Eye on the Prize
Page 5 of 6
Visual Effects
By Scott Lehane
The competition for this year’s visual effects Oscar® will be fierce; it was a good year for big-budget, effects-heavy blockbusters.
One thing that all of the major contenders seem to have in common is that they all contain CG lead characters. Creatures like Yoda, Dobby, Gollum, Spider-man and Stuart Little are a testament to how far the tools of character animation have come. It’s now possible to create believable anthropomorphic creatures that can act and perform alongside real actors and slip right into practical shots. For example, it’s possible to see the actual motions of voice actor Andy Serkis, captured on a motion capture stage, and mapped onto a creature like Gollum that bears little physical resemblance to a Serkis.
Visual effects supervisors Jim Rygiel, Randall William Cook, Richard Taylor and Mark Stetson took home the award last year for The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring.
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The Massive software written by Weta Digital’s Stephen Regelous animated the prologue from The Fellowship of the Ring and will step into the forefront with The Two Towers. The program uses artificial intelligence to control crowd behavior. “Some of the scenes we will see in Helm’s Deep will defy belief because these Massive epic battles have tens of thousands of soldiers coming together in a huge milieu of anger and death, and all of it is digitally created,” added Richard Taylor, who received two awards for his work in the first film (for Makeup and Visual Effects).
Gollum, who has only been briefly glimpsed by audiences to date, will take center stage in the second film, along with the Ent, Treebeard, a living, walking tree-shepherd. Because of such creatures as Treebeard and Gollum, The Two Towers features 800 visual effects shots, compared to the 560 shots in The Fellowship of the Ring.
Meanwhile, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets is another contender for the award. Visual effects supervisors Jim Mitchell, Nick Davis, Bill George and special effects supervisor John Richardson oversaw the film’s 950 effects shots. The sequences were divided up between five facilities — San Rafael-based Industrial Light + Magic (ILM), London’s Moving Picture Company (MPC), Framestore CFC, Mill Film and Cinesite. (For more on the effects in Harry Potter, see December 2002 cover story).
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| Star Wars: Episode II Attack of the Clones |
Sony Pictures Imageworks’ Spider-Man is another film whose name keeps coming up in terms of the visual effects category. Visual effects designer John Dykstra, ASC collaborated with director Sam Raimi on how to bring the comic book character to life. Dystra labored on nearly 500 shots for Spider-Man.
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| Spider-Man |
Dystra used a technique called photogrammetry where wire frame animatics of portions of New York were created and photographed in varying degrees of detail. These photographs were then added to the animatic to create the moving background in the computer, This enabled the camera to move freely in the same style as Spider-Man.
Other contenders in the category include Stuart Little 2 which, at press time, looked likely to also be considered for the best animated feature category. Jerome Chen, Jay Redd, Eric Armstrong and Tony Bancroft served as effects supervisors on the film.
And in the effects category, dark horse contender Minority Report, with its 480 effects shots, is another possibility. The effects were the work of visual effects supervisors Scott Farrar, Henry LaBounta, Nathan McGuinness along with special effects supervisor Michael Lantieri.
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