Visual Effects Oscar Shortlist

nurble writes "The short list of films being considered for a best visual effects Oscar was released today. The biggest news is that the final two installments of the Matrix trilogy were snubbed in favor of Universal Studios' "The Hulk," New Line Cinema's "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King," 20th Century Fox's "Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World," Universal's "Peter Pan," Buena Vista Pictures' "Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl," Warner Bros. Pictures' "Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines" and Fox's "X2". Finalists will be announced following the effects "bake-off" on January 21st."

Comments

ROTK

[sahonen]

Return of the King, hands down. Best integration of effects with story I've seen, and come on, nothing was more impressive than Gollum. Most expressive CG character I've ever seen, take that Jar-Jar.

Re:ROTK

[rokzy]

Gollum on his own deserves the Oscar - more believable than most humans!

The battle at Minas Tirith on its own deserves the Oscar.

But both of them in the same film! There's no way they can lose. If they do it'll be the biggest joke ever, and I imagine there'd be more boos than even Michael Moore's acceptance speech.

Re:ROTK

[GerbilSocks]

Screw Gollum, the real star of the show was that gigantic spider! Talk about a CGI character that feels its taking up actual space on the set, yet how they designed the sound effects and the animation, it made it appear the spider was big, but also stealthily deadly. Roger Ebert made mention of the realism of the spider on his movie review show, before I had a chance to see the movie, and after watching ROTK, I heartily concur with this observation. During the whole time, I wasn't thinking.."nice CGI effect", I was experiencing the moment. What a thrill! *tears rolling down my face* reminds me of Jurassic Park.

Re:ROTK

[Anonymous Coward]

no legolas on the oliphant was with out a doubt the worst cgi of the movie. it looked like you were back playing one of the video games.

Re:ROTK

[Anonymous Coward]

For all you people going gaga over the "realism" in LOTR and trashing Matrix 2/3, remember it's easy to make something realistic no one has ever seen before. No one has seen a dragon but we've all seen cars and men in suits.

Re:ROTK

[xie]

IMHO I think RotK had the best CGI that you couldn't tell was CGI I've ever seen. In the matrix though the FX was good the CGI stuff just kinda looked, well, computer generated. I also did not really see anything in Matrix 2/3 that really raised the bar from original Matrix. I was pretty impressed w/ T3 FX although you could still tell they were computer generated unlike Gollum and the many other characters in RotK.

Re:ROTK

[Anonymous Coward]

Since an amusing piece of fiction like Bowling For Columbine could get an Oscar for Best Documentary(!), I think LOTR:ROTK deserves winning that category this year.

Re:ROTK

[JonGretar]

How about the CG models of the main actors. Yo do not notice that these are not the actors themselves. In a lot of the shots the fellowship is computer generated. In most of the wide shots in the battle of Kaza'dum(or however it is spelled) these were CG characters. But you actually think that these are the real actors.

However. In Matrix 2 and 3 everything smelled like CG. I was getting tired with the Neo CG character in all the battle shots.

So it is not a question of things you've never seen being more realistic. We have all seen real people before. And they bluffed us in LotR still. We have all seen real spiders and we have all seen CG generated spiders in hundreds of movies before. But nothing like this.

Re:ROTK

[CAIMLAS]

Absolutely. ROTK will be robbed if they don't get it.

Usually, during films with large amounts of CG, I'll notice it. I'll be sceptical of it, and I'll think, "wow, that looks fake" - such as the second matrix. That film's major fight scene was horrible, in terms of "suspension of disbelief" - the graphics (at times) looked like a high-res video game, to some degree, in that the figures weren't moving properly, and other such things. Not to say it wasn't impressive, though. Just not believeable.

For ROTK, I very rarely thought, "Hey, Gollum is corporeal" - and that was only due to the fact that I -knew- he wasn't real, and that he was rendered, prior to seeing the film. He was so astoundingly well done that, despite all my skepticism, I did not notice that he wasn't actually there most of the time. His interaction with the 'real actors' and environment was flawless, as was his life-like movement, etc.

Additionally, the main battle scene was incredible. In the back of my mind, I knew that the hordes were rendered, but I never once "realized" it. I didn't even realize it until I just now thought about it. The distinction between what was rendered, and what was not, was not readily perceiveable. When the Riders of Rohan rode into the horde, which orcs/etc. were real? were the horsemen real? Now that I think about it - were the elephants real? It wasn't readily discernable. They all looked damned real to me.

Overall, LOTR has put eveything that has come before it, and everything that has come at the same time, to shame, in terms of 3D realism. None of the Jurassic Park films come close. Hulk certainly doesn't. X-Men 2 didn't strike me as actually using all too many rendered effects (nothing immidiately comes to mind - were they just well done, or weren't there that many afterall?). Pirates of the Carribbian was pretty impressive, I thought - what with the undead/living graphical transitions that occured during the light of a full moon. However, nothing even came close to matching the incredible nature of ROTK. Even the lava flows looked quite realistic, and that's something that's fairly difficult to get right, I hear.

Re:ROTK

[Graspee_Leemoor]

" In the matrix though ... the CGI stuff just kinda looked, well, computer generated"

Well fucking duh!

graspee

Re:ROTK

[Locmar]

"When the Riders of Rohan rode into the horde, which orcs/etc. were real? were the horsemen real? Now that I think about it - were the elephants real? It wasn't readily discernable. They all looked damned real to me." I'm not exactly an expert, and I don't know for sure, but it looked to me like the Riders of Rohan were real (at least some of them), and the orcs were CG. I say this because of the way the orcs bounced off the charging horses: it didn't look like the horses were really reacting to them as if they'd collided with a body, so I assume that the horses were real. As for the elephants, they're definitely CG. No elephants that big are still extant on earth. They may very well have modelled them after an extinct species that really existed (which would be pretty cool), but they're easily twice as big as an African elephant.

Re:ROTK

[ppanon]

Was it just me or did anybody else get reminded of the AT-AT attack on Hoth from Empire Strikes Back during the section where Eowin and Pippin run through the mastodons' legs severing tendons? Then P. Jackson ups the ante with Legolas.

Re:ROTK

[malducin]

I also did not really see anything in Matrix 2/3 that really raised the bar from original Matrix.

Well then maybe you should read the coverage on Cinefex to see all the work that was done. Also the second film was the subject of several SIGGRAPH sketches, ehich is a pretty good indication how innovative it was:

George Borushkov's home page

For those into CG, they will recognize some of the real innovative work on the sequels.

Re:ROTK

[malducin]

Actually in many shots (mostly wide ones or far away riders) there are CG horses. Heck there were CG horses ion The Two Towers as well. It's easier to spot them if you know what to look for.

Re:ROTK

[malducin]

Absolutely. ROTK will be robbed if they don't get it.

I guess you don't know how the Academy operates. The VFX Branch (composed of VFX pros) select the 7 Bake-Off finalists and then the VFX membership votes the 3 nominees. But it's the entire Academy membership (actors, producers, directors, etc.) votes on all the winners. Which is why sometimes you have some surprises, upsets and funky selections.

X-Men 2 didn't strike me as actually using all too many rendered effects.

I believe they had over 500 VFX shots nothing to sneeze about done by a variety of studios. Many were of the invisible kind like set extensions (the interior of the X plane, Cerebro was a partial set, Wolverine's claws in many shots, etc.)

Even the lava flows looked quite realistic, and that's something that's fairly difficult to get right, I hear.

Well yes and no. CG fluid dynamics for production are relatively recent (Cast Away, Perfect Storm, etc.). Do remember the CG lava in Shrek. Also there have been other ways to do it. ILM used methacyl (a thick viscous fluid) on a miniature set for Congo. The methacyl was later color corrected and composited on the live action sets.

Overall the ROTK work was extremely impressive and more polished than the previous work. There are some minor rough spots but overall it was superb.

Re:ROTK

[Anonymous Coward]

ROTK should win based on the fact that it had Gollum alone... it should be a no-contest type of decision for any of the voters once they take into account minis tirith, the battle there, the battle at pellenor fields (the gates), the paths of the dead sequence, and the scene(s) in mordor. I heard people commin out of the theatre asking how they got the hobbit actors to climb those stairs that they would never do that reguardless of how much $$$ they were paid, they had no clue it was sfx.

Re:ROTK

[Simonetta]

CGI is just expensive eye-candy that does little more than add up the cost of film and drive the theatre admission prices sky-high.

Even if one film has great CGI and is a bit hit, it does little more than cause a rash of high budget copy-cats that are never as good and serve to re-enforce the already too-high admission prices.

I would rather have twenty well-written well-acted non-CGI films costing $5 million each (and costing $3 - $5 each for admission) than one bloated $100 million CGI comic-book turkey.

Do the math, Hollwood, you would be getting twenty admissions at $3 instead of one admission for $10. Plus there would be more work available for the technicians and set designers that you 'claim' to care about in those idiotic commercials that we have to watch before movies.

Hollywood is at the same point that the dot-com industry was in 1998: obsessed with own image of self-importance and convinced that it can do no wrong. Or, rather, Hollywood is the US car industry in the 1970's before the Japanese wiped them out with better, cheaper, and more reliable products.

Will Hollywood go crying to the feds for a big bailout like Chrysler when a New Wave of beautiful exciting foreign films wipes out their slate of $150 million comic-book turkeys in the coming years? (like in the early 1960's when the French New Wave films wiped the floor with gas-bags like 'Cleopatra'?)

Besides, the best source material for CGI never gets filmed. None of Harry Turtledove's alterative history novels have ever been optioned.
Nor have any of the best books by Whitley Strieber, like "Lilith's Dream" or "Nature's End".

Re:ROTK

[Hes Nikke]

i was looking for a snowspeeder too!

you just know that in some parody they're going to be in snowspeeders rather than on horses!

it was still an impressive scene, and i wouldn't have bought Leggolos(SP?) showing off, had i not seen him showing off in TTT, that was the payoff.

Re:ROTK

[Anonymous Coward]

Bullshit, Gollum can't hold a candle to Jar Jar.

Re:ROTK

[malducin]

And I guess giving an actor 10, 15 or 20 million, with studios hoping to open a film on just their name doesn't drive up the cost. That's 20 million for 1 person who might work for say 6 months on a film. Tack in the salary for other abpve the line people (a high profile directors, the producer, a script that was sold for a million or more, etc) and half of the cost of the film goes to just a handful (litearally) people.

On contrast while VFX on a high profile VFX film might go for 30, 40 even 60 million, that's for the hard work of 200, 300, 400 or more talented artists and technicians working for a year or even upwards of 18 months. Most VFX houses, which work as sort of contractors work on razor thin margins (1 or 2 %) and barely make it. That's why you have every year boutique VFX shops that come and gone, many underbid to get work and then disappear because for the most part its not profitable.

I agree with your basic idea, but I think some of the blame is misplaced. Check out "The Monster that Ate Hollywood" at the PBS site to se what the large media conglomarates have done to Hollywood.

Re:ROTK

[Anonymous Coward]

CGI is just expensive eye-candy that does little more than add up the cost of film and drive the theatre admission prices sky-high.

That's been true every since special effects were first used prior to CGI even being around. Not really anything new about the problem that a lot of directors / studios use special effects as a crutch, getting too caught up in the "wow" factor to realize that none of it makes a hill of beans unless there's an actual story. (Matrix 2/3 fell into this trap, most Sci-Fi movies fall into this trap.)

Re:ROTK

[drix]

Now that I think about it - were the elephants real?

Probably not, because those were oliphaunts you were seeing. Say it with me now--"oh-liff-fonts". Derived from an old German word for camel.

Re:ROTK

[sahonen]

You have a point, but I do believe that well-done and tastefully-used special effects can serve to enhance a movie. Sometimes you just need to use them to convey an image that you couldn't convey otherwise. F/X should serve the story, not the other way around. While a lot of movies seem to have forgotten that, LOTR has struck the perfect balance, IMHO.

Also, don't forget that F/X is used a lot in non sci-fi movies, and in non-obvious places. Nobody ever comments on the F/X because it doesn't occur to you that it is. Forrest Gump is a huge one. You know the actor doesn't really have legs, and Tom Hanks isn't really shaking hands with Reagan, but it's so seamless and natural that you don't really think about it. That's how F/X should be.

Re:ROTK

[darc]

>However. In Matrix 2 and 3 everything smelled like CG. I was getting tired with the Neo CG character in all the battle shots.

I'm not sure about you, but I was getting more tired of the real Neo character in the normal shots. I'm pretty sure CG Neo showed more facial expression.

Re:ROTK

[LittleBigLui]

i loved gimli's "it still only counts as one" reaction to legolas' "sk8er boi" trick - right when you're thinking "oh no, not again" you see gimli's fed up with mr. cool elf, too.

Re:ROTK

[Grab]

Depends. Sometimes it's expensive eye-candy, but sometimes it's the only way to do otherwise-impossible stuff.

RotK couldn't create the effect of huge armies meeting, if they didn't have huge armies. No-one these days can afford to hire thousands of extras like in the "old days" of Spartacus, so they hit the computers. And even in the "old days", the zillions of people on set was a "special effect" for the time, bcos it was something no-one had seen before.

I won't disagree that there's a time and a place for it, and you certainly don't need it everywhere. I've seen some really egregious use of F/X in films, where they would have been much better off hiring a scriptwriter. ;-)

Some films are just there for the F/X and nothing else, though - there's no content. I think audiences are getting wise to that now and are staying away, which is why films like Daredevil and Hulk bombed so badly, why Matrix fizzled (they may have made their money back on 2, but 3 will probably have lost money), and why I strongly suspect the next edition of Star Wars won't go far either. If the film industry releases a load of high-budget copy-cats which suck, then shame on those who go and see them, and thereby prop up a lousy system. If people stay away, the industry *will* get the message (by Darwinism if nothing else, since studios go bust from bad investments like that).

Grab.

Re:ROTK

[Simonetta]

Another example of invisible F/X is the island in the Tom Hanks/Robert Zemetkis film "Castaway". Nearly all of the outdoor scenes were shot in Southern California with the tropical backgrounds added by CGI.

American Cinematographer magazine is a good source for background info on movie technology. That's where I read about 'Castaway'.

Re:ROTK

[Simonetta]

I was really impressed with the last Star Wars movie (Attack of the Clones , I think). Having watched Star Trek on television for years and having gotten used to 'rubber mask' aliens, the CGI generated artifical characters were really impressive. There is a real difference between a 100 million dollar movie and a 100 thousand dollar TV episode.

I was also stunned by the amount that Attack of the Clones simply lifted whole CGI sections from other films. The multi-level flying car highways section that took up the first 25 minutes was 'cloned' directly from 'The Fifth Element'(1997) and, to a lesser extent, from 'Back to the Future II'. Did the smashing machines sequence in AOTC come before or after the same overlong sequence in 'Minority Report'? Or was it done first in Charlie Chaplin's "Modern Times" (1932)?

Much of the rest of the film seemed to be lifted from earlier Star Wars pictures and just run through a CGI washing-machine. There were even some points where the audience was actually laughing 'at' the movie in a sort of collective acknowledgement of its stupidity. Mostly when the Princess What's Her Name kept getting tossed out of speeding land cruisers and then just jumping up and trotting away.

In an interview, the producer of AofTheC blamed the DVD explosion for reducing the possibility of the remaining half dozen Star Wars movies from getting made. But that's silly, it's the series itself that has run out of ideas.

Let...

[Anonymous Coward]

the Matrix vs. RotK battle commence!

Personally I prefered PotC.

Re:Let...

[Anonymous Coward]

Piractes of the Carribean rocked above all other movies.

Strange you went from funny to flamebait to troll though. :)

Re:Let...

[SuperMo0]

Pirates of the Carribean had one of the most interesting battles I've seen in a while, at the end of the movie... (avoiding spoilers so I'll stop there)...

However, the DVD didn't show you how they did that scene! I was so angry!

I'd love it if PotC won, but honestly, I see RotK winning just because of how awe-inspiring the entire movie was.

Woah...

[Anonymous Coward]

As I recall, critics were saying the only redeeming quality of the last matrix was its visual effects... Nice mood swing.

Re:Woah...

[Anonymous Coward]

As someone who enjoyed the matrix sequels for what they were, IE, fun, I think that the only thing that the Wakowski bros need to worry about is the billion dollars combined that the movies brought in.

I found the movies entertaining. I can't help those who didn't.

Now Kill Bill, did anyone think there was too much Cheesiness in that movie?

Re:Woah...

[fastidious edward]

Kill Bill sucked.

Great visuals: motion, colours, costumes, settings.

Great soundtrack.

But it was totaly 2 dimensional, no depth, no emotion, no resonance, no thought.

IMHO Pulp Fiction was his best, Jackie Brown second, Reservior Dogs a poor 3rd (sucks compared to any movie Beat Takeshi has done) and Kill Bill most definately last.

Re:Woah...

[real_smiff]

Why are you talking about Tarantino movies? He quite famously said what people could do with certain body parts and their games consoles which i think disqualifies him from computer graphics awards.

(joke, but at least i'm bringing this back on topic, plus he was making a serious point i think).

Apart from being OT you IMHO missed the point of Kill Bill but i'm not going to go there.. enjoy the Oscars heh :)

Re:Woah...

[Anonymous Coward]

then what was the poin of Kill Bill, IYHO?

Re:Woah...

[Anonymous Coward]

I wasn't impressed by the last Matrix movie in any respect. The effects (or rather presentation thereof, which I think is important) in the middle one were far better, but still probably fall short of many of the other movies mentioned.

I have to admit that I haven't seen ROTK yet (my GF is away for the moment, and I promised I'd see it with her, so I'll have to wait another week).

Re:Woah...

[Anonymous Coward]

IMHO it was filed with references to other movies, but as you said, had no soul.

Re:Woah...

[KilobyteKnight]

As I recall, critics were saying the only redeeming quality of the last matrix was its visual effects... Nice mood swing.

<rant>
To me, the real problem with the list is not that the last two Matrix movies are not included, but that the Hulk is included. I have not seen the Hulk, but I have seen enough trailers of it to be disgusted. The cinematic previews of it were so bad as to make me actively avoid seeing it. Those were horrible. How can a movie have the best visual effects when they can't even peice together a couple minutes worth of believable trailers? Those trailers have to be the absolutely least believable special effects I have ever seen.

If the movie were ten times better than the trailers (and when has that ever happened?) then the movie would still suck.

Then combine that with the massive hype, merchandising, and "making-of" specials; I've seen enough of the movie to make me ill.

Lee deciding to do the motion acting for the part of the Hulk was a major mistake also. He can't act and his movements were ridiculous to say the least. Tack on a plastic looking green CG skin to the bad movement and you get a phony, imposible to accept, fake, idiotic looking main character.

One more thing... I realize it's based on a comic book, but when you create a "real world" version one of the things you have to do is make the physics believable. OK, fine, so he can jump real far and run real fast - don't just act like gravity doesn't affect him - at least try to make it look real. Or maybe they did and failed miserably; either way, it sucked.
</rant>

Re:Woah...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's art, and trying to explain art is never going to make someone enjoy it where they didn't already.. it could help you appreciate it perhaps, but not "get it" in the inner primitive sense (the emotional rather than logical part of the brain). Perhaps watching it in a different mood will help, or perhaps you'll never enjoy this film or genre. Me, i can enjoy a very wide range of films from romantic comedy to action to musical and martial arts. What i can tell you is that an enormous amount of thought and love and care went into Kill Bill and i find it sad when someone can't enjoy something i enjoy, but that's life and everyone's different. No problem!

Kill Bill was the most fun i had at the cinema this year. My brother said the same thing. Enough other people have to get into, for example, the IMDB Top250 list. It's the only film i wanted to go straight back in and see again this year. Sorry that hasn't really answered your question but search the net and you'll find out all you want (and more) about KB.. to me it's a smart film (awareness of genre and culture, timing, editing, photography, music, acting, the list goes on) disguised as a dumb film (hack 'n' slash, gore, cheesy lines) which is a masterpiece (and can be enjoyed on) both levels.

Re:Woah...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, so now you see the truth: the 2nd and 3rd Matrix films had no redeeming qualities.

Re:Woah...

[hondo77]

then what was the poin(t) of Kill Bill, IYHO?

To rock. It did.

Re:Woah...

[Anonymous Coward]

For sure it was smart "awareness of genre and culture, timing, editing, photography, music, acting, the list goes on" and was a dumb film, but it was not intelligent.

It did not thought provoke, it did not challenge expectations, it did not bring any perspective, if you got you got it, so what? It was technically 100% but emotionally 0%.

On balance it was mediocre, but there were many better. Try:

Memento
American Psycho
2001
Existenze
FMJ
Taxi Driver
Clockwork Orange

All with low technicality but great depth

Re:Woah...

[Anonymous Coward]

it didn't. it was dull.

Re:Woah...

[K8Fan]

Mod parent up...but I do have to wonder: why bother hanging out on Slashdot and writing comments worthy of being seen...and never register?

Re:Woah...

[malducin]

To me, the real problem with the list is not that the last two Matrix movies are not included, but that the Hulk is included.

You do realize the list is picked by a team of VFX pros, the VFX Branch of the Academy, headed by Richard Edlund. There are many reason why the Matrix might not have made it. Maybe all the submission requirements were not submitted on time. WB was going to submit Revolutions anyway so not to split the vote.

Second the Hulk had some of the most innovative VFX work of the year, unfortunately most people don't see it. But the real pros did. You could read the Cinefex coverage.

but I have seen enough trailers of it to be disgusted ... The cinematic previews of it were so bad as to make me actively avoid seeing it ... How can a movie have the best visual effects when they can't even peice together a couple minutes worth of believable trailers? Those trailers have to be the absolutely least believable special effects I have ever seen.

Because Universal fumbled the trailers. Many VFX films use unfinished footage, and even test shots are used because studios need to hype films sometimes even more than 6 months in advance. In this case Universal assemebled the trailers without the knowledge or even input from ILM and producers like Gale Ann Hurd. Shots in the trailers were sped up (for time reasons) and in progress shots. And after all you judge the finished products not the trailers.

Tack on a plastic looking green CG skin to the bad movement

I beg to differ but the Hulk had one of the best skin shaders I've ever seen. If it looks "fake" it's because green on a person looks so unnatural. See a detaqiled photo of him in black and white to see how good it looks (which was done in production to check his look). Some movement did look funky but a lot of that conformed to the comic book.

don't just act like gravity doesn't affect him

Well you would have to see the film to see how great the physics are. The hulk stumbles, sliups, missteps, etc. all over the place.

Or maybe they did and failed miserably; either way, it sucked.

Not according to most pros. Maybe the problem lies with the audience with their preconceived ideas and having no idea to tell good VFX from bad, IMHO ;-).

Re:Woah...

[Snaller]

Perhaps they were just trying to be positive, because as far as i'm concerned it wasn't particularly impressive. The first one was, the second one just seemed like more of the same. In fact i think we have reached a point there the technical stuff can no longer impress, it has to be the content that impresses because by now the impression is: You can do anything in a movie - of course with regards to hollywood the only exception to that rule seems to be writing a decent script.

Re:Woah...

[GooberToo]

How can a rant by someone who didn't even see the movie be rated "insightful"?

I did see the movie. The story was horrible! The CG were awesome! The movie is a literal translation of a comic book to the big screen. This is exactly as intended. Guess what, Lee pulled it off. I just wish he had pulled it off with a better story because the story that was made, sucked bad.

Story bad! CG awesome!

[...]one of the things you have to do is make the physics believable

LOL! News flash! For a comic book, the physics were believable!

So, the movie isn't your cup of tea. Big deal. Get over it. Having said that, you shouldn't allow your obvious inept biases to blur your vision so. As such, one would hope you would realize your position on it and simply stay silent.

At a time like this, one would normally say, "RTFA", however, "WTFM" seems to fit better. Until such time, please, please, mod the parent post down folks!

Re:Woah...

[Mod Me God]

Funny you fount it was artistic. I found it mechanical. No doubt it was given attention by its creators, but it was created, it did not create itself. In no way did it create itself. It was not crtistic in the way art has meaning, depth or vision, it was a re-hash, drawing from many influences but contributing none.

Re:Woah...

[Uber Banker]

Funny you are modded troll when you express a valid opinion, and not one of the common-think drone. Still, meta-mod will sort that. I agree, Kill Bill was dull and 2 dimensional, those that do not realise this do not understand what real tough provoking cinema is.

Re:Woah...

[excitable]

Nail, head, kudos... I've got a four year old son who's going through a big testosterone hit at the moment. The Hulk thrashing about and falling all over the place looked exaclty like my kid getting excited. (No I do have a kid, really...)

WHAT?!!!!!! NO Star Wars Kid?

[i_want_you_to_throw_]

That just proves that this whole thing is a sham.

Yeah, I agree

[corebreech]

As much as the Matrix sequels sucked, the effects were at least on par with some of these other flicks. Like T3, I mean, c'mon, there was only really one cool scene in the whole movie.

Re:Yeah, I agree

[josephpate]

And Pirates of the Carribean. I mean come on, sure it was a good movie but the effects were lame... the skeletons looked like marrionette puppets half the time.

Re:Yeah, I agree

[SuperMo0]

But you have to admit that the final battle sequence was rather intriuging... the way they went from regular to skeleton, back and forth... O_O

Well..

[grub]

The second and third Matrix releases weren't the best in the effects department. I am blown away that Hulk was even considered.

Anyhow, the Oscars are moot. The whole academy is nothing more than a mutual-admiration society that pats each other on the back all day. They're trying to sell you tickets and DVDs, remember?

Re:Well..

[Trurl's Machine]

They're trying to sell you tickets and DVDs, remember?

We want to buy them, remember?

I mean, with all the yadda-yadda-yadda about the Hollywood as a mutual-admiration society, the globalization, the macdonaldization, blah blah blah, I am still the first to queue for any science-fiction or fantasy blockbuster. I _want_ to pay my buck for the right stuff, and all the "Lord Of The Rings" installments were the right stuff (let me refrain from commenting the "Matrix", nothing hurts as much as disappointment in love).

Re:Well..

[grub]

I _want_ to pay my buck for the right stuff

And therein lies the key: pay for what you think is "the right stuff", not what the movie industry says you should see.

Re:Well..

[Scrameustache]

the "Lord Of The Rings" installments were the right stuff (let me refrain from commenting the "Matrix", nothing hurts as much as disappointment in love).

I would agree, had I never seen the goatse guy...

Re:Well..

[Snaller]

We want to buy them, remember?


We do?
I _want_ to pay my buck for the right stuff,

I'm not sure I want to but I'd do it for the right stuff, unfortunately there is only 0.0000000000001% of right stuff about the crap lets cash in on the copyright system stuff.

The Hulk?

[AssClown2520]

Oh come on

Not only was this one of the worst films I have seen in years, but the effects were brutally unfitting. It reminded me of the movies where they take the cartoon charecter and put him in the real world. I don't think that was the desired effect though...

Re:The Hulk?

[osgeek]

To be honest, the CGI didn't bother me nearly as much as the "trying to take a shit" look that Bruce Banner wore during most of the film.

Yes, yes, you're very angry... very very angry. Now unpinch your fucking face and do a little real acting.

Re:The Hulk?

[dolo666]

And the video game...
Cell Shading: BWHAHAHAHAHA!!!!

Re:The Hulk?

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought the effects in The Hulk looked a lot better than those in Spider-Man. SM was one of the most disappointing superhero movies I've ever seen (but I haven't seen DareDevil..)

Re:The Hulk?

[Da Fokka]

What the hell, Ive got karma to burn.

I actually liked the Hulk. I actually thought it was a very entertaining movie. I liked the way they transformed the comic book to the screen, I liked the transitions and most of all I liked the over-the top special effects. No they did not look realistic. No, they were not rendered on a l33t WETA beowulf cluster. But they were fitting to the theme and supported the story (which was thin, but what the heck, its a fricking comic).

Of course, Return of the King should win. But I really think the Hulk deserves a nomination.

Same old story.

[Krapangor]

LOTR III will get some stupid Visual Effects or Best Soundtrack or Biggest Boobs Oscar nobody cares about and the main prices go to generic, brainless, Disney-esque Hollywood shit like Jerkinator III, Green Dork or Find Goatse.

Re:Same old story.

[rylin]

I think you'll find the Biggest Boobs award goes to Belluci in Matrix: Revolutions.

Re:Same old story.

[Rumagent]

Seems fair... It was the only redeeming quality in the movie.

Re:Same old story.

[permaculture]

You should have seen them on IMAX. Most impressive.

Re:Same old story.

[Anonymous Coward]

> I think you'll find the Biggest Boobs award goes >to Belluci in Matrix: Revolutions.

Ok, sounds fair, but then the award for the Best Smile Ever should go to Cate Blanchet.

Best Smile Ever!

Re:Same old story.

[Anonymous Coward]

Minica Belluci, who is not stupid, and is completely hot. A well deserved award.

Swimming Pool

[colini]

Ludivine Sagnier has the nicest pair of visual effects I've ever seen.

Re:Swimming Pool

[Snaller]

Case in point to my previous comment.

major snub!

[Raster Burn]

The Matrix had some revolutionary special effects like the free flying camera during the Burly Brawl.

What does the academy have against the Matrix, anyway?

Re:major snub!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm inclined to agree. Sure, the movies turned out to be rather disapointing over all, but for sheer eyecandy....
And I would think that crappy writing/acting wouldn't be much of a factor for the "best VFX" catagory, but maybe I'm wrong and the oscars are stupider than I thought.

Re:major snub!

[GerbilSocks]

You kidding me? The burly brawl looked so computer generated. It was obviously even from the QT trailers. And the highway scene where one agent jumps onto the hood of a car and flips it... very computer generated looking. They have a LONG way to go before they make humans appear believable. OTOH, ROTK looked absolutely beautiful. I was absolutely enthralled by the realism and energy of the special effects. Like the dragons knocking the army of horses to the gigantic elephants in battle. Simply amazing.

Re:major snub!

[Anonymous Coward]

What is so revolutionary about a crappy computer generated scene? You could always see immediately whether the actors were real or not. Even though I must say that the CGI Keanu was as expressive as the real one. But I guess that is not very difficult to achieve.

Re:major snub!

[El Camino SS]

What does the academy have against the Matrix, anyway?


Probably that it sucked so bad that even the public noticed.

Re:major snub!

[Anonymous Coward]

And the highway scene where one agent jumps onto the hood of a car and flips it... very computer generated looking.

Yes, but, it looked just like something out of the hulk.

Re:major snub!

[blincoln]

like the free flying camera during the Burly Brawl. ...and the freeway chase. There was some really excellent virtual camera work in that film that couldn't have been achieved any other way.

It would really be too bad if that at least wasn't recognized.

Re:major snub!

[biendamon]

It looked fake. That simple. A technical achievement it might have been, but it was painfully easy to spot when reality was supplanted by CG.

In order to be worthy of real recognition, a special effect really needs to work with the movie it's in. In this case, it needed to have the hyper-real look of the rest of the Matrix. It didn't, and instead jarred the viewer out of the movie. I found myself thinking "Oh, gee, that's a neat looking special effect" instead of "Holy flap-jacks, what the hell is Neo gonna do to get outta this?!?"

In comparison, the special effects in Lord Of The Rings did their job just about perfectly. After RotK, I find myself unable to imagine Elijah Wood as a normal-sized human being, even though I know he is one. I find myself thinking of John Rhys-Davies as rather small (the guy's actually huge).

In fact, even the craptacular special effects in The Hulk didn't rip me out of the movie experience, because I knew I was watching a comic book, and they never tried to disguise that fact. The Matrix deserves its snub this year, because, despite the technical brilliance of their work, the special effects failed.

Re:major snub!

[Anonymous Coward]

The Matrix had some revolutionary special effects like the free flying camera during the Burly Brawl.

Umm, what is so amazingly revolutionary about a free-moving camera in a scene that's almost entirely computer generated?

Ladies and Gentlemen of the Academy, I present for your consideration: Just about any animation ever made with POVray!

Re:major snub!

[cfuse]

Probably that it sucked so bad that even the public noticed.

Since when did this become a problem for them?

Re:major snub!

[SurgeonGeneral]

I think the academy has just had it with the Wachowski brothers. They cut corners by filming both movies at once, they did a shoddy job on both leaving all kinds of loose ends and poorly plotted themes, and the special effects didnt even turn out that great. Things like the Smith clone battle came out looking gimmicky and contrived. These last two movies were clearly just a cash grab to build of the Matrix brand name and no one is being fooled about the amount of care and effort that went into them.

I suspect that the academy feels those other movies still have lots of potential and should be promoted, whereas the Matrix has already overshot its market and everyone is feeling quite dissillussioned. No point in whipping a dead donkey, am I right?

Re:major snub!

[KewlPC]

Let me spell it out for you: Warner Bros. didn't even submit The Matrix: Reloaded for inclusion in the VFX category. They didn't want to split votes between Reloaded and Revolutions.

Secondly, the VFX nominees are chosen by the academy's VFX branch. This branch is made up of actual VFX experts, most of them with years, if not decades, of experience.

Re:major snub!

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't get your hopes too high ...

You are the fucking public and while you laughing at them, someone somewhere is making fun of your own inability to comprehend something and you don't even realize that.
Scary isn't it ?

Welcome to the Matrix motherfucker.

Peter Pan?

[Hexydes]

Every time I watch a trailer for Peter Pan, I always say to myself "Wow, that looks REALLY fake!" I think even Hook (with Robin Williams) looked more realistic, and that was 10 years ago!

Re:Peter Pan?

[Anonymous Coward]

There's this scene in the trailer where the crocodile snaps that totally ignores every fundamental fact about the croc moves. It's the classic CGI error... choose which way the model is walking, first, then graft the mouth movement on top of that. It's doesn't work that way... when a croc snaps, he uses the force of his whole body, so that he'll stun whatever he's biting.

Re:Peter Pan?

[malducin]

That's because it's not intended to look real, you are missing the point of the movie and visuals. This is an attempt to have a more faithful interpretation of the story. The visuals are heavily art directed to have a stylized apperance.

It's like What Dreams May Come (which won the VFX Oscar btw). It was supposed to look painterly. Same with Peter Pan's many vistas.

The way to choose

[Esteanil]

Let's pit Gollum, Terminator, The Hulk, Peter Pan and all those undead pirates against eachother in a nicely computer-generated arena.
The winner claims the Oscar.

"And Gollum runs towards The Hulk, with his fierce hissed battle-cry of "Filthy greenthingses", eagerly a-snapping for fingers!"

Re:The way to choose

[arevos]

Gollum would hide until the fight was over and then stab the winner in the back.

Advantage, Gollum.

Re:The way to choose

[Simonetta]

Let's pit Gollum, Terminator, The Hulk, Peter Pan and all those undead pirates against eachother in a nicely computer-generated arena.
The winner claims the Oscar.

That's the spirit! Modern comic-book movies are so dumb and dull because they have to be in order to not offend anyone, anywhere, in any way. Every possible ticket must be sold to recoup the cost of these gigantic turkeys.

One of the most memorable aspects of "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" was seeing all the cartoon characters interelating in the same story and scenes for the first time.

CGI should be used to create surrealistic masterpieces that leave people stunned. CGI needs to be orders of magnitudes cheaper so that individual genius can create works that will still amaze audiences in ten, fifty, or a hundred years.

Take, for instance, Dali's "Soft Construction with Boiled Beans" painting (Google it). After seventy years it still stuns the imagination.

CGI is the medium of our era. But, future viewers will note that there were no artists at the time worthy of the medium, so no great works of art resulted.

In most movies, CGI is as stupid as tail-fins on an SUV.

Master and Commander

[timeOday]

Master and Commander is an interesting choice. Nothing in the movie looked fantastical or supernatural, it just looked like they somehow took movie cameras back a few hundred years. Did they really have two tall ships sailing around? In the Star Wars, on the other hand, yeah it's imaginative but it's obviously all CGI.

Anyways, I think it's cool they nominated a movie whose visual effects were subtle but convincing.

Re:Master and Commander

[fredrikj]

Anyways, I think it's cool they nominated a movie whose visual effects were subtle but convincing.

I strongly agree. The effects in The Return of the King might very well be the most advanced ever shown in cinemas, and look damn good at that, but ultimately they're not 100% convincing. Visual effects are supposed to assist in creating an atmosphere and sense of scale, which ROTK's effects really do, but they're also supposed to suspend any sensation of disbelief, which ROTK's effects don't always.

I definitely think ROTK should get the visual effects Oscar this year, just wanted to state that I agree flashiness isn't everything.

Re:Master and Commander

[GerbilSocks]

I agree as well. The main reason for MC's nomination is that recreating water in the computer is probably the toughest challenge for any visual effects team because we all know how water looks like and how it behaves. Special effects that are fantastical like in LOTR or Matrix movies are harder to judge because we can't make accurate comparisons to anything in real life.

Re:Master and Commander

[eetvar]

While water definitely is hard to do in 3d, for the reasons you stated, the toughest challenge definitely is making a realistic human being in 3d. For exactly the same reasons - people look at people a lot, and are extremely sensitive to the smallest nuances.

That's why Gollum is such an achievement, it's the closest thing to a realistic human actor ever achieved. (Compare e.g. to the burly brawl in matrix where it's painfully obvous when the actors are swapped to their digital counterparts, and there isn't even any real acting going on..)

eetu.

Re:Master and Commander

[thanester]

From the Boston Sun review of M&C:
"Painstakingly rendered props and computer-generated imagery blend persuasively with a real ship filmed at sea and full-scale models shot in the Baja, Mexico, water tank built for Titanic."
http://www.sunspot.net/entertainment/mo vies/bal-to .master14nov14,0,6183776.story?coll=bal-artslife-m ovies

Looks like the majority of the water/ship effects were actually genuine. That impresses me to no end.

Re:Master and Commander

[GerbilSocks]

I wouldn't exactly classify Gollum as being human, or even a Hobbit for that matter, but yes, when you are watching Gollum perform, you forget he's a CGI creation. It's quite remarkable, but Gollum already took home the statuette in 2001, so it's unlikey Academy members will reward him the third time around. The battle at the Minas would probably be the defining moment of the entire film.

Re:Master and Commander

[adrianbaugh]

What gets me is why they bothered using CGI for the trolls when they could have just rounded up a few from slashdot.

Re:Master and Commander

[malducin]

Not all the water was CG. For half the VFX shots, mainly Asylum's work, they shot real ocean plates and composited the real ship and miniatures onto it. For the storm sequence, they actually sent a crew to Tierra de Fuego to film stormy seas and composite the miniature.

The Apple trailer site even had a featurette on that though it seems they removed it.

ILM did use some CG water for their shots.

Re:Master and Commander

[malducin]

The VFX branch nominates films not only on innovation but on execution as well. Thatr's why films with a great quantity of invisible VFX can get nominated (for example Gladiator).

For MC, real ocean plates were used along with CG water. For more details on the VFX of the film check this:

The Effects Mastery of Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World

Re:Master and Commander

[Anonymous Coward]

Thats because the visual effects were so real and so well blended, you can't tell. That's a sign that true computer visual effects have arrived.

Re:Master and Commander

[Sabalon]

Nothing in the movie looked fantastical or supernatural

all the more reason that it should be given an honor like this. Sure...you can make all sorts of cool FX based creatures, world, etc... that people know are cgi but still look cool. But if you can put it in a movie in a way that people don't know or wonder how did they film that then you've done a much better job.

MATRIX 2 AND 3 REJECTED ?

[shamitbagchi]

MATRIX REJECTED This is bad - Matrix 2 (Reloaded) had plenty of hi-tech CGI and good visuals also Matrix 3 was not bad... PLENTY OF MONEY WAS PUMPED AND A LOT OF SCENES WERE WORTH A AWARD (No Doubts) But Lord of the Rings 2 http://lotr.com/us/ must be good I have seent he 1st one it was cisual treat no doubts

Re:MATRIX 2 AND 3 REJECTED ?

[squisher]

While I must say the parent poster uses a lot of useless CAPS (someone needs to teach him that they work best when used sparely), I strongly agree with the content.
I think the Matrix 2/3 story was barely average, the visual effects were very good, usually well integrated and created a very nice atmosphere. Not including them really is not fair to the movies, because this is an area where they still were extremely good (too bad they could not make a story line as good as Matrix 1!).

Re:MATRIX 2 AND 3 REJECTED ?

[shamitbagchi]

Whats was that on CAPS ? Did not get yer context However the Burly Brawl was amazing and many other visuals in M2 An the fight scenes in M3 and the settings and colors tones were also cool althroughout in the Matrix movies... The bullets times and kinetic energy filled action sequences were all visually stunning too !

Pixar Renderman

[KoolDude]

It's interesting to note that a good number of these movies use Pixar's Rendering software. That being said, I am surprised that Finding Nemo is not in the list. Don't they consider animations for the visual effects Osar?

Re:Pixar Renderman

[ScottGant]

Yes, Renderman is the main rendererereerer of choice for many things. The latest version of Photorealistic Renderman (Pixar's actual product that they sell) supports true raytracing now.

There are even open source Renderman renderererer called Pixie that is very powerfull in it's own right.

But Finding Nemo is considered total animation and not special effects per-se. Special Effects are for live action movies where there is something needed to be added that only special effects could solve. Expect to see Finding Nemo up for Best Animated Movie though.

It's interesting to note though that Pixar got the very first Oscar for an animated short that was completely computer animated. Tin Toy!

Re:Pixar Renderman

[Altima(BoB)]

No, they're only elligable for Best Animated FIlm oscar. Dreamworks's Shrek was the first film to win this, showing that CGI animated films can win Oscars, just not traditional VFX ones, as it is arguably harder to make VFX convincing in live action. In an animated film there is already suspension of disbelief, we know none of the images are real. With live action, they are trying to convince us the images are real. Therin lies the challenge, not how much money you can spend on fancy CGI, but how much an audiance believes what they are seeing.

Re:Pixar Renderman

[Taos]

They didn't only use Pixar's renderer, and here is a dark tale of what Pixar did to another small startup Exluna

Notice how that link goes to Nvidia? There's a reason why. Quite a few years ago, a rather genius programmer left Pixar and started up his own company to write a competing renderer called Entropy. Pixar's renderer, while very fast and the basis for many effects and animation piplines throughout the industry, was getting a bit long in the tooth. It didn't have any raytracing abilities (outside of some clever hacks), and completely lacked the global illumination abilities that were neccassary for some believable lighting models.

Why do I bring this up? Because Gollum was almost exclusively rendered on this renderer. Pixar's Renderman was not capable of doing some of the stuff they needed for that beautiful skin shader at the time they developed Gollum.

Pixar didn't take lightly to this. They launched a lawsuit against Exluna saying they were violating certain patents they held regarding some antialiasing algorithms. Never mind that the renderer was far more advanced and was a complete drop in replacement for Pixar's competing product. This was a straight up ploy to get rid of the competition.

To this day, the Exluna developers still say they did not violate those patents and that they would have won in court. However, winning in court would have destroyed the company. Instead, they sold the company to Nvidia, where they are working on some even more advanced stuff, but under the protection of a larger and well financed (and lawyer'd) company.

There are may other Renderman based renderers out there, all of varying capabilities. Pixie, while technically advanced and written by a brilliant graduate student at berkely, has a few rough edges and is missing some important features. Aqusis is progressing nicely, but doesn't have many features that I rely on. Mental Ray, while not renderman compatable, has all the features and more, but you pay for it in speed. Right now, I'm using Pixie for my tests. It's free for me, but I wouldn't trust it in production just yet. For production I would still choose Pixar's Renderman, which has since incorporated much of the lighting features available in other renderers (somewhat pushed by the demands of their clients, but mostly because they used a lot of those special lighting tools in Finding Nemo).

For more information on all available Renderman capable renderers and how to use them, I suggest visiting the Renderman Repository

Alright, back to work for me. I'm supposed to present this skin shader after new years.

Rich

Re:Pixar Renderman

[Scotter]

The only animated film to make it to the visual effects "bake-off" was The Lion King (1994). It did not get nominated.

Re:Pixar Renderman

[lxt]

Animations aren't considered for the VFX Oscar, and have their own Oscars (unsurprisingly, Best Animated Feature Film, and Best Animated Short). However, a film that intergrates traditional animation with live action (eg Who Framed Roger Rabbit) can win - in 1964, Mary Poppins won the VFX oscar.

Scorsese and Lucas

[mr.henry]

According to the IMDB trivia for Gangs of New York:

19th century New York was recreated on the lot of Cinecitta studios in Rome. When George Lucas visited the massive set, he reportedly turned to Scorsese and said that sets like that can be done with computers now.

When I saw TPM and AOTC, I thought the effects were really cool and impressive, but not 'realistic.' They looked too perfect. I think if Scorsese had seen ROTK in 2002, he might have decided to use computers for the sets. Peter Jackson has definitely raised the bar.

Re:Scorsese and Lucas

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, most people think that the digital effects are too perfect in SW:AotC and TPM, then some of them realize they're not looking at a digital effect at all times. I watched the behind the scenes segments on the DVD with a friend, and we were both shocked when many of what we thought were digital effects weren't, and many of the things that looked like "live action" segments were in fact effects. Same thing is true in a lesser extent in SW:TPM.
I'd say George Lucas has succeeded in removing the line between digital effects and live action shots, which he should be given credit for, even if Jar Jar is in one too many shots in TPM.

Re:Scorsese and Lucas

[CAIMLAS]

I'm guessing George Lucas has routine fits of rage nowadays, now that his ILM studio has been so profoundly outdone, and his personal dream of realistic computer-generated characters/environments have been dashed against the rocks - at least for him, personally. :)

Re:Scorsese and Lucas

[malducin]

Funny thing is that maybe Lucas was unaware that ILM did work on Gangs of New York. They did shots like the pullback after the initial battle, the final NY transition, the attack from the harbor, and actually a lot of invisible set extensions all around, which most people never noticed or knew about.

For its VFX, Gangs of New York was nominated for a VFX BAFTA (the British Oscar) and for 2 VES (Visual Effects Society) awards for best matte paintings and best invisible VFX.

Some info in the VFX are here:

Mean Streets

Re:Scorsese and Lucas

[malducin]

I don't know how they have been outdone when they worked on 5 of the 7 finalists. And many former members of ILM worked on the other 2 (Joe Letteri on LOTR ROTK, Stephen Rosenbaum on X2).

Re:Scorsese and Lucas

[Trillian_1138]

I disagree. My understanding is that, whenever possible, Peter Jackson used real sets that were digitally extended. This is unlike Lucas who put actors in front of a bluescreen with minimal set and digitally created as much as possible. I think the reason LOTR looks so amazing is that a lot of what you're looking at IS there. (Been watching TTT extended special features, and was looking at some of the behind the scenes stuff.)

I still think digitally creating a set usually (if not always) ends up looking bad. On the other hand, using as much real set as possible and digitally enhancing and extending it can give you an AMAZING looking scene that couldn't have actually been built or shot on-location, but would never have looked as good if it was entirely created on computers.

-Trillian

Re:Scorsese and Lucas

[Johnathon_Dough]

But Peter Jackson did not use computers for sets. So far that is just Lucas' folks running around in video games.

Jackson created large scale models as well as full size set pieces for his actors to interact in, then combined them using computers. Which is why they look more real.

Re:Scorsese and Lucas

[malducin]

Funny thing since ILM has one if not the biggest model shop in the industry. Most ILM projects make use of miniatures including the bake off finalists for these years. Just check the numerous photos in Cinefex to see it with your own eyes.

Some examples:

Hulk: Pear Lake, some of the canyons and desert vistas, Redwood forest
Pirates of the Caribbean: miniature ships
T3: particle accelarator, unedrwater skulls shot, many of the topside future war shots

Even Ep. 2 was one of the biggest miniature shots in ILM history:

Brave New Worlds

Just as well as much as miniatures were used in LOTR there was a lot of CG used as well.

Re:Scorsese and Lucas

[KewlPC]

Even funnier is that Roberto Benigni stopped by the set (he was also shooting a movie in Rome), and was talking with Scorcese about it. Scorcese said Lucas came over and was like, "You know, we can do these sets with computers now." at which point Benigni laughed and said something to the effect of, "Well, that might work for George Lucas, but that's not good enough for Martin Scorcese."

I'd take the oppinions of an Oscar-winning director over George Lucas' any day of the week.

T3?

[nsxdavid]

I wasn't even aware that T3 brought anything new to special effects stage. They basically used the normal mishmash of off-the-shelf gags. It's horrible that T3 was ever made, but I would have set that opinion aside to judge it on special effects alone... except none of them were in anyway special.

The Matrix 2 invented some new bleeding edge technology, fo sure. The problem was they couldn't find a good plot device to justify using it. But certainly the special effects accomplishments are a milestone even if the movie wasn't. I think Matrix 3 had little new except that they spent a lot more time in the CG department. How many Linux boxes does it take to render a few million sentinals anyway? Not sure it matters, one EMP wipes both out. :)

LORs had some amazing effects. The ingtegration with the story, the cinematography and the directoral style is probably their crowning accomplishment. Not to mention sheer volume. Like Matrix 2, they had to invent some new technology to pull off a "whola lotta something" effect. In this case, not just a whole lot of Agent Smiths, more like a whole lot of orcs and what not. And the impact was considerably greater.

My only beef with LOR effects was the places where it was so plainly obvious you were looking a miniature set. Like Isengard being washed away. Some of the scenes completely failed, slow motion water or not, to look remotely anything other than little models. I'm surprised by this as in other places the miniature effects were outstanding.

But Golem stole the show. That was a masterpiece of special effects. I hope it gets the accolades it deserves. After all, imagine had it turned out like the yellow critter in Lost in Space.

Re:T3?

[rmitz]

You know, when you're flying above the earth, things *do* look like little models.

Re:T3?

[nsxdavid]

Except, of course, the scenes in question had the camera at ground level or even slightly below (those pits made that possible).

The problem with models is that the material that you make things out at full scale have different properties than what you use to make the model out of. And this gives them away very easily.

For structures, it's the apparent weight of things seems oddly off. This is especially evident when things are collapsing as in Isengard. Also the way in which things respond to stress and break apart (or don't). There are parts where wooden structures are being washed away where they have that distinctive "I'm just a model bade out of balsawood" type look to them.

There are also focus issues which belay the intended distances involved.

All of these things give the effect an distinctly less than authentic look at times.

Other scenes the models are amazing, like the staircase in Moria.

Re:T3?

[craw]

Slight nitpick, Isengard gets washed away in the Two Towers, where I do agree with you that it looks more like a miniature set.

Gollum in the Return of the King is enough to justify the Visual Effect nomination, IMHO.

Re:T3?

[malducin]

I wasn't even aware that T3 brought anything new to special effects stage.

That's a naive statement on the state of VFX. Not particularly directed at you but a large number of people just go by the looks without knowing what goes on behind the scenes.

T3 was the subject of several SIGGRAPH (the most important conference and organization related to computer graphics) sketches and even one SIGGRAPH paper (one of the highest honors in CG research):

Smoke Simulation for Large Scale Phenomena
Big Bangs
Melting a Terminatrix
The Machines of T3
'T3' -- BETWEEN THE LAYERS
Fight the Future
Terminator 3 Evolves Historic Effect
TechTV Segements on T3 and Pirates of the Caribbean Online
T3: Man vs. Machine
Building a Believable Blockbuster

Not saying that the others weren't outstanding and innovative as well. Thye same point can be made about all the other bakeoff finalists.

Re:T3?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, David.

It's LOTR, not "LORs." And Gollum, not "Golem." Stupid-ass.

Re:T3?

[blincoln]

It's horrible that T3 was ever made

Oh, come on. It was worth it for the end. No one in Hollywood does that kind of thing anymore.

Re:T3?

[Johnathon_Dough]

My only beef with LOR effects was the places where it was so plainly obvious you were looking a miniature set. Like Isengard being washed away. Some of the scenes completely failed, slow motion water or not, to look remotely anything other than little models. I'm surprised by this as in other places the miniature effects were outstanding.

I do photo retouching, not video effects, but...
I noticed the miniature issue you did, as well as the black gates in the Two Towers. And in both cases, it is an issue of scale. At the Gates, when swinging open, the dirt just looks "wrong" and in the Dam bursting, the water is too damn big.

I have spent many hours in the past retouching models to get the scale correct across all elements, reducing the size of water droplets, or making snow and dirt not look so big and grainey.

Considering how long it would take me to retouch one frame of the dam breaking to look correct for all the sprays and drops in the air, it does not surprise me that they did not bother. At a certain point you need to just let it go and hope for the suspension of disbelief.

Re:T3?

[RedWizzard]

My only beef with LOR effects was the places where it was so plainly obvious you were looking a miniature set. Like Isengard being washed away. Some of the scenes completely failed, slow motion water or not, to look remotely anything other than little models. I'm surprised by this as in other places the miniature effects were outstanding.

Unfortunately that scene (fall of Isengard) was one of the last filmed. It was started only weeks before scoring started. They literally ran out of time to do a better job.

Re:T3?

[nsxdavid]

Well I still have to disagree. As a regular attendee of SIGGRAPH, I have to can say with first-hand knowledge that not everything that gets a presentation is all that ground breaking. In fact, most stuff is just incremental improvements. Being the beast of research that graphics is.

I will admit I might have over-stated the case when I said it was all off-the-shelf. And perhaps the awfulness of the movie has colored my opinion too.

ROTK

[rf0]

For me it has to be ROTK. In all the other films there were a lot of stages where the effects looked wrong. In ROTK the only scene I thought that was where Frodo was running into the enterance of mount doom. Beyond that you couldn't tell (within the reasons of physics)

Rgds

Rus

Finding Nemo missing

[shamitbagchi]

Hows that it is an amazing mistake - Its the best foilm inanimation this season ! LOTR is cool but...

Re:Finding Nemo missing

[Anonymous Coward]

Finding Nemo was an animated film, and therefore doesn't qualify - it's been nominated for Best Animated Feature instead.

Re:Finding Nemo missing

[Scrameustache]

We are talking about special effects, not animated feature film.

Not the same category.

Re:Finding Nemo missing

[malducin]

Because it's an animated film not a VFX film. Just because you use computers doesn't mean it's VFX.

Re:Finding Nemo missing

[shamitbagchi]

Ok I get the difference now... I was ignorant until now about the separate categories.

I agree totally!

[twoslice]

It is pretty easy to make a large green blob bounce like a rubber ball all over the place. If Shrek did that it would be funny. - The Hulk doing that is just plain stupid.

I can't remember a single episode of the original series where the Hulk bounces 1000 fett in the air in a single bounce.

Re:I agree totally!

[Kierthos]

You do realize, that in the comic books, the Hulk can and does leap a couple of miles at a time fairly regularly, don't you?

Ladies and Gentlemen, let me remind you. Before the CGI, before Bill Bixby, there was a comic book. The Incredible Hulk ran for years before the TV series even came out. And, quite frankly, the TV series (and related made-for-TV movies) had their own faults. In the comics, the Hulk pretty much shrugs off bullets, tank rounds, etc. In the last movie, he dies after falling a hundred feet or so. A poor end to a comic book character who can leap two miles up in the air and land safely.

That being said, the movie sucked, and the screenwriters for it (John Turman, Michael France, and James Schamus) should be taken out back and beaten with a large stick.

Kierthos

Re:I agree totally!

[strider69666]

It's good to see someone sticking up for the Hulk. I mean, the story wasn't the best and the cgi was a bit schlocky in a few scenes, but c'mon! The dogfight was one of the most kickass fight scenes ever! Even if it was a bit cartoony it still rocked. Besides, I'd like to see all you geeks out there who piss and moan about this movie do something even remotely close on your computer. If your gonna sit there and rip on a movie that hundreds of people put many hours of work, sweat, blood, tears and love into, then you damn well better be able to say "Hey, this movie sucked because I made a better movie, giving me the right to say your movie sucked". Otherwise, piss off you sniveling little shitheads. (Sorry, I just get tired of whining little pussys who do nothing but bitch about other peoples accomplishments)

Re:I agree totally!

[James Lewis]

I think you're stretching the "lets see if you can do it better" arguement a bit far here. Most of us don't have 75 million to spend on a bet. When we criticize a movie, we aren't basing it off what we think we could do with 75 million. We are basing it off other movies we've seen that have done it better. X-men did a great job of bringing comic book characters to life, and used CG without making things look cartoonish. In my opinion The Hulk didn't even come close to matching the X-men movies on any level, and so I can criticize it regardless of how well I think I could do given 75 million.

Truly Out of Touch

[Anonymous Coward]

Stunning. If The Matrix 2-3 aren't nominated for an Oscar then we'll know that Hollywood has finally lost its last shred of credibility.

1993: Tommy Lee Jones beats John Malkovich for best supporting actor.
1998: Edward Norton does not win an Oscar for American History X.
1998: Saving Private Ryan, Elizabeth, and Thin Red Line each lose to Shakespear in Love for best picture.
2003: The Matrix 2-3 may not even be nominated for technical awards.

That's it Oscar! Go to hell. You lost legitamacy in my eyes with those first three gafes but this is stupid. What a sick and disgusting cess-pool of immorality and bad taste they are.

Re:Truly Out of Touch

[fredrikj]

Don't forget Titanic :P

And yeah, I think Matrix 2 or 3 deserved a nomination. I mean, what on Earth is Pirates of the Caribbean doing in that list? The CGI skeletons were just grotesquely bad. The highway fight in Matrix: Reloaded, on the other hand, was one of the coolest things ever. Sure, the movie was dull, but that's not what the visual effects category is concerned with.

Re:Truly Out of Touch

[Anonymous Coward]

1998: Gwineth Paltrow wins the Oscar for best actress

So the girl is sure beatiful, but... "best actress" with Shakespeare in Love?? That's a joke

Re:Truly Out of Touch

[Anonymous Coward]

1998: Saving Private Ryan, Elizabeth, and Thin Red Line each lose to Shakespear in Love for best picture.

Saving Private Ryan: the usual American nationalistic reinterpretation of history. Overrated tosh.
Elizabeth: oh look, we can shock people by giving the "Virgin Queen" some steamy sex scenes! Crap film, though.
Thin Red Line: I admit I haven't seen this one, but the trailer didn't impress me.

On the other hand...

Shakespeare in Love: written by one of the best modern comic playwrights, and it shows. Certainly deserved Best Screenplay if not Best Picture.

And the acting was actually rather good, I don't know if you managed to see that past your prejudices. Just because you are an elitist doesn't mean that a comedy is always less worthy of recognition than a harrowing war film.

I note you don't even think your opinion is worth admitting your identity. At least I have a good reason for posting AC... I'm about to get modded down for dissing Saving Private Ryan. :p

Re:Truly Out of Touch

[monkeyfinger]

Don't forget Titanic :P

I'm trying to.

Re:Truly Out of Touch

[hondo77]

You're right! I never realized that the Academy members have different tastes than you do until just this minute! I feel so unclean even thinking (like a lot of people here) that the efx for those Matrix movies kinda sucked. Unclean! Unclean!

Please, start our own awards show. I need to feel clean again.

Re:Truly Out of Touch

[Zathras11]

And the Burly Brawl. They don't think that
was impressive? Geez!

Re:Truly Out of Touch

[Macdude]

1993: Tommy Lee Jones beats John Malkovich for best supporting actor.
1998: Edward Norton does not win an Oscar for American History X.
1998: Saving Private Ryan, Elizabeth, and Thin Red Line each lose to Shakespear in Love for best picture.
2003: The Matrix 2-3 may not even be nominated for technical awards.

That's it Oscar! Go to hell. You lost legitamacy in my eyes with those first three gafes but this is stupid.

1982: Tron lost Best Special Effects to a muppet (E.T.).

I haven't taken the Oscars seriously since.

Re:Truly Out of Touch

[KewlPC]

First of all, I hope you realize that, in order for a film to even be considered for an Oscar, it has to be submitted by the studio that released it. Warner Bros. didn't submit The Matrix: Reloaded because they didn't want to split the vote between that and Revolutions, so Reloaded wasn't even in the running.

Also, the VFX bake-off is done by actual VFX experts, who know a bad effect when they see one. And there were lots of bad effects in The Matrix: Revolutions.

Re:Truly Out of Touch

[Darth]

1982: Tron lost Best Special Effects to a muppet (E.T.).

the real irony of this one is that one of the reasons this happened is because people considered it cheating that they used computers to create the effects for them.

considering where effects are now, it might be time for them to create a special, posthumous award to correct that. They could call it the "We're really fucking stupid" award and it could be given every year to a film that was screwed over for obviously bullshit reasons 5 or more years ago.

Re:Truly Out of Touch

[Perky_Goth]

yeah, well, and a "we're romoving this oscar from you for sheer stupidity on our voting" too...
who cares about the oscars? i watched them for 3 years, and decided not to care again

What, no Matrix?

[barureddy]

The title says it all.

Blank left here for no reason.

Re:What, no Matrix?

[GerbilSocks]

I tried to love the Matrix sequels, but ended up hating it because the story is thin, the effects looked like something the bros tried desperately to come up with to win another oscar. You know, like when you think you are impressing a girl, but it ends up you are making yourself look even dorkier. Same applies to the Wachoski brothers and their lame comeback attempt. Don't tell me the Matrix sequels were anthing but revolutionary. It was boring!

Re:What, no Matrix?

[Anonymous Coward]

You need to work on your haikus.

Geek Heaven

[dolo666]

I was in geek heaven during the whole movie. I saw things in Return of the King I have never seen in a movie before. The rich story blends perfectly with the FX to make them almost real. Even with all the bloopers, it's believable (I didn't notice them). I don't think that anyone will come close to the quality that is Return of the King for ten years. They might get better tech running the show, but nothing like the sheer wonder between the cast, story, crew and director in RotK.

Re:Geek Heaven

[MtViewGuy]

What especially impressed me about the CGI effects in RoTK was how they did the entire city of Minas Tirith. It's as if Alan Lee's and John Howe's paintings have literally come to life; the folks at WETA Digital should take a bow at how they integrated real scenes, models and CGI all into one. Just that is good reason why RoTK will win the Best Visual Effects Oscar. :-)

Re:Geek Heaven

[Anonymous Coward]

Not exactly... Minas Tirith was done as a physical model in 1/72nd scale with the only CG work being the integration of other elements.

Re:Geek Heaven

[dwj]

Minas Tirith started to look like a model when they switched to aerial shots though. Not CG, nor even a matte painting. A physical model, sort of like how it was obvious the ship in Poseidon Adventure is a model. The combination of unrealistically sterile fields of grass surrounding the city, dotted with perfectly rectangular enemy formations drawn in CG didn't seem to help. Perhaps different camera angles would have helped to convey a better sense of scale. But that's an exercise for the director, not the effects artists. :-)

Re:Geek Heaven

[MtViewGuy]

While much of the Minas Tirith shots were done on that 1/72 scale model, a good number of these shots were done in CGI, especially when you zoom into the city street scenes.

It's still pretty amazing work, in my humble opinion. :-)

Re:Geek Heaven

[Grab]

Sure, the enemy formations were rectangular. I think that was intentional though, rather than a limit of the technology or design. If you noticed the Rohan cavalry charge, the structure was curving with three points, following the three leaders (Theoden, Eomer, Gamling) in the charge. The orcs stand in nice pretty squares when they're winning, but when they start losing (ie. when the cavalry hits them) then their lines disintegrate.

Also cross-reference to the Isengard scene of Saruman addressing his army (Two Towers), which was straight out of the Nuremburg Rally. To me, it makes the point that it's only the bad guys who need strict discipline to hold the army together - the good guys know what they're fighting for.

Maybe I'm less fussy, but the city never looked unrealistic to me. I think having soldiers everywhere gave it the scale. And as for the fields - it's *supposed* to be a plain. It wasn't unrealistically sterile either - variations in colour and height across it. It just looked like a large expanse of flatlands. For what a *bad* bit of landscape looks like, check out Phantom Menace and the Gungans vs Droid Army battle, which looks like it's being fought on a bowling green.

Grab.

Re:Geek Heaven

[dwj]

Good point, although it doesn't make the formations look any less unnatural. Perhaps it's because of the high angle, hence the tendency for small objects on the ground to look like toys is literally true.

The Phantom Menace battleground looked quite bad, I agree. But it's an offworld planet, and who knows what it's supposed to look like. But I was expecting some agriculture around Minas Tirith, which, after all, is a big city with lots of mouths to feed. What I saw instead was large, swaths of boring grass. Maybe the evil air drifting down from Mordor killed off the crops?

Re:Geek Heaven

[Grab]

That's a good point - I'd not thought about crops. Mind you, Rohan was the same. I think this is more a limitation of what you can do in a New Zealand National Park than in a computer, though. ;-)

From memory, I think Tolkein describes it as a plain as well. Maybe there should have been some cows or sheep around, but if the people knew about it then they would have brought them inside the walls. Dunno, I'm clutching at straws. Anyway, I obviously wasn't thinking about the city's infrastructure when I saw it - I was far more taken in with the "wow" element!

Grab.

Hook...

[BTWR]

Let me introduce myself. My name is James, and I'm the only person in history who really liked... Hook.

Re:Hook...

[Rallion]

Ah! One of TWO people, I think. ...It was just fun to watch...

Re:Hook...

[Kierthos]

No, you're not. Was it William's best movie? Nah... was it even remotely Oscar-caliber in any way? No, but I think the /. opinion on the Oscar committee greatly resembles a bucket of feces.

Was it a fun movie? Yes. And Dustin Hoffman as Hook was an even more brilliant piece of casting then Robin Williams as a middle-aged Peter Pan.

Kierthos

Re:Hook...

[Zoshnell]

I also liked Hook. And Jumanji and 1 Hour Photo. I am not afraid to admit it. Why wouldn't anyone like it?

Re:Hook...

[Monkelectric]

Please do not besmearch 1 hour photo by placing it next to hook and jumanji in a sentence :)

Actually, I like hook alot (haven't seen jumanji), but they are mastrabatory (sp?) hollywood bullshit compared to the masterpiece that is 1 hour photo :)

Re:Hook...

[Zoshnell]

1 hour was a good ride, but the look of old Robin Williams at the end was kinda icky. No, very, very icky. I don't have to think of that with Hook or Jumanji, therefore I win. I think.

Re:Hook...

[Hooded One]

Are you kidding? I know many people who loved it. Then again, my friends tend to like really uncommon stuff, considering how many of us are avid Breath of Fire fans.

Still, Hook has it's cult following out there. I ought to see it again sometime.

Oh no, not the Hulk

[gilesjuk]

He ended up looking more like the Jolly Green Giant "Ho Ho Ho" :)

I've seen better...

[WIAKywbfatw]

Huh, forget about Ludivine Sagnier. Monica Bellucci's as Persephone had some amazing visual effects going on in Matrix Revolutions, definitely worthy of Oscar recognition.

Heck, forget about the Oscars, those babies deserve a pair of Golden Globe awards.

Re:I've seen better...

[flewp]

I already find her globes quite golden.

Re:I've seen better...

[Anonymous Coward]

How depressing... the person ripping off the OPs joke gets modded funny, while the original jokester gets insightful because no-one knew it was a joke.

Thanks USA, your not-a-joke-till-you're-slapped-in-the-face-with-it style is even dumbing down slashdot.

There is another category...

[El Camino SS]

Remember? They added animation into the categories, didn't they?

Pillsbury bake-off

[abe ferlman]

Doesn't Pillsbury have a trademark on the term bake-off?

Intellectual property hawks of the world, unite! Fight this outrage. SCO, are you listening?

HalfLife better than Matrix2

[emptybody]

The fight scene with the kagillion AgentSmiths looked like a poor version of HalfLife.
They were choppy, expressionless, flat images.

I expected to see something like the first Matrix Movie. I guess that is the curse of success. They made the first movie too well forcing the next two to suck.

However LotR may have broken that curse...

Re:HalfLife better than Matrix2

[Zathras11]

The fight was NOT that bad. You are picky!

Re:HalfLife better than Matrix2

[emptybody]

did you watch it on a large screen?
maybe the DVD made it look like crap.
But that was what I saw... crap.
They could have spent twice the time on the render and had it look at least twice as good.

robbIE wins illusion of stuff that matters award?

[Anonymous Coward]

just wait 'til the gnu dating service takes off?

robbIE serves US, right? (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 21, @08:53AM (#7778654)
after allowing/encouraging our owned domestic terrorist/payper liesense stock markup FraUD corepirate nazi softwar gangsters to attempt to take the whole wwworld as information/commerce hostages, to finance their greed/fear/ego based megalomania, it's not surprising that/how the wwworld is reacting.

BusinessWeak(tm) should have been reporting the fleecing of america, as well as the poteNTshill for wwworld reaction, at least 5 years ago.

lookout bullow. the ?pr? ?firms? are also preparing to 'outsource' the growing need for MiSleading hypenosys.

consult with/trust in yOUR creator... get ready to lighten up.

has anywon tried robbIE's gnu 'dating' service yet?

silly movies require silly awards

[fermion]

These awards shows are so silly. I don' believe they satisfy the reasons for awards, which is to make people try harder to create better things. How is nominating the Hulk anything but a advertising gimmick.

OTOH, such silliness provides good foder for the satiists. A few years ago there was an animation called Thugs on Film. One of the shows was an award show in which the Thugs went to Hollywood to give a best supporting award. The winner of the award was for Julia Roberts bra in Erin Brockovich for best supporting effect. This is an award show I would tune into.

Reloaded and Revolutions split the votes

[K8Fan]

The most likely possibility isn't that they deliberatley snubbed both Matrix films. Both were released in the same year, so some voted for one, some voted for the other, and neither got enough to get on the list. Probably a good reason not to release two films in the same year until the Academy changes their voting in some way that can more fairly acknowledge multi-part works.

Re:Reloaded and Revolutions split the votes

[bjhonermann]

That's what I was thinking as well. Back in '91 Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis were both up for best actress for Thelma & Louise but neither won because they split the vote. It happens with the Oscars.

Re:Reloaded and Revolutions split the votes

[daegol]

Rumor is that only Revolutions was submitted for consideration. So, no split vote possible.

Re:Reloaded and Revolutions split the votes

[malducin]

It was more than a rumor. It was reported somewhere (Hollywood Reporter, USA Today, can't remember for sure).

The requirements for submission might not have been met or submitted on time. Remember a few years ago when Pixar missed the deadline to submit one of their shorts? (For the Birds I think).

fucking lamer

[Anonymous Coward]

your joke sucked. give it up!!!!!

Pirates

[red floyd]

The battle scenes with all the pirates changing back and forth as they stepped in and out of the moonlight were excellently done. Doing that on a battle-sized scale is incredible.

Re:Pirates

[AndyBusch]

Thank you. I loved the movie for that reason. The timing was impeccable. ILM has partly atoned for their sins in Star Wars with that.

Re:Pirates

[rokzy]

but the couple ROTK scenes that involve the dead army contain almost everthing in Pirates.

while I liked Pirates, nothing about the effects really wowed me.

in ROTK, there are many great effects scenes, and the two where the Rohan rode into the orcs, and the dead army galloping across the sea into battle were amazing.

Re:Pirates

[red floyd]

It wasn't the army of the skeletons in Pirates, but the seamless changing back and forth in "real-time" (yes, I know it's not real-time) that got me.

Looked like a video game

[migstradamus]

I just watched "Reloaded" on DVD and was appalled by how obvious the CGI was in the big "army of Smith" fight scene. From all the cool "bullet time" photography and Hong Kong wire action we shifted to Street Fighter 6. It was a great looking video game, but it was still painfully obvious when they switched over. It's one thing for distant battle scene but when you are "close" enough to see facial expression, or lack thereof, it's just not cutting it. The faces were smoothed over and static.

Morpheus addressing Zion early on didn't convince either. It looked washed out and projected.

It probably didn't help that I just saw ROTK a few days ago on the big screen. I'm still amazed at how well that was done. There was barely a single moment of being distracted by obvious CGI even though it was far more ambitious than Reloaded. My suggestion, stay away from close-ups of human faces in CGI action sequences.

Even speech is still very tough. The only moments of CGI weakness in Gollum, who was staggeringly well done, were speaking close-ups, not action. So many muscles go into saying the letter "M" and it's a familiar look to every human (unlike leaping around on a mountain ledge).

Too bad

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the Matrix Reloaded had a number of very interesting set-peices, such as Trinity riding her bike -> explosion, Trinity falling out of the sky scraper, Trinity racing the superbike on the highway. These were executed flawlessly, and worth a mention.

It's hard to imagine how Reloaded was not included, unless the mass disappointment involved with the completion of the trilogy (dis)coloured the nominations.

Re:Too bad

[rokzy]

in Reloaded I loved the Burly Brawl. it's obviously flawed, but for me it has the same spirit as the original Matrix rooftop scene - pushing the effects to their limits in a way no one else has the balls to try (except now RotK).

I also love how they take "rules" and just disregard them, the simplicity/naivety is wonderful - someone fires a bullet; move out of the way - and in the Burly Brawl how his fighting is initially quite normal but by the end he's just moving his body in whatever way necessary to hit multiple targets, with no concern for gravity, balance, momentum....

I also thought the squids in Revolutions were fantastic - the way they swarmed like a fluid and how they made the face.

IMHO, Return of the King by a landslide

[BurKaZoiD]

I haven't even seen all three movies, only the first, and I was extremely impressed. No, I take that back; I was astounded. It made me think, and reinforced that thinking, since the Matrix final films were released: if the type of level of effects were possible in TT & ROTK, why was Matrix so, and everything else, so bad? In my opinion, it makes the Matrix a pop music phenomenon, and ROTK a classical masterpiece. At any rate, we'll certainly see how much Hollywood politics weighs in once the Oscar decision is announced.

The Thin Red Line

[Anonymous Coward]

The Thin Red Line is an excellent film. I'd say it's in the top three war films of all time. It took me more than one viewing before I could fully appreciate it. It's not a convential war film and doesn't have such a well defined plot but if you like films like Apocalypse Now and The Deer Hunter it's well worth watching.

Saving Private Ryan has it's faults, most notably the questionable story and the way it presents the D-Day operations as only involving US forces, but the Normandy landing scene at the begining is the best war scene ever filmed by anybody. The sound and the cinematography are awesome and it really conveys the total carnage on the beaches with soldiers being cut down by machine guns before they've even taken a single step onto the beach. The remainder of the film is competent but it never lives up to that amazing opening.

best visual == worst movie?

[Jacek Poplawski]

Is it list of best visual effects or worst movies in the year?

Re:best visual == worst movie?

[malducin]

That's the way you should judge this things: VFX regardless of story, etc.

rotk

[Anonymous Coward]

While Return of the King had some excellent FX scenes it had very poorly dones also, there were problems in "2d composition" especially in blue-screening.
I would put my vote on matrix reloaded. (for best Visual FX scenes)

LOTR - One movie, three parts

[Loonacy]

The Two Towers and Return of the King are technically not sequels. Tolkien wrote it all as one book, and only split it into three when his publishers told him they couldn't print a book that big.

Europe vs America

[Trurl's Machine]

I've read an interview with Wolfgang Becker - the German director of the "Good Bye, Lenin!" and there was a sentence I find +1 Insightful (with a slight tint of -1 Flamebait). Becker was asked about the CGI used in this film - whose large sequences take part in the pre-1989, communist East Berlin. Becker said that his film actually relies quite heavily on CGI just to remove all the contemporary signs of western capitalism in Berlin. When the journalist said that the CGI in this film is hard to notice, Becker said: "I am proud that the special effects in my film are hard to notice. Only in America the filmmakers are proud of special effects that are easy to notice".

Re:Europe vs America

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. Americans are fat and stupid, LOL!

Re:Europe vs America

[Overly Critical Guy]

In other words, he makes a dig at America for appreciating a good action shot. How "insightful."

You're damn right I enjoy noticable special effects. A lot of revolutionary movies in our history were noticable special effects. King Kong, anyone? That wasn't even American.

Re:Europe vs America

[Anonymous Coward]

What's he talking about? The HULK wasn't real!?

Re:Europe vs America

[utahjazz]

Only in America the filmmakers are proud of special effects that are easy to notice

Only in Europe is Europe known as "Everywhere except America".

Re:Europe vs America

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear pedantic Slashbots: If cable theft is stealing, why is MP3 downloading "infringement?" Face it; it's stealing

Cable theft is infringement, not stealing.

Re:Europe vs America

[Anonymous Coward]

I think Becker's actually making the point that the CG should serve the story, rather than the other way around, which is generally the Hollywood norm.

Let's not forget that the LOTR trilogy, the example most people here are touting as containing "appropriate" CG, had a Kiwi director and effects created by a New Zealand team. I wonder what ILM would've done if LOTR had been a George Lucas production - suffice to say that the thought of Jar Jar Gollum is not a pleasant one.

American movies and Hollywood's tendency to lay the CG on with a thick brush are nonetheless appreciated around the world, so I think it's a little touchy to regard Becker's comment as an anti-American view - just an anti-dumb-use-of-CG view.

Not that impressed by ROTK effects

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't get me wrong, I loved the movie and am a long-time Tolkien fan.

But, the effects in "Master and Commander" were far more polished, integrated, and all-in-all believable than most of the effects in ROTK.

Maybe I watch movies with too keen an eye, but there are at least a dozen instances in ROTK where the effects mesh so poorly with the surrounding terrain, or characters, that it knocks out my suspension of disbelief. There are no such moments in "Master and Commander".

Gollum is great but is a far cry from perfect. Much like with "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?", his character works well enough with the story that the obvious falsity doesn't really matter... but that doesn't mean we've entered the virtual actor era. Gollum is a spiffy cartoon, but still a cartoon.

I understand that sentimentalism will make ROTK the overwhelming geek favorite for every category it's nominated for, but in this case I don't think it's deserving.

Best Supporting Actor, Best Adaptation, though, I'm all for ROTK. Though it doesn't really matter... the Oscars are usually meaningless except to bolster DVD sales or the careers of those who receive them. But in LOTR's case they are especially meaningless as LOTR does not need its DVD sales bolstered and the movies have made so much money that the careers of all involved are secure, Oscar or not.

Whoah Oscars again

[vijaya_chandra]

I hadn't seen any other movies on the list but the matrix sequels, so I donno how the special effects were in the other movies.

forget the final award but not even a nomination for Revolutions?!?! Whoah

To my knowledge the wachowskis had to send only Revolutions for the Oscar nominations ( Yohooo the Academy has some rules/guidelines too )
May be the ppl who decide the nominations had thought that there aren't visual effects other than the super brawl at the ending.

For their benefit i'll try to list down a few

i) The opening sequence
ii) The hovercrafts and all the places they move along ( mostly tunnels )
iii) Smiths, smiths and more smiths with the oracle, seraph and sati
iv) The Dock with the APUs and whatever other structures
v) The fight with the swarms of sentinels and the diggers
vi) The surface with the earth with those huge guarding machines churning out the squiddy bombs (sry this fool doesn't know what they're called), the sentinels again, the breeding fields, neo's orange vision and the machine city
vii) the super brawl

( Note : The next poster can do all these things on his pc with maya or 3dsmax )

Flame me but I guess all these as a whole deserve atleast a nomination.

But who "really" cares for an oscar??

which finally brings us to the question that drives us
what is reality??

Re:I let this particular parody get to me ....

[glwtta]

If The Matrix 2-3 aren't nominated for an Oscar then we'll know that Hollywood has finally lost its last shred of credibility.

I thought that might be one tiny step to gaining some sort of credibility.

Seriously, did you not notice that the FX in Reloaded and Revolutions (especially Reloaded) just plain sucked? I mean, there are more realistic looking video games out there, for gods' sake.

by far not the worst

[Anonymous Coward]

In 2000, Russel Crowe wins best actor for Gladiator. It isn't even a better work than his work in L.A. Confidential or The Insider (which was the previous year!). Russel seems to win a "makeup" award for The Insider.

But, as Crowe is picking up the Oscar for Gladiator, Denzel Washington is getting ignored for his excellent work in "The Hurricane".

So, what happens in 2001, Denzel Washington wins Best Actor for his lousy work in a lousy movie, "Training Day". Notably, he beats out Crowe's better (if not hackneyed) work in "A Beautiful Mind".

The Academy works in mysterious ways. Ignoring good performances (and pictures) and rewarding people for bad work as a make up for the past.

And then of course, there's Halle Berry's insipid 2001 acceptance speech.

Re:by far not the worst

[Perky_Goth]

yah, i thought Berry's speech way way unnacessary. What the hell was she talking about?
A speech on how to stand up for what you are... in a movie where there's an extremely graphic and unnacessary sex scene. Right... Sorry, Halle, you were saying?
For the 15min i saw of the movie before getting bored, she won the award for having a great body and doing the sex scene. Feel free to contradict me, i would very much like it...

The Thin Red Line was terrible

[Anonymous Coward]

The Thin Red Line was a boring disaster.

And Saving Private Ryan was no great shakes either. Realistic depiction of gore doesn't really stand the test of time. Technology continually adds more realism. It's the art that counts.

I agree Elizabeth was good, but I think I'd take Shakespeare in love over it too.

I'll take Three Kings over The Thin Red line and Saving Private Ryan any day of the week. Just like Platoon won more awards than Full Metal Jacket, the best movie isn't always the most famous, most rewarded or best.

Hulk ???

[Tom]

Hulk made the list?

It had the most blatantly obvious CGI ever. I know a few stop-motion movies from the 1940s that look more "real".

Yes, I know it's a comic adaption. The problem is that everything in the movie is trimmed to look real. Neither the tanks nor the guns, soldiers, streets, etc. are "comic styled". Only that green monsters stands out so obviously as CGI that any suspension of disbelief requires a massive dose of illegal drugs.

Have they seen the movie, or do they go by box-office numbers?

Reloaded FYI

[fireteller2]

Matrix Reloaded was not entered for Oscar consideration to avoid the two movies competing against each other.

Matrix Revolutions was the only one in consideration for the long list.

It's exclusion from the list in favor of T3 is very odd to me, as a visual effects professional. "Revolutions" was clearly superior in number and quality of effects. IMHO

fire

The Matrix

[Daimaou]

In my opinion, the Matrix could have easily been snubbed by Looney Tunes: Back in Action.

POTC wins on spirit not force

[Slowtreme]

Of the movies listed Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl is a clear winner for new and seemless use of visual effects. The way they show the cursed pirates moving in and out of the moonlight for almost the entire movie (and it not being really noticable till the end) was a fantasic visual treat.

The LOTR effects are always present and IN YOUR FACE, as with most of the other movies listed. While the matrix films require these effects just to exist, they pretty much stunk as stories and I hope they get panned.

best visual effects

[superfast-scooter]

the new(?) "slashdot personals" ad from match.com on ./

I hope not.

[Inoshiro]

Jurassic Park was a plotless piece of tripe crap about not messing with nature, wrapped around special effects that were trying to make up for the lack of plot.

At least Tolkien has a story.

Re:I hope not.

[catbutt]

But isn't the special effects award for special effects, not plot?

I agree that Jurassic Park had a kind of stupid plot, but I felt that my money was well spent for the effects alone. I mean, the Mona Lisa doesn't have much of a plot, but apparently people still like to look at it.

Undeserving Matrix.

[supabeast!]

I cannot see how one can think that the Matrix sequels were snubbed. Neither broke any new ground in the CGI field, they simply had a whole lot of unimpressive and obvious CGI scenes and characters, something that didn't really impress anyone when ILM did it in the last two Star Wars movies. It wasn't that the effects in the Matrix Movies were bad, just that they did not deserve any reward, as opposed to the other movies, which, with the exception of "The Hulk," all broke new ground with incredible new effects, or in the case of RoTK, took existing effects to even greater levels than ever seen before without failing to look convincing.

Re:Undeserving Matrix.

[Jackie_Chan_Fan]

As a professional 3d character animator, I cant beleive how many people here dislike The Hulk and disreguard its accomplishments. The Hulk is one of the most complex 3d characters to date. The simulation in skin/muscle behavior alone has broke new ground. (While skin and muscle systems have been put to use before, none have ever attempted the complexity that is the hulk) Gollum vs The Hulk. Its an unfair comparison. Both characters serve different on screen purposes. The Hulk is a big green, muscle flexing, shit smashing giant, while the other is tight shot, up close, facially expressive actor who needs to deliver lines with its face in full frame. Any 3D Character Animator will tell you that there's no single 3d character rig that will live up to all of the scenarios on screen. Factor in things like time, and priorities... such a system if possible, would still not be utilized due to the huge amount of work required to do it. The HULK is state of the art, as is gollum. Both in different ways. We've come so far from Jurassic Park 1, The Abyss, etc... But while 3D technology is complex and amazing, it still is just a fake. Its all Fake. Look at how complex the human body is, the way it behaves in light, the finest of details, the muscles, the internal structure, bones, organs, cells, etc. In 3D we're just working with polygons or bspline surfaces. The most complex of muscle systems/simulations are still just fake hacks. They're difficult, odd, they break, they break other things, they make things behave oddly, but if you get it just right... it works. We walk that fine line between solution and complete failure. The solutions in 3D character animation are not perfect, they are far from it. The Hulk represents the BEST of todays technology and artistry. And if you disagree, Maybe you should look at some old Ray Harrihuasen(sp?) films. I dont mean to take a thing away from Gollum. Weta Digital did a SHIT fucking hot job on him and I know the motion capture director of Gollum. And i am so proud of what he and that team have accomplished. It is by far the best on screen digital actor that we've seen yet. But it does not mean that the HULK is any less of an accomplishment.

Re:Undeserving Matrix.

[supabeast!]

What you're missing here is that, regardless of how cutting-edge it was, the CGI in "The Hulk" looked (IMHO) horrible. As George Lucas has learned from the overall negative reaction to his overuse of cutting edge CGI in Star Wars episodes I and II, just because one can do something does not mean that one should do something.

Re:Undeserving Matrix.

[Jackie_Chan_Fan]

Dont assume i missed anything.

Thats not wat i was saying. What you say is very true. But i was responding to the person saying that the Hulk wasnt an accomplishment.

And Lucas's negative response to the Star Wars prequels has NOTHING to do with the FX. The FX are dead on.

Anyone who complains about the FX is merely missing the point. Which is that LUCAS cant direct.

The problem with the prequels is the foundation. The CAST is terrible as is the script. George's obessesion with the cute, rather than the meat and potatos is the problem with the Prequels.

IF ANYTHING.. The FX was the one thing Lucas got right.

Smith punch in Matrix Revolutions

[Overly Critical Guy]

I agree that ROTK has surpassed the Matrix movies, but Revolutions should have at least gotten a nod.

Gollum may be the most well-done CG-character, the most realistic CG human face goes to Matrix Revolutions. Why? Well, you remember when, in the crater, Neo punches Smith in the face in slow-motion, and you see the effects of the punch in Smith's face, his skin rippling, etc?

Nothing in that shot was real. It was all CG.

Also, you have to at least give a nod to the siege of Zion sequence. It was pretty intense in the moment. Over all, Revolutions should have been given a chance. There was a lot of great CG, from the Sentinel siege, to the shot I described, to the explosion of the street when Smith slams Neo into it, and so on.

Still, ROTK should and will win.

Re:Smith punch in Matrix Revolutions

[KewlPC]

That shot looked horrifically fake. The audience groaned when they saw it.

Also, it should be noted that Warner Bros. didn't even submit Reloaded for a VFX award. They didn't want the votes to be split between Reloaded and Revolutions.

Re:Smith punch in Matrix Revolutions

[Overly Critical Guy]

"The audience" cheered at both the showings I went to, as well as in all the early camrips.

I doubt anybody actually groaned at yours.

Re:Smith punch in Matrix Revolutions

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually when I went people didn't groan until the end. Overall the plot sucked, but amazing visuals. Reloaded was far better and of course the first was the best.

Re:Smith punch in Matrix Revolutions

[Anonymous Coward]

I doubt anybody actually groaned at yours

You're right, they were too busy laughing at the ridiculous, cheesy dialogue.

And yes, that scene looked utterly fake. Deal with it, fanboy.

Re:Smith punch in Matrix Revolutions

[zentigger]

Dear pedantic Slashbots: If cable theft is stealing, why is MP3 downloading "infringement?" Face it; it's stealing

Ah, you see, your logical fallacy here is a faulty premise. You have fallen prey to the cable company's propaganda stating that so called "cable theft" is stealing.

Let's review:

The basic legal definition of theft is 'the dishonest appropriation of property belonging to another with the intention of permanently depriving that person of it'. Put simply this means, taking someone else's property intending that it will not be returned. There needs to be an element of dishonesty. If someone believes they have a right to take property or the owner would have consented this could mean that a theft has not been committed.

In the case of cable or mp3, since there is no tangible object of which the "owner" can be permanently deprived, there cannot be a theft. Plain and simple.

Re:Smith punch in Matrix Revolutions

[Perky_Goth]

don't feed the trolls...
yeah, his sig pisses me to no end, but what the hell... he's acting like an ignorant because he wants to.

Re:Smith punch in Matrix Revolutions

[zentigger]

I dunno, feeding trolls gives me that warm fuzzy feeling like feeding the squirrels in the park...They quickly begin to trust you enought that it's easy to snatch 'em and wring their scrawny little necks!

*EG*

Final Destination 2

[pongo000]

So much CGI looks so...fake. I like to be able to suspend belief when I'm at a movie. It's too bad something that's realistically rendered, like the crash scene in FD2, isn't included. I believe these awards tend to reward quantity over quality, and certainly don't reflect the quality of "realism."

Of course, most of FD2 sucked. But the crash scene was well worth the cost of rental.

Visual effects is NOT CG

[moosesocks]

Let me get this off of my head at once:

Visual effects are NOT necessarily computer-generated images.

Sure, the Matrix movies had tons of CG, but were lacking in the more 'traditional' effects department. The sets weren't up to par, costuming was unoriginal, and there were no new cinematic techniques which actually added to the film. In fact, the effects were incredibly obvious.

On the other hand, ROTK did not rely exclusively on computers, and built scale-models, and used 'old-fashioned' camera techniques such as forced perspective which was brilliantly used to make the hobbits appear 3 feet tall - not once during all 3 films did I dobut that they were actually 3 feet tall. Lighting was perfect, and the times where WETA resorted to CG were perfect (read: Gollum).

I hope this is a lesson to future filmmakers not to over-use computers in film production. The old-fashioned stuff looks so much better!

Re:Visual effects is NOT CG

[malducin]

A lot of the work in the Matrix sequels was actually miniatures, particularly the Zion shots. Just check out the credits for all the modelmakers. And they did have quite a bit of innovation, check George Borushkov's website for his SIGGRAPH documentation:

http://www.virtualcinematography.org/

You would find that most of the VFX bake-off finalists used miniatures in some quantity:

X2: the dam exteriors for example.
Pirates of the Caribbean: ships were miniatures for the most part.
Master and Commander: also quite a bit of ship miniatures.
Hulk: miniature Redwood forest, building the explodes, parts of the desert vistas and canyons, etc.
T3: the particle accelerator,most of the future war sequences.
Peter Pan: at least some of the ships were miniatures, but the movie hasn't opened yet, next Cinefex will have more details.

Also you'll be surprised at other stuff in LOTR. Not all was forced perspective, there were instances where actors were filmed separately (blue screen mostly) and resized and recomposited back in.

You would find most decent VFX supervisors and directors (like those represented in these 7 finalists), know when to use the most appropiate techniques. Old fashioned stuff doesn't always look better, take the sometimes not well scaled miniature water during the flooding of Isengard. It's a matter of when to use and combine which techniques checked against time and money constraints. Many of the supervisors of these 7 films (Richrd Hollander, Mike Fink, Dennis Muren, Scott Farrar, Richard Taylor, Jim Rygiel) have over 15, 20 years of professional VFX experience.

Re:Visual effects is NOT CG

[KewlPC]

Visual effects != special effects. Special effects are effects done on the set. Visual effects are effects done in post production. The VFX Oscar has nothing to do with things like the quality of the sets (unless the sets are CG or models added in post).

If Lucas had filmed the LOTR trilogy...

[Overly Critical Guy]

Scenes that Peter Jackson filmed on set or using a miniature, like Helm's Deep, Minas Tirith, and even Hobbiton, would all be blue-screened, plastic crap. For instance, instead of building two versions of Bag-End to make the actors scale right, Lucas would just film absolutely everything with blue-screens and scale the scenery when he put it all together. Meanwhile, nobody looks like they're really on Coruscant, but our heroes look like they're really in Gondor or Mordor or Bag-End.

Gollum would probably also be funny and cute (not in the creepy way he already is) and would do flips while yelling like Tarzan before jumping into the Forbidden Pool!

For Lucas to say that is the most blatant sign of how out-of-touch he is about his visual effects that I've ever seen.

Matrix NSnub NOT!

[sciop101]

Nothing new in the last (pray last!) 2 Matrix movies! Old effects, old characters, old backgrounds, old dialog! No innovation = no recognition! Maybe Battlefield Earth will be nominated for dialog!

warning: long sentence

[Anonymous Coward]

hi, thanks. i am registered but posted anon 'cos i'm scared of losing my karma with OT posts when i go into "rant about thing i love" mode :p

i can't get a handle on what's judged "off topic" on slashdot at all.

Re:warning: long sentence

[K8Fan]

Karma goes up, karma goes down. Personally, I never moderate "off-topic" when I'm pulling jury duty (aka moderation). It's a waste of the points, as far as I'm concerned. I'm much more interested in promoting worthwhile posts.

If you only compare ROTK to Matrix Reloaded

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course the comparison will come off good.

This isn't a binary race... compare it to Master and Commander instead. In a fair comparison with all things equal I think M&C wins hands down.

Re:Pixar Renderman: antialiasing

[Boss Sauce]

Pixar didn't take lightly to this. They launched a lawsuit against Exluna saying they were violating certain patents they held regarding some antialiasing algorithms. Never mind that the renderer was far more advanced and was a complete drop in replacement for Pixar's competing product. This was a straight up ploy to get rid of the competition.

This oversimplifies the dispute between Pixar and Exluna as I understand it. Antialiasing algorithms are NOT TRIVIAL. This stuff is used in nuclear engineering (Efficient Light Propagation for Multiple Anisotropic Volume Scattering for details). Building efficient systems to solve these sampling problems is quite a large task. When some in-the-know folks passed between Pixar and Exluna (BMRT), and antialiasing subsequently improved at Exluna, Pixar said "hey wait a second..."

Apart from that, renderers are not a huge business, but GPU's are-- I bet the Exluna/BMRT folks will end up doing fine.

Tweaked Gollum

[Overly Critical Guy]

I noticed a visual improvement in Gollum, and I've sinced learned that they tweaked his skin and joints since the last movie. For instance, when he wakes up, you can see his lips sticking together when he opens them, like real lips would. His facial animation is also much more realistic and natural. My favorite shot is when he and the two hobbits are hiding and peering over at Minas Morgul.

Also, I noticed a shot of a Warg that looked much, much better than those of The Two Towers (even in the audio commentary, Peter Jackson points out that they don't sit well in the shot, because they were rushed CG at the last moment...seems a lot of vital CG was rushed in that movie).

I know most people despise special releases of movies as per Lucas, but in this case, I really am hoping for a special box set release in maybe 2005 (or perhaps when The Hobbit gets made into film), so that Peter Jackson has the opportunity to go back and perfect all the old effects shots that don't quite work. As cool as the Ent battle was, it looks a little off. Also, a few shots of Gollum come to mind (like his closeup during Sam's speech in Osgiliath...he looks horrible...and over all, he could use a little more mass and weight, a little too bouncy). And he has mentioned in the past that he'd like to go back and put the final rendition of Gollum into Fellowship of the Ring.

Imagine if all the old effects shots were re-rendered using the latest technology, so that Gollum, Ents, Wargs, and even Balrogs looked even more realistic than they already did. Particularly the Ents, which I thought could have been more "treeish." They seemed just a little too plastic. Some cleanup could be done on the water effects and the destruction of Isengard. And maybe Galadriel's transformation in the first film could be redone into something better (mostly so that you can hear what the hell she's saying and understand what is going on...the over-the-top vocal effect drowns it all out).

So, I really do hope for a "Super Special Extended Edition" for these movies someday, maybe even in super-high-resolution format like the recent T2 DVD offers. I'd gladly shell out.

RE: The Hulk

[King_TJ]

Yeah, what's with that?? The Hulk struck me (and my wife, who's not even all that much of a computer graphics conniseur) as, well, crappy CGI. It looked like they overlaid him on top of a projected backdrop most of the time, and he wasn't believable as part of the scene at all.

Having watched Matrix Reloaded 3 times now on DVD, I'd still say I considered the f/x as at least "excellent quality". The person nit-picking about the faces in the Smith fight scene is paying a little too much attention to small details, IMHO. If it looked a little bit "computer-generated", it's the perfect movie to have that "problem" anyway!

Not surprised

[Jesus IS the Devil]

Am I the only one that thought the special effects in Matrix Revolutions wasn't that great? Every time they're about to put on a fight, they "magically" put on the sunglasses, and have those big overcoats/suits on. Some may think that's done to make them look "cool", but to me, it's just a way to cheat on the CG scenes. Facial expressions and hard to get right. Having characters with glasses and no facial expressions really makes it a piece of cake.

And the fight scenes between the machines and the humans, that was good, but can't even come close to the LOTR ones.

There is no such award!

[Snaller]

Mostly because Hollywood aims at very young people (whom the think have a lot of money) and that group apparently likes mostly flat chested girls with bodies like 12 year old boys :)

No, its not a troll, its just a theory based on the number of times when someone on ther internet yells "look at those big breasts" and then the person in question hasn't really got any. The excitement of young age probably, i still remmeber how the slashdotters freaked out last year when they could see a nibble on that girl from Spiderman - perhaps that's why they think its such a fantastic movie.

Re: The Hulk

[malducin]

The bake-off finalists are picked by a group of pros (the VFX Branch) many of whom have over 20 years of experience.

Actually you also provide the counter-argument "not even all that much of a computer graphics conniseur". Maybe there the fact that most people can't recognize good CG or VFX apart from the bad ones. I see many ntimes personal feelings interefere. There is also stuff like the psychology of perception. Just because something looks unnantural or you know it's CG doesn't mean it looks like bad CG. Renders of the hulk in black and white look eerily nreal, and I saw tests of the Hulk with a regular human skin shader applied that looked amazing. Seems most people don't know about good VFX. Try to read up on it in Cinefex. Maybe the pros know something more than average joe moviegoer ;-).

I predict the Hulk will also get quite a few nominations at the Visual Effects Society awards.

mod parent up, insightful

[Artifex]

Awardees are (theoretically) judged on their actual films, not on their trailers. Thanks for letting those of us who didn't see the movie know that the actual effects were much better than we imagined.

Re:Pixar Renderman: antialiasing

[KewlPC]

First off, let me just note that virtually all of the major VFX companies use Pixar's RenderMan implementation (called PhotoRealistic RenderMan, or PRman for short) for rendering their 3D animations. It is extremely flexible and, having been in use at Pixar and other studios for over a decade, extremely reliable. It can also handle extremely complex scenes in a relatively efficient manner. But it can't do raytracing or global illumination without utilizing dirty hacks where PRman uses another renderer (such as BMRT) as "ray server", letting the other renderer do the raytracing. Anyway, on with the story. There may be some slight inaccuracies, but to the best of my knowledge the following is true.

Back in the mid-90s, a guy named Larry Gritz wrote a RenderMan-compliant renderer called BMRT (Blue Moon Render Tools) that could do raytracing and global illumination. BMRT was made freely available (though closed source) over the internet. He was eventually hired by Pixar to work on their own RenderMan implementation called PhotoRealistic RenderMan (PRman for short). This, if memory serves, was around the the same time that Pixar was working on A Bug's Life.

Eventually, Larry Gritz left Pixar, and he and a few other people started Exluna. You see, Larry had managed to keep the copyright to BMRT while he worked at Pixar, and he intended to use BMRT (which, while producing film-quality images, was very slow and buggy) as the basis for a new, production-quality Renderman renderer called Entropy.

When it came out, Entropy got a lot of attention from VFX people. Not only did it cost less that PRman (something like $5000 per CPU for PRman vs $1700 per CPU for Entropy), it could do more. You could turn off Entropy's raytracing and global illumination if they were too slow for your liking or if you didn't need them, but the fact that they were available if you wanted/needed them (and you didn't have to do any ugly hacks to enable them) made a lot of people take a long, hard look at Entropy. Since Entropy was RenderMan-compliant, it was basically a drop-in replacement for PRman (as others have mentioned).

Throw into the mix the fact that Pixar was no longer the only major contender in the computer animated feature business. DreamWorks had done two successful computer animated features (although they used Pixar's PRman to do the rendering). BlueSky Studios was doing a computer animated feature called Ice Age, had their own proprietary renderer (CGI Studio), and unlike Pixar's PRman, it could also do raytracing and global illumination (it isn't RenderMan compliant from what I've heard, though, but that doesn't matter since CGI Studio isn't commercially available). BlueSky's renderer was also production-proven, having been used on various BlueSky projects since somewhere around 1996 (BlueSky used it to do the CG aliens in Alien: Resurrection in 1997, for example).

Facing serious competition in both the computer animated feature business and in the renderer licensing business for the first time, Pixar was probably getting nervous. So, they did the natural thing: bring out the lawyers. Since Exluna's founders were ex-Pixar employees, that gave Pixar everything they needed to file a lawsuit (albeit a shaky one) against Exluna.

The dispute, according to Pixar, was over trade secrets and a (bogus) software patent issue. I don't remember the exact details, but it was over some Pixar-held patent for a technology that Entropy didn't even use. The official response from Exluna, as posted on their website during the lawsuit, follows:

To our valued customers, partners, and supporters,

You are probably aware that Pixar Animation Studios has filed a lawsuit against Exluna, Inc. claiming infringement of a patent covering pseudorandom point sampling techniques for computer graphics (US patent 4,897,806).

There is no merit to the claim. As anyone who has used our Entropy product knows, our software uses a proprietary antialiasing method that does not involve poin

T3 WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

hmmm..

yeah i cant say i totally agree with this list..

LOTR: yep, definitely. (although having worked on it i am a little biased)

Pirates: hmm well the skeliton stuff was pretty impressive, even if it wasnt to my taste

Hulk: i have to disagree with a lot of people here... i thought there was a lot of quality work in this. I think the way hulk ran and jumped was fucking stupid... but.. i think they did some good work on a bad idea..

Master and Commander: again.. all quality work (but easy on the light wrap in the cabin scenes lads)

T3: no fucking way, this does not deserve to be here. this more than anything else is just the same old same old..

Matrix: this really should have been on the list. i know the movie had issues. but there were some great shots in there..
i think whoever said that the issue was the votes being split over 2 movies was right.
the burly brawl (whilst not perfect) was new and was cool.. the scene where neo is flying to catch falling trinity was fantastic.. the dock scene was fucking amazing (bar maybe the slightly overstated tracer fire)..... the final brawl was nice... not everything in matrix was perfect but it was a damn sight more interesting and groundbreaking than the work in T3

MOD PARENT DOWN!!!! No SPOILER WARNING

[Anonymous Coward]

you bastard, that was a bloody spoiler!!!

Already been done...

[whynotme]

They did mess up the lighting at least once -- in the final scene at the top of Minas Tirith -- the hobbits looked like they had been added to the scene using ColorForms technology.

Re:Pixar Renderman: antialiasing

[Anonymous Coward]

From what I've heard, Pixar has been known for bogus patents. They recieved a patent related to a SIGRRAPH 2001 paper on soft shadows of translucent volumes, when they knew that a very similar technique had been in use at PDI for a while.

We all know that the patent office is full of crap, and wouldn't know prior art if it was shoved up their very deserving asses, but it's quite low of Pixar to take advantage of that.

Mention another cinematic industry...

[jotaeleemeese]

.... in which what he says is not true.

Who cares? You do.

[jotaeleemeese]

Otherwise you would not be doing such a detailed apology of such shitty films.

What actually happened to Matrix III: MOD THIS UP!

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

This shortlist is decided by a committee. That committee is drawn from the visual effects industry and of course that includes people from Lucasfilm. In fact, as the largest employer in the visual effects business is Lucasfilm (more specifically ILM) this committee was dominated by people from that company.

Note some facts: (1) no visual effects work on Matrix II & III was given to ILM (2) John Gaeta, overall effects supervisor for Matrix II & III made this statement: I've heard the 'Star Wars' people boast about shooting frames that are 97 percent digital, and lo and behold, the movies are soulless...They traded the whole idea of depth in filmmaking for this supertechnological hype. It helped us focus our own philosophy: the story drives everything. as well as other public attacks on George Lucas. (3) John Gaeta surprisingly won the Oscar, instead of ILM, in 1999 and (4) 5 out of the 7 movies that were 'longlisted' were ILM productions.

It should now be clear exactly what happened.

As a result the academy, as a whole (or even the visual effects chapter), don't even get a chance to consider Revolutions.

Of course this scheming is all to no avail as ILM won't be taking home an Oscar this year either...