Category: retro
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Why ‘Air Force One’ has some of the most talked about visual effects in history
When Wolfgang Petersen’s Air Force One was released 20 years ago this week in 1997, it would be one of Boss Film Studios’ very last visual effects projects before founder Richard Edlund shut the effects company’s doors. The studio spectacularly delivered and destroyed a number of intricate miniature aircraft for the show. It also dived…
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Randal M. Dutra on ‘RoboCop’ and the stop-motion ED-209
Recently on vfxblog, I was able to speak to former ILM animation supervisor Randal M. Dutra about his work on The Lost World: Jurassic Park for that’s film’s 20th anniversary. I invited Dutra back to talk about his stop-motion contributions to RoboCop, which this week celebrates 30 years since its release. On that film, Dutra…
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How the beach scene in ‘Contact’ went down to the wire
Yesterday I posted an interview with Contact’s visual effects supervisor Ken Ralston about his work on the film, which is now 20 years old. This included the incredible mirror shot, and for that high speed compositing supervisor Sheena Duggal also weighed-in on how that shot was made at Imageworks. Well, Sheena has now also provided…
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The famous mirror shot in ‘Contact’ was almost something else entirely
Visual effects artists and aficionados are often asked which movie or shot was their biggest influence, a question that regularly evokes a response about films like Star Wars, Blade Runner or Jurassic Park. Those films, of course, are all milestones in the VFX world. But in recent years, if that kind of question has come up…
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‘Men in Black’ and its crazy collection of real and CG creatures
“I’ve always told people that when you have a movie that’s fairly complicated be sure to have a talking pug dog in it, because then you can fix things after with the same pose.” – Eric Brevig, Men In Black visual effects supervisor Twenty years ago, Barry Sonnenfeld delivered the quirky action sci-fier Men in…
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The forgotten freeze-frame moments from ‘Batman & Robin’
The film might have a notorious place in the history of comic book adaptations, but Joel Schumacher’s Batman & Robin, released in 1997, is notable for some innovative visual effects work. In particular, the ‘frozen in time’ moments arising from Mr. Freeze (Arnold Schwarzenegger) blasting his ray gun on unsuspecting victims capitalized on photogrammetry, stereo imaging…
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‘Predator’: VFX supe Joel Hynek recalls the days of optical compositing, thermal cameras and *that* red suit
John McTiernan’s Predator is perhaps most fondly remembered for Arnold Schwarzenegger’s line, ‘Get to the chopper!’ But it also featured some incredibly memorable optical effects, crafted by R/Greenberg Associates and overseen by visual effects supervisor Joel Hynek. These included a distinctive camouflage effect wielded by the alien Predator creature (appearing also in a monster suit…
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Before you see Tom Cruise’s ‘The Mummy’, re-visit the digital make-up, mocap and other VFX innovations from the 1999 film
You’ve got a character that needs to be desiccated and completely non-human in its position but has to be believably human in the way that it moves. Well, that’s motion capture in a nutshell. – John Berton Jr., ILM visual effects supervisor, The Mummy In 1999, director Stephen Sommers’ The Mummy burst onto cinema screens…
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‘The Lost World’ turns 20: Animation director Randal M. Dutra reflects on those early days of the digital age
How Steven Spielberg came to adopt CGI dinosaurs for 1993’s Jurassic Park is an often-told story, including in several interviews I’ve done recently. Ultimately, the move from stop-motion to digital dinos paved the way for an explosion in CG characters in blockbuster movies. That included Jurassic Park’s sequel, The Lost World: Jurassic Park, released 20 years…
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Multi pass and motion control: re-visiting the VFX of ‘The Fifth Element’
On the 20th anniversary of The Fifth Element, a look back with vfx supervisor Mark Stetson on the miniatures and CG work in the film.
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