5 Great Movies and Maya

This week, I was completely blown away and excited by Autodesk's program Maya. I have watched several different "behind-the-scenes" documentaries on several different films, and was able to watch as they created environments and creatures. For example, I loved watching how they made the creatures of the Lord of the Rings, and it is only now that I realized that they used the program Maya! I was so excited, and still am, to learn different aspects of Maya, even though there is so much depth and jobs involved in it. As I was researching I came across this article about 5 other movies that used Autodesk programs and the one thing they all had in common?: Maya.

The first was Inception, where they folded over the streets of Paris and had amazing settings.

Then there was Avatar, which was truly amazing with it's ability to combine live action 3D and CG effects. The actors of Avatar were so talented to be able to be on a virtually empty set and still perform as if they were in that actual environment.

Third on the list was Alice In Wonderland, which ties in my previous blog! Not only did they green screen most of the movie, but to find out that they used Maya as well really brought both concepts together in a way I never expected.

Fourth, was Iron Man 2. This was really cool to read because they not only used Autodesk 3D programs, but also made parts of the suits in actual life around the actors. Then they molded the suits later in computer graphics.

 Finally, and least expected, was Black Swan, when Natalie Portman turned into the swan.

Reading this article was eye-opening. There were a few that I suspected used Autodesk programs like Maya, but there were others that I never expected to find. After my brief experience, I can't imagine the amount of time it would take to do the things they accomplished in these films. It is truly incredible to continue to learn how "movie magic" is done.

By Amber Capogrossi

Black Swan

This weekend I saw so many people dressed as black swan which made me think about the effects that were used to transform Natalie Portman into the black swan. In the film, there are scenes where we see feathers coming out of her skin. And of course the part when her arms become full feathered wings. I did some searching around and found that there were so many more effects that went into the making of this movie than one would have imagined. For instance, there are a few times in the film when Natalie Portman's head was composited onto another dancers body to make it look like she did all the dancing.

Here is a video of visual effects supervisor, Dan Schrecker, discussing the effects in the film.

Visual Effects in Unexpected Places: Black Swan

When we think about movies that use CGI the first ones that seem to come to mind are usually flashy action or sci-fi movies that often have quite a hefty budget. One movie that I can think of that has an obvious use of CGI and visual effects is Avatar. You can tell almost instantly when looking at a scene from that movie that a lot of visual effects specialists were needed to create it. There are a number of movies out there, however, which incorporate CGI and visual effects that you may not have even noticed or at least not expected prior to watching it. One example of this technique can be seen in the movie Black Swan.

Black Swan, being a fairly low budget movie about ballet dancers and delusions doesn’t really strike me as a movie that would need many visual effects. One because it had a fairly low budget (about 13 Million) and CGI take lots of time which = money and two because I don’t typically picture a dancing movie needing many explosions or huge green screen scenes. Though in Black Swan, it seems to be the little things that count when it comes to CGI. Watch the video below to see what I mean. I think it shows an interesting inside look into many of the places in the movie that use CGI techniques and how they looked before and after.

I guess I didn’t realize until after watching that video how much of the important elements of the film (rash, feathers, etc) were added with a computer instead of through make-up or costuming. All of the important elements of Portman's delusions (interacting with herself in the mirror, seeing the paintings move, etc) utilized animated components as well. I guess looking back on the movie now it makes a little more sense that there is CGI used in it but it is still not very in your face about it. Some elements such as the face replacement of Natalie Portman’s face over her dance doubles was so seamlessly added that it is not noticeable at all-at least to me (there was a huge scandal connected to the use of face replacement and a dance double in this movie by the way). Next time I watch a movie where I wouldn’t expect there to be CGi I’m going to try to look hard for it because I bet I will be able to find at least one thing. CGI seems to be becoming a staple in movies now and not just in the expected genres.

Black Swan FX

So I saw Black Swan last night and when I was done watching it I was thinking about how they did some of the FX in the movie. I looked on youtube and found a great before and after video of the effects. I really love before and after videos that show you different stages and layers of effects because it makes it easier to understand how it was done. Here's the video for those of you who have seen the movie.