Image courtesy of Deron Yamada. © 2004 DYA367.

I expected to do a brief survey of all the summer blockbusters here, but that’s not how it turned out. As I started to investigate, I ran into a wall of security like never before. To give you anything meaningful was going to take an extraordinary effort. So I decided to dig deeper and started picking up useful info on a number of important films, including one that stretches beyond 2005.

Clearly new vfx magic is providing a launching pad for remakes. Old effects films like War of the Worlds and King Kong are being brought back with a vengeance. Steven Spielberg, who, in the past, has embraced nice aliens, this time not only takes Barre Lyndon’s original script to heart but especially the source novel by H.G. Wells. Expect truly nasty aliens this go-round. You may recall that WOW started out as a Wells book that became a notorious Orson Welles Mercury Theater radio broadcast in 1938 that people thought was real. It caused mass panic throughout the East coast. My family lived only a stone’s throw from the center of the attack in New Jersey. Oh, the stories they tell. Spielberg has filmed it as a personal journey as a metaphor for 9/11. You’re going to see a lot of POV shots where he normally might have used crane and copter shots.

Standing where I am on the hill, it seems like a possible rebirth of the vfx film this season — a new synergy of vfx/story/acting/art direction /direction. I’m hoping that contemporary moviemaking has matured to the point where producers and directors understand that story is king and all the rest, merely servants. Trust me, great vfx are easier to come up with than great story. Great story is rare and beautiful and we must bow before it.

Before you start throwing shoes, let me explain. Story starts with a blank piece of paper (virtual these days) and the writer must come up with a complex, perfectly developed vision that will entrance readers whole cloth. We —inspired by that great story, great previs and serious art direction —and ultimately the director’s eye, dig deep inside our creative and technical selves, and come up with our fantastic visuals that keep people coming back time after time to be immersed. It’s been said ad infinitum, but truly: film is the ultimate collaborative medium.

There appear to be many great films coming up, but these are the ones that intrigue me the most. You can tell by the amount of detail…so enjoy:

Let’s Begin With Batman Begins

The original script for Batman Begins was written back in 1991! It took some serious time to get here, but it’s going to be good. Vfx teams have gone to enormous lengths and used extremely advanced tools to bring you stuff that — even you as vfx people — might find unimaginable. I’m telling you, Gotham City is so amazing in every way, and I didn’t even expect that. I mean a digital city has been done, right? Not like this.

Director Chris Nolan was an interesting choice. He’s usually done dark sort of movies like Insomnia and Memento. Chris hasn’t done a vfx heavy film before, and he definitely approached this one with an attitude: “I do not want this to become a digital cartoon.” As an aside, that cartoonish look originated with the TV series back in the ‘60s, where they even composited in the “Offff” and “Zap” and “Arrrrgh” text balloons. Those TV shows were written by Lorenzo Semple Jr. You’ll see Lorenzo’s continuing role as you read on.

Right from the start Chris was worried about “computers taking over.” He has consistently required that all the vfx reflect “observed reality.” That is, if you’re going to animate Batman falling off a roof, you do it using reference footage of a man falling off a roof. If you’re going to build a CG city, you must base it on a real city. One vfx team went to Chicago and spent seven weeks there shooting nearly 1.5 million reference images in 10 stop HDR. During the process, they literally shut down the entire center of Chicago to light the buildings for reference. Those shots could be used later to create theatrical lighting for the massive, virtual Gotham. Paul Debevec, whose pioneering work in image based modeling and lighting made the city possible, could almost be the mayor of virtual Gotham. As an aside, Paul mentioned that he’s going to be discussing his remarkable LSP or Light Stage Process at SIGGRAPH this year. That’s one presentation that is going to be packed.

Although the movie has more than 600 vfx shots, you’ll be hard pressed to see most of them. Of course, that’s the beauty of great vfx work. It doesn’t distract from the telling of story by standing out and saying: “Look at me”; rather, it creates the moods and settings that forward the director’s vision.

Chris is also a consummate filmmaker, and that means he learns rapidly as he goes. He has an interesting personal style. Although he plans his shots, he’s also adaptable to spontaneous situations. He can change gears quickly when he wants to, in order to capitalize on situations that arise during the filmmaking process. Thus it was, that Chris began to embrace the digital realm. By the end of the picture he appeared to be quite comfortable. His work style presented an interesting challenge to the vfx teams. They had to be flexible, adapting to Chris’ style. And they did.

Batman Begins is really not intended to be a vfx extravaganza. It’s intended to be a great movie that uses a bit of very sophisticated vfx to achieve a quasi reality look that somehow remains true to the Batman mystique. In fact, the trailer shows almost no VFX except for Gotham City in the bg.