Tag: ILM
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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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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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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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‘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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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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Full liquid metal, now in 3D: re-visiting the freakin’ T-1000 walking out of the fiery truck crash
If you’ve never seen James Cameron’s Terminator 2: Judgment Day – either on the big or small screen – now’s the time to embrace this wonder of filmmaking and effects. The movie has been digitally re-mastered and received the ‘full liquid metal 3D’ stereo conversion treatment by Stereo D. The new release just premiered at the…
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You’re a wonderful human being: re-visiting CG Jabba 20 years later
You might have seen former ILM visual effects and animation supervisor Steve ‘Spaz’ Williams pop up on vfxblog quite a lot recently. That’s because he was involved in a number of seminal VFX films celebrating their various anniversaries of late, including Terminator 2: Judgment Day and Jurassic Park. Williams was also involved in another landmark…
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Behind the ILM Mars Attacks! tests that convinced Tim Burton to go CG
1996 was a break-out year for digital visual effects, with advancements in front and centre CG characters (Dragonheart), heavy environments and digital compositing (Independence Day), and photoreal CG simulations (Twister). Another film that took advantage of the the state of VFX was Tim Burton’s Mars Attacks!, a quirky off-shoot of the 1960s Topps trading cards.…
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