Having just visited NYC two weeks ago for the Global Citizen Festival, re-watching this clip from I Am Legend was disturbing to say the least. Overgrown weeds, animals running wild, and quiet streets. Time seems to stand still in this forgotten city.
It's amazing to me how all of this looks so real. It was filmed in NYC, of course, but to actually convey the feeling that there is no one left except for the protagonist seems almost impossible. However, they did it here. It must have been a lot of work to clear off the streets, and to make them look as if no one had set foot on them in years. The aerial shot of the city is my favorite, which I think best captures the magnitude of the circumstances presented in I Am Legend.
Last year a film came out that flew under the radar called "Take Shelter" (2011). Really a fabulous film that had these unbelievable graphics that just looked so realistic. It's about a man who has these intense dreams about the world ending and then basically goes crazy because of them. Check out the trailer below.
I found an interview with Jeff Nichols, the director of the film, talking about the VFX of the film.
How did you pull off the film’s visual effects?
I’m pragmatic, I’m not just a crazy artist. It doesn’t do me any good to sit down and write $40 million films in my bedroom. But I wrote this film with no real clue of [how to accomplish] the effects component. I didn’t think that one through. Luckily, my agent at the time was representing the Strause Brothers from Hydraulx, and he sent them [my first film], Shotgun Stories, and he sent them script for Take Shelter. They were willing to come on board and do the effects for a very, very reduced price.
Technically, they did algorithms to map bird formations based on starling movement, and they 3D-modeled an entire room [for one shot]—they told me they hadn’t done so much work on a single shot since Avatar.
What about the storm cells? They’re incredible looking—very ominous and very real. What was the secret there?
With a ton of money and a ton of time, they would build fake 3D cloud models, and that way you could spin them all around, make them move as fast or as slow as you want. But they weren’t going to 3D-model all of our storm cells. So Hydraulx found a guy who had taken pictures of a lot of amazing storm cells in the Midwest, and they bought some of his photos for their library and put them up in 2D. There’s a lot less maneuverability, but I didn’t need them to be crazy storms spinning around. I just needed the slow, ominous movement. So the clouds in the film look very real, and that’s because they’re real clouds.
It’s a great example of constraints on budget, and constraints on time, playing to your favor. Because if we’d had the time or the money to 3D-model all those clouds, we would have been sitting there going: Does that look real? As opposed to: Are those real clouds moving enough? I’d much rather be in that position. Independent films are breaking ground on this stuff because we’re doing things that other people [with bigger budgets] won’t try, because, why would you?
It's so interesting to hear how these effects were done with a constrained budget. It's really an awesome film, you should definitely check it out!
I'm not sure how many of you are familiar with the band Imagine Dragons, but if you aren't prepare to be introduced.
Imagine Dragons.
Imagine Dragons was formed in Utah in 2009 and currently the band is based out of Las Vegas where they got their start. Their first studio album, Night Visions, was released on September 4th, 2012 and features their hit single It's Time.
I personally love "It's Time" because I really like this kind of alternative style of music. Some of my favorite bands are cut from the same cloth as Imagine Dragons, like The Black Keys, Parachute, Passion Pit, and others.
Imagine Dragons' first album, Night Visions
The music video preceded the release of the album, as it was a single, and features the band in what appears to be a post-apocaplytic world. The video opens on a vast, bleak desert littered with remnants of civilization and devoid of vegetation. I really love the animation in this video because I love how forlorn and enigmatic the colors of the desert are. The use of blues and grays to make the viewer feel like the world really ended. Apart from the colors, I think the scene towards the end, where the storm breaks out and the band is seen running across the desert in an attempt to avoid it is really cool. And of course, when they drop that little glowing seed into the ground and all hell breaks loose, the animation used to show the smoke monster emerging from the explosion is incredible. That kind of animation must have taken forever because of the way in which it moves. It replicates the natural movement of smoke really well and it looks amazing in the video. The end especially is really cool when the smoke column rises into the sky and breaks the storm up allowing the sun to come through.
Overall the use of animation in this music video is amazing, and I thought it would be something everyone else might want to see.
Finally, if you recognize the song, it's probably because you heard it in the Perks of Being a Wallflower film trailer. I've added that just in case you wanted to see/hear it in a different context. Enjoy!
