VFX Voice - Fall 2017

anging from wild success to abysmal failure.
“One recurrent theme is that when a new technology arrives, it
initially does not work very well, but may show potential,” Catmull
explains. “Sometimes, you will try it, or even buy it, and you will
find out it actually does not live up to the hype. And sometimes,
having tried it early will give you a great heads-up on things. But if
a new thing appears and does not work well initially, some people
will therefore conclude that makes it a bad idea, but they might be
premature in concluding that. You still have to evaluate something
by what its potential might be and move forward. Related to that,
most of these things will have a horizon of about four or five years
of going right or going wrong. You don’t know, if something goes
wrong with a [technology], if a software or computer vendor is
going to correct it or be blind to it, or if something will go wrong
with their company as a result. So you have to constantly pay attention
to the symptoms, and that should give you four or five years to
prepare if something does go wrong.”
Clearly, virtual production techniques, historically powerful
software tools and rendering systems, motion-capture and
facial-capture breakthroughs, Cloud computing, the rise of sophisticated
previs techniques, deep machine-learning/AI tools, and so
much more are on the forefront of the industry’s forward-looking
conversation. But, at the same time, so is the restructuring of the
industry landscape – how facilities are built, managed, and what
their infrastructures and missions should look like.
Industry veterans remind us that major companies have
closed during this revolutionary period, along with other forms of
consolidation and automation, while others evolved successfully.
Sony Pictures Imageworks, for example, remains a key player in
producing not only high-end CG feature films, but also cuttingedge
VFX for major live-action films. To get this done, Imageworks
“migrated our headquarters in recent years, and the majority of
our workforce, to Vancouver,” explains Randy Lake, President of
Sony Studio Operations and Sony Imageworks. “This has been
successful in sustaining the quality of our work, while leveraging
tax incentives to keep our costs competitive and innovating in
technologies that enable our artists to create fantastic imagery.”
VFX Voice recently conducted a wide-ranging conversation with
several leading industry professionals to get a sense of the industry’s
future direction, and several key themes emerged.
TOP: The Jungle Book showcases
the virtual environments and liveaction
integration developed by
Rob Legato, ASC, for director Jon
Favreau. (Photo copyright © 2016
Walt Disney Enterprises Inc. All
Rights Reserved.)
LEFT: Rob Legato, ASC, on set
of Hugo. (Photo credit: Ben
Grossman. Courtesy of Rob
Legato.)
LEFT: Lindy DeQuattro
BOTTOM: The United States’ Gipsy
Danger moves a crab fishing boat
out of danger in a scene from Pacific
Rim. (Photo copyright © 2013 Warner
Bros. Entertainment and Legendary
Pictures Funding, LLC. Courtesy of
Warner Bros. Pictures.)
VIRTUAL PRODUCTION TECHNIQUES
Legato argues that the combination of the latest digital filmmaking
tools and software with VR-related previsualization technology
and game rendering engines, along with lots of innovative
thinking, can now help filmmakers achieve “a movie rooted totally
in reality, even though it was artificially created – we are going
through great pains to make sure the artificial part is removed
from the audience purview. Animals and environments can look
absolutely realistic, and I was also proud how, in The Jungle Book,
we had 150 digital double shots where I doubt the audience, or
even most professionals, could detect the use of a digital human
within the illusion.
“So that, to me,” he continues, “is the future of using this
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