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T is for Turbo Drawing

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Recently, a trailer for The ABCs of Death was released, and it looks great.  Related to that is a drawing of mine that I wanted to post.  Keep in mind, that this is a year old, but I never wrote in detail about it, so I’m posting it now.  Explanation will follow.

The ABCs of Death

The ABCs of Death is an interesting project – this is an anthology horror movie consisting of 26 segments (each around 4 minutes long), one per letter of the alphabet.  Each segment is about an instrument of death starting with that respective letter of the alphabet (say, “K is for Knife”).  26 different directors worked on this movie!  More details can be found on the Wikipedia Page or this page on JoBlo, where you can view the trailer.  Warning: Contains Blood & Gore, not for kids!

The people behind this anthology project left one slot free, for which they invited submissions from filmmakers from all around the world.  This was the slot for the letter “T” and there were more than 100 shorts that they received (you can view them at this site).  Out of all these films, “T is for Toilet” by Lee Hardcastle was selected to be in the final film.

T is for Turbo a.k.a. Turbo Kid – The Film

One of the top 3 finalists among the submitted entries was “T is for Turbo” by team RKSS (Roadkill Superstar – consisting of members Francois Simard, Anouk Whissell, Yoann-Karl Whissell).  I absolutely LOVED this short film, and in fact I felt that this would be the winning entry that’d make it into the final The ABCs of Death film.

Here, you can watch the short film (contains violence, blood & gore, not for kids!) –

I loved this film since it so very closely matched the look and feel of the 1970s/80s post-apocalyptic movie!  Specifically, I think they were referencing the loads of cheap Italian-made knock offs that came out after bigger-budgeted movies like Mad Max.  The costumes, the make-up/gore effects, the cheesy dialogues, all make for a wonderfully nostalgic experience.

The filmmakers have come up with interesting characters also (the villain Zeus, Shandella, Beardman, the Skeleton mask guy, etc).  The Turbo Kid himself reminds me of an older version of Commander Keen.

I liked the cinematography in the film (by Jean-Philippe Bernier).  The film was shot on a Canon 5D Mark II DSLR, but using an anamorphic adapter.  The camera shoots video in 1920 x 1080 resolution, which results in an aspect ratio of 16:9 or 1.78:1.  However, a lot of productions use a wider aspect ratio like 2.35:1, which gives a more cinematic look (since that is the ratio many films are presented in theatrically).  One way to achieve this would be to film in 16:9 and then crop off bits from the top and bottom.  This means that we’re not effectively using all the information that the camera has captured (the resulting image dimensions might be 1920 x 800).  An anamorphic adapter optically distorts the image horizontally, so it squishes a wider image into the 16:9 frame.  Later on, the image can be un-squished in post-production, so what this achieves is an image width of roughly 2500 pixels and a height of 1080.

I believe this is the source of the slight blur/distortions at the edges of the frames, which for some reason I find aesthetically very good looking, and it goes even further to enhance the feel of an old movie.

The submissions for The ABCs of Death were supposed to be kept to 4 minutes in length.  The longer (by few minutes) ‘director’s cut’ version of this film is called Turbo Kid.  I don’t think that version is online anywhere – I suppose you have to attend a film festival where it is screened, to be able to see it.

T is for Turbo – My Drawing

As is the case with things that I am deeply inspired by, I made a drawing based on this film.  I did this based on screenshots grabbed from the actual film, and the shot of the Turbo Kid was referenced from a behind-the-scenes still.

The drawing was done with pencil on an A5 size paper.  I scanned it and added the paper texture in the background and the subtle colours in Photoshop.  The fonts used are Helvetica for the credits, and the title of the film is in a font called Headline HPLHS (this font is designed to mimic the look of old woodcut headlines – I got it from the HP Lovecraft Historical Society site).  Perhaps not the most appropriate for a retro-futuristic film like this, but I think it looks good.  Cthulhu fhtagn!

Want to see a few in-progress / behind-the-scenes photos as I was making this poster?  Here is an album on Facebook which you can check out: T is for Turbo Drawing – Behind the Scenes [9 photos].

By the way, I posted this drawing on the RKSS Facebook page and even sent a message to them.  They liked it – and that made me really happy.

The Music – “58 minutes pour vivre” by Le Matos

Apart from everything else I loved about T is for Turbo, a standout aspect for me was the music in it.  It’s simply brilliant – the synthesizer-type music is exactly what you might find in a 1980s movie.

The track is called “58 minutes pour vivre” (translates to “58 minutes to live”) by the band Le Matos.  A little bit of trivia – “58 Minutes” by Walter Wager is the novel that Die Hard 2 was adapted from.

Here is a music video for the track, also edited by RKSS.  This video is called “58 Minutes dans le wasteland” which is very apt, as it is entirely edited together using footage from the very films that inspired Turbo Kid.

A full list of films featured in the video is there in the video description (if you view it on the Vimeo page).  Should be a nice list to pick movies from and watch.  And during the song, there is a bit of dialogue that comes up – that’s the voice of Bruce Willis and that’s a sample of dialogue from 12 Monkeys.

If you want to purchase the track, you can do so here (I did – I legally bought “58 minutes pour vivre”).

On a related note – you can also watch the grindhouse-inspired pulp horror fake trailer Demonitron: The Sixth Dimension by RKSS (it’s very good, and the look is again spot-on, though in some bits where they intentionally tried to emulate “unintentionally funny” – especially the ‘demon cake’ bit – I felt they went a little overboard, which kind of detracted from the experience).  The music used in that trailer is called “Sarah” also by Le Matos.  you can listen to the track and buy it here.

Other Notes

If you are on Facebook, you can view the “Making of T is for Turbo” album here (photos shot by Marie Raymond).  In that album, this photo is the one I used as the reference for the Turbo Kid in my drawing.  I think you have to “Like” the RKSS page to be able to see these photos.

There is an album with posters of their short movies.  In that one, you can see the digitally-created official poster for the film.  I love the look of the poster – I can almost imagine seeing this artwork on a VHS videotape and renting it immediately (back in the days when we used to rent videotapes).  I love the caption – “This is the future, this is the year 1997”.  Since Turbo Kid is inspired by those science fiction films made in the 70s and 80s, it makes sense that 1997 would be ‘the future’.  (For that matter, even John Carpenter’s classic Escape from New York, released in 1981, was set in ‘the future’ of 1997.)

The latest update about Turbo Kid is that it is going to be adapted into a full-length feature film!  This article has info about that.  Count me in as a fan!  I’m sure it’ll be a unique, quirky film that I will love.  I look forward to seeing it, reviewing it and drawing something based on it, in the future… in the year 1997.  “So what the fuck is your super power?”

Items of Interest – 27-Feb-12 to 4-Mar-12

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As usual, here is a rundown of interesting things that happened in the past week.  This week saw the announcement of two cameras, I shared TED talks from two speakers, and there were a couple of other items of interest.  Here you go –

Announced: the Nokia 808 PureView

On 27-Feb-12 at Barcelona, Nokia announced their upcoming device – the Nokia 808 PureView.  This to me is a camera which just happens to have a smartphone tacked on to it!  The reason I say this, is that the PureView has a camera with a 41 megapixel sensor.

Yes, you read that correctly, 41 megapixels.  Of course, just having a larger number of megapixels doesn’t necessarily mean you get a better picture, and the engineers at Nokia know this.  So is this just marketing fluff or is there something actually remarkable about this?

I would go with the latter – the camera on this smartphone has a larger sensor than the one in the Nokia N8 (my current phone, and in terms of image quality from a smartphone camera, the N8 is by some accounts, the best).  So, the detail it captures is indeed more than any smartphone camera around.

The sensor can capture 7728 x 5368 pixels of information.  If you shoot a picture in 4:3 mode, then the image dimensions would be 7152 x 5368 (38 megapixels), and in 16:9 mode, you get a 7728 x 4354 (34 megapixels) image.  Since the camera is capturing a lot of information, it would perform very well in low light, zooming would still produce very clear images, and when scaled down, the images would have excellent detail.  The larger sensor would allow it to produce excellent video (1080p) too.

The phone runs the Nokia Belle OS (same as the N8) – since apparently, that can handle the hardware required to process this huge amount of image information.

The phone would be available towards the end of March and in India, it would cost around Rs 35,000.  So far I have been very happy with my Nokia N8 and have not thought of upgrading my phone.  But the Nokia 808 PureView is certainly tempting!  I will definitely consider buying it.

When I told my friends this, some thought I would ditch my DSLR – I would never think of doing that, since a smartphone camera cannot replace a DSLR.  But in my opinion, it’s great to have a good camera on your phone, since you’ll be carrying your phone almost everywhere, and in situations where you may not have a bigger camera with you (check this Facebook album for example – these photos were taken by me with my N8 at a get-together at office where I didn’t have my DSLR).

See the following links for more information –

  • Nokia Conversations Article
  • Nokia 808 PureView Whitepaper (593 KB PDF File) – I highly recommended you download this, if you want to understand this technology better.
  • Nokia 808 Test Shots (31 MB ZIP File) – Sample images!  These are apparently unretouched images straight from the camera, shot at the huge 38 or 34 megapixel resolutions.  There are only 3 images inside the ZIP, each being around 10 MB in size.  They’re all shot in good light (apparently by a pro photographer).  If you zoom in all the way, the quality is amazing.  The detail is great and since the sensor size is larger, you can get a better shallow depth of field effect that you can get with the N8.
  • Gizmodo Article – If you don’t want to download the 31 MB archive, you can see smaller versions of the sample images on this article.

I would love to have a camera like this to complement my DSLR.  You’ll notice, that I am only talking about the camera on this phone – a phone to me in most cases is a necessary evil.  One can take for granted that the 808 would do nicely in allowing you to make calls and send messages.  And the OS is no different from what I am using now – it’s only Facebook and Twitter that I access from my phone, and I sometimes view my Gmail on it.  Otherwise I don’t use other apps.  That’s why, if at all I am going to upgrade my phone, this is the one I would get.

Announced: the Canon EOS 5D Mark III

On 2-Mar-12, to celebrate the 25th anniversary of its EOS system, Canon announced it’s upcoming DSLR – the Canon EOS 5D Mark III.

This is the successor to the Canon EOS 5D Mark II, which was introduced in 2008 and was considered a game-changing piece of equipment.  The Mark II is used by professionals all around the world and it has been used to shoot movies (our own Ram Gopal Varma has made two movies with it – Dongala Mutha and Not a Love Story), music videos and TV shows.

The 5D Mark III is a 22 megapixel full-frame camera and like it’s predecessor, it can do 1080p video (perhaps in the future we will see a DSLR that can shoot 4K video).  Because of its large sensor, the video is very film-like.  There are improvements in the focusing system, and there are improvements in video (technology borrowed from the 1D X) that will aid pro cinematographers.

It’ll be available in April it seems, and will cost $3499 for the body only, and with the EF 24-105mm f4 L lens, it’ll cost $4299.

If I were to upgrade to a full-frame DSLR, this is the camera I’d like to own.  So, as I said on Facebook, if someone would like to rob a bank and then buy me this camera, please let me know.  I will give you my address.  My birthday is on May 15.  Just saying.

I wouldn’t mind if you get me a Nikon D800 either, but I can’t use my 50mm f1.8 II lens with that.  So I’d stick with Canon!

Check out the following links for more info –

TED Talks of Note

There were a few TED Talks that I came across and shared this week.  The first out of these is from the future – Peter Weyland’s TED Talk on “I will Change the World” from TED 2023.

Interesting, right?  This is actually clever marketing for the upcoming Ridley Scott movie Prometheus, and features Guy Pearce playing the character Peter Weyland.

As much as Ridley Scott & Co. have been denying that Prometheus is a direct prequel to Alien, there is quite a bit of evidence to prove otherwise.  The ‘evil corporation’ in the Alien movies is called Weyland-Yutani, and Peter Weyland is obviously linked to it.

This video was directed by Luke Scott (Ridley’s son) and written by Damon Lindelof (more info).  It’s very well done, and one can make some interesting observations from this video –

At around 00:50, a tweet is visible –

Where’s Weyland going with this? Thought fire was for all mankind. He’s probably franchised using it now. #TED http://bit.ly/tgwQvj

Typing in the link will take you to the Prometheus Trailers page on Apple.com.

This tells us two things – one, that Twitter will still be around in 2023, and so will the URL shortener bit.ly.  When I compile this list of tweets each week, I always think, what if either bit.ly or Twitter’s own URL shortener t.co cease to exist?  A whole bunch of links would stop working (“as if a million voices were suddenly silenced”).  Coincidentally, I mentioned this in just the previous “Items of Interest” post.

There is another tweet that you can see earlier on (at around 00:12) –

WOW! This is EPIC!! #TEDlongbeach2023 What has @weylandcorp got up their sleeves this time? The anticipation is killing me.

I had to download the 1080p clip to see this clearly.  @weylandcorp on Twitter does not seem to be officially part of the marketing by Twentieth Century Fox for this movie though.

Later on in the video (at around 01:48) there’s another tweet that comes by, but it’s out of focus so I couldn’t make out what it says.  Only a few words – “Killer #TED…”, “online collaboration” – are discernible.

Weyland mentions that we now have the ability to create cybernetic individuals who are completely indistinguishable from humans – that is a reference to Michael Fassbender’s character in the movie.

Also, in the Paul W S Anderson movie AVP: Alien vs Predator, Lance Henriksen played the character Charles Bishop Weyland.  That movie was set in 2004, so Peter Weyland would be either the son or grandson of the other Weyland.  That is, assuming that the Prometheus filmmakers are considering AVP as part of the continuity.  They could just be ignoring that AVP ever happened, though.

As I was mentioning to my friend, that is probably a convenient thing for them to do.  AVP wasn’t a bad movie in my opinion, but I think it would be better for everyone to ignore what happened in “Gunnison, Colorado” – I’m referring to the second AVP movie, Aliens vs Predator: Requiem which was thoroughly disappointing.

This is like saying that they made only one Matrix movie (as immortalised by this xkcd comic – “Too bad they never made any sequels”), that the Star Wars prequels didn’t exist, and that Indiana Jones was a trilogy (see some of the comments in this Slashdot article).  So I’d say “it was interesting to see a crossover between the Alien and Predator franchise, I wonder if they’ll think of making a sequel to it sometime”. (TVTropes calls this Discontinuity)

Weyland mentions M-theory in his talk, which I did not know and looked up on Wikipedia.  Apparently it’s a concept to describe what makes up our universe, I couldn’t understand it beyond that.

Another TED Talk you should check out, is the below one, by T Chendil Kumar (a.k.a. CK), given at TEDx Chennai in 2010.  This is a talk called “Stand Up, Speak Up and Shut Up (The Art of using Humour in Presentations)” and is really insightful.

You can also watch these two other talks by him – Humour Workshop Dubai, TEDx Dubai “Unleash your Humour Quotient”.

Really brilliant stuff.  How I came to share these talks is, CK conducts training sessions at our company.  Several years ago I had the pleasure of attending two training sessions by him.  Recently, he was in Hyderabad to conduct a program at my office, and I got to meet him.  That’s when I came to know that he had spoken at TEDx.  I looked up those talks on YouTube, and loved them, so shared them.

Other Links of Interest

  • Flipkart has launched Flyte – a digital store that offers MP3 downloads of music.  It’s really a progressive move, you have a variety of music available at good quality and completely DRM-free.  The prices are low too (each song costs around Rs 10).
  • Panjaa Working Stills – This is an album on Facebook, has around 100 “behind-the-scenes” photos from Panjaa.
  • If PHP Were British – Fun stuff.
  • The 84th Academy Awards – I wasn’t too interested in the Oscars this year, since none of the nominated movies really were that appealing to me (not my type).  You can have a look at the list of nominees and winners though.

This image (not by me) was shared on Facebook –

I found it really funny – if anyone knows the source, please tell me.

And to conclude this post, here are the tweets from last week:

Tweets 4-Mar-12:

  • “Beneath this mask there is more than flesh. Beneath this… http://t.co/4nI5qE5g
  • RT @omgthatspunny A polar bear, a giraffe and a penguin walk into a bar. The bartender says, “What is this? Some kind of joke?” #punny
  • RT @mihirfadnavis ‘ ? ‘ wastes lot of time setting up the chars, but the last 10 mins are ball-quivering scary. And surprisingly the acting is quite decent.
  • RT @chasejarvis What the hell is Sepia? photo knowledge 101 http://bit.ly/xMMV6R #ImpressYourFriends

Tweets 3-Mar-12:

Tweets 1-Mar-12:

Tweets 29-Feb-12:

  • Day 44 #Gym
  • RT @R_beccaBlair Whoa, whoa, whoa. February 29th? WTF is this, an alternate universe?
  • RT @torrentfreak The Pirate Bay, Now Without Torrents http://t.co/U71MUV30
  • Rage – Excellent action sequences, never boring and acting is good too. Highly Recommended! 8/10
  • There’s an action scene set in a mall near the end of “Rage” with a fight in a video store – it’s full of PM Ent videos & posters!
  • RT @GreatDismal I liked it better when I thought Kardashians were one of those prosthetic forehead races on Star Trek.
  • Man, they certainly don’t make them like they used to – Rage (1995) is a terrific action movie. Saw it many years back, great to see again.
  • RT @rajturl Feb 29
  • #NowWatching Rage (1995) starring Gary Daniels, a PM Entertainment Release

Tweets 28-Feb-12:

  • RT @urbandaily pocket pool – To stick your hand in your pocket and scratch your balls. – http://t.co/rfltPpeZ
  • RT @sickipediabot Following a sexist joke I made the other day the Feminist Society now has my address. Fortunately none of them can read a map.
  • Haha 🙂 RT @josephradhik RT @sickipediabot: I’m going to get an Oscar next year for my movie, The Fartist. It’s silent, but deadly.
  • RT @R_beccaBlair Not the best thing i’ve drawn, but it IS a sketch for #ASketchADay. Megan Fox doodle from Love The Way You Lie vid http://twitpic.com/8pn1r5
  • RT @mworch That took my brain 20 seconds to process. “@wkerslake: This picture makes my brain hurt: http://bit.ly/yaLBes”
  • So It Has Come To This http://t.co/X19yAl6G
  • RT @someecards Sweatshop translation error results in least motivational sports bag on earth. http://t.co/HZr3rffH
  • RT @clientsfh “When you make a logo, do you design it yourself or do you just find something from the internet that…” http://t.co/7L1sxjpQ
  • RT @justkalpana No amount of real scientific analysis can beat the drama one anecdotal evidence can create.
  • Best Picture Winner The Artist Sets New Oscar Records http://t.co/gcEWbPl0
  • Police Find Apple Branded Stoves In China http://t.co/0sHzPaxU

Tweets 27-Feb-12:

Ek Main Aur Ekk Tu

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I don’t normally watch romantic comedies, but I saw Shakun Batra’s Ek Main Aur Ekk Tu on opening day (10-Feb-12) with two friends of mine at PVR Cinemas at Chandigarh.  I’d started writing this review on the day I was travelling back from Chandigarh to Hyderabad, but didn’t get around to completing it.

The movie is still in theatres, so I am not too late in posting this, I guess!  A few days later, and the movie will be out on DVD!

The movie stars Imran Khan as Rahul Kapoor, a 25 year old architect who lives in Las Vegas.  His parents (played by Boman Irani and Ratna Pathak Shah) have planned every aspect of his life (career, relationships) – and he has never gone against their wishes.  The movie’s plot is put into motion with Rahul losing his job.  He starts attending therapy sessions, and at one of these visits, he meets Riana Braganza (Kareena Kapoor).

Riana works as a hair stylist, but she is also out of a job, and has just got out of a relationship.  She mistakes Rahul for a stalker sent by her ex-boyfriend.  When she realises that she was wrong, she tries to make it up to Rahul and they meet in the evening on Christmas Eve.

Riana is free in all the ways that Rahul is not – and she tries to get Rahul to unwind.  As a result, they get totally wasted – and to their horror, realise the next morning that they’ve gotten married to each other at one of those wedding chapels where couples do foolish things like this without thinking.

They decide to get the marriage annulled – but it will take a few days for the paperwork to go through, and in that time, as you’d expect, the two become close to each other.  I thought the movie handled the relationship between the two really well.  Such movies probably have a tendency to turn into a sappy, sugary love story (then again, since I don’t watch many such movies, I can’t say this as a fact).  This one didn’t, it was funny and sweet, and nicely acted.  Being only 110 min long it doesn’t overstay its welcome and is easy to watch.

The movie’s songs are by Amit Trivedi and Amitabh Bhattacharya, and they’re good, as is the music score by Amit Trivedi.  The movie looked very nice (director of photography is  David MacDonald), it looked colourful without being garish and loud.

I had a lot of fun with it – while it’s not absolutely essential that it be watched on a big screen, you’ll be able to enjoy the cinematography and production design better that way.  If you’ve not got the chance to see it in the theatre, you can catch it on DVD once it’s out.

Rating: 8/10

Camera Spotting:

  • Riana presents Rahul with a classic-looking camera in the movie.  It looked like a Leica but since I don’t know about older cameras I couldn’t identify it exactly.  The camera’s brand was not visible on screen.
  • Towards the end, Rahul appears to be using a DSLR.  Again that appears on screen very briefly and it’s a wide shot so I couldn’t make out what type of camera it was.  I’ll look again once the movie is on DVD.
  • The camera is probably a Canon EOS 5D Mark II.  The reason I say this is, I checked out two videos on YouTube after my friend told me about them – apparently, during the filming of the movie, Imran Khan took candid photos of his co-star Kareena Kapoor and had an exhibition of them – Video 1, Video 2.

As evidenced by the red border on the strap, the lack of a popup flash on the camera, and the overall size of the camera, this is a 5D Mark II with an external battery grip.  It’s probably the same camera that his character was using at the end of the movie.

The bright poster designs for the movie are done by the firm Marching Ants, and they were designed by Raj Khatri who also did the posters for The Dirty Picture, Players and the upcoming Agent Vinod and Kahaani.  You can view his work on deviantART here and connect with him on Facebook here.