, franchised game incarnations have largely ended up as flubs that look and play like marketing ploys.

Enter the Wachowski brothers, avid gamers who view the two Matrix sequels and the game as a single project. All three titles share the same sets, crews, costume designers, choreographers, and - most crucially - actors. Each of the 25 main characters in the film reprise some version of their role for the game, and none more than Niobe. She and weapons expert Ghost (Anthony Wong) are the only playable characters.

While the typical spinoff might require actors to reread a few lines or submit to a scan, Pinkett Smith worked as hard on the game as on the movie that spawned it. She had to memorize game scripts several times longer than their film equivalents. She's starring in an additional hour of the movie, which will appear not in theaters but as cut-scene interludes in Enter the Matrix. And to get the gameplay right, she had to endure six months' worth of extra motion capture, face mapping, and full-body scanning. The result, she says, was maddening. "You had first unit, second unit, third unit, and then the game stuff."

That's a first for videogame production. "I could have hired some cheap actors to do it," says David Perry, whose company, Shiny Entertainment, developed the game. "But the Wachowskis didn't want to hear that. They were like, are you kidding me?"

For actors, shooting on a game set can be a trying experience: Game producers have to film from all angles to create realistic action. The motion capture set also required pretend-driving foam-and-wire cars, reacting to nonexistent explosions, and fleeing from make-believe agents. "It was like being a kid again," she says. "Everything had to be created through my imagination."

It wasn't easy, but the result, she predicts, will vault game acting into Hollywood's next big thing. "People are going to wanna be down," she says, noting that husband Will Smith is already investigating a game tie-in for his next movie. "That's the way you are going to have to do it from now on."

That's fine for Pinkett Smith - as long as she's working with the masters. "I know that if the Wachowskis made another game," she says, "it would be something that's never been done before."

The 10 Movies That Rocked My World
by John Gaeta

1. 2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick)
The ultimate application of visual effects by the director who has most inspired my industry.

2. Metropolis (Lang) Metropolis (Rintaro)
Fritz Lang's visionary approach to architecture and set design is as contemporary today as it was in 1926. The 2002 remake written by the anime master responsible for Akira is the most sophisticated merger of 2-D and 3-D animation methods I've ever seen. Plus, antirobot rebellion is supercool.

3. Alien (Scott)
Ridley Scott is a god when it comes to setting a tone. H. R. Giger's textures and atmosphere in this film are among the strongest and strangest visual backdrops you'll ever find. (A close second: Blade Runner.)

4. Koyaanisqatsi Powaqqatsi (Reggio)
These movies make me hallucinate, literally. I am obsessed with the visuals and consult them endlessly. Stylized culture, nature, and surreal patterns of this world - it's all there.

5. Vertigo (Hitchcock)
The vertigo effect is completely original. If Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick, or Orson Welles were alive, they would transcend today's virtual cinema in ways we could never imagine.

6. The Seven Samurai (Kurosawa)
This is a truly immense story and perhaps the greatest action film ever created. I first saw this when I was 15, and no Hollywood film I've seen since quite tops it.

7. The Mirror (Tarkovsky)
Symbolically charged imagery, autobiographical memory, and an inherent sense of the spiritual nature of simple things will keep this work provocative forever.

8. Godzilla, King of the Monsters (Honda)
OK, so I like to see massive destruction delivered by gigantic, unforgiving monsters. What's wrong with that? Humans need some competition.

9. SlaughterHouse-Five (Hill)
Any film that displays the mind-bending technique of "telepathic schizophrenia" - the ability to shift through time and space as a means of accepting absurd realities like war and death - has got to be useful to the average Joe. Vonnegut is a madman.

10. Brazil (Gilliam)
If George Orwell did stand-up comedy, it would be like Terry Gilliam predicting the future. Hilarious.

BONUS PICK: The Omega Man (Sagal)
I threw this film into the mix because it seems relevant right now. Gun freak number one, Charlton Heston, plays the only uncontaminated man left standing after a biological attack on America. Observe as he "deals" with the protests of the germed-up mutant citizenry. Has Dick Cheney seen this?

The Matrix Reloaded Has Been Locked by the Wachowskis

According to sources close to the production, Andy and Larry Wachowski have completed the final cut of their much anticipated second chapter of their "Matrix" trilogy. The effects are complete, the score is done and the final running time, including credits, will be two hours and eighteen minutes

Two minutes longer than the first film, "Reloaded" finds Neo, Trinity and Morpheus continuing to lead the revolt against the Machine Army, unleashing their arsenal of extraordinary skills and weaponry against the systematic forces of repression and exploitation. In their quest to save the human race from extinction, they gain greater insight into the construct of The Matrix and Neo's pivotal role in the fate of mankind.

"The Matrix Reloaded" will be released in the U.S. on Thursday, May 15, one day after its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival.

Some of us at Filmjerk.com recently had the pleasure of seeing the nine-part "Animatrix" shorts at a press screening last week. While we cannot give you our very enthusiastic review of the shorts until May 15, we can tell you the order the program will be presented in, and the running times for each of the shorts:

"The Second Renaissance, Part I": 8.5 minutes

"The Second Renaissance, Part II": 8.5 minutes

"Program": 7 minutes

"Beyond": 13 minutes

"World Record": 8.5 minutes

"Kid's Story": 9 minutes

"Matriculate": 16 minutes

"Detective Story": 9.5 minutes

"The Final Flight Of The Osiris": 9 minutes

GEEK PREVIEWS

April 3, 2003 -- IF you don't know your Aragorn from your Morpheus, don't panic. Directors of the blockbuster sci-fi franchises soon hitting theaters - "The Matrix," "Star Wars," "The Lord of the Rings" and "X-Men" - are coming to the rescue of confused fans with animated shorts and special-edition DVDs.

Those who couldn't understand what Neo, Trinity and Morpheus were trying to destroy in 1999's mind-bending hit "The Matrix" can check out the ultimate primer before seeing the sequel "The Matrix: Reloaded" on May 15.

Called "The Animatrix" - available on DVD, video and IntoTheMatrix.com on June 3 - it's a collection of nine animated shorts that provide background for the entire "Matrix" trilogy, and lay the groundwork for the two sequels coming out this year. ("The Matrix: Revolution" hits theaters in November).

Directors Andy and Larry Wachowski have also created a video game called "Enter the Matrix" (due out on May 15), which further explains the movie, thanks to footage shot exclusively for the game.

Though these tools aren't essential, "Your movie-going experience will be immeasurably enhanced and [you] will gain a deeper understanding of the world of 'The Matrix,' " said producer Joel Silver.

Enter The Matrix Interview:Don

Incorporating Don Davis' music from the box-office smash "The Matrix" and its' first sequel "The Matrix: Reloaded," Erik Lundborg is scoring "Enter The Matrix" - the first videogame of the Wachowski franchise. We caught up with both composers in bullet time to discuss their music contributions to the super scifi franchise.


Music4Games: Could you tell us a bit about what you're up to at the moment and at what stage you're at on the various Matrix projects?
Don Davis: I have just completed scoring The Matrix: Reloaded at this point, as well as the nine Animatrix episodes.
Erik Lundborg: Resting, composing, reading books and preparing for the next onslaught, whatever that might be.


M4G: The Wachowski brothers are said to show an incredible amount of interest and involvement in the musical aspects of their projects. Is this true for the game as well as the films, and if so, how do they influence the process?
DD: You're right, the brothers are very involved with every music moment in their projects. They have very specific ideas about what they want each scene to communicate, and they are tireless in working out each parameter of the process to that end. For example, when I score their films, we have a pretty detailed working process by which I demo each scene with an electronic mock-up, and we can then discuss the success or failure of any particular idea. There are also moments when a direction that they had given me during the spotting proves fruitless, and I come to them to discuss what may not have worked from that standpoint so that a more successful approach can be discovered.
EL: Yes. They wanted to preserve the original music from The Matrix, in addition to some new music from the Animes and The Matrix: Reloaded. It was my job to score the game-play music and the cineractives with that precise directive in mind and to hopefully make them happy. They are a demanding duo.


M4G: Early reports seem to suggest that this will be a movie-to-game transition that is worthy of its highly acclaimed source material. What do you think makes this game stand out and how does it enhance the Matrix experience overall, considering many games based on film licenses are quite disappointing?
DD: Larry and Andy were adamant from the start that the video game should be far more than simply rehash the concepts of the film. As such, there is an incredible amount of storyline cross-pollination between the film trilogy, the video game and also the Animatrix episodes. I think that this level of coordination between platforms is absolutely unprecedented.
SB: The game contains film footage that was shot specifically for the game, so the player's experience is not simply an echo of The Matrix: Reloaded. Therefore, it expands the sequel's story line and the game player is part of something new and independent of the film experience.


M4G: The film's producer, Joel Silver, recently said that this film would change the way people view and make films in the future. Is the game a similarly ambitious project with the potential to break as much new ground?
DD: I do think that this game will change the paradigm. Game producers in the future will be challenged to match the level of production value and integrity that was achieved in Enter The Matrix.
EL: As a famous person said, "I did not know that." My point is that working on the music is by definition part of the post-production process and I have no clue about how the envelope is stretched within the game business itself in terms of technical matters.


M4G: How does this pioneering vision affect you as a composer? Is there similar pressure to create something as new, unique and innovative with the music, and if so, how is this possible?
DD: I was challenged and excited by the creativity that was evident in every aspect of The Matrix. It was certainly incumbent upon me to look for innovation in the music, and I approached that problem by looking to what has preceded me in that medium and trying to fill what I perceived as a gap in the repertoire, so to speak.
EL: The pressure is always on to break new ground when the project demands it. And, Don accomplished that spectacularly in his original score to The Matrix and the same holds for Reloaded. Nothing like this has been attempted before.


M4G: The Matrix combines an ultra high-tech look, feel and approach to that great old, traditional battle between good vs. evil. How does the music reflect and enhance these starkly different influences?
DD: In Reloaded for example, we made the decision to rely on electronica for that sheen of hypnotic coolness during those moments when that kind of music was required, and to tap into the dynamics aspects of the orchestra when the film needed the energy and drama that orchestras provide. That way we could benefit from the best of each sonic world.


M4G: Does the game include any of the actual recordings used for the first two films, or is it re-recorded arrangements or adaptations of the original score?
EL: None of the actual recordings are used from the original score. All the music is adapted and re-recorded for the new environment demanded by the game.


M4G: How much additional and original music has been written solely for the game?
EL: About 25-30 minutes.


M4G: How different, or similar, are the styles of music used in the game and the film?
DD: I had much less actual involvement in the game because I was very busy with the underscore for "The Matrix: Reloaded" during the time that the game had to be done. Erik, who has orchestrated some of "Reloaded" and is an excellent composer himself, re-worked much of the score from "The Matrix" as well as scores from the various Animes (especially "Final Flight of the Osiris") and parts of the "Reloaded" score, so that they would fit the situations that the game presented. He also had to compose some transitional material so that it would all work together.
EL: The styles merge into one another seamlessly and this was the original intent of the Brothers Wachowski.


M4G: Have you focused on certain instrumentation to achieve an overall and specific feel and theme to the music?
EL: No. The orchestra is treated in much the way one would ordinarily treat the various different moods that one encounters on the screen. Fighting can be dominated by brass and percussion and suspense may be localized in strings, but this is just a typical example. No one would argue with these conventions. By the same token, there are no formulas as to how human emotions and action can be supported by a given orchestration. One has to judge these things by context and then make the best assessment.


M4G: Will the film, or game, use traditional musical themes or signature tunes for any of the characters, or will it be more abstract and unconventional?
EL: Don has composed a sonic "trademark" for the Matrix consisting of contrasting swells in the brass that often supports magical jumping by our heroes. This trademark will compete favorably with the top themes in filmdom, in my opinion. Don't you agree, Don? And, there exist other familiar themes, such as Agent Smith's that is derived from The Matrix.
DD: I agree, Erik. Absolutely.


M4G: How differently were the two projects treated in terms of composition, recording techniques, time and budget allowances and final product delivery?
DD: We spotted Reloaded in early December, and recorded the score in Los Angeles at the 20th Century Fox scoring stage in late February. There was over 90 minutes of music that we recorded in seven days with a 96 piece orchestra and an 80 voice choir. We also added some electronic elements that were recorded and mixed at my home studio.
EL: The recording in Seattle in a church took 44 hours and amounted to 130 minutes of music for the game. The game has two characters, Niobe and Ghost, and so each required unique scoring for their various cineractives which amounted to ca. 130 animated films. Composing started late November, 2002 and recordings were complete by early February, 2003. Recording techniques is out of my area of experitise.


M4G: Is your job of composing music to fit the film and game helped or hindered by the fact that the original Matrix movie was so influential and successful?
DD: I think that any sort of distinctive quality that is associated with the Matrix score made it very useful to apply that quality to any particular situation that required reference to anything Matrix-like.
EL: Helped.


M4G: Can you tell us what your personal favourite musical moment is from your respective pieces of recent work?
DD: It's always gratifying to look at a completed work and see how the component parts fit together, once the scoring is finished.
EL: Conducting the very challenging "Multiple Smiths."


M4G: How much friendly rivalry and competition is there between you two in terms of feeding off each other's work and wanting to impress or out-do each other and how much do you get involved in, or influence, the other person's work?
DD: Erik is very obedient. That's why we keep him around.
EL: Usually Don politely lets me into his studio and offers me some coffee and water. Then he engages me in a three-hour wrestling match and I lose. Then, we have a giant fist fight and I lose. After that, I go home and go to work. The next day, I go to work at around 4am. A couple of days go by. I go back out to his studio and he politely lets me into his studio and we repeat the process ad infinitum, ad libitum. After that, I talk to Stan.


M4G: With all the camera tricks, stunts, explosions and visual distractions, do you ever feel that all your hard work is being drowned out, or overlooked slightly by the average moviegoer?
DD: Actually, the function of film music is to not call attention to itself. So, although the average moviegoer may be unaware of my contribution to any particular film, I can be fairly confident that his moviegoing experience was enhanced by my work.


M4G: Have you seen the film or game in their entirety, and if so are they going to live up to our huge expectations?
DD: Yes, and I'm convinced that they will surpass expectations, because they surpassed mine.


M4G: What are you working on next?
DD: I'm getting ready to score The Matrix: Revolutions.


Interview by Alex Hyde-Smith

'Matrix' Jada Doesn't Want Will on Her Turf

Sexy actress Jada Pinkett Smith was desperate to bag a part in the upcoming Matrix sequel - but when she did, she refused to ask producers if they could cast husband Will Smith too. Although Pinkett Smith starred alongside her superstar spouse in Ali, she wasn't so keen to return the favor after landing the part of Niobe in the two mega-budget action sequels. She says, "When I saw the first movie, I went, 'Oh my God! It doesn't get any better than that!' So when the second movie came along, I was like, 'I've got to cut off one of my arms to be in this film!' After they called me for the second, Will was like, 'You got to ask them, is there anything for me?' And I'm like, 'It's my movie! I'm not asking them nothing!'"

Countdown to 'The Matrix Reloaded'

April 04, 2003

Get ready to jack in! 2003 is the "Year of The Matrix," and ET is counting down to your first look at the new trailer for 'The Matrix Reloaded' -- airing on next Thursday's show -- don't miss this incredible experience!

After spending months boning up on their martial arts and high-wire training, KEANU REEVES, LAURENCE FISHBURNE, CARRIE-ANNE MOSS and bad guy HUGO WEAVING were hard at work in Sydney, Australia filming the back-to-back sequels to the 1999 box-office smash. ET was there for the exciting film shoot.

"The sequel carves a continuation of [my character] Neo's journey and his quest to find out the truth," Keanu reveals to ET. "It's more about the conflict with the machines and the humans."

And this time around, the stunts and special effects in 'The Matrix Reloaded' and its final chapter, 'The Matrix Revolutions' (hitting theaters in November), are even more spectacular than the first go-around!

"We are trying to do some crazy things out here," offers Keanu. "The kung-fu sequences are more sophisticated and more challenging than the first film. Some of the wire work [allows me to] do back flips and cartwheels all in one shot.

"It's pushed me to my limits. Before it was like, 'Can you do two kicks?' and now it's like, 'Can you do three kicks, but with a jumping backspin hook-kick?' So it's like you have learned to walk -- now can you fly."

Although producer JOEL SILVER and co-directors ANDY and LARRY WACHOWSKI are keeping the 'Reloaded' and 'Revolutions' storylines tightly under wraps, we can tell you that 'Malena' star, MONICA BELLUCCI, and WILL SMITH's significant other, JADA PINKETT-SMITH, have joined the athletic cast for the new adventure. Monica's character remains a mystery for the moment, but Jada will play Niobe, the love interest of Morpheus, Laurence Fishburne's character.

"These sequels are going to blast the original off the screen, and that's exactly what the fans want," says Jada.

The original 'The Matrix' and a special behind-the-scenes documentary, 'The Matrix Revisited,' are both currently available on VHS and DVD. 'The Matrix Reloaded' opens in theaters May 15th. Die-hard fans who can't wait 'til the 'Reloaded' premiere should check out new stories from the 'Animatrix,' coming to DVD June 3 and streaming on the 'Animatrix' website!

On Screen: Learning to fly with computer-generated performers

Are the days of actors numbered? Will the computer geeks be able to generate animated performers who are as convincing as real live humans?

Those questions are raised again in "Final Flight of the Osiris," an 11-minute "Matrix"-inspired short playing in theaters with "Dreamcatcher." The computer-animated "Osiris" pretty much blows the full-length Stephen King adaptation off the screen.

"Osiris," which serves as a prologue to this summer's "Matrix Reloaded" (opening May 15), is incredible stuff. It begins with a man and woman, both blindfolded, squaring off in a sword duel that also doubles as a striptease as their flashing blades cut away each other's clothing.

A few minutes later, the two -- the captain and first-mate of the hovercraft Osiris -- are in a deadly engagement with thousands of Sentinels, those metallic search-and-destroy octopi familiar from the original "Matrix" film. The Osiris' crew must warn the inhabitants of Zion, a human-rebel stronghold within the Matrix, of an impending invasion.

The action shots are stupendous, better than what you can get from live stunt men who, after all, are made of breakable flesh and bone and subject to the laws of gravity.

One big drawback of "Osiris" is that the faces of these computer-generated characters still don't look convincingly human.

But that will change, according to Andy Jones, who was the animation director of the all-computer action/adventure feature "Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within" and who directed "Final Flight of the Osiris."

"That problem will be overcome eventually," said Jones, 30, in a phone call from his Los Angeles office. "But to do that we'll have to derive more of each performance from a real actor."

Computer animators rely on motion-capture technology to mimic the movements of the human form. A performer dons a skintight outfit with sensors at key points; as he moves, cameras and computers read the sensors and record the spatial relationships between sensors. Once captured, these movements can be repeated by computer-animated characters.

A perfect example, Jones said, is Gollum in "The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers." Actor Andy Serkis performed Gollum's role on the set with other actors, his movements captured by the computer. Later, digital artists created Gollum using Serkis' movements.

Capturing body movement, though, is easy compared to mapping the subtleties of human face, Jones said.

"What it will take is building a computer model that captures all the possibilities of human facial expression. But it will still require an actor to deliver a performance, a performance that is then given to a computer-generated character."

That might take several years, Jones said, but it will happen.

"Osiris" is one of nine short "Matrix"-inspired films that can be seen on "The Animatrix," a home-video release that will hit stores in early June. The other films, several of which were written by "Matrix" creators Larry and Andy Wachowski, employ a variety of animation styles, with an emphasis on Japanese anime.

"They all have very different looks," Jones said. "I think we were tapped for theatrical release because the look and the story of our film more closely relate to the next `Matrix' film. What you see in `Osiris' is what happens just before `Matrix Reloaded' begins."

Matrix sequel set for Cannes debut

The Matrix Reloaded is to receive its world première at this year's Cannes Film Festival - the world's leading movie showcase.

The sequel to the The Matrix will be shown out of competition on 15 May, the second day of the festival and the day the film is released worldwide.

The eagerly-awaited second movie sees Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne and Carrie-Anne Moss reprise their roles, with Jada Pinkett Smith as a newcomer to the cast.

The first and second Matrix films form two parts of a trilogy, with the final film to be released at the end of 2003.

The original high-action feature in 1999, loaded with special effects, was an award-winning global box office hit.

The Cannes Film Festival is considered a highly-prestigious event by most members of the movie industry.

As such, The Matrix: Reloaded will be very much in the spotlight, as will its stars, who are expected to attend the film's gala unveiling.

Penelope Cruz's new film will open the festival

The sequel has a big reputation to live up to after the first film won four Academy Awards and made more than $460m (£294m) worldwide.

Organisers of the Cannes Film Festival are yet to release the full line-up of movies showing in and out of competition.

Spanish actress Penelope Cruz will star in the festival's opening movie, French-language feature Fanfan La Tulipe.

The film will also be shown out of competition at Cannes, where the top prize is the prestigious Palme d'Or.

Last year's winner was Oscar-winner Roman Polanski's The Pianist.

French movie director Patrice Chereau will head this year's festival jury.

He is best known for the historical drama La Reine Margot, which won the Cannes Jury Prize in 1994.

'Matrix' Mania Ramps Up!

April 03, 2003

The theatrical release of the hotly anticipated 'The Matrix Reloaded' from famed producer JOEL SILVER is just weeks away. But for those 'Matrix' fans who can't wait to return to the rabbit hole, ET has a sneak peek at 'Detective Story,' a film-noir-styled short debuting on the 'Animatrix' website!

Written and directed by SHINICHIRO WATANABE (of 'Cowboy Bebop' fame), 'Detective Story' is one of nine visionary animated short films by world-renowned anime directors for 'The Animatrix,' coming to DVD June 3. All of the tales are grounded in the world of 'The Matrix,' telling parallel or back stories with exciting new characters and situations. Four of the nine episodes were written by 'The Matrix' directors LARRY and ANDY WACHOWSKI, and 'Detective Story' starts streaming Friday.

Two other 'Animatrix' shorts, 'Program' and 'The Second Renaissance Part 1,' are already available to see for free, in their entirety, on the 'Animatrix' website. And the incredible 'Final Flight of the Osiris,' an 'Animatrix' film from the makers of 'Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within,' can currently be seen in theaters along with STEPHEN KING's horror flick, 'Dreamcatcher.'

'The Matrix Reloaded,' starring KEANU REEVES, LAURENCE FISHBURNE, CARRIE-ANNE MOSS and JADA PINKETT SMITH, unspools in theaters May 15. The third film of the trilogy, 'The Matrix Revolutions,' comes out in November. Watch ET for all the latest on the 'Matrix' mania!

'Matrix' Sequel to Premiere at Cannes

PARIS - The futuristic sci-fi sequel "The Matrix Reloaded" will premiere at the Cannes Film Festival (news - web sites) in May, where its filmmakers and stars will sashay down the red carpet.

AP Photo

The second film in the Matrix thriller trilogy, "Reloaded" will be shown out-of-competition on May 15, the second day of the festival, which runs until May 25.

Actors Keanu Reeves (news), Laurence Fishburne (news), and Carrie-Anne Moss (news) reprise their roles from "The Matrix," a powerhouse action film released in 1999. Jada Pinkett Smith joins the cast for the second edition, which is, like the first, written and directed by brothers Larry and Andy Wachowski.

The film will be released internationally following the festival.

The final film in the trilogy, "The Matrix Revolutions," is expected to be released later in 2003. The original Matrix won four Academy Awards (news - web sites) and grossed more than $460 million in worldwide box office receipts.

The world's best known film festival, in its 56th year, serves as a launching pad for movies that are shown out of competition

Short flick is flying high

03apr03

THE Final Flight of the Osiris is already winning fans, writes MICHAEL BODEY.

In Australia, most feature films are made for less than $8 million.

Australian visual-effects supervisor James Rogers and his team at Square USA had $8 million at their disposal merely to make an 11-minute short film to complement the new sequels to the modern cult film, The Matrix .

Despite the generous budget, they didn't quite know what their film, Final Flight of the Osiris, would become.

"We were originally asked to make an instalment for the DVD, The Animatrix," says Rogers. "We didn't know at the time it was going to be 'The Matrix 1.5'. We read about that after it was finished."

The computer-generated short film shows the exploits of the crew of the hovercraft Osiris as they attempt to get a crucial message back to Zion.

As such, it follows on from the original Matrix film, affects events in the upcoming Enter The Matrix video game and sets off the events in the much-anticipated first sequel, The Matrix: Reloaded.

For the team of developers at Square USA, this job was exactly what they needed.

"It was a strange assignment but we'd just come off Final Fantasy and we were a bit sick of the negative coverage we'd got on that," says Rogers.

"To be handed The Matrix, which had this legacy and following, was so interesting to us."

Interesting because his team was able to push the dream of believable digital human beings for the screen one step further.

On big-budget flop Final Fantasy, the world was told the computer-generated humans would be photo-realistic, indistinguishable from the real thing.

The developers knew that wouldn't happen. Yet.

"That marketing was frustrating to us," says Rogers, "so Osiris was a big advance. After we'd done Final Fantasy, we knew exactly what not to do."

They knew not to be too geeky and to focus on cinematic issues more than computer ones. Also, improvements in speed and process ensured Osiris was a far more enjoyable, and ultimately successful, experience.

"This time we were more focused," he said. "In Final Fantasy, the brief was to animate the humans like the humans. In The Animatrix, it was to make them more anime-like and, funnily enough, they're more realistic."

Already, the positive verdict is in on Osiris. It's a major achievement, a captivating and humorous adventure that loses nothing from being created digitally.

And Rogers hasn't lost all hope for Final Fantasy.

"Box office-wise, it was a failure and maybe the story wasn't that hot, but it was a significant step for digital characters, as is this film," he says.

Matrix Reloaded Tracklisting Unveiled

While Warner Music drip feed info about the new Matrix Reloaded soundtrack to us in ration form, antiitcool.com in the US have scooped the pool and printed the entire tracklisting.

Like the first album, this one is also going to be a metalfest with the added bonus of a second CD and a while lotta techno.

Some of the songs you may already have. The opening track 'Session' is also on Linkin Park's Meteora.

POD are their too. Their contribution 'Sleeping Awake' was the first crumb we were fed about the album.

Rob Dougan (or Rob D) is another highlight. Rob is an Aussie living in London and some might know him for his dance hit 'Clubbed To Death'. 'Furious Angels' is also the title track of his new album. He's also on CD 2 with 'Chateau', a new song not featured on his own album.

Other tracks include new music by Marilyn Manson, Rage Against The Machine, Rob Zombie and Deftones.

In fact Deftones Chino Moreno appears twice. Team Sleep is his 'other' band.

Here is the complete tracklisting for The Matrix Reloaded:

Disc 1

01. Linkin Park - Session

02. Marilyn Manson - This Is the New S**t

03. Rob Zombie - Reload

04. Rob D - Furious Angels

05. Deftones - Lucky You

06. Team Sleep - Passportal

07. P.O.D. - Sleeping Awake

08. UnLoco - Bruises

09. Rage Against The Machine - Calm Like A Bomb

10. Oakenfold - Dread Rock

11. Fluke - Zion

12. Dave Matthews - When The World Ends

01. Don Davis - Main Title

02. Don Davis - Trinity Dream

03. Juno Reactor - Tea House

04. Rob D - Chateau

05. Juno Reactor - Mona Lisa Overdrive

06. Don Davis vs. Juno Reactor - Burly Brawl

07. Don Davis - Reloaded Suite

Fans cool on film dreams

By Wendy Frew

THE Kirby brothers have a dream. A Hollywood dream. The co-chairmen ofVillage Roadshow want to turn their radio and film exhibition anddistribution business into a top film production house.

To turn the dream into a reality, the brothers and their managing director,Graham Burke, need cash, and lots of it. They have sold a string of offshorecinema assets, secured a $US900 million ($1.5 billion) debt facility from asyndicate of banks, and suspended the dividend on ordinary shares.

So determined are they to pour as much money and resources as possible intofilm production they have even raised the possibility of suspending thedividend payment on the company's A class preference shares.

It's a move that has raised the ire of more than one shareholder and couldhave long-term consequences for equity raisings, according to analysts. Norare all investors convinced that higher exposure to film production is adream worth pursuing.

"It is a slap in the face for the preference shareholders," said one marketsource of the change in dividend policy.

"Preference shares, more than ordinary shares, are structured like debt, sothink about it in terms of someone just deciding to stop paying the intereston their debt obligations."

Unwilling to give up their 10.175¢ a share dividend on stock once worth asmuch as $4 but now trading around 74¢, some preference shareholders arethreatening to take legal action if the dividend is not paid. And theAustralian Securities & Investments Commission is investigating the legalityof any suspension.

Former distribution partner with Village, Amalgamated Holdings, was so angryabout the poor return on its investment that in February it sold its 34 percent stake in Village Roadshow Corp. The Kirbys and Burke now have 99 percent of Village Roadshow Corp, which owns 47 per cent of Village RoadshowLimited.

Preference shareholder Anton Tagliaferro at fund manager Investors Mutualbelieves any preference share dividend suspension would be "unethical andimmoral", if not illegal.

Hunter Hall Investment Management, which owns about 14 per cent of Village'spreference shares, said also that it was willing to take legal action ifVillage did not pay the preference dividends.

"We expect to be paid our dividend and we are very confident they have thefunds to pay the dividend and we can't believe they would be foolish enoughnot to pay it," said Jack Lowenstein, of the Hunter Hall investment team.

When the ordinary dividend was suspended last year, Village's share priceplunged 35 per cent. Shaw Stockbroking noted that the company had shown thatit was unable to expand rapidly without losing shareholder value, "and sothe market is rightly sceptical of the growth opportunities".

Credit rating agencies Moody's and S&P don't appear convinced, either. Bothof them have downgraded the group's ratings because of concerns about itsaggressive financial structure and its increasing exposure to the riskybusiness of making movies.

Movie production can reap huge benefits. The nine films Village released in2002 reaped $US2 billion at the box office, half of which goes to Village.

The first of the three Matrix films starring Keanu Reeves, which Village isco-producing with Warner Bros, had reportedly pulled in $US460 million bylast year, excluding earnings from home video and DVD markets.

In the current financial year, much hangs on the success of the two sequels,due for release in May and November, and estimated to cost Village as muchas $300 million.

Village has had its fair share of flops and there could be more of them.

"The film industry is a tough and complex industry," says Hunter Hall'sPeter Hall.

"It is a hits business. We prefer the more stable cash flows from radio,exhibition and distribution."

The senior team at Village have been in the local movie business for 30years and can claim Alvin Purple and Mad Max among their successes.

Interview : Lachy Hulme - The Matrix Reloaded

Having caught Skase, having dashed from Steve Irwin, and having had his name blueprinted as one heck of an actor to watch, good bud Lachy Hulme is finally getting the notice he deserves. Sure, he'll be overlooked by a swag of special effects in "The Matrix Reloaded", but hey, he's in there. We talk to Australia's Own 'Lachy' about being part of Silvers Grand Magic Circus.

tell me a bit about your character in Matrix I play "Sparks," the operator on The Logos -- the smallest, fastest, and nastiest ship in the fleet. You've got "Niobe," the captain, played by Jada Pinkett-Smith -- who is by far the best pilot in Zion. Nerves of steel. Then there's Ghost, the first-mate, played by Anthony Wong -- kind of the ultimate assassin of "The Matrix" universe, a Zen-warrior killing machine. And then there's "Sparks," who although he may be the most brilliant operator on any of the ships, he also happens to be a filthy coward who will say and do anything to avoid a dangerous situation. He's also a total smart-ass, so it's perfectly cast, now that I think about it.

Were you required to do much in the way of physical work, action scenes etc...if so did u get hurt?

I think my previous response takes care of that one. Obviously, no. All the ship's operators are free-born in Zion, meaning they can't exist inside the Matrix. So basically, I'm in the rear with the beer, which in "Sparks's" case is the perfect place to be.

what were some of the hardest sequences in the film...was anyone hurt?

Every scene was the hardest scene to film. You have no idea the level of mental and physical endurance required to sustain yourself in a project like this. From my point of view, it was the mental challenge of keeping six-hundred pages of script in my head -- meaning all the videogame stuff, plus the scripts for the two movies, even the stuff I wasn't in. I became kind of like the "encyclopedia" for some of the other cast members, because I memorized all this stuff. Shows you what kind of life I have, right? Too much time on my hands. But the physical stuff, the fighting and the action, that wasn't my problem. For that, you're talking about guys like Keanu and Hugo, and Fish and Carrie-Anne. Those guys busted their collective asses for two-and-a-half years! I mean, I can remember days when we were shooting in San Francisco, and I'd be putting my feet up having a grand ol' time making the videogame, and then you'd see Keanu getting carried -- literally carried -- to a little kiddies wading pool that they'd filled with ice. He'd lie down in it and they'd smother him in more ice, the poor bastard was so wrecked from the fight scenes he was shooting. And believe me, Keanu Reeves is no wimp. He's a big guy, he was in great shape. But smashing the shit out of one hundred Agent Smith's day-in day-out can take its toll, I guess.

Who did the martial arts training on the film, and what did this involve?

All the training and choreography was handled by Master Wo Ping and all of his Hong Kong guys. I'd hang around on set and watch them work -- which is an experience in itself, believe me -- and shit, man, do they work the actors hard. These Hong Kong guys, they're not mucking around. They are there to work, and they will not stop until they get it right. Take after take after take. And then, of course, there's those pesky Wachowski brothers to deal with. They do have a "slight" reputation for wanting things to be perfect.

How does the new matrix differ from the first film?

Bigger, better, bolder. They've taken everything to the next step -- more action, more drama, more plot-twists, more mind-bending philosophy, more love story, more everything. I truly believe -- and I know that when people see the films I won't be shot down for this -- I truly believe that "The Matrix Reloaded" will go down as the greatest sequel since "The Godfather Part II." Completely different types of movies, of course, but in terms of surpassing the original "Matrix," Andy and Larry have delievered beyond what anyone could possibly imagine.

This is a huge role for you. are you nervous about it opening and the reception you'll get as sparks?

Well, "Sparks" isn't a huge role in the scheme of things. I mean, the bulk of my work is in "Enter The Matrix," the videogame, which was also written and directed by Andy and Larry. In "Reloaded," I'm just hanging in the background waving to mum -- but the plotline to "Enter The Matrix" runs parallel to "Reloaded," so it's kind of like a separate movie in itself, but a movie that you can play. Like the title says: "Enter The Matrix," with the emphasis on "Enter." So, aside from all of that, am I nervous? Are you kidding me? This is "The Matrix," for chrissakes! How could I be nervous, man? I'm just proud to be associated with it, even if it's in a very small way.

You did the video game. what did that involve?

Well, like I say, the game is like a whole other movie. When I first auditioned, I had no idea what I was getting into. I figured, I'd be happy with maybe one or two cool little moments in the films -- whatever they're offering, y'know? I mean, I'd carry a bucket of water on a "Matrix" film, I'm that big a fan of the first one. So I audition, and I get cast, and about three weeks later I'm there in San Francisco, and I still haven't read the scripts yet, right? Basically, I have no fucking idea what I'm supposed to be doing. So I meet Andy and Larry Wachowski, and we're having a chat about the character, and I'm gathering from the conversation that I'll maybe be working on the project for, like, a month, max. And then Andy says to me: "You know about the videogame, right?" And I'm like, "Well, yeah, I've heard about it, I know you're doing some sort of game thing, so what's the deal?" So they start telling me about this game -- and I shit you not, I was stunned. The scope of what they were talking about, I seriously thought that these guys were insane. In essence, every single moment of the game was going to be performed by the cast. Now, that might not sound like much to you at first, but this is the first time in history -- and possibly the last time -- that something like this has been attempted. I'm talking about that when you play the videogame, that is the actual cast -- every movement, every moment, every line of dialogue -- all done on a Motion Capture soundstage especially built for this project. And on top of that, Andy and Larry had written the whole thing, including over one hour of totally new footage shot especially for the game. So you play the game, and then you go into these new scenes which link in to the movie, and then you're back into the game play which is also all linked into the movie, so you end up with "The Matrix Reloaded" and "Enter The Matrix" as one giant production. So I turn to Andy and Larry and say, "Well, how big is my part in the game?", and Andy leans back in his chair and holds his hands about six feet apart and he just stares at me and goes: "Biiiiiggggg." So that night, I'm back in my hotel room, and I finally read the scripts for the two films, and just like I figured, I've got a few cool little moments. And then I open this monstrous package which has all the game scripts in it, and there's hundreds and hundreds of pages to be shot -- and I'm on just about every fucking page! So: Let me put it this way: In the two films, I shot maybe a handful of scenes. But I worked on this project for fourteen months. The rest of the time was on the videogame. Like Andy Wachowski said: "Biiiiiggggg!"

have you got just as big a role in "revolutions"?

I've got a bit more to do in "Revolutions" that I do in "Reloaded," but if you want all the "Sparks" action -- basically, if you want to see what an absolute mental case this guy is -- then get the videogame, my man!

Whats your fave scene from the first film?

I'm hard put thinking of a scene that I don't like from the first film, to be honest with you. But if I had to single out one moment that really convinced me that the first "Matrix" was destined to be an absolute classic, it was the Dojo fight between Neo and Morpheus. When I saw that, I was completely sucked-in. They had me. From that point on, "The Matrix" could do no wrong. That's probably why I got on the phone to my agent about five minutes after the film had ended and asked him, "Are these bastards gonna do a sequel or what?!"

Whats next for you?

I'm currently working on a project with Jada Pinkett-Smith and Phil Oosterhouse, who's kind of like Andy and Larry's right-hand man. It's called "The Jonestown Boys," a very dark, very scary thriller that Phil and I are writing, and Jada and I will be in. Obviously I can't say too much about it, but I've been in L.A. for about three months working on it, and we hope to get it all up and running later in the year. The project was sort of "born" when we were shooting in Sydney. Phil wanted to do something with me, and Jada and I were talking about maybe doing something, so the three of us basically fleshed out an idea that I had a few years ago and turned it into this great concept. I mean, it's a huge step for me to be working with those two, and really flattering to be asked, quite frankly. And also, I've just been cast as the late Australian artist Albert Tucker in Philippe ("Communion") Mora's biopic about Tucker, Sidney Nolan, and John and Sunday Reed during World War II. One of those great untold stories that's finally going to get its due. Very, very emotional stuff. Awesome script. We're shooting around mid-year, and I finally get to do another movie in Melbourne, my home town, which should be a blast.

THE MATRIX RELOADED Opens May 15th

- CLINT MORRIS

Top Acts Plug In For 'Matrix Reloaded' Soundtrack

New tracks from Deftones, Rob Zombie, Marilyn Manson, and, as previously reported, P.O.D., will be featured on the double-disc soundtrack to the film "Matrix Reloaded," due May 6 from Maverick. The highly anticipated film, starring Keanu Reeves, arrives May 15 in U.S. theaters. The soundtrack will be bundled with a trailer for the film and its upcoming animated companion, "Animatrix," as well as behind-the-scenes clips from the "Enter the Matrix" video game.

One of the more unusual cuts on the soundtrack is Paul Oakenfold's remix of Dave Matthews Band's "When the World Ends," from the latter group's 2001 RCA album "Everyday." Oakenfold completed the remix nearly two years ago, but owing to the song's title, it was withheld in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Other artists who have offered up songs for "Matrix Reloaded" include Juno Reactor, Fluke, Deftones side project Team Sleep, Rage Against The Machine, and Unloco. The soundtrack's second disc will feature 40 minutes of the film's score.

Here is the tracklist for "Matrix Reloaded: The Album":

Disc 1:

1. "Session," Linkin Park"
2. "This Is the New Sh*t," Marilyn Manson"
3. "Reload," Zombie
4. "Furious Angels," Rob Dougan
5. "Lucky You," Deftones
6. "The Passportal, "Team Sleep
7. "Sleeping Awake," P.O.D.
8. "Bruises," Unloco
9. "Calm Like a Bomb," Rage Against The Machine
10. "Dread Rock," Oakenfold
11. "Zion," Fluke
12. "When the World Ends (Oakenfold Remix)," Dave Matthews Band

1. "Main Title," Don Davis
2. "Trinity Dream," Don Davis
3. "Tea House," Juno Reactor
4. "Chateau," Rob Dougan
5. "Mona Lisa Overdrive," Juno Reactor
6. "Burly Brawl," Don Davis vs. Juno Reactor
7. "Reloaded Suite," Don Davis