A good number of Visual Effects Society (VES) members and guests showed up at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles on Saturday for The Big Reveal, the VES equivalent of the Academy’s visual effects bake-off. Nominees for this year’s VES awards were on hand to discuss their work and screen clips for voting members.
While all of the nominees presented good arguments, many of the attendees we spoke with seemed most impressed with the digital effects in 20th Century Fox’s big-budget disaster thriller, The Day After Tomorrow. Karen Goulekas, visual effects supervisor on the film, addressed the amount of detail that went into creating a digital New York City for shots that most viewers assume were achieved with aerial photography. She explained how Lidar scanning was used so extensively to recreate actual locations and landmarks to be destroyed by various forces of nature.
Another highlight was when Roger Guyett revealed behind-the-scenes footage of Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson riding a robotic Hippogryph in front of a blue screen for Harry Potter and Prisoner of Azkaban. He explained how the 3D Hippogryph animation was created first and the data was then fed into the robotic rig so that the actors would look like they were really riding the mythological beast in the final composite.
While the folks producing effects in the commercial field typically enjoy big budgets and accommodating schedules, one thing they don’t get is a lot of glory. Vfx supervisor Jeff Okun, who served as master of ceremonies for The Big Reveal, commented, "I think the artists working in commercials these days are more experimental than we are in the feature film business."
One of the spots up for Outstanding Visual Effects in a Commercial is "Alive with Technology," an ad promoting the Citreon automobile. In true Transformers style, the CG car morphs into a dancing robot. The impressive, 30-second spot took five weeks to complete. Actual cars had to be taken apart so the team could model individual parts and figure out how they would shift around and fit together to create the giant automaton, which ended up sporting more than 2 million polygons.
The Big Reveal helps to remind us that the effects you don’t notice can be as remarkable as the tornadoes, flying creatures and web-slinging superheroes that grace today’s feature films. On the television side, Kevin Blank discussed the work his team managed to do on an impossibly tight schedule for the hit ABC series, Lost. "The scope of how quickly everything had to be done was the real challenge," he stated. "We thought it was a lost cause, no pun intended," added Benoit Girard, who noted that the advent of HD broadcasting has made the job even more difficult. "Now we have six times more pixels to work with."
Also impressive is the invisible work done on CBS’ Clubhouse. Curt Miller, Jason Spratt, Doug Witsken and Michael Tonder revealed how they used green-screen compositing techniques to make Blair Field in Long Beach look like Yankee Stadium. Also working on a brief timetable, the team seamlessly augmented the California location with photographed elements and CG crowds and set pieces to pull off the illusion.
A new category this year is Outstanding Visual in a video game. All of the nominees expressed their gratitude to the VES for including them in the competition. Bill Vanburen, who presented on behalf of Valve’s Half-Life 2, added, "When I see what’s being done in films today, I see what we’re going to be doing in the future. And that’s kind of scary because we’re going to need a lot more people."
Winners will be announced during the third annual awards ceremony on Wednesday, Feb. 16 at the Hollywood Palladium. Academy Award-winning director/producer Robert Zemeckis (Forrest Gump, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?) will be honored with a lifetime achievement award. For a complete list of nominees, visit www.vesawards.com.
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