What are Current trends in VFX?
I think that the earliest indications of the current trend setters in modern VFX can be seen in the behind the scenes of the hobbit movies (2012-2014) and the George Lucas Prequel trilogy (1999-2005) as these were the earliest large budget productions to massively abandonee practical sets favoring full CGI environments to domineering fashion. The domination of digital effects work has in some ways completely restructured the pipeline of modern film making. Instead of tail ending the film with effects work; newer developments such as the light panels used in newer features such as Mandalorian have brought a lot of that work to the front of production so as to create virtual sets before principle photography. Similarly the uptick in motion capture has made creature effects become an earlier piece of the puzzle as they must be created and rigged before performance. Its not just your humanoid figures either again scene earlier in the hobbit but more recently in films like call of the wild, dogs and dragons along with other more anatomically challenging figure can still be tackled using mocap.
A theory I have for virtual production coming fourth more and more with this trend of bringing effects earlier and earlier in the pipeline is that while DVFX are far more cost effective; they have a bad wrap for alienating the audience and separating actors from the scene. The prequels famously had actors staring into space interacting with tennis balls which some argue affected their performances. virtual production allows for a potential for interaction previously untapped bringing the personality and charisma of the stars back to the VFX.
Virtual Production
Reality Capture
Photogrammetry
CG / Practical
Motion Capture / Keyframe
The Age of the Image
Doctor James Fox offers a BBC 2 documentary in which he explores how the power of images has transformed our modern world in this time, as he refers to, The Age of the Image. This could be interpreted in a few different ways.
There’s an obviation in the information that more pictures had been created in the 20th century than in all ages previous. We’re an acutely visual society surrounding ourselves with photos and logos; films and fonts every corner of society has an aesthetic that is as well weighted if not more so than the sum of its other parts. Media consumption and entertainment has become overwhelmingly visual with books and toys replacing themselves with film, TV, and video games but alongside this, the camera phone has made the masses not only receiver but also transmitter with now almost 3.2 billion photos shared every day.
While on the surface level the sheer density of this new media would be enough to convince me of Fox’s image age idea, I think it also runs deeper in that documentation, records, and education are all changing and becoming more and more photographic. People’s lives are abandoning the written word. Child literacy plummets as the iPad generation grows, the next wave of young adults will have been socialized by the masse of YouTube and social media influencers. Even in adult life people’s lives are documented and remembered through their Instagram stories and Facebook posts accompanied by fewer and fewer words. Perhaps less relevantly but also worth mentioning the flourish of emoji-based messaging has changed the way we communicate even when the written word does appear.
I think that this idea of the age of the image is an inspired observation that is far more accurate than the more popular ideation of the more commonly termed communication age.
Lens FX
- Dolly Zoom
- Deeper Focus
- Shallower Focus
- Walking in and out of Focus
- Lens Flare
- Visible Bokeh
Harold Edgerton
I think that there’s a clear parallel between these images of the golfer and how the Wachowskis depicted bullet time moving a full speed in the matrix.
The high speed bullet time effect has been an inspiration for many movies however its the destructive element of beauty which I specifically see in Dredd.
Flubber seems to perhaps have taken inspiration from high speed water photography to see how an uncontained body of fluid might look.
PLATO’S Cave
Plato analogizes a cave wherein some prisoners have no interaction with the outside world except for the shadows cast upon the walls as things pass before a light source at an opening of the cave. unable and ignorant to the idea of escape and without sight of the opening; the shadows become real to the prisoners. Not impressions forged in the light dancing around objects but yet the objects themselves; the prisoners see a world in 2d.
When quite by chance a prisoner escapes they climb from the cave and are overwhelmed by the dazzling light of the sun. As their eyes adjust to see the bright colors and forms of the true world the prisoner is blown away and feels they must return to the cave to help the others escape. Eyes adjusted to the outside struggle to see the way through the dark as they stumbles clumsily back. By the time they have made it back they appear unimpressive and week and so face rejection from the rest of the prisoners who refuse to leave the cave; still captivated by the shadows on the wall. After a time the ignorant prisoners murder their enlightened friend.
Semiotics
in semiotics (the study of signs) an icon is directly representative of what is represents; an indexes is a logical sub step of what it represent; a symbol can be far more abstract and are cultural accepted association instead of holding a true relative to what it represents.
The Photographic Truth Claim
The photographic truth claim is this fascinating idea that with each photo comes and implied truth it’s specifically interesting because while the theory may be brushed off as digital manipulation becomes both easy and accessible almost universally on my argue that the enjoyment and consumption of modern digital manipulation is almost a proof of the truth claim a photograph holds. I think this is an idea that holds to the mark exceptionally, especially when you analyze the memetic culture of comedy on modern social media accounts. Memes would lose the comedy if the figures depicted in them were blatantly false.
The idea that digital photography and manipulation would come to the death of the photographic, truth claim is also quite unfounded, as since the beginning of photography, photographic manipulation has been present, however, using chemistry instead of math to manipulate the image. At the same time, this does not mean that an image is truth claim indexicality has always been elusive. Only that the idealized truth claim of film backed images has not wasted away with the rise of digitization.
Within film, I think the truth claim of an image is when most of the enjoyment is held. This idea of the cinematic escape a film has to be believable to be enjoyed. Wow this subject is in all of the images itself. This applies to all aspects of film writing has to be believable dialogue has to be believable , and while fiction to the fantastical is still encouraged, there has to be a grounding in some recognizable rules of the real films to be accepted, and fundamentally this is why the reputation of modern VFX is so low. Soon as visual effects are spotted, the scenes can claim truth as much as they like, but the audience know they’re looking at fake.
Fakery and Hoaxes
faced with the invention of photography, French painter Paul Delaroche said, ‘from today painting is dead.’ the incorruptible accuracy of a photo would kill the need for paintings. Or so he thought, however since to photo proliferation there has been multiple hoaxes and scandals where a manipulated photograph has fooled the masses. Perhaps the most infamous, the fairy hoax showing pictures of young girls playing in the garden with the fairies had people finally believe in this mythical creature. Though these hoaxes appear trivial at first some have the ability to shape history.
Frank Hurley was a war photographer during the first great war. his series of helped shape a lot of the perceptions of how we’ve thought back on the war since. direct inspirations have been taken from his images however as it turns out he doctored many of his images in the pursuit of drama. stitching together scenarios to create a scene of tragedy in the epic scale instead of the realism of the battle field. these pictures remain important and ingrained in our culture and reflection upon world war one and the danger of photography and why paintings wont ‘die’ is because painting appears as an artwork whereas photography is the great deceiver presenting as a ‘real’ image that may in fact be less accurate than the painting.
This famous picture of Lincoln features his head grafted to the body of Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy.
Adolf Hitler had Dr. Joseph Goebbels removed from this picture for reasons that are still unknown.
The finished photo of Ulysses S. Grant on the left was com posited from these three other pictures.
Mussolini had the horse handler removed from this picture to make it look more dramatic.
Modernity has brought an onslaught of fakes and hoaxes however the commodification of software like photoshop and the incorporation of touch up software into social media apps has allowed for a general understanding of falsity in images and the creation of fake images (a revolution of which has arisen recently post Ai) has become a joke or meme.
Visual Effects Composition
VFX compositing is the combination of different layers (plates) to create an illusion or distortion with the intent to appear as one captured piece of film. If the animation; modelling; and various simulations are the wire work of a magic trick, composition is the orientation of the curtains and mirrors. while the prestige lies with what’s behind its not possible without the curtain itself.
Compositing was the first kind of visual effects as artists would layer different film back on top of each other and reexpose onto one image plate. one could argue things like glass paintings and rear projection along with modernist approaches such as the volume are ways to approach compositing in camera.
Often people separate composition into two plates, the real and the fake. This is however a misnomer as the pejorative of all modern compositing holds a complex array of layers of real assets and a multitude of CG elements and even then the various depth and color grades. A cinematic composition exacerbated now by the popular rise of node based composition is a deeply intricate process.
Photorealism
I define photorealism as not an objective for a film maker to make something appear natural to real life but to (within the context of the film which the effects were completed) make it seamless with the plate photography. as in lens distortion, film stock and the appropriate color range of the footage especially matching the black and white levels accurate to how the camera ha captured light and dark.
Capture + Acquisition
The scanning of real world elements to incorporate aspects of their nature into a digital setting.
Motion capture is perhaps the most obvious example wherein tracking markers along the body of a moving and articulated target can translate to a computerized digital rig. 
Reality capture or photogrammetry uses a compilation of pictures of an object to not only inform on it’s model but also project it’s texture back onto itself. 
Video Capture is the oldest and most common yet also the most often left out as standing separate to the others it lacks the indexical sense of the other examples. and iconic recording of a moment in time.
Motion Capture in comparison to Key Frame Animation
The great strengths of motion capture are the accuracy and immediacy it’s able to offer. the accuracy of the performance offers the opportunity for an actor to put more of their own performance into a character. For projects like the apes movie’s and Avatar this is ideal and brings a sense of authenticity to roles which require the extra level of subtlety that an actors performance can bring. James Cameron’s idea was to show the world something they had never seen before and to make them believe it and the authenticity of physical performance was pivotal for that to work especially in the sense of the story telling.
Theirs also a kinetic resonance that is unique to mocap. Again harking to to films like avatar and planet of the apes, the true physics are instrumental in binding the fantastic and real to form not something true but something in which an audience can believe. The modernity of video game animation is swamped by motion capture for this reason. run animations and jumps along with acrobatics are now almost entirely tweaked motion capture and a simple comparison of the animations of games old and new shows the benefit of the physicality mocap can bring with emersion as the focus in how to measure the success
This authenticity is not however always appropriate and can deficit animation whereas a key frame pose to pose approach would have been more beneficial. Perhaps this is where we can accredit the successes of PIXAR. The stylized nature of the animation creates for some larger than life stories in fantastical worlds. A great example would be to compare the Dream Works action trilogy of Kung Fu Panda against the recent Disney Animation attempt; Raya and the Last Dragon. Boasting the mocap approach to action scenes you could expect an epic spectacle however the result is almost too grounded. Underwhelming animation begging the question why not make a live action picture if you don’t want to take advantage of the style capabilities that come with animation. Meanwhile the much older Kung Fu Panda movie is famed for taking inspiration from real action and fighting but pushing the boundaries of the physics to capitalize off of the malleability of animated characters.
The indexical nature of motion capture leaves an impression of real life which when approaching some sense of reality is the focus becomes a real asset however when attempted to institute into a stylized piece only forms a sense of displacement.
Mimesis, Verisimilitude and the Hyperreal
while mimesis is the pursuit of an exact imitation of the real verisimilitude is more of a collection of grounding factors that tie an artwork to reality. For instance this characters tragic backstory and evident trauma gives the plot some verisimilitude as is navigates the surreal.