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.

Cinefex Spotlight - Todd Vaziri (From 2018)

Sadly, Cinefex shut down in early 2021. While our physical copies of Cinefex magazine live on, as does the iPad edition of classic issues (boy, how long will THAT continue to work?), the website was shuttered.

Back in 2018, Graham Edwards interviewed me for the Cinefex Blog. I'm reprinting it here because I am really proud of the interview.

Cinefex Spotlight – Todd Vaziri

Posted on August 29, 2018 by Graham Edwards

To create cinematic illusions, you need conjurors. In this series of spotlight interviews, we ask movie magicians what makes them tick.

Todd Vaziri is a lead artist and compositing supervisor at Industrial Light & Magic. His list of career highlights includes American Pie, Avatar, six Star Wars and two Star Trek films, three Transformers movies and an episode of The Colbert Report, and you might enjoy rummaging through his entertaining effects-centric blog FX Rant.

CINEFEX: Todd, how did you get started in the business?

TODD VAZIRI: I saw Return of the Jedi on my tenth birthday, and afterward devoured anything I could find about how the film was made. I vividly remember reading an official Lucasfilm magazine about the film – there was an entire section on the miniatures and stop-motion animation in the Endor battle, created by a company called Industrial Light & Magic. That made an enormous impact on me. Seeing how the magic was created didn’t ruin the movie experience for me at all. Quite the contrary – I was intrigued and inspired to see pictures of modern-day magicians creating these amazing illusions, like Paul Huston setting up the AT-ST on the miniature Endor set. Years later, I discovered Cinefex, which satisfied my cravings for more detailed stories on how these intricate visual effects were created, and the challenges faced by artists in bringing these otherworldly effects to life. Strange to think that Paul Huston is a colleague and friend now – we worked together on a shot for The Force Awakens.

After film school, and a few years spent writing about visual effects for my website, Visual Effects Headquarters, I packed up my car and drove from Chicago to Los Angeles with the dream of working in visual effects. I was fortunate enough to have been given a chance by Van Ling at Banned From the Ranch Entertainment. Aware of my visual effects writing and understanding my passion for the craft, he gave me a chance to help test out a new piece of software called Commotion, which was, at the time, a brand new and revolutionary tool for rotoscoping and digital painting. Van was a tremendous mentor and I owe him so much for giving me a chance.

CINEFEX: What aspect of your job makes you grin from ear to ear?

TODD VAZIRI: At the start of every production, I am overwhelmed with anticipation. The prospect of doing something new and exciting in a movie is daunting, intimidating and exhilarating.

CINEFEX: And what makes you sob uncontrollably?

TODD VAZIRI: When the harsh realities of the project schedule kick in, along with the inevitable design changes – that’s when I reach for the Kleenex.

CINEFEX: What’s the most challenging task you’ve ever faced?

TODD VAZIRI: I’m a bit of a heat ripple snob. Most digital effects trying to replicate heat shimmer from jet engines don’t appeal to me. They frequently end up, from a design perspective, too sci-fi and fantastic, calling attention to the effect rather than allowing it to exist as a part of a realistic scene. For Avatar, we tackled several shots with intense jet engine heat ripple, and I privately tasked myself with creating the best-looking heat ripple system we’d ever produced. The effects team and I worked together on a system that included the right kind of particles, the right animation, the right kind of displacement and blur, and other design elements that are usually ignored – like refraction, shadowing, and tiny bits of soot. I was really proud of how it all turned out. Later, hearing that Jim Cameron loved the look of our heat ripple made me very happy.

CINEFEX: And what’s the weirdest task?

TODD VAZIRI: I had to create dog urine for an Adam Sandler film. I used Particle World in After Effects to create the pee stream, and the splashing and splatter on the ground. I drew roto mattes and color-corrected the photography to simulate the growing puddle of pee. If I remember correctly, I think I also had to paint out the dog’s testicles.

CINEFEX: What changes have you observed in your field over the years?

TODD VAZIRI: Between the time I started doing feature film work and today, the biggest change has been the ubiquity and democratization of high-quality, highly complicated visual effects. Complex fantasy environments, creatures and invisible effects are no longer solely available to the five or six biggest-budgeted movies per year. Filmmakers like Scorsese, Cuarón, Iñárritu, DuVernay and del Toro now have access to effects that were previously unavailable to their types of films. As a movie fan, I’m thrilled that a movie like Ex Machina can be made today, with the same kind of complicated, high-quality visual effects that previously were relegated to only the biggest superhero films or sci-fi blockbusters.

CINEFEX: And what changes would you like to see?

TODD VAZIRI: Where to begin? I’d like to see a more level playing field on many dimensions. Right now, movie studios are understandably taking advantage of massive global incentives to make films in certain localities, but this severely tilts the scales and has serious repercussions on all sides.

In addition, just like the rest of Hollywood, we need to make visual effects production a more diverse, inclusive environment. There are too many people making movies who look like me, and who have similar histories, tastes and skill sets. We will be able to tell more dynamic, interesting stories by including more women and people of color in our industry.

We have a work-life balance problem in our industry, too. The hours and stress take their toll on visual effects workers around the world. Finally and more broadly, it is inexplicable how little power the visual effects industry has in Hollywood, while our work remains critical to the success of modern films.

CINEFEX: What advice would you give to someone starting out in the business?

TODD VAZIRI: The advice I’d give is similar to the advice I’d have for anyone who is interested in Hollywood filmmaking. Firstly, understand that this is not a glamorous job. The people who make films, both in front of and behind the camera – and behind the computer – are passionate and committed to their craft. If you’re not all-in on this as an idea, you might want to consider something else.

More practically, young visual effects artists sometimes get hung up on questions like: “Which piece of software should I learn?” My personal view is that the most successful visual effects professionals in my sphere are not obsessed with software or the technology itself, but are more interested in using those tools to create the imagery or tell the story that’s in their heads. I’m not technically minded at all, and yet I get by because the tools have become so accessible and approachable that even a dummy like me can operate the controls. Also, it’s incredibly important for young visual effects artists to watch and analyze non-visual effects films, and study as much photography as possible.

CINEFEX: If you were to host a mini-festival of your three favorite effects movies, what would you put on the bill, and why?

TODD VAZIRI: Citizen Kane – don’t roll your eyes at me, millennials! You’ll watch this black-and-white movie and like it! Orson Welles and his team were using the camera to tell a story like no-one did before – you can see many now-standard cinematic techniques used for the first time in this film. They pushed every department to its limits and beyond; the film includes special effects and optical work, several ingenious matte paintings, animation and miniatures. Gregg Toland’s deep-focus photography gave the film a striking look, as did all of the hidden optical tricks made possible by Linwood Dunn’s optical printer breakthroughs – like the massive set extensions at the political rally, or the building of Kane’s mansion, Xanadu.

Star Wars (1977 theatrical edition) – come on, do I really need to say why I chose this?

The Abyss – Jim Cameron’s epic underwater adventure used pretty much every single visual effects trick in the book, including the debut of a creature of a kind never seen before on film – the computer-generated pseudopod. The movie is an encyclopedia of photographic effects from the dawn of cinema to that moment, and simultaneously presents a prelude to cinema’s digital era.

CINEFEX: What’s your favorite movie theater snack?

TODD VAZIRI: Popcorn, no butter, a tiny bit of salt.

CINEFEX: Thanks for your time, Todd!

Cinefex Spotlight

update: Since Cinefex shut down, the links presented below have broken. I've restored the article and you can read it here: http://fxrant.blogspot.com/2022/10/cinefex-spotlight-todd-vaziri-from-2018.html

I was profiled by my favorite visual effects magazine Cinefex for their Spotlight series. I'm really proud of the things that I said. Here are a couple of pull quotes:

CINEFEX: What’s the most challenging task you’ve ever faced?

TODD VAZIRI: I’m a bit of a heat ripple snob. Most digital effects trying to replicate heat shimmer from jet engines don’t appeal to me. They frequently end up, from a design perspective, too sci-fi and fantastic, calling attention to the effect rather than allowing it to exist as a part of a realistic scene. For Avatar, we tackled several shots with intense jet engine heat ripple, and I privately tasked myself with creating the best-looking heat ripple system we’d ever produced. The effects team and I worked together on a system that included the right kind of particles, the right animation, the right kind of displacement and blur, and other design elements that are usually ignored – like refraction, shadowing, and tiny bits of soot. I was really proud of how it all turned out. Later, hearing that Jim Cameron loved the look of our heat ripple made me very happy.

And...

CINEFEX: And what changes would you like to see [in the visual effects industry]?

TODD VAZIRI: Where to begin? I’d like to see a more level playing field on many dimensions. Right now, movie studios are understandably taking advantage of massive global incentives to make films in certain localities, but this severely tilts the scales and has serious repercussions on all sides.

In addition, just like the rest of Hollywood, we need to make visual effects production a more diverse, inclusive environment. There are too many people making movies who look like me, and who have similar histories, tastes and skill sets. We will be able to tell more dynamic, interesting stories by including more women and people of color in our industry.

We have a work-life balance problem in our industry, too. The hours and stress take their toll on visual effects workers around the world. Finally and more broadly, it is inexplicable how little power the visual effects industry has in Hollywood, while our work remains critical to the success of modern films.

Read the whole article here.