Handicapping the VFX Oscar Race
What about the five likely contenders?
Right now, Tron: Legacy is fresh on everyone's mind, and theoretically has the greatest momentum. To be sure, Digital Domain not only raised its game with the year's best stereo 3-D experience but also improved its performance capture capability beyond the Oscar-winning Benjamin Button with the ruthless Clu avatar -- a younger version of Jeff Bridges' Kevin Flynn. Added to that was an array of other visual improvements to the Grid, which took the ground-breaking and influential Tron into the 21st century. DD utilized its new studio in Vancouver and coordinated all of the work from the five vendor partners: Mr. X, Whiskeytree, Ollin Studio, Prana Studios and Prime Focus. Still, it was quite a legacy that director Joe Kosinski and Digital Domain (under the overall supervision of Eric Barba) had to live up to, so we'll just have to wait and see what the final verdict is from the Academy.
In fact, one scenario has Inception, Chris Nolan's mind- bender, as the odds on favorite because of the popularity of both the film and the director. Credit Dneg's imaginative rendering of multiple mindscapes, which augmented the overall visual design yet placed heavy demands on the pipeline and team at Dneg (under Paul Franklin's overall supervision). Besides which, the old school/new school VFX wow factor has just the kind of broad appeal that could win over the Academy at large.
On the other hand, Alice in Wonderland was the number two box office hit of the year, and Sony Pictures Imageworks raised its own game with an abundance of CG characters and synthetic environments for Tim Burton's re-imagining of the legendary Lewis Carroll classic. Ken Ralston and his team came up with a new synthesis of techniques to reach new hybrid heights for the Red Queen, the Tweedles, the Cheshire Cat, Absolem, the Jabberwocky and the rest of the iconic characters. Not to mention some fun digital manipulation of Johnny Depp's eyes to make the Mad Hatter appear even madder.
As for Iron Man 2 (the third highest grossing film of the year), Ben Snow & co. at ILM (including the Singapore facility) helped director Jon Favreau ramp up the jeopardy for Iron Man's confrontations with War Machine and Whiplash (Dneg did the Monaco sequence; Janek Sirrs was the overall visual effects supervisor). In addition to providing CG armor and lots of mayhem, ILM leveraged a breakthrough from Terminator Salvation called Energy Conserving Image-Based Important Sampled Lighting, which added a more real world aesthetic by integrating an energy conserving shader set in RenderMan with an HDRI lighting approach.
Meanwhile, it's about time Harry Potter got some Oscar love as it winds down with its Deathly Hallows two-part climax. An entire vfx industry in London has come of age as a result of the anointed magician, and Part 1 was yet further demonstration of greatness from regulars Double Negative, Framestore and MPC (under the overall supervision of Tim Burke). Witness Dneg's re-imagining of the Patronus as a pulsing ball of energy; the humanization of Dobby & Kreacher from Framestore; and MPC's work on the seven Potters and Nagini. Cinesite London, Rising Sun Pictures and Baseblack were also big contributors.
Stay tuned for the announcement of the magnificent seven to see how this plays out…
Bill Desowitz is senior editor of AWN & VFXWorld.
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Iron Man 2 had the best visual effects in 2010.
I can spot the relevance in writing about it, but I really wish that The Academy Awards were not taken so seriously. In fact, it could be nice to ignore it completely.
IMO, the Academy has never been about appreciating the real talents, only what seems most glamorous.
Every single year, it is evident that the judges choosing the candidates for the bakeoff are not from the VFX community. And yes, it is clearly evident that Inception has a unreasonably denser chance of being in the final VFX Race than The Last Airbender.
On the other hand, if The Academy ignores Nolan again, then God helps us.
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