“Star Wars,” “Superman,” “Avatar” – for decades, Hollywood has found box-office treasure in fantasy science fiction epics about heroes adventuring in strange and mysterious lands. “John Carter,” director Andrew Stanton’s upcoming Martian war tale, is based on the 100-year-old Edgar Rice Burroughs yarn that helped inspire many of those stories.
Andrew Stanton talks about the process of making the forthcoming John Carter, and just why Pixar movies are so brilliant, in a fascinating Q&A… (abbreviated)
Through to this final film, the world of Harry Potter has been a magic place for VFX artists to test their talents and achieve some of their best work. Cinesite discusses wand duels and infinite staircases for ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2’
When the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences unveiled its Oscar nominations this morning, there were some very familiar names among the honorees.
Cinesite UK is one of the largest full-service visual effects and post-production facilities in the world. A wholly-owned subsidiary of Kodak, Cinesite has recently completed more than 115 visual effects shots for X-Men: First Class, which unveils the beginning of the X-Men saga.
Cinesite worked on a range of shots including a retro version of the Cerebro Room, Azazel’s fight sequences, a military parade in Red Square, and Washington DC, devastated by nuclear war.
The Art of VFX settles down with Simon Stanley-Clamp, VFX Supervisor at Cinesite, to discuss work on “On Stranger Tides”
Adriene Hurst of Digital Media World interviews Simon Stanley-Clamp, VFX supervisor, and Michele Sciolette, head of VFX technology about Cinesite’s work on “On Stranger Tides”
Renee Dunlop of CGSociety profiles Cinesite upon the release of “Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides”
Sony/Columbia’s new Jonathan Liebesman directed disaster movie Battle: Los Angeles centres on a series of striking visual effects from Cinesite. The VFX giant created many of the film’s intricately detailed battle sequences as well as the Commander Alien character.
CGsociety’s Paul Hellard gets a look in on Cinesite’s work for the Battle: Los Angeles. The film follows a marine platoon that’s battling against an alien invasion. Cinesite’s Ben Shepherd was that facility’s VFX Supervisor, responsible for a tally of 110 shots.
The Dawn Treader arrives at its first port of call, Lone Island, which consisted of Australian plate photography enhanced with digital matte paintings and environment work supplied by Cinesite and the production’s in-house visual effects team. The crew disembarks at the quayside, constructed as a partial set in Brisbane, which Cinesite matte painter Sevendalino Khay enhanced with CG set extensions.
One of the magical elements of the latest Narnia film, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, is a menacing green mist that preys on characters' vulnerabilities and takes advantage of their weaknesses and desires. As one character puts it, “It seeks to corrupt all goodness – to steal the light from this world.” It fell to Cinesite to figure out how to do justice to that idea, combining realistic simulations of the mist with subtle performance-animation aspects that would bring the smoky tentacles to life.
Lord Voldemort’s snake-like nose was one of Cinesite’s key effects on Deathly Hallows: Part 1, replacing the real nose of actor Ralph Fiennes in 46 shots. On set Fiennes played the scene with 16 tracking markers applied via a mould. “It was a latex mask that had holes cut in it and they would put the markers though that so that they were always in the same place,” explained Cinesite 2D supervisor Andy Robinson. “That enabled the trackers to line up the head a lot better.” HDRs of the scene were also captured and a texture shoot of Fiennes' head gave Cinesite polarised and unpolarised images to derive both bump and spec passes for the face.
Cinesite completed 93 shots for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1, including Lord Voldemort’s snake-like nose, the ghost of Dumbledore and a Patronus doe. The most challenging involved replacing Ralph Fiennes' nose area with Lord Voldemort’s CG snake-like snout, which extended from between the eyebrows to the upper lip using Maya, RenderMan, PFTrack, 3de and Nuke.
Cinesite served as one of the lead visual effects houses on the 20th Century Fox feature Marmaduke, which opened in theatres last month. The live-action film is based on the comic strip and centres around a Great Dane, voiced by Owen Wilson, and the animal friends he makes when his family moves to a new city.
Fox’s big-screen adaptation of Marmaduke (based on the long-running comic strip) goes further in its hybrid animation approach than Beverly Hills Chihuahua or other canine movies.
Following its CG work on Beverly Hills Chihuahua and Underdog, Cinesite is back making dogs talk for Marmaduke, completing 650 VFX shots giving 10 live-action dogs the power of speech.
As Dastan and Tamina journey through sixth-century Persia on their mission to save the Sands of Time, they travel through two cities, which house several action sequences.
Sue Rowe, Visual Effects Supervisor for Cinesite, was on set throughout the shoot in Morocco and later at Pinewood Studios, collecting data for her team and preparing how they would handle the tasks they had been awarded, comprising 280 shots. The shoot ran from the end of August and into December. “Although the art department had provided quite adequate sets in many cases Director Mike Newell and Producer Jerry Bruckheimer came back from reviewing the footage wanting the whole production to be more, bigger and better. Can we add a couple of hundred buildings? Have a grander palace? Can that camera’s helicopter move swing even wider?” said Sue.
Simon Stanley-Clamp on creating fearsome beasts for the re-make of Clash of The Titans.
Duncan Evans travels to darkest Soho to talk about Cinesite’s work on big-budget Hollywood film Clash of The Titans
What was the biggest creative challenge you faced on Clash of the Titans? And what noteworthy surprise or surprises arose (a lesson learned or an unexpected discovery) during the course of the project?
