ILM - industrial light and magic

A Brief history of Industrial light and magic.

This company created by George Lucas has been huge part of Hollywood high concept films, since it started in 1975. ILM has been a part of a huge rage of Hollywood blockbuster pictures ranging from Star wars to Avatar. Industrial Light and magic is responsible for a lot of the development of special effects and computer generated imagery that we see today, they have also developed hundreds of techniques which make special effects easier to achieve and cheaper to produce.

Timeline of achievements

-Motion control photography (1975) – This technique was developed for the

epic space battles in star wars. It was invented by John Dykstra who was

hired by George Lucas at the birth of the company. This was also called the

“Dykstraflex system” It was a new more effective way of filming miniatures

-Go-motion (1981) – Fully aware of the problems with stop motion animation,

ILM went about trying to find an alternative way of creating stop motion

animation and making it seem more convincingly real and they created a

technique called Go-motion, where stop motion looks more natural.

-Young Sherlock Holmes (1985) – This was the first feature length film to

have a completely computer generated character (The stain glass window

knight)

-First morph (1988) – The first morph scene was created in 1988, ILM had to create a whole new program to complete this; it was a break through in digital imagery.

-Kodak/ILM CCD digital input scanner (1986) – this invention made in easy to convert film into digital information with out losing any of the quality. This made it very easy to create computer-enhanced scenes.

-Terminator 2 (1991) – The first film with a fully computer generated main character.

-Jurassic park (1993) – This film set the new benchmark for computer-generated special effects, with the creation of skin, textures, movement and muscles. This step forward in CGI has extended the possibilities of filmmaking.

-Caspa the friendly ghost (1995) - First fully synthetic speaking character.

-ILM developed Ambient Occlusion - in an effort to produce a greater level of realism for the CG imagery (2001)

-ILM created Imocap (2006)- a brand new image-based capture system exclusively for the production of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, but was used in many films after Pirates of the Caribbean.

-Fez animation system (2008) - this made creating complex facial animation easier, with greater flexibility. Animation based on human anatomy.

-Verte GPU Engine (2009) - ILM developed a new software system that would simulate high-resolution, photorealistic fire that was entirely computer generated.

Rob Bottin's work in "The Thing"

After Rob Bottin was introduced to director John Carpenter, he became involved in one of his earlier films "The Fog". He was responsible for the special effects and makeup of this film, he even had a small role as Captian Blake.

After "The Fog" Rob's popularity and reputation grew, he was offered to work for John Carpenter again on his next film "The Thing". His dedication to this film was huge, he worked seven days a week including late nights he also stayed over night in the studio, for a year and five weeks. He worked so hard on this film that by the end of production he was admited to hospital.

When you're first introduced to the monster in "The Thing", you see a dog transforming into this horrible thing as it tries to absorbe and infect the other dogs. The monster in the thing wasn't designed freely, even though it is very creative and unique. It had to be created around the concepts which would make it possible, with the invent of CGI a modern version of this film would have more freedom to create the monster. The technology used in this film to animate this monster was basically a hand puppet with a animatronic head, this very simlistic technique is used to full effect in this film and made it no less effective.

Albert Whitlock

This very famous matte artist who was made famous by Alfred Hitchcock because, of the films they did together. Matte artists make backgrounds for films before CGI backgrounds came about, this very skillfull way of making epic landscapes for cinematic films. For this technique the artist creates the background and combines it with the moving film to create a fake sense of location. Albert Whitlock was the matte artist for the thing, this gave the film a sense of scale which would not have been acheived with out him.

The Thing

This whole sequence was shot without any help from computer generated imagery and still the film maker have managed to make a very effective and scary effect. The use of CGI could have made this scene more believable but it would still be equally effective in my opinion.

In the first take of this scene, there was a huge mistake. The strange liquid that quirts out of the mans neck was made in such a rush that the film crew didn't realise it was flamable and fire is a main part of this scene. So when trying to film it for the first time the effect exploded and set fire. This hugely detailed model that took months to create and design went up in smoke in a matter of seconds. They had to wait a very long time untill they could reshoot this scene.

This shows how challenging and expensive it would have been to create special effects like the ones seen in "The Thing". In modern day special effects where almost every aspect of it is digital this isn't a problem. It is very easy to change and redo digital scenes.

The Pixar Story

The Pixar Story is a documentary about how pixar came to be. this documentary shows you the ups and downs of they're journey to success. This incredible documentary has given me a much deeper insight into how computer generated imagery has come about, showing how difficult it is to make and how interesting and effective the overall out comes of using computer graphics can be.

It also explains in-depth the struggle that they had in making the very first feature length computer generated film, Toy story. It also shows how investors like Steve Jobs and Disney greatly effected how Pixar came to be as it is today.

http://www.thepixarstory.com/

I recommend anyone with an interest in films to see this documentary.

Research Title

Has CGI destroyed narrative cinema?

films : Transformers (19th June 2009), Avatar (17th December 2009), The Matrix Revolutions (5th November 2003) and The Thing (26th August 1982)

Showing how most modern day block busters rely on CGI and special effects to generate an audience, they concentrate more on special effects then the narrative of the film. Does this lack of narrative lead to a less gripping cinematic experience. The thing was one of the last films that used models instead of computer generated images.

The Horror of innocence

Genre and Auteur

Genre

-Horror (the contrast between American and British horror films)
-Si-Fi (How special effects could have made science fiction films more believable and overall more enjoyable or have science fiction films decreased in quality because of special effects)
-Action films (James bond, how this franchise has survived for 30 years)
-Romantic comedy's (How this is traditionally more of a British dominated genre with, love actually, 4 weddings and many more)
-Teen movies (Archetypes in teen movies and how important they are at representing real life students)

Auteur

What is an Auteur

An Auteur is an Author or in this case a director who has his own recognisable style for example, Tim Burton uses Johnny Depp in most of his films to represent the outsider. He also remakes a lot of classic British stories for example, Charlie and the chocolate factory and Alice in wonderland. He remakes these films with a sinister darker side to them. His style of film making is completely original to him, his films are instantly recognisable as his movies.

Draft Questios

How Guillermo del Toro represents children in his films, how they are always orphans, how they are almost a link into innocence for adults.

The devils back bone, Pans labyrinth and hell boy (maybe show the contrast between his smaller budget and higher budget films.)