The Most Egregious Example of "We Didn't Use CGI" Mythology (So Far)

Folks who follow me on Twitter (currently known as X) are probably aware of my years-old, depressing, frequently updated and repetitive thread pointing out studios and filmmakers downplaying or outright lying about the use of digital visual effects on their projects. "We did it all for real!" is the message given in interviews, production notes and featurettes. The truth is these movies frequently contain hundreds or even thousands of digital visual effects shots, and sometimes the sequences they're directly referencing are made entirely out of digital effects. 

The typical pattern is as follows:

• Pre-release studio-driven featurettes and studio-provided production notes handed to journalists include the filmmakers stating that "real, practical" action is the proper way to film this kind of movie, implying that little or no digital visual effects are used because audiences can 'always tell'. The amazing stunt work, special practical effects and production design is heavily championed, and vague language is routinely utilized, ultimately implying that "no 'CGI' was used in this film". Reasonable people watch these clips and read the production notes will understandably conclude little or no digital visual effects were used in the film.
• The digital visual effects supervisors and artists working on these films see these featurettes on YouTube and scream into pillows.
• The social-media hype machine of YouTubers, Twitter users and TikTok'ers repeat the "no visual effects" mantra, which solidifies its "truth" even further. Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, CNN, local TV news, and mainstream media outlets repeat the myth, which feeds the social media folks even more.
• The movie is released and even though there are literally hundreds of visual effects professionals' names in the credits, the "no visual effects" chorus continues, this time by supporters of the film, and is weaponized in the form of "the movie was good because they didn't use 'CGI'", as in "this proves how practical effects are superior to 'CGI'".
• Weeks later, if studios allow visual effects people to discuss their work at all, visual effects supervisors talk to the tech press about the hundreds upon hundreds of visual effects that were used in the film (sometimes documenting how the very same stunts and sets that were championed in the featurettes were digitally augmented or were made fully from computer graphics techniques).
• At awards time, huge visual effects reels are seen by industry professionals and are mostly confidential.
• These films get nominated and win digital visual effects awards.
• The damage done to the truth is seemingly permanent. Even years after films' releases, some people still believe the mythology that there are no digital visual effects in movies like "Mad Max: Fury Road" and the recent "Mission: Impossible" films, and the phrase "practical is always better than 'CGI'" continues to thrive.
• The cycle begins again.

The visual effects industry is under attack from many sides, most significantly manifesting in working conditions, hours, burnout, exploitation of workers, unreasonable client expectations, unreasonable schedules, bad client design changes, bad client management, visual effects shops underbidding each other, fixed bids, only a handful of clients who pit the visual effects shops against each other, near-zero unionization amongst visual effects workers, no trade association for visual effects shops to leverage solidarity, uneven free money given to movie studios that destabilizes visual effects and creates false markets... I could go on.

The perpetual cycle of false mythology that these movies are made without digital visual effects adds insult to injury and feeds an already burning inferno.

• • •

Like me, visual effects artist Jonas Ussing has been paying attention and keeping receipts of these instances of "No CGI Mythology" over the last few years. Ussing has launched an amazing video series documenting some of the most extreme examples of actors, filmmakers and studios creating a false mythology about how their movies are made. Part 1 of his four part series is now online, and it's called "No CGI is really just Invisible CGI", and I suggest you all watch it.

Watch "No CGI is really just Invisible CGI", part 1 of 4 on YouTube

In this day and age, when there are filmmakers out there like James Cameron, Martin Scorsese, David Fincher, Michael Bay, Zack Snyder and others proudly showing off the digital effects work in their movies, considering them valuable partners in the filmmaking process (and earning billions of dollars at the box office and awards and prestigious accolades in the meantime), it's absolutely bizarre that certain studios and filmmakers steadfastly maintain the idea that marketing a modern movie means highlighting physical production while outright lying about their use of digital visual effects - and indirectly and directly insulting an entire craft in the process.

And yet, it continues. Mere days after Ussing's video debuted, Sony released a featurette for "Gran Turismo" (2023) to promote the film's home video release. At less than ninety seconds in duration, the promotional featurette represents one of the most egregious and blatant examples I've ever seen of deceptive myth-building (ahem, lies) about how a specific movie was made.

• • •

Directed by Neill Blomkamp, who also directed the imaginative science-fiction epics "District 9", "Elysium" and "Chappie", "Gran Turismo" features several exciting racing sequences that were executed with stunt drivers, innovative camera rigs, drones and many other techniques to capture as much material practically with stunt performers and actors.

via American Cinematographer - In the Driver’s Seat for Gran Turismo by Joe Fordham

Oh, I forgot to mention, the movie also required over a thousand digital visual effects shots.

Before we get to the featurette, let's talk about the visual effects of the film. Most of the stories debuted, as they usually do, a week or two after the films' release, and the "Gran Turismo" visual effects press followed the same trend. The movie was released in the United States on August 25, 2023. Two weeks later on September 16, Befores and Afters published "Make them go Fast", which detailed the various visual effects challenges of the movie. Ian Failes interviewed VFX supervisor Viktor Müller about the computer graphics cars made for the film.

Here's a few example of live-action plates, and the final shot which features CG cars.

from Befores and Afters visual effects coverage of "Gran Turismo"

Here's an example of one of the performers in a special spinning rig, photographed against a greenscreen, for a crash sequence in the film.

from Befores and Afters visual effects coverage of "Gran Turismo"

The Direct spoke to "Gran Turismo" editor Colby Parker Jr. about the post-production challenges of the film in late August, and said some very direct and clear things about the visual effects in the movie. Like, "This was a big VFX film. Our hero car wasn't going fast enough in certain scenes. So we had to find plates and strategically CGI Jann's car in certain scenes."

Blomkamp is himself a former visual effects artist. His movies "District 9", "Elysium" and "Chappie" have fully computer generated characters in prominent roles, and synthetic environments throughout each of those films.  (In fact, he and I happened to have worked on the same film at separate studios  - "3000 Miles to Graceland" - me in visual effects and him in the animated sequence that opens the film.)

In September, Blomkamp went out of his way to praise his visual effects team on "Gran Turismo" on social media. In two tweets, he displayed his pride for the VFX team as well as promoting the Befores and Afters article detailing the film's digital visual effects. He has been a vocal supporter of visual effects in the past, and these examples are no flukes.

link

link

All of this is preface to Sony's ridiculous featurette.

• • •

Premiering on YouTube on October 28, 2023, Sony's ninety second video promoting "Gran Turismo"'s digital release trumpets the physical production, and also plays heavily to the ridiculous marketing technique of repeating that "digital effects are inferior" and "only brave filmmakers shoot with practical effects".

Watch on Gran Turismo: Neill Blomkamp's Approach on YouTube

Check out these whoppers that appear the video:

• The film's producer, Asad Qizilbash says, "He wanted to make it really practical and shot like in real life." [his quote has some obvious audio editing to splice together several different comments into a single sentence]
• Blomkamp: "The temptation is to go all digital. The cars could be animated. You could film the [racing] tracks as background plates and do digital cars, but in this case, everything is real." [again, obvious audio editing here]
• Actor Darren Barnet: "It's always a treat for an audience when something feels more real. Shooting this movie without green screens, without projectors, I think gives the more honest performance." [again, obvious audio editing here]
• Cinematographer Jacques Jouffret: "It's very practical."
• From the video's description: "No green screens. No projectors. That's just how Neill Blomkamp rolls."

Let's be clear - the director of the movie said "Everything is real", and no reasonable person would assume the filmmakers used "background plates and do digital cars" which is exactly what the director said they didn't do. "Practical" and doing it for "real". The video's description is less vague and far more direct: "No green screens. No projectors. That's just how Neill Blomkamp rolls."

In 2023, I can't believe we're still dealing with these ridiculous, obvious lies. "Gran Turismo" had over 1,100 digital visual effects - digital effects that producer Qizilbash and director Blomkamp asked for and directed. And paid millions of dollars for. But you'd never guess that from this featurette. Any reasonable person would assume, after seeing that studio-produced video, that no visual effects were used in the film.

What makes this especially egregious is this studio-driven erasure of visual effects (outright lies) was brazenly published after the visual effects press promoted the movie's digital effects. Typically, the pattern begins with the deceptive marketing occurring before the film's release, not after the film's release (and after in-depth reporting). 

The whiplash sustained from the witnessing the intense contrast between the filmmakers' clear pride in the digital work on "Gran Turismo" and the studio-driven marketing of "we did it all for real" is staggering. And for those of us who care about the truth, the situations is quite demoralizing. The visual effects world is under attack from all angles, and it's deeply unsettling to get fired upon from one's own studio and filmmakers.

I'll say this as clearly as I can. Filmmakers and studios should be proud of every aspect of the filmmaking process. They should brag about their photography, their stunt work, their production design and physical sets, the amazing special practical effects. They should shout their pride and excitement from the rooftops. Filmmaking is a collaborative experience, and all crafts work together to achieve the director's vision. But there's no need to weaponize their enthusiasm of physical production against visual effects, with the ultimate goal of diminishing, erasing and outright lying about the project's use of post-production work.

Why do the studios think this is a winning strategy? That's another topic that's far too complicated to go into now. But a cursory look at the YouTube comments of the Sony featurette clearly illustrates that this marketing isn't working as well as studios think it is.

I'm really getting tired of studios and filmmakers telling the #CGLie. And others are, too.

from the YouTube comments

Links:

• my years-old Twitter thread of deceptive marketing, started in 2019
• my thread about "Gran Turismo"

Todd Vaziri on "The Flop House" Podcast, Talking "Waterworld"

The gang behind my favorite movie podcast asked me to be a guest on the show, and it was scientifically impossible for me to be more giddy about it.

Dan McCoy, Elliott Kalan and Stuart Wellington invited me on The Flop House (a podcast where they watch a bad movie and talk about it) to discuss "Waterworld" (1995), one of the quintessential big-budget "flops" of all-time. We talk about the negative hype surrounding the film's production, how it infected every single piece of press about the movie before its release, and the film itself - what we liked about it and what we didn't like.

It was a really wonderful discussion, and I'm really happy with how it all turned out.

The Flop House - Episode #408, "Waterworld" with Todd Vaziri

🎧 Overcast: https://overcast.fm/+93kiaY1o

🎧 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-408-waterworld-with-todd-vaziri/id263585537?i=1000633665950

Vanity Fair and "The Exorcist"

Anthony Breznican from Vanity Fair asked me if I could take a peek at a shot from "The Exorcist" (1973), and get my thoughts on it on whether or not it was a visual effects shot. So it was a thrill to talk with him.

Todd Vaziri, a veteran visual effects artist and historian who has written extensively about vintage filmmaking techniques, agreed with Gay’s assessment that the “demon” hidden in this shot is really just a trick of the light from her nightgown and movement.

“I’m looking at your shot and I’m stepping through it, and I’m going to say that for the first part of the shot, you can see that her screen right eye is in shadow. She’s self-shadowing. Her brow is blocking the key light,” Vaziri said. “Then for one frame, it looks like both eyes now are completely black, and it’s a little…” He pauses, then laughs. “I’m just hanging on this frame and it’s freaky as hell.”

Freaky, but most likely accidental, according to Vaziri. “This seems to me like just a lighting issue,” he said. “Her natural movement moved both eye sockets for one frame out of the key light. And that’s the effect.”

A few things I mentioned to Anthony that didn't make it into the piece.

One, "The Exorcist" is one of those films that have had alternate versions appear in the digital era. In 2000, Warner Bros. released "The Exorcist: The Version You've Never Seen" which features newly added scenes and digital visual effects including a morph that replaces a jump cut in one of the last shots of Father Karras. Much like the "E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial" Special Edition, the filmmakers and the studio have done an about-face on all the alterations and additions, and the version of "The Exorcist" that you can find on streaming and physical media is almost entirely the theatrical version (the Karras morph remains in the cut).

Two, I added that if this was a deliberate optical effect (it's not), then I'd argue that it's not a successful effect, since it's extremely subtle and only happens in one frame. It's not broad enough to register as a subliminal image.

I understand how folks want to add additional meaning and mythology into frames and sequences from "The Exorcist", especially because it's one of the most successful movies of all time, one of the most emotionally and spiritually effective movies of all time, and one that actually contains flash frames of horrific imagery. (See also "The Shining".) In this case, however, it's a trick of light and movement.

Vanity Fair: The Truth Behind the Hidden Demon in The Exorcist, by Anthony Breznican

https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2023/10/exorcist-hidden-demon

Todd Vaziri on Corridor Crew "VFX Artists React", Parts 1 and 2

watch Part 1 on YouTube

It finally happened.

I was thrilled to be a guest on Corridor Crew’s “VFX Artists React” YouTube series. Watch Part 1 here. Watch Part 2 here.

watch Part 2 on YouTube

I admire the Corridor team’s goal of promoting visual effects as a creative craft — just like any other craft in filmmaking — by elevating human faces associated with the amazing Hollywood visual effects that we all take for granted.

My goal in being a guest on the show was in harmony with Corridor’s ethos. In the current media climate of systematic dehumanization of the digital visual effects community, I wanted to present stories of the real, human artistic choices behind some of the shots on which I’ve been lucky to collaborate. Human beings make these movies, and I think it's important for visual effects folks to tell their stories of creativity, problem solving and storytelling.

I also wanted to illustrate the generous, artistic, cooperative cultural spirit of Industrial Light & Magic, my home since 2001. I’m very grateful to the ILM team for bringing me into their fold. I’ve learned so much from legends like John Knoll, Roger Guyett, Scott Farrar, Dennis Muren, Bill George, Ben Snow, Rob Bredow and countless others who have worked hard to maintain and strengthen the cultural spirit of ILM - always collaborative, always compassionate, always human. Making movies is an amazing experience, and it’s a special joy to be able to work with kind, collaborative people. Every day, I get to make movies with some of the most talented artists on the planet. I’m a lucky guy.

Thank you to Wren and Niko who made me feel comfortable and supported, and to Christian and Chase and everyone behind the scenes at Corridor, and to Ian at ILM who helped so much. Wren, Niko and I talked for literally hours and could have gone on for much longer.

If you liked the YouTube version of the episode, Corridor subscribers get a longer version where I go into greater detail with Wren and Niko. Part 1 (Extended) has more discussion about my shots on “Star Trek” (2009), “Rango” (2011), bluescreen extractions, and deeper into technical and philosophical aspects of visual effects. Part 2 (Extended) goes into greater detail about my work on "Mission: Impossible III", "Avatar", "Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol" and "Tomorrowland". (You can get a 14-day free trial on a subscription!)

Here are some of my show notes:

“Synthetic” (Part 1)

I wish I elaborated further on my definition of “synthetic” while on the show, because I think it’s important, especially in the current climate when visual effects terms like “CGI” (or worse, “no CGI”)  are being tossed around in the mainstream media without much care, to disastrous results.

I’m defining “synthetic” as my all-encompassing term for imagery that is NOT:

• full scale (1 inch of real world space equals 1 inch of movie world space)
• photographed and projected in real time
• photography presented without geometric transformations

I consider a shot that has a slight retime to speed up a portion of the shot synthetic. I consider a split screen synthetic. I consider the stabilization of a shot synthetic.  Of course, this progresses all the way into in-camera miniature model photography, forced-perspective photography, filming overcranked for slow motion, vanity work, onwards to digital matte painting set extensions, computer graphics creatures into live-action photography, all the way to shots where the entire image is computer graphics.

The term “synthetic” is valuable because it defines modern digital visual effects. There is no agreed-upon definition of “CGI”, and yet the term is used interchangeably with digital compositing, computer graphics creatures, set extensions, bluescreen photography, even motion picture editing. I avoid the term at all costs because no one agrees on its meaning. “Synthetic” is a solid umbrella term meaning “not filmed in-camera with actors” and even when filmed footage is used, it has been manipulated beyond the “purity” of what was captured on set, in real time.

(Is a glass matte painting hanging in front of the camera filmed concurrently with the live action synthetic? Come on, that’s an edge case. [Yes, it is.])

For the pedants out there, I looked up the literal definition of "synthetic" and I'm pretty happy with my results.

synthetic: something resulting from synthesis rather than occurring naturally, synthesis: the composition or combination of parts or elements so as to form a whole

 

"Methocel" (Part 1)

The stage crew at ILM built the miniature lava flows for "Revenge of the Sith" using methocel, which is a thickening agent (I said it is sometimes used in "shakes", as in fast-food restaurant milkshakes). The dirty crust on top of the lava was a combination of burned pieces of cork and other materials. Remarkably, after the stage crew ran the lava down the miniature after each shoot, they'd filter out all the cork and re-use the methocel for subsequent takes. It took a lot of experimentation to get the lava flows right - ultimately, the results were stunning. The work was supervised by John Knoll and Roger Guyett and miniature cinematographer Pat Sweeney was in charge of the photography, and the model supervisor was Brian Gernand. "Revenge of the Sith" was the longest running stage shoot in ILM's history.

From Cinefex #102:

view larger

Previously, ILM used methocel as a primary ingredient for lava flows in "Congo" (1995), supervised by Scott Farrar. The slime river from "Ghostbusters II" (1989) was also created with methocel, supervised by Dennis Muren.

"Baraka" (Part 1)

Do what you can to see the amazing film, "Baraka" (1992). I wrote a big blog post about this amazing project.

Films Every Visual Effects Artist Should Watch: "Baraka"

https://fxrant.blogspot.com/2008/12/films-every-visual-effects-artist.html

"TIE Fighters" (Part 1)

Of course, both Wren and I knew that TIE stands for "twin ion engine". I should have been clearer about the idea of what a TIE Fighter might look like when in an atmosphere, because we've seen it in "The Empire Strikes Back" (1980), circling Cloud City on Bespin.

"The Empire Strikes Back (1980)

My main point is that, differentiated from the short sequence in "Empire" which featured TIEs in a clouds environment without the ground in sight, we would see TIEs in "The Force Awakens" in very close proximity to a terrestrial ground for the first time in a live-action "Star Wars" feature film. Doug Chiang, the design director on "The Force Awakens", drew inspiration from "Apocalypse Now" in his earliest artwork imagining the shot.

Doug Chiang's still frame artwork, from 2013, as seen in "The Art of The Force Awakens"

"Apocalypse Now" (1979)

Final shot from "The Force Awakens" (2015)

"Mission: Impossible III" (Part 2)

The most frequently asked question about the shot of Ethan Hunt being blown off his feet from "Mission: Impossible III" is "why does he get blown to the side, when the explosion is behind him?" I've talked about this in the past - the short version of the story is "it's what they were able to film".

Here is what I wrote in 2008:

You know, that was my first question to Roger [Guyett] when I was turned over the shot. When they arrived on the set to actually photograph the stuntwork, a certain amount of improvisation occurred - JJ, Cruise, and stunt coordinator Vic Armstrong adapted to the physical realities of the set, rather than adhering strictly to the previsualization (which had Hunt flying prominently forward). Certain realities existed--the original placement of the flipped-over truck, the ultimate destruction of the bridge, and the amount of airborne space required for Cruise to fly through the air and safely hit the parked car. Add to this, the complex nature of the stereo camera rig, the not-trivial explosion of the truck, the dolly backwards, and the synchronization of multiple passes, and you've got some serious hurdles. Are these excuses? Perhaps. But with all of these challenges, I think we succeeded in 'telling the story' with the shot, even though, in screen space, the explosion happens between Hunt and the car... and yet Hunt is thrown screen right. In context, I think it works pretty darn well.

Here's how I'll finish my thought: about a week before I finalled the shot, I did a quick test for Roger, where I actually grabbed Cruise's element (which we fully roto'd), and shifted him further screen right, to try and at least settle the screen space issue, and help out the physics of the shot (so the explosion would be the furthest left, then Hunt, then the car, which makes his shockwave trajectory more plausible). And because I couldn't move the car or the truck, I moved Tom. I slid him over about three feet, and also had to do some tricky retiming so all of the choreography beats still worked. Unfortunately, it only sorta-worked. Yes, his trajectory was more plausible, but it broke a few things. Firstly, and most importantly, Cruise's performance was being manipulated and retimed, which took away a lot of the organic, realistic grit of the stunt. Secondly, it was harder to read the missile hitting the truck (since Cruise was covering that area of the frame). Thirdly, the shot was unbalanced, with just about everything in the frame on screen right, with screen left almost empty-- it felt odd. So I restored all of the original placements, and that's how we finished the scene. It was worth a shot, but it just took away too much of the authenticity of the moment.

My Overlook Hotel Socks

Yep, my socks are Overlook Hotel socks, inspired by the carpet pattern of the hotel as seen in "The Shining" (1980). The socks go very well with a tie I own.

Me on Local TV

I was on KPIX CBS San Francisco to talk about visual effects in the "Mission: Impossible" film series. I didn't work on "Dead Reckoning - Part One", but I did work on "III" and "Ghost Protocol".

I should also mention that I had no idea it was going to be live until about ten minutes beforehand, and I had no idea what questions they were going to ask me!

watch on YouTube
Special effects in movies are an essential part of making a groundbreaking film. A specialist who has worked on some of the “Mission Impossible” movies, Todd Vaziri with Industrial Light and Magic, discusses how he conveys special effects, his favorite sequences on screen, how movies have evolved in this creative field, and more. (07/14/2023)

All My Press Interviews for "Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves"

I was the compositing supervisor for Industrial Light & Magic's work on "Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves". The overall visual effects supervisor was Ben Snow, and ILM's visual effects supervisor was Scott Benza. I'm really proud of the work -- the team at ILM was extraordinary, and I'm really thrilled with how the movie turned out.

I did a ton of press discussing our visual effects on the movie, so here's a roundup of all my interviews.

Befores & Afters, by Ian Failes

‘You never know what the most complicated shot is going to be in your movie’

Art of VFX, by Vincent Frei

Dungeons & Dragons – Honor Among Thieves: Todd Vaziri – Compositing Supervisor – ILM

VFX Voice, by Chris McGowan

The Fantastical, Faithful, Fun VFX of "Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves"

Animation World Network, by Trevor Hogg

ILM is a True Partner in Crime on "Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves" VFX

The Credits, by Jack Giroux

“Dungeon & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves” VFX Team on the Owlbear, Talking Corpses & More

Den of Geek, by Bernard Boo

The Monsters of Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves – Gelatinous Cube, Owlbear, Mimic, and More!

Cinefex: Predictinating the Oscars with Todd Vaziri (from 2014)

illustration by Graham Edwards

update, May 2023: Since Cinefex shut down, this article had been inaccessible. I've resurrected it and reprinted it here.

Predictinating the Oscars with Todd Vaziri

by Graham Edwards, originally published on Cinefex.com, February 4, 2014

As a movie-mad Chicago kid, Todd Vaziri dreamed of being a stuntman. He never did get to ride a horse along the top of a moving train, but he did get to work in the movies – as a visual effects artist.

Todd began his career at Banned From The Ranch, under mentors Van Ling and Casey Cannon. “I got my feet wet in the crazy world of compositing and rotoscoping,” Todd told me, “using a brand new tool at the time called Commotion, which was developed by Scott Squires.”

Todd eventually moved to Industrial Light and Magic, where he’s worked for the past thirteen years in a job he describes as “absolutely a dream come true.” Recently, he was a sequence supervisor on Star Trek Into Darkness, and handled a number of shots on The Lone Ranger. Both films are Oscar-nominated for their visual effects in the 86th Academy Awards, which brings us neatly to Todd’s secret obsession: devising a foolproof method of predicting VFX Oscar winners. It’s called ... The Predictinator!

So, Todd, the Predictinator – what is it, and what does it do?

It’s a formula that my wife and I came up with. Taking the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects nominees, and based on quantifiable criteria, it accurately predicts the winner of the visual effects Oscar.

What inspired you to create it?

It all started out of an attempt to investigate how and why The Golden Compass beat Transformers in 2007. Transformers was very near and dear to my heart – I spent a year of my life on that movie, and thought it deserved to win. But the Academy voters thought otherwise. After many discussions with colleagues, we wondered how we could get inside the heads of the Academy voters. Why is it that some years it’s a slam-dunk, and other years it’s just weird?

My first attempt was to ask, “Which is a better predictor? Critical acclaim or box office?” Looking at the Rotten Tomatoes aggregator, I used its percentage value as my quantifiable gauge of critical acclaim. Then I took domestic box office as a measure of popularity. I can’t remember exactly, but in maybe two out of three cases, critical acclaim was a slightly better predictor than box office.

I wrote a series of articles about that on my blog FXRant. When I showed them to my wife, she said, “This is nice, but it’s kind of fuzzy. You should make a formula. You know what’s happened in the past, so why not craft a single formula to predict which will win, and see how it works in the future.”

So in late 2009, we came up with this formula. Working out the criteria was fun. We included critical acclaim and box office performance, then we reverse engineered it.

What criteria does The Predictinator use to make its prediction?

Well, the full Academy has something like 6,000 members, and most are actors or retired actors – so we ask what do they look for in a film? Oscar season is typically in the Fall, so do some Academy voters have a shorter memory span? How many additional Academy Award nominations did the films get? Is the film a sequel? Looking over the statistics since 1989 (which was when we decided to start the data) we noticed that sequels, even if they had great visual effects, were not generally winners – especially if a previous film in the series was a winner.

After a lot of trial and error, we got many of the previous winners to “win” with this formula, but there were a couple that really stuck out. It was very difficult to come up with additional criteria to make those films win, particularly The Golden Compass over Transformers, and Babe over Apollo 13. So we came up with what I call the “fuzzy creature” question, which asks, “Are the primary effects for that picture organic character animation?” Not robots, not hard surface stuff – creatures. If the answer’s yes, we then ask, “Does it involve facial acting?” A film gets extra points if it fulfils those two pieces of criteria.

The final difficulty was films like Death Becomes Her and What Dreams May Come. They were somewhat critically acclaimed and got modest box office, but didn’t have the hallmarks of other visual effects Oscar winners. We realised that both of those films had lead actors who had won an Oscar before. So we gave points for that, which allowed them to win. We rationalised that the Oscar-winning star power of a lead actor in a visual effects film pushed the Academy voter to support that film.

All that gave us a formula that worked historically from 1989 to 2008. In the four years since, it has correctly predicted Avatar, Inception, Hugo and Life of Pi.

Do you tweak the formula each year, or is it set in stone?

We’re intending to lock it. It was really, really difficult to come up with this one formula, and it was a point of pride that the same formula we developed back then would work into the future. We had to adjust it a little bit when the Academy finally allowed for five nominees instead of three. Also it’s a lot of work to change it. But it’s all working just fine, and we’re very proud of it.

This year, the five nominees for the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects are Gravity, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, Iron Man 3, The Lone Ranger and Star Trek Into Darkness. The Predictinator predicts that Gravity will win. Some people might say that, as predictions go, that’s a no-brainer. How would you answer that?

You could say it’s a no-brainer, sure. But that’s an emotional statement. Gravity was a big hit, near universally loved by critics, with two extremely likeable stars. It has ten Academy Award nominations. Alfonso Cuarón just won the DGA Award. That’s not to mention the innovative visual effects; the process that created them is unlike any other, and pretty much everyone would agree they were nearly flawlessly executed.

But those are all subjective statements, and my counterpoint would be that the formula breaks all that down to the level of data. I would also add that while the formula works for the “no-brainer” years – like the Avatar year – it also worked for the Hugo year. A lot of folks weren’t picking Hugo with lots of confidence. The good money was on Rise of the Planet of the Apes or the final Harry Potter film. But no, Hugo was picked by The Predictinator ... and it won!

So what’s next? Will you expand your offering to include other awards? Can we look forward to The Predictinator 2.0?

We’ve considered it. I just pitched to my wife the other day: “You know, maybe we could do this for animated features. Maybe there’s a correlation between box office and ...” and she was like, “We have enough on our plate!”

The other categories where it might be possible to do a Predictinator-type treatment would be the “technical” categories: things like editing, cinematography and sound. I personally don’t have any interest in tackling those – it’s a great deal of work. But I applaud and support anybody who wants to go ahead and do this. Let me know and I’d love to help.

How does it feel to have your work showcased in the Academy Awards nominations? Were you even a little bit tempted to skew the results to Predictinate one of your movies into the top slot?

Of course not! This is a thing of science! But seriously, when I wrote my article about The Predictinator’s results, I didn’t want to mention the fact that I had participated in two out of the five pictures. I didn’t want to give even the remotest semblance of skewing the data.

Could you talk about your work on Star Trek Into Darkness and The Lone Ranger, picking a favourite shot from each film and describing its creation?

I was on Star Trek Into Darkness for almost an entire year, in charge of the space jump that Kirk and Khan do between the Enterprise and the Vengeance, and the Enterprise falling towards Earth. I also worked on some of the early Nibiru volcano stuff, and composited the shot of the Enterprise rising out of the water. Lee Uren was the lighter, and he rendered and simmed all of the water for that. It turned out to be a really, really great shot – a really collaborative effort.

(Among the shots composited by Todd were the shots of the Enterprise regaining power and firing her thrusters, triumphantly reversing her headlong plunge into the Earth’s atmosphere.)

It’s a sister shot to one in JJ Abrams’s original Star Trek movie, where the Enterprise emerges from Saturn’s rings. Roger Guyett and Pat Tubach, the visual effects supervisors, were very open to ideas about how the thrusters turn on, and so was JJ. We saw the thrusters very briefly in the original Saturn shot. But there was no atmosphere, and it was zero gravity, so we decided we could diverge from that look if we wanted to.

(Using practical elements alongside CG, the shot includes details like tiny puffs of smoke that precede the actual firing of the thrusters.)

It’s like a dirty chamber being burned up as the rocket fuel comes out, just to give it a sense of reality and scale. It came out pretty well.

(After Star Trek Into Darkness came The Lone Ranger, which saw Todd working under visual effects supervisor Tim Alexander. One of Todd’s shots had the Lone Ranger riding his horse Silver along the top of a moving train. An instant before the train enters a tunnel, our hero spurs his horse in a spectacular leap down on to a flatbed car, narrowly avoiding being smeared against the tunnel entrance. During the shot, the camera tracks behind the stuntman’s shoulder as the horse performs its jump.)

It was actually quite a brilliant shot design that Gore Verbinski and Tim came up with. It started with a full live action stuntman, in costume, on a horse, galloping on a full bluescreen set, shot outside. That made it look very real.

The jump was only two or three feet, but it was enough to get things going. You could feel the horse pull all of its muscles and tense, so we got that true organic motion. Then we transitioned to a fully CG Lone Ranger and horse for the rest of the leap. I had to do a blend morph from the live action to the CG, with nowhere to hide.

I’m so incredibly proud that both projects got nominated for Oscars, particularly The Lone Ranger. Despite the amount and density of the visual effects work, we’re hoping that people aren’t thinking about the visual effects at all – that the effects are truly invisible.

Finally, Todd, it’s time to come clean. We both know The Predictinator isn’t a formula at all. It’s a machine you’ve built in your basement using old household appliances and bootleg body parts. So tell me, does it run on regular unleaded, or is that sucker nuclear?

No, it’s not nuclear! It’s electrical! But I need a nuclear reaction to generate the 1.21 gigawatts of electricity I need. Besides, the stainless steel construction makes the flux dispersal much more smooth. You know that! I know that!

The VFX Predictinator, 86th Academy Awards Edition – detailed breakdown of the results at Todd’s blog, FXRant

Star Trek Into Darkness images copyright © 2013 by Paramount Pictures. All rights reserved. The Lone Ranger images copyright © 2013 by Walt Disney Pictures. Special thanks to Greg Grusby, ILM.

"Seven" and Sunlight

This edit in "Seven" (1995) is gorgeous. A rare moment of direct sunlight in an overcast, rainy, dark film at a moment when Mills is contemplating the fragility of human life.

From the David Fincher director commentary: the only way that amazing edit could exist is because they shot both profiles of Mills and Somerset at the same time with two cameras. The serendipity of the sun hitting the car, seemingly perfectly timed, was recorded by both cameras.

view on YouTube

Podcast: Todd Vaziri on Jamie Benning's Filmumentaries Podcast

It was my pleasure to talk with Jamie Benning to talk about all things filmmaking and visual effects on his Filmumentaries Podcast. Nearly and hour and a half of me yapping on about moviemaking. Who could ask for more? 

The Filmumentaries Podcast - 74 - Todd Vaziri - ILM VFX Artist

Listen in Spreaker: https://www.spreaker.com/user/cstachiw/74-todd-vaziri-v1

Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/74-todd-vaziri-ilm-vfx-artist/id1522552119?i=1000610704580

Listen in Overcast: https://overcast.fm/+7o2ZK8AcA

"Men in Black" and What's in the Frame

watch on YouTube

A lovely example of "what's in the frame is the entire universe" from "Men in Black" (1997). Look how director Barry Sonnenfeld sets up the scene - Agents K and J pull over Reggie in broad daylight. Then the camera dollys a few feet to reveal his wife in labor in the back seat. The narrator (the camera) didn't want you to see her until just the right time.

Of course the Agents would have seen her as they walked up to the car. But the camera movement reveal is what makes it funny.

A Twitter thread of other examples: https://twitter.com/tvaziri/status/1572246026916102144

Vulture - The Stunt Awards

I was thrilled to be a part of Vulture's inaugural "The Stunt Awards".

The folks at Vulture, like myself, believe strongly in the art and craft of stunt professionals, and find it bizarre there's no Academy Award for this important part of Hollywood storytelling.

Enter: The Stunt Awards, created from a desire to not only highlight great stunt work over the past year (and there was great stunt work this year), but to underscore the obvious awards-worthiness of action storytelling. To do so, we created our own academy of voters, a combination of stunt professionals, filmmakers, cinematographers, visual effects artists, and critics. They considered stunt work in feature-length films released between January 1, 2022, and December 31, 2022, appraising individuals scenes and performances, as well as movies on the whole, across 10 different categories. A smaller group of consultants including Gill, director and writer Liam O’Donnell, stunt coordinator and second unit director Angelica Lisk-Hann, and visual effects artist Todd Vaziri helped us to decide what those categories would be — making clear that aerial and vehicular feats deserve to be distinctly celebrated, and that great fights and great shoot-outs are their own art forms. Importantly, this group emphasized that stunts did not need to be purely practical to qualify for our awards. The massive fight sequence that serves as actor Ram Charan’s introduction in RRR, for example, might have involved VFX, but it took 35 days to actually film.

Thanks to Bilge Ebiri and Brandon Streussnig for inviting me to the team. It was a blast to discuss the stuntwork of 2022, and also help them sift through the grey area between physical stunts and digital visual effects. The final piece is terrific.

The nominations announcement: https://www.vulture.com/2023/02/introducing-vultures-first-ever-stunt-awards.html

The winner's announcement: https://www.vulture.com/2023/03/vulture-stunt-awards-best-action-scenes-of-2023.html

 

Oscar Pool Ballot, 95th Academy Awards

It's time for the Awesomest Oscar Pool Ballot In The History Of Oscar Pool Ballots.

Every year I create a special ballot based on a typical Academy Awards printable ballot -- but on my ballot, each category has a different point value. The highest valued category is "Best Picture," while the mainstream films' categories are valued at two points. The non-mainstream categories (like the documentary and short film categories) are valued at one point.

This way, in a tight race for the winner of the pool, the winner most likely would not be determined by the non-mainstream films (in other words, blind guesses).

Download the ballot here for the 95th Academy Awards and use it at your Oscar party.

click here for larger

And if you're wondering why Tom Cruise is on my ballot... he's been on every one of my Oscar ballots. Because he's soooooooooo cool.

An Ongoing List of Directors Positively Acknowledging Visual Effects

this page is frequently updated

Over on social media, I provide an extensive and exhaustive chronicle of movie directors and studios denigrating, marginalizing, and outright insulting the visual effects crews of their own films.

I want to do a better job of chronicling the positive: the lovely, fleeting moments of Hollywood leadership actually publicly acknowledging and praising the digital visual effects work in their films and the people who create the work. 

Have you seen a studio, producer or a director specifically praising the people and work behind the visual effects of their film? Send me a link - tvaziri@tvaziri.com .

2023, Rian Johnson and "Poker Face"

Here's "Poker Face" showrunner Rian Johnson talking about the show's visual effects, calling out supervisor Craig Clarke and the visual effects houses that contributed to the show.

original tweet: https://mobile.twitter.com/rianjohnson/status/1631333681829748739

2023, John Francis Daley and "Dungeons and Dragons"

I served as ILM's compositing supervisor on "Dungeons and Dragons" (2023) and directors John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein were fantastic partners on the movie. 

original tweet: https://twitter.com/tvaziri/status/1629322328814526465

2023, Craig Mazin and "The Last of Us"

Writer and producer Craig Mazin was extremely complementary of the visual effects work on "Chernobyl" on his podcast Scriptnotes, and even dedicated an episode of the show to a discussion about visual effects. In Scriptnotes 588, Mazin goes out of his way to praise the visual effects artists of his show "The Last of Us".

watch on YouTube

original tweet: https://twitter.com/tvaziri/status/1628231925587640323

2023, Jim Cameron and Jon Landau, "Avatar: The Way of Water"

I wrote about how director Cameron and producer Landau were public and supportive of their visual effects teams on the night of the Visual Effects Society Awards in 2023. See also Landau calling into Corridor Crew's VFX Artists React video.

original tweet: https://twitter.com/tvaziri/status/1626457519219437570

2023, Boots Riley, "I'm a Virgo"

I had the pleasure of having a quick chat with Boots Riley when he was prepping "I'm a Virgo" - he's such a thoughtful gentleman and I was thrilled to see his tweet about both the in-camera effects work and the digital work for the show:

original tweet: https://twitter.com/BootsRiley/status/1672300261027770368

2023, Seth MacFarlane, "Ted"

Upon wrapping on the new Peacock series "Ted", Seth MacFarlane took time to praise the work from Franestore on the project:

original tweet: https://twitter.com/SethMacFarlane/status/1723840452514959661

2023, J.A. Bayona, "Society of the Snow"

Director J.A. Bayona was effusive with praise on the visual effects of his film "Society of the Snow", and promoted an interview with the film's visual effects supervisor Laura Pedro. (Thanks, Charmaine!)

original tweet: https://twitter.com/FilmBayona/status/1729911944411336913

Another in a series of tweets from J.A. Bayona:

original tweet: https://twitter.com/FilmBayona/status/1733207173688172719