Ex Machina – VFX Movie

Today we  will discuss about a Science fiction psychological thriller VFX Movie “Ex Machina” which is written and directed by Alex Garland, released on 21 January 2015.

Made on a budget of $15 million, grossed worldwide $36.9 million. VFX Producers: Carrie Rishel and Fay McConkey.

The film follows a programmer who is invited by his CEO to administer the Turing Test to an Intelligent Humanold Robot.

The movie received critical acclaim for its visual effects, score, acting and the director’s writing and direction.

On website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a rating of 93%, based on 235 reviews, with a rating average of 8.1/10.

The site’s critical consensus reads: “Ex Machina leans heavier on ideas than effects, but it’s still a visually polished piece of work — and an uncommonly engaging sci-fi feature.”

When Alex Garland’s Ex Machina was released earlier last year,’fxguide’  spoke to visual effects in the film by Alicia Vikander.

The live action performance was augmented to add in, via VFX, robotic elements to various body parts of the actress.

Now, Ex Machina is in the Visual Effects Bake-off for the Academy Awards, and we have a special breakdown from Dneg of the work, plus some more insight from Whitehurst.

Designing Ava

Alicia Vikander as Ava.

Ava’s final look came from art department concepts and DNeg art, including depicting where real skin would end and where the CG would begin.

“I was conscious that I didn’t want to push for super realistic concept paintings,” says Whitehurst.

“We had to stop and then go and build it – it’s a sculpting and engineering problem – and then we did turntables.

At the start of the shoot we had concepts that featured just clean metal and no textures, and then during the shoot our team would be painting up textures.”

“We made the decision to try and keep the shoulders and armpits in plate for the simple reason that rigging shoulder blades is not that much fun,” notes Whitehurst.

“Similarly, we wanted to keep the hands and feet and face because that was the main method of interacting with the environment and the main method of expression.

The arms and legs are full CG because we see through them, and the same with the back of the head and neck.”

Much of Ex Machina takes place inside Nathan’s house – an isolated building in the mountains filled with glass-lined walls.

“The set was really like an enclosed glass box,” describes Whitehurst.

“That meant the camera was either inside or outside, and there’s nowhere to hide really, because it meant later on we had to body track things three or four times because the reflections are all different from lens and mirror distortion.”

That location challenge was exacerbated by the style of the film – Ex Machina is not intended to be an action adventure, but a more cerebral and intimate piece.

“Because the whole film is about human consciousness and what it means to be human and what it means to be conscious,” outlines Whitehurst, “it’s very conversation-driven, almost exclusively. In order to get that relationship, you have to have an actor talking to another actor – they have to feed off each other.”

The result was that, although significant digital work would be carried out by the visual effects team, motion capture was not an option.

The actors were always in the plates. For each take, then, a clean plate was acquired, and later extensive body tracking – including for shots up to 1600 frames – would be necessary.

Production filmed on the Sony F-65 with anamorphic lenses, which would ultimately make for challenging plate tracking.

“We did have one or two witness cams,” notes Whitehurst. “The sets were all closed and not that massive, so the opportunities for placing witness cameras were limited.

We always tried to have one and if we could get a second one in there we did. We had to paint out witness cams for some shots since it was sometimes just easier to do that and use it for body tracking.”

On set, Vikander wore a gray wetsuit material costume covering most of her body.

When visual effects replaced a section of the actor, the remaining parts were still the wetsuit material.

Each setup involved an IBL take. “The way the sets were built actually really let lent themselves for IBLs,” notes Whitehurst.

“Plus at DNeg we have physically based shading pipeline and it really meant down the pipe that our lighting just worked.”

 Building Ava

Alicia Vikander wore a wetsuit-like costume on set, with certain key robotic parts replaced by DNeg.

To ensure the CG elements would perfectly match to the live action photography, Vikander was initially photo booth scanned in pre-production so her equivalent CG model could be built.

Once the final costume was ready on set, the actress was scanned again and the model refined.

A key aspect of Ava’s appearance was the mix of hard metal and then softer outer skin.

The visual effects team also added ‘ribbons’ of plastic visible on the inside of Ava’s translucent shell areas, which came from experiments made during the concept art phase.

“There was this lovely air of mystery you got from playing with the brushstrokes which meant that as soon as you build something for real, you can lose.

So we thought, ‘How could we add that sense of slightly confusing mystery back to her?’

What we did was add these translucent ribbons that run up and down the torso that just have that little bit of refraction on them so it just breaks things up.”

Ava’s inner mechanical parts, representing muscles to some degree, were constantly moving as she did, as Whitehurst explains: “They were all built into a rig where all of the muscles would fire correctly, and then we had various organs and gyroscopes that would just spin throughout.

We ended up with a gold mesh based on air-actuated robot modules we found and then we wrapped a spiral of metal around each muscle because that helped read the contraction of the muscle as it’s moving. It’s almost subconscious in the end.”

Milk VFX worked with Double Negative to create a CG brain for Ava who referenced a jellyfish and technical feel, as well as delivering Ava POV shots. Utopia also contributed VFX to the film.

The mechanical parts and ribbons were rendered via DNeg’s physically plausible rendering pipeline (which uses RenderMan).

“Physically plausible gives you that photographic quality that you can’t get any other way,” says Whitehurst.

“You can get beautiful renderings not using this approach, but they have a painted quality – they don’t feel as photographic – especially when you’re dealing with very known materials.”

Those known materials were replicated with shaders for things such as aluminum, chrome, silver and steel.

“Fundamentally,” notes Whitehurst, “if the material’s correct and it doesn’t look right, then you’ve got the lighting wrong.

We tested it in all the lighting environments we knew she was going to be in, and we tweaked some level of displacement on Ava’s body mesh on wider shots because you didn’t read it there.”

Having anticipated early the challenges of incorporating Ava’s CG elements into the shots, Whitehurst says that compositing was still a tough and brute-force challenge. Lens distortion from the anamorphic proved most difficult, as did adding in refraction through the see-through aspects of Ava.

“You get all that anamorphic goodness happening around the edges,” says Whitehurst of the lens choices. “Which also meant it was one of the hardest body tracking jobs we’ve ever done.

The shots are long, it’s performance-based and so we have to absolutely capture what she’s doing.”

Such VFX films inspire us, and MAAC Chowringhee is the best institute which has multiple courses such as VFX, Gaming, Animation and multimedia.

BEHIND THE SCENE VFX USED IN THE MOVIE FAN

Hi guys!! In today’s blog we are going to discuss about the movie FAN. Although the movie was not a blockbuster hit like expected but the techniques employed in this movie was amazing and was accompanied with a lot of surprising VFX.

The movie FAN was directed by the renowned director cum producer MANEESH SHARMA and produced by ADITYA CHOPRA under YASH RAJ FILMS production house.

To begin with let us first know the jist of the movie.

The story revolves around the main protagonist slash antagonist Gaurav Chandana (played by Shah Rukh Khan) a die-hard and obsessive fan of Bollywood superstar Aryan Khanna (also played by Shah Rukh Khan) and how he (Gaurav) unexpectedly tries to seek revenge against Aryan for turning his fan away.

For all we know the rest of the story is quite known and well-discussed in media already.

The main question that arises in this occasion is that how is the movie unique?

The answer to such a mind boggling question is the use VFX or VISUAL EFFECTS in the movie.

The effects used in this movie were so hardy and difficult to achieve that despite the prolonged attempts great film makers of Hollywood couldn’t accomplish it.

The VFX used in the movie was handled and monitored by SRK’s company Redchillies.

VFX along with the aid of a renowned VFX artist Harry Hingorani as its supervisor.

The Redchillies VFX used a one of its kind life sized 3D printed model (of SRK himself) to create a younger paradigm, SRK.

Apart from making SRK look younger and smaller accompanied with certain changes associated with the facial feature, VFX was also used in few chase and action sequences in the film.

Prior to the profuse application of VFX the main challenge for the cast and crew was to make SRK look younger for his role as Gaurav.

Maneesh stated that even the greatest VFX artist across the globe thought that it was not possible as Gaurav’s face should look similar to that of Aryan and yet different and younger.

But VFX producer Keitan Yadav believed that with the help of a mixed composition of prosthetics and computer-generated effects (special effects and VFX) the desired looks could be more plausible and achievable.

And thus Greg Cannon the make-up artist accepted one of the most challenging aspects of the movie-making process.

He said that the task sounded amusing but he was shocked by the number of days it took him to complete the task and make SRK look younger.

It took him a total of 70 days to complete the task whereas usually such tasks are attained within 10 days.

This one particular task demanded so much of their time due to the chubby cheeks required.

Therefore he began working with different moulds for different facial features as promised.

Yet he was not able to achieve the young look that was anticipated, as it was quite feasible to make someone look old but in contrast it was really difficult to make someone look young with such an enormous age gap.

He had to give Gaurav well toned and chubby cheeks. But after trying hard enough, one day Greg was wondering, while in his office, and discovered the mould of Brad Pitt.

He saw that he had an unusual cheek and jaw structure.

Therefore he endeavored to give Gaurav, Brad’s facial built which turned out to be successful. Therefore finally after 70 days of hard work he successfully achieved his goal.

But this was not only it. Greg and SRK along with the rest of the makeup crew had to patiently sit for 5 to 6 hours daily just in order to apply prosthetics and silicon on SRK’s face which would make him look younger.

They had to tape SRK eye lids and cheeks upside to give them shape.

They used plums to push SRK’s upper jaw up.

They used little eye brow pieces to make it look thicker. Then finally after immense hard work the look was successfully established.

Finally, after the completion of all the shorts the VFX artists initiated their work.

Firstly they all had to make Gaurav’s nose appear smaller than that of Aryan’s.

Then, they had to fill up the parts in between prosthetics and silicon. They also had to make the facial tone smoother and even.

Followed by this they had to enhance the gap between the nose and upper lip.

Then they had to make Gaurav’s eyes beseem bigger and move the jaw line slightly up.

Finally removal of the difference between prosthetics and the real skin was to take place.

Then the expressions were to be changed and the lips were to be adjusted accordingly.

After all the VFX used in face customization of his other physical features was started. For instance they had to remove Adams apple and muscles behind neck.

Then they had to shrink Gaurav’s build by narrowing and straightening his shoulders, and removing the muscles.

Due to the changes brought up in his body they had to perform several body scans.

To make correct and absolute measurements for Gaurav’s body scanning they were to be done while SRK was trying Gaurav’s costumes.

VFX was also used to achieve certain emotions on Gaurav’s face as an impact of too much makeup.

Apart from all these VFX was also used in action scenes.

The most seemingly unattainable part in the entire movie making was achieving a smaller nose.

The amazing fact about this movie is also that the concept about the film was first narrated by late Yash Chopra to SRK about 12 years ago but the filming didn’t happen then.

But finally after all the long waited ups and downs the film was completed and was finally released on 15th April 2016.

It goes without saying, as the VFX and Animation Industry is blooming in today’s world, and is needed in each and every place along with the unimaginable applications of VFX, it’s highly recommended to learn about it.

Join MAAC KOLKATA today. The place where you will be trained to become your best version and guided to know that the only limits is your imagination, and will assist you to achieve your goal and turn what everyone says “impossible” into “possible”.

USE Of MINDBLOWING AFTER EFFECTS IN STAR WARS

In our blog today we will be discussing the mind blowing After Effects done in star wars.

Star Wars is a renowned film franchise begun by the American director George Lucas with his 1977 film of the same name.

At the time, the film became the highest-grossing in the world (and remains among the highest grosser today as well) and proved to be a landmark in terms of the stunning imagery and effects put to use.

Following the critical and commercial success of the 1977 film, there have been seven more releases (marketed as a prequel trilogy, the original trilogy, and a continuation sequel trilogy), with the eighth and ninth film in the series slated for release in the coming years.

In addition, there are several spin-off films, books, video games, comics and other media and merchandise that have established the series as an icon of popular culture.

Coming to the heart of the matter, the series is an epic space opera involving intergalactic struggles between forces of good and evil.

There are alien planets and creatures abound, as well as futuristic technology and weaponry.

Naturally, visual effects and computer generated imagery have been invaluable additions to the production process over the years, Industrial Light and Magic (ILM) has handled the visual augmentation for all the films since the beginning.

Motion graphics and rotoscopy in particular have been made simpler with digital support through software such as Adobe After Effects.

After Effects is a powerful layer-based visual effects, compositing and motion graphics tool, which is commonly used in film and television in the post-production pipeline.

It can be used for chroma keying, motion tracking, compositing as well as animation, and serves as a basic non-linear audio-visual editor and media transcoder (or in layman’s terms, converter).

It has played a role in the post-production of films like Sin City, Iron Man, and Stranger Than Fiction, and is far more widely used to create introduction title and closing credit sequences due to its very capable motion graphics creation tools.

It is also used in animation films, advertising industry and television industry.

In our discussion today, we will focus on two aspects of the Star Wars films: the introductory title sequence, and weapon effects.

Star Wars Title Crawl:

The introduction sequence of the Star Wars films is one of the most recognisable elements of the franchise.

It features three parts: a static slide with the text ‘A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…’ in blue, followed by the stylised words ‘STAR WARS’ shrinking into the frame against a star field background, which is followed by the episode number and subtitle and a (typically three paragraph) passage that delves into the back-story for the film in a prologue format.

This text crawls through the screen in a perspective view rather than the more common frontal view.

After this text crawls out of the frame, the camera tilts downwards and the film begins.

The initial release of the first film did not include the episode number, but subsequent films and the re-release did.

For the original trilogy (1977-1983), this title sequence was filmed using huge 2ft x 6ft models with the camera painstakingly manoeuvred to capture the scrolling effect smoothly.

The prequel trilogy (1999-2005) made use of computer generated text and imagery to achieve the same effect, making the process faster and much easier to control and modify if needed.

The original format of the title crawl was preserved, however. In subsequent years, the original films, too, were re-released with a digital version of the introductory title crawl.

The ongoing sequel trilogy, which began with the release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens in 2015, has the title crawl designed digitally like the prequel trilogy.

Weapon effects:

There are two weapons that we see throughout the series: lightsabers, and blasters.

The lightsaber, as the name suggests, is a sword-like weapon that consists of a plasma blade powered by a kyber crystal, which was emitted as a beam of light from the hilt (usually constructed out of metal or a specific type of wood).

It is used primarily by Jedis and Siths, who are users of the Force (a mystical energy form in the films) and requires a great deal of training and skill to be handled properly.

They are of different kinds, most commonly single-bladed, but also double bladed like a staff, and these blades have different colours depending on the affiliation of the user.

Blasters are more common; they are gun-like devices that fire bullets of plasma, and are typically used by the Stormtroopers, mercenaries and rebels who do not have access to the Force.

During shooting, for the original trilogy, white blades were used.

These were subsequently rotoscoped by hand and a glow and colour was added to make them distinctive: blue and green for the Jedi, and red for the Sith.

In the prequel trilogy in the later 1990s, this design process was done digitally.

With the addition of a new character in Mace Windu (played by Samuel L. Jackson), we even find a new colour of lightsaber, purple.

Software like After Effects made the rotoscopy process faster and less cumbersome than the older manual technique, allowing for creative expansion of the mythos of the series.

Lightsabers have also been seen in white and (rarer) black across other media in the franchise.

Blasters are considered more generic weapons, and they fire bullets that resemble white streaks of laser light.

These bullet fires, too, are now created digitally and added to the live action during the compositing process.

This serves not only for faster and cost-effective production, but also reduces any potential risk of actors getting injured by malfunctioning props.

These are just a few examples of the creative power of After Effects.

If you want to learn for yourself how it can be used to create these wonderful and cool effects, do stop by your nearest Maac Kolkata centre and enrol yourself for free class and amazing career options.

For all you know, you could end up working for upcoming films in the Star Wars franchise!

CHALLENGES AND VFX USED IN TUBELIGHT MOVIE MAKING

One of the most awaited movies of 2017 was Salman Khan Starrer movie Tubelight. In our today’s blog we will be discussing about the making of the movie with special mention to VFX and special effects used in the making of the movie.

According to the superstar that this film was emotionally challenging for him to act.

“I loved the character as it was narrated to be. This was my best role. I don’t think I will get any better role that this as this man is simple and emotional. This was the most loved character that I have ever played.”

The toughest challenge he faced was to walk and talk like Laxman Singh Bisht   the character he played.

Lots of other challenges being faced while shooting for the movie too.

The crew initially decided the second schedule to be shot in Kashmir, which due to some delays was changed to Manali.

The weather had gone against Salman Khan and Kabir Khan, who are in Manali to shoot the second schedule of their film Tubelight.  The set was completely wrapped with clouds.

They had built a set  of 12000 feet high in the mountains. But when the crew went to shoot they found the set was completely covered with clouds all over.

Tubelight,  also starring Chinese actress Zhu Zhu along and the movie revolves around a love story set in the 1965 Sino-Indian war.

The makers of Tubelight have released a behind the scenes video from the film’s Ladakh schedule. The video exemplifies the difficulty the film’s unit had to face while shooting in the region.

Mostly the war scenes have been shot in Ladakh, which feature Sohail Khan in the avatar of Bharat Singh Bisht, a soldier.

The film was shot in Leh for around 15 days, informs the lead actor cum producer Salman Khan. Talking about shooting in different locations, director Kabir Khan said, “Locations for me are very important. I seriously feel that locations bring in a certain character into the film.”

Salman’s brother and co-star Sohail Khan elaborated on the difficulties the unit had to face while shooting in Ladakh.

According to him, all actors were still a little pampered, since they just had to get ready for the shot but the unit was working in between the shots.

The terrain was difficult, the winds used to begin from 132 onwards. Those winds were nasty because they used to carry mud and pebbles that used to hit on the eyes and ears.

Although the makers had a tough time filming in Ladakh, the war scenes shot in scenic locales were surely a delight to the eyes!

Tubelight opened to poor reviews from critics on Friday. The film was not showered with love by the audience either.

Box office performance of the movie bears testimony to this fact.

On its 5th day, Tuesday, the movie collected Rs 13.50 crores at the box office and now stands with a total of 97.36 crores at the domestic box office.

This surely was a disappointment for a Salman Khan film and is quite surprising that it could not enter the 100-cr-club on its opening weekend.

Based on the story of the original film ‘Little Boy’, Tubelight is an upcoming Indian historical war drama film written and directed by Kabir Khan.

Prime Focus has delivered VFX, DI and EQR services for the film. The VFX and Digital Intermediate of Salman Khan Films’ Tubelight is has been done at Prime Focus.

Tubelight is not a VFX-heavy film.  But VFX is being used a little bit of crowd multiplication, in the background here and there.

The Evolution of Animation & VFX In Indian Cinema

On one’s way to work or school, waiting for transport. The auto that takes you where you want not only provides a means of travel, but some music as well, some of Bollywood’s golden age tunes. In our today’s blog we will discuss about the evolution of Animation and VFX in Indian Cinema, popularly known as Bollywood.

As you go, you see posters showing off the newest star’s upcoming film. Films are not just entertainment here: they’re a part of life. Students, professionals, parents, grandparents: everyone in the country is united by the love of cinema.

As of 2013, India ranks first in the world in terms of annual film output. In 2016, the industry’s gross box office earnings came to 15,500 crore (US$2.4 billion).

The prospect of foreign direct investment has made the industry attractive to the likes of 20th Century Fox, Warner Bros and Walt Disney Pictures while Indian companies such as Zee, UTV and many others continue to grow and expand. Cinema is nothing short of a financial and cultural force in today’s day and age.

That being said, one of the reasons why we love films is because they’re inherently unreal.

A great artist is able to portray something impossible in a way that makes you believe it isn’t.

In the context of films, this is achieved through the use of Visual Effects (VFX) and 3D Computer Generated Imagery (CGI). Some films are so far into the realm of the imaginary, that the only way to produce them is in an entirely animated medium.

Without further ado, let’s take a look at the evolution of film in India, especially with regards to VFX and CGI.

While there had been films made in India earlier, they are generally not considered part of our film canon. It was Dadasaheb Phalke, who, with his landmark film Raja Harishchandra, began the legacy of Indian cinema in 1913, and is thus called the father of Indian cinema.

Still struggling to overthrow the British regime, many films at the time had tones of nationalism, and stirred the people to action. It was a show of art’s ability to inspire people and transform lives.

It was also Dadasaheb Phalke who first experimented with animation in India.

His 1912 shot film The Growth of a Pea Plant was based on the concept of time lapse photography, with one frame shot per day. Subsequently, in 1915, he produced Agkadyanchi Mouj (Matchsticks’ Fun).

Later, he followed with Laxmicha Galicha (animated coins), and Vichitra Shilpa (inanimate animation) 1934 saw the release of the first Indian animated film to have a soundtrack: On a Moonlit Night.

The same year also saw the first animated film to get a theatrical release, The Pea Brothers. It was directed by Gunamoy Banerjee and produced by New Theatres Limited.

The film used drawn black and white images. The plot revolved around a pea pod that opens up to release peas, from which rise toy-like figures that play with each other. The film was an experimental attempt.

The 1940s were a decade that changed the world. They saw India win her Independence. They saw the world ravaged by World War II. In the world of Indian cinema, they saw filmmakers become bolder than ever before.

One of the major focuses of animation as a medium is being lifelike. While animation revels in exaggeration, it is ultimately based on real life, and thus, realism is one of the cornerstones of any good film, no matter how unreal or fantastic it may be.

It was only after 1977 that the world truly became aware of the importance of the visual aspect of a film, and the importance of realism in the depiction of unusual scenes.



With the release of Star Wars: a New Hope, John Dykstra, special effects designer, and his team pioneered from scratch the technology and techniques of depicting large scale science fiction landscapes, battles and explosions.

Their achievement was nothing short of revolutionary, and would change the special effects landscape for all time.

As a matter of fact, CGI already existed and had been used in Futureworld, which had debuted a year earlier.

It was, however, a method still in its infancy, not yet capable of bringing to life George Lucas’ imagined world. No, that would happen in 1993, with the release of Jurassic Park.

It was the first film to utilize CGI at a level that completely blurred the line between fiction and reality: when those dinosaurs moved, the audience believed.

The impact of these films on the country’s cinematic landscape was massive: not only were visual effects now used to conveniently allow the addition of scenes which would have been considerably more expensive to physically shoot in entirety.

With the building of props, or going on location, but they also introduced the idea of the science fiction film which was based on things that simply couldn’t be depicted without these technologies.

The implementation and rise of CGI and VFX in the Indian cinematic industry was something arrived at through a long road. From the early 2D animated films of the 30s, we had progressed to an age where video editing and CGI software was available to us.

The first fully Animated feature length film to be made in India was Pandavas: The Five Warriors, in 2000, directed by Usha Ganesh Raja and produced by Pentamedia Graphics.

At the time, it was lauded for what it had achieved. It was a winner of the Second Best Animated Feature Film Award in Vancouver Effects & Animation Festival, 2001, as well as the National Film Award for Best Feature Film in English.

Ramayana is the directorial debut of Chetan Desai, the chairman and managing director of Maya Digital Media on 15 October 2010.

More than 400 crewmembers where 80% of members was from MAAC worked on the film over a five-year period the first three years were spent designing the characters, while the other two were devoted to actual production.

Since then, both hardware and software have come a long way. With an increasing percentage of the total number of shots in films utilizing VFX or CGI, the demand for skilled professionals increased. Films such as Dhoom 3, Bhaag Milkha Bhaag and Om Shanti Om showed that India had made significant strides in the field.

In 2015, we saw the release of Baahubali: The Beginning. On many levels, this film was the litmus test for the VFX and CGI industry in India.

On a conceptual level, the film was a success, blending Indian mythology with Western flair and presenting a story that was engaging.

The film consists of a vast percentage of CGI, including 2500 VFX shots. Makuta VFX was chosen as the principal visual effects provider, responsible for a large amount of the CGI.

Much of the work involved creating a 1500 feet waterfall, along with mountains, landscapes and the kingdom of Mahishmati.

Creating the waterfall took a staggering 2 years, owing to the complexity of the fluid dynamics and simulations involved.

Firefly Creative Studio worked on the avalanche and the war sequences, along with some underwater VFX shots.

This was also the first time an Indian movie had used Academy Color Encoding System workflows along with Infinitely Scalable Information Storage keeping in mind the scale of the digitally enhanced shots in the film.

Arka Media Works teamed with AMD, utilizing the state of the art FirePro GPUs W9100 and W8100 during post production, hardware capable of rendering 4K content in real time.
The film’s success, of course, speaks for itself.
So where next for Indian cinema?

With an endless possibility of new ideas and powerful next gen hardware capable of making it all real, the sky is the limit. And that’s where creators and artists come in.

With institutes such as MAAC training students in the nuances and skills necessary for the animation and vfx industry, more and more new voices are being added, and more and more stories are being told.

With industry specific softwares and courses designed to prepare students for professional work, where better to prepare for a career in CGI and VFX than at MAAC, As a certain someone once said, “To Infinity and beyond!”

Top 5 VFX Films of 2016

VFX or Visual effects,  we can notice its presence and everywhere in advertisement , movies, tele- serials etc . There are hardly any movies today that do not use visual effects,  Last year too  i.e 2016 we had many good VFX movies which were actually a visual teats to us. Here we take the opportunity to discuss the top five VFX films of 2016 that made a ever lasting impact on its audience.

The Jungle Book

Walt Disney’s The Jungle Book had made it to the top five of Oscar’s predicted nominations list for the Best Visual Effects category which is really commandable that too in Visual effect category. But this should come as no surprise as the movie has pushed all  its technological limits. We, were actually gone, mildly spooked watching Kaa (the python) in 3D, and how real and magnetic she looked. Be the movie we see dubbed in English or Hindi, we just can’t get enough of our sweet Mowgli, Baloo, Bagheera, Shere Khan, and King Louie.

 Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them

The most recent release was also one of the most awaited releases of the year. Riding on the immense popularity of the Harry Potter franchise, this prequel to the series has close to 1,500 visual effects shots in the movie is just mind boggling. It is also a strong contender for the nomination list at the Oscars. After all, how often do you find the magical creatures coming out of a suitcase?  Feel if it really happens in reality.

Doctor Strange

While we tend to wait for Benedict Cumber batch to come back as private eye, we got a visual effects treat in Doctor Strange. Considering that the movie has no less magic than a Harry Potter film, making the mystic realms, the astral plane,  kaleidoscopic components, and space look real was sheer work of  genius strokes. For those who have watched it, will grasp it. and if you haven’t watched it yest do watch to savor your visual pleasure.

The Revenant

Of course, we have all detected stories regarding however sculptor DiCaprio shot in sub-zero temperature at remote locations for the film. But that will not exclude from the gorgeous locations visuals created through VFX that had United States of America pasted to the massive screens. Talking of VFX in The Revenant, how will we tend to not mention the bear mauling DiCaprio, still fresh in our minds. We should not forget to mention that there is no bear or Di Caprio were hurt during the shot. So guys chill and enjoy the movie at its fullest.

Captain America: Civil War

And we simply can’t get enough of superheroes do we! If you saw Captain America: war, we will always remember the airfield scene wherever a superheroes war breaks out. The Avengers, Black Panther, Ant-Man, and even the very young and our own Spider-Man area unit all gift in the action-packed scene. Definitely one of the simplest VFX-laden films created this year.

So we appreciate feed back from our readers who has actually missed out seeing the top 5 VFX movies of 2016. And guys who are looking forward for a career in visual effect industry this is the right time for you guys to hit the market and to learn and acquire skills from the expert in the industry. Undoublety Maac Kolkata has shared such tempting platform for you all to be apart of the VFX team , our course is extensive with practical exposure, since we are the best VFX Institute in Kolkata.

3 Big Challenges Behind Passengers’ Spaceship VFX Shots

MPC had plenty of  challenges to solve while shooting the VFX shots in Passenger Spaceship in the film, which, includes how to realize scenes of the spacecraft, the Avalon.

MPC’s visual effects for the anti-gravity swimming pool scene in Passengers after talking to VFX supervisor Eric Nordby here we are to discuss what are the various challenges he faced while shooting.

Here Nordby runs down three things he and his team at MPC had to tackle specifically with the 1000 metre long ship, from design to scale and then coming up with an appropriate environment and lighting in space – something that’s harder to do than you could ever think and imagine.

Let’s discuss the challenges one by one.

Challenge #1 – A Ship Design That Felt Like It Served The Story

The story being, it’s this luxury cruise ship in space that has to also transport 5000 people as well as all of the cargo and the rest of it and not just feel like a freight liner.

So Guy Dyas, the production designer, broached that quite early on. He was inspired by,  all things even a sycamore leaf, which is a leaf that when it eventually falls, takes the helicopters down towards the ground.

And it’s got this very beautiful sweeping design to it. And so that was an early inspiration, to go back to the natural world. That formed the basis of it and then they just went from there and modified the ship where  modification needed.

Challenge #2 – Selling Scale

This is a huge challenge to visual effects, especially when you don’t have anything close by. And because we’re in deep space for the entirety of the movie we’re never really close to anything.

There’s one moment where one has pass by a star but the vast majority of the exterior shots are just ship and then a very, very distant star field, a star field that’s light years away.

So we’re never close to planets, we’re never close to other ships. So to really wrap our heads around the appropriate scale it required some heavy thinking on what one could afford to operate, what we could afford to really add that sort of geometry component to it that wouldn’t kill us in render and the rest of it.

And so what became the guiding principal was to art direct the shot.

So  the shot was staged, and then whatever  got closer to  would just pour whatever resources we had into doing a paint up and whatever we had in terms of atmosphere and all this stuff we wanted to add in order to sort of help us scale.

Challenge #3 – Exposure & Speed

As a result of us being in deep space and not close to any stars, we sat down with Rodrigo Prieto, the director of photography.

A large portion of the movie is in exterior space and we wanted to pick his brain on how he would see that.

We’ve seen some incredible work lately, both Interstellar and Gravity and others.

We’d been going with this very, very high-key harsh light that immediately you get a huge mileage out of because it feels very NASA-like, it feels like what you would see in actual space photography – a very blue, harsh, one light, intense fall-off shadow. And so we talked about whether or not that was a possibility for him.

Well, firstly, it would be a complete cheat because we’re not close to any sun, and secondly, he didn’t like the fact that it would be a very ugly light for the amount of stuff we had in this movie.

It would have pulled away from what he felt his overall lighting design was going to be, which I thought was great because it allowed us to create this lighting dome which was based on essentially a nebula as opposed to any single source, which we kind of designed with a very soft ratio that was more similar to how Rodrigo was lighting the interior of the ship.

The next big part of that challenge was, how do you get that to look real?

Because obviously exposure-wise when you’re actually shooting astral photography you’re actually photographing nebula and distant galaxies and there are such extraordinarily long exposure times nothing we’re going to do is going to be in that world.

And so we really had to strike a balance of what we thought felt overly designed or under designed.

So we created a continuum of images for Morten and Rodrigo before we shot a frame of film, and we went all the way from extraordinarily stylized Guardians of the Galaxy-like – a very colorful world that worked so well for that movie to just International Space Station space walk photography.

And we just talked at length about everything in between and found our area that we felt comfortable with. And then from there we could backpedal and start to paint up our space-scapes and then try to get some depth in those space-scapes and create this absolutely massive build that would form the setting for the entire movie.

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