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Talk to a Movie Digital SFX Expert
Thad Beier has been working with computer graphics and film since the late 70s. In 1995 he and three partners founded Hammerhead Productions, a company that specializes in computer-generated special effects. Thad received a Technical Achievement Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (the Oscar people, not the MPAA) in 1998 for one of his many technical innovations. He's worked on Terminator 2, Angels in the Outfield, The Fast and The Furious,
and the upcoming Blue Crush, among other films. He wrote this 1992 Siggraph paper, and now writes all of Hammerhead's software tools and manages the company's mixed bag of SGI and Linux equipment. So ask Thad anything you want about computer-generated special effects. We'll send him 10 of the highest-moderated questions, and post his answers when we get them back.
Do you think movies like Final Fantasy become increasingly popular, and eventually SFX characters will overtake human actors??
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
Every year, 3D packages get more and more sophsticated. Not just in terms of rendering effects, but in their scripting capabilities as well. Do you see a day where the artist will be able to handle the rendering features and the scripting of a 3D prog so well that it'll no longer be necessary to have a dedicated programmer on board?
Is there a particular type of problem that will always need a programmer?
What is one movie that uses CGI that you wish had never been made because it gives your craft a bad name?
Thanks!
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tcd004
How much progress are you and others making on realistic depictions of water (waves, splashing) at different scales?
(I still remember the clumsy ship in a bathtub effects from the 1970s!)
Even in recent productions like The Perfect Storm, I haven't been "convinced" sufficiently that it's a real wave.
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How much overlap is there between the programable graphics processing units (AKA "shaders") found on modern game platforms and the software/hardware used in the special effects industry? Would programming skills for one translate to the other?
;-)
BTW, I realize that special effects are half artistry, half mathematics and half sweaty work: kudos from a 'GL hacker...
.f00Dave
Greetings -
How much of the code you've written and/or worked with over the years trickled down to mainstream users in meaningful ways, and in what timeframe should we/you expect this to occur?
i.e. How quickly does the software and hardware tools of your trade today become part of the arsenal of either home digital fx enthusiasts, hobbyists or "small film" makers tomorrow?
With modern FX, it's fair to say that anything that can be imagined can be produced on screen. However, that hasn't been the case until recently: if you had the option of re-making one movie of your choice (science fiction or otherwise) in which the imagination of the film-maker was clearly hampered by the technology available at the time, which would it be?
When films are labled as "100$ Million on special effects" where does most of that money go? On rendering hardware or what?
Seriously though, do you do any sort of screening or advice on use of effects, or just follow whatever the customer ordered? Surely you don't want your name plastered on effects that were an embarrasment.
How many years do you think the introduction of Jar Jar Binks has set back the quest to gain legitimacy for your industry?
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In many movies, people walk away from them saying, "Man, they FORCED that CG."
How much discretion do you have in saying, "You guys should really do that with makeup effects."
In a corrollary, are you more in the CG-Should-Be-Impossible-To-Spot or the CG-Should-Be-The-End-All-Of-Effects camp?
Never confuse volume with power.
I'm guessing you get to work pretty closely to directors. If so, can you tell us what is their approach to the new tools technology has given them? Are they still "thinking celluloid" made cheaper by rendering it digitally, or do they really seek to break the mold and make shots that were previously impossible?
What is the best way to get into the computer generated special effects industry? Is it who you know or what you know? If it is what you know what should one know? (Programming, graphics tools, etc...).
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When somebody has intimate knowledge about how a movie is made, it gets really hard to make their eyes jump out of their head.
For example, there's a scene in the Director's Cut of Robocop where Alex Murphy is just about to be shot in the head by the lead bad dude. The camera is pointing right at Alex's face, then swings around behind him. As soon as the camera is behind him the bad guy fires a gun, the back of Alex's head explodes and you can see a hole clean through it. This whole scene was one smooth camera movement, no edits.
I was *stunned* to find out that Alex was a puppet. They were able to make a puppet that totally convinced me that Peter Weller was sitting in front of this guy about to get his head blown off. I could not believe that they were able to do one that convincing.
I'm curious, what movies have had that affect on you? "OMG! I had no idea that was an effect!"
This might be construed as off-topic, since it's not about technical aspects of CG, it's about the artistic side of CG. But hear me out:
:-)]
Although recently a lot of the big names in science fiction and fantasy are finally making it onto the screen in a plausible way (e.g. Tolkein) there are still plenty of great books out there that haven't even been optioned. If you could turn any science-fiction/fantasy book or series into a movie, which would it be?
[My personal choice: the Foundation saga by Asimov. So huge! Such a great plot! So eminently filmable! Somebody make this movie, dammit!
At one point, as a film student, I was interested in computer animation as a way for a single person or small group to produce a film, without the expense of locations, casting, cameras, etc. I thought that soon, as hardware and software improved, it would be possible for me to create a film on my own computer at home.
But my experience in animation in college taught me that increasing hardware capacity doesn't reduce the time it takes to produce a film or demo reel; it simply increases the quality of the final output. I imagine that the modelling, animation, and rendering of the scenes in Tron took as much human time as comparable scenes in Fellowship of the Ring. It's possible to render Tron-quality CG in realtime on a modern PC, but nobody wants to watch it.
My question is this: do you think it will ever be possible to produce a full-length CG film in about a man-year or less, with effects which are reasonbly "modern" for the time? Will the technology curve eventually flatten out, once we get to a certain point where the human eye can't really tell the difference? Or is it implausible to think that a single person or small group could provide all of the artistic input (scriptwriting, directing, modelling, animation, acting, etc) to produce a full film, even ignoring all technological constraints?
What is the approximate resolution of film per square inch or centimeter? What resolutions are effects rendered in and how has that changed since Willow or T2?
On the "Shrek" DVD, they have some honest-to-goodness bloopers (rather than the contrived bloopers on the Pixar films). Most of these stem from rendering goofs (such as the "ChiaPet Donkey" sequence, or the "Exploded face" renders).
Now, obviously the days of photo-realistic rendering at realtime speeds are long off (since the more CPU you have, the higher you define "photo-realistic"), but for the normal preview work, how close to real-time are we? For example, are we looking at 10 to one (ten seconds to render one second of preview), or what?
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The problem that I have with this is twofold: First, these "special editions" seem to be the ones that show up on TV and on video rental shelves, so that they and not the original become the pervasive copy.
Second, I can foresee a day when older movies are edited in this fashion so they can be remarketed to audiences with more "modern" attitudes (think similar to Speilburg taking the guns out of the hands of the pursuing authorities in the ET rerelease).
Do you believe that, as a creative professional, you have any sort of ethical duty to resist these sorts of changes? Is there a line to be drawn between merely cleaning up the original effects and replacing them entirely (as in the Star Wars special edition), or between effects-patchup and all-out content alteration (aka, the wussification of Han Solo by having Greedo shoot first)? Do you feel that old films should be left alone, or do you consider them more as ongoing acts of creation?
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
On the other hand, you're also a programmer and linux user, and must surely be aware of the danger posed by over-broad intellectual property protection laws. It's possble that the same laws that ensure your livelyhood will end up making it harder and more expensive for you to do your job.
In your unique position, you must have a better insight into piracy than the average slashdot reader, or average policy maker. How do you handle this dilemma?
I was wondering if you could give a brief overview of special effects in sound. What is the best for the movie experience? SDDS, DTS, DDSEX, Dolby Digital, Dolby Stereo? Does it really help to go to a theater that is THX certified?
Thanks,
Ian
In essence, how much do you take real physics into account when designing something a CG item to emulate a 'real' item on screen? What is the balance between physical limits and creative freedoms?
How do you feel CG is effecting films? These days many films opt for fake sets and sequences while the stunt men who worked so very hard in the 80's go begging for work. I always find it very easy to spot the CG textures and colors (can't you guys pick a color palette that actually occurrs in the real world?), and find myself increasingly disappointed by CG even as it "advances" every year. Do directors and producers give you the opportunity to offer input about the overall quality of a CG scene -- whether or not it will be convincing?
This is probably the most obvious question asked so far, but...
1) Is there a particular shot or effect in a film you've worked on of which you're the most proud? Does one in particular stand out to you as the best you can do (or could do with the equipment of the time)?
2) Have any of the techniques you personally created (and there must be at least a few after three decades in such an innovation-intensive field) been picked up by others and adopted as standard techniques by the other effect houses? Maybe you were the first person to use a shoe as an off-in-the-distance star-fighter, or you invented the blue screen, something of that nature?
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Do you think CGI can too often be seen as a "suppressor" of other art forms? The specific example in my head right now is Old Puppet Yoda vs. New CGI Yoda, we haven't seen (AFAIK) any major puppeteering work in cinema in a long time. Other possibly "suppressed" art forms might be makeup art, the art of the stunt man, set construction, backdrop painting, cinematograghy, heck even acting could be listed here. Will CGI be escorting some or all of these art forms down the same path as Silent Films, blacksmithing, and totem-pole carving?
Do you ever want to say "Hey this would be a lot better if it were done with [not CGI] instead"?
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Hi-
I have always wanted to work in your field, yet, as ironic as this is about to sound, I turned down an offer from ILM because I could not afford to live in Silicon Valley being married with one child. Apartments (crappy ones by the way) are 3 times as much as the house payments I currently make and apparently you have to send your kid to private school there. It simply was not doable. Most of the ILMers I spoke to lived with 3 or 4 other ILMers in order to afford the living expense.
If I read your website correctly, you are located in Los Angeles. I am interested to know how you feel about this situation. All of these facilities seem to be in California, where the cost of living prohibits many excellent programmers from working there simply because they have to support a family (not a bad thing). Is it possible that such a facility as yours could exist in a less costly location, or is the vicinity to the film industry too importiant to overlook in this way?
Thanks, loved TFATF by the way!
Troy
Given the power of the media, and Television in particular, to, as Noam Chomsky puts it "manufacture consent", do you see any sinister side to the ultimate perfection of CG? Given that media conglomerates do not act in the interest of their audience, and that the CG field will be getting better and better while the technology gets cheaper and cheaper, can you envision a day when we the public will not be able to differentiate from animated fiction and filmed reality? Right now things are pretty easy to differentiate, but what will the situation be in 10 or 20 years? Is there concern in the industry over this potential?
Point-based rendering has shown some amazing results -- QSplat, for example, provides results in realtime that are flat out unimaginable out of traditional engines. Even higher quality output is coming out of the Surface splatting hackers.
Image based systems also seem to be yielding results -- Gondry's Star Guitar video, which showed scenes from a window of a train synchronized to music, was undeniably compelling and could simply not have been done with traditional 3D approaches. Schodel and Essa's work with Video Sprites are also quite impressive.
I don't mean to provide a litany of unusual rendering techniques for you to ponder. I bring them up because polygonal approaches have clearly yielded some incredible results, and I'm interested to know whether you think point-based and/or image-based strategies will yield similarly disruptive fruit. Also, I'm curious whether you're aware of any other particularly obscure but powerful methods for scene generation.
So, in short: What's next for 3D?
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com