Oscar Noms for Best VFX

Oscar season is upon us. The 85th academy awards released their Oscar Noms yesterday. As for the Visual Effects category, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, Life of Pi, Marvel's The Avengers, Prometheus, and Snow White and the Huntsman are in the running. My first pick would have to be for The Avengers. To showcase their amazing abilities, ILM released a reel for Marvel's The Avengers. The reel is incredible. The movie is heavy on the effects end, with impressive modeling, texturing, and animation for the Hulk. The scene in the reel which was the most surprising, if not one of the most impressive, was the realism captured in a scene where ScarJo's character, Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow, is running in front of the Hulk as glass shatters and metal is bending behind them. Although only a few short seconds, the character never traverses into the uncanny valley and the actual, live actress looks composited in the scene rather than a CG version of her. Any animator knows, this is very difficult to believably achieve. The sheer scale of the set and the green screen is enormous as visible in this reel, and the complexity of the modeling, dynamics, and set design is incredible. This is one of the most complex projects that ILM has created to date; which is saying a lot when taking into consideration the legendary projects that the company has worked on. Another film with beautiful visual effects in this category is Prometheus. I found this film to be lacking in the story line and parts were laughable when they should have been suspenseful, horrific, and foreboding. For instance, why does Charlize run WITH the shadow of the falling ship at the end? The film uses the standard sci-fi mise-en-scène, but does it in a visually brilliant way. The background mattes are gorgeous and the levitating alien user interface animations I found to be intricate and futuristic.

Here is a highly photoshopped photo of the interfaces (but you get the idea, click to enlarge): Snow White and the Huntsman had moments of visual brilliance, and I found the Evil Queen (played by Charlize Theron) delightfully awful. Her character and her costume design was probably the only reason to see the movie. There are moments where the space used for the background is enhanced with green screens and replaced with backgrounds that capture enormous depth and hyperrealism (There are some nice articles in Cinefex from July 2012 about Snow White and the Huntsman and Prometheus) and there are interesting special effects, but some of the poor special effects turned me away. The strange fairy creatures with enlarged eyes seemed out of place with the rest of the film. Also, the mythical CG white deer-beast was not very believable in its realism and had unnatural movements characteristic of bad animation. Rupert Sanders' take on the evil queen's mirror was interesting and creepy, but it reminded me of The Secret World of Alex Mack every time. In the reviews I read, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey does not use as smooth or believable CG and fx as the other LOTR movies. For this reason, I have not chosen it in the lineup. And finally, Life of Pi is a visually beautiful film and has some nice reviews. Some of the CG animals in the film did not seem realistic (the movements give it away), but overall the tiger was pretty believable. I think this movie should win for best cinematography. The shots are brilliantly composed. Also if you haven't seen it or are familiar with the book, be prepped for a surprise philosophical ending. : )

Also, watch this animation about Prometheus. Hilar. And complete with the The Hans Zimmer Inception BRAAAM lol.

***** As an addendum, Life of Pi won for Best VFX and Best Cinematography. It is unfortunate about the controversy regarding the visual effects industry and Rhythm & Hues though.