Category: retro
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Retro vfx: Godzilla is 20!
In vfxblog’s ‘Man-in-suit, miniatures, mechanics and modern CG: looking back at 20 years since Godzilla’, we chat to visual effects supervisor Volker Engel about this massive 1998 release and its use of practical, miniature, animatronics, puppet and CGI effects – all at once. The Q&A has some fun new facts about the teaser trailer for…
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Remembering this killer ILM shot from Deep Impact, now 20 years old
20 years ago, the first of 1998’s asteroid films, Deep Impact, was released. In some ways it used visual effects rather sparingly to showcase the result of a partial meteor hit on the Earth. Massive waves hitting New York were a feature of the film, and these were realised as CG water sims by ILM.…
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What retro stories are you interested in seeing on vfxblog?
There’s a whole bunch of retro stories coming soon to vfxblog. You can read past ones here, but I’d also love to know if vfxblog readers have any ideas for fun vfx retrospectives. Drop me a line at beforesandafters@gmail.com.
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Dark City at 20: a conversation with colorist Peter Doyle
Filmed in Sydney and released 20 years ago this week in 1998, Alex Proyas’ Dark City surprised many by instantly becoming a neo-noir sci-fi classic. Fans of Proyas’ earlier works, including The Crow, were perhaps not surprised at the director’s adept skills in crafting a film around a dark sun-less world run by a mysterious group…
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‘We tried a million things’ – the oral history of Sphere’s sphere
Barry Levinson’s 1998 film Sphere, which is celebrating its 20th anniversary this week, brought with it a diverse array of visual effects straddling both the practical and digital worlds. Its central ‘character’, the sphere itself, was a CG creation by Cinesite, and proved to be one of the toughest design challenges on the movie. Overall…
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Industry news: Iloura merges with Method Studios, and the lost Pirates 3 interview
Sister visual effects studios Iloura and Method, both owned by Deluxe, are combining under a single brand – Method Studios. Iloura, an Australian VFX studio with a 30 year history in Melbourne and Sydney, had in particular been knocking it out of the park recently with killer work on projects such as Game of Thrones, Fury…
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Tracking nightmares: behind Blur’s half-digested Billy shots in Deep Rising – from 20 years ago
“We said, sure, we can do it! And we did it, although it was very, very painful.” – David Stinnett, Blur Studio While it may not have made a splash at the box office when it was released 20 years ago, Stephen Somers’ Deep Rising certainly contained some considerable ‘out-there’ practical and CG creature work. Most…
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The story behind Cloverfield’s classic Statue of Liberty shot – in the teaser AND the final film
In the summer of 2007, Paramount Pictures ran a teaser trailer for an unnamed film with the release of Michael Bay’s Transformers. It featured a group of New York friends at a party who suddenly witness a massive explosion and then see the head of the Statute of Liberty careening down a city street. That…
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Retro VFX: Cloning Freddie Prinze, Jr.
In 2005, a new show called Freddie starring Freddie Prinze, Jr. briefly made it onto US television screens. While the show’s one and only season may not have been that memorable, its opening titles were pretty cool – they featured a number of ‘Freddie’ clones getting up to mischief in one continuous shot. Back then,…
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The things you find when you’re doing retro vfx research…
Love these old ads for Rising Sun Pictures and Animal Logic (from a publication called Cinema Papers, June 1999.)
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