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  1. In Memory of LAJ_FETT: Please share your remembrances and condolences HERE

State of the Art - The Industrial Light and Magic special effects thread

Discussion in 'Lucasfilm Ltd. In-Depth Discussion' started by ShaneP, Aug 3, 2009.

  1. michealB

    michealB Jedi Youngling

    Registered:
    May 18, 2010
    Many big films for ILM nex year. pirates 4 could have been an interesting project if only verbinsky( or someone else with a trained eye for sfx and cgi) was the director, but marshall is not very familiar with big special effects movies, if i remember right.
     
  2. shanerjedi

    shanerjedi Jedi Padawan star 4

    Registered:
    Mar 17, 2010
    His unfamiliarity with genre films might be a plus though, especially on a fourth film in a franchise. he might bring something different. After the third Pirates film, I really hope they go in a different direction. The old storyline was spent.
     
  3. malducin

    malducin Jedi Padawan star 4

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    Oct 23, 2001
    Charlie Gibson was mainly in charge of coordinating and supervising the non-ILM work on the Pirate films, which involved a lot of comp/roto and digital environments not done by ILM. If I remember right in the first film about half the shots were ILM (mainly the skeletons and the miniature work) and the other half spread around several vendors. By the third film there was so much work that even though ILm had a lot more shots a ton of 3D work was also done by other vendors.

    As far as Rob Marshall, yeah only Memoirs of a Geisha has any significant VFX. What I'm hoping is that he can bring some of the quirky humor from the first film back to the 4th installment, and certainly Nine and Chicago had some of that.
     
  4. malducin

    malducin Jedi Padawan star 4

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    Oct 23, 2001
    Ben Snow is supe on Pirates 4.

    Also press release today of ILM and Imageworks open source collaboration project.
     
  5. michealB

    michealB Jedi Youngling

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    May 18, 2010
    my bet was ben snow on cowboys&aliens because of favreau. btw, since farrar probably is on transformers 3, tim alexander on rango, i guess john knoll could be the supervisor of C&A( or roger guyett?). But there is also the great dennis muren( i read his name in the credits of the last airbender as creative consultant). only speculations of course:)

    malducin did you see something interesting about iron man 2 and the last airbender presentations on siggraph?
     
  6. shanerjedi

    shanerjedi Jedi Padawan star 4

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    Mar 17, 2010
    It could be that Ben Snow AND John Knoll are on Pirates 4. Remember that Knoll was on Pirates 3 as overall supe for ILM and then Roger Guyett also handled a bunch of shots too.

    Really 2 supes is possible due to the large scale of these films.

    edit another thing to consider for these projects are the associate fx supes from past projects who may be in line for a promotion.
     
  7. shanerjedi

    shanerjedi Jedi Padawan star 4

    Registered:
    Mar 17, 2010
    A little interview with Peter Berg about Battleship here: Perg talks Battleship

    ILM gets a few mentions, namely how they're working on the aliens and the alien's ships. The aliens sound like they'll be a combo of actor and alien. Berg used Davey Jones as an example of how theyre going to accomplish it. Sounds like iMocap to me.
     
  8. Kaero_Shan

    Kaero_Shan Jedi Youngling

    Registered:
    Jun 1, 2006
    I have to quote something I read at aintitcool.com:
    "Lucas is also probably regretting his lack
    of foresight in jettisoning off Pixar back when he used to own them I guess. And irony of ironies, passing on fully rendered and texture-mapped x-wings back in the late seventies when a test was done before Empire (and looked better than stuff that came years later) - because of money/budget concerns.
    Incidentally, the CG guys responsible for the Star Wars graphics (displays and trench simulation) provided Lucas with a fully rendered X-Wing CG dogfight test in *1979*(if you're lucky, you'll find it on the net, or at least still images). You would be surprised at the level of detail in the thing. However, computing power at that time wasn't sufficient for real production (you needed a Cray or two, and those weren't sold at Radio Shack).
    Cinefex issue 6. "An apple for the dreamsmiths" story. It's the Dragonslayer/Raiders of the Lost Ark issue. The test was done by Triple I of a wave of fighters. They did stuff on Tron, and the lead guy's name was Richard Taylor (no, not the Kiwi, the other one)."

    Never heard of this before?

    Is this true?
    Does anyone here have pictures or links? I would really like to see what they accomplished!

    Thanks,
    Kaero
     
  9. shanerjedi

    shanerjedi Jedi Padawan star 4

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    Mar 17, 2010
    Looks like ILM re-opened a office in LA. :cool:
     
  10. malducin

    malducin Jedi Padawan star 4

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    Oct 23, 2001
    Nice, though not 100% surorised since I heard some rumblings of ILM side projects. I'm guessing it'll just be a small office to stay in touch with studios/producers. The one that has me wondering is that they have listed Canada in their jobs page. Is it just for recruiting talent from Canada or are they planning to open an office in Vancouver like Pixar, DD and others?

    Agreed

    Yeah, maybe I'll have to dedicate a longer post to that. For Iron Man 2 one of the really insane things is how they basically had to do it without it been a final script or plan for it. The finale was basically done on the run. For example when Whiplash appears in the Japanese tea garden, O'Rourke was filmed on a simple bluee screen, for the background there was no real plate, so ILM had to take a still photo they had from the shoot and recreate it from there. For the battle between Tony and Roadie at Stark's mansion a lot of that was a virtual set with reprojected textures.

    For Last Airbender ILM showed a few sequences that didn't make the final cut. Also they confirmed my suspicion for a lot of the fight sequences for Ang (like when he fights in the training ring and a lot of the fight where he flips around in the ice finale), it was a stunt double with a head replacement. Also no fire elements used at all in the film, it's all CG fire from their improved CUDA based CG fire.

    Yes it's true, I've seen pictures of it. You can find more details in ther CG1010 book by Terrence mason. In summary, while the tests were good there were 2 problems, the cost per minute was much higher than using miniatures and mocon, and scanning back to film (using a CRT system developed by Edlund, this was way before the laser based one done by the Graphics Group later on) was not that great.

    You can see a picture from a Byte magazine article from around that time (which is when I originally saw the picture, in color).
     
  11. malducin

    malducin Jedi Padawan star 4

    Registered:
    Oct 23, 2001
  12. michealB

    michealB Jedi Youngling

    Registered:
    May 18, 2010
    guys, i've read about the involvment of dennis muren in guillermo del toro's movie "mountains of madness" as a creature designer. does it mean he will be also the vfx supervisor of the movie for ILM ? i found the report a bit vague. thanks.
     
  13. shanerjedi

    shanerjedi Jedi Padawan star 4

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    Mar 17, 2010
  14. shanerjedi

    shanerjedi Jedi Padawan star 4

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    Mar 17, 2010
    Nevermind. I just found some sources on Deadline and Joblo. But they are from the same interview. Hmmm....

    Lovecraft, del Toro, Cameron AND Muren?

    Wow.

    One of the things that gives this interview some legitimacy is that del Toro mentions working with Spectral Motion, which he almost always does.

    Here's a video of del Toro mentioning working with Muren. So Muren is at least involved in the testing and design phase. But as del Toro points out, the film hasn't been green-lit yet.

    Here: Muren and Madness
     
  15. Darth_ABC

    Darth_ABC Jedi Youngling star 1

    Registered:
    Mar 17, 2002
    Any news about ILM's next projects?
     
  16. Darth_ABC

    Darth_ABC Jedi Youngling star 1

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    Mar 17, 2002
    Lucasfilm to build Singapore facility



     
  17. malducin

    malducin Jedi Padawan star 4

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    Oct 23, 2001
    del Toro also mentioned showing Muren designs for Mountains of Madness on the Craig Ferguson show a few weeks back. Apparently Muren was impressed by the creature designs.

    I also agree, I drool at the though of a del Toro/Muren project.


    Interesting. *I knew they were hiring a lot recently for the Singapore facility but not at the rate that they would need a new facility.

    They have quite a few upcoming. Transformers 3 is probably the biggest one right now. There's Pirates 4 and Rango as well. Super 8, Battleship and Cowbowys and Aliens also on the pipeline. Red Tails and I Am Number 4 are smaller one. So 2011/2012 looks like a pretty big slate. Heard they might do MIB 3 but haven't been able to confirm. On the other hand I don't think they're involved in the last 2 Harry Potter films.
     
  18. shanerjedi

    shanerjedi Jedi Padawan star 4

    Registered:
    Mar 17, 2010


    Which is kinda funny because they've worked on every other one. Then the end comes and they're aced out of it. It seems many productions are using the UK houses right now for the tax incentives.
     
  19. malducin

    malducin Jedi Padawan star 4

    Registered:
    Oct 23, 2001
    Unless their contribution is very small (last one was what? about 100 shots?) but there has been no mention and the UK is hot right now. I guess will see in a couple of weeks.

    They might also not be involved on MIB3, seems Imageworks might be the main provider. On the other hand Mission Impossible 4 seems likely now.
     
  20. shanerjedi

    shanerjedi Jedi Padawan star 4

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    Mar 17, 2010
    Yeah ILM's work on Half Blood was a self contained sequence of about 100 shots.

    Isn't MIB3 a Columbia/Sony thing?

     
  21. shanerjedi

    shanerjedi Jedi Padawan star 4

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    Mar 17, 2010
    Here's a link to Tf.net's main page about the upcoming ILM documentary on Encore.

    ILM documentary 30

    Thx to ILMVFX, fxblog, and CNET for the initial heads up and TF.net for providing more coverage.
     
  22. malducin

    malducin Jedi Padawan star 4

    Registered:
    Oct 23, 2001
    Yep, Sony project, so I think Imageworks will take the lion's share of the work though last one was a multihouse effort. But Berton is no longer at ILM anyway. We'll see.

    Yeah I've been waiting several weeks for it. Too bad it's not as long as the Pixar one.

     
  23. shanerjedi

    shanerjedi Jedi Padawan star 4

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    Mar 17, 2010
    Well hopefully they can still get fairly in-depth even with a shorter length on the documentary.

    Looks like Kim Libreri is supervising Super 8. I was interested in who would pick that up.
     
  24. malducin

    malducin Jedi Padawan star 4

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    Oct 23, 2001
    Yep, he was interviewed in Wisconsin at the time Super 8 was shooting there. Not much of a secret.
     
  25. michealB

    michealB Jedi Youngling

    Registered:
    May 18, 2010
    Shanerjedi, sorry for not replying you about muren/del toro project but i wasn't able to log in in the last few months.


    i'd like to ask if you guys know wich supervisor is working on cowboys and aliens( apparently a teaser will be attached to the nex harry potter).