BoxOffice® Pro - June 2010

INDUSTRY NEWS continued
FAKING FIRE
WITH FIRE
Animating The Last Airbender
By Sara Maria Vizcarrondo
Pablo Helman, the visual effects supervisor
and second unit director of
The Last Airbender, makes a point of
authenticity. An affable man with a big accent,
he addresses the theater at the Industrial
Light and Magic (ILM) compound in San
Francisco with a familial warmth. Like an
uncle pulling pennies from ears, Helman is
a man who both manages and manufactures
childlike wonder, something he does with
a comprehensive detail. As the animator
entrusted to make M. Night Shyamalan’s live
action adaptation of the Nickelodean cartoon
real, Helman’s highest priority was fire.
“It’s hard to make fire look real,” warns
Helman. “Night [referring to the director] was
very concerned it would look CG.” This was
a big concern for a story that merges martial
arts and their spiritual-cum-literal relationship
to the four natural elements. The effects
departments responsible for water, air and
earth all had their own battles—animators
had to manipulate each in unnatural ways.
But fire burned though their best efforts.
“We actually created fire, filmed it and it
still looked fake,” says Helman. And Charlie
Chaplin famously won third place in a Charlie
Chaplin look-a-like contest. We often
expect more of reproductions. To ILM’s animators,
imagination is the secret ingredient;
wily youth blessed with the capacity to bend
the elements and their animal-like friends.
Take Appa, a flying polar bear and elephant
hybrid that Tim Harrington—animation
supervisor and the man who made Yoda
fight with Count Dooku—called “a cross
between the Millennium Falcon and Chewbacca.”
He and his animators had to build
creatures that are such wild mixings of naturally
occurring parts, it’s hard to distinguish
realities: a beaver’s tail, six legs, primate’s
eyes, levitation. And, Harrington insists,
“He’s a gentle giant.”
Like Appa, Momo—main hero Aang’s
(Noah Ringer) sidekick animal, a ring-tailed
lemur with wings—was present in the animated
series. So, too were the Spirit Dragons,
favorite ride of the Airbenders, who are akin
to enormous Kimodo Dragons—only dangerous.
Transforming these cartoon beasts
into live action can feel just as perilous.
Here’s the paradox: believability is the
goal, accuracy isn’t the solution. To illustrate
ILM’s challenge, Craig Hammack and Daniel
Pierson, the Associate Visual Effects Supervisor
and the Technical Director Supervisor
respectively, showed their research footage
of actual tornadoes and geysers. As they
explained, we don’t see the movement of
air—we see the movement of the particles
in it. ILM has learned it’s not what we see but
what makes us believe it that counts. These
are not mundane occurrences the animators
at Industrial Light and Magic are presenting,
they’re magical and well beyond the scope of
our everyday realities.
Even the world we recognize is off, not
that we’d notice. Barry Williams and Chris-
tian Altzman, visual effects supervisors in
i i ti i th ti di t tian Altzman, visual effects superviso
these animators aren’t just creating
natural al occurrences—they’re ing to make natural elements do
supernatural things.
Avatar: ar: The Last Airbender. r
The
try-
story is an American visioning of
East Asian lore. In it, the Earth Kingdom,
Air
Nomads and Water Tribes
unite to
stave off the conquest of
the evil Fire Lords. It’s still a tightly
guarded secret how much the
film is married to the highly
lauded d and widely adored
charge of backgrounds, explain
that
they were responsible for designing
the cities in The Last Airbender. The
North Water Temple must re-
semble a fully engineered e me-
tropolis, but there’s no need
to plan plumbing. Garbage
disposal and parking
lots are
not part of this live action real-
ity. Williams and Altzmann apply
reason to their city layouts, but
shorthand stuff like civic
SAY AANG
TV series, s, but the tors loyally preserved the
Noah Ringer control fire,
Still, the cities
anima-
planning.
ILM had to make newcomer
spirit of
the characters— air, earth and water
demonstrate te a
logic
that gives the audience that crucial connection
to reality.
Pierson emphasized their guiding principle:
“Naturalistic filmmaking style over
fantasy.” Everything must be couched in
the real. As they explain, “The fire benders
have to have fire—they can’t conjure it.” And
really, neither can the animators. Incredible
things are done on the ILM campus,
but they’re not the product of far flung
whimsy. It’s the work of dozens—sometimes
hundreds—of animators over the course
of years. The work is hard. But if they do it
right, you’ll think you’re looking right at
Chaplin without rubbing your eyes. ■
SUPER SONIC
Christie on their new
partnership and the state of
24-hour support
By Amy Nicholson
Last year, Christie Managed Systems
debuted their new 24-hour command
center, a humming, industrial control
room that looks like a movie set where a
president barks orders to prevent a global
disaster. In a smaller, less-Roland Emmerich
way, that’s almost what it is: a support nexus
where technicians avert crises. Sure, it’s not
life-and-death, but it sure feels like it when
you’re an exhibitor trying to fix a glitch before
the Friday night onslaught.
“Early on, we saw the need for some of
these types of core, fundamental support
options,” says Christie’s Vice President of
Managed Services, Sean James. “A lot of other
folks probably didn’t think it made sense at
the time, but as you start developing scale, I
think everybody’s come on board with the
concept.”
Last month, Christie announced it had a
new partner in crisis aversion: Sonic Equipment
Company, a Kansas-based sales and
consulting service that connects exhibitors
to the digital equipment best for their theaters.
Sonic has helped install more than 400
digital screens to date, and now offers Christie’s
24-hour support to current and future
customers.
“Sonic has been a very good Christie partner,”
says James. “They’ve sold a lot of Christie
gear. They see the level of investment, the
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