Here’s another VFS grad “done good”. Meet Bernhard Kimbacher, VFX Data Coordinator/Compositor for “District 9″…
rsp breaks it down
Rising Sun Pictures put together two really nice breakdowns for the work they did on ‘Harry Potter 6′ and ‘Terminator 4′. Both reels feature really stunning VFX work. Some of it the obvious stuff like robots, dragons…and magic. But some of it much more hidden. For example, I had no idea that Dumbledore’s blackened hand done in CG. Did you miss that too? Most seemed to not catch that one. Which just goes to show how good the work done by RSP was for this film. Though I did just have to think…wouldn’t it have been easier/cheaper to just break out some shoe polish and call it a day? I guess not.
Anyways, crack yourselves a Fosters and follow the links below to check out some pretty stellar VFX work down by this studio down under.
resurrecting 80′s scifi
More ‘District 9′ coverage over at VFXWorld, and nope I still haven’t seen it. Starting to feel like I need to turn in my VFX geek card or something! Hopefully next weekend though, because I haven’t heard anything but great things about this film.
LINK: District 9: Bringing Back ’80s Sci-Fi
When it came time for Neill Blomkamp to assemble the visual effects team for his first feature, District 9, his distinctive mash up of ’80s militaristic sci-fi (adapted from his short, Alive in Joburg), he was counting on Weta Digital. But with Avatar consuming Peter Jackson’s CG arm, the Vancouver resident turned to newcomer Image Engine to tackle the aliens and The Embassy (his former company) to create the exo-suit worn by the beleaguered protagonist (Sharlto Copley), who transforms into a “prawn” and must learn to embrace his new identity. Even so, Weta Digital found time to help out in the end, and Zoic contributed some minor yet explosive shots as well.”We had never done realistic digital characters on screen, let alone with a scope of 300 tough shots,” explains Image Engine’s Peter Muyzers, on-set visual effects supervisor & digital production manager. “So at the outset, Neill didn’t know very much about Image Engine. But Neill is such a supporter of Vancouver. When Weta Digital couldn’t do the whole movie, he saw it as an opportunity for a Vancouver company to step in. We started talking about the project with Neill and his assistants and by taking advantage of the BC tax incentives, they had a larger budget — that was key. We worked at keeping the look of the aliens as simple as possible. There’s not a lot of fur on them, there’s little physical interaction. There’s no water or major steam effects. Neill knows what he wants. He used Weta Workshop to design the aliens. We made use of hundreds of illustrations.”
ridley’s ‘dangerous days’
I put together a little treat for all you awesome readers out there today. It’s a YouTube Playlist of the Blade Runner documentary ‘Dangerous Days’!
‘Blade Runner’ is still one of my all time favorite films. And it really was like they say in the documentary, “the last great analogue science fiction movie.” Even in the countless re-cuts and re-releases that followed it’s original release, there aren’t any digital visual effects to speak of. You can just smell the visual effects, you know? Every frame has life to it. And that’s something sorely lacking in 90% of visual effects heavy films today in my opinion.
There is hope though that we might just see a resurgence of this type of film making though. Just look at Duncan Jones’s “Moon”. Real models combined with modern day matte painting and compositing techniques. It gave that film a look that was all together new, but also familiar. Bringing you back 20 years and reminding you of all the great science fictions films of the 60′s, 70′s, and early 80′s.
“Moon” has a visual strength that was obviously learned from giants like Douglas Trumbull, Special Photographic Effects Supe on “Blade Runner”…as well as a little film called “2001: A Space Odyssey”. So enjoy the following featurette, and hopefully gleen some lessons from the greats for yourself.
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Now if you’re a VFX artist out there who doesn’t already own this film three times over, well honestly I’m shocked. But have no fear! There’s still time to redeem yourself. Follow the links below to add this MUST HAVE film to your collection! Whether it’s the Blu-ray or the DVD version, both have the ‘Dangerous Days’ documentary included as well. Plus remember…if you’re a working VFX artist out there, buying movies suddenly becomes research! And that my friend, is a tax write off!
LINK: Blade Runner (Five-Disc Complete Collector’s Edition) [Blu-ray] $22.99
LINK: Blade Runner (Four-Disc Collector’s Edition) [DVD] $27.99
neill bloomkamp…student
Check out “District 9” Director Neil Bloomkamp‘s 1998 VFS student reel. It has a big time Michael Bay, a’la “Armageddon” vibe to it. But you can really see this Director’s love and, more importantly, understanding of a strong visual language and cinematography.
I really can’t help but wonder what student reels from my graduating class at SCAD will be dusted off in 10 years.
My favorite thing about this reel though has to be the “special thanks” to the now defunct Silicon Graphics Computer Systems. SGI will always hold a special place in not only my heart, but also every VFX artist past and present.
I vividly remember watching a special behind the scenes video tour of the server room at ILM during “Jurassic Park”. And that room was just packed to the gills with those beasts. And it wasn’t just at ILM! Any self respecting VFX studio back then had at least one system from SGI. Those machines were Cadillacs to visual effects artists back then, and I really miss that.
“Oh memories…out the corner of my mindddddd…such precious memories……of the way…we werrrreeeee…”
visiting district 9
Finally getting back into the swing of things and starting with this great article over at VFXWorld on “District 9″!
LINK: Neill Blomkamp Talks District 9
Well, originally, I thought Weta would do everything, but Avatar had taken over and absolutely crushed Weta. So Weta said no, we can’t do the film. What I wanted to do then was take advantage of Vancouver: I live there for one and in the future I’m going to do more films there, and, two, the British Columbia tax credit thing for post-production. We would be able to get more shots for it. So I know a lot of the effects houses in Vancouver, and I had a bunch of meetings with Image Engine and they actually flew down to New Zealand. They hadn’t done anything that was on this scale before, but based on the guys who were in charge of running the company and making District 9 happen, Shawn Walsh [visual effects exec producer] and Pete Muyzers [on-set visual effects supervisor & digital production Manager], I felt like they were going to do whatever it took to make this work, so I had faith in them, as opposed to the reel of the company, and they totally stepped up to the plate and just hired all the right people, and I’m exceptionally happy with the way it turned out.
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My weekend was pretty jam packed, so I haven’t had a chance to check it out yet. But besides the Visual Effects done for this film, the journey from short to feature is really what I’m finding the most fascinating about this film.
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It’s certainly a milestone for the Vancouver VFX community too. They’ve made it loud and clear to those outside of the know that they’re one of the big players in the modern visual effects landscape. Which is either good or bad depending on which side of the border you sit I suppose. For me I really wish California would finally adopt the long proposed tax cuts that has made Vancouver such a haven for exciting film-making. Why? Well call me crazy but in the future I’d like to have the opportunities that allowed me to live in my own country and make a living doing what I love. Rather than having to immigrate just to find work. That’s just a little too much of a vagabond lifestyle for my taste.
Ok, off my soap box.
It’s also really cool to see just how many Vancouver Film School alumni ended up working on this film as well. Everyone from the more well known writer and director of “District 9″, all the way to the executive of the VFX studio Image Engine! Talk about a litmus test for just how amazing VFS really is!
LINK: District 9 – VFS Alumni Unite on Hit Film
Vancouver Film School’s connections to District 9 are many. Beginning with director Blomkamp and his co-writer, Terri Tatchell (a Writing for Film & Television graduate), the film’s VFS roots run deeper than on any other major motion picture.
Nowhere is this more apparent than the film’s visual effects, which feature the work of 31 VFS graduates. Local studio Image Engine worked on the majority of the 600 or so shots, while Vancouver’s The Embassy and Zoic, along with Weta Digital, did the rest. Many see District 9 as a milestone for visual effects in Vancouver – an announcement of sorts: we’re here, and we can play with the big boys.
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But for those who saw the film over the weekend, tell me what you thought in the comments below! Just try to keep things spoiler free of course!
gi joe tours paris
Director Stephen Sommers talks about his GI Joe accelerator suits and how they destroyed the Eiffel Tower with nanomissles…yeah.
Is anyone out there in the internet ether actually excited for this movie? I’ve been really surprised to read critics actually giving it good reviews!
Let me know in the comments!
PM on g-force 3d
Popular Mechanics magazine published an article last Friday on the work done to convert the new movie “G-Force” into stereoscopic 3D. It goes on to talk about the techniques involved in taking a traditionally shot 2D movie and creating the left eye parallax digitally. By which I can’t say too much about, but just trust me…it was MUCH harder than this article makes it out to be.
There was a lot of time spent on this film’s 3D conversion. And because it was done so well, you’ll never know.
Read more below!
LINK: How Effects Wizards Transformed G-Force From 2D to 3D
First, artists scanned the 2D plate photography into the computer, then rotoscoped—or traced—all the elements of the scene. “We’re effectively defining the edges of all the objects that are in the photography,” Engle explains. Next comes match-moving, where artists create a virtual representation of the set during photography. “Imagine I’ve photographed a coffee mug on the table,” Engle says. “We’d put into the computer a digital coffee mug, a digital table, and a digital representation of where the camera is.” This allows animators to place the CG guinea pigs in the virtual scene and, once satisfied with the movement, place that element on top of the original plate. “Everything will feel like it’s been photographed at the same time,” Engle says.
Next, animators projected the plate, without CG characters, onto the match-move geometry. The original view represented the left eye, and filmmakers took a picture of the plate from the right-eye perspective to synthesize the second view. “Now, I have a picture that represents what we would have seen had there really been a [second] camera on-set in the right-eye position,” Engle says.
But because the left and right eyes are separated by about two and a half inches, they each see a slightly different view, creating something called object occlusion. “The left-eye photograph doesn’t have all the information we need to see from the right eye,” Engle explains. “We’re missing information that was never in the left-eye photograph. So we have to fill in that hole, and there are a series of techniques including optical tracking and painting we use to fill in the holes.” The final step to create the 3D shot is to integrate the CG guinea pigs (which have been rendered in 3D) into the synthesized 3D plate.
mpc’s wrigleys 5
MPC just recently completed work on a new Wrigleys 5 Gum campaign, and posted a bunch of great behind the scenes material on how the spots were done on their site.
What I love most about the Zing and Solstice campaign is how MPC used tried and true bluescreen compositing techniques, mixed with some nice matte painting and particle work to really create a whole CG world that feels unique and consitant. They kept it technically realitively simple, and wrapped it in a really cool and perfectly executed concept. Something that’s surprisingly very hard to accomplish under typically tight commercial schedules.
Anyways, enough of my chatter. Head on over to their site to check it out! They’ve got not only the full commercials but also a bunch of breakdown videos for each spot.
Fredrik Bond has directed the new campaign for Wrigley’s 5 gum. The Ad Agency was Energy BBDO/Chicago, with production handled by Pam Pietrowski. MPC LA provided 3D animation and compositing for the spot.
MPC was involved from pre-production with input into the design process, Duncan McWilliam and Dan Sanders attended the shoot at Paramount Studios supervising elements of the blue screen stage and the adjacent practical elements shoot.
scad’s deadline
This is why I’m proud when someone asks me where I went to school for Visual Effects. Some really great student work and filmed in my old home away from home, Montgomery Hall! Check it out…
