Hasta La Motion!

An analysis of a formal and thematic device employed in Kelly Reichardt’s 2008 film WENDY AND LUCY

Following a tragedy, a mother and her teen son move to a relative’s vacant vacation home, where eerie and unexplained forces conspire against them. Only On Netflix, January 19.

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The moment Rey and Kylo Ren take on Snoke’s Elite Praetorian Guard’s is one of the many highlights from Rian Johnson’s The Last Jedi. I’ll have more on how Industrial Light & Magic crafted Snoke soon, but here’s overall visual effects supervisor Ben Morris on how that lightsaber fight scene, which was overseen by ILM London VFX supe Mike Mulholland, came to be, including the curtain of fire surrounding them and the weapons used by the guards.

Ben Morris (overall visual effects supervisor): On paper it was an incredible thing, and you can feel the dynamics. To me that took the roof off of the LA premier. People were just screaming when they went back-to-back. What we always knew was, we had this amazing throne room set on Q stage at Pinewood. Rob Inch, who’s the stunt coordinator, had rehearsed for ages with Adam and Daisy, and Adam is a force to be reckoned with as an actor, as a physical actor as much as an emotional one, and Daisy worked very hard.

We knew they’d put in the hours, and Rian always had this vision of this red throne room that he designed with [Lucasfilm Design Supervisor] Kevin Jenkins, that he wanted this incredible boudoir to just, at some point during this fight, set on fire, and reveal that epic space outside.

So we sat down and said, ‘How much of this are we going to be able to do physically?’ We had the active LED sabres, which were far more reliable this time, more or less the same thing that, we’d dialled down the saturation of our sabres enormously in this film, which I think is a good thing. We spoke at length with [special effects supervisor] Chris Corbould and his special effects guys, and what we realised is Chris could provide us with some ember-y atmospherics that were basically fanned cardboard embers that lasted just for a brief period. Also, he could do the odd piece of burning wad, or red fabric soaked in isopropyl alcohol, so it’s a very cold burn. But that was it. This entire curtain thing going on had to fall to us.

Cutting it together for the first time you realise the energy of it, but the great thing about it is, it’s a sloppy fight, and Adam’s scraping his sabre on the floor, and it’s like a welding arc gouging out and throwing stuff up. The new weaponry that those new guards have got is great as well. We had to work out what to do with those weapons, and how they’ve got these sort of truncated lasers to make the edges more dangerous, the whip. Ultimately it was an awful lot of incredibly meticulous body tracking in roto.

The other thing we inevitably discovered is the red suits reflected all sorts of things. We were replacing helmets, arms, all sorts of stuff, and augmenting. We actually had to body track the majority of the highly reflective surfaces. The floor ultimately needed the full set of reflections.

I think everything layered on top of itself, great idea to start with, amazing stunt execution, super powerful sim work and body tracking, and then compositing. It was great. The thing where the guy pulls in the whip and pulls Rey towards him. He mimed the entire thing. There was no whip, and Daisy was pretending, just holding on to her stub of sabre. I was terrified that we weren’t going to have the right physical continuity of space as he was doing over there, but he’d rehearsed lots of times with a practical, and it worked out really well.

From a critic’s standpoint, the year wasn’t anything to write home about. But certainly, there were a slew of movies that told a story; not by its dialogues or narratives, but with some awe-inspiring visual effects.

These were the releases that made headlines also for its stunning VFX, garnering critical appraise from all quarters. Some of these are even in the race for the 2018 Oscars in the same category, a further testimony to their quality.

Below mentioned are the top five such releases of the year

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets

Luc Besson’s ambitious space odyssey turned out to be an irresponsible wreckage, but garnered rave reviews for its pristine visual effects which was perhaps, the only saving grace of the film.

Valerian thrived in its impeccable displays of extra-terrestrial creatures and picturesque outer world settings through which the plot sifted. Every single scene was crafted with VFX of top drawer quality (2700 VFX shots in all), providing a thoroughly satiating visual delight.

Such an astronomic scale of computerisations accounted for $250 million of investments going into the project. Whilst it failed to reimburse the mammoth sum, it did however, lay an unwavering claim to the Best VFX silverware at the upcoming Academy Awards.

Thor: Ragnarok

Packed to the rafters with nerve-wracking moments, one of the instrumental reasons for Ragnarok’s resounding success was its stunning VFX. Like Valerian before it, the Marvel blowout was shot extensively on the green screen and later embellished with eye-catching visuals that added to the high-octane actions.

Some of the highlights were the opulent clips of Asgard kingdom, the inter-universe space transit, the adrenaline-gushing climax battle scene and the whatsit flashback scene to name a few.

Industrial Light and Magic, Double Negative, Digital Domain, Framestore were among the ensemble VFX roster who put together one of the most thrilling visual set-ups of the year.

Star Wars: The Last Jedi

As it is the norm always, the eighth episode in the Star Wars saga continued its tradition of narrating an epic space adventure through rabble-raising VFX, interspersed with clashes of illuminating light-sabers, heart-pounding clone wars, the eye-catching Jedi temple, outer galaxy visions and so, so much more.

The Last Jedi was the last, and the most apt release to finish the year on a high, but it’s the spellbinding visuals that propelled the overall experience further up the thrill-o-meter by a notch or two.

Blade Runner 2049

No movie divvied up the critique lobby across the globe quite as much as Denis Villeneuve’s sequel to the 1982 Ridley Scott classic. However, they and the fans alike, sung from the same hymn-sheet when it came to the enthralling visual effects produced to create the futuristic settings of 2049.

The movie captures K’s, the new Blade Runner on the charge, journey to apprehend all the rogue applicants. Every location he traverses is a work of CGI and VFX, for there aren’t any actual landscapes that the movie is shot on.

The best bits of the digitisation are the alluring Wallace Corporation headquarters dotted with maze-like cubicles, as well as the dusty portrait of the city, or Joi’s occasionally flickering holographic avatar.

A visual extravaganza by all accounts.

Wonder Woman

The anchor to DC’s sinking ship, Wonder Woman wasn’t just a blockbuster by trade, but also a feast to the eyes. Packed with gripping special effects, the viewing was at its breath-taking best whenever the scene involved the kingdom of Themyscira or other locations in the Amazon’s hinterland.

The battle between Diana and the antagonist Ares, is a complicated muzzle of CG but never threatens to overstay its welcome, giving a fitting end to what was a true DC classic.

Double Negative and MPC headlined a competitive VFX team.

Also a shout out to Spider-Man: Homecoming, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 and War for the Planet of the Apes for pulling off some VFX blinders of their own!

The post VFX review of 2017: The top five releases with stand-out visuals appeared first on AnimationXpress.