#but also the return of practical effects to film when vfx is no longer the cheap alternative is so so so wooooooooooo yay :))) | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

ionicspacemarmot · 4 years

Text

Modern Visual Effects and the Ethics of Digitally Revived Actors

Since its earliest days, illusions have been a staple of cinema. Filmmakers like Georges Méliès sought to use the medium to achieve visual spectacles which could never be accomplished in a live setting like theatre.

Over the past century, special effects have advanced to an unprecedented extent. We now live in a world in which just about anything that can be visualized can be translated to the screen, whether through practical or digital means.

When CGI, or Computer Generated Imagery, was first introduced to mainstream cinema, one of the main goals of VFX artists was to perfect photorealistic human beings. In this industry, one of the most difficult tasks is to create a human being detailed enough to fool the audience into believing it's really there. This is an art which only recently has even come close to being achieved.

Why So Complicated?

When a CGI character is present in a film, it's very rarely seamlessly integrated. Many would argue that it still has yet to be perfected. This is generally not for lack of effort or talent on the part of the artists, but rather the fact that human beings have evolved over many years to identify other humans based on the smallest details and microexpressions. We, as a species, are incredibly good at picking up on the slightest inconsistencies. When a character teeters too precariously on the line between realistic and unconvincing, it runs the risk of falling into what is known as the "uncanny valley."

What is the Uncanny Valley?

The uncanny valley refers to our empathetic response to humanoid creations who look real, but not quite real enough to be completely convincing, thus eliciting a discomforting emotional response from the audience. As explained before, we are extraordinarily good at identifying when something doesn't look or behave as it would in real life, as we experience real world textures, lighting, and physics every single day.

This discrepancy is especially true when it comes to identifying flaws in other human creations. The animal part of our brains immediately recognize that what they're looking at resembles another human being, but those slight imperfections trigger something inherently off-putting. (1)

This is why 3D animated films opt for more exaggerated, cartoony character designs. Mr. Incredible does not look like a real person. Homer Simpson is not designed to look as though he exists in the real world. Our brains have a much easier time registering these designs because they are not designed to imitate reality and fool us.

A Very Brief History

In recent years, technology and techniques have evolved within the VFX industry to the point where convincing photorealistic characters are quite possible. This has been the goal of many artists since the introduction of CGI, meaning there is a great deal of research and development behind it.

While Disney is known today, for better or worse, for their recent advancements in 3D human animation, this is something that has been attempted many times over the past twenty or so years, with varying degrees of success.

Even at the time, this movie was criticized for its creepy, imperfect character models who fell deep into the uncanny valley. That being said, this film was still an immense technical achievement unlike anything that had come before, and paved the way for the truly groundbreaking effects of Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, released the following year in 2002.

One of the earliest experiments in 3D human animation was the 2001 Japanese-American film, Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, directed by Hironobu Sakaguchi. This was the first fully motion-captured mainstream film, as well as the first film to utilize "photorealistic" human characters.

The Beginning of De-Aging

The Two Towers introduced audiences to Gollum, a fully computer-animated character who is still praised today for his realism. This film took the technology introduced in Final Fantasy far beyond its limits, taking Andy Serkis's motion-captured performance and taking the time to ensure his character was composited as seamlessly as possible into the live action world of the film.

A wide variety of films followed, all trying to perfect the art of CGI human beings. While some of these projects were well-executed and have aged quite well, such as (some of) the Matrix sequels. Most, however, failed to properly bridge the uncanny valley, notoriously films such as The Polar Express and The Scorpion King.

In 2006, Bryan Singer's X-Men: The Last Stand, introduced a new frontier to this evolving art: Digital de-aging. In this film, a flashback sequence shows off actors Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen, both digitally altered to resemble younger versions of themselves.

Today, of course, the charge in the effort to perfect 3D human animation is led by none other than Disney. Specifically, Marvel Studios.

The Reign of Disney

While a bit jarring by today's standards, this was extremely new and impressive technology for 2006. It was also a technique that would once again be taken on by a number of other filmmakers in subsequent films such as The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008) and Tron: Legacy (2010).

Tron was Disney's first real foray into the world of digital de-aging technology. While once again, the de-aged Kurt Russell featured in the film is quite unsettling to look at, it paved the way for 2015's Ant-Man. This film opens with a flashback in which actors Michael Douglas and Martin Donovan have been de-aged approximately twenty-five years.

2016 would also see an unprecedented use of this evolving technology upon the release of Gareth Edwards' Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.

Using a miraculously found, highly detailed lifecast of the actors face from the 1984 film Top Secret, the artists at ILM were able to produce an accurate 3D sculpt of the actor's face and composite it onto the motion-tracked performance of Guy Henry. (2)

This effect was remarkably successful and the film continues to be praised for its use of the technology. This technology would again be applied the following year, in Captain America: Civil War, which features a rather convincingly de-aged Robert Downey Jr.

While imperfect, CGI Tarkin was a groundbreaking achievement in terms of technological innovation. However, it did raise a number of ethical discussions. In particular, is it ethical to use this technology to revive deceased actors? And by extension, do actors have a legal right to their physical likeness?

Star Wars Changes the Game

A major element kept secret in the marketing for the film was the prominent role of the character Grand Moff Tarkin, a major character from the original Star Wars in 1977. The immediate issue here is that the actor who originally portrayed the character, Peter Cushing, passed away in 1994.

Ethical Dilemmas

For this film, the immensely talented artists at Industrial Light and Magic were tasked not with de-aging a character, but with bringing a deceased actor back from the dead. This daunting project was achieved by casting a stand-in actor, Guy Henry, who could not only imitate Cushing's voice, but also looked a bit like him.

While Lucasfilm did receive permission from Peter Cushing's estate to use his likeness, this is something they theoretically did not have to do. Legally, it can be quite tricky to protect one's physical likeness. That being said, because they were granted permission by the estate, the studio was not heavily criticized. However, it certainly opened up an interesting ethical discussion. (3)

Again, it begs the question: is this the beginning of a trend? Disney is far from the only studio to attempt something like this. Usually when a deceased actor is revived for a role through special effects, it's for a specific reason. For example, Brandon Lee and Oliver Reed both passed during production of The Crow and Gladiator, respectively. Special effects were used to finish a project they were already heavily involved in. A character like Tarkin is different. (5)

Soon after Rogue One was released, Carrie Fisher tragically passed away before she could film her scenes as Princess Leia Organa in the ninth installment of the main Star Wars saga. Disney released a statement soon after claiming they would not use CGI to recreate her likeness for Episode IX.

As it came to pass, the film ended up utilizing unused footage of Fisher from 2015's The Force Awakens. Writers JJ Abrams and Chris Terrio attempted to write scenes around her pre-existing dialogue to try and fit her into the overarching narrative. Whether or not this worked in the film's favor is besides the point. From a technical standpoint, it's undoubtedly impressive and a testament to how far VFX has come. (4)

One again, however, many questioned the implications of such a practice. Like Peter Cushing's return as Tarkin, Fisher's role in The Rise of Skywalker did not face much scrutiny due to the fact that once again, the production was given the family's blessing to use her likeness in this way. Her daughter, Billie Lourd, actually plays a significant role in the film and shares scenes with her mother's character.

While exciting for hardcore Star Wars fans like myself to see, Tarkin was a character that could have been absent from Rogue One, or at least kept more to the sidelines. However, Edwards chose to make the character a prominent player for the duration of the film, showing him off in great detail quite often. They have essentially used special effects to synthesize an entirely new performance from an actor who has been dead for more than twenty years.

So again, could this be the start of a trend in cinema? Will we see the return of great actors who are no longer with us? Is that a bad thing? Who gets credited and paid? This is entirely new territory that comes with our rapidly growing technological advancements in the film industry. It seems that this is a phenomenon that will continue for the time being. The question remains as to whether or not legal and ethical attitudes change as a result of this ever-evolving medium.

Notes:

Bill Desowitz. "Advanced De-Aging VFX Are Crucial to The Irishman, Gemini Man, and Captain Marvel," Indiewire, October 1, 2019, accessed April 26, 2020.

(2)Bill Desowitz. "Rogue One: How ILM Created CGI Grand Moff Tarkin and Princess Leia," Indiewire, January 9, 2017, accessed May 2, 2020.

Brian Welk. "How Samuel L Jackson’s De-Aging on ‘Captain Marvel’ Cut Shooting Time in Half," The Wrap, March 18, 2019, accessed April 26, 2020.

Carolyn Giardina. "Will Smith, Robert DeNiro and the Rise of the All-Digital Actor," The Hollywood Reporter, August 10, 2019, accessed April 20, 2020.

David Ehrlich. "James Dean Is Just the Beginning: Critics Debate the Future of CGI Acting," Indiewire, November 11, 2019, accessed April 26, 2020.

Erin Winick. "Actors are Digitally Preserving Themselves to Continue Their Careers Beyond the Grave," MIT Technology Review, October 16, 2018, accessed April 20, 2020.

Laura M. Holson. "A C.G.I. James Dean? Some in Hollywood See ‘an Awful Precedent’," New York Times, November 7, 2019, accessed April 20, 2020.

Leon Miller. "14 Actors Resurrected With Crazy CGI (And 6 That Can Never Be)," Screenrant, August 9, 2018, accessed April 26, 2020.

Luke Kemp. "In the age of deepfakes, could virtual actors put humans out of business?" The Guardian, July 8, 2019, accessed April 26, 2020.

(4)Jordan Zakarin. "It Took More CGI Than You Think to Bring Carrie Fisher Into The Rise of Skywalker," Syfy, January 7, 2020.

(3,5)Joseph Waltz. "Rogue One: the CGI resurrection of Peter Cushing is thrilling – but is it right?," The Guardian, December 16, 2016, accessed April 26, 2020.

(1)"VFX Artists React to Resurrected Actors Bad and Great CGI," YouTube video, 13:20, "Corridor Crew," June 1, 2019. https://youtu.be/2ZKPnuUFwOk

#film #filmcommunity #filmmaking #star wars #marvel #carrie fisher #peter cushing #deepfake #deaging #disney #vfxartist #cgi animation #cgi #weta workshop #weta digital #industrial light and magic

22 notes · View notes

aion-rsa · 3 years

Text

How Wonder Woman 1984’s Practical Effects Set it Apart

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

Going back to Themyscira is one of the most anticipated aspects of Wonder Woman 1984. For many fans, the Amazons were the highlight of the original film and an all-Amazon movie can’t come soon enough. The physical prowess and the pure joy of seeing so many women not only in combat, but engaging in fight choreography that’s developed around their physical attributes/gifts/features, is a rare and wonderful thing. The resulting actions sequences were unlike anything on screen before: highly stylized yet clearly effective.

Heading into WW84, director Patty Jenkins and her team (which now includes Gal Gadot as a producer) had a reputation to uphold, and then some.

“There was just no way we’re going to take any shortcuts,” Gadot said during a WW1984 press conference. “And we’re just going to raise the bar and give everything we have because we knew people were so invested with the character and cared so much about her.”

One of the biggest opportunities for action on an epic scale is the so-called Amazon Olympics, an extended opening sequence from Diana’s childhood, where she competed against some of Themyscira’s best in a triathlon of sorts involving an obstacle course high in the air, swimming, and archery on horseback. Lilly Aspell returns to play young Diana who’s now 10 years old. She did at least five months of training to run the obstacle course, which she actually runs through herself. Some of the more fantastical elements are enhanced with green screen and CGI for her safety, but all of the running, jumping, climbing, and swimming is Lilly herself.

If the Amazons were the high point of the first movie, the unequivocal low point was the final fight in the third act, a messy overlong CGI spectacle that felt out of step with the spirit of the warm, character-driven movie audiences had fallen in love with up until that point. While no one mentioned it by name in interviews, it’s not hard to imagine that’s what Jenkins is keen to avoid when she talks about avoiding CGI action – or when Chris Pine refers to “cataclysmic computer graphics explosion nonsense.”

As star Gal Gadot put it: “Patty really made a point about wanting to have a minimum amount of CGI in our movies. So most of the stuff that you’re going to see is real people doing the real thing. Whether it’s us or the stunt people, it’s real people. So it took much longer. You have to prep and to rehearse much longer.”

Gadot calls WW84 “the hardest movie I ever got to shoot by far” but also says it was worth it.

“[The first movie] was received in such an amazing way that there was just no way we’re going to take any shortcuts. And we’re just going to raise the bar and give everything we have because we knew people were so invested with the character and cared so much about her,” said Gadot. “When you see it in the movie … you can just tell that it’s the real deal. You can see by the face expressions that it’s real. You can see the weight and the movement and the speed.”

Practical effects have major advantages, and directors like George Miller and David Leitch, who directed female starring action movies Mad Max: Fury Road and Atomic Blonde, respectively, are big fans. But there are disadvantages as well.

“The hardest parts were just how demanding the shoots were and how physical it was, because it was very important for Patty that we do minimum amount of CGI,” Gadot told Den of Geek and other outlets during a recent press event “So most of the stuff that you see—the running on Penn Avenue, the Amazon sequence, the fight with Cheetah—most of it, it’s real people doing it for real. And for the obvious reasons, it took longer to shoot and it’s very tiring on your body. But then you see the result and I was so satisfied with it cause I was like, ‘Oh my God, you can see the difference. You can tell the difference between real action to CGI action. You can see it in the way that we move, that we hold, our faces, our bodies.’ So that was the hardest part. The rest of it, honestly, Wonder Woman feels like a second home for me.”

There’s a decent amount of wire work in the film which, as Gadot pointed out, isn’t exactly new so much as something that’s fallen a bit out of favor with the rise of CGI.

As fans of the comics know, and the trailer has alluded to, Diana and Barbara have a relationship of sorts before Cheetah enters the picture. Gadot, Jenkins, and Wiig discussed the unique nature of their climactic altercation at a press conference for WW84.

“And I think Gal and I talking about this from the very start,” recalls Jenkins, “saying, ‘However they would fight, it would be completely different. And they’re friends.’ Right? Or at least they have this friendship in the past. It’s not about punching in the face … They’re both trying to literally get the other one under control. … So, narratively, it was fascinating, and then how it would work spatially was fascinating, and then executing it was long and laborious and wild.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like this before,” Gadot says. “It’s not like when you see women try to fight like men. No, we’re females, our bodies are different, the way we move is different and this is how we do it. And just to see it, it was so great.”

Each part of the set was carefully designed around the needs of the fight choreography. Eagle-eyed viewers might pick up on a railing or two that play key roles in how the performers bring the action to life.

“We designed what we wanted something to feel like and look like and what the moves were. And then we had to build. There was no stage big enough in the world so we had to build the stage,” Jenkins says. “And then we had to build all those things. And then we have Cirque du Soleil performers practicing them and showing us what things are going to look like. And then these guys have to end up doing it. And so it was incredible, but it was fun to really aspire.”

Of course many fans are simply worried how Cheetah herself will look. As Cinema Blend helpfully points out, while Cats and WW84 were made around the same time (and filmed in adjoining studios) Kristen Wiig looks significantly better than the cast of that delightful little monstrosity.

“Finding the right blend of prosthetics and CG to make that transformation was… it took a ton of (research and development),” Jenkins told Cinema Blend. “It started from the day I started it, and we didn’t complete it until the day we finished. It was so complex trying to figure how to pull off that character. I would lose so much sleep over it. Honestly. Because I was like, it could go so wrong. The first thing I did when I got on to the movie was that they said, ‘We can do this all CG. We can put hair on people.’ And I was like, ‘Show me the best example of that.’ And I saw it, and I said, ‘That’s not good enough. If that’s where our technology is, that is not good enough.’ … Cats was shooting on the stage next to us, and I knew that they were going through the same thing. And then I heard that they were just going to do it in CG. And I was like, ‘I hope it works out for you!’ But I’ve never been so thankful for the process I went through.”

It’s worth noting that while they were filmed at the same time, WW84 is coming out a full year after Cats. The VFX artists who worked on Cats were famously mistreated, rushed to put out an inferior product in order to make financial and awards show deadlines (the latter of which they missed) and then many were laid off and their work publicly derided, an all-too-common occurrence in the industry. Nevertheless, Jenkins once more opted for practical effects as much as possible, and held off on incorporating CGI until absolutely necessary.

“I didn’t want Kristen’s face to become some animated bizarreness. So then we ended up doing tons of prosthetics. Real work. And we only took over certain parts of her body. The rest of it is prosthetics.”

Perhaps most importantly, the action in WW84 is an extension of characterization and moves the plot forward—one of the biggest advantages of using practical effects and a reason actors often cite when they insist on doing as many of their own stunts as possible. The opening sequence in Themyscira illustrates a lesson that shaped who Diana is as a person. Her relationship with Barbara informs her tactics in battle. Her stance on violence and war in the first film—a tricky but welcome one for the genre—is refined here, and directly impacts how she fights.

Wonder Woman isn’t just a demi-goddess who punches her way to victory—how, who, and when she fights matters, both behind the scenes and within the story.

The post How Wonder Woman 1984’s Practical Effects Set it Apart appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3puwylZ

#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

0 notes

ramajmedia · 5 years

Text

10 Things In Historical Period Movies You Didn't Know Were CGI

When most of us think of CGI in films, we think its enhancing superhero capes as they fly through the air, or creating alien creatures in science fiction adventures. Most audiences don't expect it to appear in historical period films, where so much emphasis is placed on the story, actors, and props being as accurate as possible.

CGI in these particular films is used more often than you think, for every imaginable reason. Either because a certain historical item or location no longer exists, or because there's simply no other way to demonstrate the scale of a historical battle or environment. It's also used for enhancing environments, whether it's in 19th century Regency England or the '40s in Europe during WWII. Below you'll find 10 things in historical period films you didn't know were CGI.

10 LONGSHANK'S ARMIES & STAKES IN BRAVEHEART

Despite Mel Gibson being a lot older than the real William Wallace at the time he portrayed him in Braveheart, as well as a few creative liberties taken with the breadth of Wallace's march on York, it still holds up as a great historical film. CGI was used to enhance it only where completely necessary so as not to take away from the authenticity.

CGI was used for long shots of Edward Longshank's armies as they line up before the initial battle, and while "an army" of extras were hired for the film, CGI was used to vastly multiply their numbers. When the horses were impaled on stakes in the battle, the stakes were CGI, while the horses were dummies.

9 THE ENVIRONMENTS IN PRIDE & PREJUDICE

Joe Wright's 2005 version of Pride & Prejudice is one of many film versions of Jane Austen's classic piece of literature, but what sets it apart from the others is the enchanting beauty of its natural environments, from capturing the majesty of England's rolling hills, to the stately elegance of its manor homes and country houses.

Though most people think it's CGI-free because it's a period drama, you'd win a bet if you decided to prove them wrong. CGI was used to enhance the facades of many historical homes and remove modern-day anachronisms, and heighten lighting in natural environments. The scene where Lizzy is crying in her carriage about Lydia and Wickham was shot in the day but made to look like dusk.

8 CINDERELLA'S FEET

When Disney's live-action Cinderella debuted, the dazzling CGI of the lavish historical environments wasn't the topic on everyone's lips. Audiences were debating on whether or not the star's svelte waistline had been altered using CGI to be even smaller than it would be while corseted.

RELATED: The 10 Best Disney Live-Action Movies Of All-Time, According To IMDB

Ironically, that wasn't where the CGI was used on the star! She never felt her feet were particularly attractive, and for the scene involving the glass slipper being placed on them, she was happy to have them digitally enhanced to be daintier and more slender.

7 SOLDIERS IN DUNKIRK

Christopher Nolan takes great pride in using as little virtual effects as possible in his films. He prefers to use practical effects wherever possible, with CGI only used as enhancement. But even he couldn't get away with making a large scale film like Dunkirk without a little CGI boost.

RELATED: 10 Best World War II Movies, Ranked

In the scenes on the beach involving hundreds of stranded men, Nolan and his team used a time-honored tradition of using CGI to multiply certain extras by putting the same ones in a different position and replicating them. He had to do something to indicate there were 400,000 men stranded on that beach. Surprisingly, he only ever had three (real) spitfires in the sky, which didn't provide the same sense of scale.

6 COLISEUM CROWD IN GLADIATOR

Gladiator was a historical period drama on an epic scale, drawing from real history and combining it with scintillating narrative enhancements to tell the story of one gladiator who defied his place and challenged an Empire. Some of the enhancements were through CGI, and they were done cleverly enough as to not pull focus from the grand storyline.

The Coliseum is well known to have been recreated using CGI wizardry, returning it to its glory in ancient times. But the crowd was also CGI as well beyond the Emperor's box, meaning Russell Crowe was addressing about 10 people max.

5 SOUTHAMPTON IN TITANIC

Pioneering filmmaker James Cameron has always used the latest in digital technology to bring his cinematic visions to life. The technology he used in The Abyss for the most realistic water effects ever seen on film was used extensively in Titanic, especially in the sequence where it capsizes.

But there were other environmental aspects that audiences may not realize were also made digitally. Much of early 20th century Southhampton, where the ship sets all from, didn't exist. They had to either map historical buildings over real ones, or completely recreate buildings long-since demolished.

4 BULLET WOUNDS IN SAVING PRIVATE RYAN

Steven Spielberg, like James Cameron, is a filmmaker who is at the forefront of film making technology to get his narrative exactly the way he wants it. In the famous war film, while he used thousands of extras in lieu of CGI soldiers, and built provincial French towns where none existed with practical effects, he had to use CGI for some of the smallest details.

You would think he'd simply have his VFX crew pour corn syrup and ketchup on some prosthetic wounds, but he used CGI in 1998 to make them as gruesome and realistic as possible in Saving Private Ryan.

3 DONOVAN'S DEATH IN INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE

The Indiana Jones films used a variety of movie-making magic to Chronicle the adventures of the worlds most famous globe-trotting archaeologist. From creating giant matte paintings to create jungle vistas and ancient temples, to playing with blue screen for exciting car chases, every effort was made to make the scenes seem as real as possible.

RELATED: Indiana Jones 5: 10 Scrapped Ideas From Previous Sequels It Should Use

In the third installment in the film franchise, for the scene involving Donovan's death by drinking from the wrong grail, Spielberg wanted a long take focused on his decaying body. Multiple puppets were made in his likeness and then the actor's face was digitally mapped over it, a tricky process in 1989.

2 THE PIER IN THE GREAT GATSBY

Baz Luhrman's The Great Gatsby is a dizzying, frenetic look at one of American literature's most important novels and characters. CGI can be found throughout the beautiful sets, to recreate aspects of New York City in the 20s, as well as heighten the level of opulence in Gatsby's impressive abode.

But where it might not have been expected is to recreate the infamous pier in the novel, which separates Gatsby's house in the fictional West Egg from his rival Tom Buchanan's house in the East Egg. The pier, water, and blinking green lantern were all created using CGI.

1 SOOT IN THE DARKEST HOUR

While The Darkest Hour gets great accolades for using practical effects and makeup to transform Gary Oldman into Winston Churchill during WWII, it should be celebrated for its painstaking recreation of wartime London through the clever use of CGI.

London in the 40s was covered in a thick layer of soot, and it wasn't possible to film exterior shots of the city without using CGI to bathe the city in a blanket of blackness. It added to the oppressive ambiance of the film and showed the descent into degradation the war effort had caused on the jewel of the British Empire.

NEXT: 10 Things In Sci-Fi Movies You Didn't Know Were CGI

source https://screenrant.com/historical-period-movies-didnt-know-cgi/

#screenrant

0 notes

aion-rsa · 3 years

Text

Willow: What to Expect from the Disney+ Series

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

After the wildly successful conclusion of the original Star Wars trilogy and meeting the wonderful Warwick Davis, George Lucas had a plan: to launch a new fantasy franchise with the man who’d bought Wicket the Ewok to life at the forefront. Reimagining a film he’d first conceived in 1972, Lucas got to work and five years later Willow hit screens in 1988. Directed by Ron Howard and written by Bob Dolman based on Lucas’ story, the film tells the tale of the titular hero and aspiring sorcerer who heads off on an incredible journey to return a baby to its people.

While the film wasn’t a huge commercial success and received mixed reviews on release, to a whole generation of kids–who have now grown up–and their kids it remains a classic. That’s why this Willow fan was incredibly excited to hear that Howard and Lucas will be returning–with helmers Jon Chu and Jon Kasdan–to the fantastical world and the characters who’ve meant so much to so many over the years.

So what will this new Willow series look like? What do we want to see? And what storylines will the new show likely pick up? Get ready for some theories because we’re diving in!

The Ufgoods

With Davis returning it’s clear that Willow will once again be at the center of the new series. In the original film he and his family lived in the small village of Nelwyn. Willow’s wife Kiaya (Julie Peters) and children Ranon (Mark Vandebrake) and Mims (Dawn Downing) were only in the film for a short time but the new series could see them return. Seeing as Davis is getting older there’s a chance that we could see one of his kids join him on his quest or even take over for the hero. If Willow achieved his goal of becoming a powerful sorcerer we could also meet him as the town’s elder, using his magic to protect the people he cares about while potentially looking for an apprentice.

With longer form storytelling available to the creative team it would be nice to learn a little more about the Ufgoods and their village. Magic is real here and clearly a part of the economy, world, and existence of the Nelwyn community as well as that of the Daikinis who rule over the land. It would be super cool to take advantage of the format to really build on the inner workings of the world and lore of Willow.

In the film, Willow acts as a connection between those two worlds which we could see explored here. Speaking of which, the fact he saved a young baby who was prophesied to take down an evil queen–and did–is probably a big thread that will get picked up here.

Which brings us to…

A New Generation of Heroes

Alongside Willow’s children, Ranon and Mims, there is the obvious story of Elora Dannon, the young baby that set Willow on his quest years ago. Disney has finally started to combine their success with women-led stories–the princess movies that kept them afloat for years–with genre storytelling. It might have taken them 11 years to do a female-led movie in the MCU but it now exists, and after critiques of The Mandalorian and its lack of women with speaking roles, it seems like they’d be smart to take advantage of the fact that they have a franchise here which featured two radical strong women already in place and a new young hero who could potentially be a great ally to Willow. Basically, expect Elora Dannon to play a large part in whatever adventures Chu, Kasdan, and co. have in store.

With all of that said, it would be amazing to see Disney bring Mims and Ranon back. We rarely get stories with heroes who aren’t a very specific kind of person. To have two little people leading a big Disney+ series would be huge, plus the kids already have a connection to Elora as they were the ones who found her in the river at Nelwyn. It seems to make sense that she would have been raised alongside Willow’s kids, especially as he had a close connection to the people who raised her too.

Sorsha and Madmartigan

And who did raise her? Well, that would be the powerful warrior daughter of evil queen Bavmorda (Jean Marsh), Sorcha (Joanne Whalley), and the arrogant sellsword Madmartigan (Val Kilmer). It’s a truly unlikely pairing and both her parents were… let’s say unusual, so it’s hard to say exactly where they’ll be when we return.

There’s a chance they cleaned up their acts to raise their daughter and rule as stable and fair monarchs but that seems a little boring. Sorcha is one of fantasy’s coolest and most complex female characters so it’d be nice to see her return, especially if she’s ended up having to raise Elora alone due to Madmartigan continuing his canonical streak of being a useless, greedy man.

With the trend of big actors returning to nostalgic roles it seems like we could see Davis and Kilmer team up again, perhaps Willow has to find his one time ally for Sorcha? Maybe he even has to hunt him down when he puts the world in danger with some terrible scheme or bargain. It would be wonderful to see Whalley return too as we rarely get to see strong older women in big, meaty fantasy roles. If that’s the case then maybe we could see dual storylines as the classic Willow team reunites and their younger counterparts have to either assist, save, or potentially battle them. There’s so many options!

Bavmorda’s Return?

The big question is what could cause all of these disparate warriors to come back together? The answer seems to lay in the original movie.

The evil queen at the center of the story was banished but not killed, so potentially she could make her return to finish off Elora once and for all. Jean Marsh is an icon–she also terrified us as Momby in Return to Oz–so to see her return in some form would be amazing, but also if she’s not interested there are plenty of ways to reinvent an evil witch.

Bavmorda is a classic fantasy villain but if the team wants to do something else there’s plenty of scope for angles to explore. The conflict between the Daikini and Nelwyns seems like an obvious route, but we could see some totally new inventions too. There’s also the chance that Sorcha or Elora could become surprise villains, perhaps with one of them being inspired to follow in their missing matriarch’s footsteps. It would be a big twist but would definitely be an interesting route for the show to explore. Another option could be a sect of Bavmorda’s loyal followers rising up against the crown.

Incredible Creature Work

If you’ve rewatched Willow recently then you’ll be aware of how great the practical effects are. I still remember the abject horror of the opening attack on Nelwyn and the Death Dogs. There’s also the two headed Eborsisk–named after Siskel and Ebert–and the unforgettable transformation of Madmartigan. Basically, the ’88 film offers up a ton of incredible creature work.

Lucasfilm has been continuing that legacy with the new Star Wars trilogy and of course, the puppeteering magic of Baby Yoda, so they’re definitely capable of creating more fantastical creatures which will hopefully be filling the world of the Willow series.

There’s also the recent beauty of Jim Henson Studio’s The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance which was critically acclaimed–and unfairly canceled–showcasing that there’s still an audience for good old practical effects and hard fantasy. With the recent invention of the tech that brought The Mandalorian to life, it’s pretty likely that we’ll see a melding of VFX and practical effects to build out the world.

Reimagining What Fantasy Can Be

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

Willow was groundbreaking for its time not just because of its effects and storytelling but also by having Davis as a lead. It would be amazing to see the series continue that trend. The conversation around representation often leaves out disabled people and this would be a brilliant place to introduce an accessible and inclusive version of what fantasy can be.

If we can imagine a world with Death Dogs and magical prophecies, surely we can imagine a wheelchair user as a heroine or someone with a facial disfigurement as a romantic lead. What would be really cool is if Willow expanded our idea of what disability looks like as disabled people of color are often left out of the very little rep that we do get.

So let’s see if Disney is willing to continue the legacy that was started years ago with the original film and create something truly radical in terms of who gets to be a hero in fantasy stories.

The post Willow: What to Expect from the Disney+ Series appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3k3jXmD

#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

1 note · View note

aion-rsa · 4 years

Text

Lovecraft Country: Bringing the Shoggoths to Life

https://ift.tt/3o3hsUu

Contains spoilers for episodes 1, 2, 8 and 10 of Lovecraft Country.

Grant Walker is a monster person. “I’m a monster person, indeed.” He confirms. “It’s definitely been there since I can remember.” Raised on a diet of Clive Barker and ‘80s horror, The Lord Of The Rings and painting Warhammer figures, Walker is just fascinated with monsters. So as Framestore’s VFX supervisor on Lovecraft Country, in charge of bringing the shoggoths to life, he’s in his element.

“Misha [Green – creator] briefed us on the character of the shoggoth and it was basically supposed to be the ultimate guard dog. It’s a loyal creature. It’s a guard dog that’s supposed to be terrifying and fierce and powerful. The most important of those, I guess, is terrifying,” Walker explains. “Almost every element about the creature is supposed to be there to terrify you. Its teeth, all the weird eyes it’s got all over its back. It’s got a powerful anatomy. It’s got these little raptor arms for chopping up people and poking them.”

A creature originally described in H.P. Lovecraft’s mythology, Walker says he was still given plenty of leeway to make his shoggoth his own.

“I really wanted to push the teeth. That was the main thing. It was a big, powerful creature that was supposed to be absolutely terrifying, but also slightly otherworldly. It didn’t want to feel like it was just a monster from the zoo. While we base a lot of reference on existing animals like gorillas, big cats, sharks and things like that, it was supposed to have an otherworldly nature about it to give it some sort of eeriness and sit it into the Lovecraft world.”

Shoggoths make appearances in episodes one, two, eight and ten. A surprise ambush occurs in episode one, followed up in episode two when they’re in guard dog mode. Then in episode eight the shoggoth returns for a big gory action scene, while episode ten sees two shoggoths go head to head.

VFX explained

So how do you put a CG shoggoth into a live action scene interacting with actors?

“It is tricky,” explains Walker.

“What we do is we first plan it out with a pre-visualization, a very basic animation where we take a scan from the set so we can build the set in our computers, and we block out the entire sequence with all the actors, with the shoggoth, with all the stuff that’s happening

“That’s to really iron out what we’re going to film, because obviously when we get on set there’s no shoggoth. There’s stunt guys holding puppets but we need to know how fast the shoggoth can run, we need to know what he’s going to do, what he’s going to impact. If he bumps into a car, when do we nudge that car on-set, all those kinds of things.”

There’s no clear cut rules about what will be done with CGI and what will be practical FX, Walker explains. Instead it’s a case of trial and error and ensuring he always knows what can be achieved in CGI if they don’t get the shot. The scene in episode eight where the rampaging shoggoth tears off Office Lancaster’s (Mac Brandt) arm, for example, originally involved a prosthetic limb, but ultimately CGI worked better.

Molding the Shoggoth

Using the pictures supplied by the art department and with further direction from Misha Green, Walker set about sculpting the shoggoth.

“We basically built a digital sculpture of the shoggoth like you would in clay. Then you build a control rig for animation,” he explains. “On top of that you have to replicate all the anatomy inside [the creature]. We build a muscle system that works with simulation so we can simulate muscles bouncing around, flesh wrinkling and all that kind of stuff in a technical process.”

When he was happy with the musculature, attention turned to attempting to replicate the lighting on set, focusing on the skin of the creature and how it would absorb and reflect light.

“You have to paint all these textures and develop, what we call, shaders that react to light in the way that you would expect certain objects to react to light. You render it using the lights from the set and then at that point you should see your shoggoth sitting pretty much on top of the film plate,” he says. “Then you have a massaging process called compositing where you merge the two seamlessly together.”

This involves things like adding shadow, painting out bits of blue screen and working with environmental elements like the shoggoth kicking up dust as he runs which could be done via CGI or via a filmed element to really bring it all together.

Guts and gore

Lovecraft Country prides itself on not holding back when it comes to the grue, but this posed more challenges for the team when deciding what should be done in-camera and what would in-computer.

“There’s one significant shot in ep eight where the gore is a big feature that’s in-camera,” says Walker. “There’s this big blood exposure, it covers them. That is the one that I would hate to attempt in visual effects. It’s got too much interaction with the characters. That’s the one significant gore piece that is in-camera. Then there’s the set dressing, which is the blood, guts, arms, prosthetics limbs that are on the floor.”

Blood directly from and around the shoggoth – when it comes from the shoggoth’s gills or when he’s mauling people – was CGI and there were different types of blood they needed to simulate.

“It was surprising how many different types of variation of blood that we needed to do. Blood exploding was one type. Then there’s blood that landed on the ground. From a technical point of view there were probably six, maybe eight, variations of how to produce CGI blood for doing different things. If blood’s seeping into a jumper it’s a textural thing that has to change over time. We also have bits of blood protruding from somewhere and then landing onto something. Then it has to change from one type of data, which is geometry data landing to effect texture. That would turn into another thing. It was quite a complex setup. 90% of it is visual effects blood.”

You can tell monster-man Walker is here for it.

Real life inspirations

Walker got the concept designs from the art department which acted as a blueprint for how the shoggoth would look but Green gave him the greenlight to make tweaks where he saw fit and some of his reference points came from the natural world.

Take the teeth:

“I see all those teeth, but I’m like, ‘Is that the sarlacc pit? Is it just a round thing with loads of teeth in it?’ I want this thing to be able to churn up people’s faces rather than just shaking teeth around. That was one area I was like, ‘Let’s look at teeth that are scary.’

“I saw an angular fish that had these big pointy teeth that jut out at you. Then I looked at a shark’s jaws, because I knew that their teeth operated separately from the main cranium skull. Then we built these mandibles inside the mouth that could act like a food processor for people’s heads.”

Nice.

The shoggoth also has gills at the back of the head which inspired Walker in further grossness.

“When someone said, ‘He’s got gills back there and he eats people’s heads,’ I was like, ‘Oh, sure we can blast the blood out of the back of the head.’ I’m sure I wasn’t the first person to think it…”

Putting the moves on

The next challenge for Walker and his team was how to make the shoggoths convincingly move and for this Walker turned to primates.

“In terms of also making it move and be powerful, I looked at it and I’m like, ‘All right, it’s muscular, and looks like this it’s running on its knuckles.’ That’s the gorilla,” he says. With the animation supervisor they would look at other references and tweak the anatomy of the shoggoth in reference to the movement, adjusting the length of the arms and the legs and making tweaks until the anatomy matched the motion they wanted.

Eyes in the back of its head

From the original Cthuhlu mythos the shoggoth was covered in eyes but Walker wanted to adjust exactly where they were situated.

“We put their eyes on the head and the back. We removed them a bit from the shoulder. They felt a bit strange on the shoulder. We were thinking that maybe its brain is in its head. You can imagine that the spinal column might have some sort of optical nerve that might tie it all together. But to be on limbs as well pushed too far. I did feel I’d like to try to keep it around the spinal column at least,” he explains.

“In terms of how that affected the animation and the character was quite interesting because the idea is this creature can see in pretty much any direction. Most creatures hear or see something and they turn their head to look at it. Well, this doesn’t need to. How do you make the creature look at something without needing to turn its head? There was a bit of a trade off there. We did ultimately use the head and little looks, but there are some shots where it’s mainly in the eyes.”

Big mouth strikes again

With the eyes scattered around the shoggoth’s head and neck and the pupils not easily identifiable – they are either have slight cataracts or they’re almost entirely black – much of the shoggoth’s facial focus is on the mouth. As well as the teeth, the shoggoth’s tentacled tongue became an important aspect of the design.

One of the early animation tests of the face

“When you’ve got a mouth as big as this, you have to spend a lot of time controlling it. This one was a pretty big feature. We spent a lot of time working on where the lips should start and finish. I did do a version where the lips were closed over the teeth, which kind of looked a bit like a weird Kermit the Frog and became immediately less terrifying,” deadpans Walker.

The tongue was another big focus.

“There were a couple of concepts from our art department where they had a single tongue, double tongue, and a four tongue kind of thing but the ends of it were quite short,” Walker explains. He had his heart set on something bigger, a longer, twistier tongue that could feel like a weapon, with barbs down the side he says were inspired by the barbs on a cat’s tongue.

The shoggoth is a scary beast. There is also something grotesquely phallic about it.

“It’s weird you say that because I’ve done a number of creatures and it’s often a comment about creatures that I make. It must be something subconscious that creeps into these creatures. I don’t know what it means. I’m not going to analyze it too much. But yeah, I have no good explanation for that,” says Walker. We’re not going to push.

Under the skin

The skin of the shoggoth was another element that took work. Walker says the plan was always to make the skin slightly translucent which meant building the skeleton, muscles and vein system beneath the skin so that you can see into it a bit if you shine a torch at it.

Concept art of the shoggoth

“There’s some kind of red gnarly stuff all over his skin as well,” says Walker. “They’re supposed to be creatures that haven’t seen the sun or don’t like light. So the skin was always supposed to be a bit sickly. That scarring, also was an artistic way of creating variations. There’s a few of these, what we call white shoggoths, in the episode so we needed to have a few variations.”

The money shots

Walker says episode eight was the biggest challenge, in particular the sequence where the shoggoth goes on the rampage and bites Lancaster’s arm off.

“When a monster is interacting closely with a human being, you need to make sure it’s either moving that person or it’s physically affecting that actor, but also that it’s casting shadows correctly,” says Walker. Sequences like this are where the pre-vis comes into its own, he explains, “you’re filming all this action going on and there’s one significant thing missing, which is the shoggoth.”

Walker says they’d been working on this sequence for around five months, and that’s not including the pre-vis which they completed over a year ago.

Meet the Monsters of Lovecraft Country

By Rosie Fletcher

Lovecraft Country Episode 10 Review: Full Circle

By Nicole Hill

The shoggoths get a final hoorah in episode ten, in several sequences where you see it close up, not on the rampage “It’s more chill, it’s in bodyguard mode, it’s just following around and you get to see it in a bit more detail in certain shots,” says Walker, while there’s another scene where two shoggoths have a scrap (“he’s going to bob, with his little paws and he’s going to wait up and he’s going to throw a right hook…” boxer Walker describes acting it out for the animator).

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

Walker says the show’s been a joy to work on, and he’s even enjoyed watching it back, though he doesn’t always like to look at his own work – surely an indication of the quality of his creation. The show has been a success and while there is by no means any guarantee any sort of second season will materialise, if it does, we’d fully expect to see more of Walker’s supernatural guard dogs – for the merchandising opportunities if nothing else. Because after all, who wouldn’t want a shoggoth of their very own?

The post Lovecraft Country: Bringing the Shoggoths to Life appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/31t2JbY

#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

0 notes