Hey folks, Harry here... The following report from Donut Boy covers some of the footage that'll show at ComiCon - and from what D.B. describes - it isn't quite all that I've heard will be shown in San Diego. However, he also saw a bit more than will be shown, just different things. Also - this report doesn't really lay Phillip K Dick's A SCANNER DARKLY - if you haven't read the book - then get ye to a book store/site and get it now - it really is essential sci-fi literature. You folks set to see this in San Diego are lucky as can be, I'm already envious.

A friend of mine is an artist on the Scanner Darkly project and invited me for a tour of his office. I got to see clips of the movie including the footage that will be shown at Comicon. Here is my review:

If you use this, call me Donut Boy.

To be honest, when I first saw the trailer for Scanner, I wasn’t too impressed. It looked like they took some kind of computer filter and simply transformed the video shots into some computer generated mumbo jumbo.

My friend is an artist on the project and invited me to Scanner Darkly Studios (or what ever they call the place) which is simply an old office building on IH 35 in Austin, TX for a tour. There was a hot receptionist who greeted me and walked me back past a bunch of empty Apple G5 boxes and into one of the art rooms. In this room sat ten hippie looking artists all hard at work on the film. My friend showed me the custom software they are using to create the movie which was actually really impressive. All of the artists use a tablet to draw directly on top of the film footage. My friend got really good at drawing Woody Harrelson so he became the Woody expert. I watched as he drew a scene involving Woody and a bicycle. I was very impressed with the amount of actual freehand artwork being put on top of the film footage. After meeting the artists in this room, I was given a tour of the rest of the studio which was really just a few other rooms with more artists. The whole vibe of the place was cool and everybody was really nice.

I got to meet one of the guys who is editing the film (I can’t remember his name) who had just put the Comicon footage together. He pulled it up and I watched a scene involving all of the major members of the cast including Woody, Keanu, Winona, and Robert Downy Jr. The animation was far better than the trailer on Apple’s QuickTime web site. It’s really hard to describe what I saw, so I’ll do my best.

Robert Downey’s character comes into a small apartment with this bicycle and he is so excited about the deal he got on it. Keanu and Winona are hanging out on the couch with Woody and are very skeptical about the deal that Downey got. The animation looks a bit 3d in a way that the shadows are drawn. The hair on the actors moves with amazing detail and was one of the features that I noticed right away. The whole thing is just visually amazing. It didn’t take me long to get totally into the scene I was watching and before long I was laughing at some of the jokes that came out of Woody. The scene was about 4 minutes long and I think it really demonstrates the true talent of the artists working on the project. .

After seeing the Comicon footage, I went into another room of artists to see who wanted to join us for lunch. I stood over one of the artists who had pulled up the entire movie in quicktime format. He was really proud of the “Vomit Scene” which he just finished in which Keanu is taken to a hospital and vomits on the floor. He fast forwarded through a lot of the movie until that scene came up. The vomit was very realistic and he froze the scene during a close up shot of the vomit. He started to point out all of the hidden items in the vomit. There was a shoe, a martini glass, and a couple of other hidden treasures that the typical movie patron would miss. When you get the DVD, pause on that scene and you’ll see it. I wonder how many other Easter eggs are hidden in this movie? (I forgot to ask.)

Right after seeing the vomit scene, I watched a few others including one that gave away a very important twist in the movie. I was told not to discuss it. (I don’t want my friend to get fired.) The scene involved one of the characters wearing some kind of suit which would hide their identity by changing the way they look. The visuals were really neat, almost like different character parts fading in and out. A left eye, a nose, an ear, hair color, all fading in and out. The artists explained to me the mathematical process they used to create these visuals. They had a big dry erase board and all kinds of stuff on it for the artists to follow in order to achieve this one visual effect.

The last thing I saw that I thought was interesting was some of the footage of Winona sitting at a table and speaking. This scene had yet to be animated and the first thing I saw was that she looked like she was sweating, she had no makeup on, and her hair was totally unkept. It was explained to me that they don’t need any makeup or hair because all of that stuff drawn by the artists. You could even see the microphone boom in a few of the shots.

I’m really excited to see this movie. Peace out..