Todd Vaziri on Vanity Fair VFX

Vanity Fair asked me if I wanted to talk about visual effects in a video, and it was my great honor to show off some of ILM’s terrific work over the years.

watch Todd Vaziri on "ILM's VFX Secrets Behind Star Wars, Transformers & More" on YouTube

My goal was to highlight the artistic process of visual effects. Movies like the ones I highlight in the video are crafted by hundreds of artists, technicians and production folks, all working together to achieve the vision of the director. I’m so proud to have worked with such amazing crews over the years.

In the video, I wanted to emphasize the teamwork aspect of the work that we do. To support that, here are the full credit lists of everyone at ILM who worked on the projects I discuss in the video:

“Rogue One” (2016), All ILM credits


“Dungeons & Dragons” (2023), All ILM credits

“Skeleton Crew” (2024), All ILM credits

“Star Trek: Into Darkness” (2013), All ILM credits

“Transformers” (2007), All ILM credits

“The Force Awakens” (2015), All ILM credits

I want to thank everyone at Vanity Fair for making me feel so welcome and comfortable, especially director Adam Lance Garcia, editor Matthew Colby and everyone at ILM PR for this opportunity.

In the visual effects world, we frequently gripe about the prevalence of misinformation in the public discourse about “CGI” and the role of visual effects in Hollywood, but rarely do any of us tell our own stories about innovation, creativity, problem solving and teamwork to the general public. I’m very grateful for the opportunity to tell some of our stories about what we do.

I'm really proud of my final few words in the video:

Digital visual effects is just like any other step in the filmmaking process. There's really not a lot of fundamental difference between, say, what the costume designer does, what the editors do, what the set designers do. We're all trying to work together to solve problems and tell the story using light and images the best we can within the time that we have. It takes a lot of coordination to get all of this stuff done and sometimes hundreds and hundreds of digital artists working behind the scenes.

There's a perception out there that digital effects are a black box, that it just gets shipped off and the directors are just handed this work. [That] couldn't be further from the truth. We work directly with filmmakers to achieve their vision.

Todd Vaziri on Vanity Fair Visual Effects:

https://youtu.be/ERKEsIzTFas?si=3SE9Fw_GsYS5sZMY

Lens Flares Don't Always Scale

I've been telling artists for decades that it's not always the best idea to scale up a synthetic lens flare when the light source is moving closer to camera, which is typically met with resistance from the artist. "Of course it scales when the source moves closer!" is the usual response.

My white whale has been to find the perfect photographic reference for this phenomenon to back up my accurate claim, one that clearly illustrates my point. And I finally found it in the 1981 horror sequel, "Halloween II", photographed by Dean Cundey. In the in-camera shot, a police car with its headlights directly aimed at camera races toward the camera, and you can clearly see the iconic Panavision red ring flare element remains a consistent screen size while the lightbulb is racing toward camera.

click for larger GIF

To help convey this further, I stabilized the headlamp in screen space and made a fixed box around the red ring, illustrating the fact that even though the light source is hurtling toward camera and gets large in screen space, the lens flare elements do NOT scale commensurately. 

Fun Detail in "The Terminator"

"There's a storm coming in!"

Podcast: I Was On Reconcilable Differences Again

 

It was back in 2018 when I was a guest on a member special for Reconcilable Differences... and seven years later they asked me back! RecDiffs is one of my favorite podcasts, and it was again an honor to talk to my two friends John Siracusa and Merlin Mann about movies, parenting, podcasting, Letterboxd and a whole bunch of other stuff.

To hear this episode, you need to become a Relay member. Please consider joining the Relay community by signing up for a Relay membership.

Here's a clip from the episode where I ask John to stop referring to the movie tracking app as "Letterbox D":

Watch on YouTube

The "Predator" Opening Titles, Re-Imagined

I recently had the pleasure of re-watching John McTiernan’s “Predator” (1987) for the umpteenth time with someone who had never seen the movie before. Watching movies with first-timers is a wonderful experience (I highly recommend doing it!) — it's the closest you'll ever get to seeing a beloved movie again for the first time, and it reminded me of a fascinating thought experiment when it comes to the movie’s construction. 

I’ll quote from Priscilla Page’s brilliant essay on the movie: “‘Predator’ combines the actioner, the western, the war film, horror, and science fiction. People seeing it for the very first time might’ve thought they were watching something in the vein of ‘Apocalypse Now’, ‘Deer Hunter’, or ‘First Blood’ — until an alien appears and starts ripping out spines and skulls.”

Although the audience catches glimpses of a mysterious thermal point-of-view throughout the first hour, we really aren’t given many clues as to what on earth is stalking our heroes in the jungle. The first time we really get a good look at the alien’s camouflage is at 42 minutes into the movie. The alien finally uncloaks (to the audience) at 53 minutes. At 55 minutes Mac tells Dillon “nothing on this earth could have lived” through a barrage of bullets they just served the hunter.

Of course, in order for the audience to be completely in the dark and fully empathize with our heroes, we would have had to forget the opening title sequence of the movie, which shows a spaceship flying past the camera, launching a smaller craft that is headed toward earth, removing all doubt as to the hunter's origin.

I always wondered how the movie would play WITHOUT that first glimpse of the alien spacecraft. Would it add more suspense and mystery to the movie if we are coldly introduced to our movie without it? I wanted to visualize what the opening titles would look like.

Watch on YouTube

At minimum, I wanted to “simply” remove the spaceship flyby and craft launch. But that meant totally reorganizing the gorgeous music by Alan Silvestri so the new cut could make sense. It also meant completely rebuilding the helicopter landing audio from scratch, using stock sound elements. I also removed the starfield from the three opening title cards. It was a lot of fun, albiet much more work than what I was expecting.

It's a fun to imagine how audiences would have reacted to the movie had it opened this way. As one "Predator" superfan remarked to me: "that spaceship flyby seems like a studio note" added to the screenplay to reduce 'audience confusion'.

Here's a comparison of the original titles and my re-imagined titles:

Watch on YouTube

Mega Show Notes from Lighter Darker: Lens Flare Extravaganza

 

Lighter Darker, EP20 and Show Notes

Lighter Darker, The ILM Podcast’s first season comes to a close with Episode 20, our Lens Flare Extravaganza! Rob, Jenny and I are joined by John Knoll and Shannon Tindle to talk all about lens flares, those fun aberrations that occur within a lens when light rays shine at JUST the right angle. John talks all about the creation of Knoll Light Factory, the innovative and industry-changing software that allowed digital artists to create their own lens flares in Adobe Photoshop. Shannon talks about his flares in “Kubo” and “Lost Ollie” and we all talk about our favorite lens flares from movies we’re fans of, and flares that we’ve created.

The official show notes are ILM.com, but I wanted to add more visually-oriented show notes, and include clips from the shots that we discuss on the show.

Oh, and if you want to see our podcast, a full video "talking heads" version of the podcast is on YouTube:

Watch on YouTube

•  •  •  •

I made a compilation of the clips below for YouTube:

Watch on YouTube

“Hook” (1991)

This shot was created with John Knoll's motion control animation rig, with the flares shot with a 50-300mm Nikon Nikkor zoom lens.

“Poltergeist” (1982)


“Visions of Light” (1992) documentary

Shannon makes mention of “Visions of Light”, the documentary directed by Arnold Glassman, Todd McCarthy and Stuart Samuels about cinematography that was deeply influential to me and how I look at movies. At some point, internet hero “Deus Ex Film Prof “ re-edited the entire documentary and swapped out old standard definition clips with much clearer and brighter high definition clips, which makes for a much more pleasant viewing experience.

“Cool Hand Luke” (1967)

“The Good, The Bad and the Ugly” (1966)

“Rango” (2011)

I didn't mention it on the show, but this flare from "Raiders of the Lost Ark" was also an inspiration for the "Rango" lens flare that I designed.

“Blade Runner” (1982)

“Close Encounters of the Third Kind” (1977)

“Star Trek” (2009)

Relevant article: Millimeter Magazine: Back on Trek, where director JJ Abrams, cinematographer Dan Mindel and VFX supervisor Roger Guyett talk about the lens flares of the movie, and even mention my lens flare work on the film. ILM Sequence Supervisor Todd Vaziri was responsible for developing the artificial lens-flare software system, which the company dubbed SunSpot. The system essentially combines off-the-shelf software, certain proprietary ILM tools, photographed elements, and several custom paint elements to painstakingly match the flares captured on the negative.

Relevant article: Post Magazine: “Star Trek” Returns, where Guyett and others discuss the visual effects lens flare work on the film. ILM's Todd Vaziri analyzed what anamorphic lenses do and all their different properties so they could be used in simulated shots and they call the resulting program "Sunspot." Vaziri was a sequence supervisor whose job was to overlook all the sequences and make sure that ILM's shots were "correct to the film" — that they matched. "He takes great, great pains and it shows," says [compositing supervisor Eddie] Pasquarello. "That was one of our compositing coups that I feel made a difference here — finishing touches that help our shots blend with the live action that J.J. gave us."

I also talked extensively about our "Star Trek" lens flares on Corridor Crew: VFX Artists React to Bad & Great CGi 112 ft. Todd Vaziri from ILM.

Watch on YouTube

The first shot of the movie, composited by Greg Salter, lens flare design by Todd Vaziri

The last shot of the movie, composited by Todd Vaziri

The Vulcan Sun, shot composited by Francois Lambert, lens flares by Todd Vaziri

"2001: A Space Odyssey" (1968)

"Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest" (2006)

Two shots from "Pirates 2" that featured John Knoll's photographed flares.

“Kubo and the Two Strings” (2016)

Shannon's original storyboard frame for this shot.

"Lost Ollie" (2022)

"Raiders of the Lost Ark" (1981)

“Die Hard” (1988)

“Star Wars” (1977)

This is the shot that John and I roasted, indicating not only the two disparate light directions in the shot, but the fact that the foreground element (the Falcon) has been comped on top of lens flare elements which are being created inside the lens.

I hope everyone enjoys the episode.