Principles of VFX

Movie Research Quiz

  • Movie- 2001: A Space Odyssey
  • Release Date- 1968
  • Director- Stanley Kubrick

  • Movie- The Abyss
  • Release Date- 1989
  • Director- James Cameron

  • Movie- Jason and the Argonauts
  • Release Date- 1963
  • Director- Don Chaffey

  • Movie- Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl
  • Release Date- 2003
  • Director- Gore Verbinski

  • Movie- Luxo Jr
  • Release Date- 1986
  • Director – John Lasseter

  • Movie- TRON
  • Release Date- 1982
  • Director- Stephen Lisberger

  • Movie- A Trip to the Moon
  • Release Date- 1902
  • Director- Georges Méliès

  • Movie- King Kong
  • Release Date- 1933
  • Director- Merian Cooper and Ernest Schoedsack

  • Movie- Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring
  • Release Date – 2001
  • Director- Peter Jackson

  • Movie- An American Werewolf in London
  • Release Date- 1981
  • Director- John Landis

  • Movie- TRON Legacy
  • Release Date- 2010
  • Director- Joseph Kosinski

  • Movie- Terminator 2
  • Release Date- 1991
  • Director- James Cameron

  • Movie- Interstellar
  • Release Date- 2014
  • Director- Christopher Nolan

  • Movie- Young Sherlock Holmes
  • Release Date- 1985
  • Director- Barry Levinson

  • Movie- Godzilla
  • Release Date- 1954
  • Director- Ishirō Honda

Good VFX Shots

 

This scene looked really cool to me when I watched the movie for the first time, since I am a fan of the vaporwave aesthetic and it has a similar feel.

Good Special Effects Shots

The bright lasers and light sources in Akira were made using light tables shining through physical drawings.

 

Prince, S. (2010) Through the Looking Glass: Philosophical Toys and Digital Visual Effects:

In this text, Stephen Prince looks into the coexistence of Art and Science and how the latter has affected how filmmakers produce movies. He opens by stating that, in order to improve the ease of viewing for the public, digital visual effects artists try to make the physics of their movies as realistic as possible. Filmmakers achieve this through the use of physics simulation software to make their environments and objects better-fit humanity’s perception of reality. The article also explores the work of ILM, mentioning their research with Stanford University to make their water simulations for Poseidon (2006) more realistic. The culmination of their research was the creation of “Vorticity,” which is the phenomenon where water will swirl as it crashes into and around objects.

Continuing from this, Prince then explores the subject of “Perceptual Realism,” a sensation in which a viewer will suspend their expectations of what is real and replace it with the media’s version of “reality.” A noteworthy example of this also mentioned in the extract is Jurassic Park, a movie in which dinosaurs are real. Viewers understand that dinosaurs do not exist and therefore cannot be photographed, but will react in a way that leads them to believe that these CGI beings are actually interacting with the actors. The goal of a digital visual effects artist, in this case, is to most effectively straddle the line between what is real and what is imaginary to give the audience the best viewing experience.

“Invisible” vs “Spectacular” VFX

Almost every piece of media utilises visual effects in some manor. Media like “Ford Vs Ferrari” and “Alice in Borderland” use invisible VFX to an amazing degree, the former taking the viewers back to the racing grounds of the 1960’s in order to retell the fascinating story of the arms race between Ford and Ferrari to win LeMans.

“Alice in Borderland” completely recreates Tokyo into a grim, dystopian wasteland that the characters must navigate through in order to live. The image below shows the lengths that the filmmakers went to in order to create this wasteland, with them completely remaking the famous Shibuya crossing in a field, and adding in some very detailed VFX after the fact to add animals and litter.

Prince, S. (2012) Digital Visual Effects in Cinema: The Seduction of Reality:

This extract opens by delving into the beginnings of film, mentioning the Lumière brothers, who captured snippets of everyday life and played them back as video for the world to see, and Georges Méliès, who was a magician and the ‘Father of Special Effects.’ To continue his article, Prince discusses the effect of VFX and the public’s perception of what VFX has done to the film industry, with one person stating that they “…hate those movies!” as VFX is related to explosions and magic more than it is to fixing landscapes and creating atmosphere. This brings up the argument that, while visual effects can be used to create fantastical beasts and enchanting magical battles, it can also be a powerful tool for simply placing a boat in the ocean or changing the face of a house. In conclusion to this discussion, Prince concludes that visual effects don’t have to be flashy, it can just be another tool that directors use to create narrative and purpose in the story that is being told. This is the difference between “Spectacular” and “Invisible” VFX.

Prince once again brings up Jurassic Park (1993) as an example, this time to discuss the combination of special effects and digital visual effects used in the movie to create the dinosaurs. To achieve this, the production team used “a blend of animatronic models, old-fashioned man-in-a-monster-suit theatrics, and digital animation.” This created a spectacle which had never been seen before, with the digital dinosaurs interacting in a much livelier and more convincing manner.

The Keys of Visual Effects

– Assumption –

– Presumption –

– Context in reality –

Georges Méliès

He was a French illusionist and film director who is known as the Father of Special Effects. He created his own camera, his own sets and became a film maker to show more people magic.

Méliès used to own a theatre before closing it to pursue film making. In one of his films “The Four Troublesome Heads”, he used the double exposure technique to portray himself in multiple places at once on camera.

During production of one of his films, Méliès’ camera jammed. After clearing it and resuming filming he found out that a bus had turned into a hearse and different people had come on to set. This gave him the idea to use stop motion animation in his films, which lead it to become the first special effects technique Méliès would use in his films.

  • Born – 1861.
  • Died – 1938.
  • Most popular film – A Trip to the Moon.

Techniques he employed

  • ‘Stop trick’ photography
  • Multiple exposure
  • Time lapse photography
  • Colour painting negatives

A Willing Suspension of Disbelief

A phenomenon where the mind gets immersed in a fictional story, suspending the disbelief the mind would normally feel.

The poet and aesthetic philosopher Samuel Taylor Coleridge suggested that, if a writer could infuse a “human interest and a semblance of truth” into a fantastic tale, the reader would suspend judgement concerning the implausibility of the narrative.

Persistence of Vision

The phenomena which makes motion picture possible. An after image is thought to persist for approximately one twenty-fifth of a second on the retina.

Gunning, T. (2006) ‘The Cinema of Attractions: Early Film, Its Spectator and the Avant-Garde’, in Strauven, W.

Gunning explains that cinema has changed since its inception. In early film, there were two ways that video was produced. The way of the Lumière brothers, where something from everyday life was filmed, creating a simple story that the audience could follow. Then there was Georges Méliès, who combined magic and film to create the first case of special effects. In modern times, with the use of digital visual effects, viewers suggest that the narratives we once had in older movies have now been lost. Gunning instead argues that, instead of overwriting the narrative, digital visual effects work with the narrative to create an immersive world for the viewer to get lost in.

Gunning then touches on the Cinema of Attractions, defining it as a cinema that shows something. He adds some examples of Cinema of Attractions, mentioning interaction with the spectators (Breaking the 4th wall) as interacting with the audience and “breaking the realistic illusion of the cinema.” This was mainly used in early film to “solicit the attention of the spectator.” This worked so well during early cinema because film was more of a technical marvel than the form of entertainment it is nowadays. 

The potential of cinema was clearly shown through Méliès’ work, namely Le Voyage dans la lune (1902). The movie was ground-breaking as it was the first of its kind, being a longer form, more theatrical version of what people were used to. It blurred the line between a stage performance and a piece of film, and showed the industry that a full-length movie could be profitable.

Manovich, L. (2001) ‘Digital Cinema’ ,The Language of New Media.

Manovich breaks Digital Cinema down into 5 points or principles, briefly summarised into:

  1. Live-action footage is captured and digitised for use by the VFX artists to create a 3D space. This means that raw footage is no longer the only form of “possible material from which the finished film is constructed.”
  2. The footage is reduced (in the mind of the computer) to a collection of images that can be freely transformed however the animators see fit, be it through substituting one shot for another or painting over the shots to create entirely new scenery.
  3. Footage is turned into just another tool that artists will use in order to construct their world. An example of this that Manovich used is the opening shot of Forrest Gump (1994), in which the camera tracks the flight of a feather for an unusually long time. This was achieved by filming the feather “against a blue background in different positions” and adding it to footage of a landscape, referring to this process as “elastic reality”.
  4. The age of computers has aided the process of filmmaking heavily, and has allowed for there to be a more streamlined process for post-production. Computers have removed the need for an editor, as there is no longer the need for someone to cut footage and place it in the correct order. Visual effects artists can easily achieve this during their work process as, in order to make a clean shot, they have to place the footage in a chronological arrangement anyway. Turning the role of the editor and the VFX specialist into one operation.
  5. Manovich then creates a simple equation for how the process of making film now works:

“digital film = live action material + painting + image processing + compositing + 2-D computer animation + 3-D computer animation”

The Evolution of Visual Effects

One of the easiest, and best in my opinion, comparisons to make is that of the bikes in Tron (1982) and Tron: Legacy (2010). The original Tron movie being the first movie to ever make extensive use of computer generated imagery makes it ground-breaking any way you look at it, but when compared to modern standards, it doesn’t particularly hold up. For the time, just being able to see computer graphics was amazing, but nowadays the bikes look basic and the background is dull with not much going on. The remake of this movie, being Tron: Legacy, intended to improve upon this. Joseph Kosinski took this ground-breaking movie and revamped it, giving it modern graphics and improving incredibly on the futuristic style that Tron (1982) started to explore.

Tron: Legacy allows the viewers to actually see the riders interacting with each other and, sometimes, tampering with other’s bikes. The reboot adds an insane amount of detail to the world compared to the original, and really immerses the viewer in the universe through said detail. This detail is mainly achieved through;

  • The advent of reflections. Reflections add a level of realism that was previously unattainable in the original, making everything look a lot cleaner and realistic.
  • Higher quality textures and equipment. Of course, given the time difference between the movies, higher quality models and textures are available to be used in the remake. This allows more detail to be added to everything in the movie, from models to textures, to even the actors themselves as cameras and displays are much higher quality too.

Ray Smith, A. (1982) George Lucas Discovers Computer Graphics

Opening the article, Smith states that he has come across a group of three “accidental visionaries” and how one of these three, George Lucas, discovered computer graphics. Smith coined the title “accidental visionary” for these men due to the fact that they may not have recognised the “full power of the technology they supported.”

While working with George Lucas, Smith came to the realisation that Lucas did not yet fully understand raster graphics. This is where Smith’s dream of creating a fully animated movie flared up to push him to create a generated shot that would “knock George’s socks off.”

To achieve this goal, Smith’s team decided to create a minute-long sequence that showed a “…spacecraft flying by a dead, moon-like planet with a camera attached to the craft.” This aim was met by the crew. The final shot showed a wall of flame crest over the horizon of the planet, pass by the ship and overtake the camera before fully engulfing the planet. Then as the ship is flying away, the camera pans back and shows that the planet had now been transformed into an “earth-like, green and blue, alive, planet.” In 1995, Smith’s dream of creating a fully animated movie came true, when Lasseter directed the movie Toy Story.

A look into the Uncanny Valley

Mori, M (1970) The Uncanny Valley

In the initial section of this article, Mori states that robots in a factory are perceived by the common populous to be just that, a robot. Therefore the general population feels no affinity towards said robot and will only ever recognise it as such. In the case of a toy robot where a human face may be needed, though, is where the term “Uncanny Valley” is coined. As the face and general features of a robot, or any design for that matter, become more human-like, our affinity for it increases. This is true until an object becomes almost human. As soon as our minds detect that this object looks like us, but is just slightly wrong, there is a massive drop in our affinity for said object. This drop in affinity is what we know as the “Uncanny Valley.”

An example of this valley that Mori gives us is that of prosthetics. Modern technology has enabled humanity to create almost lifelike limbs as replacements for people who have lost them. From afar these prosthetics can be near indistinguishable from an actual arm or leg, but once up close the imperfections and overall fake look of the limbs becomes obvious to a human’s mind. Another example given is that of movement, which can be related to Visual Effects. If something moves in straight lines, it is considered wrong in our minds. This is because nature will always take an arced path when displaying movement, leading to us very quickly detecting that something is off. To create a convincing-looking movement, one must account for this natural arc that a movement will follow.

Disney Drawing Principles

  • Squash and Stretch – Newton’s third law, every action has an equal and opposite reaction.
  • Anticipation – The preparation of the main action. Broadcasting intent, draws the audience’s attention to the action.
  • Staging – Clarity in Expression and Clarity of Action. The image shouldn’t be cluttered with shapes, and the character should always pop. Even if it betrays realism a little.
  • Straight Ahead Action and Pose to Pose – Straight ahead action is the technique of creating each frame of an animation one after another, a great technique for fluid movements. Pose to pose is where an animator will create all of the major frames of the movement first, this will allow them to catch major mistakes early.
  • Follow Through and Overlapping Action – This principle is meant to make motion look more realistic and follow the laws of physics. If a character comes to a complete stop then, for example, their hair will swing forwards and follow the momentum. Certain character features will either follow through the movement or overlap to slowly stop.
  • Ease in and Ease out – Meant to show acceleration and deceleration, a person will build up speed when running and will slow down to a stop as opposed to instantly running then instantly stopping.
  • Arc – Nothing in nature is a straight line, character movements will always follow an arc. Everything in life travels in circular motion, be that the bouncing of a head when you walk or the trajectory of a spear or arrow.
  • Secondary Action – The gesture that supports the main action, if you are walking then your arms are swinging too, or if you grab something your weight will shift on your feet.
  • Timing – Meant to give characters personality. A scene could be more serious or funny with some delay, or a character could seem more energetic if they have little delay in their motions and never stay still.
  • Exaggeration – Movements can be exaggerated to give comedic or dramatic effect. Character’s features, movements and emotions can all be exaggerated as much as needed to create the most effective story.
  • Solid Drawing – A rule used to give the impression that the drawing exists in a 3D space, the picture would have to contain volume, balance and weight as well as being drawn at some sort of an angle in order to give this illusion of 3D space off.
  • Appeal – Characters’ features, movements and expressions should compliment their role in the story. Each character should have their own personality and look, and should be interesting in their own way.

 

Assignment 2 – 1000 Word Essay

My prompt: