SCI FI PI

SCI FI PI recently visited the headquarters for planet Earth's special effects, at ILM, tromping the corridors amongst the legendary bric-a-brac of a thirty years of ground-breaking movie magic.

Here's Part 3 in our special 3 Part feature.


The other cool thing that’s just around the corner for filmmakers is digital insertion during filming.

What that means is, I can, as a director, look through my camera monitor and see my hero running from the digitally created robosaurus and flying organo-missiles, literally as I film the actual shot of the hero running through the frame. The special effects team can render in a rough version of the CGI so I know exactly where everything is supposed to be, so that my actor knows just where they must insert the sword to slay the robosuarus, and just when they must duck form the bat-winged organo-missles.

And that’s just what the digital boys are up to. The MoCap (short for Motion Capture) people are up to all sorts of no good, involving digital environments, by they are remaining extremely tightlipped- about it all.



Behind the reception desk.


One wonders if the upcoming live action Star Wars series may provide more insights into the latest technology form ILM.

Certainly though, all this geekiness doesn’t wipe out the human side of the days work. It’s not just a bunch of cubicle drones tapping away in an pristine environment.



Cool vintage Italian movie posters line the walls. Absolutely amazing for film memorabilia buffs.


Work rooms themselves are riots of colour.

Dotted liberally with fanboy memorabilia, as well as iconic props form the world's most famous film franchises, they are jumbles of gigantic computer screens and frozen rains of computer cords. The aesthetic is similar to what one would achieve if someone could cleave the average fanblogger’s head apart with an axe and then liberally dowse the local area with solidified portions of sci-fi-centric mind space.

Monty Python posters, Tiki dolls, funny re-photoshopped images, gigantic models that size of canoes hanging from the ceilings, black lighting, banners taken from seaside resorts, cool movie posters, bean bags, lava lamps, row upon row of awards, signed pictures, signed posters, glass encased models and white ‘body’ outlines on the floor are just some of the things you’ll find in the average workspace at ILM.



The centre of the ILM 'campus' houses a top notch day care facility.


Seems like competent individuality is the theme, with a 'let’s just do it, but have fun while we do it' work ethos encouraged. It’s this kind of attitude that someone like Australian Ben Snow embodies. He’s worked his way to Special Effects Supervisor (the kind of person who gets their own line in the credits of a $150 million dollar movie) yet retains that laid back, straightforward Australian-ness that is so refreshing in the USA, yet actually not that stark of a contrast at ILM.

Sure he may have risen to the pinnacle of his profession, but he has in no way lost the love for the magic that he supervises and creates. It is not just a job to him. It’s a way of life that involves getting paid. It also involves the odd adventure.



Pablo Hellman discusses working on Indy IV.


Whilst working on Iron Man, his team had difficulties in adequately rendering the spectacular night time reflections from the Mark II Iron Man suit, which is distinguished by being made entirely from super-reflective chrome.

The suit that Stan Winston Studios had painstakingly created in heartbreaking detail could only used sparingly, because the chrome effect was so good, the film crew and camera kept appearing in shot, reflected in the panels of the armour!



This, apparently, is where the one-legged man bought it.


A way had to be made to replicate the reflective metal qualities of the chrome, whilst retaining a realism notoriously hard to do with such materials in the digital world, and at the same time, adding a bit of movie magic and giving the suit more colour and light to reflect than would actually occur, creating a flying Iron Man that stood out against a dark night time back drop. The answer- smuggle the Iron Man Mark II head out of ILM (at a time when any fanboy with a camera phone could’ve created a firestorm) and take that head up to Coit Tower in San Francisco, digitally photographing and filming the reflection of the night time city in its metal panels.

The results in the final film, as an exuberant Tony Stark streaks over Santa Monica’s iconic wharf-side ferris wheel, speak for themelves.



This glowing ILM logo is seen on many walls, in many colours.


A trip from the ‘design’ department to the motion capture department involves several lifts, pass-activated, auto-lock (don’t wander away from the group!) doors and corridor upon corridor of movie posters of Lucasfilm projects (larger) and ILM as supplier projects (smaller). The effect of these smaller posters is almost like colourful glass tiles, there are so many. From Hudson hawk to Titanic, they are ALL there.

ILM isn’t just George Lucas' toy factory, it is a going concern that deals with the spectcular action of Indiana Jones and Iron Man, all the way through to small independent movies where the whole point of the special effect is that you do NOT see it.



'The Jar Jar'. Meesa Carbonitey!


The Motion Capture Studio is somewhat eerie. About the size of two squash courts, the walls are lined with the ‘mocap’ cameras, which look all the world like large digital SLR cameras, complete with chunky lenses. And that’s because they are. The only thing added is a monstrously fast digital connection, which tubes line the walls like tiny plumbing, and an odd ring of red lights around the lense of each camera.

The information gathered from any movement in the room is then whisked away by the digital ‘tubes’ to banks of computers ready to crunch numbers and place real humans into alternate worlds. It’s all real time, which as any computer geek will tell you, means a staggering amount of processing power, and storage space.



I had friends on that death star...


An entire wing of the building is devoted to ‘crunching the numbers’, be it rendering in the ‘render farms’, creating the final shots of the films due out in the next months, or creating the first strokes of a digital world and digital characters captured from the movements of a live actor, in a way that no computer program or programmee would ever have devised.

The distinctive movements, for example, of Bill Nighy’s Davey Jones in The Pirates of the Caribbean sequels, are all the results of his performances in his 'weird little wet suit'.

Oddly enough, his beard of tentacles was actually created with a program that could literally be dialled up or down to reflect the emotional state of the wearer, depending on the level of anger the character portrayed. The more angry, the more frantic and vigorous the tentacular action.

When you combine the human behind the pixels and ingenuity of the world’s best digital artists, the results, while impossible, become believable.



It's not all Star Wars, you know! It's every cool movie ever made since the 70's just about. Here's the T-1000 transformation maquettes, from Robert Patrick to liquid metal death.
Awesome.


Take for example, Robert Downey Jr's performance in Iron Man. You probabaly didn’t know that for the last half of the film (particularly in the final fight sequences) he too wore the 'weird little wet suit'. Exhausted after a punishing schedule, he opted not to wear the Stan Winston armour, but to let ILM suit him up in post production. Almost all of the armour that he wears in the final third of the movie is digital.

Which is pretty cool.

Once you’ve been in the MoCap room and popped in for lunch, there’s always time to pop into the gift shop, which once again reminds you that this isn't just a place to go to work, in the same way that St Peter’s isn’t just a place to go to church.



Jim Cameron obviously enjoys working with ILM. Here's the model made for film's first ever fully digital creature, the 'water face' in The Abyss.


No matter what you pay at the Skywalker Ranch Shop, nothing quite beats having ‘May the Force Be With You’ written out on the bottom of your receipt, especially for someone who grew up in a time and a country where the magic of Star Wars belonged to 'a galaxy far far away'. Sure, it’s a place to make money. But you don’t mind paying.

Owning a little of ‘I’ve been to ILM’ for a film buff is worth any amount of money. The ability to share it with like minded-fans equally so.



And here's a wonderful poster, signed by Ray Harryhausen multiple times, showing that as we are fans of ILM, so those at ILM are fans as well.



PART ONE of this special feature.

PART TWO of this special feature.


In Australia, Iron Man is out Oct 9, The Incredible Hulk is out Oct 23, and Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is out Oct 30 on Blu-ray and DVD.