VFX Voice - Fall 2017

COVER NOTES:
WE’RE ABOUT TO SEE A LOT MORE OF AVATAR
Among the newest additions to the VES’s list of most influential
visual effects films is James Cameron’s Avatar. In 2009,
it set the standard in both virtual production techniques and
in transforming human actors into the realm of photo-realistic
creatures.
Right now, the lead visual effects studio on Avatar – Weta
Digital – is also at work on the four sequels to the film being
made by Cameron. The first of those is set for release in
December 2020, with the fourth sequel coming out in 2025.
“What Joe Letteri and Weta Digital bring to these stories
is impossible to quantify,” Cameron says in a release about
the start of production by Weta Digital. “Since we made
Avatar, Weta continued to prove themselves as doing the
best CG animation, the most human, the most alive, the most
photo-realistic effects in the world. And of course, that now
means I can push them to take it even further.”
“Avatar is the ideal type of film for us,” adds Weta Digital’s
Senior Visual Effects Supervisor Joe Letteri. “Jim’s vision for
the world of Pandora was always so much bigger than what
we created for the first film. Helping him expand the language
of cinema through new narratives set in such an expansive
universe is the type of opportunity that rarely comes along
twice. Projects like this allow everyone involved to push
themselves to do their best work and you can’t ask for
anything more than that.”
—Ian Failes
Avatar (2009). James Cameron’s blockbuster Avatar took
performance capture, virtual production and the realization
of digital characters and environments to new levels, with
Weta Digital crafting the majority of visual effects for the
film. It was also filmed in native stereo, further bringing
new challenges to the visual effects vendors in terms of
live-action integration, compositing and rendering stereo
images. (Photo copyright © 2009 Twentieth Century Fox
Film Corporation. All rights reserved.)
Inception (2010). Director Christopher Nolan made
use of full-scale practical effects, miniatures and digital
visual effects to tell the mind-binding story of Inception.
This miniature of the hospital fortress was built by
New Deal Studios on its backlot and rigged to collapse
in sections as part of the film’s ‘kick’ conceit in which the
characters would wake themselves from a dream within a
dream. (Photo copyright © 2010 Warner Bros. Pictures.
All rights reserved.)
King Kong (2005)
Life of Pi (2012)
Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)
Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)
Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002)
Lost World, The (1925)
Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)
Mary Poppins (1964)
Mask, The (1994)
Matrix, The (1999)
Metropolis (1927)
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest (2006)
Planet of the Apes (1968)
Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
Return of the Jedi (1983)
Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011)
Seventh Voyage of Sinbad, The (1958)
Sin City (2005)
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)
Star Wars (1977)
Starship Troopers (1997)
Superman: The Movie (1978)
Ten Commandments, The (1956)
Terminator, The (1984)
Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)
Thing, The (1982)
Titanic (1997)
Total Recall (1990)
Toy Story (1995)
Tron (1982)
Transformers (2007)
Young Sherlock Holmes (1985)
War of the Worlds, The (1953)
What Dreams May Come (1998)
Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988)
Wizard of Oz, The (1939)
FALL 2017 FXVOICE.COM • 75