[PaulILMFan]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wb49-oV0F78
MI6 trailer

[ShaneP]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wb49-oV0F78
MI6 trailer

Best one so far.

[TylerMirage]

You know, a lot of people turn their nose up at these movies for just being Tom Cruise stunt reels, but...I don't see that as a bad thing.

So, I watched Roland Emme- I mean, Dean Devlin's Geostorm the other day. Wasn't expecting much, as I knew it was basically going to be "Roland Emmerich lite" in the same way that Pfister's Transcendence was his way of mimicing Nolan and Battleship was Paramount riding on the success of Bay's Transformers.

The movie itself surprised me on a few fronts: it has relatively little environmental destruction (not much of an exaggeration to say that most of the destruction money shots were used in the trailers), and instead was much more of a character-driven story. And the fact that it had a crisp runtime of 1 hour 50 minutes, when compared to the usual 2-2.5 hours that some of these epics have.

As for the VFX, I think it's an even bigger hit-and-miss than Stephen Sommers' movies. You'd think that for a blockbuster producer like Devlin, he'd have enough experience to at least be consistently competent with VFX across the board. Instead, what I found with the work was that the natural environment destruction (tornados, earthquakes, lightning storms, tidal waves) was on par with the kind of CGI you'd expect circa 2008, while any of the outer space/space station work was supber.

Seriously, there's scenes of collapsing buildings and bridges and entirely CG shots of roadways with dozens of cars and it just screamed "G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra Paris Car Chase Sequence". The Day After Tomorrow, 2012, Man of Steel, San Andreas, Independence Day: Resurgence... all had immensely superior city destruction scenes. But with Geostorm, when buildings collapses and broke apart, it legitimately felt like I was watching their pre-viz. The buildings had no weight to them. Skyscrapers were falling to the ground in big chunks and in a matter of 2 seconds, instead of the long, drawn-out collapses that you'd (theoretically, as I have no real-world experience with collapsing buildings, thankfully) see in real life. It was destruction porn, but it wasn't even good destruction porn.

This is one of the moments I'm talking about: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eoU49CBIJYA&t=35s

With that said, the outer space scenes that dealt with spaceships and space stations were really, really good looking. Hard-surface work seems to be a popular topic lately, and whichever vendor was responsible for the space station work did a great job (similar to Independence Day: Resurgence's spaceship/space station work, which was also really good).

Okun was the overall Sup and the VFX vendors listed in order were:

-Framestore
-Double Negative
-Electric Effects
-Method Studios
-Hydraulx
-Soho VFX
-Ingenuity Studios
-Important Looking Pirates
-Zero FX
-Scanline VFX
-At the Post
-Rising Sun Pictures
-El Ranchito
-Instinctual
-COS FX
-Flash Film Works

With that many vendors and it being such a VFX-heavy film, I should take some time to try and find some articles talking about the movie's work.

[ShaneP]

Sometimes I miss the old days when merely ten vfx companies worked on a film.

[TylerMirage]

Sometimes I miss the old days when merely ten vfx companies worked on a film.

Same here. Those good ol' days back in 2010.

In all seriousness, though, Geostorm was exactly the kind of movie that would necessitate that many vendors. Lots of isolated sequences of natural disaster destruction, the natural disasters on Earth and the space station in space, lots of green-screen windows and widget elements inside the space station. Wouldn't surprise me if the last half-dozen or so of those vendors worked on only a handful of shots, based on how small their team credits were.

[PaulILMFan]

Geostorm sat on the shelf for 3 years they knew immediately it was not going to be possible to craft something watchable out of it. I think its ok but also you can see all the issues with the sloppy editing & disjointed storyline.

Armageddon by far is still the best example of this type of movie done well. I remember Todd did a great piece on the VFX on his own website back in the day....just checked its still up & such a great website as well
http://www.vfxhq.com/1998/armageddon.html

[ShaneP]

I remember reading about Geostorm years ago. Doesn't surprise me to read it sat around.

[PaulILMFan]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Um0aZKbpe1Y
MI6 behind the scenes on the practical helicopter FX with Cruise flying looks insane this is going to be an exciting movie no way to fake this in IMAX and they are not even trying to CG it so full marks to Cruise & Paramount for letting him even do his own flying.

[ShaneP]

Speaking of movies sitting on the shelf...when the heck is Andy Serkis' Tarzan movie going to come out?

[TylerMirage]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Um0aZKbpe1Y
MI6 behind the scenes on the practical helicopter FX with Cruise flying looks insane this is going to be an exciting movie no way to fake this in IMAX and they are not even trying to CG it so full marks to Cruise & Paramount for letting him even do his own flying.

And what's interesting is that Tom is actually a licensed and trained pilot. He receives a separate credit in American Made as "Cessna/[other model of aircraft that I can't recall at the moment] Pilot". Like, after all of the cast, right around where the Stunt Coordinator or trained helicopter/aircraft pilots would be, sure enough, "Tom Cruise - Cessna/Aircraft Pilot".

Speaking of movies sitting on the shelf...when the heck is Andy Serkis' Tarzan movie going to come out?

You mean his Jungle Book movie? Or is he making a Tarzan movie, too?

[ShaneP]

Speaking of movies sitting on the shelf...when the heck is Andy Serkis' Tarzan movie going to come out?

You mean his Jungle Book movie? Or is he making a Tarzan movie, too?

Yes, sorry got my jungle movies mixed up. It is his Jungle Book movie. I know he's been working on that movie for at least the last three or four years. I think he actually shot the movie back before Episode 7 came out. No idea what happened to it.

[TylerMirage]

Yes, sorry got my jungle movies mixed up. It is his Jungle Book movie. I know he's been working on that movie for at least the last three or four years. I think he actually shot the movie back before Episode 7 came out. No idea what happened to it.

As far as I know, it's still on track for October of this year. Latest news was a month or so ago where they revealed the title change from Jungle Book: Origins to Mowgli.

Originally it was October of 2016...and then it was bumped to October 2017...and now it's October 2018. It's been delayed longer than most films take to make.

[ShaneP]

Yes, sorry got my jungle movies mixed up. It is his Jungle Book movie. I know he's been working on that movie for at least the last three or four years. I think he actually shot the movie back before Episode 7 came out. No idea what happened to it.

As far as I know, it's still on track for October of this year. Latest news was a month or so ago where they revealed the title change from Jungle Book: Origins to Mowgli.

Originally it was October of 2016...and then it was bumped to October 2017...and now it's October 2018. It's been delayed longer than most films take to make.

Good grief. Just looked up some production history on it. Serkis was set to direct this back in early 2014, shot it in early 2015.

[ShaneP]

Haven't seen Pac Rim 2 yet but I am a bit bugged to read a few reviews crediting ILM for the vfx when it was DNeg. Guys, if you know enough to get Legacy Effects involvement right, how do you miss DNeg in the credits?

Really? Come on media.

[TylerMirage]

Finally got around to seeing Black Panther. Not as generic as I thought it was going to be, but also nothing to really write home about. Your usual Marvel schtick: strong opening act or two, weak final act, undercutting every dramatic moment with a joke, hero in a suit fighting a villain in a nigh-identical suit, cap it off with the obligatory "Next Time on Days of Our Marelives...". I will say that I enjoyed Michael B. Jordan as the villain and Shuri and Klaue were the highlights of the movie.

As for the VFX, it had some awesome environment work with the digital cities and such. But did anyone else feel like they had time-travelled back to 2007 and were watching SPI's Spider-Man 3 digital doubles? The digi-double work for Panther or even other characters was just... yikes.

[TylerMirage]

DNeg did some solid work on Pacific Rim: Uprising. Their animation for the Jaegers...is kind of a whole other story due to creative choices by the filmmakers, but there were some AMAZING looking shots of the Jaegers when they were still/standing in the Shatterdome. Some awesome looking hard-surface VFX.

Really looking forward to the Blu-Ray release. Hopefully it comes packed with BTS and a commentary.

[TylerMirage]

Rampage was better, more fun and had more quality VFX than it deserved to, ha ha.

Weta knocked it out of the park again with ape work (this time with no pretentious Andy Serkis quotes!) and had some superb close-ups. Was also nice to see an albino ape instead of the classic dark brown/black colouring.

I'm not sure if maybe Weta swapped out creature work with other companies for certain scenes/shots, because the quality of work in the final battle seemed to fluctuate from A++ to B+. Close-ups were great, wide shots of creatures and city destruction seemed to fall a little short.

[ShaneP]

Vincent at Artofvfx interviews DNeg's cofounder peter Chiang about supervising the vfx work for Pacific Rim Uprising:

http://www.artofvfx.com/pacific-rim-upr ... isor-dneg/

He even gets specific about what ILM's Art Department helped do for the show:

"The art department under Production Designer Stefan Dechant had already worked with the ILM Art Department and had already designed a lot of the Jaegers, Scrapper and the three main Kaiju. VFX came in and finished designing Mega Kaiju, some generic Jaegers, the Drone Kaiju and the breach Kaiju. Once animation and rigging got under way some minor alterations to the original shapes had to be modified."

Sounds like the ILM AD did quite a bit!

[ShaneP]

Started watching this new Netflix show, Altered Carbon, about a month ago. Very good show and vfx done by DNEG TV.

Here is artofvfx talking about the show:

http://www.artofvfx.com/altered-carbon- ... r-dneg-tv/

[Kmart]

Here's a CARBON piece that talks about the cinematography, with an eye towards some in-camera trickery that also mentions VFX: http://www.studiodaily.com/2018/03/dp-n ... ed-carbon/