The State of VFX: A Documentary

Here is a short documentary "Life After Pi," about 30 minutes long, about the story of Rhythm & Hues and the state of other VFX houses. Many VFX studios struggle to stay in business when the business model in the film industry for VFX work is so unsustainable. Tax subsidies in other countries and the payments being fixed bids are hindering the VFX studios.

Life of Pi - Tiger

Creating a life-like tiger as a main character that must be pretty much all computer generated takes an insane amount of animation work. Everything needs to be exactly like a real tiger, down to the muscle patterns. The animators that worked on the tiger through Rhythm & Hues productions had access to real tigers for all the animating work they needed. They used real tigers in the film for only a total of 20 shots, everything else was done with the CG tigers they built. VFX supervisor Westenhofer explained that it was the most complex creature they had every animated. He said that the paws were the most challenging since they required the most amount of independent controls. Ths is the kind of animation that is truly awe inspiring, it just looks so real.

Who makes this stuff anyway?

Hey you. Yeah, you with the face. Ever wonder who exactly is behind the visual effects from your favorite movies or commercials? Well if you haven't, that's unfortunate. If you have, however, then the search is over.

MPC (Moving Picture Company) has been one of the global leaders in visual effects for over 25 years, and it doesn't seem that they'll be out of the game anytime soon. With facilities in London, Vancouver, Montréal, Los Angeles, New York, Amsterdam, Bangalore, and Mexico City, MPC is a powerful group that's stationed around the world. In addition to being one of the world's leaders in visual effects, MPC also specializes in concept design, shoot supervision, software development, color grading, and many other aspects of a production.

Man of Steel, World War Z, Life of Pi, and Prometheus are some of MPC's more recent successes that you probably know. I mean, really, how would you not? These are just a few of the company's unbelievable projects where they have gone above and beyond the norm. Take a look. I bet you won't be able to only watch part of the reel.

The company has made some spectacular accomplishments in the world of visual effects. MPC is currently working on countless projects including Godzilla and Game of Thrones (a personal favorite). Aside from films, the company has taken part in the creation of numerous advertising campaigns such as Coca-Cola and Lexus.

I'm not sure if it's the music or the visual effects that have got me amped, but either way, that's some amazing work right there. I guess it just takes a montage and some exciting music to make you realize how much great work is put into certain projects. That's not to say the effects aren't good enough to be noticed on their own, but it's just that a person wouldn't typically stop and think about them.

I don't mean for this to be a post where I shamelessly advertise for some company. No, they didn't ask me to do this. It would have hopefully been written much better if they did. I just think the proper people should be given credit where credit is deserved. Also, apparently MPC is working on this:

And that just looks dope.

Life of Hulk

In great action movies, such as The Avengers, the effects are larger than life (EX: The Hulk). Have you ever wondered how they make these monsters look so realistic, and how they create a whole location and make it seem real? Through the advancement of technology, CGI characters are broke down to the skeleton, making the creations more believable than ever before. Also, cities and oceans are now just painted on in Post-Production as Green/Blue Screen has become a highly valued location.

In both The Avengers and Life of Pi CGI work is used for more than making an animation, but rather bring a new world, and its creatures in it, alive.

 

 

Behind The Scenes: Life of Pi

While working on my chroma key project I decided to base this post off of the footage that I used from "Life of Pi." I found this really cool article that talks about some of the logistics used to create the studding effects in the Emmy winning movie. What I found interesting about the article is the role water played in the film. The ocean is featured in 3/5th of the film and posed several problems for the animation and production teams. For one the boat scenes were shot in a wave pool. This posed the issue of matching the practical waves to the animated ones. The animation team had to use motion tracking points on the edge of the pool as well as research gathered from the coast hard to make the animations look as lifelike as possible. Tracking was a major obstacle for the production team who used a crane to gather the bulk of the footage. Whenever there were overhead shots there were no motion points for the animation team to lock onto. To solve this problem two alternative cameras with matching time codes. All and all a cool article definitely worth checking out. 

The link to the article is here: Life of Pi: a tiger’s tale

Here is some behind the scenes visuals: 

Life of Pi

So I haven't heard much about Ang Lee's Life of Pi, except that it is supposed to have amazing special effects. I did a little research and this movie looks pretty interesting. It is about a boy whose family decides to move their zoo. There is a shipwreck and the boy, Pi, has to survive. That is the very basic jist of the plot. The reviews so far are pretty good (it has an 86% on Rotten Tomatoes). The movie is based on a book that was supposed to be "impossible" to film, which I think makes it even more impressive that it is good at all, let alone great (supposedly). It came out on Nov 21, so hopefully I will get to see it soon.

Here is the trailer, the special effects don't really come in until the end but when they do, they look awesome.