Movies and Meaning- Pearson New International Edition
Page 48
Lucas had three objectives. He wanted a nonlin-
sequel, Return of the Jedi , used only a small amount
ear editing system that could speed up the work of
of digital animation to simulate graphics displays.
editing, a complementary system for digitally pro-
Lucas shot the next set of Star Wars movies on
cessing and mixing sound, and a digital film printer
high definition video. The Phantom Menace (1999)
to replace existing optical printers. There was no
originated partly on film because high speed
point in developing computer graphics unless the
HD video needed for effects work wasn’t yet vi-
results could be scanned to film for exhibition.
able. Lucas persuaded Sony to build a customized
Although digital effects were not part of Lucas’
hi-def camera for his needs, and using the Sony
original vision, the effects created by the artists at
HDW-F900, Lucas shot all of Episode II in the second
his company, Industrial Light and Magic (ILM),
trilogy, Attack of the Clones (2002), on HD video.
became widely identified with the filmmaker as
He used an improved version of Sony’s camera on
his primary influence on cinema. In light of this,
the next installment, Revenge of the Sith (2005). In
ironically, Lucas was relatively slow to incorporate
doing so, he demonstrated for the industry the vi-
digital effects into his own films. Star Wars (1977)
ability of digital capture. Capturing images digitally
included a brief 3D computer graphic visualizing
facilitated effects work because there was no need
the planned attack on the Death Star. The other
to scan from film to digital video.
computer screens shown in the film display hand-
In the meantime, ILM became an industry pow-
animated graphics. The innovative computer work
erhouse in the area of visual effects, producing work
on Star Wars lay not in digital effects but in motion
for Lucas’ films and for many other filmmakers.
control cinematography. A computer-controlled
Steven Spielberg had planned to make Jurassic Park
camera made multiple, exactly repeatable passes,
as he did Jaws , with animatronic models. But the
photographing miniature models numerous times
artists at ILM convinced him that it was possible to
to create the image layers needed for a composite.
do the dinosaurs digitally, and although Spielberg
On The Empire Strikes Back (1980), ILM considered
retained some animatronics in the film, it was the
using CGI to animate an X-wing fighter, but in the
digital dinosaurs that made the movie a must-see
end the film contained no computer graphics. The
event for audiences. ILM’s work on Jurassic Park
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Visual Effects
persuaded Hollywood that digital visual effects
Lucas returned to directing, and to his Star Wars
would henceforth be a vital part of contemporary
project, with The Phantom, Menace (1999), Attack of
film.
the Clones (2002) and Revenge of the Sith (2005). He
Following Star Wars , Lucas stepped out of the
believes that celluloid film is now a relic of history and
director’s chair and turned his attention to getting
that the medium will be moving in an all-digital di-
ILM and his production company, Lucasfilm, into
rection. Through ILM, Lucas has exerted a profound
good financial condition and to producing films for
influence over visual effects in contemporary film.
other directors. In this capacity, he oversaw comple-
And in the mix of adventure, fantasy and visual ef-
tion, and co-wrote, the other two films in the trilogy
fects he perfected in Star Wars , he helped shape the
( The Empire Strikes Back , 1980; Return of the Jedi ,
very definition of a Hollywood blockbuster.
1983) and each of the three Indiana Jones films di-
There is no denying the enormous popular ac-
rected by his pal Steven Spielberg ( Raiders of the Lost
ceptance of his work or its trend-setting importance
Ark , 1981; Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom ,
for mainstream filmmaking. Lucas’s digital paradigm
1984; and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade , 1989).
is, in all probability, the future of cinema. ■
THE DIGITAL ERA
In the 1960s and 1970s, a tremendous amount of research conducted at universities and corporate and government laboratories focused on computer graphics (CG), the creation and display of pictures in computers. Research scientists and visual artists had to learn how to simulate the properties of light and how to model solids, liquids and gases and spatial relationships among them in ways that would be convincing and would look naturalistic. These were extremely difficult tasks, and as they were solved computer graphics became increasingly photorealistic.
Computer graphics began appearing in feature films in small ways in Westworld (1973) and Future World (1976) and then more significantly in Tron (1982), Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982), The Last Starfighter (1984), Young Sherlock Holmes (1985), The Abyss (1989), Terminator 2 (1991), and Death Becomes Her (1992). But the jury was still out, as far as the film industry was concerned. Many of these movies performed poorly at the box office, and it was not yet clear that digital effects could make a real difference for a film’s box-office success.
With its $1 billion global box-office gross, Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park (1993) became the film that showed the industry the financial and creative potentials of digital effects. Jurassic Park’s digital dinosaurs were more vivid than any prehistoric beasts seen on screen before, and Spielberg brilliantly blended old and new effects techniques. There are only about 50 digital effects shots in the film, and most scenes with dinosaurs blend the digital beasts with animatronic models (a model that is motorized and moves) and old-fashioned man-in-a-monster-suit performers. In many shots, Spielberg subliminally shifts among the suited performers, the models and the digital creatures, and unless a viewer knows exactly what to look for, the changes remain invisible.
Jurassic Park ushered in a new generation of digital effects that gave filmmakers an expanded toolbox for designing images. Digital tools did not alter the role of visual effects in cinema; instead, filmmakers used digital tools to build on and further develop existing stylistic traditions.
313
Visual Effects
JURASSIC PARK (UNIVERSAL, 1993)
ILM’s dinosaurs re-defined the nature of visual effects by taking them into the digital domain in ways that electrified audiences and made the Hollywood industry take note.
It wasn’t the first digital effects film, but it was the most important. The digital dinosaurs co-exist on screen with animatronic models and performers in dinosaur costumes. Steven Speilberg brilliantly combined digital and non-digital effects tools in ways that were largely seamless and invisible. Frame enlargement.
Digital composites replaced optical printers. Rather than photographing image elements on an optical printer to create a blend, digital composites worked directly on pixels and blended image layers by transforming pixels. A matted object could be produced, for example, by adding or subtracting pixels in an image. Digital rendering replaced optical printing. Rendering is the process during which a synthetic digital image is created from the files and dat
a that an artist has assembled. Multi-pass compositing creates a final, rendered image from separate operations carried out upon different image layers. Multi-pass compositing had been carried out on optical printers. Some of the optical printer effects shots in Return of the Jedi were so complex that they required more than a hundred passes.
But doing multiple passes digitally allows for much greater precision and control of image elements. A depth pass can be carried out on the Z-depth channel to manipulate focus and depth of field. A specular pass controls the size and positioning of specular highlights (shiny surfaces). An ambient pass builds general, directionless levels of light in the environment. An ambient occlusion pass generates soft shadows.
A beauty pass builds the shot with its greatest levels of color and detail. Unlike optical printing, digital passes introduce no image degradation. Everything remains first generation in visual quality.
Moreover, importing images to an electronic realm makes them infinitely variable. Digital tools can simulate many features of camera perspective and lighting, and all-CG films, such as WALL-E, can be given a specific photographic look. Andrew Stanton, WALL-E’s director, wanted the movie to look as if it had been shot as a 1970s-era sci-fi movie in anamorphic widescreen. The images were digitally rendered, 314
Visual Effects
FORREST GUMP (PARAMOUNT, 1994)
In the wake of Jurassic Park , digital effects assumed a new importance for feature filmmaking. The digital erasure of actor Gary Sinise’s lower legs, so that he could play a paraplegic Vietnam veteran, became a famous and much talked-about effect when the film was released. Many viewers knew this was a digital effect, but this knowledge did not undermine the credibility of the images. The filmmakers believed strongly that the effect brought them closer to a realistic style than had been the case in past films where an actor playing a paraplegic would hide a limb in costume. Frame enlargement.
therefore, to emulate many of the characteristic flaws and idiosyncrasies of anamorphic cinematography, such as horizontally spiked lens flares.
When digital tools started being adopted in films, many filmmakers and critics feared that digital applications would replace traditional effects tools. To date, that has not happened. Digital tools co-exist with the traditional techniques of models, stop motion, animatronics and location filming, as movies like The Lord of the Rings trilogy (in which miniature models and matte paintings were used extensively) and Inception demonstrate. Inception ’s director, Christopher Nolan, blended location filming, practical effects created in-camera, and physical sets and props with digital images. The real locations included Paris streets where stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Ellen Page were filmed.
The real location was then treated digitally for a spectacular scene in which the urban environment folds up into a cube containing the actors. Nolan felt these blends would enhance the perceived realism of the film’s more fantastic moments.
Although digital methods have changed matte paintings, painting remains an essential effects tool. Many contemporary films— The Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The Day After Tomorrow —rely intensively upon matte painted images. Today matte paintings are created using programs like Autodesk Maya and Adobe Photoshop, and painters work with mouse and keyboard rather than paint and brush. In the analog era, a matte painting was a flat, 2D image element placed at the rear of a shot, and apart from the pans or tilts facilitated by a motion control system like the Dupy Duplicator, the painting could not be integrated dynamically into shot movement on screen. A digital matte painting, by contrast, can be camera-mapped onto the 3D geometry of a CG scene or set. This involves wrapping the painting around the wireframe objects that form the underlying geometry of the scene and specifying perspective as established by the camera’s position and lens focal length. The wireframe objects can be rotated in computer space to simulate the changing perspective of a 315
Visual Effects
WALL-E (PIXAR, 2008)
Digital animation does not require a camera to film live action. Almost nothing was filmed in this animated sci-fi movie, but its director Andrew Stanton wanted the movie to look as if it might have been filmed in anamorphic widescreen during the 1970s. Accordingly, Hollywood cinematographer Roger Deakins consulted with Pixar’s animators on issues of lighting, showing them how a cinematographer would work. The Pixar artists emulated the characteristic features of anamorphic lenses, building these artifacts into the film.
The artifacts include lens flares that spike in a horizontal direction, as in the shot pictured above. Anamorphic lens perspective organizes the aesthetic design of WALL-E , and this was achieved not with a camera but as a digital graphic design. Frame enlargement.
moving camera. When this is done, the camera-mapped painting exhibits the motion perspective produced by the moving camera. Digital matte paintings, therefore, are 2 ½-D elements—not fully 3D because they are texture wrappings on 3D wireframe objects—and as such can undergo dynamic spatial changes within a shot. This is a major difference compared with the way paintings functioned in the analog era.
THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW (20TH CENTURY FOX, 2004)
Digital matte paintings are extremely common in contemporary film and can be spatially dynamic in ways that earlier generations of paintings could not. The Statue of Liberty freezes over due to global warming, and the matte painting supplies an appropriately apocalyptic composition. Frame enlargement.
316
Visual Effects
ALICE IN WONDERLAND
(DISNEY, 2010)
Digital methods can offer
new performance oppor-
tunities for actors. Helena
Bonham Carter played
the wicked Red Queen in
costume on a greenscreen
soundstage. Effects artists
then enlarged the size of
her head and gave her a
tucked, narrow waistline.
The character was then
composited into environ-
ments dressed with digital
props and objects. Frame
enlargement.
Digital tools have not replaced actors but have helped to create dynamic extensions of performance. Obviously, many creatures in film today can be digitally created; when they are, they typically begin life as a maquette , a small, 3D sculpture that forms the basis for subsequent digital animation and demonstrates the continuing role that miniatures play in the digital era. Using motion capture, a live actor’s performance can furnish the basis for a character that is digitally animated (as with the blue-skinned Na’vi in Avatar ) or digitally transformed in ways that go beyond what traditional makeup can supply. An example is the digital head replacements in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button that enabled Brad Pitt to play a character who ages in a backwards fashion. Costumes as well can be created digitally. In Iron Man 2 , actor Robert Downey wore an incomplete costume as Iron Man. The full costume was motion tracked onto Downey as a digital element in postproduction.
THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON (WARNER BROS., 2008)
Digital environment creation returns contemporary film to the backlot traditions of the studio era. The digital backlot offers an alternative to location shooting. All of the scenes in which Benjamin (Brad Pitt) sails aboard the tug Chelsea along the eastern seaboard are virtual environments, created from a blend of digital matte paintings, miniatures, and CGI. Nothing was filmed at sea. Frame enlargements.
317
Visual Effects
Digital tools have built on existing effects traditions. A clear example is today’s counterpart of studio backlot filmmaking—the digital backlot . Locations that cannot be filmed can be built or augmented digitally. Numerous films today— Change-ling (2008), Zodiac (2007), Master and Commander (2003), The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008)—simulate locations on digital sets, using painting, animation, and miniatures in combination with live action.
STEREOSCOPIC (
3D) MOVIES
The widespread adoption by Hollywood of digital imaging has produced a resurgence of 3D movies. 3D today is a digital visual effect and is typically used in movies that are intensively oriented toward effects— Avatar, Alice in Wonderland, Thor.
The term “3D” is actually a poor one because conventional cinema is already 3D.
Watching a movie in a theater activates most of the same informational cues about depth and distance that operate in real life. These are monocular depth cues , that is, they do not depend on seeing with two eyes but can be perceived with one eye only.
Examples of these cues are overlap (near objects hide more distant objects along a single line of sight), relative size (objects appear smaller with increasing distance), height in the picture plane (farther off looks higher up), and motion perspective (differences in the apparent rate of an object’s motion depending on its distance from the camera or observer). These cues provide information about a three-dimensional world, and conventional cinema has always used them because they work perfectly well on a flat picture surface like a movie screen.
CORALINE (FOCUS FEATURES, 2009)
Stereoscopic cinema uses two images to produce a left-eye and a right-eye view of scene action. The two views are displaced from one another in ways that position objects in stereoscopic space, in front of and behind the screen. Unlike conventional cinema, stereoscopic cinema uses binocular disparity and convergence to provide viewers with an enhanced experience of depth and distance. Frame enlargement.
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Visual Effects
A better term for a 3D movie, therefore, is stereoscopic cinema . Stereoscopy is perception with two eyes, and it includes all of the monocular depth cues as well as several that require two-eyed viewing. The two relevant to stereoscopic cinema are binocular disparity (each eye has a different angle of view on the world) and convergence (movement of the eyes toward each other to sight a near object). Where stereoscopic cinema differs from conventional cinema is in using information about binocular disparity and convergence to create for the viewer an enhanced impression of spatial depth, one that extends behind the screen as well as in front of it.