Thursday, January 22, 2009

And The Nominees Are...

Here are the nominees for Best Visual Effects for the 81st Annual Academy Awards:

“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”
Eric Barba, Steve Preeg, Burt Dalton and Craig Barron

“The Dark Knight”
Nick Davis, Chris Corbould, Tim Webber and Paul Franklin

“Iron Man”
John Nelson, Ben Snow, Dan Sudick and Shane Mahan

Congratulations to all the nominees and everyone who contributed to the visual effects of these three films! The winner of the Academy Award will be announced February 22, 2009.

16 comments:

Daniel Broadway said...

Those movies all have fantastic visual effects. However, the most seamless work in my eyes is The Dark Knight.

TylerMirage said...

I didn't really care for the list of the "Semi-Final 7" because it shut out "Prince Caspian" and "Indiana Jones IV".

I REALLY think that "Prince Caspian" deserves this more the "The Dark Knight". "The Dark Knight" was indeed a great movie, but it does NOT need to be nominated in every category. (I think it was nominated for 8/16 or something like that.)

I hope that "Iron Man" gets the award that was rightfully "Transformers"'s.

I actually wouldn't mind if "Benjamin Button" got the award because Digital Domain then get's some much-needed recognition since 2004 for "I, Robot".

Anonymous said...

i think there is nothing in dark knight that couldn't be achieved even 6-7 years ago.

Anonymous said...

I agree about Dark Knight, it's work is really good but nothing that hasn't been seen before. Sure it's impressive to work at such high resolution for the IMAX release, but does that really mark it out as something worthy of oscar?

I'll offer my congratulations to the DD team for their win now.

TylerMirage said...

I am also SOOOOOOOO......exstatic that "Australia" was NOT nominated. I don't think that it's VFX qualified it for even being nominated beacause you can film most of it's VFX.

Even "The Spiderwick Chronicles" wouldn't have been too bad of a choice, either.

Yay for Digital Domain!

Anonymous said...

Can someone tell me if that amazing shot, in iron man, when we see for the first time the silver boots of the mark 2 suit, with the assembling machines putting the steel pieces around them, is completley CG or pratical?

Thanks.

TylerMirage said...

Although I do not work at ILM and thus may be wrong, I think that shot (the legs and armour, NOT the background) is completely digital. The assembling machine is definately CG.

It was probably easier to get the interaction between CG legs and CG armour than between real legs and CG armour.

Hope that helps. If not, try contacting Mr. Todd Vaziri himself for the real answer.

Anonymous said...

Thanks Tyler for the infromation.

That shot is very photorealistic and i thought it was the Stan Winston armor.

TylerMirage said...

No problem, Anonymous.

I wish more people came onto this blog and asked questions. It would make things a bit more interesting.

Keep in mind that that was only my guesstimated opinion. I could be wrong. I think it's CG because of the reason I mentioned earlier and the walking seems to be a bit too perfect for a human to walk like that. ie: the cadence and movement, the position of the feet and legs are just too flawless.

Anonymous said...

My vote would be for IronMan - I loved the suit interaction and the hologram style CAD like tool to build it.

TylerMirage said...

My personal vote is for "Iron Man" also. It should take the award that is rightfully "Transformers".

However, there are several factors that go aginst that:

1.) The Academy Awards don't seem to care too much for ILM.

2.) "The Dark Knight" was critically and financially successful and thus should OBVIOUSLY win, despite have sub-par VFX. (Sarcasm for the "obviously")

3.) "The Curious Case..." was critically successful and has very impressive tracking and de-ageing effects.

Anonymous said...

erm, the Dark Knight has "sub-par" VFX, TylerMirage??? :)
I get the impression you have no idea how many full-CG shots there were or otherwise invisible effects.
I think the fact that people can't tell most of the time if something was a Visual Effect, a practical effect or "just real" is the highest goal one can achieve. Granted, it is a hard sell for awards :) But I personally am fed up with high profile VFX movies that have cringeworthy stuff right next to great VFX. The consistent quality of Dark Knight is remarkeable in my opinion.
On top of that all, the Oscar also takes Special Effects into consideration. And come on, flipping trucks and exploding hospitals - it doesn't get much cooler than that... :)
Anyways, all three contenders sure are "worthy", so time will tell :)

TylerMirage said...

Okay, Mike.

Maybe "sub-par" was the wrong adjective. How about: seamless, unnoticeable (to the point where the only CGI I'm seeing is the bat-cycle and Two-Face).

I probably shouldn't be judging since I haven't seen the entire film yet. All I've seen are pictures, articles and commercials.

I'm just angry and venting because of ILM's losing streak. :(

Anonymous said...

A bit off-topic:Has anyone seen the transformers 2 spot?


pretty impressive i must say.

i hope the movie will be more violent and less sterile than the first one(wich has breathtaking vfx, btw).

TylerMirage said...

Yeah, I saw the "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" SuperBowl Spot.

The full-length trailer will appear online on February 14th, by the way.

The VFX were quite impressive, as usual. And they weren't even fully complete or rendered yet! Imagine what they'll look like with four more months of work put into them!

"Avatar" and "TF2" will have to duke it out in 2009's VFX Oscars.

Best. VFX. Ever!

Ben said...

Forgive me as I don't know too much about all this stuff (I'm learning) but I must ask, where is the Hulk? Surely huge monsters and explosions beats making Brad Pitt look old