As movies become more and more reliant on
computer effects, the entire landscape of
filmmaking is changing. And sometimes there
aren't any landscapes at all, because it's
all done in front of a green screen.
The end result? Movie sets look completely
ridiculous. Here's a behind-the-scenes look
at what some of your favorite movies looked
like before the special effects team went
to work.
The Planet of the Apes
Effects studio Weta Digital changed the game
when they helped reboot Planet of the Apes
with a new trilogy of prequels, beginning
with 2011's Rise of the Planet of the Apes.
Producer Dylan Clark had a special amount
of praise for Andy Serkis. The industry's
top performance capture artist shone as protagonist
Caesar, redefining screen acting in the digital
age.
"Andy Serkis is unlike any other actor. He
can inhabit characters that don't speak and
emote in ways that you don't really see often."
Fox campaigned for Serkis to get an Oscar
nomination, but the call from the Academy
never came, much to the actor's frustration.
After the release of 2017's War of the Planet
of the Apes, Serkis told Independent:
"The awarding bodies should not discriminate
about this being different. The visual effects
render the character, just like putting on
makeup, except here it happens after the fact.
It's digital makeup, if you will."
Harry Potter
Bringing J.K. Rowling's Wizarding World to
life was only ever going to be possible with
the help of CGI, and the films made increasingly
good use of visual effects with each installment.
While early CGI hasn't aged well, the quality
of digital imagery from Goblet of Fire onward
still holds up. The VFX team had to up their
game for the fourth film in the series, as
it marked the return of Lord Voldemort. Paul
Franklin, the VFX supervisor for Order of
the Phoenix and Half-Blood Prince, revealed
that creating Voldemort's nose was a mammoth
task. Franklin told Radio Times:
"There's this idea that we put the shots through
the computer and it just vanished off [his]
face. [...] [His nose] had to be painstakingly
edited out, frame by frame, over the whole
film. And then the snake slits had to be added
and tracked very carefully using dots put
on his face for reference."
That's a lot of work for a couple nose slits,
but Voldemort just wouldn't have been the
same without them.
"Thanks for the new wand Mr. Olive Vander!"
"Nothing's too good for James Potter."
Life of Pi
Filming this tale of a boy stranded at sea
with a Bengal tiger came with a number of
obstacles—but the biggest one wasn't the
tiger, it was the water. Director Ang Lee
explained:
"I knew that to make it work with 3D, water
had to become a character itself. I've never
seen realistic water scenes in movies because
water hits one side of a tank wall and bounces
back like it would in a bathtub, but we needed
to make it work."
That's not to say that the tiger was easy
to create, either. Scenes in which Pi interacts
with the deadly animal were done using a crude
puppet. The rest of it had to come from CGI.
Game of Thrones
The season finales on Game of Thrones always
have a cinematic quality, thanks in part to
the digital wizardry of Pixomondo. Green screen
use is kept to a minimum where possible, but
bringing the creatures of George R. R. Martin's
world into the mix requires some top-notch
CGI.
Pixomondo's VFX supervisor Sven Martin told
The Washington Post that one of their biggest
achievements has been making Daenerys' dragons
blend seamlessly with the world around them.
But all that magic doesn't happen until the
dragon scenes have been shot, so how does
Emilia Clarke connect with her fire-breathing
babies? Green puppets. The actress told Huffington
Post.
"They have these amazing life-scale models
that we used for camera rehearsals for the
sake of the CGI people, and I got very attached
to them. [...] Fundamentally [they're] dolls,
I suppose. But it was nice to have something
physical that I could really picture in my
mind."
Alice In Wonderland
Tim Burton was creating stunning visual effects
long before relying heavily on CGI, using
a combination of practical techniques to bring
his vision to the screen. The former Disney
artist used stop-motion animation, miniatures
and puppetry to great effect in his earlier
works, though when the opportunity to direct
his own version of Alice In Wonderland came
along, he soon realized that he couldn't do
it without leaning heavily on digital wizardry.
This means that all the stars of the movie
had to do the bulk of their acting in front
of green screens. According to visual effects
supervisor Ken Ralston, it was a challenge
for the whole team.
"The green screen color, after long periods
of time, seems to create a certain aggravation
and irritation after staring at it for a long
period. It is effective for compositing, but
visually and psychologically exhausting to
be surrounded by it for extended periods of
time."
Beauty and the Beast
When Disney first announced their intention
to remake a number of their beloved animated
classics in live action format, the title
that raised the most eyebrows was Beauty and
the Beast. A film in which the majority of
the supporting characters are animated household
objects was always going to rely on CGI, though
director Bill Condon has never liked digital
effects and actively avoided using them wherever
possible. He told IndieWire:
"It was important to make everything that
could be real, real. I'm not a big fan of
CG movies. The idea is to feel grounded in
a world and not be distracted by things that
felt like additions."
Unfortunately for the actor portraying the
Beast, Dan Stevens, it was motion capture
all the way, plus some stilts to get him to
the right height.
"It wasn't easy on stilts, heh heh."
Stevens spoke to both Andy Serkis and Mark
Ruffalo about their experiences in motion
capture roles, and their feedback left him
sweating. He added:
"I think I was mildly terrified. But that's
really, generally what drives a lot of my
decisions these days, is calibrating the right
amount of terror."
Nothing like a Disney movie to get that fear
meter up, right?
The Dark Knight
Christopher Nolan is notorious for using real-life
effects as much as possible, and most of the
big effects in The Dark Knight were done on-camera.
"The only visual effect involved in that scene
was to remove the ram that they had built
inside the truck."
But The Dark Knight still offered some unique
CG challenges, especially since it was the
first film to shoot scenes with IMAX cameras
as opposed to using 35 millimeter and converting
in post. Visual effects supervisor Nick Davis
spoke to StudioDaily about his experience
on the Batman flick, saying:
"It was important for the visual effects to
look as though they were shot on set. [Nolan]
didn't want the film to take on a gimmicky
visual-effects look."
Taking this route meant that Nolan's first
sequel to 2005's Batman Begins was "a difficult
movie to finish" as the visual effects had
to be rendered in a higher resolution than
ever before.
When it came to creating the look for Harvey
"Two-Face" Dent, Nolan wanted to remove layers,
not add them. The VFX team had to digitally
remove the skin. Two-Face's exposed eyeball
had to be painstakingly animated by hand,
as were the subtle changes in muscle tension.
Gravity
The biggest challenge Alfonso Cuarón faced
making his space epic Gravity was achieving
a realistic lack of gravity on screen. Pulling
it off involved an intricate mixture of practical
and digital effects.
"Now there are flares, and there are mistakes,
as it were, but...no mistakes. It's all created."
The director talked to Space about the challenges
in getting the effects to look realistic,
saying:
"It took a lot of education for the animators
to fully grasp that the usual laws of cause
and effect don't apply. In outer space, there
is no up, there is no down."
Co-stars Sandra Bullock and George Clooney
were advised on their movements by real astronauts
before being hooked up to a series of rigs
created by Academy Award-winning visual effects
artist Neil Corbould.
It turns out that Bullock not only had to
put up with being suspended from wires most
of the day, there were electric shocks to
contend with, too. Corbould explained:
"There was a charge in there like the static
you feel underneath an electricity substation.
If you walked out then touched someone, you'd
get this massive shock."
It may not have been easy work for the actors,
but it worked out pretty well for Corbould,
who won his second Oscar for Gravity.
The Matrix
Arguably one of the most influential films
of all time, The Matrix truly changed the
landscape of action movies, with its memorable
fight sequences becoming a benchmark for stunt
coordinators and VFX artists alike.
The term "bullet time" was coined for the
epic slow motion shots that the movie employed
on the regular, which were created by visual
effects guru John Gaeta. Gaeta old The New
York Times:
"The directors wanted to emulate the stylization
found in Japanese animation. When we created
weather, fire and smoke, we wanted it to move
not realistically but impressionistically."
Raw footage released as an extra on the DVD
showed how bullet time was achieved using
an intricate setup of perfectly positioned
cameras and masses of green screen.
The Lord of the Rings
Whenever Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings
trilogy comes up, the first thing most people
mention is Andy Serkis' brilliant motion capture
performance, though creating Gollum was just
one of many challenges Weta faced during the
movies.
Practical solutions like miniature models
and forced perspective were used in places,
but the bulk of the visual effects were achieved
digitally. Even the interior of Bilbo Baggins'
hobbit hole was computer generated for some
shots.
Speaking to AWN, visual effects supervisor
Jim Rygiel revealed that Return of the King
was his favorite of the three movies, because
of the monumental amount of work he and his
team put into the picture. He explained:
"Return of the King has more shots than one
and two combined, it's like 1,450. It was
mind-boggling to figure out logistically how
to do them all. It's something you never think
you could have done and you did it, like climbing
Mt. Everest."
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
Bill Nighy's character Davy Jones made his
first appearance in 2006's Dead Man's Chest,
although you may not have recognized the actor
under all those digital tentacles.
"Well I was once required to be a squid man
in a movie. I was an octopus guy."
"And I was perfectly happy watching that.
Because what are you going to say? You don't
like my squid? Well then, you know...live
with it."
Visual effects supervisor John Knoll was able
to develop a method that allowed Nighy to
be on set with his fellow actors instead of
filming separately in front of a green screen,
which in turn allowed him to interact more
believably and deliver a far more genuine
performance. Knoll described the process to
EW, saying:
"On a soundstage with 25 technicians staring
at Bill and nobody to play off of, that quirkiness
would all have gotten ironed out. Somebody
would say, that gesture is 'too off' or 'too
odd.' It could have become a real sort of
committee effort."
"My squid was world class. My squid was an
award-winning squid because of the hundred
men and women who created my squid."
The post-credits scene in Pirates of the Caribbean:
Dead Men Tell No Tales opened the door for
the return of supernatural sealord Davy Jones,
although Nighy had no part in it. In fact,
he had no idea his award-winning squid was
even in the movie until a taxi driver told
him about it.
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