Hasta La Motion!

Technology and movie-making have always gone hand in hand but the latest breakthroughs are changing the very nature of the process.
Those in the industry say that thanks to the role of graphics processing units (GPUs), the director’s vision can be more fully realised.

It also means that special effects teams are involved in the making of the movie at a far earlier stage.

In the past, their creations would be done in post-production and not be seen for weeks or even months after a movie has wrapped.

All that is changing thanks to the GPU, according to leading industry players like Richard Kerris, chief technology officer of Lucasfilm, part of Industrial Light and Magic (ILM).

The GPU is a specialised graphics processor that creates lighting effects and transforms objects every time a 3D scene is redrawn. These tasks are mathematically intensive and in the past were done using the brains of a computer known as the central processing unit or CPU.

ILM was started by Star Wars director George Lucas, and is the biggest special effects studio in the business and behind blockbusters like E.T., Star Trek, Terminator, Harry Potter, Transformers and M Night Shyamalan’s soon-to-be-released fantasy The Last Airbender.

"The advent of the GPU is really the next big frontier for us. We have seen hundreds of times improvements over the last few months. This is taking Moore’s Law out the window," Mr Kerris told BBC News.

"Back in the day, the simplest of special effects rendering took a lot of computing power and a 500-square-foot room back then that really wouldn’t operate our phone systems today.

"But, the talent and the understanding of what could be done out of that was able to produce movies like Terminator. It was cutting-edge stuff and getting a computer that was the size of a small automobile to render out simulations of a twister was pretty groundbreaking then," said Mr Kerris.