Final 10 Visual Effects Contenders Announced

From Oscars.org

Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
Godzilla
Guardians of the Galaxy
The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies
Interstellar
Maleficent
Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb
Transformers: Age of Extinction
X-Men: Days of Future Past

The ones I worked on are in bold. Nolan's Interstellar might be a favorite for the statue, but the Academy also loves it some CG main characters, so Dawn of the Planet of the Apes stands a good chance too. Personally, I loved how Godzilla came out, and will be especially rooting for that one (although the variety of work done for Night at the Museum 3 was quite challenging to film as well).

MPC's VFX shot breakdowns for GODZILLA

Bloody gorgeous. The buildings drop like Tetris pieces in the later shots.

New interview on the TALKING MOVIES podcast

Recently I was on a podcast talking about the previs and animation work that I have done on films here in Los Angeles. Topics covered include: The Avengers, Divergent, Godzilla (2014), Night at the Museum 3, Furious 7, and The Thief of Bagdad (1940).

Talking Pictures w/Paul Booth and Josh Lange, Previs for Divergent and Godzilla 11/03

New FURIOUS 7 trailer is now online

After an emotional roller-coaster of filmmaking, the trailer for the new Fast & Furious movie is here. Entitled 'Furious 7,' the movie will have daring stunts and more of the high-stakes action fans of the franchise expect. Working on it was a fun challenge, and I'm happy with how our previs looks to have transitioned to the final photography.

Here is the official trailer. It starts off with our cargo drop sequence and transitions into the bus rescue. These were the first sequences I worked on when I started on the project last year. I hope the fans enjoy it.

Steven on Steven: Studying Staging with Spielberg and Soderbergh

I'm late on this, but I wanted to reblog this Steven Soderbergh post about his exercise to study the "staging" (moving the camera and its subjects) of Raiders of the Lost Ark, after removing all the color and replaced the audio with a techno track. This is a great way to study staging, and it's part of why it's great to watch old black and white movies, even if you're making the latest Hollywood visual effects-oriented films.

The definition of unforgettable staging. 

I recently watched a 1950 noir film by Elia Kazan called Panic in the Streets, which used particularly inventive staging back when camera movement was much more limited. In order to keep his long takes interesting, Kazan repeatedly blocked his scenes out so that characters would move close up and far away from the camera. This resulted in a single continuous shot that would overtime go from a wide shot to a medium shot to a close up and even back to a wide shot at times. There is an uncomplicated scene with just two characters, where the husband (Richard Widmark) goes around their bedroom to retrieve different parts of his Naval uniform, where this is done well. The simple things, if done well, can make all the difference with staging.

A fantastic noir outbreak disaster movie, by Elia Kazan.

 Although I cannot be 100% sure Soderbergh has seen Panic in the Streets, I would venture to guess he has, because it was a notable early "outbreak disaster film" that could have served as useful reference for Soderbergh's own outbreak movie Contagion. Watching any of these movies would greatly help a student of film understand how to build tension with advanced staging. Although I've heard it attributed to Ingmar Bergman and not David Fincher as Soderbergh does, the notion that there is only one "best" way for a scene to be staged is a high standard, and one that should be aspired to by all filmmakers.

Steven Soderbergh's own take on the outbreak disaster genre.

THE MAZE RUNNER is now in theaters!

Although I have not seen it yet, I have high hopes that our previs came out well in the final picture. Congratulations to all the people who helped make the movie happen.

TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES crew screening

Just got back from an amazing experience at the Paramount Studios lot, where the crew screening was being held for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I worked on the film doing previsualization for two months while at The Third Floor, inc. The group of us at the time were all focused on the snowy mountaintop chase sequence between the Foot Clan, April, Vernon, and the turtles, and the sequence had a glut of over-the-top action that was fun to animate. It was a helpful challenge as well because we had to make lots of fast revisions, often in front of the second unit director, who would provide notes alongside us as we worked. The part I worked on that I liked the most was when Donatello slings Raphael (always my favorite turtle) into a Humvee at (0:54):



Visiting Paramount Studios was a dream come true for me and my longtime friend Paul, who I brought as my guest. He showed up a bit earlier than I did, and showed me a few landmarks on the lot before showtime. It was great to see the Robert Evans office, as well as the sound stages for Rear Window, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Coming to America, and many others. Before we went in to the theater, we got a shot near the famous arch that leads to the sound stages:

With fellow Vancouver Film School alum Paul Booth outside the gate to the Paramount sound stages (Hollywood sign in the far background).

 The Paramount Pictures theater was very nice and felt like a real theater you'd walk up to on the street, complete with a lobby. We saw it in 3D in what felt like the loudest theater I've ever been to (I guess it's known for that).

Inside the Paramount Theater lobby.

The original, classic Paramount logo.

Seeing the movie was entertaining, and I know it will blow the minds of young kids like the first ones did when I was a kid. Being a part of that cycle for the next generation of moviegoers was a treat, as it always is.

Update: So it looks like the public loved it! $65 million domestic gross ($20 million above projections). Nice to see people enjoyed it.

Godzilla previs article on Animation World Network

Roaring Through the Previs of 'Godzilla' (full article, with previs/final comparison pictures)

Here are excerpts that describe two of the parts that I helped with when I was on the previsualization team:

"Dan Sarto (AWN): In terms of the third act, what were the biggest challenges you faced in with the previs?

Eric Carney (The Third Floor): The sequence consists of Godzilla, who is fighting two other creatures, the Mutos, in San Francisco. We've seen Godzilla before, and he's kind of like a big lizard, so we had a fairly good idea of how he might move. But one of the biggest challenges was figuring out how to animate the Mutos. When we were given the designs of the creatures, they were still in development actually. There was a lot of exploration work with Gareth in order to figure how the Mutos would fight and how Godzilla would fight them.

We started to look at footage of animals - Komodo Dragons, bears, even some winged creatures. Gareth sent us a lot of reference material of real animals fighting. So we started out doing a lot of fight tests and sending them over to Gareth, figuring out what he liked and didn't like and developing it further. He had a vision for the film, that even though it's a monster movie, it would feel very grounded in reality. So with that in mind you have to think of these monsters just as big animals, and research how big animals fight each other. A lot of the things you might think would be cool for a monster fight aren't the kind of things real animals do. So there was a lot of exploration in finding the right tone."
---------

DS: Any highlights from your work on this project?

EC: It was a great project. In the end we had about 40 minutes of previs, once everything had been edited down. So there was a large amount of footage. The halo jump was definitely a highlight, and a lot of the imagery in the final sequence, the trailer, and the poster are close to the previs we did. Working with Gareth too was really a fantastic experience. He was a very collaborative director and a lot of the suggestions we put forward made it into the movie. Seeing the final product was great!

It really was. As mentioned in an earlier Godzilla post, the first Maya scene I animated after graduating from Vancouver Film School was a fight between two enormous monsters in downtown Vancouver. To think that the experience from back then would help inform the motion of the real Godzilla all those years later makes my head spin.

Edge of Tomorrow movie review

Now that Transformers 4 is out and sucking up box office attention like a black hole, I thought I'd mention this movie. It's a great surprise, and people should see it before it's out of theaters. Third Floor did the previs and motion design for the aliens, which translated in the film as erratic and menacing. I kept thinking of alternative ways for it to have ended, but overall it was a very well done movie that could have only been pulled off by a top-notch creative team. Congrats to the filmmakers.

Now I need to finally see Looper...

New TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES movie trailer

Another project I helped previs while at The Third Floor, inc. Read more about it here. Releases August 8th.

Bottle sketch

Value exercise with Photoshop on my new Cintiq (those who've worked with me probably recognize my trusty water bottle). I'm loving it so far, even though there seems to be too few ExpressKeys for using with Maya. As much as I've been addicted to using too many layers for digi-paintings in the past, I tried to restrain myself this time and kept the majority of it to just one.

Drew Struzan: The Man Behind the Poster review/Comic-Con reblog

It's been out for a while, but Netflix Instant Streaming has it now, and you need to see it! He is THE BEST artist you can imagine in this modern age. They had a part that showed video of him at the Comic-Con panel I attended back in 2010. Just for fun, I digged up that old blog post again:

"...Then there was the Drew Struzan panel, which I was really looking forward to. He was joined by two filmmakers that are putting together a documentary about him, 20 minutes of which they screened for the crowd. Frank Darabont, who was interviewed in the documentary, was also in attendance. Struzan seemed very surprised at the standing ovation and overall attention he received, mentioning a few times that most of his life was spent alone in his studio and he doesn't get much contact with his fans. He looks like he could be the kinder, artsy brother of Clint Eastwood:"

Giving thanks to those who have supported him.

Struzan and the Archer panel I saw later on.

X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST is now in theaters

Now in theaters!

It's been a week, and Godzilla has had the biggest worldwide opening of 2014. However, all the media websites are projecting X-Men: Days of Future Past to do even better. Reviews are stellar, so I hope the readers of this blog make some time to see it this weekend. When you do, leave a comment and let me know what you thought.

The particular scenes I worked on have a bit of a spoiler in them, so I'll mention them in the comments section for those who would like to know what they can look for (other than Stan Lee's cameo, of course). Excelsior!

FX Podcast interview with Gareth Edwards

FXGuide.com podcast link, with interviewer Mike Seymour @mikeseymour
Link to transcript by Ian Failes

Fantastic interview with Edwards where he goes into detail the struggles directors have with previs on big-budget feature films. In my limited experience, many of them seem to come into it with a somewhat adversarial attitude, and some stay this way until the end, but most warm up to it quickly after finding out how fast their ideas can be visualized with a team of 3D artists who are also versed in filmmaking and  cinematography. He even mentions the "pitchvis" that was made to help get the film greenlit by producers, and which provided several moments that ended up in the final film.

Edwards humbly gives the proper credit to the people who helped get the film where it needs to be, including Eric Carney, who was the Third Floor supervisor on the project. This was great to listen to, and something that I hope becomes the norm for future directors as they openly discuss how helpful previsualization is to making modern, VFX-driven films.

An excerpt from the transcript:

The Power of Previs

“When we started this, I hated the idea of previs,” recalls Edwards. “I thought it was going to rob the film of its soul. The idea of trying to pick shots and decide exactly what we were doing six months before we even stood on the location or met the actors – I wasn’t really into that. Even though I used to do computer graphics, I just felt like that was the antithesis of what I wanted to do.”
But Edwards says his attitude to previs changed after working with The Third Floor and an in-house MPC team on crafting Godzilla’s major action scenes. “What I didn’t appreciate was that when you do previs, what you’re really doing is getting a chance to make a mini version of a movie without any interference from anybody – you’re completely given free rein – it’s just you and the previs guys.”

He also discusses the temptation to show everything about the monster up front, but for proper tension, there must be a "cinematic foreplay" to tease the audience, "and hopefully they won't hate you for it." When you see the movie, you definitely notice some unexpected choices that err to the side of preserving tension throughout the first two acts, for better or for worse. Learning his rationale for these choices from the interview was very interesting. I can't wait to see it again, knowing more about the theory behind the direction.

Other great, slightly paraphrased quotes

"Eric Carney, who was the The Third Floor previs supervisor, did an amazing job. There's a lot of people's DNA in this film, and I think the previs guys definitely should take some credit, because stuck to that previs a lot, and it was kind of like my crutch...When you have a video that you can hit play on and it kind of works, and you're excited about it and other people are, it's good to be able to circulate to get these shots. ..... so whenever we got to the set pieces we spent so long getting it right in the previs, so in those areas we would often just go back to the previs and get it pretty much exactly right."

"Previs became this Bible for what we were going to shoot."

Finally, here is his quote about making on a Godzilla sequel:
"We'll see what happens...I'm sort of itching to have another crack at it, because I feel like we can do something even much better next time."

Godzilla credits

Biggest international opening of 2014 so far, and the Big G isn't done destroying yet. Great work, previs team.

The previs credits, with a logo added. Previs lead Eric Carney was credited separately up the list.

Godzilla crew screening

Last night I finally saw Godzilla at the Warner Brothers lot. Phones weren't allowed, but there was a keepsake:

The only evidence.

The director, Gareth Edwards, gave a nice intro speech talking about how thankful he was for all the hard work the teams put in. Since he started from a visual effects background, he said he knew what it felt like to do so much work and have so much credit go to another person. Apparently the cast screening hadn't happened yet, and so other than the press, we were the first people it was screened for.

As usual, I can't go into any specifics that haven't already been confirmed by the film's marketing campaign, but I will say that I absolutely loved how it came out--and my expectations were very high going into it. Not only were the VFX jaw-dropping, but Bryan Cranston's performance kept me emotionally invested from the start. What can I say? Working on the movie turned me into a fanboy. When you go see it, be sure to see it on a huge IMAX 3D screen. Anything else is an injustice to the big guy.

Congratulations to everyone that worked on it. The Third Floor team got lots of names in the credits, which was great (you'll see mine on screen left). At the time I was on the project, we were working on the following sequences, with the shots I personally worked on in parentheses:

1. Godzilla approaching the Golden Gate sequence ('boat getting lifted on a big wave' shot, shots of soldiers reacting from the boats)
2. All hell breaking loose on the bridge (kids in the school bus looking out at the military preparing to fight, navy ships launching cruise missiles, soldiers scrambling around while the bridge bets blown up)
3. HALO jump (high angles on the group as they fell)
4. Very start of the Muto vs. Godzilla showdown in Chinatown

We also did some early motion design tests (6:30) of how Godzilla and the Mutos would fight, which was a lot of fun, even though they were animation exercises that weren't for any particular shots in the movie.

A final note to wrap up this post: Back in 2001, after finishing my Softimage 3.7 training in film school, I knew I needed some animation experience with the Maya program. My classmate Sony, a huge Godzilla fan, had built, rigged, and textured two giant monsters and a city block of Vancouver in Maya, and he asked me to animate them fighting. It was the very first thing I animated in Maya, outside of the Salty the Seal tutorial. Who would have thought that all these years later that experience would help to inform the motion of the latest Godzilla incarnation? What a weird coincidence...

La Brea and Melrose,  Los Angeles

Writeup about Proof, inc. in the Los Angeles Times this week/release dates for 2014

The Los Angeles Times has a nice writeup today of Proof, inc, the previsualization company where I am currently working on the upcoming film, Night of the Museum 3.:

Los Angeles Times: Previsualization firm Proof helps filmmakers plan for complex scenes

Be sure to look out for Night of the Museum 3 in theaters when it releases on December 19, 2014.

If you are interested to know where else you can see some of the fun projects I've worked on recently, here is a rundown for the release dates in 2014 (bold = available to see now):

300: RISE OF AN EMPIRE   In movie theaters NOW. Released March 9, 2014. (uncredited)

DIVERGENT   In movie theaters NOW. Released March 21, 2014.

DESPICABLE ME: MINION MAYHEM   theme park ride, in 3D. Open NOW at the Universal Studios theme parks in Los Angeles and Orlando, Florida.

GODZILLA   opens in theaters May 16, 2014.

X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST   opens in theaters May 23, 2014.

TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES   opens in theaters August 8, 2014.

THE MAZE RUNNER   opens in theaters September 19, 2014.

NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM 3: SECRET OF THE TOMB   opens in theaters December 19, 2014

It's good to be busy. Be sure to check back to this blog for updates with details on what I worked on within each project. Keep in mind that, due to confidentiality agreements, I am not able to write about anything that is not already public knowledge. That said, please come back often and please leave comments when you do!

Tim Burton Sits Down With Ray Harryhausen

The push-in shot at 8:51 made me smile. It's a great moment of him really feeling the weight of Burton's overflowing appreciation for him and his work. Although nearly all of the panels I ever saw at Comic-Con were enjoyable and memorable, I regret not making it a priority to see his "Ray and Ray (Bradbury)" panels there before Harryhausen passed away.

New trailer for X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST, and a spoilers S.O.T.U.

There was so much movie news the other week, I nearly forgot to write about the new trailer for X-Men: Days of Future Past. It was the second Bryan Singer movie I worked on, after Jack the Giant Slayer, and since the X-Men comics series were my favorites growing up, working with these characters was the culmination of much geeky childhood enthusiasm (like The Avengers and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles projects were). The movie will be overflowing with entertainment for fans of the comic, especially those who read the "Days of Future Past" series.

Speaking of geeky enthusiasm, the guys over at Schmoes Know noticed an unusual trait of the video: it managed to focus on the movie's broad themes, without spoiling any of the actual plot. That's not easy to do, and a relatively rare thing in the field of trailers. Historically, trailers have been heavy on spoilers and intentionally throw the juiciest parts of a movie out to attract viewers. The trailer for 1949's Casablanca is a typical example from its time, using heavy-handed devices like a campy voiceover, sensationalized score, and dominating overlaid text:

Considering the movie is among the best of all-time (and has the best screenplay of all time, according to story gurus like Robert McKee), it's almost odd the marketing for it seemed so desperate--at least compared to the more refined design tastes of today.

Flash-forward fourteen years, and you have Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds trailer (1963), which went completely in the opposite, minimalist direction. Using clips from the movie in a straightforward manner, the intensity it contains comes directly from the movie itself:


When the 1980s hit, computers were offering sleek new digital aesthetics, and the trailers of that decade relied on their eye-grabbing flash to push a new era of action films:


Contemporary advertising companies have taken the art of the movie trailers to another level, in part by creating multiple versions tailored for different outlets. Theatergoers are often treated to a two-to five-minute long trailer, often mimicking a three-act structure of its own. Like this trailer for The Dark Knight Rises shows, today's trailers can be long and story-driven without relying on much smoke and mirrors from the editing of the trailer itself. The quiet opening works well, and Hans Zimmer's score closes it out nicely at the end:



Now, onto the topic of spoilers. Working in previs is entirely about being shown the most dramatic and action-oriented sequences of a movie. You are exposed to a disproportionate amount of movie spoilers, and if you're lucky, they are for movies you are especially excited to see. Squaring this with my passion for helping make big Hollywood movies has not always been easy, and there are times where I try not to have certain moments given away for films I did not work on and am not familiar with the original material (comics, books, etc). It was fantastic to watch something like "Battlestar Galactica" without knowing any of the plot points ahead of time, but I doubt I'll care too much about knowing who the real "Winter Soldier: is when I get my socks knocked off by it.

Marketing for modern movies relies on new material being put out to keep websites abuzz with interest. At some point this is bound to reveal too much. How much is too much in your eyes?



_____
For further reading on trailers, the New York Times article "Dissecting a Trailer: The Parts of the Film that Make the Cut" is a must-read.

Buzzfeed's 12 Posters that Totally Spoiled the Movie

New TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES Trailer

Featuring the mountainside "batter up!" shots that I worked on (0:59):



This project was unique because of the exposure we had to the director and second unit director. Plus, it provided an opportunity to revisit the Turtles movies that I loved as a kid for work reference. You don't get that every day...

Congrats to the team on another fun upcoming release.

Martin Scorsese's 2013 Jefferson Lecture at the John F. Kennedy Center

So as much as I enjoyed pouring over Oscars and box office history for last week's Top Ten List of VFX films, last year Martin Scorsese gently and solemnly reminded us all that such thinking is ridiculous and unfortunate. Of course, he's right. I loved this speech and hope you will too:



I watched Hugo last week and was blown away by its genius. If only Scorsese could be around for another 100 years to make movies.

Some choice moments:

• Vertigo was nearly lost forever (partially because of Hitchcock)
• 2001: A Space Odyssey ripped off two movies that came out just before it, and was critically panned
• Socrates thought reading and writing was a threat to true wisdom, and we shouldn't see film going digital as a similar threat
• His mother brought him to see Duel in the Sun as a kid, even though it was on the Catholic banned list. It has one heck of an ending:

Divergent screening

Tonight the Divergent crew screening was held in Westwood Village. The movie was a fun ride, and I know it will give younger fans of the book what they're looking for. As one might would imagine, crew screenings have their own level of energy; maybe not as exuberant as a midnight showing full of superfans, but there's still lots of good cheer and sporadic bursts of applause throughout the credits. Even if you've been on a project a while, it's never a sure thing to get screen credit, and there's always a feeling of anticipation right up until you finally see the names for your company start scrolling up.

Note the other audience members holding up their phones at the bottom to photograph their names.

The sequences we worked on include: the Dauntless faction jumping off the train for the tests, Tris's mirror room test, Tris running/climping up to the platform/jumping onto the downtown train, the Dauntless rooftop jump off the train, the big Tris net jump, the zipline ride, the tightrope walk test, and Four's father test. They all ended up being extremely faithful to the previs, and as a result looked polished and well-planned (and in the case of the mirror room, very complicated to pull off).

Check out Divergent this weekend--and be sure to stay for the credits!

New trailer for THE MAZE RUNNER

Although there have still not been trailers for a few other Third Floor projects I worked on, this was the last project I worked on there. It was a small and fun crew that was given a nice amount of freedom. It's looking good so far, and I'm excited to see how it all comes out.

Release date: 14 September 2014

Unearthing the VFX Oscar Elite: My List of the "Best" All-Time Visual Effects Films

This week my longtime friend and film historian Paul Booth sent me an email with a fun request: "I would love a Top 10 Visual Effects films you feel I need to see."

If this question isn't "film geek" bait, I don't know what is. A list of the "best" visual effects movies is of course entirely subjective, and there are many ways to create one. Past Academy Award winners for "Best Visual Effects" seems like a great place to start, and there is a place for the highest-grossing movies as well.  Since this year's Academy Awards had a Best Visual Effects shoo-in (Gravity) which was also a strong contender for Best Picture, I thought I would replace my email reply with a blog post that took a closer looked at these films.

Before I continue, however, ask yourself this movie trivia question: "What films have won the Academy Award for both Best Picture and Best Special/Visual Effects?" I discovered the answer while creating my list.

Awards

To start making my list, I wanted to start by looking at "hard" data, so I looked up the past winners of the Academy Award for Visual Effects. It is worth noting that the category underwent an evolution over the years: its name changed to reflect the gradual eclipse of visual effects over special effects, starting as "Best Special Effects" in 1939 but becoming "Best Visual Effects" in 1978. In some years the award wasn't given out at all. After I reviewed the list of 74 winners, I cross-checked them with the Best Picture winners and nominees from the same years, of which there were 22. Finally, when typing up the list, I added notes for movies that especially relied on a fully-digital or practical principal character, to show how common that complicated effect has become. These last two notes were only made offhand, and are not 100% complete.

Best Visual Effects (or equivalent) and Best Picture Oscar Winners and Nominees:

pink = Best Picture nominee
red = Best Picture winner
d = principal digital character
p = principal practical character

2013: Gravity d
2012: Life of Pi d
2011: Hugo
2010: Inception
2009: Avatar d
2008: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button d
2007: The Golden Compass
2006: Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest d
2005: King Kong d
2004: Spider-Man 2
2003: The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King d
2002: The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers d
2001: The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
2000: Gladiator
1999: The Matrix
1998: What Dreams May Come
1997: Titanic
1996: Independence Day
1995: Babe
1994: Forrest Gump
1993: Jurassic Park
1992: Death Becomes Her
1991: Terminator 2: Judgment Day
1990: Total Recall
1989: The Abyss
1988: Who Framed Roger Rabbit
1987: Innerspace
1986: Aliens
1985: Cocoon
1984: Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
1983: Return of the Jedi p
1982: E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial
1981: Raiders of the Lost Ark
1980: The Empire Strikes Back p
1979: Alien
1978: Superman
1977 ("Best Visual Effects" from this year onward): Star Wars
1976 ("Special Achievement in Visual Effects"): King Kong
1975 ("Special Achievement in Visual Effects"): The Hindenburg
1974 ("Special Achievement in Visual Effects"): Earthquake
1973 NO AWARD GIVEN (More on that here)
1972 ("Special Achievement in Visual Effects"): The Poseidon Adventure
1971 ("Best Visual Effects"): Bedknobs and Broomsticks
1970 ("Best Visual Effects"): Tora! Tora! Tora!
1969 ("Best Visual Effects"): Marooned
1968 ("Best Visual Effects"): 2001: A Space Odyssey
1967 ("Best Visual Effects"): Doctor Dolittle
1966 ("Best Visual Effects"): Fantastic Voyage
1965 ("Best Visual Effects"): Thunderball
1964 ("Best Special Effects"): Mary Poppins
1963 ("Best Special Effects"): Cleopatra
1962 ("Best Special Effects"): The Longest Day
1961 ("Best Special Effects"): The Guns of Navarone
1960 ("Best Special Effects"): The Time Machine
1959 ("Best Special Effects"): Ben-Hur
1958 ("Best Special Effects"): Tom Thumb
1957 ("Best Special Effects"): The Enemy Below
1956 ("Best Special Effects"): The Ten Commandments
1955 ("Best Special Effects"): The Bridges at Tokyo-Ri
1954 ("Best Special Effects"): 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
1953 ("Best Special Effects"): The War of the Worlds
1952 ("Best Special Effects"): Plymouth Adventure
1951 ("Best Special Effects"): When Worlds Collide
1950 ("Best Special Effects"): Destination Moon
1949 ("Best Special Effects"): Mighty Joe Young
1948 ("Best Special Effects"): Portrait of Jennie
1947 ("Best Special Effects"): Green Dolphin Street
1946 ("Best Special Effects"): Blithe Spirit
1945 ("Best Special Effects"): Wonder Man
1944 ("Best Special Effects"): Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo
1943 ("Best Special Effects"): Crash Dive
1942 ("Best Special Effects"): Reap the Wild Wind
1941 ("Best Special Effects"): I Wanted Wings
1940 ("Best Special Effects"): The Thief of Baghdad
1939 ("Best Special Effects"): The Rains Came

While it has lately looked like films with great visual effects go hand in hand with Best Picture nominations, there were three 10+ year droughts in Oscar history where no film was nominated for both awards. Moreover, only five times in 74 years did the same film win both awards, and four have been in the last 20 years. To put that into perspective, Walt Disney won four Academy Awards in one night.

So once again, the list of the "VFX Oscar Elite," containing the epic powerhouses that managed to buck the odds to win for Best Picture and Best Visual Effects is as follows:

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
Gladiator
Titanic
Forrest Gump
Ben-Hur

One fantasy film and four historical films, with two set in ancient Rome.  Three share the all-time record for most wins by a film. None of the them share any directors, producers, or actors (as far as I could tell upon first glance). It is an interesting group of five films that, prior to doing this research, I did not know had this fact in common. After searching the Internet for a bit, no other website seemed to mention this specific list either, so I assume this is not a well-known or commonly-discussed piece of trivia. What's more, now that the last six years of the Academy Awards have all contained a film that shared nominations for Best Picture and Best Visual Effects, we might be due for another film to join the ranks of this VFX Oscar Elite very soon (keep this in mind when making your Oscar picks next year!).

Other observations:

• By cementing the category's modern name, Star Wars literally changed the category of "Best Visual Effects."
• It does not seem to be as easy for Peter Jackson's fantasy movies to win Best VFX any more. Despite the Lord of the Rings movies winning Best VFX Oscars every time they were nominated, Peter Jackson's movies have not won the award since Return of the King collected both the Best Visual Effects and Best Picture awards in 2003. 
• By and large, The Academy has not seemed to "snub" any great visual effects movies for its nominations. The field seems to be more of a meritocracy than others. Although, The Dark Knight Rises recently missed nomination in 2013.
• Speaking of 2013, Life of Pi won in perhaps the Academy's most competitive year, beating out The Avengers, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, Prometheus, and Snow White and the Huntsman. 1999 was also a year with a big rivalry between The Matrix and Star Wars: Episode One (no Star Wars prequel ever went on to win the award).

But enough about arbitrary and subjective things like artistic awards. Let's move on to something concrete:

Box Office Performance

Skipping any that were fully-animated, I took a look at the top ten highest-grossing films of all time (domestic, then worldwide) and saw how they lined up with the above Oscar-winners:

light blue = Best VFX nominee
blue = Best VFX winner
red = Best Picture nominee
pink = Best Picture nominee/Best VFX winner
purple = Best Picture winner/Best VFX winner

Top Ten Highest-Grossing Movies of All Time - United States

1. Avatar
2. Titanic
3. Marvel's The Avengers
4. The Dark Knight
5. Star Wars Episode One: The Phantom Menace
6. Star Wars
7. The Dark Knight Rises
9. E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial
10. The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (awards status currently unknown)
11. Pirates of the Caribbean - Dead Man's Chest

Top Ten Highest-Grossing Movies of All Time - Worldwide

1. Avatar
2. Titanic
3. Marvel's The Avengers
4. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2
5. Iron Man 3
6. Transformers: Dark of the Moon
7. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
8. Skyfall
9. The Dark Knight Rises
10. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest

Observations:

• None of the top ten highest-grossing films have been both nominated for and lost the Best Picture and Best Visual Effects categories.
• Directors who have remained consistent standouts over the years include: Michael Bay, James Cameron, David Fincher, Peter Jackson, George Lucas, Christopher Nolan, Sam Raimi, Ridley Scott, Steven Spielberg, Gore Verbinski, and Robert Zemeckis.
• We love ourselves some aliens and comic book heroes, don't we? No wonder those movies keep getting made.

Making My Final List

After discovering those five movies that won Oscars for Best Visual Effects and Best Picture, I knew I had to give special consideration to them, and they required a good reason if they were not to be included. In the end, however, I decided to drop Forrest Gump, because its effects, while undoubtedly clever and well-executed, were not enough of a spectacle in the movie to make a "best Visual Effects movie" list, with all that has been released since 1994. Gladiator was removed because its effects also weren't quite as impressive compared to other top VFX films. As a side note however, what is uniquely great about movies like Forrest Gump and Gladiator are their timeless visual effects that pushed the limits of the available technology, without being so overly ambitious that their quality and believability suffered. Ben-Hur I omitted because it was released back in the special effects era, and its visuals are what a game developer might politely call "last generation." Titanic is a classic movie with great effects, but for diversity's sake, I only included one James Cameron movie.

For the replacements, I weighed factors like accolades, spectacle/believability, timelessness, historical significance to the VFX medium, and memorability/entertainment level. Three over-the-top juggernauts seemed like appropriate choices to showcase what the limits of current technology can do. Although it wasn't in the league in terms of box office, Life of Pi was chosen for its similarly ambitious and beautiful effects. A Christopher Nolan movie needed including as well, even though he commonly relies on practical technology for shots that seem like they would be digital (the rotating hallway set in Inception is a great example of this). David Fincher's The Curious Case of Benjamin Button also achieved a powerfully touching performance by a digital character, winning his visual effects team an Oscar, along with a whopping thirteen Oscar nominations (including Best Picture). The Matrix and Empire Strikes Back are both entertaining classics with watershed effects that have aged very well over time.

So after weighing all those factors, I came to my final list (in order of release date):

• Life of Pi
• The Avengers
• Transformers: Dark of the Moon
• Inception
• Avatar
• The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
• Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
• The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
• The Matrix
• Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back

A pretty safe list, and of course, he's already seen them all (d'oh!). Expecting that though, I made a couple of back-up lists. Other than the Academy Award winners and the tip-top box office grossers, here is a select a list of "Best Visual Effects" also-rans whose visual effects have stood the test of time:

Apollo 13, Blade Runner, District 9, Harry Potter films, Iron Man 1 and 2, Jurassic Park 2 and 3, The Matrix 2 and 3, Minority Report, Pearl Harbor, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, the Star Wars prequels, Transformers 1 & 2, War of the Worlds

And here's list of fun ones, although some effects might not have held up as well over time:

Back to the Future 1 and 2, Ghostbusters, The Fifth Element, Jason and the Argonauts, Jaws, Planet of the Apes, Skyfall, Starship Troopers, and on and on...

So that's it. I hope all this helped put these movies in a new light. What makes up your top ten list of visual effects movies?


_____
Hat tip to these online articles, which helped prevent films from slipping through the cracks of my memory: Den of Geek's Top 50 Movie Special Effects, Erin Whitney's 13 Jaw-Dropping Visual Effects in Movies, and Chris Agar's 8 Movies That Revolutionized Hollywood's Visual Effects

Colin Stokes: The Hidden Morals of Movies or How Movies Teach Manhood

Today I watched a TED talk by an unassuming dad named Colin Stokes. Using a dry sense of humor, he compared the two favorite movies of his daughter and son: The Wizard of Oz and Star Wars (respectively) and how they have influenced them both. As a new dad who got hooked on Star Wars early, and enjoyed (but never dwell on) the Wizard of Oz, the subject matter was up my alley.



There were many memorable lines, from the then-prescient:

"I think if the Wizard of Oz were made today, the wizard would say 'Dorothy you are the savior of Oz that the prophecy foretold. Use your magic slippers to defeat the computer-generated armies of the Wicked Witch.'"

To the topics of how the heroes in each movie succeed:

"I wonder what my son is soaking up, and I wonder what he is soaking in: is he picking up the themes of courage and perseverance and loyalty? Is he picking up on the fact that Luke joins an army to overthrow the government? Is he picking up on the fact that there are only boys in the universe, other than Aunt Beru, and of course this princess who's really cool, but who kinda waits around through most of the movie so that she can give the hero a medal and a wink and thank him for saving the universe by using the magic that he was born with?

"Compare this to 1939 and the Wizard of Oz. How does Dorothy win her movie? By making friends with everybody and being a leader. That's kind of the world I'd rather raise my kids in. Oz. And not the world of dudes fighting, which is where we kind of have to be. Why is there so much Force--capital F force--in the movies we watch with our kids and so little in the yellow-brick road?"

The conversation goes on from there to address the evolution of the Disney princess yet how male characters have stagnated. Additionally, he cites his informal study of top Hollywood movies rate against the famous Bechdel Test, which powerfully shows how far the movie industry has yet to go to flesh out the character makeup of their stories. From there he extrapolates how an improvement in this area could help to reduce sexual assault.

It was an effective speech at getting me to see these films from a new angle, and I will keep its notions in mind with each children's movie release.

As we enter Oscar weekend...

...here is a reminder of what this industry is going through right now:



I know that it's typical to thank family and agents (and now lawyers?) upon winning an Academy Award, but if Gravity receives the statues for Cinematography and Director, I hope the winners remember to thank the department that they depended on the most to execute their vision. Without their hard work, the result would have ended up with something a bit less impressive:

New GODZILLA trailer is here!

It seems like only a few weeks ago that Godzilla had its first teaser hit the web. Now, there's a full-length trailer for people to enjoy. Bryan Cranston's voice completely puts you in the horrifying atmosphere of the film.



If it wasn't already clear by now, the movie is a complete 180 degree turn from the 1998 film of the same name. I couldn't be more excited for it.

Despicable Me: Minion Mayhem coming to Los Angeles Spring 2014

New billboards are up in LA.

After winning an Annie Award, a VES award, and having a successful opening at the Universal Studios theme park in Orlando, the Despicable Me: Minion Mayhem ride I helped previs is now coming to my city. After seeing the Hollywood Universal Studios last summer, I am definitely looking forward to returning to finally check out this 3D ride the way it was meant to be experienced. I hope you do too.

Final DIVERGENT trailer

The final trailer for Divergent is here. Part of my previs work seen in the trailer includes the mirror/dog, hole jump, train jump, and group punch sequences. Release date is March 21st, 2014.

300: RISE OF AN EMPIRE Trailer #3

The latest trailer for 300: Rise of an Empire has hit the interwebbing. Sequences feature in the trailer that I worked on include: the first segment with the triremes (Greek ships) preparing to face Artemesia, the Greek clifftop attack, and the fiery naval battle (with the Persian that swings the big cauldron). It's loosely based on historical events, and still has no actors of Persian descent in it, but it has lots of unique action in it and fans of the first one should like it as well. Its release date is March 7th, 2014.