As the nominations for the 77th Annual Academy Awards were announced early this morning, many in Hollywood were waiting with fingers crossed to hear their name or project announced. One of those people was Tim Sarnoff, president of Sony Pictures Imageworks, the studio behind the mind-blowing visual effects in Sony’s Spider-Man 2.
"I wasn’t planning on getting up real early this morning." Sarnoff comments, "I don’t have a very good internal alarm clock but something just woke me up so I turned on the news and sat there waiting. It’s a very good way to wake up."
Spider-Man 2 is up for Best Visual Effects, along with Warner Bros.’ Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and 20th Century Fox’s I, Robot. Sarnoff says that both competitors are good films but confidently believes that Spider-Man 2 is the best of the three. "We are basking in the glow of a nomination for a movie that we all feel very passionate about," he says.
"Spider-Man has been, from Spider-Man 1 through to Spider-Man 2, one of our premiere projects in building a digital character base," notes Sarnoff. "It’s really nice at this point to see it all come to fruition all in one movie. I think the progression from the first movie to the second movie was noticed by the general audience and clearly noticed by the Academy. A focus this company has been working on over the past five years is building a strong, photo-realistic live-action character. People still don’t realize that a lot of the shots are 100% digital."
In praising his team’s work, Sarnoff specifically points to the seamless blending of digital and live-action elements. "What you’ll see is a lot of integration between live-action plates that may start as a full live-action, transition to a digital character in a live-action plate, then a digital character in a digital plate, the digital character going back into a live-action plate again and then a real character on a live-action plate, and that’s all one shot."
One thing that sets Spider-Man 2 apart from many recent effects films is that the digital technology serves the script rather than the converse. "What I’m really pleased about in Spider-Man as a project is that the gee-whiz shots are literally storytelling points," says Sarnoff. "I personally like projects where we are creating characters. It makes us much more engaged with the storytelling process as opposed to just creating explosions on the side.
Sarnoff is grateful that the three-time winners at Weta (The Lord of the Rings Trilogy) aren’t going for the brass ring this time out. "Sometimes they have to stop so someone else can come in," he jokes. "I actually called Jim Rygiel today to thank him for stepping aside for a year. I think I needed to be the first one to say it." As far as competing with Peter Jackson’s King Kong next year, Sarnoff declares, "We’ll certainly give that ape a run for its money."
Sony Pictures Imageworks is busy at work on Spider-Man 3. We begged Sarnoff for details but he indicted that he would be wearing cement boots at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean if he let anything slip at this point. He would only say, "It’s bigger," adding, "In each group of shots in Spider-Man 2, I don’t think there were any clunkers in there. And I think that in Spider-Man 3 there will be even fewer shots that will make people ask, ‘Is this real or is it Memorex?’"
The third installment in director Sam Raimi’s epic screen adaptation of the Marvel Comics property is slated to open in May of 2007.
Leave a Reply