“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.
”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.'“
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.
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.“
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.
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.
”
Reloaded.
The first one was one of the best films I have seen. Imagination and the realisation of it in a way I have never seen on the silver screen before. After reading this, I dont know how I am going to wait till May :)
It all started with a mistake.
Me and
suresh went to the Prestige Meridien Coffee Day instead of the bombay store one :(. After carefully scrutinizing the crowd there, we came to the conclusion that the big fat guy smoking a cigarette and watching us intently was not
Sathish :-)
It turned out that we were right for Sathish was patiently waiting for us on the steps of the Bombay store, with a warm smile on his lips. It is another fact that I ended up scanning him from top to bottom in the hope of finding a camera (which was what Arun was supposed to have in his hands) :-) Fortunately, Sathish indentified me correctly and so we got started on what was going to be a long night.
A few words about Sathish. An extremely warm and easy going guy, He is a pleasure to talk to. A genuine nice guy which is indeed the rarest of things in this kaliyug :-) We went about the first few minutes chattering about our jobs, blogs and what not. Soon it dawned on us that the others have not come yet. It is indeed frustrating to stand waiting for someone without knowing how the person whom you are waiting for looks like :( Anyway, at this moment,
indra chose to make his entry. Since we know each other well, There was no problem in identification.
We continued our chat for well over twenty odd minutes only to notice that the time was around 6:40 and none of the others were in sight. At this point, by mere chance, I happened to notice a canon camera in the hands of a tall bearded guy. I must admit that at this point, overjoyed at finally seeing
arun, I ran towards him and shouting his name. I dont know what went inside his head but he took a step backwards :-) Soon though, we shook hands with him and
harris and found out to our great dismay that arun and harris were standing at the other side of the store from 6:00 PM onwards. A quick phone call to
ayesha confirmed the fact that she was on her way. Soon she made her entry with a beige colored bag, the color of which was fiercely debated upon during the whole night :-)
So started the Bangalore Blogger's meet.
The next few minutes were spend on top floor of the bombay store discussing varied stuff like the color of ayesha's bag and the interesting birth date of harris ( Dec 25th ). Unfortunately, Sathish had to leave early lest sooraj throws a tantrum at not seeing his favourite person in the whole world :-)
We continued a few moments there and then decided to move to a place where we can get something to eat. After a lot of thought, we settled upon the ICH. The waiters were not exactly pleased when they saw a bunch of people walking in towards closing time and made their displeasure known by scaring ayesha :-)
At this point, I must digress and say a few things about the others. I have already talked about Sathish and chose not to talk about Suresh and Indra ( good friends :-) ).
Arun is a tall, well built, bearded guy with a serious air to him. He exudes a quiet confidence and a serious manner. A measured talk, a deep voice and a silent yet strong presence marks him out. He was ofcourse the photographer for the night. With his skills, We are all bound to look like bollywood heroes :-)
Harris is someone who reminds me very much of
vignesh. I am sure they will become best buddies if and when they meet up. The best word to describe him will be cool. A genuinely funny person, he was making us all laugh with his interesting comments and funny one liners :-) I must say that he was a tad pre-occupied with all those pretty girls walking past us but hey so was I :-) Towards the end of the day or should I say the night, We even had a decent technical discussion. All in all, A really cool guy, just like his
blog :-)
And finally, a bit about Ayesha, the oldest member of the group at 27. She is a librarian which incidentally is something that I wanted to be during my childhood days :-) She comes as a intelligent person with a learned background and a lot of reading behind her. Unfortunately, Since we were at opposite ends of the table, we couldn't get much time to talk during the whole meet.
During the course of the dinner at MCH Arun, Ayesha and Harris expressed an interest in starting a community blog centred around indians. I expressed doubts at whether this will take off since I already had a failed
community blog behind me :-) What do you guys think ? Is it worth starting one ? Any ideas on that ?
So after finishing a small dinner at ICH, we parted ways in front of the foodworld with solemn promises of keeping in touch and meeting again.
All in all, A night to remember and hopefully the first of many to come.
Yesterday, 6:45 PM.
The old school bus, doubling up as the AT&T shuttle bus in these difficult days, pulled into the parking lot of the usually deserted train station. The sole occupant of the bus, on his way out, exchanges a few pleasantries with the bored driver. He slowly makes his way to the Track no 2 to catch the New York bound train. It will be atleast 45 minutes before the train arrives.
In his hand, the young guy ( the sole occupant will be now onwards referred to as the young guy ) carried a plastic bag with a few sheets of paper in it. Extended waiting times at the train station had taught him to come prepared. It is his habit to print out a short story or two from the
gutenburg site to read while waiting. However having exhausted most of the titles from the short story section, he had printed out a translation of the
Bhagavad Gita on that particular day.
Having spend most of the day conducting training sessions for new developers taking over his project, the young guy was not in a mood to read. The wooden bench on the platform beckoned him to lay down his tired body in its lap and enjoy a few minutes of rest. Without a moment's hesitation, he streched his long lean body on the bench, using his bag as the pillow and closed his eyes for a small nap.
Unknown to him, on the opposite platform, a middle aged american picked a cellphone and made a call.
A couple of minutes later, a police car pulled into the train station. The young guy was woken up ( he was not really asleep in any case ) by the flashing lights of the car. He watched as a young clean shaved policeman came out of the car and looked around. The moment the policeman's eyes met that of the young guy, he started walking towards his direction. Not thinking much of it, the young guy continued in his horizontal position. When the policeman came and stopped in front of his bench, it dawned upon the young guy that the police man had indeed come to meet him.
This is what followed.
Policeman : “whats going on ?”.
Youngguy ( with a shrug ) : “Well, I am waiting for the train”.
Policeman : “I figured that”, with a cold stare.
Youngguy : “Well, why the question then ?”, with an attempt at a smile :).
The Policeman showed with an expression on his face that he was not in the least bit amused.
Policeman then asks, “whats your name ?”.
Youngguy : “anand”.
The Policeman's eyes drift towards the young guy's AT&T badge, pinned on his shirt, and find a different ( and in no way related ) name there.
Policeman : “Well, your badge here says something else”.
I ( now onwards the young guy will be referred to as I since as you would have guessed by now, he is me ) : “Well, Thats my real name. But since it is so long and difficult to pronounce, I use my nickname which is anand”.
The Policeman is not satisfied but still buys my argument.
Policeman ( now pulling out his notebook ) : “What is your home address ?”.
( I had recently moved from one apartment to a basement sharing arrangement with a friend. I only knew how to walk to my new place from my station and had no idea of the *actual* home address. )
I try to explain my above predicament.
Policeman ( getting annoyed now ) : “What is your home phone number ?”.
I did not have a phone for my personal use and had no idea about the owner's number.
Policeman : “Show me another id, Please”.
I did not have any other.
Policeman ( getting a bit frustrated here ) : “What is your Social Security Number ?”.
Me : “I dont remember :(”.
Policeman ( now getting really irritated ) takes a look at my plastic cover : “What is in there ?”.
I say,“Just a few printouts” and hand it over to him.
Policeman opens it casually to find the title on the first page saying Bhagavad Gita. Now getting increasingly interested in me, he says “Do you always carry the Gita with you?”
I say defensively, “I just printed it out to read while waiting for the train.”
Policeman asks me many more questions during the course of which I blurt out ( quite honestly, I must add ) that I am flying from JFK next week.
The three letters, JFK, had an electric effect on the Policeman.
He walked a few steps away, pulled out his walkie talkie and called ( presumably ) his superiors.
I ( watching this scene from a distance ) was getting a wee bit worried. My position definetely looked bad.
A couple of minutes later, a bigger police car made its way into the now slightly crowded parking lot. A big fat guy and an old wise ( the reason for him being called a wise guy will become clear in a few lines from now ) guy got out.
A few more questions later, We still dont reach anywhere. There is nothing on me to prove who I am and nobody nearby to tell them I really am what I claim I am.
The three men start an internal discussion at a small distance from me.
The young policeman says “We must detain him until we can verify his id.”.
The old
wise guy takes a look at me and says, “He doesnt look suspicious”.
All three look at my direction. I put on my best smile and try to bring an expression onto my face which says that I am the nicest guy on planet earth :-) The three men realising that I have overheard their conversation walk away a bit further with a sheepish grin on their faces.
An even longer discussion ensues with a lot of shaking heads and gestaculating hands. I watch in rapt attention while three men discuss about who I really am.
Finally, the three men walk towards me with the old guy leading the way.
He asks me a strange question. “Where you sleeping on the bench ?”.
I reply in the positive.
He replies with a weak attempt at humour. “People dont do that in these places.”
I raise an eyebrow and say nothing.
It seems a gentleman ( the middle aged american on the other platform ? ) had called in to report a suspicious character. With a friendly warning to carry an id with me whenever I go out, he wished me good night and walked away with the other two.
and I turn back and walk, in the land of free, unable to sleep on a bench.
