Thursday, January 22, 2004
With Oscar season around the corner, the nominating frenzy is full upon us. I had the good fortune to attend the "Visual Effects Bake-Off" tonight, where a mixture of top-notch VFX people and Academy fogies get together to decide what three films to nominate for the VFX Oscar. Of the 800 or so eligible films this year, seven made it to tonight: "Pirates of the Caribbean: the Curse of the Black Pearl," "Master and Commander: the Far Side of the World," "The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King," "Peter Pan," "Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines," "X2," and last but also quite possibly least, "The Hulk."
The theater at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences building is SO SWEET. Not only is it huge, but it's lush, and the sound system is the best I've ever heard. The screen is only dwarfed by the one at the cinerama dome at Arclight ... but cinerama's funny like that. Anyway, four supervisors from each of the seven movies were there, and they blathered a bit about their effects before screening 15-minute effects reels. Those were like movies for people with crazy ADD. Can you imagine "Return of the King" condensed to 15 minutes? Right. So my guesses? ROTK, no doubt. It's going to win, anyway. "X2" and most likely "Pirates of the Caribbean" will round out the nominees.
What really stunned me was "Master and Commander." Did you know it had more than twice the effects shots of "Pirates"? Get this: there were NO ACTUAL SHIPS in that movie. All off the ones you see are either CG or miniatures, or composite of both. Most of the water is CG too, although it's very closely based on film they took. All of the scenes with actors running around on tossing decks were done with full-size models of the tops of ships, set on moving thingies called gimbals (sp?); that's pretty standard, though, apparently. They used the same technique for "Peter Pan" and "Pirates." "Pirates" had at least one real ship, though. "Pan" was done entirely on a sound stage, but the whole thing is so cartoony that it's not really surprising the ship is fake.
Okay, that's enough out of me. Whew!
Current Music: Cowboy Bebop!
Current Mood: talkative
The theater at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences building is SO SWEET. Not only is it huge, but it's lush, and the sound system is the best I've ever heard. The screen is only dwarfed by the one at the cinerama dome at Arclight ... but cinerama's funny like that. Anyway, four supervisors from each of the seven movies were there, and they blathered a bit about their effects before screening 15-minute effects reels. Those were like movies for people with crazy ADD. Can you imagine "Return of the King" condensed to 15 minutes? Right. So my guesses? ROTK, no doubt. It's going to win, anyway. "X2" and most likely "Pirates of the Caribbean" will round out the nominees.
What really stunned me was "Master and Commander." Did you know it had more than twice the effects shots of "Pirates"? Get this: there were NO ACTUAL SHIPS in that movie. All off the ones you see are either CG or miniatures, or composite of both. Most of the water is CG too, although it's very closely based on film they took. All of the scenes with actors running around on tossing decks were done with full-size models of the tops of ships, set on moving thingies called gimbals (sp?); that's pretty standard, though, apparently. They used the same technique for "Peter Pan" and "Pirates." "Pirates" had at least one real ship, though. "Pan" was done entirely on a sound stage, but the whole thing is so cartoony that it's not really surprising the ship is fake.
Okay, that's enough out of me. Whew!
Current Music: Cowboy Bebop!
Current Mood: talkative
