Wham! Ban! Boom! Sploosh! Ok, we’re
not the greatest CGI wizards in the world but we’ve met the guys who are. Bow
down to Industrial Light & Magic
Cinematic trickery has changed so much
since it debuted In 1895 with the invention of stop-motion, that these days the
phrase ‘special effects’ seems quaint and inadequate. Since the ’90s, CGI
(computer generated imagery) has superseded older, mechanical techniques such
as animatronics to become cinema’s immaculately rendered driving force. And
leading the charge through recombinant DNA dinosaur-parks, tentacle squid pirates,
Death Star dogfights or shape shifting robot assassins alike is San
Francisco-based effects studio Industrial Light & Magic.
Special
FX
Set up by George Lucas in 1975 to bring
Star Wars to intergalactic life, ILM has pioneered CGI, conjuring gigantic
spaceships out of a photo-realistic sea in Battleship, and emotive performances
out of motion captured characters such as the Hulk in Avenger Assemble.
But how do these rendering wizards create
the virtual worlds and characters we take for granted? And where can CGI and
visual effects take us in the future? We sent intrepid Stuff explorer (and
avowed film geek) Stephen Graves to a green screen at ILM HQ in San Francisco
to find out…
ILM: A potted VFX timeline
Industrial Light & Magic has been
writing the rulebook on SFX and VFX (that’s special and visual effects, for the
non-film nerd) since it was founded. From cameras to Photoshop to motion-capture:
in the history of visual effects, there’s very little they didn’t
revolutionise…
1977 – First use of motion-controlled
cameras
Star wars
ILM’s first pioneering effort was the
digitally-controlled Dykstraflex camera. Created by ILM head John Dykstra, it
could make complex passes around the X-Wing, TIE Fighter or Snowspeeder models,
giving the illusion of flight – and crucially, it could repeat those passes for
multiple takes.
1982 – First CGI sequence – genesis
effect
Star trek II: The Wrath of khan
1985 – First CGI character – the stained
glass knight
Young Sherlock Holmes
1986 – CGI gets its start
Pixar is born
Lucas film’s Graphics Group worked with ILM
on early CGI effects. In 1986 the group was spun off into Pixar, with plenty of
funding from Steve Jobs. But it wasn’t until 1995 that technology caught up
with Pixar’s ambitions, and it was able to produce its first feature film – Toy
Story. The rest is history,
1988 – First computer-generated morphing
sequence
Willow
1989 – ILM invent Photoshop
The abyss
The ‘water snake’ effect from James
Cameron’s undersea adventure was created with an early, as yet unreleased
version of Photoshop. It was made by Thomas Knoll, brother of ILM employee John
Knoll. Millions of memes await the future.
1991 – First CGI main character
Terminator 2
CGI characters had appeared in films before
but the liquid metal T-1000 combined morphing effects, CG animation and
chrome-skinned reflections to create the most advanced Cg character that had
ever made it on to the big screen
1992 – CGI replicates human skin
Death becomes her
1993 – First photo-realistic CGI
renditions of a living creature (or dinosaur)
Jurassic Park
1994 – Blue screening
Forrest Gump
A land mark film. From adding Tom Hanks to
archive footage of JFK and John Lennon, to the digital removal of Gary Sinise’s
legs, or the Cg ping pong ball, ILM’s CG work was pioneering. Pulp Fiction
still should have won Best Picture, though.
1995 – First CG hair
Jumanji
The film’s lions and monkeys are the first
CG characters with photo realistic fur.
1999 – Whoops
Star wars: The phantom menace
CGI is used in 95% of the film’s frames and
Jar Jar Binks is a reminder that it can be used for evil as well as good
2006 – The debut of imocap
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead man’s chest
ILM refined motion capture tech into the
iMoCap system for Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest. The system meant
that actors performing motion-captured roles could work opposite the other
actors on-set allowing ILM to include more elements from Bill Nighy’s
performance as the half-squid Davy Jones into the CG character who appeared on
screen
Pirates
of the Caribbean: Dead man’s chest
2011 – ILM’s first fully animated
feature
Rango
Green parks, green screens
ILM doesn’t look like the chrome and glass
future scape you might expect a high-end VFX company to occupy. It’s just a
collection of slightly ’30s-style white buildings set in an immaculately
groomed San Francisco public park. Look closely, though, and details reveal
themselves. Scattered throughout are statues of cinema pioneers such as motion
specialist Eadweard Muybridge, while the fountain out front is topped with a
bronze Yoda. We’re in the right place, all right.
We’re ushered to a cavernous screening room
that’s bigger than most cinemas – all plush seats and Art Deco flourishes –
where we’re treated to Battleship’s Blu-ray Featurette, which expounds on the
pioneering water effects created for the film. Once the lights go up we’re
whisked down anonymous grey corridors enlivened by vintage movie posters
(Dracula!, A Hard Day’s Night!) and concept artwork, props and matte paintings
from Lucas film movies and LucasArts games. Is that the Scumm Bar from The
Secret of Monkey Island? The Carousel from AI? The, er, sky from Dragonheart?
Yup. “If they moved the artwork, we wouldn’t know where we were,” jokes our
guide. A box of hard drives marked for destruction is temping – what if they
contain the Star Wars Holiday Special? – but then suddenly, we’re in the green screen
studio.
Yes, your correspondent is going to be a
star for a day. The setup’s pretty simple – a pair of green sheets (blue was
used until recently, but cameras pick up green better) and a railing to fill in
for the deck of a battleship. We don’t Navy fatigues, and then we’re thrust in
front of the camera, told to back away from an imaginary alien and deliver a
punch line. And that’s sit – the tech wizards at ILM will do the rest, dropping
us into a shot in place of the film’s star Taylor Kitsch. We reckon we were pretty
good – Mr Demille, we’re ready for our mo-cap.
Green
parks, green screens
