Nominee Dean Wright credits Rhythm & Hues, Sony Pictures Imageworks and ILM for their phenomenal digital work on Narnia. They all tried to serve the story and fit into the fantasy world of the movie. Photo credit: Phil Bray.

DW: We were invited into creating the dramatic structure of the film with a host of characters, into precious and hallowed territory. I think the work all three of our lead companies did in creating the digital characters is phenomenal. Rhythm & Hues’ Aslan is a cinematic milestone in terms of look and acting. The variety of characters Imageworks did are phenomenal, and ILM, under the gun, created hosts of characters and made memorable moments. Everything we created had to fit into the world. It’s been a thrill watching audiences respond to a character that moves them, makes them think, hits them emotionally, not manipulatively, but in a true way. It’s more of an accomplishment than creating the biggest explosion you’ve ever seen, although I love big explosions. The environments are top notch. I think everything was necessary. Some might disagree, but that’s what drove us. We tried to serve the story. We honed down and honed down until we had what we needed and no more.

BR: And War of the Worlds?

JL: I really liked War of the Worlds as a film. The way [director] Steven Spielberg handled the treatment of the story is terrific. The work was pretty flawless — the destruction of the freeway coming apart, the neighborhoods destroyed, the people vaporized — especially the way it was done as point of view: You’re always seeing the destruction approaching you. It makes you the viewer in the film. I think the contribution was how effortlessly the effects fit into the story. And, there was no fear on the director’s part. He didn’t have to do special set ups. He just said, “I’d like to get this shot,” and Dennis and Pablo [Helman] could accommodate it.

The visual effects in War of the Worlds were so well integrated into the scenes, observes Wright, that the big moments felt real. Although the film had only 300 shots, they were all difficult ones. Image courtesy of ILM.

DW: The visual effects were so integrated into the scenes, the big moments felt totally real. And, the style they shot, the in-the-moment execution of effects, the personal point of view, worked tremendously well for the film. While War of the Worlds had only 300 shots, they were long shots and they were all difficult. It took huge amounts of artistry to meld miniatures, effects elements, CG, and make everything photoreal and truly drive the story. It doesn’t have big CG animated character shots like Narnia and Kong, but the effects were done so well, it’s a great example of how you can use these types of effects to help tell the story in a meaningful way. The two masters, Dennis and Pablo, took big events that could have been distracting, like explosions, and used them exactly in the way they needed to propel the movie along. They weren’t blowing things up to make bing bang, boom. The effects were used specifically to move the movie. You get scared. That was exactly what they wanted.

DM: We didn’t have a thousand shots, but it was 45 minutes of work. I think our film, from what other people say, was completely different from the other candidates. The style was different. We were trying to make something poetic — the lighting, composition, metaphors in the shots — it was almost spiritual. I think we affected people at the bakeoff on an unconscious level like we did on audiences when it came out. What I really like are the things we were doing in War of the Worlds where we were getting into metaphors, where the images represent something else. I like the way of storytelling that isn’t literal, when the story exists on different levels. How many times can you see something blow up? War of the Worlds is more than backyards blowing up, and the visual effects contributed to the way the story was told.

BR: Many people were surprised that Revenge of the Sith didn’t receive a nomination. Any idea why?

JL: The work they did was amazing. It was great. You could see the progression. The effects got better and better during the three episodes. There was so much they had to create from scratch. I don’t know why it didn’t make it.

DW: I was surprised it didn’t make it; there’s not a bad shot in the movie. Maybe people saw it as recently honored. You don’t know how close the voting is. They could have lost by one vote.

DM: I’ll bet the vote was very close. When you think there were six Star Wars films, five were nominated and three won, that’s pretty amazing. They’re locked into doing something that has been recognized many times before, and no matter how well it’s done, a lot of it is based on the last show. But I was surprised. I thought Star Wars would be nominated.