Week 1

Current VFX Trends
As soon as it became possible to create realistic looking humans with CGI multiple movies used the techniques to create flashbacks where the actor was way younger, especially movie franchises such as Marvel have used it a lot even using it for a whole movie where they made Samuel L. Jackson younger for the duration of the whole of the Captain Marvel movie.

Other examples of trends in VFX:
– Anime using CGI – (Attack on Titan)
– Real time Rendering – (UE Backdrop)
– Surrealism – (Dr Strange Style VFX Shots)
– Deepfakes – (The Book of Boba Fett)

His Strobe Photography:

Where can we see the Impact of Harold Edgerton’s work in VFX?

In this shot of the Matrix we can see time stopping and the camera moves around the actors. This moment where the actors are paused in time is really similar to Edgerton’s style where it creates this time stopping effect through a strobe light, it is pretty similar to the Apple and the Bullet image that Edgerton made.

In this shot of Dr Strange, time slows down for a moment but the main thing is the effect for Dr Strange’s soul leaving his body where you can see multiple versions of his body at different moments in time. This is very similar to the Athletics images such as the golfer above where you can see different stages of the golfers movement in the same image.

What does Dr. Fox mean by ‘The Age of the Image’?
Throughout the documentary, Dr. Fox establishes the ideas that will be explored in the following episodes. He establishes the core question that will be explored. Meanwhile, he mentions that we currently are in “The Age of the Image.” What does that mean exactly? He seems to be comparing our time with other important times in our recent history such as the Industrial Revolution and the Renaissance, but what does that exactly mean, and are we actually in the age of the image?

He mentions that “in one day, we take more images than the entire 20th century.” Our lives and daily behaviours are controlled by the technology that surrounds us. Cameras are everywhere, especially after the invention of the smartphone. We have had a camera inside our pocket at all times for almost two decades now and we have been able to capture images digitally for free since the invention of the digital camera. This has changed the way we use cameras from being a tool used to capture people to being a tool used to capture experiences and memories.

I would say that because of this change, there are 3 stages to the Age of the Image. The first stage is the distinct section where cameras were first invented, and where the first movies were starting to be made. The second stage would be when cameras started to become more accessible to the masses when digital cameras and video cameras were part of every household and the final stage was from the moment smartphones were created to now.

During these 3 stages, people used the cameras in really different ways. The reason I split the second stage and the third instead of putting them together is because in the second stage, we still took photos but then passed them into a physical medium such as an album and not everyone had a camera which meant that normally one person would be in charge of the photos and the videos but because those were digital we had already changed to capturing mainly experiences. Finally, as I mentioned earlier, now everyone has a camera in their pocket and most people create these Albums digitally and is able to take hundreds a photos per experience instead of a couple such as in prior stages.

Week 2

The Matrix tackles a lot of the similar philosophies and thought experiments that Plato presents with The Allegory of the Cave.

What are some examples where Images have turned more like reality and reality has turned more like images?

Over the years Arch Viz has turned extremely realistic where they fake reality to make the models look as realistic as possible to sell the project and make the clients be able to have a detailed visualization of how it will look like once the project is finished.

On the other hand, The Globe in Las Vegas is an LED screen where they can place any sort of visual. This makes it look extremely realistic but still out of place which when seeing it from a photograph makes it seem like it is a render instead of an actual image.

The Photographic Truth Claim – Tom Gunning
The photographic truth claim is an idea that Tom Gunning presents where traditional photographs are capable of accurately represent reality. Part of this claim is the concept of indexicality and the visual accuracy of images.

The term indexicality refers to the relationship between the physical object and the final photograph of such object.

Indexicality: Are the traces of the real world, or is it fully fabricated?

Iconicity: Does it resemble reality convincingly, or is it clearly functional?

Photographic Truth: Does it claim to represent reality, and how does this challenge traditional truth claims?

What is meant by The Photographic Truth Claim?

The Photographic Truth claim refers to the notion that photographs offer an objective depiction of reality, based on the mechanical process of light being captured on film or a sensor. This concept positioned photography as an inherently truthful medium, particularly in journalism and documentary photography, where photos have been used as evidence of events.

However, theorists like Roland Barthes have critiqued this idea. In Camera Lucida, Barthes argues that photographs are not purely objective, introducing the idea of punctum, the personal and emotional response a viewer may have to an image (Barthes, 1981). This suggests that while a photograph can record reality, our interpretations and emotions shape the meaning we take from it, making the image a subjective experience.

The advent of digital technologies like VFX, Photoshop, or filters further complicates the truth-claim of photographs. VFX processes, such as compositing or CGI, alter the original photographic or film images using software like After Effects and Nuke (Kerlow, 2009). These manipulations blur the line between reality and illusion, actively constructing new versions of reality. As a result, we now approach images with increased skepticism, aware that they may no longer represent a truthful or unaltered version of reality.

References:
– Barthes, R. (1981). *Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography*. Hill and Wang.
– Kerlow, I. V. (2009). *The Art of 3D Computer Animation and Effects*. John Wiley & Sons.

Week 3

Fake Analogue Images

Frank Hurley combined multiple images and overlaid them one on top of the other to create this narrative of men fighting a horrible battle during WW1.

Fake Digital Images

Writing Task Week 3 (Sully & The Crown VFX)

DEFINE COMPOSITING THEN EXPLORE THE EXAMPLES!

Identify Components:
Looking at the VFX shots from Sully and the Crown, I believe that multiple parts have been faked. It seems as if they utilized a real plane in a set and then replaced the background with a greenscreen, similar to the way they are doing it for The Crown. However, I also think that they changed parts of the plane, such as the turbines, to make them look like they exploded.

Optics & Perspective:
In the shot of The Crown, you can see that the camera has a bit of distortion since the lines on the sides tend to warp, this optical feature of cameras was then faked in the composite to fit in with the real footage. In both shots, the same level of noise has been added to the fake footage to make it seem real and the digital camera was tracked and placed in the exact same position as the real one to maintain realism.

Believability in Composition:
In both of the shots the VFX lighting was adjusted to match the real one, this is often done by creating an HDRI of the actual location to have a starting point and then tweaked and adjusted by adding other digital lighting.

Composition Rules:
In the VFX shot of The Crown, they use a symmetrical composition where the left and the right of the image are practically identical, on the other hand, the shot of Sully has both central and the rule of thirds. The plane is in the center of the shot but the sky covers the top two-thirds of the shot and the building landscape covers the bottom third.

Week 4: Photorealism

The Third and The Seventh

Other Examples Similar to The Third and The Seventh:

All 3 of the pieces above have been made solely using CGI, the first uses a mixture of Blender and Gaia to create a hyper realistic shot of Egypt, the next uses Houdini to create a jungle environment and the final is the shot of Interstellar.

This shot specifically I believe is one of the most realistic shots due to the fact that they created a new software with a new physics and rendering system specifically crafted to create black holes and it was created in partnership with a group of physicists. I feel like further proof of how groundbreaking and realistic this shot is, is the actual photo of a black hole released by NASA a years after the shot was made and it looked like a blurry image of this VFX shot.

What is Photorealism?
Photorealism has been largely popularised in the VFX industry. It is a crucial skill for VFX artists, and it is often the goal of a VFX shot to look photorealistic. But what is photorealism, how does it differ from realism, why is it so popular, and what makes it such an interesting and sought-after style?

Well, photorealism is the act of attempting to replicate the look of an image through a different medium, in this case, that medium being VFX. Still, before VFX this style and artistic technique was popularized in paintings and drawings.

I believe there is a distinct difference between a realistic shot and a photorealistic one and it is often confused. Realism is in turn attempting to replicate reality through a different medium, extremely similar to photorealism but here is the key takeaway from these definitions. A shot can look photoreal but not look realistic for a shot to be photoreal it simply needs to replicate the look of a camera by mainly recreating lens effects such as depth of field, lens distortion, vignetting, lens flares, and more. On the other hand realism itself always has the elements present in photorealism, hence why it is photorealistic, but it attempts to replicate reality itself, or a better way to put it would be that the actual imagery is based on the real world.

Additionally, photorealism is incredibly affected by light, learning how cameras work, how the different ways a camera can capture light will help in the understanding of when to use specific lens effects. Effects like lens flares and halation only happen when there is a bright point of light, noise and vignetting, on the other hand, are most present when there is low levels of light. Learning how light influences how we view the real world and how it is captured is extremely helpful for us VFX artists because it will allow us to control these lens effects and the way we implement them into a shot.

Week 5:

List what you think are the advantages + disadvantages of motion capture?

When and for what character might use traditional key-frame technique?

When and for what character might motion capture be used?

TANINE ALLISON

Hw: Comparing Motion Capture + Keyframe Animation

Week 6:

Homework – choose a piece of work done by a company that heavily uses reality capture and talk about it.

Reality capture is really heavily used in the VFX industry, one of the franchises that has most made use of this technology is Game of Thrones. Due to its often destruction and explosion scenes reality capture has been used to bring buildings from the real world into 3D through LIDAR scans. This allowed the VFX artists to be able to replace the digital LIDAR scan into the shot and add explosions or fire interaction into the scene in a realistic way.

This however has been a more niche use case and often Game of Thrones has made use of LiDAR scans of terrain. Generating buildings in 3D can be difficult but it is possible, on the other hand, creating high-quality realistic terrain such as mountains is extremely difficult and complicated, even though it is possible with new and upcoming software such as Gaia it is becoming easier at the moment reality captured terrain still looks better than these versions if it is going to be closer to the camera.

In Game of Thrones, you can see how they layer different sections of scanned assets of terrain to create the exact terrain they are looking for and achieve hyperrealistic results.

Most of the time to achieve the most realistic results as fast as possible studios have assets libraries of 3D scanned models.

Week 7:

What was the Digital Michelangelo Project?

What can you find out about this early 3d scanning project?

What was this project and how was it completed?

Make some notes with images

Mimesis is the act of creating a duplicative representation of a piece of the real world in the medium of art and or literature.

It assumes that meaning resides in the real things themselves, and representation’s job is to “mirror” or “copy” that reality.

Yet it does have it’s limitations as even the most realistic untouched images will always differ in some way shape or form from the original subject at it’s core.

Week 8:

What are the 4 Phases of hyperreality:

• It is the reflection of a basic reality.
• It masks and perverts a basic reality.
• It masks the absence of a basic reality.
• It bears no relation to any reality whatever: it is its own pure simulacrum.

Illustrate Baudrillard’s concept of the four phases of the image and hyperreality

It is the reflection of a basic reality:

It masks and perverts a basic reality:

It masks the absence of a basic reality:

It bears no relation to any reality whatever: it is its own pure simulacrum:

Choose an example similar to the Mona Lisa but with different VFX shots.Week 9: