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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."
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.
Make me a friend and I'll mod you up
As I recall, critics were saying the only redeeming quality of the last matrix was its visual effects... Nice mood swing.
That just proves that this whole thing is a sham.
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?
Trolling is a art,
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...
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.
Owner of a Mensa membership card.
Ludivine Sagnier has the nicest pair of visual effects I've ever seen.
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?
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!
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!"
I'm a dreamer, the world is my playpen. But hey, I'm a serious person, I can't dream all the time.
Anyways, I think it's cool they nominated a movie whose visual effects were subtle but convincing.
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
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?
getSexySig();
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.
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.
David Whatley
Hows that it is an amazing mistake - Its the best foilm inanimation this season ! LOTR is cool but...
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.
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.
He ended up looking more like the Jolly Green Giant "Ho Ho Ho" :)
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.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
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
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
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
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
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.
"How perfectly Goddamn delightful it all is, to be sure" Charles Crumb
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.
The only reason we have the rights we have is that people just like us died to gain those rights. -- Cheerio Boy
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).
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.
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".
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.
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.
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??
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
In my opinion, the Matrix could have easily been snubbed by Looney Tunes: Back in Action.
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.
"Sufferin' succotash."
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.
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!
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
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.
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.
"Sufferin' succotash."
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: