VFX Voice - Spring 2017 Issue

PREMIERE ISSUE SPRING 2017

VFXVOICE.COM

GHOST IN THE SHELL: VFX ON A MISSION WESTWORLD’S VIOLENT VISUAL DELIGHTS • CARS 3: RAY-TRACED RACING ARRIVES GEARS OF WAR 4: GRAPHIC VICTORY • CLOSE ENCOUNTERS: EFFECTS MILESTONE 2017 VES AWARD HONOREES KEN RALSTON AND VICTORIA ALONSO

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[ EXECUTIVE NOTE ]

Welcome From the VES Leadership When the theater lights dim, when the TV screen glows, when the headset is in place – that’s when the artistry and innovation of visual effects comes into the spotlight. That’s when we revel in the talent, ingenuity and passion that bring us truly remarkable imagery and immersive experiences, all in service to the art of storytelling. Today, with the introduction of VFX Voice, we are ushering in a new era. A new platform to recognize and illuminate those often unsung heroes, the community of VFX artists from around the world who have introduced us to worlds that once only lived in our imagination – and drive box-office like never before.

For 20 years, the Visual Effects Society has been the industry’s only global organization dedicated to advancing the arts, sciences and applications of visual effects.

It has been our proud mission to elevate visual effects as an integral element of the art and business of all areas of entertainment and redefine its profile on a global scale.

Over the last two decades, the VFX industry has evolved and grown at a rapid pace. Our membership – which now includes more than 3,400 members from diverse disciplines in 35 countries, with 11 member Sections worldwide – reflects an industry that is constantly reinventing itself. Developing a magazine has been a longstanding goal of the VES, and introducing you to the premiere issue of VFX Voice, our new signature print and online publication, is a truly exciting way to embark on our next 20 years.

In developing VFX Voice, we had a clear vision. We set out to create a magazine that embodies our charge in educating, celebrating and supporting visual effects artists and enhancing a connected global community. To offer a tangible demonstration of the artistry and innovation conceived by talented professionals advancing the field, who can further raise the awareness and value of our industry among business and entertainment stakeholders. To craft content reflecting the diversity of the VES membership and visual effects industry, inclusive of film, television, commercials, animation, special venue, games and new media. And to provide a magazine that is at once a benefit to our valued membership and a new must-read publication for the industry at large. We are immensely proud of the work that’s been done to meet these lofty goals in launching our inaugural issue.

In this premiere issue and those to come, you’ll find that sense of joy and wonder in what we all do daily.

You’ll find it in compelling profiles of industry leaders and pioneers who share their inspirations and how they got to where they are. Insightful craft roundtables that tackle industry trends, challenges and opportunities.

Back stories you’ve never heard on projects you know and love. Exclusive glimpses into projects just hitting audiences. Deep dives into VFX artists as problem-solvers who relish the thought of conquering what some deem impossible. Tech news that highlights barrier-busting inventions and new applications. Roundups from across the globe showcasing VES members in action. Historical reviews coupled with an eye towards what comes next.

And visuals that make VFX Voice a coffee table centerpiece well worth holding on to.

In addition to our quarterly magazine, you can read VFX Voice online at vfxvoice.com. It houses the digital version and will be a robust platform of news and features, keeping you engaged and up to speed on the VFX industry and the people who make it tick.

Getting to our launch is due to many people who share the vision and worked collaboratively to make VFX Voice a reality. Thank you to the VES Board of Directors for fostering this long-held goal of the organization; to our Publication Workgroup for lending your time, talents and resources to the creative and business development process; and to the VES staff for its commitment to excellence. VFX Voice has an esteemed creative leadership team at the helm, led by Publisher Jim McCullaugh, who previously served as the Publisher of the award-winning American Cinematographer magazine, Editor Ed Ochs, who comes to VFX Voice with decades of editorial experience, notably as Editorial Director, Special Issues for Billboard Magazine, and Alan Alpanian, a multiple award-winning creative director responsible for the launch of hundreds of leading entertainment brands.

We have the benefit of a world-class team of creative directors, editors and writers. And VFX Voice also brings a venerated Advisory Board to the production, lending insight and expertise to its editorial focus.

On behalf of the VES, we hope that VFX Voice is your new source of information and inspiration that celebrates this industry we all love and tethers us ever closer together. We welcome you as readers, future advertisers and valuable contributors to its continued success.

Please let us know your thoughts – we want to hear your ideas and feedback. Thank you again for joining us on this exciting endeavor.

Mike Chambers, Chair, VES Board of Directors

Eric Roth, VES Executive Director

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[ CONTENTS ] FEATURES FX TRENDS: AHEAD IN VFX 10 V From CG humans to new horizons in VR/AR.

VFXVOICE.COM

DEPARTMENTS 4 EXECUTIVE NOTE 103 VFX TECH & TOOL NEWS

20 VR/AR: WANTED - VFX ARTISTS VFX artists are gravitating to the new media.

28 TELEVISION: WESTWORLD The vivid, visceral effects behind the HBO hit.

36 COVER: GHOST IN THE SHELL Director, VFX team pay homage to anime classic.

44 INDUSTRY: Q&A ROUNDTABLE Industry leaders on the future of the VFX business.

52 SFX: JOHN RICHARDSON Born to be a Special Effects Supervisor.

56 THE 15TH ANNUAL VES AWARDS Celebrating the best in VFX. 64 VES AWARDS WINNERS Photo Gallery.

104 VES SECTION SPOTLIGHT 107 VES NEWS 108 THE VES HANDBOOK 110 CROSS CRAFT 111 V-ART: PHIL TIPPETT 112 FINAL FRAME: KEN RALSTON

ON THE COVER: Scarlett Johansson in Ghost in the Shell. (Copyright © 2016 Paramount Pictures. All Rights Reserved.)

70 VR: FANTASTIC BEASTS Framestore VR expands mobile applications.

72 PROFILE: VICTORIA ALONSO 2017 VES Visionary Award Winner.

76 PROFILE: KEN RALSTON 2017 VES Lifetime Achievement Award Winner.

80 COMPANY PROFILE: MR. X Honing their craft in visual storytelling.

84 GAMES: GEARS OF WAR 4 Microsoft, The Coalition studio achieve visual glory.

90 ANIMATION: CARS 3 Road-testing Pixar’s shiny, new rendering skills.

94 VFX VAULT: CLOSE ENCOUNTERS Spielberg classic as VFX landmark.

100 PREVIS: THE GREAT WALL Visionary Chinese director discovers previs.

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SPRING 2017 • VOL. 1, NO. 1

VFXVOICE

Visit us online at vfxvoice.com PUBLISHER Jim McCullaugh publisher@vfxvoice.com

VISUAL EFFECTS SOCIETY Eric Roth, Executive Director VES BOARD OF DIRECTORS

EDITOR Ed Ochs editor@vfxvoice.com CREATIVE Alpanian Design Group alan@alpanian.com ADVERTISING advertising@vfxvoice.com MEDIA media@vfxvoice.com CIRCULATION circulation@vfxvoice.com CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Renee Dunlop Andy Eddy Ian Failes Naomi Goldman Debra Kaufman Ed Ochs PUBLICATION ADVISORY COMMITTEE Rob Bredow Mike Chambers Neil Corbould Debbie Denise Paul Franklin David Johnson Jim Morris, VES Dennis Muren, ASC, VES Sam Nicholson, ASC Eric Roth

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OFFICERS Mike Chambers, Chair Jeffrey A. Okun, VES, 1st Vice Chair Kim Lavery, VES, 2nd Vice Chair Rita Cahill, Secretary Dennis Hoffman, Treasurer DIRECTORS Jeff Barnes, Brooke Breton, Kathryn Brillhart, Emma Clifton Perry, Bob Coleman, Dayne Cowan, Kim Davidson, Debbie Denise, Richard Edlund, VES, Pam Hogarth, Joel Hynek, Jeff Kleiser, Tim Landry, Neil Lim-Sang, Brooke Lyndon-Stanford, Tim McGovern, Kevin Rafferty, Scott Ross, Barry Sandrew, Tim Sassoon, Dan Schrecker, David Tanaka, Bill Taylor, VES, Richard Winn Taylor II, VES, Susan Zwerman ALTERNATES Andrew Bly, Fon Davis, Charlie Iturriaga, Christian Kubsch, Andres Martinez, Daniel Rosen, Katie Stetson, Bill Villarreal Tom Atkin, Founder Allen Battino, VES Logo Design Visual Effects Society 5805 Sepulveda Blvd., Suite 620 Sherman Oaks, CA 91411 Phone: (818) 981-7861 visualeffectssociety.com VES STAFF Brent Armstrong, Director of Operations Nancy Ward, Program & Development Dir. Jeff Casper, Manager of Media & Graphics Ben Schneider, Membership Coordinator Colleen Kelly, Office Manager Jennifer Cabrera, Administrative Assistant P.J. Schumacher, Controller Naomi Goldman, Public Relations

VFX Voice is published quarterly by the Visual Effects Society. Subscriptions: U.S. $50: Canada/Mexico $60; all other foreign countries $70 a year. See vfxvoice.com Advertising: Rate card upon request from publisher@vfxvoice.com or advertising@vfxvoice.com Comments: Write us at comments@vfxvoice.com Postmaster: Send address change to VES, 5805 Sepulveda Blvd., Suite 620, Sherman Oaks, CA 91411. Copyright © 2017 The Visual Effects Society. Printed in the U.S.A.

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VFX TRENDS

AHEAD IN VFX: PATTERNS, POSSIBILITIES AND PREDICTIONS

By IAN FAILES

The digital Governor Tarkin in Rogue One, made via a combination of real actor Guy Henry, reference from now-deceased Tarkin performer Peter Cushing, and visual effects by ILM. (Photo credit: Lucasfilm/ Industrial Light & Magic.

(Photo credit: Copyright © 2016 Lucasfilm Ltd. All Rights Reserved.)

Things move quickly in visual effects. An appetite for imagery that has never been seen before, coupled with fast-moving technological advancements and changing global settings for entertainment production, means it can be hard to predict what might happen in VFX. But we can look to recent developments, say in digital humans on screen, or the rise of real-time and VR, to think about future developments. Here’s a look at what might be some of the main visual effects issues coming up.

DIGITAL ACTORS ARE READY FOR THEIR CLOSE-UP, WHETHER YOU LIKE IT OR NOT

The prospect of a fully photoreal digital actor gracing our screens has been simmering along for several years now. But the appearance of the CG likeness of the deceased Peter Cushing as Governor Tarkin and a young Carrie Fisher as Princess Leia in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story recently re-stirred the debate.

What debate? Well, it’s multi-tiered. First there are the legal and ethical considerations about whether a dead (or alive) actor should be brought to life in a digital role in the first place. Would that actor want to have appeared in another film, a TV commercial, a game?

Ultimately, that might be something that is solved purely in a legal way, such as via a contract or estate permissions.

Then there are the technological issues. It can be done.

We are at the stage where CG modeling, facial and body scanning, the capturing of performances, animating digital actors and rendering them can be done incredibly convincingly. It’s already commonplace for digital double and stunt work, and characters such as Tarkin, Leia, and others (notably the digital Paul Walker seen in Furious 7 and the young Sir Anthony Hopkins in Westworld) are evidence that the phenomenon is already with us as a filmmaking technique.

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If filmmakers are crafting scenes that require digital humans, then digital humans will exist.

So the question might not be, are CG actors ready for their close-up, but instead, how good will their close-up look? And the audience will always be the judge of that, even if the future of digital humans is already here.

But are these digital actors convincing enough, and should it be used in the first place? Have we brought CG humans out of the Uncanny Valley? Remember, making a digital actor is hard and requires a ton of nuance, technology and perhaps luck. And do we even need to replace actors – even dead ones – just because we (almost) can?

In the end, none of this debate might matter. If filmmakers are crafting scenes that require digital humans, then digital humans will exist. So the question might not be, are CG actors ready for their close-up, but instead, how good will their close-up look? And the audience will always be the judge of that, even if the future of digital humans is already here.

TOP: A still from The LEGO Batman Movie. Animal Logic has diversified from a visual effects studio into animated features, including several LEGO films, and has its own production slate, too. (Photo credit: Copyright: © 2016 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. and Ratpac-Dune Entertainment LLC.) BOTTOM: Race Through New York Starring Jimmy Fallon required extensive digital sets, complicated greenscreen shoots, motion capture and CG imagery to become a theme park ride at Universal Orlando. (Photo credit: © 2016 Universal Orlando Resort. All Rights Reserved.)

MAKE YOUR OWN IP (OR PERISH?)

Visual effects is a service industry, and that’s great when there is constant work available for visual effects studios. But with the advent of global competition in VFX, differentiating subsidies, fixed bids and the ebb and flow of work in the entertainment industry, it can be hard to predict just how much work – and therefore income – will be coming in.

One way studios have already tried to turn this around is to, instead of being the service provider, become the content creator.

That can involve owning the IP itself and finding production partners, or simply diversifying into different areas of production.

The idea is to capitalize on well-developed creative, artistry, and technical pipelines inside VFX studios so that they can create their own films, TV shows and other entertainment. It’s a way of keeping their own staff busy, too.

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AD - MIKROS FELIC Making content is expensive – and risky. There’s no guarantee of a ‘knock it out of the park’ hit.

But visual effects studios are well poised to make these moves – especially in terms of offering their creative expertise on design and tech. They also often have an established infrastructure and already interact with filmmakers and production-side contacts constantly.

Look out for a push behind their own content ideas for years to come.

Some studios are, of course, doing this right now, in places like animated features and VR. Animal Logic, historically a visual effects studio that has segued also into animated features, now has several features on its development slate, including the live-action/CG-hybrid Peter Rabbit. Then there’s Stuttgart-based LUXX Studios which is putting its toe in the water of animated features with Manou the Swift. Cinesite and Double Negative now have animated features divisions. And several visual effects studios, for example Luma Pictures, have production arms that aren’t even necessarily for VFX-centric forms of entertainment.

The catch? Making content is expensive – and risky. There’s no guarantee of a ‘knock it out of the park’ hit. But visual effects studios are well poised to make these moves – especially in terms of offering their creative expertise on design and tech. They also often have an established infrastructure and already interact with filmmakers and production-side contacts constantly. Look out for a push behind their own content ideas for years to come.

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TOP: Framestore VR Studio delivered a tie-in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them VR experience for Google Daydream. (Photo credit: Copyright: © 2016 Warner Bros.

Entertainment Inc. All rights reserved.)

BOTTOM: A still from Ninja Theory’s upcoming Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice video game. (Photo credit: Copyright © 2016 Ninja Theory Ltd.)

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VFX TRENDS

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We might traditionally think of visual effects being made mostly for film and television. That’s still the case, with TV enjoying a current explosion in cinematic-like VFX production. But there are other places where visual effects artists can be – and have been – lending their services.

Virtual and augmented reality experiences are the most talked about current opportunities. Partly, that’s because billions of dollars are being spent on this nascent medium by large companies like Facebook, HTC, Samsung, Sony and Google, which need content. With a history of shooting elements, stitching, locking CG images to plates, producing 360-degree environments and working with stereo imagery, it’s clear that visual effects artists are well-suited to working in VR and AR. Studios like Framestore, MPC, Digital Domain, ILM and Mirada are well into the making of VR, 360-degree video and immersive experiences. To be fair, right now this content is a mix of original entertainment and promo material or commercials. Still, several studios are able to take advantage of assets they’ve already helped create for a feature film or TV project.

Framestore delivered a Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them tie-in, for example, and other VR experiences have been

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Michael Bay and crew during filming of Transformers: The Last Knight.

(Photo credit: Andrew Cooper.

Copyright © 2016 Paramount Pictures. All Rights Reserved.)

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VFX TRENDS

AD - THE THIRD FLOOR announced by the studios behind 2017 releases War for the Planet of the Apes and Alien: Covenant. There’s been a clear, dramatic upsurge in TV shows with cinematic production values. The attraction of working on the newest kinds of entertainment is surely an engaging factor.

Video games are another area where VFX skills can be interchangeable. The film and gaming industries tend to require understanding of similar technologies and artistry – design, 3D modeling, programming, animation, effects simulation, motion capture and rendering. Then there are opportunities for the creation of game cinematics and a wave of real-time rendered experiences coming on-board, again areas in which VFX artists and studios can offer their skills.

The possibilities are evidenced in games studio Ninja Theory’s Hellblade demos of late, which combine the facial animation, game engine, motion capture and rendering abilities of 3Lateral Studio, Cubic Motion Ltd., Xsens and Epic Games Inc. to capture an actress in real-time and render her, also in real-time, as a photorealistic CG character.

Meanwhile, a steady stream of Disney animated films, new Star Wars movies, Avatar sequels and other blockbusters is spurring on associated theme park rides. Witness Pandora – World of

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The Coke Mini commercial pushed the VFX envelope.

(Photo credit: Copyright © 2016 The Coca-Cola Co./Marvel Studios.

All Rights Reserved.)

Virtual and augmented reality experiences are the most talked about current opportunities.

Partly, that’s because billions of dollars are being spent on this nascent medium by large companies like Facebook, HTC, Samsung, Sony and Google, which need content.

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VFX TRENDS

Avatar currently under construction in Disney’s Animal Kingdom park, the planned ‘Star Wars’ Land at two Disney locations, Race Through New York Starring Jimmy Fallon at Universal Orlando Resort, and the already in existence Wizarding World of Harry Potter and Fast and Furious – Supercharged experiences.

These attractions are realized with a mix of greenscreen shoots, motion capture, high level animation and compositing and often have very specific screen and immersion requirements, something VFX artists are again well suited for.

Beauty and the Beast.

(Photo credit: Copyright © 2016 Walt Disney Pictures. All Rights Reserved.)

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A CHANGE IN THE CONVERSATION

We all know that just about all of the blockbusters released at the cineplex contain heavy amounts of visual effects. Even smaller films often have more VFX in them than people realize (just look at films like Arrival, Silence, Allied, Deepwater Horizon and Sully released last year). Indeed, all these films – big and small – would not be able to tell the stories they do without visual effects.

But sometimes the strong presence of computer-generated imagery or over-the-top stunts and action can be considered a turn-off for audiences. Comments like ‘too much CGI’ are occasionally bandied around, while others pine for the days of practical creature effects, animatronics and miniatures. Perhaps that’s why both filmmakers and film marketers have been pushing the practical side of production in recent times.

The recent Star Wars releases, The Force Awakens and Rogue One, pushed heavily on the practical creature creations and the real sets built for the film (this was all true, and didn’t mean the VFX were ignored, but the message was about how much was delivered practically). Likewise, the early marketing and imagery for Michael Bay’s Transformers: The Last Knight releasing this year is high on the practical stunts.

What’s clear is that the practical side of filmmaking is being talked up more than ever before.

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VR/AR

WANTED: VFX ARTISTS

By DEBRA KAUFMAN

Virtual reality and augmented reality are in their embryonic stages but are predicted to become a $150 billion business by 2020, surpassing the mobile industry. That matters to the visual effects world, because its artists’ skills are a perfect match for what’s required to make convincing VR and AR. Already, nearly every media and entertainment company from Pixar Studios to IMAX is creating virtual reality content. Studios have created VR experiences to accompany movies as disparate as Wild and The Martian, and director Jon Favreau just created Gnomes and Goblins, an interactive VR experience that pushes the boundaries of what the medium can do. Dozens of VFX artists are gravitating to the new medium.

At USC’s Entertainment Technology Center, VR/AR initiative project lead/consultant Phil Lelyveld – who notes that the new media will create “whole new markets” including training, customer support and marketing – differentiates virtual reality from augmented reality.

“If you’re walking down a supermarket aisle, holding up your cell phone and the camera gives you information about the products in front of you, that’s augmented reality,” he says. “If you’re at home in an easy chair, directing a robot down that supermarket aisle, all the sensory input is coming from a place you aren’t actually in. That’s virtual reality.”

Mixed reality describes the continuum between those two extremes, based on a scale established during virtual reality’s first boom in the 1990s. “As you increasingly add virtual things, it flips from augmented to virtual reality,” explains Lelyveld. “VR glasses isolate you, and AR lets you see the world around you,

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but in both cases, you’re inputting virtual sights and sounds.”

The barrier to entering the VR/AR creation community is not high for VFX artists who are already adept at creating and manipulating computer-generated imagery. Unity and Unreal are the two game engines on which VR experiences are based, so that’s one new skill some VFX artists will need. “But once you learn those, there’s a big need for visual effects artists to make VR a quality experience,” says Lelyveld. Another added value that visual effects artists bring to the table is expertise with 3D stereoscopic imagery, honed during the push for 3D in movies and TV. The VES Vision Committee, chaired by Toni Pace, has held events on virtual reality, including “Storytelling in VR” and “VR Post Production.” Scott Squires, VES, a member of the committee who has played a leading role in its VR initiative, is an example how veteran visual effects professionals are repurposing their VFX skills for the new medium. As Chief Technology Officer and Co-founder of virtual reality company Pixvana, Squires has directed or supervised numerous 360-degree videos for viewing on VR headsets, built and programmed specialized video players for VR headsets as well as a number of interactive 3D experiences for VR headsets using Unity and Unreal.

Squires explains how he became interested in virtual reality.

“With the advent of the Oculus DK1 [headset] it seemed VR had real potential at a near point in the future,” he says. “With the arrival of the Oculus DK2 and certainly the prototypes of the HTC Valve Vive, the quality and experience levels raised enough to see the potential of VR.”

OPPOSITE PAGE: The Jaunt VR 360-degree camera ABOVE: The Expanse.

Experience Mars in VR. TOP TO BOTTOM: Phil Lelyveld, Neishaw Ali, Jacki Morie

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Squires points out that VFX is a great background for a number of areas of VR. “Anyone on the 3D rendering side – modelers, painters, lighters, animators, particle artists, developers and so on – can apply much of what they’ve done to make 3D worlds for VR,” he says. “It’s similar to the transition from visual effects for film and TV to those for video game production. Typically, VR production means creating assets for a game engine, with further manipulation in the game engine.”

The expertise required for VFX that can be applied to VR extend beyond the creation of 3D assets. “The skillsets of personnel involved in post production, including compositors, rotoscopers and so on, apply directly to stitching and blending 360-degree videos,” Squires says. “This is a much needed area to achieve the best quality. Nuke, After Effects and specialized tools are used for this type of work.”

VFX professionals on the live-action production side also possess skills important to virtual reality production, says Squires.

“They understand the need to shoot, mindful of the requirements of post production,” he says. “Issues they would be sensitive to include stitch edges, which can be thought of as matte edges, camera calibration and dealing with multiple camera alignment.

Volumetric capture takes many of the photogrammetry or Lidar VFX skillsets and applies them directly to build VR worlds.”

Squires points out that “another advantage for VFX artists is that we tend to understand the 3D world and can imagine working in that space.” Likewise, he says, “there are some VR tools that could be a real boon to VFX. “VR provides the ability to see a model spaceship or set in real scale,” he says. “It allows you to walk around the previs design or set designs before that work is done. There are tools to paint and model in 3D while in the headset, and that’s a much different experience than looking at a monitor and using a tablet.”

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“Anyone on the 3D rendering side – modelers, painters, lighters, animators, particle artists, developers and so on – can apply much of what they’ve done to make 3D worlds for VR. It’s similar to the transition from visual effects for film and TV to those for video game production. Typically, VR production means creating assets for a game engine, with further manipulation in the game engine.”

—Scott Squires, VES, Chief Technology Officer, Pixvana SpinVFX in Toronto is among the visual effects facilities that are now using their knowledge and experience for virtual reality projects. “After 30 years in the film and television industry, it is no wonder that we are pushing the envelope and looking at what’s next,” says President/Executive Producer Neishaw Ali. “Virtual reality is such an immersive experience and is a natural fit for SpinVFX, as we are a content provider.” She enthuses over the new medium that “allows you to be physically transported” and “interact within your environment. It’s exciting, unnerving and challenging,” she says.

Ali reports that her company’s experience in creating photoreal imagery has been applicable to its new focus on VR. “We know

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TOP: Sony Playstation VR Headset.

CENTER: Oculus Rift 3 VR Headset BELOW: Samsung Galaxy Gear VR Headset

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VR/AR

where the uncanny valley lies,” she says. “We know how to play to the medium’s strengths and adjust to accommodate for what the naked eye needs to perceive.” Because VR is a new medium, she adds, “there are plenty of challenges to contend with.”

Those challenges have been both technological and creative.

“From the technology side, we are learning a lot about real-time rendering from video game engines,” she says. “We’re also learning about the importance of scene optimization to maintain frame rate.” From the creative side, she says, the company has learned that planning for the user experience is critical. “The relationship between the inner ear and our eyes is a delicate balancing act,” she says. “We always need to stay within a certain level of tolerance that doesn’t run counter to human physiology. We often act as a guide to maximizing the experience with interesting things to look at, listen to and interact with, so the one thing flows into the next.”

To target new markets for VR and AR, including architectural visualization, healthcare, automotive, product design, advertising, social media and games, SpinVFX has developed BRIO VR, a platform to create 3D virtual reality experiences.“The platform is designed to be as simple yet powerful enough for anyone to use, without needing to code,” says Ali, who reports that the platform has a template library for auto design, VR photo/video galleries, architectural visualization and others. The platform connects to HTC Vive, Oculus Rift and Gear VR headsets. A completed design can be shared via a link.

VES member Jacki Morie, who helped found USC’s Institute for Creative Technologies (ICT) and who wrote her 2007 Ph.D.

TOP: HTC Valve Vive VR Headset CENTER: Oculus Rift 4 VR Headset BOTTOM: The Walk IMAX VR Experience: 94 stories up on a wire stretched between two skyscrapers.

AD - NAB Michael Bay and crew during filming of Transformers: The Last Knight. (Photo credit: Andrew Cooper.

Copyright © 2016 Paramount Pictures.

All Rights Reserved.)

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dissertation on VR as a new medium, started her own company, All These Worlds, to focus on virtual world projects. Her company’s work also provides ample evidence of the variety of projects that can and do employ virtual and augmented reality. All These Worlds worked with NASA to create a virtual world ecosystem to mimic Mars, which was installed in a geodesic dome in Hawaii.

There, scientists were sequestered for a full year to test the impact of social isolation and sensory deprivation. At the end of the study, the scientists that could interact with the virtual world showed better psychological health than a control group that didn’t have the system. Morie presented a workshop at NASA on the results.

She reports that many rank-and-file visual effects artists who have worked in all aspects of film VFX are getting involved in VR to expand their opportunities and skillsets. “There’s a need for modelers, for people who can do environment design and look – all the things we do in VFX,” Morie says. “There are beautiful visual effects that would translate beautifully into VR. The things that grab our attention for film also work in VR.” The differences that VFX artists have to learn, she says, is that the environment is totally immersive and gives agency to the viewers to craft their own stories.

“The message about VR that I’ve been trying to get out since I became involved in 1989 is that VR is a totally different medium,” Morie says. “We’re at that moment with VR that we were with film at the turn of the 20th century. But some of the best VR has beautiful effects with moody lighting. That’s what VFX people can bring to VR: the artistic sensibility and the production expertise to bring it into reality.”

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BEHIND THE VITAL, VIOLENT, VISUAL EFFECTS IN WESTWORLD

By IAN FAILES

TOP AND TOP RIGHT: Oliver Bell plays the Little Boy, actually a host with an older-style exoskeleton similar to that of Delores’ that is revealed in these shots.

(Photo credit: HBO)

Michael Crichton’s 1973 future dystopia Westworld, in which the androids of a Western-themed amusement park begin malfunctioning and turn on the park’s human visitors, was a keystone moment in visual effects. Its use of digital-image processing to represent an android POV was the first of its kind in a feature film.

That was a legacy Visual Effects Supervisor Jay Worth had somewhat on his mind when he approached the effects assignment on HBO’s television series, Westworld, created by Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy and based on Crichton’s film.

“We weren’t necessarily thinking about the 1973 movie all the time,” says Worth. “It was more about the feel of that film, and with the effects what we would do is say, ‘How might they have done this kind of effect 30 years ago?’ Most of the shots that we did I always felt like we could have done practically if we had to.”

Those shots ranged the full gamut of effects techniques, from crafting a young version of Sir Anthony Hopkins, to building, de-generating and destroying various hosts, and to delivering a world of visuals inside the amusement park featured in the show.

We even did a test of taking the head of one of those shots and putting it onto our stand-in.”

Ultimately, the scenes would be achieved with a CG Ford face.

This began with shooting a stand-in who performed both with and without facial tracking dots. Hopkins was also cyberscanned

by SCANable in order to provide a baseline facial structure. VFX studio Important Looking Pirates then took on the task of generating Ford in CG. The process of modeling a convincing digital representation of the ‘youngified’ actor quickly hit an unexpected road block, as Worth explains. “We tried matching Sir Anthony exactly to what he looked like back then, but the thing is, Anthony from the early 80s actually looks quite different to what most American audiences remember him as from, say, The Silence of the Lambs. We realized that our role really was to make him instantly recognizable, so our de-aged model actually had to be what people would think he looks like, not what he actually did.”

UNDER THE SKIN

MEET YOUNG SIR ANTHONY HOPKINS

Although the audience knows that central character Dolores

“We tried matching Sir Anthony exactly to what he looked like back then, but the thing is, Anthony from the early 80s actually looks quite different to what most American audiences remember him as from, say, The Silence of the Lambs. We realized that our role really was to make him instantly recognizable, so our de-aged model actually had to be what people would think he looks like, not what he actually did.”

—VFX Supervisor Jay Worth BOTTOM: 3D printing in Westworld. Although many practical props were created to show the hosts under construction, visual effects artists also augmented and added digital nozzles and muscle weaves. (Photo Credit: HBO)

Westworld’s season one plot weaves in and out of the past and present, often initially without audiences realizing. However, at one point the show makes a very clear flashback to park founder and creative director Robert Ford (Sir Anthony Hopkins) as a younger man.

Several ways in which to depict Hopkins 30 to 40 years ago were considered. One included cutting out existing footage of the actor from his previous films such as Dark Victory (1976) and 84 Charing Cross Road (1987).

“We actually shot the scenes with specific angles matching those films somewhat in mind,” says Worth, “but we had issues with clearances; we had issues about whether we could get the negative.

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TELEVISION

BEHIND THE VITAL, VIOLENT, VISUAL EFFECTS IN WESTWORLD

By IAN FAILES

TOP AND TOP RIGHT: Oliver Bell plays the Little Boy, actually a host with an older-style exoskeleton similar to that of Delores’ that is revealed in these shots.

(Photo credit: HBO)

Michael Crichton’s 1973 future dystopia Westworld, in which the androids of a Western-themed amusement park begin malfunctioning and turn on the park’s human visitors, was a keystone moment in visual effects. Its use of digital-image processing to represent an android POV was the first of its kind in a feature film.

That was a legacy Visual Effects Supervisor Jay Worth had somewhat on his mind when he approached the effects assignment on HBO’s television series, Westworld, created by Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy and based on Crichton’s film.

“We weren’t necessarily thinking about the 1973 movie all the time,” says Worth. “It was more about the feel of that film, and with the effects what we would do is say, ‘How might they have done this kind of effect 30 years ago?’ Most of the shots that we did I always felt like we could have done practically if we had to.”

Those shots ranged the full gamut of effects techniques, from crafting a young version of Sir Anthony Hopkins, to building, de-generating and destroying various hosts, and to delivering a world of visuals inside the amusement park featured in the show.

We even did a test of taking the head of one of those shots and putting it onto our stand-in.”

Ultimately, the scenes would be achieved with a CG Ford face.

This began with shooting a stand-in who performed both with and without facial tracking dots. Hopkins was also cyberscanned

by SCANable in order to provide a baseline facial structure. VFX studio Important Looking Pirates then took on the task of generating Ford in CG. The process of modeling a convincing digital representation of the ‘youngified’ actor quickly hit an unexpected road block, as Worth explains. “We tried matching Sir Anthony exactly to what he looked like back then, but the thing is, Anthony from the early 80s actually looks quite different to what most American audiences remember him as from, say, The Silence of the Lambs. We realized that our role really was to make him instantly recognizable, so our de-aged model actually had to be what people would think he looks like, not what he actually did.”

UNDER THE SKIN

MEET YOUNG SIR ANTHONY HOPKINS

Although the audience knows that central character Dolores

“We tried matching Sir Anthony exactly to what he looked like back then, but the thing is, Anthony from the early 80s actually looks quite different to what most American audiences remember him as from, say, The Silence of the Lambs. We realized that our role really was to make him instantly recognizable, so our de-aged model actually had to be what people would think he looks like, not what he actually did.”

—VFX Supervisor Jay Worth BOTTOM: 3D printing in Westworld. Although many practical props were created to show the hosts under construction, visual effects artists also augmented and added digital nozzles and muscle weaves. (Photo Credit: HBO)

Westworld’s season one plot weaves in and out of the past and present, often initially without audiences realizing. However, at one point the show makes a very clear flashback to park founder and creative director Robert Ford (Sir Anthony Hopkins) as a younger man.

Several ways in which to depict Hopkins 30 to 40 years ago were considered. One included cutting out existing footage of the actor from his previous films such as Dark Victory (1976) and 84 Charing Cross Road (1987).

“We actually shot the scenes with specific angles matching those films somewhat in mind,” says Worth, “but we had issues with clearances; we had issues about whether we could get the negative.

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TELEVISION

SIGGRAPH AD

Abernathy (Evan Rachel Wood) is one of several older models of hosts inhabiting Westworld. Her true inner workings are not revealed until the final episode of season one. Here, Dolores’s exoskeleton is uncovered, thanks again to VFX artists at Important Looking Pirates.

“To film the Dolores exoskeleton shots,” outlines Worth, “Evan was in a blue turtleneck jumpsuit all the way to her toes and all the way to her fingertips. We shot her, shot a clean plate, and then shot some lighting reference.”

Worth says there was much discussion about whether the exoskeleton should actually look like a skeleton or something else, and whether it should be white or black. “It was a little more unexpected not to look like a skeleton, so we went with that. We ended up going with a matte black finish partly because we thought it looked more elegant.”

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TOP: Old Bill, played by Michael Wincott, is an older model host. The VFX teams implemented some subtle face contortions to hint at his more animatronic-like nature.

(Photo credit: HBO) ABOVE LEFT: After considering the use of miniatures, a CG approach to the terraformer shots was ultimately chosen.

This is the original background plate. (Photo credit: HBO) ABOVE RIGHT: The final CG terraformer crafted by Important Looking Pirates. (Photo credit: HBO)

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TELEVISION

BRINGING ANDROIDS TO LIFE (AND DEATH)

Delores isn’t the only host receiving the effects treatment.

Both practical and digital effects were relied upon to accomplish scenes where they were malfunctioning, being frozen still, or shot to pieces.

Old Bill (Michael Wincott) is a host who exhibits signs of glitching when he seems to perform looped animatronic-like movements. Surprisingly, the effect was achieved with what Worth describes as relatively simple compositing.

“Basically, the actor was performing everything relatively smoothly and we were ramping in and out in terms of speed,” he says. “CoSA VFX handled that. They also did some augmentation for other hosts that were malfunctioning by taking plates shot at different frame rates, and we realized with Old Bill we could almost start and stop the actor as if we were doing speed changes.”

The park controllers have the ability to “freeze all motor functions” of the hosts. The effect initially required a simple solution – having the actors try and stay as still as possible. “Everyone got really good at it,” recalls Worth, “but we did do a lot of subtle compositing with old-fashioned grunt roto to get these people to freeze, occasionally with projection mapping if the camera was moving around them.

“One thing we did differently with the freezing,” adds Worth, “was when the hosts were down in the diagnostics area, we would take out their eye blinks but still have them breathing. It made it feel like the hosts were even more helpless under the management’s control.”

The treatment of the hosts by management, guests and other

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TOP: The map projection technique was adapted to also produce “bucket” views of surveillance footage from the park. (Photo credit: HBO)

FOCAL PRESS MASTERS OF FX AD

BOTTOM: Evan Rachel Wood as host Dolores Abernathy during an interrogation scene while under the “freeze all motor functions” command. The actress held still as much as possible, but was aided in terms of small movements and eye blinks by the visual effects team. (Photo credit: HBO)

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LEFT: An on-set photo of Thandie Newton as madam host Maeve Millay during a “freeze all motor functions” scene.

(Photo credit: John P. Johnson/HBO) RIGHT: Millay is interrogated by park operator Elsie Hughes (Shannon Woodward). (Photo credit: HBO)

hosts is often brutal and bloody. Significant make-up effects gags orchestrated by make-up effects designer Christien Tinsley were relied upon for things like shotgun blasts and the resulting wounds. “Christien’s team built these face rigs with magnets and blew them apart, and we would then comp certain pieces in,” states Worth. “It just had to be very visceral and so it was relatively simple from a VFX standpoint compared to if we had had to do a full CG version.”

HOSTS IN PROGRESS

Down in the depths of the park’s central offices, scenes of hosts under construction relied on a mix of practical and digital work.

Mostly the construction resembled an advanced kind of 3D printing in which the humanoid host bodies and their skeletal structures and organs are weaved together and then dipped into a white milky substance.

A signature image from the show depicts the hosts in the pose of Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man, albeit attached to a robotic arm. “Our Special Effects Supervisor Michael Lantieri and then Christien Tinsley and their teams were responsible for what we had on set,” outlines Worth. “Michael had found a glue company that could produce massive amounts of glue without the bonding agent, and that provided the cool dripping look coming off the bodies.

“Christien built the clay bodies in his shop (Tinsley Studio),” continues Worth, “and the special effects crew made the rigs and robotic arms. Digital effects came in to add small details such as muscle fibers being built up or threading in the wet substance of a host’s eyes, for instance.”

“We had to figure out how the motor controlling the map would spin in conjunction with the projectors. And we even changed the time of day on the map throughout the series depending on what was necessary for the story.

I don’t think anybody even picked up on that, per se, in that when it was nighttime outside, it was nighttime on the map, or it had a sunrise or a sunset when it was supposed to.”

—Jay Worth

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NAVIGATING WESTWORLD

In the park’s control room, an ever-present 3D hologram-like map displays the position of the hosts at all times. Westworld’s creators wanted to move away from a typical hologram look, instead suggesting that the map was being projected.

“With a lot of projector technology these days there’s a way to actually make it appear dimensionalized,” says Worth. “You see it, say, at basketball games where they’re projecting these 2D images but from a certain angle it looks 3D, and then it also looks different from different angles.”

For the map itself, fabrication company SCPS sculpted a rocky terrain for use during filming. A matte painting of the Westworld environment was then created, including aspects allowing for

TOP: A sculpted surface representing Westworld. Live projections were the means by which the control room map was brought to life.

(Photo credit: HBO) LEFT: 3D printing in Westworld.

(Photo credit: HBO)

changes of the time of day. That was projected directly onto the sculpt – live. One of the most challenging aspects of the map then became its movement, since some scenes had it spinning around.

“We had to figure out how the motor controlling the map would spin in conjunction with the projectors,” says Worth. “And we even changed the time of day on the map throughout the series depending on what was necessary for the story. I don’t think anybody even picked up on that, per se, in that when it was nighttime outside, it was nighttime on the map, or it had a sunrise or a sunset when it was supposed to.”

CHANGING THE LANDSCAPE

During season one, Ford begins efforts to build a new experience for outsiders. This involves a massive digging effort by an enormous terraforming mining machine which rips up an existing area of Westworld. Worth notes that, early on, miniatures were considered for the terraformer before a CG route by Important Looking Pirates was adopted.

“We looked at miniatures partly because this terraforming

machine was based on real things that tear up the land like that,” says Worth. “But we realized we’d have to do a number of setups for that; the plate, then the miniature and then combine them, plus it was going to have a moving camera. ILP did such a great job – we had even shot some dirt and dust elements just in case but they were able to simulate all of that at the right scale.”

THE EFFECTS WORLD OF WESTWORLD

In completing the show’s visual effects, Worth had at his disposal several studios, including Important Looking Pirates, CoSA, Double Negative, Shade VFX, Chicken Bone VFX, Encore Hollywood, and a crew of independent compositors and in-house artists. Collaboration with the practical, make-up and special effects crews remained key in achieving the final shots.

“The show has such an organic nature to it,” suggests Worth.

“We never wanted the VFX to be a centerpoint but instead always just in there supporting the story. That approach actually gives you a lot more freedom in some ways because you know what lane you need to stay in.”

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TELEVISION

LEFT: An on-set photo of Thandie Newton as madam host Maeve Millay during a “freeze all motor functions” scene.

(Photo credit: John P. Johnson/HBO) RIGHT: Millay is interrogated by park operator Elsie Hughes (Shannon Woodward). (Photo credit: HBO)

hosts is often brutal and bloody. Significant make-up effects gags orchestrated by make-up effects designer Christien Tinsley were relied upon for things like shotgun blasts and the resulting wounds. “Christien’s team built these face rigs with magnets and blew them apart, and we would then comp certain pieces in,” states Worth. “It just had to be very visceral and so it was relatively simple from a VFX standpoint compared to if we had had to do a full CG version.”

HOSTS IN PROGRESS

Down in the depths of the park’s central offices, scenes of hosts under construction relied on a mix of practical and digital work.

Mostly the construction resembled an advanced kind of 3D printing in which the humanoid host bodies and their skeletal structures and organs are weaved together and then dipped into a white milky substance.

A signature image from the show depicts the hosts in the pose of Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man, albeit attached to a robotic arm. “Our Special Effects Supervisor Michael Lantieri and then Christien Tinsley and their teams were responsible for what we had on set,” outlines Worth. “Michael had found a glue company that could produce massive amounts of glue without the bonding agent, and that provided the cool dripping look coming off the bodies.

“Christien built the clay bodies in his shop (Tinsley Studio),” continues Worth, “and the special effects crew made the rigs and robotic arms. Digital effects came in to add small details such as muscle fibers being built up or threading in the wet substance of a host’s eyes, for instance.”

“We had to figure out how the motor controlling the map would spin in conjunction with the projectors. And we even changed the time of day on the map throughout the series depending on what was necessary for the story.

I don’t think anybody even picked up on that, per se, in that when it was nighttime outside, it was nighttime on the map, or it had a sunrise or a sunset when it was supposed to.”

—Jay Worth

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NAVIGATING WESTWORLD

In the park’s control room, an ever-present 3D hologram-like map displays the position of the hosts at all times. Westworld’s creators wanted to move away from a typical hologram look, instead suggesting that the map was being projected.

“With a lot of projector technology these days there’s a way to actually make it appear dimensionalized,” says Worth. “You see it, say, at basketball games where they’re projecting these 2D images but from a certain angle it looks 3D, and then it also looks different from different angles.”

For the map itself, fabrication company SCPS sculpted a rocky terrain for use during filming. A matte painting of the Westworld environment was then created, including aspects allowing for

TOP: A sculpted surface representing Westworld. Live projections were the means by which the control room map was brought to life.

(Photo credit: HBO) LEFT: 3D printing in Westworld.

(Photo credit: HBO)

changes of the time of day. That was projected directly onto the sculpt – live. One of the most challenging aspects of the map then became its movement, since some scenes had it spinning around.

“We had to figure out how the motor controlling the map would spin in conjunction with the projectors,” says Worth. “And we even changed the time of day on the map throughout the series depending on what was necessary for the story. I don’t think anybody even picked up on that, per se, in that when it was nighttime outside, it was nighttime on the map, or it had a sunrise or a sunset when it was supposed to.”

CHANGING THE LANDSCAPE

During season one, Ford begins efforts to build a new experience for outsiders. This involves a massive digging effort by an enormous terraforming mining machine which rips up an existing area of Westworld. Worth notes that, early on, miniatures were considered for the terraformer before a CG route by Important Looking Pirates was adopted.

“We looked at miniatures partly because this terraforming

machine was based on real things that tear up the land like that,” says Worth. “But we realized we’d have to do a number of setups for that; the plate, then the miniature and then combine them, plus it was going to have a moving camera. ILP did such a great job – we had even shot some dirt and dust elements just in case but they were able to simulate all of that at the right scale.”

THE EFFECTS WORLD OF WESTWORLD

In completing the show’s visual effects, Worth had at his disposal several studios, including Important Looking Pirates, CoSA, Double Negative, Shade VFX, Chicken Bone VFX, Encore Hollywood, and a crew of independent compositors and in-house artists. Collaboration with the practical, make-up and special effects crews remained key in achieving the final shots.

“The show has such an organic nature to it,” suggests Worth.

“We never wanted the VFX to be a centerpoint but instead always just in there supporting the story. That approach actually gives you a lot more freedom in some ways because you know what lane you need to stay in.”

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COVER

EFFECTS ELEVATE DAZZLING LIVE-ACTION REMAKE OF CLASSIC GHOST IN THE SHELL

By IAN FAILES

TOP: Scarlett Johansson plays The Major in Ghost in the Shell, a synthetic cybernetic counterterrorist assigned to take on a gang of cyber criminals.

All photos courtesy of Paramount Pictures.

All Rights Reserved.

In the years that followed the release of the anime Ghost in the Shell, directed by Mamoru Oshii and based on the manga series by Masamune Shirow, a bevy of science-fiction films seemed to echo both the look and futuristic predictions of the 1995 film.

Jump forward just over two decades and director Rupert Sanders has entered the Ghost in the Shell fray with a live-action remake starring Scarlett Johansson in the role of The Major, a synthetic cybernetic counterterrorist who is assigned to take on a gang of cyber criminals.

Looking to honor the original visions of Oshii and Shirow, while implementing his own take on the Ghost in the Shell world, Sanders assembled a team of effects artisans for the task. Visual Effects Supervisors Guillaume Rocheron and John Dykstra and Visual Effects Producer Fiona Campbell Westgate oversaw work from lead vendor MPC and other studios, among them Atomic Fiction, Territory Studio, Pixomondo, Framestore, Method Studios and Raynault VFX. Weta Workshop took on several conceptual design, fabrication, prop and costume challenges. Steve Ingram handled special effects duties.

Sanders says he went for a grounded approach to the visual effects in the film. “I use visual effects to embellish and do things that aren’t achievable in-camera,” he says. “I try and do everything else in-camera. We built a lot of animatronics, we did a lot of prosthetic makeup, we built a lot of sets and we did very little full greenscreen environments. I always wanted Ghost in the Shell to be a tactile world that you felt really existed.”

A CYBORG IS MADE

In a ‘shelling’ sequence that echoes the original anime, The Major is shown entering the world – her cybernetic parts are melded together and then infused through a white milky substance that rips off to reveal her outer suit layer.

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Based on initial art department concepts and previs from The Mill, Weta Workshop continued designs for the sequence.

It was part of the company’s wider compilation of elements for the film. “We used visual graphics to help organize the film,” notes Workshop Concept Designer Leri Greer. “What we were trying to do was take the really broad team of people coming onto the film and give them info-graphics to get them up to speed very graphically.”

The Workshop designed and 3D printed The Major’s brain and underskeleton parts, in metal and as optically clear materials to represent more fibrous pieces. They were then assembled, jigsaw puzzle-style, for the shoot at the nearby Stone Street Studios in Wellington, New Zealand.

A dry for wet approach using smoke and particles was followed to make the shots at times appear underwater. Weta Workshop also built a replica of The Major’s body weighted with concrete for views of it emerging from the white liquid. “That liquid was a mix of products to give it the right thickness that our Special Effects Supervisor Steve Ingram put together,” says Rocheron. “We shot a bunch of passes of dipping the body into the white liquid and

TOP: The Major (Scarlett Johansson) in camouflage suit.

Weta Workshop fabricated a silicone suit, tinted fleshcolored, for Johansson to wear.

BOTTOM LEFT: The Major on a mission.

BOTTOM RIGHT: Major Maddy Kisana (Scarlett Johansson) entering the world – her cybernetic parts melded together and then infused through a white milky substance that rips off to reveal her outer suit layer.

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COVER

AD - THE VIEW

pulling it out. In the end it was a combination of CG and live action, with elements of the dripping liquid and bubbles that we shot at 1500 frames per second.”

“Rupert had a driving desire to do as much practically as possible,” says Weta Workshop CEO Richard Taylor, noting the combination of practical and digital for the shelling sequence.

“At the Workshop, we don’t think digital is the enemy, far from it.

But there is no doubt for us that our passion is the physical feel of practical effects.”

The Major dons a thermoptic suit that allows her to go into camouflage mode. Weta Workshop fabricated a silicone suit, tinted flesh-colored, for Johansson. “We had measurements and a body scan sent to us for Scarlett,” describes Workshop costume maker Flo Foxworthy. “We then found an in-house fit model and we milled out and created life-size mannequins, too. We didn’t get it onto Scarlett until the day before filming but it worked out great.”

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TOP: Ghost in the Shell’s cityscape. Director Sanders sought to populate the city views with a form of solid, sometimes enormous, augmented reality holograms he called ‘solograms’.

LEFT: Pilou Asbaek plays Batou.

RIGHT: Director Rupert Sanders and Scarlett Johansson on the set of Ghost in the Shell.

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WORLD BUILDING

BEWARE THE ROBOT GEISHA

Ghost in the Shell’s city landscape was fleshed out by several artists, including Production Designer Jan Roelfs and Concept Designer Ash Thorp. Sanders chose to reveal the city with a series of long, floating camera moves, dubbed ‘Ghost Cam’, that he devised with cinematographer Jess Hall. “We flew a helicopter up and down paths pre-determined from Google Maps, photographing textures and roof textures and then we photographed the same places from the street so we could start to build a digital environment,” says the director.

Sanders also sought to populate the city views with a form of solid, sometimes enormous, augmented reality holograms he called ‘solograms’. To acquire the imagery appearing in the solograms, a specialized 80-camera rig array designed by Dayton Taylor took a ‘fully immersive’ 15-second take showcasing an actor from all angles. Still camera arrays have been used on many films, but in this case the rig was a video array, an attractive prospect to Rocheron for achieving the desired sologram look.

“This technique allowed us to capture 24 cyberscans per second of an actor and generate what was effectively animated clips,” he says. “MPC’s Visual Effects Supervisor Axel Bonami then had to take that footage and voxelize it to get the 3D hologram appearance. We also had Territory Studio spending months creating volumetric assets for signage and displays in the city and pairing it with our footage.”

Photographic elements further helped make up the city buildings themselves, thanks to a photogrammetry shoot of scaled miniatures built by Weta Workshop. “What they built,” says Rocheron, “was more for prototyping and creating a kit-bash library that we could photograph from multiple angles and then have as 3D assets. We never used one of those miniatures in a shot directly, but it was a good choice to design them that way.”

Robot Geisha featured in the film included contributions from Weta Workshop, which created several masks worn by performers as well as a standalone animatronic head for a later scene. “Rupert had this idea that the actress Rila Fukushima could play all of the geisha,” says Workshop Senior Art Director Ben Hawker. “So we replicated her face and 3D printed the mask, so the performers all looked identical.”

“It’s a very polished suit – it’s meant to look like highly finished ceramic or porcelain on the outside,” describes Workshop Supervisor Rob Gilles. “The actual masks were semi-rigid, so they did have a little bit of flex in them. We tried to keep that surface quite hard so we could get a really nice paint finish on it. And then we had a silicone neck cowl and silicone arms and gloves.”

At one point, a Robot Geisha head is examined. An elaborate on-set prop was made by Weta Workshop to spring open and reveal an elaborate concoction of internal clockwork-like mechanisms, crafted to look as if the geisha had been tampered with.

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CRAFTING KUZE

The Major’s nemesis Kuze (Michael Pitt) is himself a cybernetic being, but not as elite as the current model. “Rupert wanted him to look like he was a broken piece of porcelain,” says Gilles, “and that he had tried to repair himself with different body parts. He’d become this enigma of knowledge and didn’t really associate himself with a physical form. So we made prosthetics down his face and neck and these transformed into a costume element with ceramic panels that were like moving plates that articulated when he moved.”

“We’d then use CG to create all the negative space where you would see into muscle and skeleton for Kuze,” details Rocheron.

“In post we also started just keeping certain things like his eyes, or

his hair or just parts of his face. We re-created an entire body above the torso and animated it based on Pitt’s performance and then had all this exposed translucent and transparent muscles with these skin plates cladded on.”

DIVING IN

When The Major combines her brain with that of a cyborg to look through its memories, she moves into what was termed the ‘Deep Dive’. “The fun part of that,” suggests Dykstra, “was getting to highlight the differences between the way the cyborg thinks and the way the human thinks and you also get to give The Major a different point of view about exactly what she is.”

After falling through a seemingly endless amount of black liquid, The Major walks through the Yakuza Club where clubgoers are frozen and de-grading into digital noise, the idea being that memories are unstable. “You could see their faces but not the back of their heads to give the idea that The Major was navigating memories from a different point of view,” says Rocheron.

The visuals were realized by blocking out camera moves and recording their positions, then shooting a clean plate. Later, a 150 DSLR photogrammetry rig was used to re-film those actors in the same poses. “That way, I would get a scan and textures of everyone exactly the way they were supposed to be featured in the club to then send to MPC for treatment and degradation,” he explains.

During the Deep Dive, Kuze sees he is about to be uncovered and hacks into the memories to unleash a series of black figures who try to drown The Major. Part of that scene employed some relatively inexpensive, yet innovative, approaches to the effects, as Sanders recounts. “I got wardrobe to make some plastic suits for our extras. We covered them all in black oil and had them slipping around and grabbing at The Major. Later, we used the same people in Kuze’s lair and they were in those same suits and linked with

TOP: In a fight sequence in a flooded slum area, The Major demonstrates her camouflage abilities, donning a thermoptic suit that allows her to go into camouflage mode.

TOP LEFT: Robot Geisha in Ghost.

Weta Workshop created several masks worn by performers.

“I use visual effects to embellish and do things that aren’t achievable in-camera.

I try and do everything else in-camera.

We built a lot of animatronics, we did a lot of prosthetic makeup, we built a lot of sets and we did very little full greenscreen environments. I always wanted Ghost in the Shell to be a tactile world that you felt really existed.”

— Director Rupert Sanders

SPRING 2017

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5/7/18 1:13 PM

COVER

WORLD BUILDING

BEWARE THE ROBOT GEISHA

Ghost in the Shell’s city landscape was fleshed out by several artists, including Production Designer Jan Roelfs and Concept Designer Ash Thorp. Sanders chose to reveal the city with a series of long, floating camera moves, dubbed ‘Ghost Cam’, that he devised with cinematographer Jess Hall. “We flew a helicopter up and down paths pre-determined from Google Maps, photographing textures and roof textures and then we photographed the same places from the street so we could start to build a digital environment,” says the director.

Sanders also sought to populate the city views with a form of solid, sometimes enormous, augmented reality holograms he called ‘solograms’. To acquire the imagery appearing in the solograms, a specialized 80-camera rig array designed by Dayton Taylor took a ‘fully immersive’ 15-second take showcasing an actor from all angles. Still camera arrays have been used on many films, but in this case the rig was a video array, an attractive prospect to Rocheron for achieving the desired sologram look.

“This technique allowed us to capture 24 cyberscans per second of an actor and generate what was effectively animated clips,” he says. “MPC’s Visual Effects Supervisor Axel Bonami then had to take that footage and voxelize it to get the 3D hologram appearance. We also had Territory Studio spending months creating volumetric assets for signage and displays in the city and pairing it with our footage.”

Photographic elements further helped make up the city buildings themselves, thanks to a photogrammetry shoot of scaled miniatures built by Weta Workshop. “What they built,” says Rocheron, “was more for prototyping and creating a kit-bash library that we could photograph from multiple angles and then have as 3D assets. We never used one of those miniatures in a shot directly, but it was a good choice to design them that way.”

Robot Geisha featured in the film included contributions from Weta Workshop, which created several masks worn by performers as well as a standalone animatronic head for a later scene. “Rupert had this idea that the actress Rila Fukushima could play all of the geisha,” says Workshop Senior Art Director Ben Hawker. “So we replicated her face and 3D printed the mask, so the performers all looked identical.”

“It’s a very polished suit – it’s meant to look like highly finished ceramic or porcelain on the outside,” describes Workshop Supervisor Rob Gilles. “The actual masks were semi-rigid, so they did have a little bit of flex in them. We tried to keep that surface quite hard so we could get a really nice paint finish on it. And then we had a silicone neck cowl and silicone arms and gloves.”

At one point, a Robot Geisha head is examined. An elaborate on-set prop was made by Weta Workshop to spring open and reveal an elaborate concoction of internal clockwork-like mechanisms, crafted to look as if the geisha had been tampered with.

40 • VFXVOICE.COM SPRING 2017

86214L022a_PG 36-42 GHOST.indd 41

CRAFTING KUZE

The Major’s nemesis Kuze (Michael Pitt) is himself a cybernetic being, but not as elite as the current model. “Rupert wanted him to look like he was a broken piece of porcelain,” says Gilles, “and that he had tried to repair himself with different body parts. He’d become this enigma of knowledge and didn’t really associate himself with a physical form. So we made prosthetics down his face and neck and these transformed into a costume element with ceramic panels that were like moving plates that articulated when he moved.”

“We’d then use CG to create all the negative space where you would see into muscle and skeleton for Kuze,” details Rocheron.

“In post we also started just keeping certain things like his eyes, or

his hair or just parts of his face. We re-created an entire body above the torso and animated it based on Pitt’s performance and then had all this exposed translucent and transparent muscles with these skin plates cladded on.”

DIVING IN

When The Major combines her brain with that of a cyborg to look through its memories, she moves into what was termed the ‘Deep Dive’. “The fun part of that,” suggests Dykstra, “was getting to highlight the differences between the way the cyborg thinks and the way the human thinks and you also get to give The Major a different point of view about exactly what she is.”

After falling through a seemingly endless amount of black liquid, The Major walks through the Yakuza Club where clubgoers are frozen and de-grading into digital noise, the idea being that memories are unstable. “You could see their faces but not the back of their heads to give the idea that The Major was navigating memories from a different point of view,” says Rocheron.

The visuals were realized by blocking out camera moves and recording their positions, then shooting a clean plate. Later, a 150 DSLR photogrammetry rig was used to re-film those actors in the same poses. “That way, I would get a scan and textures of everyone exactly the way they were supposed to be featured in the club to then send to MPC for treatment and degradation,” he explains.

During the Deep Dive, Kuze sees he is about to be uncovered and hacks into the memories to unleash a series of black figures who try to drown The Major. Part of that scene employed some relatively inexpensive, yet innovative, approaches to the effects, as Sanders recounts. “I got wardrobe to make some plastic suits for our extras. We covered them all in black oil and had them slipping around and grabbing at The Major. Later, we used the same people in Kuze’s lair and they were in those same suits and linked with

TOP: In a fight sequence in a flooded slum area, The Major demonstrates her camouflage abilities, donning a thermoptic suit that allows her to go into camouflage mode.

TOP LEFT: Robot Geisha in Ghost.

Weta Workshop created several masks worn by performers.

“I use visual effects to embellish and do things that aren’t achievable in-camera.

I try and do everything else in-camera.

We built a lot of animatronics, we did a lot of prosthetic makeup, we built a lot of sets and we did very little full greenscreen environments. I always wanted Ghost in the Shell to be a tactile world that you felt really existed.”

— Director Rupert Sanders

SPRING 2017

VFXVOICE.COM • 41

5/7/18 1:13 PM

COVER

cables and generating his network, but I was thinking, how do we make them different? So we Vaselined over their eyes and then we doused them in flour.”

INVISIBLE EFFECTS

Another iconic moment from the original anime film is a fight sequence in a flooded slum area, in which The Major demonstrates her camouflage abilities. “I think that was one of the scenes from the original that I felt had to be in there,” comments Sanders. “We built a water tank in New Zealand and that’s one of the few things that we filmed almost entirely greenscreen. Then we tiled a lot of Hong Kong apartment blocks and then Guillaume and I started to design it slightly more sci-fi.”

The water fight was filmed with Johansson and her stunt performer in and out of frame, so that the themoptic look could be achieved in CG. “For that look,” says Rocheron, “we wanted to get away from any kind of magnifying glass effect. What we did was create an animated version of The Major and then she was completely voxelized. It’s as if she was moving through a volume and the voxels would displace depending on her movements.”

BATTLE OF THE GHOSTS

A final tank battle, again inspired by the original film, sees The Major use her hybrid cybernetic-human brain to outsmart the six-legged machine. The scene was filmed on a backlot area and required significant set extensions, a CG tank, pyrotechnics and digital double work for The Major and Kuze, with The Major

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“At the Workshop, we don’t think digital is the enemy, far from it. But there is no doubt for us that our passion is the physical feel of practical effects.”

— Weta Workshop CEO Richard Taylor

AD - NLG

ultimately compromising her physical body to defeat the tank.

“We spent a lot of time giving personality to the tank to give a sense of a relationship between it and The Major,” says Dykstra, “but also to show how The Major’s biggest strength is her ability to reason. The bottom line for this story is the idea of a ‘ghost in the shell’ and how that is better than a cyber-being in terms of the depth of its free will and the ability of it to be creative and imagine something that doesn’t necessarily follow a reasonable route.”

For Sanders, the tank battle typified his general approach to the film – it was something that paid homage to the original anime, that took advantage of the existing impressive visual elements and continued to leave the audience engaged on several levels.

“I think what attracted me to Ghost in the Shell overall,” says Sanders, “was the opportunity to exist in both worlds where you had a big spectacular action-packed film, but also you were left with something resonating beyond just spectacle.

“There’s so much in that original film to borrow from about technology and humanity that would make it a richer and more memorable experience.”

SPRING 2017

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5/7/18 1:13 PM

Congratulations to the Visual Effects Society on the premiere issue of VFX Voice.

Heralding a new global spotlight on the art and innovation of VFX.

We are so proud to work with you.

Naomi Goldman nlgcommunications.com

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3/13/17 PM 5/7/18 12:33 1:14 PM

INDUSTRY Q&A ROUNDTABLE

VFX FACILITIES AT THE BEGINNING OF ST THE 21 CENTURY

“It is a vibrant industry that has bulked up on steroids, and while its sheer size makes it seem new and different, I think much of its underlying DNA is still the same, and the model that has been with us since ‘Star Wars’ persists.”

—Jim Morris, VES

44 • VFXVOICE.COM SPRING 2017

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“Trends may appear to favor decentralization… However, in order to continue to innovate and reshape our industry, we need critical mass of resources working together to allow for creative invention and the development of new techniques.”

—Neishaw Ali

In his new book Thank You For Being Late: An Optimist’s Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations, New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman (The World Is Flat) discusses the fast-moving forces upending the world – technology, globalization and climate change.

Similarly, much is happening quickly in the VFX cosmos. VFX Voice caught up recently with industry veterans for a worldwide virtual Q&A Roundtable discussion about changes in the visual effects production universe. They include: Jim Morris, VES, General Manager and President of Pixar Animation Studios; Sam Nicholson, Founder/ CEO Stargate Studios; Anthony Hunt, Cinesite Group CEO; Dan May, President, Blackmagic Design; Alex Mahon, CEO, Foundry; Andrew Bly, CFO/Executive Producer, The Molecule; Neishaw Ali, President/Executive Producer, Spin VFX; Devin Sterling, VP Global Operations, Long Form, Deluxe Creative Services; Sébastien Moreau, President of Rodeo FX; Weyron Henriques, Director of Software Development, Deluxe Creative Services; Jacki Morie, Founder and Chief Scientist, All These Worlds, LLC; Neville Spiteri, CEO and Co-founder, Wevr; David Stinnett, Co-founder, Blur Studios; Ed Ulbrich, President and GM of VFX and VR at Deluxe; Pierre Raymond, President, Co-founder and Head of Operations, Hybride; Andrea Block, CEO and Producer, LUXX Studios; Adam Stern, VFX Supervisor/Owner, Artifex Studios; Namit Malhotra, CEO, Prime Focus World; and Parvinder Bhatia, Head of Entertainment, Plowman Craven.

Q: Given the sweeping importance of visual effects in all media production, how do you see the model for production of VFX evolving in the future? In other words, will traditional VFX facilities persist in some form, or do you envision some other model will emerge?

Morris: The visual effects world has changed dramatically over the past couple of decades. Unbelievably so. Digital approaches have almost entirely supplanted the photochemical techniques (motion control, miniature shooting, optical

compositing, etc.) that were at their height when I joined Industrial Light & Magic in the mid-’80s. And the number of people working in effects has probably grown 20 fold.

The growth of the effects-fueled tent pole film has grown explosively as well. Once upon a time, a 350-shot show was considered a huge one, and there would only be a couple of those a year. Now there might be 20 films each having one to two thousand shots. And the quality of the work is staggeringly good.

But I’m not sure the basic model of effects production has changed that much. Yes, once upon a time a visual effects facility like ILM might do the effects work in an entire film all by itself. Given the size of films now, and the fact that many shows have production-side effects supervisors and producers to oversee the show’s vendors, single facility shows are a rarity.

But there have always been small, medium and large shops out there doing effects work.

Now there are just more of them. And each of them plays a valuable role in the filmmaking process. And while small shops can do an awful lot these days, projects of huge scope, scale and variety still rely on the pipeline and capacity of the larger shops, as they always have.

Visual effects of superb quality are now common in television work, games, VR and attractions as well as in cinema. It is a vibrant industry that has bulked up on steroids, and while its sheer size makes it seem new and different, I think much of its underlying DNA is still the same, and the model that has been with us since ‘Star Wars’ persists.

Nicholson: Today’s VFX business model will continue to evolve as we respond to the ever-increasing creative demands and the rapidly evolving technologies which are reshaping media production and distribution. Tomorrow’s VFX business model will be less centralized, more collaborative and more globalized, offering limitless scalability and extreme horsepower at a reasonable price.

We are developing this business model into a very diverse group of internationally-networked artists with unlimited access to extensive cloud- based software and off-site rendering. Challenging VFX work deemed

impossible today will be achieved by virtual communities of decentralized yet integrated artists networked through efficient digital delivery pipelines to meet the demands of tomorrow’s media.

Ali: VFX facilities will persist in the foreseeable future because visual effects is all about creating and achieving the director’s vision. This unique challenge cannot be commoditized or ‘manufactured’ and is often prone to subjectivity, as we try to create the ‘impossible’ – that which cannot be achieved in camera. As always it is a team sport and requires creative talent and a group of experienced knowledge-based team members through all facets of production from prep to post.

A successful production is one that has a reliable pipeline that can operate at the speed, volume and quality level demanded by clients and even more importantly a collection of experienced core-talented artists capable of synergistically deconstructing very complex creatives, technical directors that can script solutions at a moment’s notice, and experienced producers that understand the strength and challenges of the team and can mitigate the production’s liability. This is not something that can be organized or achieved within weeks of a project being green lit.

Newer tools will continue to allow artists to do more faster. Cloud computing is lowering barriers to entry on the cost and technology side and, the talent pool is growing internationally. So those trends may appear to favor decentralization and that may well exist in one form or another.

However, in order to continue to innovate and reshape our industry, we need critical mass of resources working together to allow for creative invention and the development of new techniques as we continue to pioneer into the ever-evolving, challenging and inspiring creative marketplace that we work in.

May: The stakes have been raised for VFX and post professionals. In today’s landscape, they have to do more in less time.

There are new consumption platforms (streaming, mobile, etc.), new standards (the jump from SD to HD and beyond with 4K/ Ultra HD), and new technology and systems (high frame rate, high dynamic range, etc.)

“Bigger does not always mean better. Mid-sized facilities will prosper if they focus on some key principles: people, projects, pipeline and partners.”

—Anthony Hunt

“New media forms will include the best of what has gone before as well as incremental advances in techniques we have used to great effect to provide entertaining, thought-provoking and meaningful works of art.”

—Jacki Morie

SPRING 2017

VFXVOICE.COM • 45

5/7/18 1:15 PM

INDUSTRY Q&A ROUNDTABLE

VFX FACILITIES AT THE BEGINNING OF ST THE 21 CENTURY

“It is a vibrant industry that has bulked up on steroids, and while its sheer size makes it seem new and different, I think much of its underlying DNA is still the same, and the model that has been with us since ‘Star Wars’ persists.”

—Jim Morris, VES

44 • VFXVOICE.COM SPRING 2017

86214L025a_PG 44-51 Q&A ROUND TABLE.indd 44-45

“Trends may appear to favor decentralization… However, in order to continue to innovate and reshape our industry, we need critical mass of resources working together to allow for creative invention and the development of new techniques.”

—Neishaw Ali

In his new book Thank You For Being Late: An Optimist’s Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations, New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman (The World Is Flat) discusses the fast-moving forces upending the world – technology, globalization and climate change.

Similarly, much is happening quickly in the VFX cosmos. VFX Voice caught up recently with industry veterans for a worldwide virtual Q&A Roundtable discussion about changes in the visual effects production universe. They include: Jim Morris, VES, General Manager and President of Pixar Animation Studios; Sam Nicholson, Founder/ CEO Stargate Studios; Anthony Hunt, Cinesite Group CEO; Dan May, President, Blackmagic Design; Alex Mahon, CEO, Foundry; Andrew Bly, CFO/Executive Producer, The Molecule; Neishaw Ali, President/Executive Producer, Spin VFX; Devin Sterling, VP Global Operations, Long Form, Deluxe Creative Services; Sébastien Moreau, President of Rodeo FX; Weyron Henriques, Director of Software Development, Deluxe Creative Services; Jacki Morie, Founder and Chief Scientist, All These Worlds, LLC; Neville Spiteri, CEO and Co-founder, Wevr; David Stinnett, Co-founder, Blur Studios; Ed Ulbrich, President and GM of VFX and VR at Deluxe; Pierre Raymond, President, Co-founder and Head of Operations, Hybride; Andrea Block, CEO and Producer, LUXX Studios; Adam Stern, VFX Supervisor/Owner, Artifex Studios; Namit Malhotra, CEO, Prime Focus World; and Parvinder Bhatia, Head of Entertainment, Plowman Craven.

Q: Given the sweeping importance of visual effects in all media production, how do you see the model for production of VFX evolving in the future? In other words, will traditional VFX facilities persist in some form, or do you envision some other model will emerge?

Morris: The visual effects world has changed dramatically over the past couple of decades. Unbelievably so. Digital approaches have almost entirely supplanted the photochemical techniques (motion control, miniature shooting, optical

compositing, etc.) that were at their height when I joined Industrial Light & Magic in the mid-’80s. And the number of people working in effects has probably grown 20 fold.

The growth of the effects-fueled tent pole film has grown explosively as well. Once upon a time, a 350-shot show was considered a huge one, and there would only be a couple of those a year. Now there might be 20 films each having one to two thousand shots. And the quality of the work is staggeringly good.

But I’m not sure the basic model of effects production has changed that much. Yes, once upon a time a visual effects facility like ILM might do the effects work in an entire film all by itself. Given the size of films now, and the fact that many shows have production-side effects supervisors and producers to oversee the show’s vendors, single facility shows are a rarity.

But there have always been small, medium and large shops out there doing effects work.

Now there are just more of them. And each of them plays a valuable role in the filmmaking process. And while small shops can do an awful lot these days, projects of huge scope, scale and variety still rely on the pipeline and capacity of the larger shops, as they always have.

Visual effects of superb quality are now common in television work, games, VR and attractions as well as in cinema. It is a vibrant industry that has bulked up on steroids, and while its sheer size makes it seem new and different, I think much of its underlying DNA is still the same, and the model that has been with us since ‘Star Wars’ persists.

Nicholson: Today’s VFX business model will continue to evolve as we respond to the ever-increasing creative demands and the rapidly evolving technologies which are reshaping media production and distribution. Tomorrow’s VFX business model will be less centralized, more collaborative and more globalized, offering limitless scalability and extreme horsepower at a reasonable price.

We are developing this business model into a very diverse group of internationally-networked artists with unlimited access to extensive cloud- based software and off-site rendering. Challenging VFX work deemed

impossible today will be achieved by virtual communities of decentralized yet integrated artists networked through efficient digital delivery pipelines to meet the demands of tomorrow’s media.

Ali: VFX facilities will persist in the foreseeable future because visual effects is all about creating and achieving the director’s vision. This unique challenge cannot be commoditized or ‘manufactured’ and is often prone to subjectivity, as we try to create the ‘impossible’ – that which cannot be achieved in camera. As always it is a team sport and requires creative talent and a group of experienced knowledge-based team members through all facets of production from prep to post.

A successful production is one that has a reliable pipeline that can operate at the speed, volume and quality level demanded by clients and even more importantly a collection of experienced core-talented artists capable of synergistically deconstructing very complex creatives, technical directors that can script solutions at a moment’s notice, and experienced producers that understand the strength and challenges of the team and can mitigate the production’s liability. This is not something that can be organized or achieved within weeks of a project being green lit.

Newer tools will continue to allow artists to do more faster. Cloud computing is lowering barriers to entry on the cost and technology side and, the talent pool is growing internationally. So those trends may appear to favor decentralization and that may well exist in one form or another.

However, in order to continue to innovate and reshape our industry, we need critical mass of resources working together to allow for creative invention and the development of new techniques as we continue to pioneer into the ever-evolving, challenging and inspiring creative marketplace that we work in.

May: The stakes have been raised for VFX and post professionals. In today’s landscape, they have to do more in less time.

There are new consumption platforms (streaming, mobile, etc.), new standards (the jump from SD to HD and beyond with 4K/ Ultra HD), and new technology and systems (high frame rate, high dynamic range, etc.)

“Bigger does not always mean better. Mid-sized facilities will prosper if they focus on some key principles: people, projects, pipeline and partners.”

—Anthony Hunt

“New media forms will include the best of what has gone before as well as incremental advances in techniques we have used to great effect to provide entertaining, thought-provoking and meaningful works of art.”

—Jacki Morie

SPRING 2017

VFXVOICE.COM • 45

5/7/18 1:15 PM

INDUSTRY Q&A ROUNDTABLE

“Challenging VFX work deemed impossible today will be achieved by virtual communities of decentralized yet integrated artists networked through efficient digital delivery pipelines.”

—Sam Nicholson

46 • VFXVOICE.COM SPRING 2017

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“We expect to see the efficiency of process and creative collaboration between previsualization, production, VFX and post improving significantly as cloud technology and automation tools become increasingly necessary and accepted among content producers and independent VFX producers alike.”

—Weyron Sterling and Devin Henriques

to keep up with. This all means that siloed workflows are no longer viable for today’s VFX facilities.

Collaborative workflows are now crucial because they allow post professionals across disciplines to work together in tandem on the same project or even the same shot, regardless of if they are in the same suite or different studios across the world.

Collaborative workflows require an interoperable and flexible toolset so the VFX artist, editor, colorist, etc. can seamlessly interface with each other without time-consuming round-tripping or any of the other pitfalls that can add time rather than eliminate it. These toolsets are critical as post professionals expand their skill sets to help with various parts of the post process that typically were outside of their purview – for example, VFX artists using color grading software to color correct VFX plates, or editors using VFX software to enhance actors’ performances when cutting together scenes.

VFX facilities need to invest in and build collaborative workflows that empower their VFX artists and breed creativity as they step outside their comfortable zones and take on new skills. This will help them remain competitive as the VFX production model continues to evolve.

Mahon: Technology advancements will shift the concept of ‘VFX facilities’ in the years to come. The sheer amount of data required for VFX and post-production work has meant that film companies have become adept at producing their own network facilities to manage it. However, cloud technology is now reaching the point where the advantages it offers, such as scalability, beat the question of its cost.

As the media production industry adopts cloud tools, you’ll see smaller studios and production houses become far more competitive with the big names. Previously, small outfits were held back by affordability to engineer their own cloud and data storage, an issue that cloud adoption removes. Now they can take on certain parts of a film project, for example, just by scaling up their cloud needs for that specific piece of work. As a result, you’re going to see a higher quality of competitive work from smaller operations, as they are able to produce the same level

of VFX content that features in Hollywood blockbusters.

We recognize the benefits this type of technology can offer the industry, and are already looking at a project that would enable anyone – whether it’s a small studio or a single artist in their own home – to access a well-equipped VFX facility through a web browser. This is the power that cloud offers our industry, and the great news is that it will only improve the quality of VFX work that is undertaken over the coming years.

Hunt: Envisaging the future of the VFX industry is always a challenge. Technology is constantly changing, as are the VFX location hotspots. At this moment in time, a truly worldwide post production industry exists, fueled in part by an explosion in big-budget comic book and sci-fi films, animated features, and TV visual effects, but bigger does not always mean better. Mid-sized facilities will prosper if they focus on some key principles: people, projects, pipeline and partners.

People should be the priority and the core of studios. They are the talent behind the tools, and while there are many similarities between the global VFX houses, the cultures and environments differ.

We have a company culture that supports our crews and helps them develop into the best artists. This sounds simple and obvious but it’s incredibly important to keep at the forefront of all our operations.

By having both a service and IP approach a studio can put a stamp on the big, fun blockbusters, but also tell more rich and complex stories. Tellingly, Cinesite is working on Otto Bathurst’s first studio feature film with Lionsgate ‘Robin Hood: Origins,’ after having recently completed work on ‘Assassin’s Creed’ for Fox and ‘Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them’ for Warner Bros. This neatly demonstrates the wide range of VFX projects we’re now working on. This runs alongside our increasing feature animated content, including our four-picture deal with 3QU Media on films such as ‘Gnome Alone’ in addition to service contracts with big studios like Sony Pictures Animation, who we’ve partnered with to bring ‘The Star’ to the big screen. Development of our animation slate

is also well underway.

Project variation within studios will ensure the work remains interesting for crews, whilst helping them adapt to market trends and shifts with greater ease as a business.

Having a solid pipeline is integral to any studio in this industry; it’s the backbone within any facility. Cinesite has worked hard to integrate the sophisticated techniques that we developed over the last 20 years in visual effects into a state-of-the-art and robust animation pipeline that’s been road tested on 200-plus movies. This allows us to push our standards for creative excellence.

The on-going investment and development has allowed us to progress from being just a VFX facility to a multimedia studio that can handle multiple projects from a centralized and stable pipeline.

Filmmaking is a collaborative process; studios’ partners must continue to reflect the ever-changing industry if they are to prosper. They must cross genres and borders to strengthen opportunities for artists and ultimately deliver benefits and opportunities for all involved.

Cinesite has had long-lasting relationships with all major Hollywood studios, independent production companies and broadcasters, however we are also forming new partnerships with multinational entertainment companies.

In recent years facilities have grown on the back of rising global demand and transformed from a niche footprint to a multinational industry. Our acquisition of Image Engine in 2015 has resulted in a fantastic partnership, positioning us to deliver worldclass visual effects and animation services to a mutual global customer base.

Bly: With the ever-increasing importance of VFX I would hope that the relationship between productions and visual effects will evolve into the dynamic seen more in earlier days of the industry. Efficiency and creativity will flourish when VFX functions as a production-side department collaborating immediately with film and episodic crews.

Imagine the potential magic if a DP who just left a production meeting stopped by the VFX department to run some camera simulations. There was a great talk two years ago at the VES Summit about how the feature

“I do hope that the industry and technology will continue to evolve so that one day, in the near future, we’ll not only be able to generate entirely photoreal CG environments but we’ll also be making films completely in CG with CG actors as well.”

—Pierre Raymond

“I think the big will get bigger.

It will be harder to be a mid-sized shop because a global network of talent and resources is essential to play at scale.”

—Ed Ulbrich

SPRING 2017

VFXVOICE.COM • 47

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INDUSTRY Q&A ROUNDTABLE

“Challenging VFX work deemed impossible today will be achieved by virtual communities of decentralized yet integrated artists networked through efficient digital delivery pipelines.”

—Sam Nicholson

46 • VFXVOICE.COM SPRING 2017

86214L025a_PG 44-51 Q&A ROUND TABLE.indd 46-47

“We expect to see the efficiency of process and creative collaboration between previsualization, production, VFX and post improving significantly as cloud technology and automation tools become increasingly necessary and accepted among content producers and independent VFX producers alike.”

—Weyron Sterling and Devin Henriques

to keep up with. This all means that siloed workflows are no longer viable for today’s VFX facilities.

Collaborative workflows are now crucial because they allow post professionals across disciplines to work together in tandem on the same project or even the same shot, regardless of if they are in the same suite or different studios across the world.

Collaborative workflows require an interoperable and flexible toolset so the VFX artist, editor, colorist, etc. can seamlessly interface with each other without time-consuming round-tripping or any of the other pitfalls that can add time rather than eliminate it. These toolsets are critical as post professionals expand their skill sets to help with various parts of the post process that typically were outside of their purview – for example, VFX artists using color grading software to color correct VFX plates, or editors using VFX software to enhance actors’ performances when cutting together scenes.

VFX facilities need to invest in and build collaborative workflows that empower their VFX artists and breed creativity as they step outside their comfortable zones and take on new skills. This will help them remain competitive as the VFX production model continues to evolve.

Mahon: Technology advancements will shift the concept of ‘VFX facilities’ in the years to come. The sheer amount of data required for VFX and post-production work has meant that film companies have become adept at producing their own network facilities to manage it. However, cloud technology is now reaching the point where the advantages it offers, such as scalability, beat the question of its cost.

As the media production industry adopts cloud tools, you’ll see smaller studios and production houses become far more competitive with the big names. Previously, small outfits were held back by affordability to engineer their own cloud and data storage, an issue that cloud adoption removes. Now they can take on certain parts of a film project, for example, just by scaling up their cloud needs for that specific piece of work. As a result, you’re going to see a higher quality of competitive work from smaller operations, as they are able to produce the same level

of VFX content that features in Hollywood blockbusters.

We recognize the benefits this type of technology can offer the industry, and are already looking at a project that would enable anyone – whether it’s a small studio or a single artist in their own home – to access a well-equipped VFX facility through a web browser. This is the power that cloud offers our industry, and the great news is that it will only improve the quality of VFX work that is undertaken over the coming years.

Hunt: Envisaging the future of the VFX industry is always a challenge. Technology is constantly changing, as are the VFX location hotspots. At this moment in time, a truly worldwide post production industry exists, fueled in part by an explosion in big-budget comic book and sci-fi films, animated features, and TV visual effects, but bigger does not always mean better. Mid-sized facilities will prosper if they focus on some key principles: people, projects, pipeline and partners.

People should be the priority and the core of studios. They are the talent behind the tools, and while there are many similarities between the global VFX houses, the cultures and environments differ.

We have a company culture that supports our crews and helps them develop into the best artists. This sounds simple and obvious but it’s incredibly important to keep at the forefront of all our operations.

By having both a service and IP approach a studio can put a stamp on the big, fun blockbusters, but also tell more rich and complex stories. Tellingly, Cinesite is working on Otto Bathurst’s first studio feature film with Lionsgate ‘Robin Hood: Origins,’ after having recently completed work on ‘Assassin’s Creed’ for Fox and ‘Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them’ for Warner Bros. This neatly demonstrates the wide range of VFX projects we’re now working on. This runs alongside our increasing feature animated content, including our four-picture deal with 3QU Media on films such as ‘Gnome Alone’ in addition to service contracts with big studios like Sony Pictures Animation, who we’ve partnered with to bring ‘The Star’ to the big screen. Development of our animation slate

is also well underway.

Project variation within studios will ensure the work remains interesting for crews, whilst helping them adapt to market trends and shifts with greater ease as a business.

Having a solid pipeline is integral to any studio in this industry; it’s the backbone within any facility. Cinesite has worked hard to integrate the sophisticated techniques that we developed over the last 20 years in visual effects into a state-of-the-art and robust animation pipeline that’s been road tested on 200-plus movies. This allows us to push our standards for creative excellence.

The on-going investment and development has allowed us to progress from being just a VFX facility to a multimedia studio that can handle multiple projects from a centralized and stable pipeline.

Filmmaking is a collaborative process; studios’ partners must continue to reflect the ever-changing industry if they are to prosper. They must cross genres and borders to strengthen opportunities for artists and ultimately deliver benefits and opportunities for all involved.

Cinesite has had long-lasting relationships with all major Hollywood studios, independent production companies and broadcasters, however we are also forming new partnerships with multinational entertainment companies.

In recent years facilities have grown on the back of rising global demand and transformed from a niche footprint to a multinational industry. Our acquisition of Image Engine in 2015 has resulted in a fantastic partnership, positioning us to deliver worldclass visual effects and animation services to a mutual global customer base.

Bly: With the ever-increasing importance of VFX I would hope that the relationship between productions and visual effects will evolve into the dynamic seen more in earlier days of the industry. Efficiency and creativity will flourish when VFX functions as a production-side department collaborating immediately with film and episodic crews.

Imagine the potential magic if a DP who just left a production meeting stopped by the VFX department to run some camera simulations. There was a great talk two years ago at the VES Summit about how the feature

“I do hope that the industry and technology will continue to evolve so that one day, in the near future, we’ll not only be able to generate entirely photoreal CG environments but we’ll also be making films completely in CG with CG actors as well.”

—Pierre Raymond

“I think the big will get bigger.

It will be harder to be a mid-sized shop because a global network of talent and resources is essential to play at scale.”

—Ed Ulbrich

SPRING 2017

VFXVOICE.COM • 47

5/7/18 1:15 PM

INDUSTRY Q&A ROUNDTABLE

“As new entertainment forms emerge (VR, I’m looking at you), things will continue to get interesting, and VFX facilities will need to adapt.”

—David Stinnett

“The day is coming where it will make much less sense for smaller facilities to invest in infrastructure, and more sense putting that capital into web-based services such as ZYNC and FTRACK and remote artist pools.”

—Adam Stern

48 • VFXVOICE.COM SPRING 2017

86214L025a_PG 44-51 Q&A ROUND TABLE.indd 49

‘HUGO’ used this framework and it resulted in a more streamlined creative process. The big question is how well would this work for episodic?

With regard to the structure of visual effects facilities, I do believe they will remain, but they won’t look exactly how they do now. As one of the co-founders of The Molecule, I’ve gotten to watch the size and shapes of VFX facilities evolve over the past 12 years. With episodic driving a big portion of this new influx, the prevalent qualities of a VFX facility now tend to be reliability, speed and cost. Scalability has also become crucial for smaller facilities due to the seasonality and inconsistent shot orders per episode.

Couple this with recent tech advances and people finding themselves to be more productive while working from home, I definitely expect to see a shift in the traditional brick and mortar approach to forming a studio.

First we’ll see groups of collective artists working from home linked remotely as a virtual facility. Eventually, however, I can see these artists wanting to connect more in person and going together on a small shared workspace. Yes, that sounds exactly likely.

It went full circle but I see the last iteration being a blend of the current facility setup and artist collectives patched in remotely. All they will need is a cheap workstation and internet connection while all the processing power will be held in the cloud.

Moreau: Movies are now being made globally and post production isn’t done only in California, Vancouver or London.

Small- to medium-size studios now have the technical and artistic abilities to compete with the major ones at every level and raise the bar of visual effects across all mediums.

Rodeo FX has always strived to create a culture that focuses on our artists. Whenever we’ve expanded, our first consideration is that artists like to work with other great artists in an environment that encourages them and gives them space to grow. Our LA and Quebec offices are examples of how we have built that culture beyond our base in Montreal.

Rodeo FX will continue to open offices globally wherever we can find the talent and enthusiasm that helps enrich our company culture.

Block: After more than 10 years in the

industry I often get the impression that we have shifted to a mere technical team of production, which needs to work extremely efficiently with little artistic freedom. This neglects a huge potential of improvement for each show.

Often VFX work is squeezed in at the end of a production to add garnish & glamour and raise the monetary success of movies.

Some producers, directors and VFX supervisors still allow enough time for thinking, planning, experimenting and creative input.

On those occasions, we are not only the mechanical, technical, skilled partners of the film but creative partners that add real value to a movie. Those are the best productions with results we are proud of. But some have gone extinct during this rewarding process, because the budget did not match the added value of their work. Therefore, sustainable pricing for VFX is key for business development.

Regarding the fields where professional VFX and animation are executed, they have widened and will be even more various in the future. Effects will become more important, needed on many fields from research to production, VR, games, fun-parks and film.

The tools we will use to do so will change our daily routine a lot. There are real-time engines that now render light and physics simulations for dust, water and even explosions on the spot. This will be a vast improvement for decision-making processes and enhance our visions for non-real settings and creatures. At the same time the artist with knowledge, imagination, creativity and wide technical skill will become even more important, while the tool skills will change tremendously.

Virtual reality adds a new perspective to VFX and animation in filmmaking. The immersive experiences will propel storytelling, increase our possibility of taking part in movies as observers or even as actors, and question our perception of audience and film separated by screens. This will be a big challenge for the VFX industry since the framing and camera angles are not static anymore.

Overall, the technical skills will shift towards instant, photoreal programming which enables us to have easier and more natural interaction with filmed elements on a high technical level.

Soon we will be able to discuss within virtual conferences a shared model or setting, set light and camera moves interactively in a studio, discuss and modulate animation in cinesynch sessions in virtual 3D space, create characters and sets on the spot with our hand and VR goggles. The creative team gets back their artistic interfaces, like pens and brushes. Maquettes and models will be chiseled and placed in space by hands and fingertips, and eye movement will drive cameras which will send data simultaneously to VFX facilities. Our work could become more intuitive, artistic and allow for easier communication if we can all afford to invest in new techniques.

Raymond: I think the industrialization of the VFX industry will keep increasing.

Studios no longer work in competition with one another but are now working in collaboration, sharing technical expertise and assets, which makes the process more complex. I do hope, however, that the industry and technology will continue to evolve so that one day, in the near future, we’ll not only be able to generate entirely photoreal CG environments but we’ll also be making films completely in CG with CG actors as well.

Sterling & Henriques: The two of us live on the post side, so our perspective is based in that world. We don’t see VFX facilities going anywhere other than growing in importance. From where we sit, VFX leads the development of the post workflow today.

The VFX Supervisor is one of the key drivers in this phase, and that leadership will likely continue to extend into other arenas. We expect to see the efficiency of process and creative collaboration between previsualization, production, VFX and post improving significantly as cloud technology and automation tools become increasingly necessary and accepted among content producers and independent VFX producers alike.

Ulbrich: I think we are going to see a domination of the major VFX studios, with more consolidation, and a continued move toward broad capabilities and away from niches of expertise.

We’ve all seen the statistics – the highest-grossing movies are VFX and CG animation movies. They are the only ones that consistently play globally, and they

“Small- to medium-size studios now have the technical and artistic abilities to compete with the major ones at every level and raise the bar of visual effects across all mediums.”

—Sébastien Moreau

“Being amongst the best in the VFX world is not just about having the most talented creatives. It is also about having the best production support, the latest technology infrastructure and the most intelligent financial solutions. And in today’s world, that also means having global capacity and scale.”

—Namit Malhotra

“We continue to work with these global VFX facilities and production companies to be an important partner in the digital data capture process, as the industry progresses to service the increased number of ‘Windows’ to view media.”

—Parvinder Bhatia

SPRING 2017

VFXVOICE.COM • 49

5/7/18 1:15 PM

INDUSTRY Q&A ROUNDTABLE

“As new entertainment forms emerge (VR, I’m looking at you), things will continue to get interesting, and VFX facilities will need to adapt.”

—David Stinnett

“The day is coming where it will make much less sense for smaller facilities to invest in infrastructure, and more sense putting that capital into web-based services such as ZYNC and FTRACK and remote artist pools.”

—Adam Stern

48 • VFXVOICE.COM SPRING 2017

86214L025a_PG 44-51 Q&A ROUND TABLE.indd 49

‘HUGO’ used this framework and it resulted in a more streamlined creative process. The big question is how well would this work for episodic?

With regard to the structure of visual effects facilities, I do believe they will remain, but they won’t look exactly how they do now. As one of the co-founders of The Molecule, I’ve gotten to watch the size and shapes of VFX facilities evolve over the past 12 years. With episodic driving a big portion of this new influx, the prevalent qualities of a VFX facility now tend to be reliability, speed and cost. Scalability has also become crucial for smaller facilities due to the seasonality and inconsistent shot orders per episode.

Couple this with recent tech advances and people finding themselves to be more productive while working from home, I definitely expect to see a shift in the traditional brick and mortar approach to forming a studio.

First we’ll see groups of collective artists working from home linked remotely as a virtual facility. Eventually, however, I can see these artists wanting to connect more in person and going together on a small shared workspace. Yes, that sounds exactly likely.

It went full circle but I see the last iteration being a blend of the current facility setup and artist collectives patched in remotely. All they will need is a cheap workstation and internet connection while all the processing power will be held in the cloud.

Moreau: Movies are now being made globally and post production isn’t done only in California, Vancouver or London.

Small- to medium-size studios now have the technical and artistic abilities to compete with the major ones at every level and raise the bar of visual effects across all mediums.

Rodeo FX has always strived to create a culture that focuses on our artists. Whenever we’ve expanded, our first consideration is that artists like to work with other great artists in an environment that encourages them and gives them space to grow. Our LA and Quebec offices are examples of how we have built that culture beyond our base in Montreal.

Rodeo FX will continue to open offices globally wherever we can find the talent and enthusiasm that helps enrich our company culture.

Block: After more than 10 years in the

industry I often get the impression that we have shifted to a mere technical team of production, which needs to work extremely efficiently with little artistic freedom. This neglects a huge potential of improvement for each show.

Often VFX work is squeezed in at the end of a production to add garnish & glamour and raise the monetary success of movies.

Some producers, directors and VFX supervisors still allow enough time for thinking, planning, experimenting and creative input.

On those occasions, we are not only the mechanical, technical, skilled partners of the film but creative partners that add real value to a movie. Those are the best productions with results we are proud of. But some have gone extinct during this rewarding process, because the budget did not match the added value of their work. Therefore, sustainable pricing for VFX is key for business development.

Regarding the fields where professional VFX and animation are executed, they have widened and will be even more various in the future. Effects will become more important, needed on many fields from research to production, VR, games, fun-parks and film.

The tools we will use to do so will change our daily routine a lot. There are real-time engines that now render light and physics simulations for dust, water and even explosions on the spot. This will be a vast improvement for decision-making processes and enhance our visions for non-real settings and creatures. At the same time the artist with knowledge, imagination, creativity and wide technical skill will become even more important, while the tool skills will change tremendously.

Virtual reality adds a new perspective to VFX and animation in filmmaking. The immersive experiences will propel storytelling, increase our possibility of taking part in movies as observers or even as actors, and question our perception of audience and film separated by screens. This will be a big challenge for the VFX industry since the framing and camera angles are not static anymore.

Overall, the technical skills will shift towards instant, photoreal programming which enables us to have easier and more natural interaction with filmed elements on a high technical level.

Soon we will be able to discuss within virtual conferences a shared model or setting, set light and camera moves interactively in a studio, discuss and modulate animation in cinesynch sessions in virtual 3D space, create characters and sets on the spot with our hand and VR goggles. The creative team gets back their artistic interfaces, like pens and brushes. Maquettes and models will be chiseled and placed in space by hands and fingertips, and eye movement will drive cameras which will send data simultaneously to VFX facilities. Our work could become more intuitive, artistic and allow for easier communication if we can all afford to invest in new techniques.

Raymond: I think the industrialization of the VFX industry will keep increasing.

Studios no longer work in competition with one another but are now working in collaboration, sharing technical expertise and assets, which makes the process more complex. I do hope, however, that the industry and technology will continue to evolve so that one day, in the near future, we’ll not only be able to generate entirely photoreal CG environments but we’ll also be making films completely in CG with CG actors as well.

Sterling & Henriques: The two of us live on the post side, so our perspective is based in that world. We don’t see VFX facilities going anywhere other than growing in importance. From where we sit, VFX leads the development of the post workflow today.

The VFX Supervisor is one of the key drivers in this phase, and that leadership will likely continue to extend into other arenas. We expect to see the efficiency of process and creative collaboration between previsualization, production, VFX and post improving significantly as cloud technology and automation tools become increasingly necessary and accepted among content producers and independent VFX producers alike.

Ulbrich: I think we are going to see a domination of the major VFX studios, with more consolidation, and a continued move toward broad capabilities and away from niches of expertise.

We’ve all seen the statistics – the highest-grossing movies are VFX and CG animation movies. They are the only ones that consistently play globally, and they

“Small- to medium-size studios now have the technical and artistic abilities to compete with the major ones at every level and raise the bar of visual effects across all mediums.”

—Sébastien Moreau

“Being amongst the best in the VFX world is not just about having the most talented creatives. It is also about having the best production support, the latest technology infrastructure and the most intelligent financial solutions. And in today’s world, that also means having global capacity and scale.”

—Namit Malhotra

“We continue to work with these global VFX facilities and production companies to be an important partner in the digital data capture process, as the industry progresses to service the increased number of ‘Windows’ to view media.”

—Parvinder Bhatia

SPRING 2017

VFXVOICE.COM • 49

5/7/18 1:15 PM

INDUSTRY Q&A ROUNDTABLE

“There is room for, say, a studio to develop and sell a B2B or directto-consumer visual effects service.”

—Neville Spiteri

“Our work could become more intuitive, artistic and allow for easier communication if we can all afford to invest in new techniques.”

—Andrea Block

50 • VFXVOICE.COM SPRING 2017

86214L025a_PG 44-51 Q&A ROUND TABLE.indd 51

increasingly dominate global box office. So there’s a focus on blockbusters across the industry. Studios appeal to their shareholders by putting release dates on movies years in advance, so we now have visibility into their pipelines that we didn’t necessarily have before. We’re also seeing the evolution of the blockbuster – from CG-effects-heavy in the ’90s to the explosion in animated features, to more CG actors, to where we are now, with features that are hybrids of CG and live action – like ‘Avatar’ and ‘The Jungle Book.’

To create those kinds of movies, the demand is for studios with world-class talent in multiple geographies that can scale and expand their capacity dynamically anywhere in the world, with the depth of resources to ensure security. The ability to have integrated global production capacity that can optimize favorable local economics, low-cost labor centers, technology centers, and move work around the world seamlessly to optimize talent, costs and drive utilization of those facilities is the model that serves the studios’ needs while enabling VFX companies to run viable businesses.

I think the big will get bigger. It will be harder to be a mid-sized shop because a global network of talent and resources is essential to play at scale.

Morie: We live in exciting times for the development of new media forms. We are seeing the birth of fully immersive, agency-driven Virtual Reality (VR), for example, as well as new forms of Augmented Reality (AR) that allow a seamless blending of imaginary, custom built or replicated elements with our immediate physical world.

Any production pipeline created for new forms of media will require many of the same skills and techniques that we have developed over the past several decades to enhance all forms of moving image media. New media forms will include the best of what has gone before as well as incremental advances in techniques we have used to great effect to provide entertaining, thought-provoking and meaningful works of art. These new forms will also invent additional techniques, innovative methods of production, new ways to blend realities in ways almost unimaginable today. They will bring in the participant as an active partner in creation, and involve

ingenious and original ways of supporting this change in our traditional audience.

The same inventive spirit that created computer graphics, motion capture, blue and green screens, rotoscoping, compositing, digital characters, miniatures, simulation techniques and more are in the DNA of our industry.

Stern: I do believe traditional VFX facilities will persist, but I think one potential model could be that of VFX ‘hub’ facilities, where a core studio manages some level of infrastructure, client meetings, internal concept department, review session capability, and a small core team of artists, but that the same facility takes advantage of new technologies to increase artist rosters and rendering capacity on the fly.

This seems like something smaller studios might be able to take better, immediate advantage of. Tent pole projects will require higher levels of secure, controlled infrastructure and staffing for years to come, and I can see it being quite difficult to move away from that model. Smaller studios, however, may be able to take faster advantage of burst-rendering and ‘burst-staffing’ by bringing in remote artists on the fly. Particularly when it comes to independent film projects and episodic television.

This is obviously not without challenges, especially regarding security and bandwidth. But the day is coming where it will make much less sense for smaller facilities to invest in infrastructure, and more sense putting that capital into web-based services such as ZYNC and FTRACK and remote artist pools.

Bhatia: Visual effects and animation continue to play a very important role in enhancing cinematic experience, and creating visuals, which are able to take the director’s vision to the next level. With content production going global, VFX facilities have created pipelines to service these demands. We continue to work with these global VFX facilities and production companies to be an important partner in the digital data capture process, as the industry progresses to service the increased number of “Windows” to view media.

Malhotra: The VFX facility business model is here to stay. As VFX becomes more and more integral to an ever-expanding

universe of media production, so does the need to deliver at a highly professional level of quality. Clients, whatever the medium they are producing for, are looking for assurances not only of quality, but also the ability to deliver on time and on budget. Being amongst the best in the VFX world is not just about having the most talented creatives.

It is also about having the best production support, the latest technology infrastructure and the most intelligent financial solutions.

And in today’s world, that also means having global capacity and scale.

Spiteri: The visual effects industry has largely operated on a work-for-hire, service-oriented business model since the early days of media production. Studios both big and small will likely continue to work that way as long as movies, television shows and the like continue to require those services, though there is room for, say, a studio to develop and sell a B2B or direct-toconsumer visual effects service.

Stinnett: I think facilities that are content with doing exclusively classic visual effects for film and television will always be around, and at least for the near future can continue to operate within the traditional facility model. Film and episodic production aren’t going away any time soon, even if the delivery platforms are changing. That being said, business models in VFX are changing.

There has always been a constant demand to deliver better, faster and more cost effectively, but that hill always seems to be getting steeper. Advances in rendering (GPU, cloud) are helping many in the industry work more efficiently and iterate more frequently.

Flexibility and adaptability have been the key to our longevity. We have never been a “traditional” VFX facility because in addition to traditional film/television VFX, we have always worked in special venue, games, advertising, and design as well. While creative workflows and pipelines developed to produce projects across these arenas tend to be complementary, our ever-evolving pipeline is flexible enough to allow us to take whatever projects that we find interesting and challenging. As new entertainment forms emerge (VR, I’m looking at you), things will continue to get interesting, and VFX facilities will need to adapt.

“As the media production industry adopts cloud tools, you’ll see smaller studios and production houses become far more competitive with the big names.”

—Alex Mahon

“VFX facilities need to invest in and build collaborative workflows that empower their VFX artists and breed creativity as they step outside their comfortable zones and take on new skills.”

—Dan May

“I definitely expect to see a shift in the traditional brick and mortar approach to forming a studio.”

—Andrew Bly

SPRING 2017

VFXVOICE.COM • 51

5/7/18 1:15 PM

INDUSTRY Q&A ROUNDTABLE

“There is room for, say, a studio to develop and sell a B2B or directto-consumer visual effects service.”

—Neville Spiteri

“Our work could become more intuitive, artistic and allow for easier communication if we can all afford to invest in new techniques.”

—Andrea Block

50 • VFXVOICE.COM SPRING 2017

86214L025a_PG 44-51 Q&A ROUND TABLE.indd 51

increasingly dominate global box office. So there’s a focus on blockbusters across the industry. Studios appeal to their shareholders by putting release dates on movies years in advance, so we now have visibility into their pipelines that we didn’t necessarily have before. We’re also seeing the evolution of the blockbuster – from CG-effects-heavy in the ’90s to the explosion in animated features, to more CG actors, to where we are now, with features that are hybrids of CG and live action – like ‘Avatar’ and ‘The Jungle Book.’

To create those kinds of movies, the demand is for studios with world-class talent in multiple geographies that can scale and expand their capacity dynamically anywhere in the world, with the depth of resources to ensure security. The ability to have integrated global production capacity that can optimize favorable local economics, low-cost labor centers, technology centers, and move work around the world seamlessly to optimize talent, costs and drive utilization of those facilities is the model that serves the studios’ needs while enabling VFX companies to run viable businesses.

I think the big will get bigger. It will be harder to be a mid-sized shop because a global network of talent and resources is essential to play at scale.

Morie: We live in exciting times for the development of new media forms. We are seeing the birth of fully immersive, agency-driven Virtual Reality (VR), for example, as well as new forms of Augmented Reality (AR) that allow a seamless blending of imaginary, custom built or replicated elements with our immediate physical world.

Any production pipeline created for new forms of media will require many of the same skills and techniques that we have developed over the past several decades to enhance all forms of moving image media. New media forms will include the best of what has gone before as well as incremental advances in techniques we have used to great effect to provide entertaining, thought-provoking and meaningful works of art. These new forms will also invent additional techniques, innovative methods of production, new ways to blend realities in ways almost unimaginable today. They will bring in the participant as an active partner in creation, and involve

ingenious and original ways of supporting this change in our traditional audience.

The same inventive spirit that created computer graphics, motion capture, blue and green screens, rotoscoping, compositing, digital characters, miniatures, simulation techniques and more are in the DNA of our industry.

Stern: I do believe traditional VFX facilities will persist, but I think one potential model could be that of VFX ‘hub’ facilities, where a core studio manages some level of infrastructure, client meetings, internal concept department, review session capability, and a small core team of artists, but that the same facility takes advantage of new technologies to increase artist rosters and rendering capacity on the fly.

This seems like something smaller studios might be able to take better, immediate advantage of. Tent pole projects will require higher levels of secure, controlled infrastructure and staffing for years to come, and I can see it being quite difficult to move away from that model. Smaller studios, however, may be able to take faster advantage of burst-rendering and ‘burst-staffing’ by bringing in remote artists on the fly. Particularly when it comes to independent film projects and episodic television.

This is obviously not without challenges, especially regarding security and bandwidth. But the day is coming where it will make much less sense for smaller facilities to invest in infrastructure, and more sense putting that capital into web-based services such as ZYNC and FTRACK and remote artist pools.

Bhatia: Visual effects and animation continue to play a very important role in enhancing cinematic experience, and creating visuals, which are able to take the director’s vision to the next level. With content production going global, VFX facilities have created pipelines to service these demands. We continue to work with these global VFX facilities and production companies to be an important partner in the digital data capture process, as the industry progresses to service the increased number of “Windows” to view media.

Malhotra: The VFX facility business model is here to stay. As VFX becomes more and more integral to an ever-expanding

universe of media production, so does the need to deliver at a highly professional level of quality. Clients, whatever the medium they are producing for, are looking for assurances not only of quality, but also the ability to deliver on time and on budget. Being amongst the best in the VFX world is not just about having the most talented creatives.

It is also about having the best production support, the latest technology infrastructure and the most intelligent financial solutions.

And in today’s world, that also means having global capacity and scale.

Spiteri: The visual effects industry has largely operated on a work-for-hire, service-oriented business model since the early days of media production. Studios both big and small will likely continue to work that way as long as movies, television shows and the like continue to require those services, though there is room for, say, a studio to develop and sell a B2B or direct-toconsumer visual effects service.

Stinnett: I think facilities that are content with doing exclusively classic visual effects for film and television will always be around, and at least for the near future can continue to operate within the traditional facility model. Film and episodic production aren’t going away any time soon, even if the delivery platforms are changing. That being said, business models in VFX are changing.

There has always been a constant demand to deliver better, faster and more cost effectively, but that hill always seems to be getting steeper. Advances in rendering (GPU, cloud) are helping many in the industry work more efficiently and iterate more frequently.

Flexibility and adaptability have been the key to our longevity. We have never been a “traditional” VFX facility because in addition to traditional film/television VFX, we have always worked in special venue, games, advertising, and design as well. While creative workflows and pipelines developed to produce projects across these arenas tend to be complementary, our ever-evolving pipeline is flexible enough to allow us to take whatever projects that we find interesting and challenging. As new entertainment forms emerge (VR, I’m looking at you), things will continue to get interesting, and VFX facilities will need to adapt.

“As the media production industry adopts cloud tools, you’ll see smaller studios and production houses become far more competitive with the big names.”

—Alex Mahon

“VFX facilities need to invest in and build collaborative workflows that empower their VFX artists and breed creativity as they step outside their comfortable zones and take on new skills.”

—Dan May

“I definitely expect to see a shift in the traditional brick and mortar approach to forming a studio.”

—Andrew Bly

SPRING 2017

VFXVOICE.COM • 51

5/7/18 1:15 PM

SFX

JOHN RICHARDSON: ON BOND, POTTER, REALITY AND MAGIC

By DEBRA KAUFMAN

BOTTOM: A large explosion for the film Aces: Iron Eagle III, directed by John Glen.

Filmed in Arizona, Richardson was responsible for the liveaction effects, directing the model unit and effects and also some of the second unit.

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John Richardson – the man who supervised special effects for all the Harry Potter films and nine James Bond movies – was born to be a special effects supervisor. His father, Cliff Richardson, was one of special effects’ pioneers, starting in the business in 1921 and working with Alfred Hitchcock and Ealing Studios in their early days.

“My father was absolutely my first mentor,” says Richardson.

“I grew up with special effects, going to film sets whenever I could as a small boy.”

During school holidays, Richardson went on location with his father, first when he was 13, for Exodus with Otto Preminger and then for Lawrence of Arabia with David Lean. On Exodus, he was soon assisting with special effects, helping out in accounting and appearing as a kibbutz guard “extra.” But SFX was what stuck.

“All those explosions and fires and exciting things got it in my blood,” he says. Not that Richardson Sr. approved: “Dad felt that I was going to come into the industry over his dead body,” says Richardson. “He didn’t feel the film industry was stable enough.

But I won in the end.”

Carl Foreman’s The Victors in 1962 was Richardson’s first film after leaving school; he next went to Malaysia with his father to make The 7th Dawn. “These were all big-budget movies,” says Richardson. “My father was doing the effects and his assistant was me, a 16-year-old boy.” Richardson continued to assist his father on movies that included Battle of Britain, and had his first solo

outing as a SFX supervisor on Duffy. “My dad got a nice letter from [director] Bob Parrish, which pleased him enormously,” he says.

Father and son continued to work together until 1970 and The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, directed by Billy Wilder.

Richardson credits his father for much of his education as a special effects artist. “I learned a lot of things from my dad, none more important than how to blow up things safely,” says Richardson. “Anything to do with explosives, you really have got to know what you’re doing because peoples’ lives are at risk.”

Richardson Sr. also schooled his son in model work. “There’s a real learning curve to models,” he says. “You need to know about camera speeds and all the tricks to make it look real. My father had done a lot of that back in his time, and I learned a certain amount from him.” Richardson also notes that he had a natural leaning towards mechanical engineering. “Although I was never fully trained in it, it came pretty naturally to me, and that was a large part of the special effects job,” he says.

His work on Ken Russell’s The Devils and Sam Peckinpah’s Straw Dogs, both in 1971, were a turning point for his career. “They were both very hard directors to work with, but interesting and I learned a lot,” says Richardson. “And it got me an awful lot of publicity.” Over the next five years, the movies rolled in: The Day of the Jackal (Fred Zinneman); The Little Prince (Stanley Donen); The Great Gatsby (Jack Clayton); Barry Lyndon (Stanley Kubrick); Rollerball (Norman Jewison); Lucky Lady (Donen); The Omen (Richard Donner); and A Bridge Too Far (Richard Attenborough) are just some of his credits from that era.

With 1967’s Casino Royale he began the first of nine James Bond movies, for some of which he was named visual effects supervisor, since all the effects were done in camera.

“Back in the 1980s, we did live action with models, foreground miniatures, front projection, back projection,” he says. “And I used to be responsible for the model unit, which I directed myself and sometimes also did some of the 2nd unit helicopter work. I had, I would say, a very good knowledge of the whole effects world.”

He took that comprehensive role on Octopussy, A View to a Kill, The Living Daylights and License to Kill. (In the 2000s he also was SFX and model FX supervisor on James Bond films Tomorrow Never Dies, The World Is Not Enough and Die Another Day.) He also took on that more comprehensive role on several other blockbusters, including John Glen’s Aces: Iron Eagle III, Ron Howard’s Far and Away, Renny Harlin’s Cliffhanger and

TOP: John Richardson fronts the effects crew gathered on one of the last of the Harry Potter series.

BOTTOM LEFT: Richardson discussing a Potter shot with, left to right: David Yates, Tim Burke, John Richardson, Ricky Farns.

BOTTOM RIGHT: Richardson testing a modified 2nd World War flamethrower on A Bridge Too Far. George Gibbs, assistant, is behind Richardson.

“With storyboards, you still had flexibility around them, a little more freedom to be creative. With previs, which is basically a cartoon, it somehow translates as that down to the movie. So, you’ll see a plane flying straight towards the camera, and it flies straight towards the lens. You lose the reality.”

—John Richardson

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SFX

JOHN RICHARDSON: ON BOND, POTTER, REALITY AND MAGIC

By DEBRA KAUFMAN

BOTTOM: A large explosion for the film Aces: Iron Eagle III, directed by John Glen.

Filmed in Arizona, Richardson was responsible for the liveaction effects, directing the model unit and effects and also some of the second unit.

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John Richardson – the man who supervised special effects for all the Harry Potter films and nine James Bond movies – was born to be a special effects supervisor. His father, Cliff Richardson, was one of special effects’ pioneers, starting in the business in 1921 and working with Alfred Hitchcock and Ealing Studios in their early days.

“My father was absolutely my first mentor,” says Richardson.

“I grew up with special effects, going to film sets whenever I could as a small boy.”

During school holidays, Richardson went on location with his father, first when he was 13, for Exodus with Otto Preminger and then for Lawrence of Arabia with David Lean. On Exodus, he was soon assisting with special effects, helping out in accounting and appearing as a kibbutz guard “extra.” But SFX was what stuck.

“All those explosions and fires and exciting things got it in my blood,” he says. Not that Richardson Sr. approved: “Dad felt that I was going to come into the industry over his dead body,” says Richardson. “He didn’t feel the film industry was stable enough.

But I won in the end.”

Carl Foreman’s The Victors in 1962 was Richardson’s first film after leaving school; he next went to Malaysia with his father to make The 7th Dawn. “These were all big-budget movies,” says Richardson. “My father was doing the effects and his assistant was me, a 16-year-old boy.” Richardson continued to assist his father on movies that included Battle of Britain, and had his first solo

outing as a SFX supervisor on Duffy. “My dad got a nice letter from [director] Bob Parrish, which pleased him enormously,” he says.

Father and son continued to work together until 1970 and The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, directed by Billy Wilder.

Richardson credits his father for much of his education as a special effects artist. “I learned a lot of things from my dad, none more important than how to blow up things safely,” says Richardson. “Anything to do with explosives, you really have got to know what you’re doing because peoples’ lives are at risk.”

Richardson Sr. also schooled his son in model work. “There’s a real learning curve to models,” he says. “You need to know about camera speeds and all the tricks to make it look real. My father had done a lot of that back in his time, and I learned a certain amount from him.” Richardson also notes that he had a natural leaning towards mechanical engineering. “Although I was never fully trained in it, it came pretty naturally to me, and that was a large part of the special effects job,” he says.

His work on Ken Russell’s The Devils and Sam Peckinpah’s Straw Dogs, both in 1971, were a turning point for his career. “They were both very hard directors to work with, but interesting and I learned a lot,” says Richardson. “And it got me an awful lot of publicity.” Over the next five years, the movies rolled in: The Day of the Jackal (Fred Zinneman); The Little Prince (Stanley Donen); The Great Gatsby (Jack Clayton); Barry Lyndon (Stanley Kubrick); Rollerball (Norman Jewison); Lucky Lady (Donen); The Omen (Richard Donner); and A Bridge Too Far (Richard Attenborough) are just some of his credits from that era.

With 1967’s Casino Royale he began the first of nine James Bond movies, for some of which he was named visual effects supervisor, since all the effects were done in camera.

“Back in the 1980s, we did live action with models, foreground miniatures, front projection, back projection,” he says. “And I used to be responsible for the model unit, which I directed myself and sometimes also did some of the 2nd unit helicopter work. I had, I would say, a very good knowledge of the whole effects world.”

He took that comprehensive role on Octopussy, A View to a Kill, The Living Daylights and License to Kill. (In the 2000s he also was SFX and model FX supervisor on James Bond films Tomorrow Never Dies, The World Is Not Enough and Die Another Day.) He also took on that more comprehensive role on several other blockbusters, including John Glen’s Aces: Iron Eagle III, Ron Howard’s Far and Away, Renny Harlin’s Cliffhanger and

TOP: John Richardson fronts the effects crew gathered on one of the last of the Harry Potter series.

BOTTOM LEFT: Richardson discussing a Potter shot with, left to right: David Yates, Tim Burke, John Richardson, Ricky Farns.

BOTTOM RIGHT: Richardson testing a modified 2nd World War flamethrower on A Bridge Too Far. George Gibbs, assistant, is behind Richardson.

“With storyboards, you still had flexibility around them, a little more freedom to be creative. With previs, which is basically a cartoon, it somehow translates as that down to the movie. So, you’ll see a plane flying straight towards the camera, and it flies straight towards the lens. You lose the reality.”

—John Richardson

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SFX

TOP LEFT and RIGHT: James Bond’s boat jammed on a rock at the top of the Iguazu Falls in Brazil. The boat got stuck while filming on Moonraker and somehow it fell to Richardson, the FX Supervisor, to try and find a way to shift it. Richardson says the worst part was listening to the stitches on his harness breaking while he was dangling over the boat. Fortunately, John Morris, part of the FX team, was on the helicopter winch and he managed get Richardson up into the helicopter before anything broke completely. Richardson says they did get rid of the boat in the end so that they could continue filming.

BOTTOM LEFT: Richardson driving a Jaguar car with a Polearm mounted in the middle. The Bede Jet could bank from side to side controlled by an air-pressurized hydraulic rig. Richardson was able to drive through the hangar at about 75 mph for the opening sequence of Octopussy. The plane flying into and exiting the hangar was filmed with FG miniatures in front of the real hangar. Richardson says that with Bond films he and his team tried to do as much as possible in camera.

BOTTOM RIGHT: Richardson standing on a camera platform for filming plates and live action for A View to a Kill. He says if you look very closely you can probably see how white his knuckles were!

Glen Gordon Carron’s Love Affair. “Back in the 1960s through 1980s, effects budgets were much smaller,” recalls Richardson.

“Consequently crews were a lot smaller, and one had to be a lot more inventive. Things started to change after the first Star Wars, but it was very gradual and didn’t change a lot until the 1990s.”

The change was gradual, in part, because digital effects were constrained by the limited abilities of hardware and software – and the cost of burgeoning technology. “Initially, because it was an expensive process, we would always get asked by directors and producers if I could do it for real, because it would be cheaper,” he says. “That’s something that’s slipped in the last 15 years.”

Some directors still have a preference for doing as much as possible in-camera. Richardson notes that both Alfonso Cuarón and Christopher Columbus wanted to do as much in-camera as possible on their Harry Potter films. He adds that SFX supervisor Chris Corbould works with Christopher Nolan, who also creates as many in-camera effects as possible.

Richardson declares he isn’t decrying CGI work – “it’s a wonderful tool” – but still believes that in-camera effects have advantages. “Actors have got something they can react to,” he says.

“A director has something in front of him he can see, and has an opportunity to move around it with the camera and choose other angles.” He believes that the transition from storyboards, which he

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always worked from in the past, to digital previsualization plays a role in changing the feeling of the movie.

“With storyboards, you still had flexibility around them, a little more freedom to be creative,” he says. “With previs, which is basically a cartoon, it somehow translates as that down to the movie.

So, you’ll see a plane flying straight towards the camera, and it flies straight towards the lens. You lose the reality.”

“CGI does some brilliant work, but it needs to be looked at very carefully,” he says. “My maxim is, whatever the effects you’re doing, first, can you do it for real? If you can’t do it for real, how much of it can you do for real? And then, what you can’t do, CGI can help you.”

He’s well aware of the fact that he’s going against the current.

“Sadly the art of SFX is being lost,” he says. “There are a few guys out there who do great work, but they can only do as much as they are asked to do or allowed to do.”

Among his favorite films he’s worked on, Richardson is proud of all the James Bond titles and also picks 1986’s Aliens with director James Cameron. “We didn’t have CGI back then,” he says. “It was all done with in-camera models and live-action effects. We used every trick we had on that film – and huge credit to Jim Cameron.

He is a hard taskmaster but one of the best directors I’ve worked with, and Aliens still stands out.” (Richardson won a special effects Oscar in 1986-87 for Aliens.)

Another director he enjoyed working with was Richard Donner whom he dubs “probably my favorite director of all times.”

“He was fun to work with,” says Richardson. “As a director, he gets more out of the crew than with anyone else I’ve worked with.”

Although, Richardson finds it difficult to pick a “favorite” among his long list of credits, because his work covers such a vast swath of genres and techniques, one standout is Lucky Lady, which was shot entirely at sea. “Working at sea is not the easiest at the best of times, but when you’re blowing up boats day after day, it becomes challenging,” he says. Raise the Titanic, although not a big box-office hit, required underwater work with models, and Deep Blue Sea, with Renny Harlin, was another film that involved underwater work, with a director who loved in-camera effects.

The Harry Potter films are an example of the evolution of digital effects, says Richardson, who notes that SFX played a bigger role in the first films, The Philosopher’s Stone (2001), The Chamber of Secrets (2002) and The Prisoner of Azkaban (2004), than the later ones. “I’m really proud of all eight Potter films,” he says. “It’s such a classically well-made piece of filmmaking and great kudos to be a part of that.”

The future of special effects is unknown. Although the industry is busier than ever with bigger pictures and bigger budgets, Richardson says SFX is a dying art unless more directors choose to do in-camera work. But he says, special effects still offers two crucial qualities in an era in which the “how they did it” of digital effects has become more widespread.

“Reality and magic are two words that keep coming up for me,” he says. “Special effects puts reality into movies and keeps the mystery of the magic, so the audiences are still trying to work out how you did it. As soon as they know, the magic is gone.”

“Reality and magic are two words that keep coming up for me. Special effects puts reality into movies and keeps the mystery of the magic, so the audiences are still trying to work out how you did it. As soon as they know, the magic is gone.”

—John Richardson TOP: Richardson with father Cliff in his “Laboratory” at home (mum is showing a little interest there, too).

The time is 1951.

BOTTOM: For a scene in Octopussy, a hangar was blown up on the backlot at Pinewood Studios.

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VES AWARDS

VISUAL EFFECTS ARTISTRY IN THE SPOTLIGHT

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Captions include all members of an Award-winning team. For more show photos and a complete list of nominees and winners of the 2017 VES Awards visit visualeffectssociety.com (All photos by: Danny Moloshok and Phil McCarten) 1. Anticipation builds as the 15th Annual VES Awards is about to begin.

2. The view of the International Ballroom at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, Los Angeles, at the 15th Annual VES Awards.

3. Patton Oswalt hosts the VES Awards show.

4. VES Chair Mike Chambers announces nominees and winners in the compositing field.

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On Feb. 7, 2017, the Visual Effects Society held the 15th Annual VES Awards, the prestigious yearly celebration that recognizes outstanding visual effects artistry and innovation in film, animation, television, commercials, video games and special venues.

Comedian Patton Oswalt served as host to the more than 1,000 guests gathered at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, Los Angeles, to celebrate VFX talent in 24 awards categories and herald the VES’s 20th anniversary.

The Jungle Book was named photoreal feature film winner, earning five awards. Kubo and the Two Strings was named top animated film. Game of Thrones was named best photoreal episode and garnered five awards. And John Lewis: Buster the Boxer won top honors in the commercial field.

Director Taika Waititi presented the VES Visionary Award to acclaimed producer and Marvel Studios Executive Vice President of Physical Production Victoria Alonso.

Jim Morris, VES, President, Pixar Animation Studios, presented the VES Lifetime Achievement Award to multiple Academy Award®-winning visual effects pioneer Ken Ralston.

Awards presenters included directors Gareth Edwards and Albert Hughes, Yara Shahidi, Auli’I Cravalho, Jessica Parker Kennedy and Brenton Thwaites.

5. Eric Roth, Executive Director of the Visual Effects Society, heralds the 20th Anniversary of the organization.

6. Victoria Alonso accepts her VES Visionary Award.

7. Ken Ralston receives his Lifetime Achievement Award.

8. Presenters Jeffrey A. Okun, VES, and director Albert Hughes greet the crowd.

9. The VES Award for Outstanding Visual Effects in a Photoreal Feature went to The Jungle Book and the team of Robert Legato, Joyce Cox, Andrew R. Jones, Adam Valdez and JD Schwalm.

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VES AWARDS

VISUAL EFFECTS ARTISTRY IN THE SPOTLIGHT

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Captions include all members of an Award-winning team. For more show photos and a complete list of nominees and winners of the 2017 VES Awards visit visualeffectssociety.com (All photos by: Danny Moloshok and Phil McCarten) 1. Anticipation builds as the 15th Annual VES Awards is about to begin.

2. The view of the International Ballroom at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, Los Angeles, at the 15th Annual VES Awards.

3. Patton Oswalt hosts the VES Awards show.

4. VES Chair Mike Chambers announces nominees and winners in the compositing field.

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On Feb. 7, 2017, the Visual Effects Society held the 15th Annual VES Awards, the prestigious yearly celebration that recognizes outstanding visual effects artistry and innovation in film, animation, television, commercials, video games and special venues.

Comedian Patton Oswalt served as host to the more than 1,000 guests gathered at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, Los Angeles, to celebrate VFX talent in 24 awards categories and herald the VES’s 20th anniversary.

The Jungle Book was named photoreal feature film winner, earning five awards. Kubo and the Two Strings was named top animated film. Game of Thrones was named best photoreal episode and garnered five awards. And John Lewis: Buster the Boxer won top honors in the commercial field.

Director Taika Waititi presented the VES Visionary Award to acclaimed producer and Marvel Studios Executive Vice President of Physical Production Victoria Alonso.

Jim Morris, VES, President, Pixar Animation Studios, presented the VES Lifetime Achievement Award to multiple Academy Award®-winning visual effects pioneer Ken Ralston.

Awards presenters included directors Gareth Edwards and Albert Hughes, Yara Shahidi, Auli’I Cravalho, Jessica Parker Kennedy and Brenton Thwaites.

5. Eric Roth, Executive Director of the Visual Effects Society, heralds the 20th Anniversary of the organization.

6. Victoria Alonso accepts her VES Visionary Award.

7. Ken Ralston receives his Lifetime Achievement Award.

8. Presenters Jeffrey A. Okun, VES, and director Albert Hughes greet the crowd.

9. The VES Award for Outstanding Visual Effects in a Photoreal Feature went to The Jungle Book and the team of Robert Legato, Joyce Cox, Andrew R. Jones, Adam Valdez and JD Schwalm.

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VES AWARDS 10. The VES Award for Outstanding Visual Effects in an Animated Feature went to Kubo and the Two Strings and the team of Travis Knight, Arianne Sutner, Steve Emerson and Brad Schiff.

11. The VES Award for Outstanding Compositing in a Photoreal Episode went to Game of Thrones; Battle of the Bastards Retaking; Winterfell and the team of Dominic Hellier, Thijs Noij, Caleb Thompson and Morgan Jones.

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12. The VES Award for Outstanding Effects Simulations in an Episode, Commercial, or Real-Time project went to Game of Thrones; Battle of the Bastards; Meereen City and the team of Thomas Hullin, Dominik Kirouac, James Dong and Xavier Fourmond.

13. The VES Award for Outstanding Created Environment in an Episode, Commercial or Real-Time Project went to Game of Thrones; Battle of the Bastards; Meereen City and the team of Deak Ferrand, Dominic Daigle, Francois Croteau and Alexandru Banuta.

14. The VES Award for Outstanding Visual Effects in a Photoreal Episode went to Game of Thrones; Battle of the Bastards and the team of Joe Bauer, Steve Kullback, Glenn Melenhorst, Matthew Rouleau and Sam Conway.

15. The VES Award for Outstanding Animated Performance in an Episode or Real-Time Project went to Game of Thrones; Battle of the Bastards; Drogon and the team of James Kinnings, Michael Holzl, Matt Derksen, and Joseph Hoback.

16. The VES Award for Outstanding Effects Simulations in a Photoreal Feature went to The Jungle Book: Nature Effects and the team of Oliver Winwood, Fabian Nowak, David Schneider and Ludovic Ramisandraina.

17. The VES Award for Outstanding Model in a Photoreal or Animated Project went to Deepwater Horizon; Deepwater Horizon Rig and the team of Kevin Lau, Jean Bolte, Kim Vongbunyong and Kevin Sprout.

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18. The VES Award for Outstanding Visual Effects in a Special Venue Project went to Pirates of the Caribbean; Battle for the Sunken Treasure and the team of Amy Jupiter, Hayden Landis, David Lester and Bill George.

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VES AWARDS 10. The VES Award for Outstanding Visual Effects in an Animated Feature went to Kubo and the Two Strings and the team of Travis Knight, Arianne Sutner, Steve Emerson and Brad Schiff.

11. The VES Award for Outstanding Compositing in a Photoreal Episode went to Game of Thrones; Battle of the Bastards Retaking; Winterfell and the team of Dominic Hellier, Thijs Noij, Caleb Thompson and Morgan Jones.

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12. The VES Award for Outstanding Effects Simulations in an Episode, Commercial, or Real-Time project went to Game of Thrones; Battle of the Bastards; Meereen City and the team of Thomas Hullin, Dominik Kirouac, James Dong and Xavier Fourmond.

13. The VES Award for Outstanding Created Environment in an Episode, Commercial or Real-Time Project went to Game of Thrones; Battle of the Bastards; Meereen City and the team of Deak Ferrand, Dominic Daigle, Francois Croteau and Alexandru Banuta.

14. The VES Award for Outstanding Visual Effects in a Photoreal Episode went to Game of Thrones; Battle of the Bastards and the team of Joe Bauer, Steve Kullback, Glenn Melenhorst, Matthew Rouleau and Sam Conway.

15. The VES Award for Outstanding Animated Performance in an Episode or Real-Time Project went to Game of Thrones; Battle of the Bastards; Drogon and the team of James Kinnings, Michael Holzl, Matt Derksen, and Joseph Hoback.

16. The VES Award for Outstanding Effects Simulations in a Photoreal Feature went to The Jungle Book: Nature Effects and the team of Oliver Winwood, Fabian Nowak, David Schneider and Ludovic Ramisandraina.

17. The VES Award for Outstanding Model in a Photoreal or Animated Project went to Deepwater Horizon; Deepwater Horizon Rig and the team of Kevin Lau, Jean Bolte, Kim Vongbunyong and Kevin Sprout.

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18. The VES Award for Outstanding Visual Effects in a Special Venue Project went to Pirates of the Caribbean; Battle for the Sunken Treasure and the team of Amy Jupiter, Hayden Landis, David Lester and Bill George.

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VES AWARDS

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19. The VES Award for Outstanding Supporting Visual Effects in a Photoreal Episode went to Black Sails; XX and the team of Erik Henry, Terron Pratt, Aladino Debert, Yafei Wu and Paul Stephenson.

26. The VES Award for Outstanding Compositing in a Photoreal Commercial went to John Lewis Buster the Boxer and the team of Tom Harding, Alex Snookers, David Filipe and Andreas Feix.

20. The VES Award for Outstanding Virtual Cinematography in a Photoreal Project went to The Jungle Book and the team of Bill Pope, Robert Legato, Gary Roberts and John Brennan.

27. The VES Award for Outstanding Animated Performance in a Photoreal Feature went to The Jungle Book; King Louie and the team of Paul Story, Dennis Yoo, Jack Tema and Andrei Coval.

21. The VES Award for Outstanding Created Environment in a Photoreal Feature went to Doctor Strange; New York City and the team of Adam Watkins, Martijn Van Herk, Tim Belsher and Jon Mitchell.

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22. The VES Award for Outstanding Animated Performance in a Commercial went to John Lewis Buster The Boxer and the team of Tim van Hussen, David Bryan, Chloe Dawe and Maximilian Mallmann.

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28. The VES Award for Outstanding Visual Effects in a Real- Time Project went to Unchartered 4 and the team of Bruce Straley, Eben Cook and Iki Ikram.

29. Awards Duo: Lifetime Achievement recipient Ken Ralston and Visionary Award recipient Victoria Alonso share a moment.

23. The VES Award for Outstanding Compositing in a Photoreal Feature went to The Jungle Book and the team of Christoph Salzman, Masaki Mitchell, Matthew Adams and Max Stummer.

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24. The VES Award for Outstanding Supporting Visual Effects in a Photoreal Feature went to Deepwater Horizon and the team of Craig Hammack, Petra Holtorf-Stratton, Jason Snell, John Galloway and Burt Dalton.

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25. The VES Award for Outstanding Effects Simulations in an Animated Feature went to Moana and the team of Marc Henry Bryant, David Hutchins, Ben Frost and Dale Mayeda.

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VES AWARDS

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19. The VES Award for Outstanding Supporting Visual Effects in a Photoreal Episode went to Black Sails; XX and the team of Erik Henry, Terron Pratt, Aladino Debert, Yafei Wu and Paul Stephenson.

26. The VES Award for Outstanding Compositing in a Photoreal Commercial went to John Lewis Buster the Boxer and the team of Tom Harding, Alex Snookers, David Filipe and Andreas Feix.

20. The VES Award for Outstanding Virtual Cinematography in a Photoreal Project went to The Jungle Book and the team of Bill Pope, Robert Legato, Gary Roberts and John Brennan.

27. The VES Award for Outstanding Animated Performance in a Photoreal Feature went to The Jungle Book; King Louie and the team of Paul Story, Dennis Yoo, Jack Tema and Andrei Coval.

21. The VES Award for Outstanding Created Environment in a Photoreal Feature went to Doctor Strange; New York City and the team of Adam Watkins, Martijn Van Herk, Tim Belsher and Jon Mitchell.

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22. The VES Award for Outstanding Animated Performance in a Commercial went to John Lewis Buster The Boxer and the team of Tim van Hussen, David Bryan, Chloe Dawe and Maximilian Mallmann.

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28. The VES Award for Outstanding Visual Effects in a Real- Time Project went to Unchartered 4 and the team of Bruce Straley, Eben Cook and Iki Ikram.

29. Awards Duo: Lifetime Achievement recipient Ken Ralston and Visionary Award recipient Victoria Alonso share a moment.

23. The VES Award for Outstanding Compositing in a Photoreal Feature went to The Jungle Book and the team of Christoph Salzman, Masaki Mitchell, Matthew Adams and Max Stummer.

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24. The VES Award for Outstanding Supporting Visual Effects in a Photoreal Feature went to Deepwater Horizon and the team of Craig Hammack, Petra Holtorf-Stratton, Jason Snell, John Galloway and Burt Dalton.

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25. The VES Award for Outstanding Effects Simulations in an Animated Feature went to Moana and the team of Marc Henry Bryant, David Hutchins, Ben Frost and Dale Mayeda.

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VES AWARDS 32. The VES Award for Outstanding Created Environment in an Animated Feature went to Moana; Motunui Island and the team of Rob Dressel, Andy Harkness, Brien Hindman and Larry Wu. 33. The VES Award for Outstanding Animated Performance in an Animated Feature went to Finding Dory; Hank and the team of Jonathan Hoffman, Steven Clay Hunter, Mark Piretti and Audrey Wong.

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34. The VES Award for Outstanding Visual Effects in a Student Project went to Breaking Point and the team of Johannes Franz, Nicole Rothermel, Thomas Sali and Alexander Richter.

35. VES Chair Mike Chambers and Auli’I Cravalho on the red carpet.

36. Director and presenter Taika Waititi, Victoria Alonso, Patton Oswalt, presenter and actress Auli’I Cravalho and director Gareth Edwards gather on the red carpet at the VES Awards.

37. The VES Award for Outstanding Visual Effects in a Commercial went to John Lewis Buster The Boxer and the team of Diarmid HarrisonMurray, Hannah Ruddleston, Fabian Frank and William Laban.

38. VES Selfies: Presenter Jessica Parker Kennedy (Black Sails), Victoria Alonso and presenter Yara Shahidi (Blackish) get ready for their close-up.

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39. VES Executive Committee Members.

From left: Jeffrey A. Okun, VES, Kim Lavery, VES, Mike Chambers, Rita Cahill and Dennis Hoffman.

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VES AWARDS 32. The VES Award for Outstanding Created Environment in an Animated Feature went to Moana; Motunui Island and the team of Rob Dressel, Andy Harkness, Brien Hindman and Larry Wu. 33. The VES Award for Outstanding Animated Performance in an Animated Feature went to Finding Dory; Hank and the team of Jonathan Hoffman, Steven Clay Hunter, Mark Piretti and Audrey Wong.

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34. The VES Award for Outstanding Visual Effects in a Student Project went to Breaking Point and the team of Johannes Franz, Nicole Rothermel, Thomas Sali and Alexander Richter.

35. VES Chair Mike Chambers and Auli’I Cravalho on the red carpet.

36. Director and presenter Taika Waititi, Victoria Alonso, Patton Oswalt, presenter and actress Auli’I Cravalho and director Gareth Edwards gather on the red carpet at the VES Awards.

37. The VES Award for Outstanding Visual Effects in a Commercial went to John Lewis Buster The Boxer and the team of Diarmid HarrisonMurray, Hannah Ruddleston, Fabian Frank and William Laban.

38. VES Selfies: Presenter Jessica Parker Kennedy (Black Sails), Victoria Alonso and presenter Yara Shahidi (Blackish) get ready for their close-up.

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39. VES Executive Committee Members.

From left: Jeffrey A. Okun, VES, Kim Lavery, VES, Mike Chambers, Rita Cahill and Dennis Hoffman.

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VES AWARD WINNERS

THE JUNGLE BOOK

The VES Award for Outstanding Visual Effects in a Photoreal Feature went to The Jungle Book.

The Jungle Book also won VES Awards for Outstanding Virtual Cinematography in a Photoreal Project, Outstanding Compositing in a Photoreal Feature, Outstanding Effects Simulations in a Photoreal Feature, and Outstanding Animated Performance in a Photoreal Feature.

(Photo credit: All photos copyright © 2016 Disney Enterprises Inc. All Rights Reserved.)

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VES AWARD WINNERS

KUBO AND THE TWO STRINGS

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Kubo and the Two Strings won Outstanding Visual Effects in an Animated Feature.

(Photo credit: All photos copyright © Laika/Focus Features. All Rights Reserved.)

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VES AWARD WINNERS

GAME OF THRONES

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Game of Thrones was named Best Photoreal Episode and garnered five awards. The series won Outstanding Visual Effects in a Photoreal Episode; Outstanding Animated Performance in an Episode or Real-Time Project; Outstanding Created Environment in an Episode, Commercial, or Real-Time Project; Outstanding Effects Simulations in an Episode, Commercial, or Real-Time Project; and Outstanding Compositing in a Photoreal Episode.

(Photo credit: All photos copyright © HBO. All Rights Reserved.)

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VR

FRAMESTORE’S ‘FANTASTIC’ VR BREAKTHROUGH

By ED OCHS

TOP LEFT: (Photo credit: Copyright © 2016 Warner Bros. Entertainment. All other photos copyright © 2016 Framestore.

All Rights Reserved.)

RIGHT: Michael Cable

Framestore VR Studio designed 2016’s Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them VR experience for the Google Daydream to make the user feel like a wizard with a wand, able to interact with the exotic objects in Newt Scamander’s magical shed – and J.K. Rowling’s fantastical Graphorn, Erumpent and Thunderbird. It marked the first time a handheld controller was used in mobile VR. “Interaction is key for VR,” writes Framestore Global VR Technical Director Michael Cable in an email response to VFX Voice, “now more than ever with the proliferation of hand controllers available. It would have been very easy to ignore the Daydream’s controller, but that wouldn’t have played to the core of the device’s function. We’re long past the early days of VR where 360-video was good enough.”

It also marked the first time Framestore combined real­-time interactive elements with high-quality pre­rendered environments. New, homegrown techniques allowed embedded real-time game-engine assets inside an environment rendered using an offline renderer. The enhanced interactivity, environments and visuals combined to create a fresh sense of “being there” for the user.

“Each scene was planned in advance as to the elements that would be pre-rendered and which elements would be real-time,” Cable explains. “It was quite a challenge to get all the elements in place – the viewport looked more like a 3D view from Flame than a game-engine view. This required a number of editor tools to be written to allow for easier editing of the scene.

“We are looking to expand this technology in the future as we feel it has a quite a few applications for mobile VR in the future.

It has a smaller memory footprint than 360-video and is higher quality in general.”

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PROFILE

2017 VES VISIONARY AWARD WINNER VICTORIA ALONSO: STORYTELLING IS HER SUPERPOWER

By NAOMI GOLDMAN

Victoria Alonso and Robert Downey Jr. on the set of Iron Man 3 (2012).

In February, acclaimed producer and Marvel Studios Executive Vice President of Physical Production Victoria Alonso was bestowed with the prestigious VES Visionary Award. And with that much-deserved honor for her stellar creative achievements, she broke new ground as the first woman to receive it. A staunch advocate for the advancement of women in VFX, Alonso wears the responsibility and opportunity of being a trailblazer with grace, conviction and hope for all that lies ahead for those following her path.

“I’m on a mission and I won’t stop until we have that 50/50 gender ratio in the visual effects industry,” Alonso says, “because we should be doing a better job reflecting the world we live in.

And it makes for better work. Period. Rooms are better when we’re in them.”

In conferring Alonso with this distinction, the VES recognized her impact in elevating visual effects as an integral element of the art and business of moviemaking and cited her leadership in redefining the profile of visual effects on a global scale.

An amazing creative force and powerhouse producer, Alonso’s unique vision has delivered some of the most popular movie franchises of all time. She is currently executive producing Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 and Thor: Ragnarok. In her executive role, she oversees post-production and visual effects for the studio slate.

She executive produced Doctor Strange, Captain America: Civil War, Ant-Man, Avengers: Age of Ultron, Guardians of the Galaxy, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Thor: The Dark World, Iron Man 3, as well as Marvel’s The Avengers. She co-produced Iron Man and Iron Man 2, Thor and Captain America: The First Avenger.

ROOTS AND WINGS

In starting her career path, Alonso did not have VFX and movies in her sights. She was studying theater and psychology while working at Alaska Airlines when fate stepped in. “One day a friend who was an AD was looking for a PA and I said, ‘Can you please not talk in code?’ So I learned the alphabet soup and one weekend they were shooting a movie and I started doing PA work. That led to my working at a commercial company RSA USA [Ridley/Tony Scott’s company]. I worked on a bunch of commercials and Digital Domain was doing the VFX on one of them.”

Alonso defines herself as a fiercely inquisitive person, a trait which has served her well. “I started asking a lot of questions and they seemed to think: this girl seems to be smart enough, friendly enough, cares enough. So would you like to do a job for us? Ed Ulbrich’s assistant had broken her leg and so I helped for two weeks…and stayed for four years.

“One of the things I always love about visual effects is that it’s ever-changing. Just when you think you know it, you don’t. There is always something new, faster, better, more radical out there in the market and so you’re consistently evolving and learning. I’m that person who needs to be consistently stimulated, so I’m a good fit…and I love geeks and some of them need someone like me to help them communicate. So it was a match made in heaven.

“It was completely on the job training. I figured if I could understand how they did it, I could help them maximize the efficiencies of how we get the image where it needs to go so that we have happy clients. My entire process was in breaking down how to get things done in hours it didn’t appear we had, and reassembling the workflow to get ahead of the curve.

“Oh yes,” she adds, “I’m also a geek, a workflow geek! And the minute I also started looking creatively at the image, self-taught as I am, I could see how to achieve the artistic vision with the team.”

TOP RIGHT: From left: Craig Kyle, Executive Producer; Victoria Alonso, Executive Producer; Kevin Feige, Executive Producer; and Director Kenneth Branagh on the set of Thor (2010).

(Photo credit: Zade Rosenthal. TM & © 2010.

Marvel Studios. All Rights Reserved.)

BOTTOM: Victoria Alonso and Gwyneth Paltrow on the set of Iron Man 3 (2012).

“I’m on a mission and I won’t stop until we have that 50/50 gender ratio in the visual effects industry.”

—Victoria Alonso

LEAN IN - WOMEN IN ENTERTAINMENT

“I didn’t have a mentor in the visual effects field, but I always looked up to Kathy [Kathleen] Kennedy and all the things she had achieved, and she had survived and maneuvered a sea of men and created a name for herself and was a rarity. One of the things that has been a true dream come true is calling Kathy Kennedy a friend, someone that I can talk and email and eat with. That is truly one of my Hollywood moments – where you see the little kid in you is excited and your heart flutters, OMG Kathy Kennedy!”

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PROFILE

2017 VES VISIONARY AWARD WINNER VICTORIA ALONSO: STORYTELLING IS HER SUPERPOWER

By NAOMI GOLDMAN

Victoria Alonso and Robert Downey Jr. on the set of Iron Man 3 (2012).

In February, acclaimed producer and Marvel Studios Executive Vice President of Physical Production Victoria Alonso was bestowed with the prestigious VES Visionary Award. And with that much-deserved honor for her stellar creative achievements, she broke new ground as the first woman to receive it. A staunch advocate for the advancement of women in VFX, Alonso wears the responsibility and opportunity of being a trailblazer with grace, conviction and hope for all that lies ahead for those following her path.

“I’m on a mission and I won’t stop until we have that 50/50 gender ratio in the visual effects industry,” Alonso says, “because we should be doing a better job reflecting the world we live in.

And it makes for better work. Period. Rooms are better when we’re in them.”

In conferring Alonso with this distinction, the VES recognized her impact in elevating visual effects as an integral element of the art and business of moviemaking and cited her leadership in redefining the profile of visual effects on a global scale.

An amazing creative force and powerhouse producer, Alonso’s unique vision has delivered some of the most popular movie franchises of all time. She is currently executive producing Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 and Thor: Ragnarok. In her executive role, she oversees post-production and visual effects for the studio slate.

She executive produced Doctor Strange, Captain America: Civil War, Ant-Man, Avengers: Age of Ultron, Guardians of the Galaxy, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Thor: The Dark World, Iron Man 3, as well as Marvel’s The Avengers. She co-produced Iron Man and Iron Man 2, Thor and Captain America: The First Avenger.

ROOTS AND WINGS

In starting her career path, Alonso did not have VFX and movies in her sights. She was studying theater and psychology while working at Alaska Airlines when fate stepped in. “One day a friend who was an AD was looking for a PA and I said, ‘Can you please not talk in code?’ So I learned the alphabet soup and one weekend they were shooting a movie and I started doing PA work. That led to my working at a commercial company RSA USA [Ridley/Tony Scott’s company]. I worked on a bunch of commercials and Digital Domain was doing the VFX on one of them.”

Alonso defines herself as a fiercely inquisitive person, a trait which has served her well. “I started asking a lot of questions and they seemed to think: this girl seems to be smart enough, friendly enough, cares enough. So would you like to do a job for us? Ed Ulbrich’s assistant had broken her leg and so I helped for two weeks…and stayed for four years.

“One of the things I always love about visual effects is that it’s ever-changing. Just when you think you know it, you don’t. There is always something new, faster, better, more radical out there in the market and so you’re consistently evolving and learning. I’m that person who needs to be consistently stimulated, so I’m a good fit…and I love geeks and some of them need someone like me to help them communicate. So it was a match made in heaven.

“It was completely on the job training. I figured if I could understand how they did it, I could help them maximize the efficiencies of how we get the image where it needs to go so that we have happy clients. My entire process was in breaking down how to get things done in hours it didn’t appear we had, and reassembling the workflow to get ahead of the curve.

“Oh yes,” she adds, “I’m also a geek, a workflow geek! And the minute I also started looking creatively at the image, self-taught as I am, I could see how to achieve the artistic vision with the team.”

TOP RIGHT: From left: Craig Kyle, Executive Producer; Victoria Alonso, Executive Producer; Kevin Feige, Executive Producer; and Director Kenneth Branagh on the set of Thor (2010).

(Photo credit: Zade Rosenthal. TM & © 2010.

Marvel Studios. All Rights Reserved.)

BOTTOM: Victoria Alonso and Gwyneth Paltrow on the set of Iron Man 3 (2012).

“I’m on a mission and I won’t stop until we have that 50/50 gender ratio in the visual effects industry.”

—Victoria Alonso

LEAN IN - WOMEN IN ENTERTAINMENT

“I didn’t have a mentor in the visual effects field, but I always looked up to Kathy [Kathleen] Kennedy and all the things she had achieved, and she had survived and maneuvered a sea of men and created a name for herself and was a rarity. One of the things that has been a true dream come true is calling Kathy Kennedy a friend, someone that I can talk and email and eat with. That is truly one of my Hollywood moments – where you see the little kid in you is excited and your heart flutters, OMG Kathy Kennedy!”

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PROFILE

running a studio with Lou [Louis D’Esposito, Co-President] and Kevin [Kevin Feige, President], but I do have a child and a wife and a life and a balance that works for me. So find that balance for you – so that companies have no choice but look at your true value and provide the flexibility that allows you and them to benefit.”

ON EMERGING TECHNOLOGY

TOP LEFT: From left: Stephen Broussard, Executive Producer; Victoria Alonso, Executive Producer; and Charles Newirth, Line Producer, on set of Thor (2010).

TOP RIGHT AND BOTTOM LEFT: Dr. Strange (Photo credit: Copyright ©2016 Marvel Studios.

All Rights Reserved.)

BOTTOM RIGHT: Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2 (Photo credit: Copyright ©2017 Marvel Studios. All Rights Reserved.)

“Oh yes, I’m also a geek, a workflow geek!

The minute I also started looking creatively at the image, self-taught as I am, I could see how to achieve the artistic vision with the team.”

—Victoria Alonso

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On the subject of diversity and women in VFX, Alonso does not mince words. “We are consistently failing in terms of diversity and that is a hard statement to make. We have a lot of work to do and it’s not moving fast enough. It’s one thing to see more women in the audience at things like SIGGRAPH, but we need to see more women at the helm of these panels. I won’t stop until we have parity, which will make me very happy.

“When I went to this year’s [Academy] bake-off, I saw 10 wonderful presentations by incredibly talented white men.

There was not one woman, and no diversity on those teams.

Even though those men are so talented, I would be remiss in not mentioning that we are not represented at all – and that includes my own teams.

“So how do I help address this in my capacity since I don’t run the facilities? I need people who are ready to do the work at our [Marvel] caliber. These are big projects and failure at this level is something enormously hard to recover from. The talent needs to be grown inside at facilities, and so I implore you, allow more room to mentor or educate or usher through more women into your ranks. I’ve seen the benefit to the work and the business.”

To women looking to enter and rise up in VFX: “For women to invest and achieve in this field, they need to have a family-friendly place they can work and grow, like Facebook and Google. There has to be room for flexibility. The other reality is that it has evolved into a gypsy life, and we can’t change that, and it may be more difficult to embrace that kind of career with a family. Big jobs require a lot of time. Even while we create new technologies that allow greater efficiencies, we somehow shorten ourselves in the schedule in the relentless pursuit of a good story.

“I’m working a slate of eight movies simultaneously while

“When it comes to emerging technologies, I think there is room for everybody. Audiences are thirsty for what’s new, but also dedicated to more traditional ways of experiencing a good story – like your most memorable experiences sharing stories around a campfire. It’s not about one part of the industry eating up another – it’s great that the industry is so flexible with mediums that can open up your mind and allow you to think of things differently one day and see something in 2D or 3D of hear it in Atmos and be delighted in your choices. So not new dog beating old dog or big dog conquering small dog – it’s more like, let’s all go play!

“But regardless of advances, storytelling remains the same.

A good story makes you feel something. So if technology and enhanced global communications and enhanced VFX can help us tell a good story, that is always the ultimate goal.”

LAST WORDS

“My favorite thing: to wake up in the morning and think of the privilege of making something that kids and those with the kid-inside are expecting to see and making sure that we can be faithful to what that dream was and either equalize that feeling or experience or make it better. If I continue to do that for the rest of my life, I would consider myself beyond lucky. If I can share with the girls that it can happen to you, that it doesn’t matter how different you are then I would have left a legacy for my daughter, which I think is incredibly important to know that ‘ if you can see it, you can be it’!

“Always remember who you are. I have never forgotten who I am. My version of success is to create a family everywhere I go.

Marvel is a little family and we do the best we can with a whole lot of harmony, respect and love for one another. And always know that we love the characters; it keeps us grounded. It’s about them, it’s not about us.”

What would things look like if she was not in VFX? “I would build homes, restaurants, parks for kids – you name it. And second, I’d be rescuing every stray dog across the planet. So I would need a lot of land. And a lot of milk bones!”

“They seemed to think: this girl seems to be smart enough, friendly enough, cares enough. So would you like to do a job for us?”

—Victoria Alonso

TOP AND BOTTOM: Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol 2 (Photo credit: Copyright ©2017 Marvel Studios. All Rights Reserved.)

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PROFILE

running a studio with Lou [Louis D’Esposito, Co-President] and Kevin [Kevin Feige, President], but I do have a child and a wife and a life and a balance that works for me. So find that balance for you – so that companies have no choice but look at your true value and provide the flexibility that allows you and them to benefit.”

ON EMERGING TECHNOLOGY

TOP LEFT: From left: Stephen Broussard, Executive Producer; Victoria Alonso, Executive Producer; and Charles Newirth, Line Producer, on set of Thor (2010).

TOP RIGHT AND BOTTOM LEFT: Dr. Strange (Photo credit: Copyright ©2016 Marvel Studios.

All Rights Reserved.)

BOTTOM RIGHT: Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2 (Photo credit: Copyright ©2017 Marvel Studios. All Rights Reserved.)

“Oh yes, I’m also a geek, a workflow geek!

The minute I also started looking creatively at the image, self-taught as I am, I could see how to achieve the artistic vision with the team.”

—Victoria Alonso

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On the subject of diversity and women in VFX, Alonso does not mince words. “We are consistently failing in terms of diversity and that is a hard statement to make. We have a lot of work to do and it’s not moving fast enough. It’s one thing to see more women in the audience at things like SIGGRAPH, but we need to see more women at the helm of these panels. I won’t stop until we have parity, which will make me very happy.

“When I went to this year’s [Academy] bake-off, I saw 10 wonderful presentations by incredibly talented white men.

There was not one woman, and no diversity on those teams.

Even though those men are so talented, I would be remiss in not mentioning that we are not represented at all – and that includes my own teams.

“So how do I help address this in my capacity since I don’t run the facilities? I need people who are ready to do the work at our [Marvel] caliber. These are big projects and failure at this level is something enormously hard to recover from. The talent needs to be grown inside at facilities, and so I implore you, allow more room to mentor or educate or usher through more women into your ranks. I’ve seen the benefit to the work and the business.”

To women looking to enter and rise up in VFX: “For women to invest and achieve in this field, they need to have a family-friendly place they can work and grow, like Facebook and Google. There has to be room for flexibility. The other reality is that it has evolved into a gypsy life, and we can’t change that, and it may be more difficult to embrace that kind of career with a family. Big jobs require a lot of time. Even while we create new technologies that allow greater efficiencies, we somehow shorten ourselves in the schedule in the relentless pursuit of a good story.

“I’m working a slate of eight movies simultaneously while

“When it comes to emerging technologies, I think there is room for everybody. Audiences are thirsty for what’s new, but also dedicated to more traditional ways of experiencing a good story – like your most memorable experiences sharing stories around a campfire. It’s not about one part of the industry eating up another – it’s great that the industry is so flexible with mediums that can open up your mind and allow you to think of things differently one day and see something in 2D or 3D of hear it in Atmos and be delighted in your choices. So not new dog beating old dog or big dog conquering small dog – it’s more like, let’s all go play!

“But regardless of advances, storytelling remains the same.

A good story makes you feel something. So if technology and enhanced global communications and enhanced VFX can help us tell a good story, that is always the ultimate goal.”

LAST WORDS

“My favorite thing: to wake up in the morning and think of the privilege of making something that kids and those with the kid-inside are expecting to see and making sure that we can be faithful to what that dream was and either equalize that feeling or experience or make it better. If I continue to do that for the rest of my life, I would consider myself beyond lucky. If I can share with the girls that it can happen to you, that it doesn’t matter how different you are then I would have left a legacy for my daughter, which I think is incredibly important to know that ‘ if you can see it, you can be it’!

“Always remember who you are. I have never forgotten who I am. My version of success is to create a family everywhere I go.

Marvel is a little family and we do the best we can with a whole lot of harmony, respect and love for one another. And always know that we love the characters; it keeps us grounded. It’s about them, it’s not about us.”

What would things look like if she was not in VFX? “I would build homes, restaurants, parks for kids – you name it. And second, I’d be rescuing every stray dog across the planet. So I would need a lot of land. And a lot of milk bones!”

“They seemed to think: this girl seems to be smart enough, friendly enough, cares enough. So would you like to do a job for us?”

—Victoria Alonso

TOP AND BOTTOM: Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol 2 (Photo credit: Copyright ©2017 Marvel Studios. All Rights Reserved.)

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PROFILE

RAISED BY MONSTERS

2017 VES LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD WINNER KEN RALSTON: THE MASTER IS STILL THE STUDENT

By NAOMI GOLDMAN

Meryl Streep rehearsing a scene from Death Becomes Her. Ralston is watching to make sure everything she does will work in post when they twist her head around 180 degrees.

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When you ask VFX pioneer Ken Ralston to remark on receiving the 2017 VES Lifetime Achievement Award, he shakes his head and notes he’s struggled to find the words.

“Despite that graying face I see in the mirror, in my head,” he says, “I’m still that 14-year-old kid animating clay creatures in my folks’ garage, just having fun, figuring out problems.”

It is that humility, childlike sense of wonder and desire to tackle complex issues that undoubtedly propelled Ralston to become a game-changing force in the visual effects industry for more than four decades…and counting.

Ralston’s love affair with VFX has earned him legendary bona fides and five Academy Awards® in the process, including a Special Achievement Oscar® for the visual effects in the 1984 phenomenon Star Wars: Episode VI – The Return of the Jedi and visual effects Oscars for his transformative work on Forrest Gump, Death Becomes Her, the revolutionary Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Cocoon. He was also Oscar-nominated for The Rocketeer, Jumanji, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Dragonslayer, Back to the Future Part II and Alice in Wonderland (3D).

Ralston is currently Senior Visual Effect Supervisor and Creative Head at Sony Pictures Imageworks. Previously, he placed his artistic and technical stamp on the films at Industrial Light & Magic and played a pivotal role in advancing the company’s renown over the course of 20 years.

“As a little kid I loved science fiction, fantasy and horror movies, and I started doing my own 8mm movies with my parents’ camera.

I was initially really interested in make-up – so picture me with latex on my face and parents who had no idea what their peculiar kid in the garage was up to.

“I was trying to learn and have fun doing this, but at that time there was no information on anything. I was just fighting my way through it. The only thing that came close – and barely that – was the magazine Famous Monsters of Filmland. It was really through that magazine that I met some people who helped launch my career. Little did I know then…”

Ralston officially started his career at seminal commercial animation and visual effects company, Cascade Pictures in Hollywood, after submitting his 45-minute self-described “8mm opus” The Bounds of Imagination, which took a year of work to complete amidst his high school studies. At age 17, Ralston got a three-month gig doing stop-motion work on a short film and when it ended, he just stayed put. Ralston worked on more than 150 memorable advertising campaigns at Cascade in the 1970s in a dizzying array of capacities. He built sets, sculpted models, animated puppets, created optical effects and stop-motion animation for such iconic commercial characters as Poppin’ Fresh, the Pillsbury Dough Boy, and the Jolly Green Giant. “I would not be where I am now without the chance to touch every aspect of the work in those early days.”

He describes Cascade as a veritable incubator of VFX wizards, as Ralston worked with the dream team of Dennis Muren, VES, Phil Tippett, VES, Jon Berg, David Allen and occasionally Rick Baker. “We were just a bunch of young goofs, but I learned an awful lot. That’s where Dennis got the script for Star Wars and we all laughed – Ha! There’s sure a lot of work in that one…and next thing I knew Dennis asked me to be his camera assistant.”

“It’s thrilling to be connected to so many of these guys and to have worked with them from Cascade to ILM and on, and watching what our little group of friends has gone on to do has been fascinating. We’re brethren of the School of Hard Knocks.”

TOP LEFT: Ralston with the stop motion miniature of the Rocketeer. The building was never in the movie. Ralston says he used it in a series of shots to show Disney Studios how cool the puppet looked.

TOP RIGHT: Ralston with legendary director Akira Kurosawa at a pre-production meeting for Dreams. Ralston says it was one of life’s great honors working for him.

BOTTOM LEFT: Ralston operates the Ceti eel for Star Trek II. Ralston designed the disgusting little critter and also shot all the inserts.

BOTTOM RIGHT: Ralston at the 2017 VES Awards Show.

(Photo credit: Danny Moloshok and Phil McCarten)

“In my head, I’m still that 14-year-old kid animating clay creatures in my folks’ garage, just having fun, figuring out problems.”

—Ken Ralston

IDOLS AND INSPIRATIONS

“The person I idolized who really got me into the business was Ray Harryhausen. I saw The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad at a local theater and it really did something to me. I simply couldn’t believe

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PROFILE

RAISED BY MONSTERS

2017 VES LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD WINNER KEN RALSTON: THE MASTER IS STILL THE STUDENT

By NAOMI GOLDMAN

Meryl Streep rehearsing a scene from Death Becomes Her. Ralston is watching to make sure everything she does will work in post when they twist her head around 180 degrees.

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When you ask VFX pioneer Ken Ralston to remark on receiving the 2017 VES Lifetime Achievement Award, he shakes his head and notes he’s struggled to find the words.

“Despite that graying face I see in the mirror, in my head,” he says, “I’m still that 14-year-old kid animating clay creatures in my folks’ garage, just having fun, figuring out problems.”

It is that humility, childlike sense of wonder and desire to tackle complex issues that undoubtedly propelled Ralston to become a game-changing force in the visual effects industry for more than four decades…and counting.

Ralston’s love affair with VFX has earned him legendary bona fides and five Academy Awards® in the process, including a Special Achievement Oscar® for the visual effects in the 1984 phenomenon Star Wars: Episode VI – The Return of the Jedi and visual effects Oscars for his transformative work on Forrest Gump, Death Becomes Her, the revolutionary Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Cocoon. He was also Oscar-nominated for The Rocketeer, Jumanji, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Dragonslayer, Back to the Future Part II and Alice in Wonderland (3D).

Ralston is currently Senior Visual Effect Supervisor and Creative Head at Sony Pictures Imageworks. Previously, he placed his artistic and technical stamp on the films at Industrial Light & Magic and played a pivotal role in advancing the company’s renown over the course of 20 years.

“As a little kid I loved science fiction, fantasy and horror movies, and I started doing my own 8mm movies with my parents’ camera.

I was initially really interested in make-up – so picture me with latex on my face and parents who had no idea what their peculiar kid in the garage was up to.

“I was trying to learn and have fun doing this, but at that time there was no information on anything. I was just fighting my way through it. The only thing that came close – and barely that – was the magazine Famous Monsters of Filmland. It was really through that magazine that I met some people who helped launch my career. Little did I know then…”

Ralston officially started his career at seminal commercial animation and visual effects company, Cascade Pictures in Hollywood, after submitting his 45-minute self-described “8mm opus” The Bounds of Imagination, which took a year of work to complete amidst his high school studies. At age 17, Ralston got a three-month gig doing stop-motion work on a short film and when it ended, he just stayed put. Ralston worked on more than 150 memorable advertising campaigns at Cascade in the 1970s in a dizzying array of capacities. He built sets, sculpted models, animated puppets, created optical effects and stop-motion animation for such iconic commercial characters as Poppin’ Fresh, the Pillsbury Dough Boy, and the Jolly Green Giant. “I would not be where I am now without the chance to touch every aspect of the work in those early days.”

He describes Cascade as a veritable incubator of VFX wizards, as Ralston worked with the dream team of Dennis Muren, VES, Phil Tippett, VES, Jon Berg, David Allen and occasionally Rick Baker. “We were just a bunch of young goofs, but I learned an awful lot. That’s where Dennis got the script for Star Wars and we all laughed – Ha! There’s sure a lot of work in that one…and next thing I knew Dennis asked me to be his camera assistant.”

“It’s thrilling to be connected to so many of these guys and to have worked with them from Cascade to ILM and on, and watching what our little group of friends has gone on to do has been fascinating. We’re brethren of the School of Hard Knocks.”

TOP LEFT: Ralston with the stop motion miniature of the Rocketeer. The building was never in the movie. Ralston says he used it in a series of shots to show Disney Studios how cool the puppet looked.

TOP RIGHT: Ralston with legendary director Akira Kurosawa at a pre-production meeting for Dreams. Ralston says it was one of life’s great honors working for him.

BOTTOM LEFT: Ralston operates the Ceti eel for Star Trek II. Ralston designed the disgusting little critter and also shot all the inserts.

BOTTOM RIGHT: Ralston at the 2017 VES Awards Show.

(Photo credit: Danny Moloshok and Phil McCarten)

“In my head, I’m still that 14-year-old kid animating clay creatures in my folks’ garage, just having fun, figuring out problems.”

—Ken Ralston

IDOLS AND INSPIRATIONS

“The person I idolized who really got me into the business was Ray Harryhausen. I saw The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad at a local theater and it really did something to me. I simply couldn’t believe

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PROFILE

Ralston holding the slate for an element from inside the giant space slug in Star Wars: Episode V The Empire Strikes Back.

what I was seeing. I didn’t know who he was at the time, but as movies came out over the years with something really cool to them I realized it’s just one guy doing all of this stuff, and I fell in love with how brilliant it all was.”

At Ralston’s core is a profound respect and encyclopedic knowledge of art history. He speaks with great passion about the vital need to understand cinema and cites that as his top advice to people looking to enter any aspect of filmed entertainment. “If you are making a movie, you should understand what that is. You have to know your history to understand what worked and what didn’t so that you can apply it to what you are doing for the film.”

On his many influences, Ralston cites people and works he thinks may be unexpected from a visual effects practitioner. “I could mention a million: Chuck Jones and the animation work he did at Warner Bros., Willis O’Brien who did the original [King] Kong. This whole group of visual effects guys from the early days: the Lydecker Brothers who did great miniatures; stop motion from Jiri Trnka; the work of Doug Trumbull, VES, that knocks your eyes out; [directors] John Ford and David Lean. I started paying attention to the DPs like Gregg Toland (Citizen Kane); the work in Grapes of Wrath; the gorgeous and bizarre Night of the Hunter shot

by Stanley Cortez. People don’t think of Citizen Kane in this way, but it is an amazing visual effects movie. And then just artists: Van Gogh, Bierstadt, Degas… All art does something to me. It opens up a lot of creative doors.”

STANDOUT CINEMATIC MOMENTS

“I’ve been so lucky with the types of movies I’ve been on, and beyond the work itself there are always amazing takeaways. Like coming full circle and paying homage to Tex Avery in Roger Rabbit after getting to know him at Cascade; going from being a Star Trek fanboy to working on the film – just the surreal dreams of a young kid realized. And what I remember most about Star Wars was the premiere – sitting with Dennis [Muren], having it come up, and the crew was literally blown out of our seats! I will never forget that feeling as long as I live, seeing what we had done, simply awe-inspiring. But I’ll tell you, watching each premiere it feels like your work should be on the screen for days because you spend so much time on it – it flies by!”

CALL ME THE RIDDLER

“We were just a bunch of young goofs, but I learned an awful lot. That’s where Dennis [Muren] got the script for Star Wars and we all laughed – Ha! There’s sure a lot of work in that one, and next thing I knew Dennis asked me to be his camera assistant.”

—Ken Ralston

Reflecting on what makes working in VFX so unique and compelling: “Figuring out the complexities of each movie is always a thrilling challenge. In this world, you never stop learning.

Meryl [Streep] falling down the stairs in Death Becomes Her and twisting her head around like that had never been done. Accepting a cartoon rabbit in the live frame had never been done. Every film comes with a grab-bag of work, and potentially every shot on the same movie is done with a different technique. Things constantly melt down in process and you’re never out of group problem-solving mode. What’s so much fun for me is that on any project I get to work with a huge, amazing group of talented artists and mind-meld. It’s like being in an artistic furnace.

“I think it’s good to have projects where 30%-40% of it seems

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TOP LEFT: Ralston lighting one of the snow speeder ships for Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back.

TOP RIGHT: Ralston getting ready to shoot the asteroid damaged T.I.E. fighter in Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back.

BOTTOM: A t-shirt Ralston drew for everyone on the night crew on Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back. Says Ralston: “There were only so many camera systems at ILM, so our group of folks shot all night... then we handed over the equipment to the day crew.

I bet the day crew never got a shirt!”

impossible at the time, because it keeps everyone on their toes; you work that much harder, and technology upgrades. I always say that at the end of each movie, I finally know how to do that movie.

“And while things have changed enormously since my Star Wars days, my approach is still the same, as is my advice: Keep technology from interfering with artistic expression. It’s the art of cinema. Never forget what you were excited by at that first script read because technology is going to try and beat that out of you.

It’s vital to keep that enthusiasm in the work.”

THE LAST WORD

In bestowing Ken with the VES Lifetime Achievement Award, Board of Directors Chair Mike Chambers highlighted Ken’s intuitive vision and unparalleled mastery of visual effects, his creative vision and fierce technical expertise. In doing the honors at the VES Awards, Pixar Animation Studios President and longtime friend Jim Morris, VES underscored the indelible mark Ken has left on every film under his supervision and how he has changed the very landscape for visual effects and filmmaking.

Lucky for us that Ken found his way from his parents’ garage workshop. Because if you ask him what he’d be doing if he were not in VFX, he answers: “I would be face down in the gutter as I have no other skills. PS – I also doodle a bit.”

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COMPANY PROFILE: MR. X, TORONTO

COMPETING AT THE HIGHEST LEVEL, ALWAYS LOOKING TOWARDS THE FUTURE

By RENEE DUNLOP

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Under the guidance of Global Managing Director/Visual Effects Supervisor/Producer Dennis Berardi, Mr. X has blossomed into a formidable VFX force, enjoying quite a string of successes and making a reputation in both film and television.

Their list of credits is impressive, starting with their earliest work with Zack Snyder on Dawn of the Dead.

Says Berardi, “It was our first big studio project, and one of the first where I was a VFX supervisor. We delivered over 300 visual effects shots. It was completely filmed in Toronto, and all the VFX work was done at Mr. X. That project put our company on the map as one that can deliver for the studios.”

As with so many success stories, Mr. X Inc. was founded on a dream that has materialized into something much more than even its founder expected. Established in 2001, the studio began with just eight people. “We started Mr. X with the idea of a place where we could do our best work. We wanted to invent the pipeline, invent the studio, and work with artists and technicians that inspired us, where we all had the common goal that our best work was ahead of us and we could do it together.

That was the genesis of Mr. X.” Berardi’s visual effects career began in the early ’90s with the National Film Board of Canada and IMAX. There he integrated revolutionary digital-imaging systems for live-action and animated films. Later, he established Command Post Toybox’s visual effects department, where he continued building his impressive résumé as VFX Lead on films such as Tarsem Singh’s The Cell and David Fincher’s Fight Club.

Berardi has surrounded himself with a team of highly experienced professionals. Aaron Weintraub helped found the company along with Berardi. Mr. X’s Senior Visual Effects Supervisor, Weintraub has compiled no less than an 80-film repertoire including Dawn of the Dead, Eastern Promises, Pacific Rim, TRON: LEGACY and Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. More recently, Weintraub has added films such as Sully, The Finest Hours and Ben-Hur, under his belt. He is the company’s go-to expert in VR and 360-degree video, and recently directed the spectacular Ben-Hur 360° Experience and Resident Evil: The Final Chapter 360° Experience. Before Mr. X, Weintraub built his career on an already impressive string of successes through his contribution to TOPIX’s Mad Dog Digital. Weintraub has been awarded the Kodak Canada Award for Academic and Creative Excellence, and been nominated by the Canadian Screen Awards for his work on Mama.

Accompanying Weintraub on Sully, Ben-Hur, The Finest Hours, Scott Pilgrim, and TRON: LEGACY is Supervising Visual Effects Producer and Head of Production, Sarah McMurdo. Her impressive work can also be seen in Hanna and Mama. Most recently she produced VFX for three seasons of the Showtime’s Penny Dreadful, each recognized with VES nominations for Best Supporting Visual Effects.

McMurdo designed the project management workflow for Mr. X and supervises a team of 40 production staff.

Visual Effects Supervisor Chris MacLean worked on Crimson Peak, Ben-Hur and Pompeii, and has helped Mr. X

streamline its asset-creation process through his development of Xscan, a photogrammetry-based scanning stage.

Visual Effects Supervisor Trey Harrell joined Mr. X in 2010 after 15 years as an art director and creative director for broadcast, web and print ads. After his stint on TRON: Legacy as Lead Lighting TD, he’s now working on Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water.

Since its inception, Mr. X has grown to over 300 employees.

Working from locations in Toronto, New York City, Montreal and Los Angeles, the company now has well over 100 films on its credit list. The team at Mr. X wanted to build a company based on a philosophy that the quality of their contribution and unique visual brand will improve the productions they work on.

“We strive to recruit, hire and partner with those who understand the idea of visual storytelling, where we take an abstract idea, scripted page, or a brief from a director and we have to translate that idea into visuals that make sense and tell stories. That is our passion,” Berardi says. While many other companies are bogged down by the needs of the industry, Berardi has a starkly lighthearted approach. “I always laugh when some people complain about the films or TV productions they’re on. I don’t know what they’re complaining about; they should just work to make it better.”

Stability is another goal of Berardi’s, growing the company organically, taking on the projects they feel they’re suited for, will enjoy, and therefore excel at. Many companies hire freelancers on an “as needed” basis, when they are hired to meet crushing deadlines through three- or six-week contracts.

“We don’t do that,” he says. “We bring people in for six months or a year or a permanent job. Those are the three options. We are generally offered more work than we can do, so that allows for some choice. We make long-term commitments to our staff and offer stability and a lifestyle that I think is unique [in this industry]. I’m proud that an artist, technician, coordinator, or supervisor can come in and find a home within our company.”

The quality of work has continued for Mr. X with television shows such as Godless, Penny Dreadful, Bates Motel and the

“We started Mr. X with the idea of a place where we could do our best work. We wanted to invent the pipeline, invent the studio, and work with artists and technicians who inspired us, where we all had the common goal that our best work was ahead of us and we could do it together.

That was the genesis of Mr. X.” —Dennis Berardi, Global Managing Director/Visual Effects Supervisor /Producer, Mr. X

OPPOSITE PAGE: Dennis Berardi TOP LEFT: Welcome to Mr. X TOP RIGHT: Mr. X at work BOTTOM: Resident Evil: The Final Chapter (Photo credit: Copyright © 2017 Sony Pictures Entertainment. All Rights Reserved.)

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COMPANY PROFILE: MR. X, TORONTO

COMPETING AT THE HIGHEST LEVEL, ALWAYS LOOKING TOWARDS THE FUTURE

By RENEE DUNLOP

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Under the guidance of Global Managing Director/Visual Effects Supervisor/Producer Dennis Berardi, Mr. X has blossomed into a formidable VFX force, enjoying quite a string of successes and making a reputation in both film and television.

Their list of credits is impressive, starting with their earliest work with Zack Snyder on Dawn of the Dead.

Says Berardi, “It was our first big studio project, and one of the first where I was a VFX supervisor. We delivered over 300 visual effects shots. It was completely filmed in Toronto, and all the VFX work was done at Mr. X. That project put our company on the map as one that can deliver for the studios.”

As with so many success stories, Mr. X Inc. was founded on a dream that has materialized into something much more than even its founder expected. Established in 2001, the studio began with just eight people. “We started Mr. X with the idea of a place where we could do our best work. We wanted to invent the pipeline, invent the studio, and work with artists and technicians that inspired us, where we all had the common goal that our best work was ahead of us and we could do it together.

That was the genesis of Mr. X.” Berardi’s visual effects career began in the early ’90s with the National Film Board of Canada and IMAX. There he integrated revolutionary digital-imaging systems for live-action and animated films. Later, he established Command Post Toybox’s visual effects department, where he continued building his impressive résumé as VFX Lead on films such as Tarsem Singh’s The Cell and David Fincher’s Fight Club.

Berardi has surrounded himself with a team of highly experienced professionals. Aaron Weintraub helped found the company along with Berardi. Mr. X’s Senior Visual Effects Supervisor, Weintraub has compiled no less than an 80-film repertoire including Dawn of the Dead, Eastern Promises, Pacific Rim, TRON: LEGACY and Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. More recently, Weintraub has added films such as Sully, The Finest Hours and Ben-Hur, under his belt. He is the company’s go-to expert in VR and 360-degree video, and recently directed the spectacular Ben-Hur 360° Experience and Resident Evil: The Final Chapter 360° Experience. Before Mr. X, Weintraub built his career on an already impressive string of successes through his contribution to TOPIX’s Mad Dog Digital. Weintraub has been awarded the Kodak Canada Award for Academic and Creative Excellence, and been nominated by the Canadian Screen Awards for his work on Mama.

Accompanying Weintraub on Sully, Ben-Hur, The Finest Hours, Scott Pilgrim, and TRON: LEGACY is Supervising Visual Effects Producer and Head of Production, Sarah McMurdo. Her impressive work can also be seen in Hanna and Mama. Most recently she produced VFX for three seasons of the Showtime’s Penny Dreadful, each recognized with VES nominations for Best Supporting Visual Effects.

McMurdo designed the project management workflow for Mr. X and supervises a team of 40 production staff.

Visual Effects Supervisor Chris MacLean worked on Crimson Peak, Ben-Hur and Pompeii, and has helped Mr. X

streamline its asset-creation process through his development of Xscan, a photogrammetry-based scanning stage.

Visual Effects Supervisor Trey Harrell joined Mr. X in 2010 after 15 years as an art director and creative director for broadcast, web and print ads. After his stint on TRON: Legacy as Lead Lighting TD, he’s now working on Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water.

Since its inception, Mr. X has grown to over 300 employees.

Working from locations in Toronto, New York City, Montreal and Los Angeles, the company now has well over 100 films on its credit list. The team at Mr. X wanted to build a company based on a philosophy that the quality of their contribution and unique visual brand will improve the productions they work on.

“We strive to recruit, hire and partner with those who understand the idea of visual storytelling, where we take an abstract idea, scripted page, or a brief from a director and we have to translate that idea into visuals that make sense and tell stories. That is our passion,” Berardi says. While many other companies are bogged down by the needs of the industry, Berardi has a starkly lighthearted approach. “I always laugh when some people complain about the films or TV productions they’re on. I don’t know what they’re complaining about; they should just work to make it better.”

Stability is another goal of Berardi’s, growing the company organically, taking on the projects they feel they’re suited for, will enjoy, and therefore excel at. Many companies hire freelancers on an “as needed” basis, when they are hired to meet crushing deadlines through three- or six-week contracts.

“We don’t do that,” he says. “We bring people in for six months or a year or a permanent job. Those are the three options. We are generally offered more work than we can do, so that allows for some choice. We make long-term commitments to our staff and offer stability and a lifestyle that I think is unique [in this industry]. I’m proud that an artist, technician, coordinator, or supervisor can come in and find a home within our company.”

The quality of work has continued for Mr. X with television shows such as Godless, Penny Dreadful, Bates Motel and the

“We started Mr. X with the idea of a place where we could do our best work. We wanted to invent the pipeline, invent the studio, and work with artists and technicians who inspired us, where we all had the common goal that our best work was ahead of us and we could do it together.

That was the genesis of Mr. X.” —Dennis Berardi, Global Managing Director/Visual Effects Supervisor /Producer, Mr. X

OPPOSITE PAGE: Dennis Berardi TOP LEFT: Welcome to Mr. X TOP RIGHT: Mr. X at work BOTTOM: Resident Evil: The Final Chapter (Photo credit: Copyright © 2017 Sony Pictures Entertainment. All Rights Reserved.)

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COMPANY PROFILE: MR. X, TORONTO

“One of our true success stories with Guillermo del Toro is Crimson Peak. All the design work was done here in Toronto, filmed completely in Toronto, post production in Toronto, as well as visual effects. It’s a design-based film that brings to life the aesthetic that we all envisioned.

I think it’s some of our best work.”

TOP LEFT and RIGHT: Inside Mr. X —Dennis Berardi BOTTOM: Crimson Peak (Photo credit: Copyright © 2017 Sony Pictures Entertainment. All Rights Reserved.)

TOP: Crimson Peak (Photo credit: Copyright © 2015 Universal Pictures.)

CENTER: Ben-Hur (Photo credit: Copyright © 2016 Paramount Pictures.)

BOTTOM: Vikings (Photo credit: Copyright © 2013 MGM Television.)

“We continue to hone our craft in visual storytelling, to push our understanding of the technology, and to embrace new movements beyond animation and visual effects.”

—Dennis Berardi critically acclaimed Vikings, now in its fifth season. Their feature credits include TRON: LEGACY, Sully, Ben-Hur, Resident Evil: The Final Chapter, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk and Guillermo del Toro’s Crimson Peak.

The company works frequently with del Toro, a director known for his success with various forms of media. “We’ve collaborated with him on multiple projects including Mama, on which he was one of the creative producers. We worked on Pacific Rim with him as well, where we contributed design and pre-visualized the opening sequence, something that I’m really proud of. One of our true success stories with Guillermo, however, is Crimson Peak. All the design work was done here in Toronto, filmed completely in Toronto, post production in Toronto, including visual effects. It’s a design-based film that

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brings to life the aesthetic that we all envisioned. I think it’s some of our best work.”

Mr. X continues to work on The Strain. A collaboration between del Toro and creator, Carlton Cuse, the series is entering its final season later on this summer. “Now we are working with him on The Shape of Water” – an otherworldly story befitting a Guillermo and Mr. X partnership. The upcoming year looks bright for the company with yet another highly anticipated 2017 release – Aaron Sorkin’s directorial debut, Molly’s Game, with Jessica Chastain.

“Mr. X Inc. is a company that is always looking towards the future. We continue to hone our craft in visual storytelling, to push our understanding of the technology, and to embrace new movements beyond animation and visual effects, especially VR and AR.” The Mr. X team is often recognized for their work through various awards, including the Emmys, the VES and CSA. “I’m proud to say we’ve been recognized for our passion in this industry. We compete at a very high level of visual effects and come up against the likes of Game of Thrones frequently.”

One of their artists’ favorites is Penny Dreadful. “Everyone here is a huge fan of the show,” he says, “so we would film the episode, we’d deliver the VFX, and then we’d watch it. We watch our own work, we are that company. We are a company that is excited about the work we do. We deliver, we watch it, and embrace it.”

Says Berardi, “We’re passionate about the industry we work in and the sense of camaraderie that we’ve achieved over the years – from attending events together, debating on how best to do this and that – we’ve developed our own unique visual effects society here at Mr. X.”

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COMPANY PROFILE: MR. X, TORONTO

“One of our true success stories with Guillermo del Toro is Crimson Peak. All the design work was done here in Toronto, filmed completely in Toronto, post production in Toronto, as well as visual effects. It’s a design-based film that brings to life the aesthetic that we all envisioned.

I think it’s some of our best work.”

TOP LEFT and RIGHT: Inside Mr. X —Dennis Berardi BOTTOM: Crimson Peak (Photo credit: Copyright © 2017 Sony Pictures Entertainment. All Rights Reserved.)

TOP: Crimson Peak (Photo credit: Copyright © 2015 Universal Pictures.)

CENTER: Ben-Hur (Photo credit: Copyright © 2016 Paramount Pictures.)

BOTTOM: Vikings (Photo credit: Copyright © 2013 MGM Television.)

“We continue to hone our craft in visual storytelling, to push our understanding of the technology, and to embrace new movements beyond animation and visual effects.”

—Dennis Berardi critically acclaimed Vikings, now in its fifth season. Their feature credits include TRON: LEGACY, Sully, Ben-Hur, Resident Evil: The Final Chapter, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk and Guillermo del Toro’s Crimson Peak.

The company works frequently with del Toro, a director known for his success with various forms of media. “We’ve collaborated with him on multiple projects including Mama, on which he was one of the creative producers. We worked on Pacific Rim with him as well, where we contributed design and pre-visualized the opening sequence, something that I’m really proud of. One of our true success stories with Guillermo, however, is Crimson Peak. All the design work was done here in Toronto, filmed completely in Toronto, post production in Toronto, including visual effects. It’s a design-based film that

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brings to life the aesthetic that we all envisioned. I think it’s some of our best work.”

Mr. X continues to work on The Strain. A collaboration between del Toro and creator, Carlton Cuse, the series is entering its final season later on this summer. “Now we are working with him on The Shape of Water” – an otherworldly story befitting a Guillermo and Mr. X partnership. The upcoming year looks bright for the company with yet another highly anticipated 2017 release – Aaron Sorkin’s directorial debut, Molly’s Game, with Jessica Chastain.

“Mr. X Inc. is a company that is always looking towards the future. We continue to hone our craft in visual storytelling, to push our understanding of the technology, and to embrace new movements beyond animation and visual effects, especially VR and AR.” The Mr. X team is often recognized for their work through various awards, including the Emmys, the VES and CSA. “I’m proud to say we’ve been recognized for our passion in this industry. We compete at a very high level of visual effects and come up against the likes of Game of Thrones frequently.”

One of their artists’ favorites is Penny Dreadful. “Everyone here is a huge fan of the show,” he says, “so we would film the episode, we’d deliver the VFX, and then we’d watch it. We watch our own work, we are that company. We are a company that is excited about the work we do. We deliver, we watch it, and embrace it.”

Says Berardi, “We’re passionate about the industry we work in and the sense of camaraderie that we’ve achieved over the years – from attending events together, debating on how best to do this and that – we’ve developed our own unique visual effects society here at Mr. X.”

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GAMES

enemy race, the Swarm, which threatens the human race.

GoW4 is the first new GoW title on Microsoft’s latest and most advanced game console, Xbox One, and the product review from game-reporting website Polygon said, “It’s easily the best-looking game on Xbox One.” It had been nominated for Best Action Game and Best Multiplayer awards at The Game Awards 2016, and it earned a nomination for Outstanding Visual Effects in a Real-time Project at the 15th annual VES Awards.

Another change with GoW4 was that it was the first Gears game not to be developed by North Carolina-based Epic Games, which launched the series with the first game in 2006. This game’s development was handled by The Coalition, a seven-year-old, Vancouver-based studio owned by Microsoft (which bought the GoW franchise from Epic after the original trilogy). The Coalition operated under other names earlier, including Zipline Studios, Microsoft Studios Vancouver and Black Tusk Studios.

The Coalition name, though, ties it to the Gears universe, with the series featuring a faction called the Coalition of Ordered Governments (or “COG”). It’s clear that Coalition’s focus will be on Gears games.

START YOUR ENGINE

GEARS OF WAR 4 FOR XBOX ONE ACCELERATES TO NEW VISUAL HEIGHTS

By ANDY EDDY

“Whatever we think we need that’s going to make the artists’ lives easier or automate repeated tasks, they’re very responsive.

We want our artists to be artists. We don’t need them to be fighting with their computers.”

—Aryan Hanbeck, Associate Art Director, The Coalition

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The videogame industry has taken some incredible strides in a relatively short period of time. In the late ’80s, when Nintendo became a household name around America for its Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), and with such notable game releases as Super Mario Bros., games were mostly 2D, sprite-based “side scrollers,” perhaps creating pseudo-3D with parallax variations between background “layers.” Now, just 30 years later, we have PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC entertainment software with full 3D presentation of realistic characters, intricate architecture and rich worlds.

Take Gears of War 4, the fifth entry in the hyperviolent, thirdperson-shooter franchise. This latest installment was released October 11, 2016, for Windows PCs and the Xbox One console.

The GoW series – which has shipped over 26 million copies worldwide – is known for its diverse pacing, from lengthy set pieces with snappy dialogue and character interplay that build a rich story, to frantic combat with big, highly detailed character models and giant weapons. The signature weapon in the game series is the Lancer assault rifle with the chainsaw bayonet attachment, which leaves little to the imagination in its level of destructive power and grisly results, but there are numerous arms available, from sniper rifles to shotguns to an explosive launching gun called Dropshot.

RISE LIKE A FENIX

The GoW4 story focuses on JD Fenix – the son of Marcus Fenix, the lead protagonist in the original GoW trilogy – and his squadmates, Kait and Del, as they battle on the planet Sera against numerous enemies. The trio will need to find and rescue their missing family members, but also discover the source of a new

Gears titles have always been a graphics tours de force, but Gears of War 4 takes the visuals to a new level, thanks to the robust hardware platforms on which it plays. A large part of the game’s visual authority comes from its foundation: It was constructed in Epic’s Unreal Engine 4. The development suite was first introduced in 1998, but the latest version – which is also free, with royalties paid only when the developed product is sold – is polished and powerful, with plenty of advanced tools and tech available out of the box. However, it’s also open to modification for custom procedures and effects. Unreal Engine helped The Coalition art team meet its goal of making GoW4 into what Associate Art Director Aryan Hanbeck called “the most visually inspiring game of 2016.”

“We had a really good working relationship with Epic, and Epic would help us out any time we could use some help – they were a great partner,” says Colin Penty, CG supervisor on GoW4. “We, of course, did some modifications here and there to streamline things or make things work better on Xbox One.” “[Unreal is an] awesome engine and it’s very feature complete – though we do a lot of work on it, and we have a good tools and engine team that really support us, so as we go forward, whatever we think we need that’s going to make the artists’ lives easier or automate repeated tasks, they’re very responsive,” Hanbeck adds. “We want our artists to be artists. We don’t need them to be fighting with their computers.”

Of course, there were other tools that Coalition artists put to use in their work. Penty says, “We’re a Maya house…PhotoShop, Substance Painter…all on Windows workstations. We use pretty beefy workstations to handle our levels in Unreal 4. We had such massive levels with so much content in them – like a 100,000 assets inside a level – so we had to upgrade our hardware a few times throughout the production to keep up with our density.”

The art team faced numerous other challenges across the

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GAMES

enemy race, the Swarm, which threatens the human race.

GoW4 is the first new GoW title on Microsoft’s latest and most advanced game console, Xbox One, and the product review from game-reporting website Polygon said, “It’s easily the best-looking game on Xbox One.” It had been nominated for Best Action Game and Best Multiplayer awards at The Game Awards 2016, and it earned a nomination for Outstanding Visual Effects in a Real-time Project at the 15th annual VES Awards.

Another change with GoW4 was that it was the first Gears game not to be developed by North Carolina-based Epic Games, which launched the series with the first game in 2006. This game’s development was handled by The Coalition, a seven-year-old, Vancouver-based studio owned by Microsoft (which bought the GoW franchise from Epic after the original trilogy). The Coalition operated under other names earlier, including Zipline Studios, Microsoft Studios Vancouver and Black Tusk Studios.

The Coalition name, though, ties it to the Gears universe, with the series featuring a faction called the Coalition of Ordered Governments (or “COG”). It’s clear that Coalition’s focus will be on Gears games.

START YOUR ENGINE

GEARS OF WAR 4 FOR XBOX ONE ACCELERATES TO NEW VISUAL HEIGHTS

By ANDY EDDY

“Whatever we think we need that’s going to make the artists’ lives easier or automate repeated tasks, they’re very responsive.

We want our artists to be artists. We don’t need them to be fighting with their computers.”

—Aryan Hanbeck, Associate Art Director, The Coalition

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The videogame industry has taken some incredible strides in a relatively short period of time. In the late ’80s, when Nintendo became a household name around America for its Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), and with such notable game releases as Super Mario Bros., games were mostly 2D, sprite-based “side scrollers,” perhaps creating pseudo-3D with parallax variations between background “layers.” Now, just 30 years later, we have PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC entertainment software with full 3D presentation of realistic characters, intricate architecture and rich worlds.

Take Gears of War 4, the fifth entry in the hyperviolent, thirdperson-shooter franchise. This latest installment was released October 11, 2016, for Windows PCs and the Xbox One console.

The GoW series – which has shipped over 26 million copies worldwide – is known for its diverse pacing, from lengthy set pieces with snappy dialogue and character interplay that build a rich story, to frantic combat with big, highly detailed character models and giant weapons. The signature weapon in the game series is the Lancer assault rifle with the chainsaw bayonet attachment, which leaves little to the imagination in its level of destructive power and grisly results, but there are numerous arms available, from sniper rifles to shotguns to an explosive launching gun called Dropshot.

RISE LIKE A FENIX

The GoW4 story focuses on JD Fenix – the son of Marcus Fenix, the lead protagonist in the original GoW trilogy – and his squadmates, Kait and Del, as they battle on the planet Sera against numerous enemies. The trio will need to find and rescue their missing family members, but also discover the source of a new

Gears titles have always been a graphics tours de force, but Gears of War 4 takes the visuals to a new level, thanks to the robust hardware platforms on which it plays. A large part of the game’s visual authority comes from its foundation: It was constructed in Epic’s Unreal Engine 4. The development suite was first introduced in 1998, but the latest version – which is also free, with royalties paid only when the developed product is sold – is polished and powerful, with plenty of advanced tools and tech available out of the box. However, it’s also open to modification for custom procedures and effects. Unreal Engine helped The Coalition art team meet its goal of making GoW4 into what Associate Art Director Aryan Hanbeck called “the most visually inspiring game of 2016.”

“We had a really good working relationship with Epic, and Epic would help us out any time we could use some help – they were a great partner,” says Colin Penty, CG supervisor on GoW4. “We, of course, did some modifications here and there to streamline things or make things work better on Xbox One.” “[Unreal is an] awesome engine and it’s very feature complete – though we do a lot of work on it, and we have a good tools and engine team that really support us, so as we go forward, whatever we think we need that’s going to make the artists’ lives easier or automate repeated tasks, they’re very responsive,” Hanbeck adds. “We want our artists to be artists. We don’t need them to be fighting with their computers.”

Of course, there were other tools that Coalition artists put to use in their work. Penty says, “We’re a Maya house…PhotoShop, Substance Painter…all on Windows workstations. We use pretty beefy workstations to handle our levels in Unreal 4. We had such massive levels with so much content in them – like a 100,000 assets inside a level – so we had to upgrade our hardware a few times throughout the production to keep up with our density.”

The art team faced numerous other challenges across the

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“We had a really good working relationship with Epic, and Epic would help us out any time we could use some help — they were a great partner. We, of course, did some modifications here and there to streamline things or make things work better on Xbox One.” — Colin Penty, CG Supervisor on GoW4

30-month project, one of which was maintaining a self-imposed high frame rate across all gameplay modes: The single-player campaign runs at 30fps in 1080p, while the multiplayer modes run at 60fps in 1080p. There was also the matter of releasing a beta for the purpose of seeing how the gameplay was received, and getting subsequent comments from the players that could be used in the remaining months to make the game’s elements better. The beta came out with graphics that weren’t close to release-candidate quality, but there was still some great feedback from the community on how specific effects could be improved.

“We released a beta, and it was clear that the community wasn’t happy with the blood…which was like ‘Oh, no…that’s horrible.’

This is one of the pillars. I want to get the blood right first,” says Stu Maxwell, the game’s lead creatures and weapons artist. “Of course, it’s a work in progress…we did a true beta where we were really testing the game before we polished all of the art. Hey, that happens, but it just meant that I went back to the drawing board and really figured out how to take our blood to the absolute industry top, which was our goal.”

A PLOT TWISTER

When the three artists interviewed were asked how The Coalition pushed the envelope, all of them cited the game’s “windflares.” The effect starts as a tornado-like windstorm that picks up

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and throws everything that isn’t nailed down – plants and trees, debris, dead bodies. The wind is also strong enough to affect your projectile weapons, sending bullets in unintended directions – perhaps back at you.

The windflare can also generate “lightning flurries” that send multiple bolts of lightning at the ground. These bolts move across the terrain and break into more bolts. The bolts may take out some of the enemies you’re trying to defeat, so it can be a helpful offensive “weapon,” but you have to be careful that you don’t end up becoming a victim of the dangerous electricity yourself. You can take shelter from the windflare, but it won’t help you progress very much in your pursuit of moving along into the game. The windflares are massive, world-changing events, but also visually effective, presenting an ominous enemy to your team – and untraditional because it’s not on two legs and doesn’t carry a gun.

“It’s like you walk right into the center of an alternative-reality tornado. A tornado that isn’t just wind, but now it’s wind and lightning…extreme winds that are almost like fantasy – and what that entailed is creating the feeling of being in the most destructive possible environment,” Maxwell says. “Filling the air with debris, huge storm walls in the distance with inner lightning and lightning coming into the field destroying cover objects it happens to hit. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a level in a game that has that level of intensity and complexity.”

“We released a beta, and it was clear that the community wasn’t happy with the blood… which was like ‘Oh, no…that’s horrible.’ This is one of the pillars. I want to get the blood right first. Of course, it’s a work in progress…we did a true beta where we were really testing the game before we polished all of the art.

Hey, that happens, but it just meant that I went back to the drawing board and really figured out how to take our blood to the absolute industry top, which was our goal.”

— Stu Maxwell, GoW4’s lead creatures and weapons artist

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“Of course, there were other tools that Coalition artists put to use in their work.

We’re a Maya house… PhotoShop, Substance Painter… all on Windows workstations. We use pretty beefy workstations to handle our levels in Unreal 4. We had such massive levels with so much content in them – like a 100,000 assets inside a level – so we had to upgrade our hardware a few times throughout the production to keep up with our density.”

—Colin Penty “There are four or five points where you get hit by a…massive hurricane-like storm,” Penty adds. “Those are the points where everyone would have to come together, but especially the visual effects team, to create something that was all-encompassing, that would fill a run at 30fps at 1080p in Xbox One. When we pulled them off, they were the points where we really demonstrated what we could do with the hardware.”

The windflares ended up being quite impressive, but without question they were graphics components that needed a number of iterations before they truly became the showcases the art team sought them to be.

“The windflares have lots of elements to them – it’s the way the storm looks, how it approaches, what the lightning orbs look like, how it affects gameplay,” Hanbeck says. “So from a purely visual standpoint, we built that windflare maybe four or five times from bottom up…and we’d kill it and play it and look at it. We’d look at it for a few weeks and say, ‘You know what? This isn’t good enough… it doesn’t look right, it’s not impressive enough, it’s not blowing the socks off anyone.’ This is one of our visual pillars here, so it has to look good. So, we’d revisit it…we’d cut right back down to concept phase, reconcept it out with a different take and try it again.”

READING, ’RITING, ’RITHMETIC…AND RENDERING

As far as the game industry has come – with Gears of War 4 as proof of what its current labor force and consumer-available hardware can provide to players in the way of visual fidelity and presentation – there’s still a lot that can be done to improve the standards and push the envelope.

“When I went to school, there was no concept of a game VFX artist,” Maxwell explains. “Certainly, there were specialty schools at the time that had a little bit of film VFX work…there wasn’t even a game-design school, but now that does exist – and there’s plenty of them. Thankfully the new generation is growing up learning how to become game designers, but still VFX is so specialized that there’s a limited amount of VFX education out there.”

And I guess we’ll see how much things have changed when The Coalition and parent Microsoft are ready to bring Gears of War 5 to store shelves.

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ANIMATION

CARS 3: PIXAR EMBRACES NEW RENDERER WITH STUNNING DETAIL

By IAN FAILES

The first Cars film from Pixar Animation Studios was released in 2006. Cars 2 followed in 2011. This summer, the third installment of the franchise featuring race legend Lightning McQueen will be in the spotlight. And with each new feature, Pixar has upped the ante on the compelling stories they tell and the technology used to help tell them.

That’s particularly the case with the upcoming Cars 3, directed

by Brian Fee, since Pixar has now completely adopted its new physically-based, path-tracing rendering architecture known as RIS inside of its renderer, RenderMan. On the previous Cars films, the studio’s REYES (Render Everything You’ve Ever Seen) algorithm, mixed with some ray-tracing techniques, had been used to deal with shiny car surfaces. But, after implementing RIS on Finding Dory, Pixar also embraced the new renderer for Cars 3.

The third installment in the franchise sees race car Lightning McQueen (voiced by Owen Wilson) deal with the impact of a major crash, aided by race technician Cruz Ramirez (Cristela Alonzo), as they also take on a new foe in Jackson Storm (Armie Hammer).

The results look to be stunning, but getting there was not without some major challenges – ranging from the particular needs of highly reflective cars, to audacious effects involving mud and volumetrics.

A NEW RENDERING PARADIGM

BOTTOM: For Cars 3, Pixar took advantage of its new rendering architecture, RIS in RenderMan to tell the latest adventures of race car Lightning McQueen.

(All photos copyright 2017 Disney/Pixar.

All Rights Reserved.)

Although just about every film Pixar makes throws up a series of tough rendering assignments, the Cars films tend to have very specific ones such as metal-fleck paint, high specular reflections, gloss coats and generally lots of reflections. These are rendering challenges that ray tracing lives for, but prior to RIS, Pixar was using ‘the tricks of the trade’ to simulate the required look.

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“The problem was that metal-fleck paint has all these tiny little specks which are reflecting specular highlights at all random times and that kind of looks like noise. So we ran the risk of, if we used too much de-noising, we’d get rid of all the beauty of the metal-fleck paint.”

—Michael Fong “Now with RIS that all comes automatically,” outlines Pixar supervising technical director Michael Fong. “We did a lot of cheating in the past and now we try to figure out how materials would really respond in different lighting conditions. And we try to model those materials more correctly.”

Interestingly, the ability to model and render those materials, such as car surfaces, in more detail and more realistically also required a new way of thinking about the things themselves.

“Before,” notes Fong, “we approached it like this: well, it kind of looks like car paint to us. Now, it’s: well, exactly what would car paint be? It would have these various layers, and the metal-fleck would do this, and the gloss coat would do that.”

One challenge came simply from all the ‘free’ detail Pixar received in the renders. Now, lights placed along a race track were inherently featured as reflections of light shooting across the surface of the cars. While this looked exciting, and realistic, occasionally they had to have it art-directed.

“You have to remember that we’re an animation company,” states Fong, “so we want to make sure that you can read the character’s faces. We need this to be a character who’s emoting and is talking to the audience.”

Another challenge of the new RIS approach emerged with Pixar’s use of de-noising – a process used to speed up rendering times. “The problem was that metal-fleck paint has all these tiny little specks which are reflecting specular highlights at all random times and that kind of looks like noise,” says Fong. “So we ran the risk of, if we used too much de-noising, we’d get rid of all the beauty of the metal-fleck paint.”

TOP and BOTTOM: Concept art for the film shows a dynamic beach race.

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ANIMATION

LIKE A CAR IN MUD

TOP TO BOTTOM: Michael Fong, Jon Reisch, Bill Cone, Jason Hudak, June Brownbill

One particular effect that was made easier with Pixar’s new renderer, while also offering up a wave of new challenges, was mud. In one action sequence, the race cars run through mud, have mud flicked up onto their faces and fenders, and generally stir up a whole concentration of the substance.

Pixar therefore had to create many different types of mud; the kind sitting on the ground in a puddle, the kind that sprays when the cars run through, and the kind that stuck to car bodies and tires. That involved devising, notes Pixar Visual Effects Supervisor Jon Reisch, the “dynamics of a viscous fluid like mud,” as well making sure it “felt natural and blended in with the great shading work that had already been done.”

“A big part of it too,” adds Reisch, “was making sure we got that sense of this being a really kinda raucous sequence without covering up all the great acting the animation team had done with all of our mud.”

Mud was particularly challenging because of its solid and liquid qualities (often at the same time). “We needed to see some sense of detail that’s still left behind and kind of infected through this sloppy mess,” says Reisch, “and then add additional detail by putting in chunks and pieces of ‘aggregate’ to give a break-up of texture and something that the light could play off of on the surface.”

Because there were so many types and layers of mud, artists split out the mud simulations, done in SideFX Software’s Houdini, into smaller ones. “The mud that gets kicked up from the tires would be a separate simulation,” describes Reisch. “The mud that hits and cakes up in the wheels and gets layered up on the character bodies would be some combination of detecting where the collisions of our splash sim would hit, and then passing that data over to either our character shading folks or trying to put an additional set of meshed mud on top of it.”

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A VAST VOLUME OF VOLUMETRICS AND EFFECTS

In addition to mud, Cars 3’s various racing sequences involve not only a wealth of ray-traced vehicles but also accompanying dust, dirt, sand, tire smoke, burnouts, debris and even fire.

“The big thing was making sure that we could get a clustered simulation set up,” says Reisch. “We had lots of independently sim’d volumes which we could run in parallel on the farm for a shot. For example, if McQueen is burning down a straightway of a dirt track, he’d be kicking up a tremendous amount of dust behind him and it may be a quarter mile in length, we wanted to get a certain amount of detail in there. So we’d break that sim up into smaller components.”

Among the other effects challenges on Cars 3 were crowds, again realized in Houdini. Here, animators would create clips of animation to populate stands. “We then selectively chose the ones that really needed to stand out,” outlines Fong, “and we have animators come in and actually hand-animate key members of the crowd.”

Crowds could be particularly expensive to render, so Pixar also optimized them, as Fong explains. “The crowd models are actually variations on our normal models, and we’re just always trying to hide that transition from real model to crowd model. We do tricks like we might switch from subdiv to polys, we might remove pieces, we might cheapen the shading, and all we’re doing is just to hopefully make it more efficient.”

KEEPING IT REAL, IN THE CARS WORLD

Pixar’s new RenderMan RIS architecture has already been used for the visual effects in several live-action feature films to help provide stunning photorealistic sequences. That’s always something within Pixar’s reach, too, but of course their work on this latest animated feature had to stay in the already-established Cars realm.

“I think with the new renderer it’s a lot easier to hit

PIXAR, YOU CAN DRIVE MY CAR Having already delivered two major Cars features, Pixar had in its arsenal of tools a driving system within the studio’s animation software, Presto. On Cars 3, that system was given a whole new level of acceleration.

“We had a driving system and it was rebuilt for Cars 3,” says Michael Fong. “Our tools group put a bunch of people on it and they built a brand new system. The interface is actually new and a little different.”

The original system was developed to deal with the challenge of having an animated car “moving along a path and the wheels all contacting the ground and correctly bouncing and the suspension working correctly,” notes Fong, “especially when some of the bounces are actually displacement and not in the model itself.

“What it does is sample a ground plane after shading so it knows when the displacement is. It can tell whether or not the tires are correctly sitting on the ground. The tires will to some degree automatically bulge out. What the animator can basically do is lay out a path and work with just the path, and everything else is more automatically figured out.”

photorealism,” suggests Fong, “and I think we definitely have examples where we can push it to that level. But that’s not the level, or the look, we’re going for in this particular movie. We’re not doing things like introducing film grain and that sort of thing to make it feel like it’s a filmed piece. We want people to know it’s still a Cars movie, but we also want to make sure people are aware of, hey, this is a different type of Cars movie.”

Cars 3 from Disney and Pixar is scheduled to be released in the U.S. on June 16, 2017.

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VFX VAULT

CLOSE ENCOUNTERS WITH AN EFFECTS MILESTONE

By IAN FAILES

1977 was a seminal year in visual effects. Yes, it was the year Star Wars was released, setting a path forward both for blockbuster effects films and for the studio behind the work, Industrial Light & Magic. But it was another film, Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind, that also made waves in the effects industry by pushing forward technological boundaries in miniatures, motion control and compositing still felt 40 years later.

Close Encounters’ sci-fi story about human contact with an alien species was always going to necessitate the use of visual effects.

Having contributed to 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Andromeda Strain and Silent Running (which he also directed), Douglas Trumbull, VES, came on board the film to supervise the ‘special photographic effects.’

RIGHT: In this polaroid of the Close Encounters cloud tank in action, the desired wispy edges and density of the cloud-like patterns are apparent.

BOTTOM LEFT: Individual cloud elements were acquired in the cloud tank.

BOTTOM RIGHT: Fiber optic lights helped achieve light patterns within the cloud elements.

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LEFT: Scott Squires, VES, oversees the Mothership miniature (in background) and the electronics required to operate the motion-control unit.

BOTTOM. Squires slates the Mothership. The miniature was four feethigh and five feet wide, and weighed 400lbs.

He partnered with Richard Yuricich to start Entertainment Effects Group (EEG) in Marina del Rey, California a facility which would handle – and simultaneously advance the techniques for – motion-control miniature photography, optical compositing, cloud tanks and the creation of matte elements.

Trumbull and his team capitalized on the needs of the production and his fledging facility to experiment with several visual effects techniques. This included the first use of a real-time on-location system for digitally recording camera motion. The idea here was that the movement of lights used on set for representing the flight of spaceships in the scenes, and the matching camera movement, could be recorded and then precisely repeated in the miniature photography.

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VFX VAULT

TOP LEFT: Lighting pass filmed for the Mothership.

TOP RIGHT: Mothership miniature slate.

BOTTOM LEFT AND RIGHT: Models created for wide shots in the film were extreme miniatures.

Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind made waves in the effects industry by pushing forward technological boundaries in miniatures, motion control and compositing still felt 40 years later.

EEG was the first company to composite motion-control shots in 65mm, for Close Encounters. Indeed, the effects work was captured with 65mm Super Panavision cameras, the larger format negative enabling greater quality of the final image and matching to the 35mm photography after multiple generations and composites.

In addition, EEG would make headways into how a blacked-out ‘smoke room’ could be used to film miniatures with motion control and help add consistent layers of atmospheric mood to scenes of this kind (in this case, the large Mothership made from fiberglass and filled with seemingly miles of fiber optic lighting, built under the supervision of Greg Jein).

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TOP: An optically composited shot in progress, in which a live-actionplate and cloud-tank footage is composited with a matte painting.

LEFT: Scott Squires, VES. Photos courtesy of Scott Squires.

RIGHT: Cloud tank results.

Another breakthrough was the facility’s ‘soft matte’ approach that retained the much-needed glows and lens flares of spaceship lights during compositing. It was intended to mimic the live-action effect of lens flares, particularly on anamorphic lenses.

To depict the clouds where the alien spaceships would be hiding, EEG devised a cloud tank effect by combining salt water and fresh water layered between a plastic sheet that, when combined with injected paint, produced the desired consistency. Scott Squires, VES led the development of the cloud tank work (see sidebar).

Close Encounters would also take advantage of matte paintings to widen the scope of certain scenes. Matte artist Matthew Yuricich was responsible for several of these paintings that

“The first day on the job, someone said, ‘Okay, so in the movie we have to create these clouds, and we’re looking at different ways of doing it.

There are different chemical smokes but most of those are toxic. But when we pour cream in our coffee, that’s kind of like the clouds we want to create but, you know, it can’t be in coffee. We have to see the clouds themselves and we have to be able to photograph it.’”

—Scott Squires, VES, Visual Effects Supervisor/ Co-founder, Dream Quest Images

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VFX VAULT

CRAFTING THOSE CURIOUS CLOUDS At one point, the working title for Close Encounters of the Third Kind was Watch the Skies. It was perhaps an apt reference and insight into how important to the film the clouds were that hide the spaceships. The visual effects used to bring those clouds to life proved to be equally innovative.

The job of making clouds – ultimately realized with a cloud tank solution – fell to Scott Squires, VES, who was fresh out of high school and working as an assistant to Douglas Trumbull, VES, on the film. He was almost immediately called into action.

“The first day on the job,” recalls Squires, “someone said, ‘Okay, so in the movie we have to create these clouds, and we’re looking at different ways of doing it. There are different chemical smokes but most of those are toxic. But when we pour cream in our coffee, that’s kind of like the clouds we want to create but, you know, it can’t be in coffee. We have to see the clouds themselves and we have to be able to photograph it.’”

Squires was given $20 in petty cash and asked to experiment with liquids in a 20 gallon aquarium. “I walked a few blocks to the local grocery store, picked up some milk and whipped cream and paints and all types of other things just trying to start exploring this,” says Squires, who would later co-found the visual effects studio Dream Quest Images and be a visual effects supervisor at ILM on several key projects such as The Mask, Dragonheart and Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace.

After exploring the effects of alcohol and milk, and then salt water to increase the density, he was able to get the liquid to respond in a cloudy way. “By the end of the week I’d had a solution where I poured salt water in the bottom of the aquarium, and then carefully on the top I put in fresh water and avoiding mixing the two waters. Then by injecting white tempered paint into the fresh water it would bellow out like a real cumulus cloud and also rest right on that inversion layer between the salt water and fresh water, which would make it appear more like a cloud because you get different air pressures and so forth.”

Buoyed by that success, Squires ordered a 2,000 gallon glass tank. Two wine vats made of redwood held 1,000 gallons

enabled live-action plates to be projected into environments and locations that had been produced on glass.

At the 50th Academy Awards® in 1978, Star Wars would take the Best Visual Effects Oscar. Its only competitor in the final nominations, however, was Close Encounters. But the Spielberg film has remained a constant go-to for other filmmakers in how to craft atmospheric effects and use visual effects to help tell a compelling story.

Notably, the film is often referenced for its ingenious blend of the then latest in effects techniques, coupled with a ‘rubber band and wire-tape’ style of effects that was predominant before the rise of CGI and digital compositing.

That’s pretty impressive for a 40-year-old movie.

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each of fresh and salt water. “Then we had fiber optics coming down on an eight-inch tube through which the paint would come out of,” explains. “That was filmed and it was great because with an anamorphic lens it tended to make ovals out of any point sources, which means it looked like a glowing UFO coming through the clouds.”

A crucial part of the cloud tank solution involved an ‘atomic arm,’ essentially a remote-controlled hand like those used in nuclear laboratories, which enabled the liquid rigged with a compressor to be injected into the water solution with some consistency. Additional syringes were utilized to create small clouds in the background while the main simulated cloud formations were in the foreground. Squires and the team at EEG also established a complex set-up of pumps and plastic sheeting to control the mixing of the water and enable turnaround between takes.

The final cloud shots were achieved by combining 65mm plates of the actual cloud tank footage, which was then rotoscoped and optically composited into the relevant scenes – notable ones include clouds massing around Devils Tower and near the house of the character Jillian Guiler.

The cloud tank shots were so effective that they have been emulated almost ever since in other films. ILM actually purchased the large tank itself and followed the technique for scenes in Raiders of the Lost Ark, as well as adapting it for ghost shots in Poltergeist. The encroaching alien spaceships in Independence Day were famously preceded by billowing clouds achieved with a cloud tank solution, too.

“These days,” notes Squires, “it would certainly be done digitally and you’d have full control over it. But back then there were not a lot of ways to make good-looking clouds. The liquids really give you the right opacity and at the same time a certain amount of translucency like you get with real clouds.

And you can make some fairly elaborate motions just by squirting the liquids in different ways, by moving a wand around, and trying different things. Which is the great thing about all types of practical effects.”

TOP LEFT: Compositing shot slate.

TOP RIGHT: A wedge test for the Mothership miniature.

LEFT: Filming the Mothership miniature.

CENTER RIGHT: Wedge test.

BOTTOM RIGHT: An R2-D2 model was hidden in one of the shots.

NEXT PAGE: Wedge test for final composite shot featuring live action and cloud tank footage.

SPRING 2017

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VFX VAULT

CRAFTING THOSE CURIOUS CLOUDS At one point, the working title for Close Encounters of the Third Kind was Watch the Skies. It was perhaps an apt reference and insight into how important to the film the clouds were that hide the spaceships. The visual effects used to bring those clouds to life proved to be equally innovative.

The job of making clouds – ultimately realized with a cloud tank solution – fell to Scott Squires, VES, who was fresh out of high school and working as an assistant to Douglas Trumbull, VES, on the film. He was almost immediately called into action.

“The first day on the job,” recalls Squires, “someone said, ‘Okay, so in the movie we have to create these clouds, and we’re looking at different ways of doing it. There are different chemical smokes but most of those are toxic. But when we pour cream in our coffee, that’s kind of like the clouds we want to create but, you know, it can’t be in coffee. We have to see the clouds themselves and we have to be able to photograph it.’”

Squires was given $20 in petty cash and asked to experiment with liquids in a 20 gallon aquarium. “I walked a few blocks to the local grocery store, picked up some milk and whipped cream and paints and all types of other things just trying to start exploring this,” says Squires, who would later co-found the visual effects studio Dream Quest Images and be a visual effects supervisor at ILM on several key projects such as The Mask, Dragonheart and Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace.

After exploring the effects of alcohol and milk, and then salt water to increase the density, he was able to get the liquid to respond in a cloudy way. “By the end of the week I’d had a solution where I poured salt water in the bottom of the aquarium, and then carefully on the top I put in fresh water and avoiding mixing the two waters. Then by injecting white tempered paint into the fresh water it would bellow out like a real cumulus cloud and also rest right on that inversion layer between the salt water and fresh water, which would make it appear more like a cloud because you get different air pressures and so forth.”

Buoyed by that success, Squires ordered a 2,000 gallon glass tank. Two wine vats made of redwood held 1,000 gallons

enabled live-action plates to be projected into environments and locations that had been produced on glass.

At the 50th Academy Awards® in 1978, Star Wars would take the Best Visual Effects Oscar. Its only competitor in the final nominations, however, was Close Encounters. But the Spielberg film has remained a constant go-to for other filmmakers in how to craft atmospheric effects and use visual effects to help tell a compelling story.

Notably, the film is often referenced for its ingenious blend of the then latest in effects techniques, coupled with a ‘rubber band and wire-tape’ style of effects that was predominant before the rise of CGI and digital compositing.

That’s pretty impressive for a 40-year-old movie.

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each of fresh and salt water. “Then we had fiber optics coming down on an eight-inch tube through which the paint would come out of,” explains. “That was filmed and it was great because with an anamorphic lens it tended to make ovals out of any point sources, which means it looked like a glowing UFO coming through the clouds.”

A crucial part of the cloud tank solution involved an ‘atomic arm,’ essentially a remote-controlled hand like those used in nuclear laboratories, which enabled the liquid rigged with a compressor to be injected into the water solution with some consistency. Additional syringes were utilized to create small clouds in the background while the main simulated cloud formations were in the foreground. Squires and the team at EEG also established a complex set-up of pumps and plastic sheeting to control the mixing of the water and enable turnaround between takes.

The final cloud shots were achieved by combining 65mm plates of the actual cloud tank footage, which was then rotoscoped and optically composited into the relevant scenes – notable ones include clouds massing around Devils Tower and near the house of the character Jillian Guiler.

The cloud tank shots were so effective that they have been emulated almost ever since in other films. ILM actually purchased the large tank itself and followed the technique for scenes in Raiders of the Lost Ark, as well as adapting it for ghost shots in Poltergeist. The encroaching alien spaceships in Independence Day were famously preceded by billowing clouds achieved with a cloud tank solution, too.

“These days,” notes Squires, “it would certainly be done digitally and you’d have full control over it. But back then there were not a lot of ways to make good-looking clouds. The liquids really give you the right opacity and at the same time a certain amount of translucency like you get with real clouds.

And you can make some fairly elaborate motions just by squirting the liquids in different ways, by moving a wand around, and trying different things. Which is the great thing about all types of practical effects.”

TOP LEFT: Compositing shot slate.

TOP RIGHT: A wedge test for the Mothership miniature.

LEFT: Filming the Mothership miniature.

CENTER RIGHT: Wedge test.

BOTTOM RIGHT: An R2-D2 model was hidden in one of the shots.

NEXT PAGE: Wedge test for final composite shot featuring live action and cloud tank footage.

SPRING 2017

VFXVOICE.COM • 99

5/7/18 1:27 PM

PREVIS

THE GREAT WALL: TAKING THE DIRECTOR’S VISION TO THE NEXT LEVEL

By ED OCHS

The Great Wall. (Photo credit: Copyright © 2017 Universal Pictures. All Rights Reserved.)

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Using previs as a first step in building the Wall and armies of warriors that deliver an epic film experience on the grand scale of Universal’s The Great Wall seemed like a smart idea. But first the director had to be convinced that previs was a key, not a limitation, to fully realizing his creative vision. And time, as always, was pressing.

“The Great Wall sky warriors scene was a fun challenge to figure out,” explains Halon Entertainment Previsualization Supervisor Clint G. Reagan in an email to VFX Voice. “We had a short two-week time frame to demonstrate the previs process to (director) Zhang Yimou who had not used it before. The goal was to show him how this filmmaking tool would help him make this very large-scale movie. To show the benefits of using previs during pre-production with very little time or iterations, combined with the armies of characters and lack of storyboards, we needed to generate a scene that would stand on its own.”

Reagan did some unusual translating to set the wheels in motion. “The previs process began with a verbal pitch from Zhang Yimou in Chinese,” Reagan recounts. “I watched his gestures while I took notes to connect how he expressed each story beat to the English translator. After the initial pitch meeting, I began the structural design of the scene, and planned how to approach the shots so that my Halon team would have an edit to start from. We divided the scene and artists by story beats, with each artist on our team focused on a very specific moment.

Each artist brought their filmmaking talents to their beat, making the work scalable and exciting within the confines of our short time frame.”

Modeling and rigging started right away. “Our lead animators started animation with blocky placeholders so that we would have time to find exciting performances and shots for the edit.

The Great Wall turning to gold in 3D and compositing was designed by another artist. I had to design the launching system for the warriors and prep it for more detailed animation. We really had to previs our previs so that no time was wasted in reaching a storytelling piece ASAP. “Having so many things happening at once and seeing each contribution coming together was rewarding,” Reagan adds. “After a first-week review, we launched into the second week where the action and look of everything was refined and delivered. Our team of previs filmmakers did amazing work with so little to start with, and it shows in that so much of our work is seen in the first trailer.”

Patrick Smith, Previs Supervisor for The Third Floor, another key contributor to The Great Wall, felt the weight of the challenge as well. “Director Zhang Yimou is a renowned director known for his visionary style of filmmaking, so right off the bat that set a precedent for us to really deliver on the most visually and aesthetically pleasing previs we could develop. In addition, we also knew he wanted to create some very elegant, well-choreographed long takes that would need to be worked out in advance.

“To meet that challenge,” Smith tells VFX Voice, “we enlisted some of The Third Floor’s top asset builders to construct the world of The Great Wall in previs form – from the elaborate environments and sets to the vibrant cast of characters and otherworldly monsters.”

Smith had previously worked on films requiring long takes and learned it can be useful to approach these shots in bitesized chunks.

“The nature of these types of shots is that they tend to evolve over many months of sculpting and shaping and pursuing new ideas or reintroducing old ones,” he explains. “In terms of approaching continuous long takes within previs, it helps to ‘manage’ the shot by keeping it as simple as possible and compartmentalizing actions and sections of actions within your file. It’s best to stay in a blocking state for the previs animation as long as possible so you aren’t redoing everything when you need to slip a new action right into the middle of a 2,000-frame shot! The fewer key frames the better in those situations.”

As the shot becomes more defined, the previs becomes more detailed. “You basically have to approach it from the beginning knowing that it’s going to be a lengthy task and if you do the preventative maintenance work up front, it will help save you time in the long run. For example,” he advises, “you can set up some global tools from the onset in the previs file to help rotate large portions of action or camera paths. But you can’t always plan for every contingency – sometimes you have to roll with it.”

Welcoming the director to previs for the first time was both exciting and a bit nerve-wracking for Smith. In the beginning, Yimou wondered where previs fit in. When he learned that previs supported efficiency as well as creativity, any concern he may have had melted into enthusiasm.

“When we started on the show, we were provided with a set of some of the most beautifully drawn storyboards I have ever seen for a film,” Smith declares. “I was simultaneously excited and terrified to then have to deliver on nailing each and every one of these

TOP: PREVIS by Halon for The Great Wall.

(Photo credit: Image copyright Universal Pictures and courtesy of Halon Entertainment.)

ABOVE: PREVIS by The Third Floor for The Great Wall. TTF visualized ideas and action for director Zhang Yimou with moving 3D previs that conveyed the vision for key scenes and especially the film’s battles. (Photo credit: Image copyright Universal Pictures and courtesy of The Third Floor, Inc.)

“The wall itself was one of the major silent characters in that its interior was a far more complex environment than just wood and stone.”

—Patrick Smith, Previs Supervisor for The Third Floor

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PREVIS

THE GREAT WALL: TAKING THE DIRECTOR’S VISION TO THE NEXT LEVEL

By ED OCHS

The Great Wall. (Photo credit: Copyright © 2017 Universal Pictures. All Rights Reserved.)

100 • VFXVOICE.COM SPRING 2017

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Using previs as a first step in building the Wall and armies of warriors that deliver an epic film experience on the grand scale of Universal’s The Great Wall seemed like a smart idea. But first the director had to be convinced that previs was a key, not a limitation, to fully realizing his creative vision. And time, as always, was pressing.

“The Great Wall sky warriors scene was a fun challenge to figure out,” explains Halon Entertainment Previsualization Supervisor Clint G. Reagan in an email to VFX Voice. “We had a short two-week time frame to demonstrate the previs process to (director) Zhang Yimou who had not used it before. The goal was to show him how this filmmaking tool would help him make this very large-scale movie. To show the benefits of using previs during pre-production with very little time or iterations, combined with the armies of characters and lack of storyboards, we needed to generate a scene that would stand on its own.”

Reagan did some unusual translating to set the wheels in motion. “The previs process began with a verbal pitch from Zhang Yimou in Chinese,” Reagan recounts. “I watched his gestures while I took notes to connect how he expressed each story beat to the English translator. After the initial pitch meeting, I began the structural design of the scene, and planned how to approach the shots so that my Halon team would have an edit to start from. We divided the scene and artists by story beats, with each artist on our team focused on a very specific moment.

Each artist brought their filmmaking talents to their beat, making the work scalable and exciting within the confines of our short time frame.”

Modeling and rigging started right away. “Our lead animators started animation with blocky placeholders so that we would have time to find exciting performances and shots for the edit.

The Great Wall turning to gold in 3D and compositing was designed by another artist. I had to design the launching system for the warriors and prep it for more detailed animation. We really had to previs our previs so that no time was wasted in reaching a storytelling piece ASAP. “Having so many things happening at once and seeing each contribution coming together was rewarding,” Reagan adds. “After a first-week review, we launched into the second week where the action and look of everything was refined and delivered. Our team of previs filmmakers did amazing work with so little to start with, and it shows in that so much of our work is seen in the first trailer.”

Patrick Smith, Previs Supervisor for The Third Floor, another key contributor to The Great Wall, felt the weight of the challenge as well. “Director Zhang Yimou is a renowned director known for his visionary style of filmmaking, so right off the bat that set a precedent for us to really deliver on the most visually and aesthetically pleasing previs we could develop. In addition, we also knew he wanted to create some very elegant, well-choreographed long takes that would need to be worked out in advance.

“To meet that challenge,” Smith tells VFX Voice, “we enlisted some of The Third Floor’s top asset builders to construct the world of The Great Wall in previs form – from the elaborate environments and sets to the vibrant cast of characters and otherworldly monsters.”

Smith had previously worked on films requiring long takes and learned it can be useful to approach these shots in bitesized chunks.

“The nature of these types of shots is that they tend to evolve over many months of sculpting and shaping and pursuing new ideas or reintroducing old ones,” he explains. “In terms of approaching continuous long takes within previs, it helps to ‘manage’ the shot by keeping it as simple as possible and compartmentalizing actions and sections of actions within your file. It’s best to stay in a blocking state for the previs animation as long as possible so you aren’t redoing everything when you need to slip a new action right into the middle of a 2,000-frame shot! The fewer key frames the better in those situations.”

As the shot becomes more defined, the previs becomes more detailed. “You basically have to approach it from the beginning knowing that it’s going to be a lengthy task and if you do the preventative maintenance work up front, it will help save you time in the long run. For example,” he advises, “you can set up some global tools from the onset in the previs file to help rotate large portions of action or camera paths. But you can’t always plan for every contingency – sometimes you have to roll with it.”

Welcoming the director to previs for the first time was both exciting and a bit nerve-wracking for Smith. In the beginning, Yimou wondered where previs fit in. When he learned that previs supported efficiency as well as creativity, any concern he may have had melted into enthusiasm.

“When we started on the show, we were provided with a set of some of the most beautifully drawn storyboards I have ever seen for a film,” Smith declares. “I was simultaneously excited and terrified to then have to deliver on nailing each and every one of these

TOP: PREVIS by Halon for The Great Wall.

(Photo credit: Image copyright Universal Pictures and courtesy of Halon Entertainment.)

ABOVE: PREVIS by The Third Floor for The Great Wall. TTF visualized ideas and action for director Zhang Yimou with moving 3D previs that conveyed the vision for key scenes and especially the film’s battles. (Photo credit: Image copyright Universal Pictures and courtesy of The Third Floor, Inc.)

“The wall itself was one of the major silent characters in that its interior was a far more complex environment than just wood and stone.”

—Patrick Smith, Previs Supervisor for The Third Floor

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PREVIS

TOP: Artists at The Third Floor collaborated with multiple departments to mock up camera positions, distances and stunts via technical previs, or “techvis.” (Photo credit: Image copyright Universal Pictures and courtesy of The Third Floor, Inc.) MIDDLE: PREVIS by Halon for The Great Wall. (Photo credit: Image copyright Universal Pictures and courtesy of Halon Entertainment) BOTTOM: TECHVIS by The Third Floor for The Great Wall. Witness camera views were a component of technical previs that mapped out shots in terms of shooting and stunt components. (Photo credit: Image copyright Universal Pictures and courtesy of The Third Floor, Inc.)

shots in previs. Our director had not used previs in the traditional sense that I’m aware of and seemed to want to understand our role more when we first arrived on location in Beijing.

“After a couple of meetings in which it became clear that we weren’t there to lock him into anything and were simply another visual extension of his vision, he took to it immediately. You could see his eyes light up and he sprang to life with such passion and excitement in describing his vision to us. We truly became the director’s sandbox where he could try out any number of ideas. He would then come by regularly and sit with us and we’d meet with the department heads to go over his vision for each sequence.”

For the visual effects supervisor, producers, stunts and art department, the techvis was “wildly important,” he states. “After having helped develop lots of exciting and bold new actions, we’d then need to help figure out how those shots could actually be executed on a set. We worked extremely closely with the art department to make sure that our sets in previs and techvis were based on their builds and then, using previs camera setups, we could help inform what they needed to build physically or what could be set extensions for VFX.” They also worked tirelessly to determine sizes and placements for greenscreens, shipping containers and other elements on a large outdoor practical set. Smith adds: “The techvis additionally encompassed things like calculating the actual path of the sun and where shadows would fall so the set builds could be oriented to show the cast and the environments in the best possible light.”

There was a special previs focus on the big battle sequences.

“The director wanted each battle sequence to be strikingly different in style and motif,” he explains, “from the style of combat to how the scene advanced the story or helped unfold the plot. Each battle focused on a unique fighting style used against the film’s alien creatures, so they wanted us to help visualize the vision for what that would actually look like. The wall itself was one of the major silent characters in that its interior was a far more complex environment than just wood and stone. The inner workings of this needed to be visualized since the visual effects team would be stitching different set dressings together to make it seamless.”

The majority of the work Smith and his Third Floor team did while in Beijing was previs and techvis prior to the shoot. “By mapping things out virtually,” he noted, “it was possible to assist the art department as they updated their sets and help visualize the spatial relationships of, say, adding weaponry on top of the wall prior to building it out physically. There was limited space within the wall set, so understanding how many horses or battalions or reinforcements could fit was important.”

Smith believes the previs was instrumental in helping the film’s production team develop a definitive plan for tackling many of the long, complex single-take shots. “Being able to visualize the scenes also provided the director with tools to explore multiple different ideas before going to camera. We were able to help the multiple contributing departments very clearly understand and plan how to achieve these creative and elaborate shots technically well before it came time to go to camera so that the production could be much smoother overall.”

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[ VFX TECH & TOOL NEWS ]

A glimpse at recent hardware, software and services developments, as well as related industries.

BLACKMAGIC DESIGN Fusion 8.2.1: Blackmagic Design released the latest version of its VFX and motion graphics software Fusion, Fusion 8.2.1. and Fusion 8.2.1 Studio.

The Fusion 8.2.1 update builds on Fusion 8.2 with dozens of new features and UI enhancements, with many of the features based on suggestions from customers. Some features include improved DNG support for consistency with DaVinci Resolve, new animation indicator shortcuts, new expressions for non-master color wheel inputs, the ability to select multiple license servers, a save version command in the file menu, and more.

Fusion 8.2.1 is available for both Fusion and Fusion Studio customers and can be downloaded free of charge from the Blackmagic Design website at www.blackmagicdesign.com/support.

DaVinci Resolve 12.5.4: Blackmagic Design has released the latest version of its professional editing, color correction

and finishing solution DaVinci Resolve, DaVinci Resolve 12.5.4 and DaVinci Resolve 12.5.4 Studio. (Top Left) DaVinci Resolve 12.5.4 adds support for the new MacBook Pro Touch Bar, along with additional HDR grading formats, and more. Now while using DaVinci Resolve 12.5.4, the Touch Bar automatically changes to show context sensitive tools based on the tasks that customers are performing, whether it’s editing, color grading, media management or finishing.

DaVinci Resolve 12.5.4 is available for both DaVinci Resolve and DaVinci Resolve Studio customers and can be downloaded free of charge from the Blackmagic Design website.

SIDEFX A Houdini 16 Launch Event was held at Rich Mix in London recently where SideFX previewed a wealth of new features, including: a new node network editor, viewport radial menus, booleans, terrain generation,

auto-rigging tools, a new shading workflow and much more. Released in late February, Houdini 16 is now available for download at SideFX.com. (Top Right) SideFX also announced that Houdini Core – previously known as simply Houdini – is now being offered for $1,495 USD – a 50% discount from the regular price. This promotion celebrates a powerful collection of features including procedural modeling, animation, character rigging, lighting and rendering, compositing, terrain generation and volumes.

Houdini Core works with scene files and Houdini Digital Assets [HDAs] created using the dynamics and simulation tools in Houdini FX, and have access to unlimited Mantra render tokens. Game developers can use Houdini Core to create digital assets that can be opened in game engines such as Unity and UE4 using the Houdini Engine plug-ins.

Please e-mail Tech and Tool News releases to publisher@vfx.voice.com

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[ VES SECTION SPOTLIGHT: TORONTO ]

A Busy Hub for VFX, VES and the Film Community

By RENEE DUNLOP The growth of the now 20-year-old Visual Effects Society worldwide is inexorably linked to the growth of its Sections. VES now boasts 11 global Sections and counting.

One of its standout Sections is Toronto.

That seems only fitting since the city is a major screen-based hub with more than 40 years of international experience in film and television production, and post production. It also continues to be a mushrooming VFX mecca.

The Toronto Section of the VES began when local VFX producers Christa Tazzeo Morson and Lara Osland took the heady initiative to start the ball rolling, officially launching in the spring of 2013. Movie screenings were offered almost immediately, along with a handful of networking opportunities to create VFX community.

The first Section Chair was Kim Davidson, President and CEO of SideFX, a company he co-founded in 1987. SideFX is the innovator of advanced 3D animation and special effects Houdini software, and sponsors many VES Toronto events, along with the VES Summit in Los Angeles every Autumn.

“I feel I’m in a unique position for VES and VES Toronto as I have both a supplier and a global perspective,” says Davidson, who is also a board member of SIRT (Screen Industries Research and Training Centre) in Toronto and holds two AMPAS Sci-Tech awards, led the Toronto Section for the first two terms, followed by the current chair, Christa Tazzeo Morson.

The Toronto Section grew through what Davidson refers to as “soft recruiting: handouts at pubs events, just the general awareness that the VES has a Section in Toronto. Social events and our Speaker Series seemed to strike a chord with members,” he says.

In 2014 the Section brought Oscarwinning VFX supervisor Jim Rygiel in from LA for a panel discussion. With credits on Godzilla and Lord of the Rings, Rygiel was a huge draw. “We developed quality pro-

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gramming and events that speak to the membership and that the local stakeholders support. Since then we’ve hosted a number of pedigreed talent – the legendary Phil Tippett, VES, VFX Supervisor Stephane Ceretti, who worked on Guardians of the Galaxy, Special Effects Designer Shane Mahan, and most recently Michael Kaschalk, Head of Effects at Disney Animation.

“We all learn from the technical achievements in our field, and there will be more to come,” says Davidson about importing more top-draw talent in the future to speak to the membership.

Davidson has since passed the baton to Christa Tazzeo Morson, but maintains a seat as a Section board member along with eight others. He is also a member of the VES global Board of Directors.

Christa Tazzeo Morson, veteran VFX producer and current VP Sales of Post Production at Deluxe Toronto, took over the position of Chair in 2016. Tazzeo Morson’s credits include the upcoming Flatliners remake from Sony, A Series of Unfortunate Events (Netflix), Suicide Squad (Warner Bros./DC), the 2015 Academy Award® Best Picture winner Spotlight, and the Emmy award-winning Game of Thrones (HBO).

Today, Toronto Section membership numbers around 100. “We’d like to see that grow,” says Tazzeo Morson. “That is one of our mandates over the next year or so, to grow the membership and community.”

In such a demanding industry that can be a challenge.

“People want to be part of a community, and our industry is so busy, that’s a good thing. So it becomes a combination of trying to provide the right educational and networking activities in the time frame that works for our membership,” she continues.

“I remember sitting down the first year and saying, ‘Let’s just get some screenings going,’” says Tazzeo Morson. The Section is now running one or two screenings a month. “It’s the sponsors that make it all possible.”

Tazzeo Morson and the Section managers have continued to build on the momentum gained from the Speaker Series by conducting specific training and education workshops, such as a planned lighting workshop with David Stump, ASC, a cinematographer who recently did work on American Gods. The Section also added an Intimate and Interactive series last year, a roundtable event involving roughly 20-25 members, where guests sit with the speaker in person or through video conferencing.

Says Tazzeo Morson, “We were lucky enough to have Ben Gervais, Technical Supervisor, and Demetri Portelli, Stereographer/3D Supervisor from Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk at our last event, discussing the technical achievements of shooting and projecting at 120fps in 3D Stereo at 4K. We’ve had Nancy St. John, former Vice Chair of the VES, who talked about women in VFX, sharing her career path with some of the younger females of the industry, where they can go and where opportunities lie, and Doug Roble, Creative

OPPOSITE PAGE TOP: VES Toronto’s popular Speaker Series: Legend VR, Will Maurer, VP of VR & VFX, and Ryan Cummins, VR & VFX Supervisor.

OPPOSITE PAGE BOTTOM LEFT: VES Speaker Series invite for Jim Rygiel OPPOSITE PAGE BOTTOM RIGHT: VES Speaker Series invite for Nancy St. John THIS PAGE LEFT: Kim Davidson, SideFX, and Neishaw Ali, SpinVFX, at VES Toronto party THIS PAGE RIGHT: Fianna Wong, Kim Davidson, Ainsley Johnston, SideFX, at VES Toronto Party

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[ VES SECTION SPOTLIGHT: TORONTO ]

A Busy Hub for VFX, VES and the Film Community

By RENEE DUNLOP The growth of the now 20-year-old Visual Effects Society worldwide is inexorably linked to the growth of its Sections. VES now boasts 11 global Sections and counting.

One of its standout Sections is Toronto.

That seems only fitting since the city is a major screen-based hub with more than 40 years of international experience in film and television production, and post production. It also continues to be a mushrooming VFX mecca.

The Toronto Section of the VES began when local VFX producers Christa Tazzeo Morson and Lara Osland took the heady initiative to start the ball rolling, officially launching in the spring of 2013. Movie screenings were offered almost immediately, along with a handful of networking opportunities to create VFX community.

The first Section Chair was Kim Davidson, President and CEO of SideFX, a company he co-founded in 1987. SideFX is the innovator of advanced 3D animation and special effects Houdini software, and sponsors many VES Toronto events, along with the VES Summit in Los Angeles every Autumn.

“I feel I’m in a unique position for VES and VES Toronto as I have both a supplier and a global perspective,” says Davidson, who is also a board member of SIRT (Screen Industries Research and Training Centre) in Toronto and holds two AMPAS Sci-Tech awards, led the Toronto Section for the first two terms, followed by the current chair, Christa Tazzeo Morson.

The Toronto Section grew through what Davidson refers to as “soft recruiting: handouts at pubs events, just the general awareness that the VES has a Section in Toronto. Social events and our Speaker Series seemed to strike a chord with members,” he says.

In 2014 the Section brought Oscarwinning VFX supervisor Jim Rygiel in from LA for a panel discussion. With credits on Godzilla and Lord of the Rings, Rygiel was a huge draw. “We developed quality pro-

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gramming and events that speak to the membership and that the local stakeholders support. Since then we’ve hosted a number of pedigreed talent – the legendary Phil Tippett, VES, VFX Supervisor Stephane Ceretti, who worked on Guardians of the Galaxy, Special Effects Designer Shane Mahan, and most recently Michael Kaschalk, Head of Effects at Disney Animation.

“We all learn from the technical achievements in our field, and there will be more to come,” says Davidson about importing more top-draw talent in the future to speak to the membership.

Davidson has since passed the baton to Christa Tazzeo Morson, but maintains a seat as a Section board member along with eight others. He is also a member of the VES global Board of Directors.

Christa Tazzeo Morson, veteran VFX producer and current VP Sales of Post Production at Deluxe Toronto, took over the position of Chair in 2016. Tazzeo Morson’s credits include the upcoming Flatliners remake from Sony, A Series of Unfortunate Events (Netflix), Suicide Squad (Warner Bros./DC), the 2015 Academy Award® Best Picture winner Spotlight, and the Emmy award-winning Game of Thrones (HBO).

Today, Toronto Section membership numbers around 100. “We’d like to see that grow,” says Tazzeo Morson. “That is one of our mandates over the next year or so, to grow the membership and community.”

In such a demanding industry that can be a challenge.

“People want to be part of a community, and our industry is so busy, that’s a good thing. So it becomes a combination of trying to provide the right educational and networking activities in the time frame that works for our membership,” she continues.

“I remember sitting down the first year and saying, ‘Let’s just get some screenings going,’” says Tazzeo Morson. The Section is now running one or two screenings a month. “It’s the sponsors that make it all possible.”

Tazzeo Morson and the Section managers have continued to build on the momentum gained from the Speaker Series by conducting specific training and education workshops, such as a planned lighting workshop with David Stump, ASC, a cinematographer who recently did work on American Gods. The Section also added an Intimate and Interactive series last year, a roundtable event involving roughly 20-25 members, where guests sit with the speaker in person or through video conferencing.

Says Tazzeo Morson, “We were lucky enough to have Ben Gervais, Technical Supervisor, and Demetri Portelli, Stereographer/3D Supervisor from Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk at our last event, discussing the technical achievements of shooting and projecting at 120fps in 3D Stereo at 4K. We’ve had Nancy St. John, former Vice Chair of the VES, who talked about women in VFX, sharing her career path with some of the younger females of the industry, where they can go and where opportunities lie, and Doug Roble, Creative

OPPOSITE PAGE TOP: VES Toronto’s popular Speaker Series: Legend VR, Will Maurer, VP of VR & VFX, and Ryan Cummins, VR & VFX Supervisor.

OPPOSITE PAGE BOTTOM LEFT: VES Speaker Series invite for Jim Rygiel OPPOSITE PAGE BOTTOM RIGHT: VES Speaker Series invite for Nancy St. John THIS PAGE LEFT: Kim Davidson, SideFX, and Neishaw Ali, SpinVFX, at VES Toronto party THIS PAGE RIGHT: Fianna Wong, Kim Davidson, Ainsley Johnston, SideFX, at VES Toronto Party

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[ VES SECTION SPOTLIGHT: TORONTO ]

Director, Software at Digital Domain discussing digital humans. These segments are open discussion and quite valuable to have that one-to-one question and answer period with people of that caliber.”

Toronto has many companies and schools that stand to benefit from the local VES Section. There are a number of stereo conversion shops, such as Stereo D which contributed to Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Avengers: Age of Ultron. Legend 3D did the stereo work on Ghostbusters and The Shallows. Shops like Soho, SpinVFX, Rocket Science, and Mr. X get the pre-production, production and post-production on many big features and high concept television series. The city of Toronto often works on jobs in tandem with vendors around the world, while the location often doubles as New York. Pinewood Toronto Studio has the largest purpose-built soundstage in North America. Added to this impressive list of filmic activity is the fact that there are a lot of shooting days in Toronto.

Some of the notable shows that can credit Toronto locations and visual effects and animation talent are The Revenant, Suicide Squad, Game of Thrones, Hannibal, Ben-Hur, American Gods, Pacific Rim, Rio 2 and The Nut Job. “We span indies to tent pole features and high concept television in animation and visual effects,” says Tazzeo Morson.

“Credits that hold a lot of merit.”

The city and its VES members enjoy their fair share of awards, too. “We are extremely

proud that there are three shows from Toronto that picked up VES nominations this year, Vikings, Penny Dreadful and The Expanse. We compete on a global stage and have been recognized at awards shows around the world.”

The Expanse combined the work of eight different Toronto companies under the VFX supervision of Bob Munroe. One of those companies was Rocket Science VFX, whose Owner/Operator/VFX Supervisor, Tom Turnbull, was nominated for a 15th annual VES Award for Outstanding Visual Effects in a Photoreal Episode, acknowledging his work on the episode Salvage.

“Our job on that show was largely working on some of the main spaceships,” says Turnbull. “For me, that was the reason I got into visual effects. When I was a kid I was nuts about spaceships, into physics and all of that. This was a dream job, particularly this science fiction series, because they wanted to make it accurate to what space travel would be like, what we could achieve with existing technology resources.”

Turnbull is humble but no stranger to recognition. He has two BAFTA awards, one for the BBC adaptation of Day of the Triffids and another for the ITV production of The Titanic, and has three Emmy nominations.

Turnbull has seen the Toronto VES Section become a serious force, a great resource and a terrific way to network.

“We aren’t a vast community in Toronto but having said that, there are thousands of people working in VFX here, especially if you start adding the animation compa-

nies. Most people who have been doing it for a long time stay local and know each other, so when you attend a mixer it’s ‘yeah, haven’t seen you in ages, how are you doing?’It’s like going into the bar on Cheers.”

Turnbull is pleased to see the way the Toronto VES Section is developing. “They are already becoming the thing I want to see, and are taking their position in the business pretty seriously. They are defining the standards of practice and acting as a resource for the industry, uniting us on a worldwide level.”

TOP LEFT: Jim Rygiel and Kim Davidson at SideFX offices TOP RIGHT: Christa Tazzeo Morson, Lara Osland and Kim Davidson, VES Toronto Section Inaugural Board, at VES Toronto party ABOVE: Tom Turnbull of Rocket Science VFX

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[ VES NEWS ]

VES New York Celebrates Acclaimed Filmmaker On March 3, the VES N.Y. Section presented the 2017 VES Empire Award to visionary director Darren Aronofsky. Born and bred in Brooklyn, Aronofsky is noted for his films Requiem for a Dream, The Fountain, The Wrestler, Black Swan and the re-imagined biblical epic Noah.

Photo above, from left to right: Eric Robertson, Co-Chair N.Y. Section, VFX Supervisor & Co-founder of Mr. X Gotham; Andrew Bly, Co-Chair N.Y. Section, Board Member of VES Board of Directors, Co-founder of The Molecule; Aronofsky; Dan Schrecker, Former Chair of N.Y. Section, Board Member of VES Board of Directors, VFX Supervisor; and Eric Roth, VES Executive Director.

VES Board of Directors Officers 2017; Mike Chambers Re-Elected Board Chair The VES Board of Directors officers for 2017, who comprise the VES Board Executive Committee, were elected at the January 2017 Board meeting. The officers include Mike Chambers, who was re-elected as Board Chair.

The 2017 Officers of the VES Board of Directors are: • Chair: Mike Chambers • 1st Vice Chair: Jeffrey A. Okun, VES • 2nd Vice Chair: Kim Lavery, VES • Treasurer: Dennis Hoffman • Secretary: Rita Cahill Board Chair Mike Chambers has been a member of the VES for 20 years, serving multiple terms on the Board of Directors.

This is his third term as Chair, and he previously served on the Executive Committee as both Vice Chair and Secretary of the organization. He is also a longtime member of the Producers Guild of America. A freelance visual effects producer and independent VFX consultant specializing in large-scale feature film productions, Chambers has contributed to the visual effects efforts on many Academy and BAFTA award-winning films. He has won two VES Awards for Best Visual Effects, for The Day After Tomorrow and Inception, and was also nominated for his work on I Am Legend.

Among Chambers’ credits is the upcoming feature Dunkirk, his third collaboration with director Christopher Nolan.

VES Handbook Headed for New Edition The VES Handbook of Visual Effects: Industry Standard VFX Practices and Procedures (Focal Press) is marching towards a 3rd Edition. Editors Susan Zwerman and Jeffrey A. Okun, VES have begun the collection, writing and editing process as they seek out new sections, authors and section ‘captains’ to begin the updating process. Some topics will be added while some others discarded while still other topics will be updated and re-written.

The Handbook has become a ‘go-to’ staple for professionals as a reference, for students as a guide, and lay people to reveal the magic of visual effects. Anyone interested in contributing to the book should contact the VES Office at Visual Effects Society, 5805 Sepulveda Blvd., Suite 620, Sherman Oaks, CA 91411.

Phone: (818) 981-7861.

Or email the VES through its website at visualeffectssociety.com.

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[ THE VES HANDBOOK ]

Excerpts From the Second Edition positioned along a dolly track until the grid fills the camera frame edge to edge.

Then in post, if a plate has a lot of camera distortion, use this data to create a version of the plate with the camera lens distortion removed for camera tracking and 3D element creation. This is done by matching the serial number of the lens used to shoot the plate with the corresponding grid that was shot with that same lens.

Using the compositing software tool set, undistort the grid until the grid lines look completely straight and absent of any distortion or bowing.

Now when the CG elements are added into the composite, simply apply the inverse of the numbers used to undistort the plate to actually distort the CG elements by the amount needed to match them back into the original plate. Voilà!

A lens chart can be as simple as a series of grid lines or a checkerboard.

The VES Handbook of Visual Effects: Industry Standard VFX Practices and Procedures (Focal Press), edited by Susan Zwerman and Jeffrey A. Okun, VES has become a ‘go-to’ staple for professionals as a reference, for students as a guide and lay people to reveal the magic of visual effects.

Here is an excerpt from the second edition.

LENS DISTORTION CHARTS Karen Goulekas Because camera lenses create varying degrees of lens distortion on the images they capture, shooting lens distortion charts is very helpful in dealing with this issue when creating visual effects.

Since no two camera lenses are the same, a large black-and-white grid should

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be shot for every lens that was used to shoot the film. So if the main and 2nd unit both used the same range of lenses, it is still necessary to shoot a unique grid for every lens in both kits. By doing so, the unique lens distortion created by each lens will be obvious based on how many lines of the grid get bowed and distorted toward the edges of the frame.

For best results, the grid should have the same aspect ratio as the film or digital cameras that were used. For example, a grid that is 4 feet by 3 feet can be easily filmed to fill the frame of a full aperture film frame of 2048 Å~ 1556 pixels as it shares a similar aspect ratio. When filming the grid, it should be placed against a flat surface, such as a wall, and the camera should be

HDRI AND CHROME BALLS Matching to the practical outdoor and indoor lighting used to shoot the film is one of the more difficult tasks required for the visual effects teams to make their elements photoreal and fit them seamlessly into a shot.

One relatively quick method is to shoot a chrome ball on set for each camera setup.

It is a quick way of seeing where the light sources are coming from and how the object reacts to light. It is also a good idea to paint half of the ball with a matte gray to see how dull surfaces react to the same light.

When shooting the ball, the data wrangler can simply hold the chrome side of the ball up to the camera for a few seconds and then rotate the ball to reveal the matte gray side for a few seconds.

The advantage of using the chrome ball is that it can be done quickly for each setup without holding anyone up. It can be done any time but most often during the slating of the shot or at the very end as the last take. The disadvantage is that the chrome ball simply provides visual reference of where the lights were on set and how shiny

and matte objects respond to that light.

Another technique, which provides a lot more information when re-creating a digital version of the position and intensity of the set or location lighting, is to use HDRI (high dynamic range imaging).

By photographing the same scene with a wide range of exposure settings and then combining those different exposures into one HDR image, an image is created that represents a very high dynamic range from the darkest shadows all the way up to the brightest lights.

Many visual effects houses have created their own proprietary software that can use these HDR images to calculate where the lights need to be placed in a scene and how bright they need to be. This technique has great advantages over the simple chrome ball because it greatly improves the ability to re-create photorealism and accurately light visual effects elements in a scene.

The disadvantage of taking HDR images on set, however, is that it can take a few minutes to set up and take all the bracketed photos needed and crew members should not be walking through the scene during this time.

If shooting on a set in which the lighting does not change, simply take the HDR photos during lunch hour without disrupting anyone.

However, if HDR images are shot for an outdoor shoot with a constantly moving sun position, it can be quite difficult to get the set cleared after every camera setup.

So it is a good idea to still use the old-fashioned chrome ball during the slating of each scene as a backup, and grab those HDRs whenever there is a window of opportunity.

ON-SET ANIMATION CAPTURE: WITNESS CAM (IBMC) Joel Hynek A witness camera setup generally refers to the use of one or more video, high-definition, or motion digital cameras on a live-action set for the purpose of capturing the motion of one or more of the actors while the production cameras are shooting. This technique is also known as Image Based Motion Capture (IBMC). The pre-

ferred method is to use two to four cameras to capture true 3D information. The action from the various camera perspectives is tracked and converged into one set of 3D motion data after the shoot.

Capturing animation by tracking the view only from the primary production camera is possible, of course, but it is not as accurate, and an animation with conflicting information may result. For instance, because it is not possible to capture distance from only one point of view, the lower part of a body may resolve as being farther away than the upper part of the body when in fact it is the same distance.

It is appropriate to use one or more witness cameras when there is a need to capture more motion information than can be obtained from the production’s primary or secondary taking cameras. Using one witness camera will only work if it is used in conjunction with the production camera.

Using four witness cameras will aid in the motion solve and prevent interruption of data if one or more of the camera views becomes obstructed.

Generally, witness cameras are used to gather 3D information.

However, they can also be used as an aid to 2D tracking when the view of the subject from the taking camera is partially obscured or in and out of focus. In these cases a sharp unobstructed view of the subject from a nearby witness camera can provide the track (this assumes that either the taking camera is static or that it can be stabilized).

SHOOTING VIDEO AS A REFERENCE Charles Clavadetscher Shooting video for reference sounds like a great idea for tying loose threads together, putting a helpful perspective on the production shot, or recording some detail in real time as the camera rolls.

However, video reference can quickly transform into hours and hours of unusable and incomprehensible material. This is not to say that video is without its use, but many factors need to be kept in mind in order to make video valuable: 1. First and foremost, get a slate shot for the video – preferably at the head. If this

video pertains to a particular scene and/ or sequence make sure that information is on the slate. Verbally reading the slate as the video is slated (since the video camera also captures audio) is a great idea. It might make a hastily written slate easier to understand. Slates should always have the current date, time of day (to coordinate with other time-of-day information), and production shot number matching the production slate used to film/record the scene.

Additionally, this slate should contain unique identifying information such as the set or location name. If the video is shot for a particular purpose, it is always good to put this information on the slate as well as recording it verbally.

2. The second priority is to use video precisely. This suggestion cannot be stressed enough. The most common reason video becomes useless is that by the end of the production there are hundreds of hours of video that someone must search, log, copy, edit, organize, and/or perform other arduous and repetitive tasks on to make it usable. Also keep in mind that the person organizing the video may not be the one who shot the video, therefore the purpose and end usage may be outright impossible to understand later. As a result, the time spent shooting video has no benefit because it lies unused, misfiled, or thrown away due to the time-consuming, frustrating, and often impossible task of organizing and deciphering it.

Another issue is the willingness and ability of later, post-production artists to watch the video. In many cases an alternate to video, such as two or three reference still photographs, photogrammetry, or other standard data gathered on set, would provide a more precise method of capturing the same information. Standard methods are likely to prove to be more useful and easier to access, and usually mean data gets to the proper artists instead of some general reference that becomes unused because it is not clear who should see it. In this sense shooting precisely is the key to successful video reference.

Important to remember: Shoot just enough to get the job done, and keep it organized and logged to insure it goes to the proper users.

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[ THE VES HANDBOOK ]

Excerpts From the Second Edition positioned along a dolly track until the grid fills the camera frame edge to edge.

Then in post, if a plate has a lot of camera distortion, use this data to create a version of the plate with the camera lens distortion removed for camera tracking and 3D element creation. This is done by matching the serial number of the lens used to shoot the plate with the corresponding grid that was shot with that same lens.

Using the compositing software tool set, undistort the grid until the grid lines look completely straight and absent of any distortion or bowing.

Now when the CG elements are added into the composite, simply apply the inverse of the numbers used to undistort the plate to actually distort the CG elements by the amount needed to match them back into the original plate. Voilà!

A lens chart can be as simple as a series of grid lines or a checkerboard.

The VES Handbook of Visual Effects: Industry Standard VFX Practices and Procedures (Focal Press), edited by Susan Zwerman and Jeffrey A. Okun, VES has become a ‘go-to’ staple for professionals as a reference, for students as a guide and lay people to reveal the magic of visual effects.

Here is an excerpt from the second edition.

LENS DISTORTION CHARTS Karen Goulekas Because camera lenses create varying degrees of lens distortion on the images they capture, shooting lens distortion charts is very helpful in dealing with this issue when creating visual effects.

Since no two camera lenses are the same, a large black-and-white grid should

108 • VFXVOICE.COM SPRING 2017

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be shot for every lens that was used to shoot the film. So if the main and 2nd unit both used the same range of lenses, it is still necessary to shoot a unique grid for every lens in both kits. By doing so, the unique lens distortion created by each lens will be obvious based on how many lines of the grid get bowed and distorted toward the edges of the frame.

For best results, the grid should have the same aspect ratio as the film or digital cameras that were used. For example, a grid that is 4 feet by 3 feet can be easily filmed to fill the frame of a full aperture film frame of 2048 Å~ 1556 pixels as it shares a similar aspect ratio. When filming the grid, it should be placed against a flat surface, such as a wall, and the camera should be

HDRI AND CHROME BALLS Matching to the practical outdoor and indoor lighting used to shoot the film is one of the more difficult tasks required for the visual effects teams to make their elements photoreal and fit them seamlessly into a shot.

One relatively quick method is to shoot a chrome ball on set for each camera setup.

It is a quick way of seeing where the light sources are coming from and how the object reacts to light. It is also a good idea to paint half of the ball with a matte gray to see how dull surfaces react to the same light.

When shooting the ball, the data wrangler can simply hold the chrome side of the ball up to the camera for a few seconds and then rotate the ball to reveal the matte gray side for a few seconds.

The advantage of using the chrome ball is that it can be done quickly for each setup without holding anyone up. It can be done any time but most often during the slating of the shot or at the very end as the last take. The disadvantage is that the chrome ball simply provides visual reference of where the lights were on set and how shiny

and matte objects respond to that light.

Another technique, which provides a lot more information when re-creating a digital version of the position and intensity of the set or location lighting, is to use HDRI (high dynamic range imaging).

By photographing the same scene with a wide range of exposure settings and then combining those different exposures into one HDR image, an image is created that represents a very high dynamic range from the darkest shadows all the way up to the brightest lights.

Many visual effects houses have created their own proprietary software that can use these HDR images to calculate where the lights need to be placed in a scene and how bright they need to be. This technique has great advantages over the simple chrome ball because it greatly improves the ability to re-create photorealism and accurately light visual effects elements in a scene.

The disadvantage of taking HDR images on set, however, is that it can take a few minutes to set up and take all the bracketed photos needed and crew members should not be walking through the scene during this time.

If shooting on a set in which the lighting does not change, simply take the HDR photos during lunch hour without disrupting anyone.

However, if HDR images are shot for an outdoor shoot with a constantly moving sun position, it can be quite difficult to get the set cleared after every camera setup.

So it is a good idea to still use the old-fashioned chrome ball during the slating of each scene as a backup, and grab those HDRs whenever there is a window of opportunity.

ON-SET ANIMATION CAPTURE: WITNESS CAM (IBMC) Joel Hynek A witness camera setup generally refers to the use of one or more video, high-definition, or motion digital cameras on a live-action set for the purpose of capturing the motion of one or more of the actors while the production cameras are shooting. This technique is also known as Image Based Motion Capture (IBMC). The pre-

ferred method is to use two to four cameras to capture true 3D information. The action from the various camera perspectives is tracked and converged into one set of 3D motion data after the shoot.

Capturing animation by tracking the view only from the primary production camera is possible, of course, but it is not as accurate, and an animation with conflicting information may result. For instance, because it is not possible to capture distance from only one point of view, the lower part of a body may resolve as being farther away than the upper part of the body when in fact it is the same distance.

It is appropriate to use one or more witness cameras when there is a need to capture more motion information than can be obtained from the production’s primary or secondary taking cameras. Using one witness camera will only work if it is used in conjunction with the production camera.

Using four witness cameras will aid in the motion solve and prevent interruption of data if one or more of the camera views becomes obstructed.

Generally, witness cameras are used to gather 3D information.

However, they can also be used as an aid to 2D tracking when the view of the subject from the taking camera is partially obscured or in and out of focus. In these cases a sharp unobstructed view of the subject from a nearby witness camera can provide the track (this assumes that either the taking camera is static or that it can be stabilized).

SHOOTING VIDEO AS A REFERENCE Charles Clavadetscher Shooting video for reference sounds like a great idea for tying loose threads together, putting a helpful perspective on the production shot, or recording some detail in real time as the camera rolls.

However, video reference can quickly transform into hours and hours of unusable and incomprehensible material. This is not to say that video is without its use, but many factors need to be kept in mind in order to make video valuable: 1. First and foremost, get a slate shot for the video – preferably at the head. If this

video pertains to a particular scene and/ or sequence make sure that information is on the slate. Verbally reading the slate as the video is slated (since the video camera also captures audio) is a great idea. It might make a hastily written slate easier to understand. Slates should always have the current date, time of day (to coordinate with other time-of-day information), and production shot number matching the production slate used to film/record the scene.

Additionally, this slate should contain unique identifying information such as the set or location name. If the video is shot for a particular purpose, it is always good to put this information on the slate as well as recording it verbally.

2. The second priority is to use video precisely. This suggestion cannot be stressed enough. The most common reason video becomes useless is that by the end of the production there are hundreds of hours of video that someone must search, log, copy, edit, organize, and/or perform other arduous and repetitive tasks on to make it usable. Also keep in mind that the person organizing the video may not be the one who shot the video, therefore the purpose and end usage may be outright impossible to understand later. As a result, the time spent shooting video has no benefit because it lies unused, misfiled, or thrown away due to the time-consuming, frustrating, and often impossible task of organizing and deciphering it.

Another issue is the willingness and ability of later, post-production artists to watch the video. In many cases an alternate to video, such as two or three reference still photographs, photogrammetry, or other standard data gathered on set, would provide a more precise method of capturing the same information. Standard methods are likely to prove to be more useful and easier to access, and usually mean data gets to the proper artists instead of some general reference that becomes unused because it is not clear who should see it. In this sense shooting precisely is the key to successful video reference.

Important to remember: Shoot just enough to get the job done, and keep it organized and logged to insure it goes to the proper users.

SPRING 2017

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[ CROSS CRAFT ]

Who Is the Author of the Image?

TOP LEFT: Robert Primes, ASC CENTER LEFT: Paul Cameron, ASC TOP RIGHT: Dr. Strange (Photo credit: Copyright © 2016 Marvel Studios.

All Rights Reserved.)

“It’s insane the number of people that may work on one particular VFX shot.”

—Paul Cameron, ASC

With all of the collaborative work being done on films these days, who precisely is the author of the image now?

According to acclaimed cinematographer Robert Primes, ASC (Quantum Leap, Money Talks, Bird on a Wire) he would determine the authorship of a completed composite image this way: “Who had the initial vision, who designed the image and who supervised the execution. Authorship by multiple people is possible.”

When the bulk of the story is told in live images, “the cinematographer should lead the collaboration,” says Primes. The VFX supervisor should lead the collaboration when the “bulk of the story is told in VFX created images.” The director should lead the collaboration “when the director chooses to, barring a serious lack of confidence from the cinematographer or VFX supervisor.”

According to cinematographer Paul Cameron, ASC (Westworld, Pirates of the Caribbean, Dead Men Tell No Tales, Collateral, Total Recall): “It’s a fine line when it comes to simple VFX like sky replacement, etc. The level of post manipulation and number of people by nature make it a collective image. It’s insane the number of people that may work on one particular VFX shot. Does that make everyone who has an effect on the final image an AUTEUR? As cinematographer I want the final image to show the highest level of authorship I can accomplish from my physical photography.”

In Cameron’s view, “The director should

always lead the collaboration. Then the production designers. Collectively they are the ones who are conceptualizing and designing initial visual components on the movie whether it involves heavy visual effects or not. The cinematographer should come in after initial concept and design at the visualization phase. That’s the time when discussions of what the world of the movie will look like and feel take place.

This is the time when all possible creative ideas should be explored. This includes practically how to accomplish the ideas within schedule and budget constraints.

“The VFX supervisor traditionally is brought in way before the cinematographer. Unfortunately, sometimes before the production designer.

“The VFX supervisor’s primary role is to achieve the creative aim of the director through the use of visual effects. The production designer is still responsible for the design of those images.

“Ideally,” he adds, “the director, production designer, cinematographer, VFX supervisor and producer all meet together and approach the film as one collaborative effort. I just know from experience that films are all very different in these initial phases and unfortunately, as a cinematographer, I am almost never brought in early enough in the process. Methodology is extremely vital to the success of production and to the integrity of the final image. Where the film is being shot and how much of it is practical or not is often determined by the time I get on board.”

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[ V-ART ]

Phil Tippett, VES

V-Art showcases the talents of worldwide VFX professionals as they create original illustrations, creatures, models and worlds. If you would like to contribute to V-Art, send images and captions to publisher@vfxvoice.com.

When it comes to creature design, character animation and other forms of VFX artistry, Phil Tippett, VES, is an acknowledged sage. Ever since he saw Ray Harryhausen’s The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad he was hooked on Visual Art. In 1975 Tippett’s life would change forever when he linked up with George Lucas to do stop-motion work for the first Star Wars film. He never looked back. After a stint with Industrial Light & Magic, he created Tippett Studio, based in Berkeley, California.

Over the years, Tippett’s imagination and wizardry have appeared in any number of VFX films and projects.

CLOCKWISE: Phil Tippett, VES sculpts a Tauntaun head for The Empire Strikes Back.

“Early on,” he says, “George was playing with different ideas for what the Tauntaun could be.

It could have been a guy made up in an outfit.

I was asked to submit a bunch of designs and I drew a bunch of drawings. George picked one and I made a clay maquette and George looked at that and that’s what ended up in the movie.”

A motion-control setup combined with the stop-motion provided the appropriate level of motion blur for the running Tauntauns. “We lucked out because most of the requirements for the Tauntaun were that it was a pack animal so it was running around and didn’t need to do a lot of performance,” says Tippett.

From left, Phil Tippett, Dennis Muren ASC, VES, and Tom St. Amand pose with a mold of a stop-motion Tauntaun during production on The Empire Strikes Back.

The stop-motion set for a Tauntaun scene on the planet Hoth.

Compiled by Ian Failes Images courtesy of Phil Tippett/Tippett Studio.

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[ FINAL FRAME ]

da VINCI WORKS FOR MEDICI STUDIOS

Multiple Academy Award®-winning visual effects pioneer Ken Ralston was the recipient of the 2017 VES Lifetime Achievement Award in recognition of his enormous contributions to filmed entertainment. (See article on page 76 in this issue.) When he has any spare time, Ralston likes to conjure images. We asked him to create an original illustration for the premiere issue of VFX Voice.

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