Wired released a video on the special effects of films nominated for an Oscar 2023 in the category “The best visual effects”.
Head of Method Studios Kevin Bailey took five examples – Avengers Final, Star Wars: Skywalker. Sunrise”, “1917”, “Irishman” and The Lion King.
When Avengers he drew attention to the achievements of the motion capture technique, which was most clearly manifested in the case of Thanos and the “smart Hulk”.
Previously, the points used for capture could not take into account the small movements of the face that occurred between them. Therefore, including the effect of the “sinister valley”.
However, now a special algorithm has come to the rescue. Today, capture points are used rather for a general understanding of the actions and movements of the actor, and then the necessary material is passed through a special program that “completes the necessary gaps”.
In the process of “training” the program learns a large amount of training material, understanding how to properly move the face. To do this, use a high-quality scan and include various light sources, studying the movement of the skin. In addition, the actors are asked to show the maximum number of emotions tracked by the machine.
In the film itself, there are about 2500 thousand frames with different visual effects.
Relatively “Skywalker. Sunrise” a total of three points were noted:
- a combination of real shots and effects
- creation of a separate water system
- recreation of Leia’s image using a computer.
Despite the fact that puppets were often used on the set, their movements had to be modified with the help of graphics. The same was true of many environmental elements created on a computer.
During the battle scene Kylo Rena and Ray a mixture of real water was used on the wreckage of the second Death Star, helping the actors keep track of the right moments, and graphics. Under this scene, they just developed a new water system.
And Leia, in the ninth episode, used her effects to add clothes and hair, composing frames with unused scenes from the seventh episode.
By the way, Bailey himself began to work in the industry on the first episode of the same Star wars. And according to him, now artists are much less limited in working with effects, compared with the past days.
In the passage “1917” Bailey paid most attention to the combination of real shooting and computer graphics.
For example, a character’s jumping scene was shot in this way: a real actor begins to jump over the wall, and then in the process it is changed to a digital double that falls into a moving river. From this moment, an ordinary actor plays in the scene, although they remove it altogether in a different location.
Another important point was the creation of an atmosphere of war. Many moments in the frames were specially finished to achieve the desired effect – tanks, ammunition and so on.
Such effects are called “invisible”, and they primarily work to support the story, rather than just spectacles. Bailey noted that this is his favorite type of work with CGI.
IN Irish the most important aspect was the famous “rejuvenation” of actors using graphics.
To achieve the desired effect, virtual masks were created, and the scenes themselves were shot on three cameras: one ordinary, and the other two were “witnesses”. One of the cameras was infrared, thus allowing you to track what is happening on the site without the need to change the lighting.
In the work we used the program Flux studios Industrial Light & Magic, analyzing every movement of the face. She herself recognized the movements and created young versions of the leading actors, and then they were applied on top of her modern appearance.
Young facial images were created by analyzing thousands of video clips and photographs of actors from past works. This procedure allowed the program to undergo the necessary “training”.
Main achievement The Lion King became the world itself, almost entirely created using CGI.
By and large, the authors developed virtual instruments that allowed the film crew to use real cameras for the desired movement and angles, tracking them in computer “reality”.
This allowed us to convey the feeling of small roughnesses that are always present in real life, without turning the picture into an unrealistic-ideal one.
More on review
