The Best Visual Effects nominees are The Chronicles of Narnia, King Kong and War of the Worlds. Left to right: The Best Visual Effects nominees are The Chronicles of Narnia, King Kong and War of the Worlds. Left to right: © Disney Enterprises Inc./Walden Media Llc., © 2005 Universal Studios, ™ & © 2005 Paramount Pictures and DreamWorks. Images courtesy of ILM.

As is customary at VFXWorld, we asked three of the Oscar-nominated visual effects supervisors to evaluate each other’s work on the eve of the March 5 Academy Awards: Joe Letteri from Weta Digital for King Kong, Dean Wright from Frozen Lake for Narnia and Dennis Muren from Industrial Light & Magic for War of the Worlds. Once again, their responses are indicative not only of what stood out last year but also of the importance of integrating vfx into the storytelling.

Barbara Robertson: Did you expect your colleagues to pick these three films from the seven contenders in the Bakeoff?

Dean Wright: No one could say anything was a lock. Usually you know three out of four, but it could have been any film this year. Most of the films in the Bakeoff would have been nominated in any other year. To make it to the last three is truly remarkable.

Joe Letteri: We’re at a point where we’re not looking at technical achievements per se, not whether or not the effects were flawless, but how well the effects work to create the movie. I think these three films moved visual effects from the background into the storytelling part of the film. It would have been hard to move the story along without the effects in these films. You could say that of all the films in the bakeoff, but I think these three fit the effects into the story in a noteworthy way. With Narnia and Kong, it’s more obvious because you had main characters that were part of the film. With War of the Worlds, there was the overall feeling of putting you into the environment.

ILM’s Dennis Muren thinks the Best Visual Effects category should be expanded to five nominees. He maintains that the vfx contributions to films are a lot more significant than10 years ago.

Dennis Muren: I thought all seven films were stunning. It was an unusual year. Any one of the films could have taken the cake in other years. We’re splitting hairs to think this is better than that. There was beautiful work in Charlie. The city stuff in Batman was stunning. Potter had flawless work. Your jaw drops at every shot in Star Wars being a creation. I think it was a crapshoot. Everything was good.

I think we need five nominations. This year showed it could have happened and it should have happened. What was the budget for Kong? You probably could have bought 20 Capotes just for the effects budget. I hate to equate nominations with money, but it shows you the size of effects in movies now and why this branch deserves a couple more shots. The contribution is more than it was 10 years ago, which was amazing then. It’s not a post process at all. It takes a lot of organization, talent, hundreds of people. It’s closer to best picture. We’re organizing people over a period of time. We’re making the film.

BR: What was special about the effects in King Kong?

DM: The gorilla was phenomenal. The facial performance really worked; you could tell what he was thinking. There weren’t any artifacts or monkey business. The New York stuff was stunning, especially the Empire State Building. But, I think the performance of Kong pushed it. To have the motion capture consistent for 800 or 1,000 shots — but it wasn’t only motion capture. There was lots of hand animation, also. We’d done Mighty Joe Young before, but there weren’t as many shots and Kong is more expressive. It’s good that [director] Peter Jackson gave Kong a lot of shots so that we could understand the character. Some directors don’t want to spend the money. Also, I liked the stylized look. The whole thing was kind of artificial — like a memory of what things are — and that was a really good choice.