2016 Oscars short list announced for "Best Visual Effects"

This year, the short list for movies that could win the Oscar for "Best Visual Effects" was expanded to include twenty films. They are:

• Ant-Man
• Avengers: Age of Ultron
• Bridge of Spies
• Chappie
• Everest
• Ex Machina
• Furious 7
• The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2
• In the Heart of the Sea
• Jupiter Ascending
• Jurassic World
• Mad Max: Fury Road
• The Martian
• Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation
• The Revenant
• Spectre
• Star Wars: The Force Awakens
• Terminator Genisys
• Tomorrowland
• The Walk

I am glad our work on Furious 7 helped that movie make the cut. Next comes the bake-off, which I assume will be twice as long this year (!). Congratulations to all those who worked on visual effects for these notable films.

If I had to predict which films will become the final five nominees, I would choose:

• Jurassic World
• Mad Max: Fury Road
• The Martian
• Star Wars: The Force Awakens
• The Walk

Of course, based on my findings from studying last year's Oscar race, this probably means a space-themed movie will once again win for "Best Visual Effects," which has traditionally been the case in years with multiple space-themed nominees. Of course, it is still too soon to see how many will end up nominated, but this could make the space films The Martian and Star Wars: The Force Awakens the strongest contenders to win. Jupiter Ascending, another space movie on the list, seems like a long shot due to bad reviews and a cast lacking Oscar nominees and winners, even though the Wachowskis have Oscar pedigree from their "Best Visual Effects" winner The Matrix.

The Martian has a cast with many Oscar nominees, but no actual winners other than Damon (who won for writing), and the number of Oscar nominees Star Wars: The Force Awakens has in its cast other than Harrison Ford is...unknown to me because I have avoided that IMDb page like the plague to keep that movie as spoiler-free as possible for me. I should have a slightly better prediction after I see it during Winter break, but history shows that Star Wars movies with the original cast win Oscars, and follow-ups do not (Three winners, three losers). Stay tuned for more observations on the Oscar visual effects race.

2015 Oscar Recap/Space-Themed VFX Winners of the Past

Sunday night was the 87th Academy Awards, an event that always provides plenty of pomp, some touching tributes, passionate speeches, so-so jokes, and several "train wreck" moments. It looks like the ratings weren't great this year, and there seemed to be little interest by the Academy in mixing up the format to address the same complaints you always hear about the ceremony (running time, pacing, caliber of jokes). Out of all the nominees, Birdman's far-out concept, dream-like cinematography (by back-to-back winner Emmanuel Lubezki), and terrific performance by Michael Keaton (one of my favorite actors) made it easy to root for in the Best Picture category. It was being heavily promoted last year when I was working at the Fox Studios lot, and I'm glad to see so many others enjoyed it. Fox proved to probably have the best 2014 out of all the studios, coming in #1 with market share, earning the most Oscar nominations, and winning the Best Picture award. The cherry on top was a music tribute to the studio's 1965 box office smash and five Oscar-winning The Sound of Music (a mural of Julie Andrews in those iconic Swiss Alps still hangs at the studio lot).

Since I entered the Oscar pool at work this year, I paid extra attention to who was winning at the Screen Actor's Guild Awards, the British Academy of Film and Television (BAFTAs) Awards, the Golden Globes, and the Visual Effects Society (VES) Awards. In a year with many heavy favorites, the "Best Visual Effects" winner seemed harder to determine. Director Christopher Nolan's space epic Interstellar ended up taking home the Academy Award, which not only surprised those in the VFX industry who assumed Dawn of the Planet of the Apes would win, but also broke Todd Vaziri's "Predictinator," a formula specifically devised to predict all of the VFX Oscar winners from 1989 to the present day. The formula weighs the factors of critical acclaim, box office returns, total nominations, release date, whether the movie was a sequel or not, the caliber and type of CG creatures it contains, and actor prestige, and predicted the dark horse space comedy Guardians of the Galaxy would win the award.

"Predictinator, you are flawed, and imperfect! Execute your prime function!"

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (another movie with lots of creature animation) had won the VES Award earlier this year, which was viewed by many to be a strong contender. The voting body of the VES Awards are visual effects artists who are well-informed of the latest technology and have extremely critical eyes toward this aspect of filmmaking. Before the Oscars, I read a post by Todd which took a closer look at how good a predictor the VES Awards are for the VFX Oscar, and it turns out that the BAFTAs have been slightly better since 2002 when the VES Awards began.

Even though it won the BAFTA for Special Visual Effects, a possible knock on Interstellar's chances at getting the Academy Award was that Gravity won last year for Best Visual Effects, and an argument could be made that it would be unlikely that two movies with the same setting of space would win back-to-back. Despite this nagging thought and a clear Predictinator pick for Guardians, I sided with Interstellar, which had strong Las Vegas odds and a BAFTA win that could not be ignored. I ended up winning our Oscar pool by one point for a total of nineteen correct picks out of twenty-four.

My #Oscars picks from Friday. Time will tell how they pan out... pic.twitter.com/PtELYPN1yi
— Josh Lange (@THEJoshLange) February 23, 2015

With a two-year trend now established for space movies winning the Best Visual Effects Oscar, I became curious about how the genre had done historically throughout the Oscars, including back in the early years when the award was for "Special Effects" and "Special Achievement in Visual Effects." How many times had space-themed movies won? How many years had one or more been nominated? Did the Academy tend to reward the genre once it became nominated?

I returned to the familiar sight of the Visual Effects Oscar winners Wikipedia page, which was the main resource back when I wrote my "VFX Oscar Elite" post. I counted how many years that a story involving outer space had been nominated for Best Visual Effects (or its equivalent), and then compared it to its fellow nominees for those years. I kept track of how the "terrestrial" movies (ones that did not significantly involve outer space) did in these years as well. The breakdown is below:

bold  space-themed winner
blue  year with multiple space-themed nominees
red  terrestrial beat a space-themed nominee
purple  terrestrial beat two space-themed nominees

2014: Interstellar
2013: Gravity
2012: Life of Pi
2011: Hugo
2010: Inception
2009: Avatar
2008: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
2007: The Golden Compass
2006: Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
2005: King Kong
2004: Spider-Man 2
2003: The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
2002: The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
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 (uncontested)
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 (uncontested)
1982: E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial 
1981: Raiders of the Lost Ark
1980: The Empire Strikes Back (uncontested)
1979: Alien (4 space nominees)
1978: Superman (uncontested)
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
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 (uncontested)
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

#Interstellar winning Best #VFX at the #Oscars2015 makes it the 19th space-themed movie in #Oscar history to win that award.
— Josh Lange (@THEJoshLange) February 23, 2015

In seventy-four years of the award's existence, a space-themed movie has won for Best Visual Effects nineteen times and lost twelve times. Twenty times in the last thirty years there has been at least one nominee of this kind. Not only have there been multiple back-to-back years of space movie winners, there was even a four-year streak between 1977-1980 where the visual effects of space movies were apparently irresistible to the Academy. Life of Pi has been the only terrestrial movie which was able to win the Best Visual Effects Oscar in a year with multiple space-themed nominees.

On the flip side of these wins, there have been some notable losers with a space theme: Star Wars Episode I and II, The Avengers, Prometheus, Apollo 13, Alien 3, Predator, 2010, Starship Troopers, and more. Transformers movies, Star Trek movies, and Star Wars prequel movies have never won in their seven total nominations. Interestingly, Star Trek movies have only lost to other space movies. Three times out of seven did a terrestrial movie beat a Star Wars, Star Trek, or Transformers movie (The Matrix, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, and Hugo). To summarize, when space-themed movies get nominated for the Best Visual Effects Academy Award, history shows that they win 61.3% of the time (19/31). If they are not a Transformers movie or Star Wars prequel, they beat a "terrestrial" movie 67.9% of the time (19/28).

Some other things I noticed:

1) Comic book movies are almost all doomed to lose the Best Visual Effects Oscar, with a mere two wins out of thirteen nominations. A record-setting three comic book movies were nominated this year, and all came up short. All three Iron Man movies lost--two of those three times to terrestrial movies. The Avengers lost, despite its space content and plentiful CG aliens. Every Batman movie has lost, and a Superman movie only won in an uncontested race. Both Spider-Man nominees were in contested races though, and one ended up winning, however that win was in a year with no space nominee.

2) Peter Jackson movies are two-for-three in defeating space-themed contenders for a Best Visual Effects Oscar. Christopher Nolan movies are two-for-three in this category.

3) Since 2002, the BAFTAs are now +2 over the VES awards in predicting the VFX Oscar winner.

4) The Return of the Jedi is probably the most intentionally-funny space movie to win the Best Visual Effects Oscar, which is saying something (and no, the exploding head moment in Total Recall doesn't count). As it does in the other Oscar categories, the Academy sides overwhelmingly with dramas over comedies. So much in fact, that it's amazing the outright-goofy Guardians of the Galaxy was considered a contender for the award at all.

Conclusion:

After taking this long look from another angle at the history of the Best Visual Effects Oscar award, I have learned that space-themed movies tend to do very well overall. Audiences have now seen black holes, worm holes, exploding planets, and aliens of every shape and size, and it seems like everything they can imagine has been covered at this point. Conversely, there is practically no limit to what the VFX industry can visualize at this point in its history, and the sci-fi genre will never cease to be interesting to moviegoers, so there will assuredly be many more nominees and winners. Not only did Interstellar's lead actor Matthew McConaughey have "actor prestige," but its Oscar-winning supporting cast of Anne Hathaway, Matt Damon, Michael Caine, and Ellen Burstyn, (did I miss anyone?) might have been worth a bit more weight in Todd and his wife's formula to tilt Interstellar over Guardians of the Galaxy, whose cast only had Oscar nominees as far as I can tell. This could also be seen as a win for the space drama genre over the (all too rare) space comedy. These factors might be worth considering when Todd pops the hood on his Predictinator and looks around for parts to upgrade.

"You're gonna need a bigger wrench."

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

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:

Interview with Influx Magazine

Recently I was asked by my longtime friend, fellow Vancouver Film School grad, and producer-director-film critic (he does it all, folks) Paul Booth to do an interview with him for the online film site Influx Magazine. I've included a link to the full article at the bottom.

"Josh Lange has worked on some very impressive video games and he’s been part of some amazing studio pictures. For me, it’s Josh’s integrity and consummate professionalism that made him an ideal candidate for this series. Josh also has a respect for movies of the past and present before Star Wars or the prequel trilogy. We live in a time of cinema, where many people don’t respect the past. Josh knows his stuff.

Paul Booth: What films or life event made you want to make movies? Past just loving movies?

Josh Lange: The worlds and characters of the original Star Wars films triggered an intense fascination and passion in me early on when I was a kid. As my connection to those movies evolved, I began to learn about the methods developed by George Lucas and his visual effects crew to make their groundbreaking special effects. Since the visual effects were what really made those movie stand out, I started looking at other filmmakers with high standards for the field, such as Stanley Kubrick. I was also in love with the films of Walt Disney as a kid, and as my interests began bouncing between art, animation, movies, and visual effects, I started making small films and taking film courses through the local community college while I was in high school. Senior year I was officially hooked, and it was only a matter of time before I entered film school."

Link to the full article on Influx Magazine.com

Articles on The Third Floor's new partnership with Silverdraft

Good reads for those interested in visual effects and the way previsualization is changing the game:

FXGuide: Introducing Silverdraft Mobileviz

Hollywood Reporter: Silverdraft Rolling Out Mobile Digital Studio