21 Years in a Row

As you may have heard, "Avatar" picked up the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects, which extended the streak of The VFX Predictinator correctly predicting the winner of that category to its twenty-first year. In this post, we showed you our prediction for 2009:

The obvious response from someone who hasn't followed our work on the Predictinator is, "well, of course 'Avatar' won this category. It was a shoo-in." Well, maybe it was, but it illustrated that The VFX Predictinator works.

And the Nominees Are...

Here are the nominees for Best Visual Effects for the 82nd Academy Awards:

“Avatar”

Joe Letteri, Stephen Rosenbaum, Richard Baneham and Andrew R. Jones

"District 9"
Dan Kaufman, Peter Muyzers, Robert Habros and Matt Aitken

“Star Trek”
Roger Guyett, Russell Earl, Paul Kavanaugh, Burt Dalton

More About ILM and "Avatar"

Thank you so much to everyone who wrote me with kind words on our VES Award nomination. Even though there are four names associated with the nomination for Outstanding Compositing in a Feature Motion Picture (Jay Cooper, Beth D'Amato, Eddie Pasquarello and Todd Vaziri), the nod belongs to the entire ILM team that worked on "Avatar." Our ILM work for the film was also nominated for Best Single Visual Effect of the Year, for the Quaritch Escape (Jill Brooks, John Knoll, Frank Losasso Petterson and Tory Mercer).

The full credits for the film are here: Avatar: How Many People Does It Take To Make A Movie?, from the Birmingham Sunday Mercury, where you'll see the full visual effects credits for Weta Digital, ILM, Framestore, Prime Focus, Hybride, hy*drau"lx, Buf, Lola Visual Effects, Look Effects, Pixel Liberation Front, and Spy Post. Putting this ambitious film together took the skill, artistry and talent of hundreds upon hundreds of individuals, as you'll see when you read through the credits.

Who do the ILM nominations belong to? The folks listed below: the ILM team for "Avatar."

Visual Effects & Animation by
INDUSTRIAL LIGHT & MAGIC
A Lucasfilm Ltd. Company

ILM Visual Effects Supervisor JOHN KNOLL
ILM Animation Supervisor PAUL KAVANAGH
ILM Visual Effects Producer JILL BROOKS
Digital Production Supervisor MICHAEL DICOMO
Compositing Supervisor EDDIE PASQUARELLO
CG Supervisors PAT CONRAN PHILIPPE REBOURS DAVID WEITZBERG
Digital Matte Supervisor RICHARD BLUFF
Digital Model Supervisors DAVE FOGLER BRUCE HOLCOMB
Viewpaint Supervisor RON WOODALL
Creature Supervisor KARIN COOPER
Layout Supervisor JOHN LEVIN
Roto and Paint Supervisor BETH D'AMATO

Sequence Supervisors
JAY COOPER, THOMAS FEJES, JEN HOWARD, TORY MERCER, MARK NETTLETON, GREG SALTER, ROBERT WEAVER

Digital Artists Leads
FRANCOIS ANTOINE, JASON BILLINGTON, YANICK DUSSEAULT, CHRIS FOREMAN, CHRISTOPHER HORVATH, FRANK LOSASSO PETTERSON, JOHN SIGURDSON, JIM SOUKUP, TODD VAZIRI, DAN WHEATON

Digital Artists
JOAKIM ARNESSON, JEREMY BLOCH, AMANDA BRAGGS, TRIPP BROWN, CATHERINE BURROW, KELA CABRALES, MICHAELA CALANCHINI CARTER, JEREMY CANTOR, TAMI CARTER, LANNY CERMAK, GRADY COFER, MIKE CONTE, MICHAEL CORDOVA, TIM DOBBERT, SELWYN EDDY III, CONNY FAUSER, SIMON FILLAT, SHINE FITZNER, BRIAN FLYNN, TIM FORTENBERRY, MARIA GOODALE, DAVID GOTTLIEB, GILES HANCOCK, TREVOR HAZEL, SHERRY HITCH, PEG HUNTER, JIRI JACKNOWITZ, PATRICK JARVIS, RYAN L. JONES, KIMBERLY LASHBROOK, ASIER LAVINA, HILMAR KOCH, MARSHALL KRASSER, DAVID MARSH, TIA MARSHALL, MARCEL MARTINEZ, KENT MATHESON, JOSEPH METTEN, CARLOS MONZON, DAVID MORRIS, TIM MUELLER, MYLES MURPHY, DAVID NAKABAYASHI, MARLA NEWALL, BEN O'BRIEN, AKIRA ORIKASA, COS¸ KU ÖZDEMIR, SCOTT PRIOR, EDWARD QUINTERO, MICHAEL RICH, ANTHONY RISPOLI, SHANE ROBERTS, ELSA RODRIGUEZ, BARRY SAFLEY, JEFF SALTZMAN, STEVE SAUERS, JERRY SELLS, JOE STEVENSON, FLORIAN STROBL, ALAN TRAVIS, YUSEI UESUGI, NOAH VICE, KELLY WALSH, DAVID WASHBURN, TALMAGE WATSON, SCOTT YOUNKIN, DEAN YÜRKE, RITA ZIMMERMAN

Animators
JEREMY CANTOR, JEAN-DENIS HAAS, ALEX LEE, ERIK MORGANSEN, STEVE RAWLINS, GREG TOWNER, TIM WADDY, ANDY WONG, JOHN ZDANKIEWICZ

Digital Models and Simulation
LEIGH BARBIER, ANDY BUECKER, DAVID DEUBER, KALENE DUNSMOOR, CHRIS EVANS, CHRIS HAVREBERG, KELVIN LAU, SEUNGHUN LEE, GREG MAGUIRE, SCOTT MAY, STEVE SAUERS, AARON WILSON

Visual Effects Editor JIM MILTON
Production Coordinators STACY BISSELL, MARISSA GOMES
Production Assistants KAT BACHERT, LEE BRIGGS
Production Support MELISSA DE SANTIS, PETER LEBER, MIKE McCABE, PETER NICOLAI, JULIAN SALVADOR, JEROME SOLOMON, MARCI VELANDO, KEVIN WONG
Technical Support SEAN BITTINGER, CHANTELL BROWN, KAI CHANG, RAYMOND CHOU, GEORGE GAMBETTA, SHAHZAD KHAN, FRANKIE KWAK, SAM PENROSE, JESSICA RIEWE
Research & Development AARON ELDER, RONALD MALLET, ROBERT MOLHOLM, JOHN OLMSTEAD, POITR STANCZYK, STEVE SULLIVAN
ILM Executive Producer GRETCHEN LIBBY
ILM Senior Staff LYNWEN BRENNAN, CHRISSIE ENGLAND, CURT MIYASHIRO

"Avatar" and ILM

Hi, folks. Here's my big "Avatar" post, and there will probably be a few more about James Cameron's film in the coming weeks.

The overwhelming global box office dominance of "Avatar" continues, and with it, more stories about the process of creating the world of Pandora and its inhabitants are hitting newsstands. The industry leader of visual effects journalism is Don Shay's Cinefex, whose magazine which has inspired legions of visual effects fans and professionals (myself included). Cinefex #120, the January 2010 issue, covers "Avatar," along with "The Road" and "2012."

As an aside, the magazine also features the most astounding quote I've read in some time. "2012" visual effects supervisor Volker Engel describes Roland Emmerich's script for the disaster film: "... we though it was the best script that we ever got from Roland. It worked on so many levels, not just 'let's destroy everything we can and make it visually fantastic.' The characters worked well, and there were some very emotional moments [in the script]." Did he just say that with a straight face?

An image from Roland Emmerich's "2012." A fast, efficient way to anger Todd Vaziri is to add anamorphic lens flares to a non-anamorphic film.

Jody Duncan's Cinefex article on "Avatar" goes into great detail on how Weta Digital interpreted James Cameron's vision, and is the definitive text on the film's visual effects. As described in the article, with about a year remaining to deliver the final picture, Cameron and Weta awarded some 600 shots to other visual effects shops, including Industrial Light & Magic, which took on over 180 shots. The ILM shots were carefully chosen as to not contain any hero animation work (which was being completed at Weta), and heavily featured vehicles, certain Pandora environments, and battle sequences. The division of labor was crafted to be as logical as possible-- but it still required an extraordinary amount of coordination and cooperation between Weta, ILM and other vendors who shared assets, in order to make the work as seamless as possible. In the final film, you might see two Weta shots, then two ILM shots, then Weta and ILM shots back-to-back. We spent a great deal of time ensuring a seamless blend of our work; our hope was that audiences felt no perceptible change in quality, texture or feel between the different vendors' effects shots.

Due to the overwhelming amount of innovation involved with Weta's work on the film, the vast majority of Duncan's article focuses on Cameron and Weta's collaboration, but only has a few paragraphs about ILM's involvement. We're very proud to have six our our images published within the article.


Since "Avatar's" release, several articles about the films' visual effects have appeared to supplement the Cinefex article. A snapshot of these articles includes: VFXWorld, Cameron Geeks Out On "Avatar," VFXWorld, "Avatar," The Game Changer, and 30 Ninjas, Three-Part Interview with "Avatar's" John Bruno.

And then there's this CNet article, which is the only article I have yet to find that specifically focuses ILM's work on the film: CNet: ILM steps in to help finish 'Avatar' visual effects.

That headline makes me squirm, since the reader might get the wrong impression, as if the folks at Weta needed 'rescuing.' Headlines, by their very nature, only give you the slightest impression of the story, and tease you to read on. But I pushed this squirmy feeling aside, chalking it up to my increased sensitivity to visual effects journalism.

For the most part, the article by Daniel Terdiman does a nice job of giving an overview of ILM's work. He interviewed ILM visual effects supervisor John Knoll, and even gave more details on our work than the Cinefex article. For example:

For the most part, the teams at ILM and Weta worked on different scenes, but Knoll said there were some in which the two companies handles different parts of the same sequence. An example, he said, was a scene in the film where a group of helicopters attack the giant "home tree," where the Navi, the humanoid alien race in the film, live. Knoll said that the effects in the scene were mainly put together by Weta, but ILM handled all the shots in which the camera looks back toward the choppers. In the scenes where the two effects houses both were charged with creating shots, the challenge was figuring out how to "checkerboard" the shots, Knoll said, especially because in some cases, ILM didn't know what Weta's work looked like. "You keep cutting back between ILM shots and Weta shots," Knoll said. "They're really intermixed. I was worried, because we had to get going and go pretty far down the line before we had any Weta shots to refer to. We were both doing development in parallel."

However, near the top of the article, there was this unfortunate paragraph:

Weta Digital... was a bit in over its head. For ILM, this wasn't the first time it had been called in to help rescue another effects house, but it may well have been the first time it did so for one as big and as accomplished as Weta. And while ILM's overall contribution to the finished film was minor compared to Weta's, the fact that "Avatar" came out on time and is being seen as a visual tour de force is certainly due, in part, to ILM's ability to come in and, if not save the day, at least contribute mightily to the day turning out well.

911 work by its very nature is a sensitive issue for effects houses. The situation is nothing new (effects houses have been collaborating to finish a film for decades), but with the current climate of filmmakers demanding ever-increasingly difficult work and studios continuing to shrink post-production schedules, 911 work is as frequent as ever. As aggressive as effects houses need to be during the bidding process, we all respect one another and realize we are part of the same family. We all understand that, in most cases, when an effects house becomes overburdened with an impossible-to-complete body of work, it usually has more to do with studios and filmmakers' failure to accurately predict the scope of the work (combined with inexcusably small effects budgets), rather than failure on the effects' houses end.

Thankfully, a few days after the original publication of the original CNet article, the controversial paragraph was significantly altered, along with the following end note:

For ILM, this wasn't the first time it had been called in to help aid another effects house, but it may well have been the first time it did so for one as big and as accomplished as Weta. To be sure, ILM's overall contribution to the finished film was minor compared to Weta's, but nonetheless critical in helping get the film to its final, finished state, Knoll suggested.

footnote: The fifth paragraph in this story was updated on December 22 to better reflect Knoll's statements of how and when ILM came to be involved in "Avatar" and what the company's impact on it was.

The new, altered fifth paragraph of the story gives a slightly more accurate description of how ILM came to work on "Avatar," but does not expand on the delicate sensitivities involved with 911 work in our industry. And the article still contained the unfortunate phrase "Weta was a bit in over its head." Perhaps, someday, someone will write an essay on this aspect of the visual effects industry. The issue of 911 work is not only emotionally heated but can be economically dangerous. No effects house wants to ever appear as though they cannot deliver work on time and on budget, without the risk of losing out on future studio work. The issue is a public-relations minefield, and will probably remain shrouded in mystery, silence, and remain in the shadows (yet openly and frankly discussed privately amongst visual effects professionals).

Back to the CNet story. Since its original publish date, the CNet article was apparently syndicated to other websites, several of which apparently decided to re-write the headline. After a copy of the article appeared on several dozen other news websites, we were quite shocked to read an article headlined "How ILM Rescued Avatar's Special Effects," which was a popular rewriting of the original headline (here's an example). Although the content of the article was identical, the headline, as it appeared in other venues, went from 'nearly inaccurate' to 'completely inaccurate.' ILM was brought on to help finish the movie, not to 'save' or 'rescue' the film. This wrong implication out in the world does nothing to help ILM's reputation. The syndicators' rewriting of an already painful headline was unfortunate.

And, to add insult to injury, some of the re-printed, syndicated versions of the article have the original, controversial, 'save the day' fifth paragraph intact. Ugh.

The artists at ILM were very proud and grateful to have made a contribution to James Cameron's vision, and were astounded and amazed by Weta Digital's extraordinary work. It's a shame that the CNet article had to unfold in a shoddy manner.

A much more detailed and tech-heavy exploration of ILM's work on "Avatar" took place in a recent FXGuide podcast. Make sure you listen to FXGuide's January 15 podcast, where Mike Seymour interviews John Knoll, and goes deep into the specifics of our body of work, as well as a lengthy discussion of stereo 3D techniques (scroll down to the "Avatar: ILM" podcast). FXGuide podcast host John Montgomery actually mentions the CNet article in his introduction to the interview, concurring that the tone of the article was not faithful to the collaborative spirit of the work.

"Avatar," "Transformers 2" and the Tomatometer

photo credit: michaelbay.com

We can all breathe a sigh of relief. 2009 will not go down in history as the year a "grinding garbage disposal of a movie" earns the top spot at the box office. The film once described as "a horrible experience of unbearable length" has been overtaken by James Cameron's "Avatar" as the highest grossing film released in 2009. No longer will there be a risk of a "a wad of chaos puked onto the big screen, an arbitrary collection of explosions and machismo posturing and frat boy assholery" permanently marking its spot at the yearly box office charts.

I have updated my previously posted chart, comparing the box office champs of the last 29 years, to include "Avatar." I kept "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" on the chart for comparative (and comedic) purposes.


Sources: Box Office Mojo and Rotten Tomatoes.

The List of 7, 82nd Academy Awards

It's Bake-Off time! The visual effects branch of the Academy have narrowed their 'list of 15' films to the seven films that will be participating in the bake-off for the race for the 82nd Academy Awards:

• “Avatar"
• "District 9"
• "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince"
• "Star Trek"
• "Terminator Salvation"
• "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen"
• "2012"
  

The Executive Committee have narrowed the List of 15 to these seven films when they met last week. The Bake-Off, which features 15 minute reels from each film and a short Q & A from each film's visual effects supervior, will take place on Thursday, January 21. Immediately after viewing the reels, the entire visual effects branch gets to vote on the final three nominees for the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects. As always, the entire Academy then votes for the winner of the award.

Industrial Light & Magic contributed to five out of the seven films ("Avatar," "Harry Potter," "Star Trek," "Terminator" and "Transformers 2"), and I personally worked on three of those films. Weta Digital brought us "Avatar" and "District 9," (along with several other houses) while a flurry of facilities contributed to "2012" and "Harry Potter."

My predictions for the List of 7 was almost spot-on; I only missed one film (I wrongly predicted "G.I. Joe" would grab a spot, rather than "Terminator"). Thankfully, I made up for my dismal predictions from last year.

My always-not-to-be-trusted predictions for the three final nominees? "Avatar," "Star Trek" and "District 9."

Expectation vs. Reality

The List of 15, 82nd Academy Awards

The visual effects branch of the Academy have announced their 'list of 15' films, considered semifinalists in the race for the Oscar nominations for the 82nd Academy Awards, as determined by the branch's Executive Committee:

• Angels & Demons
• Avatar
• Coraline
• Disney’s A Christmas Carol
• District 9
• G-Force
• G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra
• Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
• Sherlock Holmes
• Star Trek
• Terminator Salvation
• Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
• 2012
• Watchmen
• Where the Wild Things Are

The visual effects branch's Executive Committee will then whittle this list down to seven films in the next few weeks, which will be featured at the bake-off (to take place on January 21, 2010) where each of the seven films presents a 15 minute reel of their finished work, and takes questions from the entire visual effects branch. The entire branch then votes for their top three choices, which ultimately determine the three Academy Award nominees for Best Visual Effects. The nominees for all categories will be announced on February 2, 2010. The entire Academy membership then votes on the winner.

I'm very proud to have contributed to the visual effects for three films on this list: "Star Trek," "Avatar" and "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen," while at Industrial Light & Magic.

My prediction for the final seven films: "Avatar," "District 9," "G.I. Joe," "Harry Potter," "Star Trek," "Transformers 2" and "2012." Stay tuned!

James Cameron's "Avatar" Trailer

Yeah, it's a few weeks late, but I've been a bit busy finishing a film. On an unrelated note, the final trailer for James Cameron's "Avatar" is out in the world, and the Randomizer 2009™ software was cranked into overdrive and selected two images from the trailer.

Hey, didn't this shot look a little different in the teaser?

View the trailer here.

James Cameron's "Avatar" Teaser

update: Please read the new FXRant post, "'Avatar' and ILM" to learn more about ILM's work on the film.

Looking back at the last few posts, it seems like I nearly leapfrogged over an entire production on which I worked. It's almost as if "Transformers 2" didn't even happen, as if it is being erased from our collective consciousness. Huh. Imagine that.

Anywhoo, the highly anticipated teaser for James Cameron's "Avatar" is now available online. And the image above was chosen by the Randomizer 2009™ software, featuring ArbitraryBoost 3.0.

View the teaser here.