The VFX Predictinator, Part 2

Just joining us? Please read "The VFX Predictinator Part 1."

So, how could anyone accurately predict the winner of the visual effects Academy Award using known, quantifiable data? My wife’s little idea suddenly became an obsession. We analyzed the last 20 years of Oscar nominees and winners and started playing with various quantifiable pieces of data and tried to find (or create) some sort of logical narrative behind Academy voters’ choices. What causes the over 6,000 Academy voters to choose these films? What influences these voters?

Critical Acclaim and Box Office
A consensus of critical acclaim from movie critics and strong domestic box office gross both play a significant role in the film's victory. These were the two bits of criteria that drove my first wave of research, and although these criteria did not prove to be slam dunks, the data illustrated that stronger films were more likely to win the Oscar. We recorded acclaim with the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer, which gauges acclaim on a percentage scale. Our earliest year of analysis is 1989, since beyond that year, we felt like the aggregate Tomatometer score begins to weaken due to fewer reviews in their pool. For box office tally, we looked at the film's final domestic box office gross (from boxofficemojo.com), and assigned each film a box office value relative sum of each year's nominees, to reduce inflationary discrepancies.

The strong critical acclaim for 2000's "Gladiator" gave it a strong advantage relative to its fellow visual effects Oscar nominees "The Perfect Storm" and "The Hollow Man," which both earned much lower Tomatometer scores.

The Tomatometer point value was weighted more heavily than box office as acclaim is a much better indicator of who will win the Oscar (see my previous work at predicting the Oscar for more discussion on this topic).

Additional Academy Nominations
We noticed that films that ride a wave of additional Academy Award nominations grab the gold for visual effects more frequently. Generally speaking, if a film with technically well-done effects (yet comparatively unremarkable or un-groundbreaking) ends up with a boatload of additional Oscar nominations for acting, directing, or art direction, more likely than not, Academy voters will jump on the bandwagon muttering to themselves "well, that movie got 12 nominations, so the effects must be pretty good! I'll vote for it!" The most extreme example occurred in 2000, where the effects Oscar went to "Gladiator" (which earned 12 total nominations that year), rather than "The Perfect Storm" or "The Hollow Man" (which earned 2 and 1 nominations, respectively). The most lopsided year in this category of criterion was 1997, where "Titanic," the winner of the Oscar, earned 14 total Academy nominations that year, while its competition, "Starship Troopers" and "The Lost World" earned only one nomination each. If a film earned four or more Oscar nominations, we assigned it a point value.

"Gladiator" was nominated for twelve Academy Awards in 2000, while its two fellow nominees earned a total of three nominations.

Month of Release
Producers of 'prestige' pictures--films that are generally regarded as 'important' and Oscar-worthy--know exactly the best time to distribute their films. A film debuting in the fall, particularly November and December, will be in the forefront of Academy voters' minds. With their film fresh in their memory, producers have a much better chance of nabbing Oscar nominations and wins, versus the same film (with the same acclaim) released in February or March. With this evidence, we decided to include the calendar month of release to the formula. For example, we noticed that in each of the "Lord Of The Rings" film victories, the movies defeated films that were exclusively released in the summer; the "Lord of the Rings" movies were each released in December. We assigned point values to nominees' month of release, with films later in the calendar year earning a higher value.

Sequels and Oscar-Winning Predecessors
What about battling the 'been there, done that' attitude of Academy voters? In looking at past visual effects Oscar winners, we noticed that sequels to films had a slight disadvantage in voting. The Academy may feel a sequel's effects were good enough to get a nomination, but decided against voting for it since, generally, sequels tread on familiar, well-tested ground. For example, "The Lost World," may have suffered from this issue, since voters may have thought, "well, didn't they do convincing dinosaurs in the first film? I don't want to reward a retread." In addition, we noticed that sequels whose predecessor actually won the Oscar for visual effects also had a slight statistical disadvantage. 2007's "Pirates 3" had the double disadvantage of not only being a sequel, but a sequel to a film that previously won the Oscar. The year this criterion made the greatest impact was 1992, where "Batman Returns" and "Alien 3" lost the gold to non-sequel "Death Becomes Her." Both of the losing films were sequels, and "Alien 3" took an extra hit since its predecessor, "Aliens," won the effects Oscar in 1986. For these two categories, we assigned negative point values.

Up until this point, I've been listing 100% quantifiable, undeniable criteria to help drive our formula. But to push the formula further into the realm of invincibility, we had to come up with two more criteria that aren't 100% quantifiable, and may be controversial. We labored over these final two pieces of criteria, and pared them down to the most barest of definitions. Let's dive in!

Trevor Wood, Ben Morris, Bill Westenhofer and Mike Fink with their Academy Award for "The Golden Compass."

Organic Creatures and Facial Animation
Looking at the Oscar winners over the past 20 years, a specific trend is undeniable. The visual effects Oscar goes to a film that features synthetic, organic characters. This phenomenon became much more significant in the post-"Jurassic Park" era, where advances in computer graphics allowed filmmakers to tell extraordinary stories with fully animated characters that play a significant role in the narrative. We asked of each film: does the movie's primary visual effects consist of organic creatures? And, as a second piece of criterion, if so, does the film contain CG facial animation, i.e. organic acting?

Can you see where this is going? "Babe" beat out "Apollo 13;" talking barnyard animals trump space travel. "Fellowship of the Ring" won over "Pearl Harbor;" Balrogs and cave trolls trump exploding airplanes. "Benjamin Button" tops "The Dark Knight;" CG human trumps miniature car chases. And, most significantly, "The Golden Compass" topples "Transformers;" talking polar bears trump robots made of metal and chrome. Academy voters have a strong preference in voting for films with organic creature effects, particularly with facial acting performances, rather than films whose visual effects surround action set pieces, extraordinary environments, or digital stunt work. We awarded films a point value for these two criteria.

Even with all of these fairly accurate criteria under our microscope, we still had a problem accurately predicting certain years' competitions. "Death Becomes Her's" 1992 win and "What Dreams May Come's" 1998 win were naggingly baffling. Even though "Death" was not a sequel like its competition (giving it a slight edge), it suffered at the box office compared to fellow nominee "Batman Returns," especially with the 1-2 punch of "Batman's" huge box office and strong critical acclaim. Similarly, in 1998, "What Dreams" had strong statistical competition with "Mighty Joe Young." Both films had nearly identical box office and critical acclaim, but "MJY" had an edge with its organic creature work while "What Dreams" primarily had environmental visual effects.

We had a difficult time crafting a formula that correctly predicted "What Dreams May Come" getting the Oscar over "Armageddon" and "Mighty Joe Young." And then, Robin Williams showed us the way.

Lead Actor with an Academy Award
What made "Death" and "What Dreams" special? We came to the realization that these films had something in common most visual effects films don't have: lead actors with some serious performing prestige. Both Meryl Streep and Robin Williams, leads in "Death" and "What Dreams," previously won acting Oscar statuettes. This is a fairly rare occurrence for visual effects films. When looking through visual effects nominated films through the last 20 years, you frequently see lead actors of serious stature (Johnny Depp, Robert Downey Jr., Will Smith, Jeff Goldblum) but very rarely will you see a lead actor with an Academy Award under its belt. In fact, the phenomenon only occurred seven times among sixty nominated films. We created the criterion, 'Has the lead actor previously won an acting Academy Award?', and gave it a point value.

Meryl Streep's presence in "Death Becomes Her, might have given Academy voters one more reason to vote for the film.

Adding this last bit of criterion helped "Death" and "What Dreams" defeat its competition; the thought is Academy voters may have been swayed by the presence of Streep and Williams in those films. Or it could have been a desperate attempt to skew the data so our formula became fool-proof. Or, maybe it's a little of both.

For each year of analysis (1989-2008), we added the point values of each nominee, and the film with the largest point value became 'our pick' for the winner of the Academy Award. And in each and every year from 1989 to 2008, the 'our pick' was, indeed, the winner of the Oscar.

In Part 3, we'll summarize our findings, and give you a look at how the formula works. The formula that correctly predicted the winner of the visual effects Oscar for twenty out of the last twenty years. Read Part 3.

The VFX Predictinator, Part 1

Avid readers of this site may have noticed a curious omission during last year's awards season. I didn't run the numbers to try and predict which film would win the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects.

In early 2008, I took an exhaustive (and exhausting) look at the previous 23 years of visual effects nominees and tried to determine what was a better predictor of the film that wins the Oscar: critical acclaim or box office popularity. (If you're interested in all of the explanations and data, be sure to read the full articles, "Predicting the VFX Oscar Part 1," which has links to Parts 2 through 5.)

Here is a brief summary for those who need to catch up. I've always wondered if there exists a statistical relationship between the winner of the visual effects Academy Award and some sort of quantifiable criteria which informs the Academy's voting. I wondered if one could accurately predict which nominee wins the award. And, most importantly, which is the more accurate predictor of the visual effects Oscar - critical acclaim or box office success?

And please keep in mind that this is a game of prediction; this process does not take into account the actual quality or achievement of each years' nominees. We are looking at Academy voting trends, and what criteria influences Academy voters' choices.

Analysis of 23 years of Academy Award nominees for Best Visual Effects brought me to this conclusion: critical acclaim is generally a better predictor of the winner of the Academy Award than box office popularity. And, to state the obvious, this theory surmises that critical acclaim (which initially drives the wave of publicity, such as "For Your Consideration" advertisements, Oscar "buzz," and the self-fulfilling prophecy of "If people are saying it's Oscar-worthy, then it must be Oscar-worthy") ultimately informs Academy voters and influences their vote.

For the 80th Academy Awards, I ran the numbers (in Part 4), and the data overwhelmingly indicated that "Transformers" would bring home the gold. The silly giant robot film had the greatest critical acclaim (a modest 57% on the Tomatometer, but still higher than its competitors) and earned the most money at the box office (barely edging out "Pirates 3" but destroying "The Golden Compass"). In addition, in eleven years of the 23 years charted the film that earned the most acclaim and box office won the Oscar ten times. Armed with this ammunition, I felt pretty confident predicting "Transformers" would bring home the gold. Of course, I-- and the rest of the moviegoing world-- was a bit stunned with "The Golden Compass" win.

Huh?

Not only did my prediction fall flat on its face, but my heart was broken (not because I'm particularly fond of shiny robots, but because I was a sequence supervisor at ILM for the film). The "Transformers" loss left my theory dead.

As the 81st Academy Awards nominations were announced, I had a sinking feeling that the theory would fall apart yet again. The three nominees for the Oscar were "The Dark Knight," "Iron Man" and "Benjamin Button." Looking at the numbers, all three films earned some fairly solid acclaim ("Dark Knight" earned 94% on the Tomatometer, "Iron Man" earned 93% and "Button" garnered 72%), and although "Dark Knight" destroyed at the box office, they each made a respectable amount of money ($513, $318 and $125 million, respectively). According to the numbers, with its domination of the box office and the highest amount of critical acclaim (by a hair), "The Dark Knight" should have wrapped up the statuette.

As we drew closer to the awards, I realized it was not meant to be. The stinging, theory-destroying win of "The Golden Compass" would probably be repeated, with "Button," the least acclaimed nominee and the least earning film winning the Oscar. (On a personal note, I actually felt that "Button" deserved the Oscar by a hair, just slightly more than "Dark Knight." But to quote Clint Eastwood in "Unforgiven," 'deserve's got nothin' to do with it.')

So I decided not to run the numbers and not write up a blog post. Ultimately, I feel somewhat vindicated since my fears came true; "Button" won the award, once again foiling my theory that the film with the most amount of critical acclaim has the best chance of winning the award.

Just before the Oscars, I heard through the grapevine that my humble "Predict The Oscar" methodology was mentioned on The VFX Show podcast, show #68, from February 13, 2009. As an aside - thanks, guys, for the mention! When my wife heard about FXRant's mention on an actual, respected podcast, her immediate response was "Wow, somebody actually reads your blog? And then talked about it?!" Later, after thinking about it for a few moments, she said, "You know, you're doing this all wrong."

"Doing what all wrong?" I asked.

She said that I was looking for correlation between statistics and the ultimate winner of the Academy Award-- and getting upset when the correlation breaks between the data and reality. A far more interesting exercise would be to devise a formula to actually predict the winner, based on quantifiable, known criteria. We could look at several years' worth of data, craft a series of calculations based on certain values, and weight those values accordingly to skew the formula in the right direction.

She, like always, was correct.

After analyzing the data and looking for the trends in the winning films, we added several new criteria and weighted the criteria until we hit paydirt. Using nine carefully weighted scores, we devised a formula which was able to predict the visual effects Academy Award winner with a strong degree of accuracy.

How strong?

In 20 years of Academy Awards data, the formula is 100% accurate. It correctly predicted the winner of the visual effects Academy Award every single year. We're calling the formula The VFX Predictinator.

Stay tuned for Part 2 coming soon! It will be worthy of these exclamation points! Trust me!

And now... here's Part 2!

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

ILM's Space Jump from "Star Trek"

Image From the Millimeter Magazine article about ILM's work on "Star Trek."

Post Magazine recently published a nice little video, giving audiences a brief glimpse into the work that Industrial Light & Magic created for "Star Trek"'s space jump sequence. The video includes some breakdowns of ILM shots, and features our visual effects supervisor Roger Guyett, our associate supervisor Eddie Pasquarello, and our animation director Paul Kavanaugh.

I was thrilled to contribute to a few key shots in this exciting sequence. The work was brilliantly sequence supervised by Jay Cooper and Francois Lambert.

Go watch the video! Now! (Wouldn't this video look great on a website, like, say, oh, ilm.com?)

VES Announces Nominations for 8th VES Awards

Here's the press release sent out by the Visual Effects Society, announcing their nominees for the 8th Annual VES Awards.

"Avatar" earned 11 nominations (from 8 live-action feature film categories). Other multiple nominees include "2012" and "District 9" with 3 nominations each, and "Star Trek," "Terminator: Salvation" and "Sherlock Holmes" grabbing 2 nominations each.

What follows is an edited list of nominees, listing live-action feature film categories only.

-todd

VES Announces Nominees for 8th Annual VES Awards
Los Angeles, January 19, 2010 - The Visual Effects Society (VES) today announced the nominees for the 8th Annual VES Awards ceremony recognizing outstanding visual effects artistry in over twenty categories of film, animation, television, commercials and video games. Nominees were chosen Saturday, January 16, 2010, by numerous blue ribbon panels of VES members who viewed submissions at the FotoKem screening facilities in Burbank and San Francisco as well as at other facilities in London, Sydney and Vancouver.

“The Visual Effects Society is proud to present these nominations as the most outstanding work in the field this year,” said Jeffrey A. Okun, Chair of the Visual Effects Society. “It’s important to keep in mind that it wasn’t machines that created these images but incredibly talented artists. We congratulate them all and look forward to seeing who is chosen as the best of the best at the awards show in February.”

As previously announced, this year James Cameron will be honored with the VES Lifetime Achievement Award and Dr. Ed Catmull with the Georges Méliès Award for pioneering.

The 8th Annual VES Awards will take place on Feb. 28, 2010, at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles, CA.

The nominees for the 8th Annual VES Awards for live-action feature film categories are the following (click here for full list):

Outstanding Visual Effects in a Visual Effects Driven Feature Motion Picture
2012
Volker Engel, Josh Jaggars, Marc Weigert
AVATAR
Richard Baneham, Joyce Cox, Joe Letteri, Eileen Moran
DISTRICT 9
Stefanie Boose, Dan Kaufman, Peter Muyzers, James Stewart
STAR TREK
Burt Dalton, Russell Earl, Roger Guyett, Shari Hanson
TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN
Scott Benza, Wayne Billheimer, Scott Farrar, John Frazier

Outstanding Supporting Visual Effects in a Feature Motion Picture
ANGELS & DEMONS
Angus Bickerton, Mark Breakspear, Ryan Cook, Barrie Hemsley
THE BOX
Peter Cvijanovic, Mark Kolpak, Olcun Tan, Thomas Tannenberger
INVICTUS
Geoff Hancock, Dennis Hoffman, Cyndi Ochs, Michael Owens
THE ROAD
Mark O. Forker, Paul Graff, Ed Mendez, Phillip Moses
SHERLOCK HOLMES
Dan Barrow, Jonathan Fawkner, Chas Jarrett, David Vickery

Best Single Visual Effect of the Year
2012 - Escape from L.A.
Volker Engel, Josh R. Jaggars, Mohen Leo, Marc Weigert
AVATAR - Quarich's Escape
Jill Brooks, John Knoll, Frank Losasso Petterson, Tory Mercer
AVATAR- Neytiri Drinking
Thelvin Cabezas, Joyce Cox, Joe Letteri, Eileen Moran
KNOWING - Plane Crash
Dan Breckwoldt, Camille Cellucci, Andrew Jackson, Angelo Sahin
TERMINATOR SALVATION - VLA Escape
Chantal Feghali, Charles Gibson, Susan Greenhow, Ben Snow

Outstanding Animated Character in a Live Action Feature Motion Picture
AVATAR - Neytiri
Andrew R. Jones, Joe Letteri, Zoe Saldana, Jeff Unay
DISTRICT 9 - Christopher Johnson
Brett Ineson, Jeremy Mesana, Steve Nichols, Vera Zivny
G-FORCE - Bucky
Benjamin Cinelli, Peter Tieryas, Dustin Wicke, Ryan Yee
WATCHMEN - Doctor Manhattan
Aaron Campbell, Kevin Hudson, Victor Schutz, Keith Smith

Outstanding Matte Paintings in a Feature Motion Picture
AVATAR - Pandora
Jean-Luc Azzis, Peter Baustaedter, Brenton Cottman, Yvonne Muinde
FRANKLYN - Meanwhile City Scapes
Tania Richard, Christoph Unger
HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE
David Bassalla, Emily Cobb, Tania Richard
STAR TREK
Brett Northcutt, Shane Roberts, Masahiko Tani, Dan Wheaton

Outstanding Models and Miniatures in a Feature Motion Picture
AVATAR - Samson/Home Tree / Floating Mountains / Ampsuit
Simon Cheung, Paul Jenness, John Stevenson-Galvin, Rainer Zoettl
CORALINE
Deborah Cook, Matthew DeLeu, Paul Mack, Martin Meunier
NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM: BATTLE OF THE SMITHSONIAN - National Air and Space Museum Escape
Robert Chapin, Tony Chen, Forest Fischer, Ian Hunter
TERMINATOR SALVATION-Practical Models and Miniatures
Nick d'Abo, Brian Gernand, Geoff Heron, Patrick Sweeney

Outstanding Created Environment in a Feature Motion Picture
2012 - Los Angeles Destruction
Haarm-Pieter Duiker, Marten Larsson, Ryo Sakaguchi, Hanzhi Tang
AVATAR - Floating Mountains
Dan Lemmon, Keith F. Miller, Cameron Smith
AVATAR - Jungle / Biolume
Shadi Almassizadeh, Jessica Cowley, Dan Cox, Ula Rademeyer, Eric Saindon
AVATAR - Willow Glade
Thelvin Cabezas, Miae Kang, Daniel Macarin, Guy Williams

Outstanding Compositing in a Feature Motion Picture
AVATAR
Erich Eder, Robin Hollander, Giuseppe Tagliavini, Erik Winquist
AVATAR - End Battle
Jay Cooper, Beth D'Amato, Eddie Pasquarello, Todd Vaziri
DISTRICT 9
Janeen Elliott, Simon Hughes, Hamish Schumacher, Shervin Shogian
SHERLOCK HOLMES - Wharf Explosion Sequence
Jan Adamczyk, Alex Cumming, Sam Osborne, Kate Windibank,


For more information on the VES Awards, sponsorship and tickets, please visit www.visualeffectssociety.com.

"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.

No More Anonymous

We interrupt our stream of FXRant-ing to bring you this relatively unimportant announcement. I've disabled anonymous commenting on the site.

I've made this change because I've gotten tired of deleting spam comments that have been filed anonymously, and hopefully this will help. Plus, this change will enhance the already lively discussions we've had on the site. Sorry about the extra step, folks, but I hope the process of logging in will not deter you from contributing from the cool discussions that we have here on FXRant.

"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.

Microsoft Admits to Stealing Ideas

Have the folks in the Microsoft marketing department completely lost their minds? Watch this ad, and realize that the answer is 'yes':


So, the tech company that is most associated with stealing others' ideas is now showing off their new flagship product, touting it as, essentially, stolen intellectual property?

I love how willing they are to trash their previous product, Windows Vista. Why doesn't the announcer just come right out and say, "Tired of worrying about crashes and freezes under Vista? Boy, Vista sure does suck, doesn't it? Well, we've got a fix for that." Apple did a nice job slamming the Windows 7 ads in their typically succinct, on-the-nose fashion:


Oh, yeah, and Microsoft is still sticking with that tired "I'm a PC" tagline, trying to out-gotcha Apple. "And I'm Microsoft, and I don't know what a metaphor is. Oh, and I have no imagination."

But back to advertising... no one decodes the silliness of Madison Avenue better than Stephen Colbert. Watch this amazing clip from the January 6, 2010 episode of "The Colbert Report," where he dissects Domino's Pizza new ad campaign:

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."