Evan Almighty featured water, hundreds of animals, a huge ark and a giant flood. © 2007 Universal Studios. Photo credit: ILM.

Car chases followed, as Peter Chiang of Double Negative presented The Bourne Ultimatum. One big chase -- car, people and motorcycle -- looked as if they all played out in front of the camera, and while many were, the effects ensured the believability of the situation, and the safety of the actors. Hundreds of effects, including rigid body dynamics (lots of falling glass), stunt doubles whose faces needed replacing, explosions, extensive matchmoving and a few CG cars, ensured that you experienced more of a documentary feel from director Paul Greengrass than a complex visual feat.

Subtle effects lent way to Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, whose effects were anything but subtle. As ILM Visual Effects Supervisor John Knoll (last year's Oscar winner) articulated, the burden of creating universes for the film's themes of "life and death, love and war" fell fully on the effects department, who needed to complete the slate of 2,000+ effects on a schedule that was two months shorter than the previous effort. In an evening where water played as integral a role as any of the actors, practical effects wizard John Frazier documented the creation of the largest gimbal ever, which could pitch and roll up to 110 degrees. Along with Digital Domain with sequences supervised by Bryan Grill, they ensured "that the water went where the script demanded, rather than where physics required it to go."

I Am Legend presented a desolate New York, which required visual effects to get rid of things that shouldn't be there. Courtesy of Warner Bros.

Going from pirates to Noah, Evan Almighty (presented by ILM Visual Effects Supervisor Bill George) brought us even more water, hundreds of animals (most of them real -- calling them practical doesn't seem quite accurate, somehow -- with the CG animals made by Rhythm & Hues) and an insanely huge ark constructed to hold all those creatures, and withstand a giant flood that carried the tub all the way to the capitol steps. Miniatures, models, a god crane, an enormous bluescreen shoot and -- I would imagine -- a fair amount of patience contributed to this film (pairing animals on set doesn't really sound like a seamless process, in the slightest).

Visual Effects Supervisor Janek Sirrs presented I Am Legend (worked on by Sony Pictures Imageworks), a remake of The Last Man on Earth and The Omega Man. Creating a desolate New York "required visual effects to get rid of things that shouldn't be there." The team called in botanists to determine which plants would have grown in those conditions. They created 43 creatures, putting a spin on the familiar. The team indicated that though the monster-creation process started with motion capture, as their actions became more extreme, the team turned increasingly to keyframe animation.