Category: retro
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Miniaturisation secrets: Eric Brevig on ‘The Indian in the Cupboard’
Alexander Payne’s Downsizing, soon in theatres, marks the latest in a rich history of films that have dealt with miniaturisation – that is, showing shrunken-down characters in a real-sized world. Films such as Fantastic Voyage, Inner Space, Willow, Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, Hook, The Indian in the Cupboard and Ant-Man are all ones that have…
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Titanic’s VFX producer on how James Cameron brought her onto the movie, and how she made it *into* the movie
It’s now 20 years since James Cameron’s Titanic was released. Back in 1997, somehow the film made it through an incredibly challenging shoot, a tense studio environment, constant media scrutiny and a gruelling post-production schedule to become the then most successful box office hit of all time. But Titanic was not without its challenges, especially…
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The secrets behind the life (and death) of Titanic’s propeller guy
A man falls from the poop deck, hitting the bronze hub of the starboard propeller with a sickening smack. That line from James Cameron’s script for Titanic, coming deep into scenes of the chaotic sinking of the famous cruiseliner, might sound simple enough. But it would turn out to be the basis of one of…
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‘Flubber’ turns 20: how ILM made the shape-shifting green goo come to life
Twenty years ago, the film release schedule was awash with CG and VFX-heavy projects. Industrial Light & Magic, which had had a hand of course in a number of these, further demonstrated a diverse visual effects skill set with its work on Flubber. Brand new challenges for the studio came in the form of Flubber itself,…
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Olivier Gondry on the making of Kylie Minogue’s ‘Come Into My World’
My recollection of music videos from the 1990s to early 2000s is that they were almost like the ultimate VFX showreel. Of course, this was at the same time that CGI was making headways in feature filmmaking, with music videos taking advantage, too, of advancements in digital effects, particularly compositing, to help tell their stories,…
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Quickshots: It’s 40 years since ‘Close Encounters’, but you can see it on the big screen again
Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind was the other big sci-film of 1977. In a year without Star Wars, the film’s effects practitioners would likely have won the visual effects Oscar (they were, of course, nominated). That’s because Close Encounters managed to use miniatures, motion control, optical compositing and even cloud tanks to…
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The tech of ‘Terminator 2’ – an oral history
Ever since James Cameron’s Terminator 2: Judgment Day was released in 1991, I’ve been reading about the many ways ILM, led by visual effects supervisor Dennis Muren, had to basically invent new ways to realise the CG ‘liquid metal’ T-1000 shots in that film, of which there are surprisingly few. Tools like ‘Make Sticky’ and…
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The last-minute roto tool that saved the ending of ‘Death Becomes Her’
I recently spoke to visual effects supervisor Ken Ralston about his work at ILM on Death Becomes Her for the 25th anniversary of the film. The interview received some surprising attention; the film might not have been a hit but the practical make-up effects by ADI and ILM’s innovative ‘digital wizardry’ both continue to be…
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A shot from ‘Event Horizon’ is still Sue Rowe’s toughest VFX task ever
“Ask any VFX artist about their worst shot and I bet they can tell you the shot name. On Event Horizon, M255 was that shot for me.” – Sue Rowe Now a visual effects supervisor at Sony Pictures Imageworks, Sue Rowe was back in 1997 a sequence supervisor at Cinesite (Europe) on Paul W.S. Anderson’s…
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Head stretching and stomach holes: re-visiting the visual effects of ‘Death Becomes Her’
“Bob had said to Meryl Streep: ‘Whatever Ken asks you to do, no matter how silly, just go with it. You can trust him.’ Because she must have been thinking, ‘What am I? What is this stupid thing?’ – Death Becomes Her visual effects supervisor Ken Ralston. By the early 1990s, ILM had already been…
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