CGSociety

Boyd Shermis received a BAFTA nomination for visual effects in the first film he supervised – ‘Speed’ – in 1994. In addition to the Oscar nomination this year for ‘Poseidon,’ he, Rhonda C. Gunner, Kim Libreri, and Philippe Rebours were nominated for a VES Award for Best Single Visual Effect of the Year for the opening sequence in ‘Poseidon.’ In that sequence, the camera closely follows Josh Lucas as he jogs around a photorealistic digital model of the Poseidon.

 “The film didn’t do well,” Shermis says, “So, I was surprised by the Oscar nomination. To be nominated by members of the branch means a lot to me.”

Shermis believes ‘Poseidon’ pushed the state of the art in two, perhaps three respects. “We took water to another level in volumetric space,” he says. “We had a combination of water, fire, smoke and oil – four different properties all in the same simulation, all aware of and interactive with one another. And, the ship is the largest piece of geometry to be modeled and rendered. ILM made it look perfectly real.”

Although Industrial Light & Magic and The Moving Picture Company handled most of the shots, CIS Hollywood, Hydraulx, Gentle Giant Studios, Lola Visual Effects, Giant Killer Robots, and Pixel Playground also contributed to the film.

When Shermis takes on a visual effects project, he looks for studios with expertise in particular areas. “Almost any studio can do any number of things,” he says, “but most have strengths. If I have a specific task within a show, I take it to a studio doing that specific thing.”

So, before settling on ILM to create the 200-foot wave that rolls the ship, he checked around. “[Digital] water is one of the hardest things to do, but more and more studios are doing it because it always comes up,” he says. “Trying to do miniatures in water is a royal pain in the ass and it never works very well because of scale problems. There were three or four companies that did different types of water, but I didn’t get the confidence that the other studios could handle the scope and scale that we needed.”

To create the water, ILM used a fluid solver developed in conjunction with researchers at Stanford University. To manage the huge number of calculations needed to simulate the ocean of water around the ship, the ocean surface, splashes, spray, foam, bubbles as well as the debris in the water, the studio developed ways to run multiple pieces of the simulation for one frame in parallel on separate processors. Four ILM’ers are up for a second VES award – for Outstanding Created Environment – for their ocean shots.

Similarly, Shermis needed a studio that could handle the unique requirements for interior shots when the water capsizes the ship. “The inside volume of water was a fraction of what we needed for the exterior,” he says. “And running simulations on smaller scales in internal environments can be accomplished by a broader range of companies. But what complicated it for us was the material inside the lobby and the ballroom. And, we needed water, oil, and smoke. The Moving Picture Company had been working with Scanline to develop fire and water sims, so that was who we chose to do that next most difficult water.”

And other studios contributed to water shots, as well. “Giant Killer Robots, CIS, and Hydraulx all did different types of dripping liquids in their miniature work,” Shermis says.

Guessing that many people attending the bakeoff might not have seen the film, Shermis created a reel without regard to the linear narrative. “Everyone knows that the boat rolls over,” he says. “So, I explained the work, not the movie; I showed all the set extensions together, for example.”

In addition, Shermis wanted to show branch members the range of effects in Poseidon. “There is a large contingent of practical effects people who recognize and vote on their effects,” he says. For example, when the wave rolled the boat, a set piece tipped a ballroom filled with furniture. “We had a gimbal that was about 110 feet long, one of the biggest stage-bound gimbals ever built.”

But, it’s the water – and the digital ship – that won the day. Shermis believes the quality of work will impact future effects. “People have to move beyond the status quo,” he says. “Anytime we raise the bar, that becomes the standard.”

As for the other nominees?
“If you look at Davy Jones and the other characters in ‘Pirates’ – applying motion from their onset iMoCap system to fully rendered 3D characters is state of the art. The onset motion capture that ILM developed for ‘Pirates’ is so brilliant. And when you look at ‘Superman’ – the use of water, the close up CG characters – there are all kinds of things in that film. I think we all felt the pinch of condensed schedules, but we didn’t have the budgetary constraints of many films.”

“I’m thrilled to be considered in their company,” he adds. “The process has its flaws. I’m surprised that ‘Charlotte’s Web’ didn’t make the bakeoff. But, for all its flaws, being as humble as I can, I think the cream rises to the top. It’s an honor to be nominated by the branch, by our peers.”

Knoll joined Industrial Light & Magic in 1985 as a motion control camera operator for ‘Captain Eo.’ He moved to the CG side for ‘The Abyss’ and about the same time helped his brother create Photoshop. He’s been nominated for a visual effects Oscar four times – for ‘Star Wars: Episodes I’ and ‘II’ and for ‘Pirates of the Caribbean - The Black Pearl’ and ‘Dead Man’s Chest.’ In addition, he’s been nominated for six VES awards including two this year, for Best Single Visual Effect of the Year (for the Flying Dutchman sequence) and for Outstanding Visual Effects in a Visual Effects Driven Motion Picture.

Industrial Light & Magic handled most of the visual effects for ‘Pirates’ under Knoll’s supervision. In addition, several other studios helped out: Asylum, The Orphanage, CIS Hollywood, Evil Eye Pictures, Gentle Giant Studios, Pacific Title & Art Studio, Method, Proof, and Tippett Studio.

“Looking at the whole show, there was a mixture of things in ‘Pirates,’” Knoll says. “We had physical effects, miniatures, CG matte paintings, CG water. But, Davy Jones was the significant aspect; I think everyone really liked Davy Jones. It took a lot of effort to put a system in place that preserved the nuances of Bill Nighy’s performance and was actor and director friendly and a lot of the things we did to make that character happen succeeded.”

With iMoCap, ILM captured the actors playing the pirates on location and on set in any environment and lighting condition without using any special equipment; that is, without interfering with the filming in any way. The ability to do this affected everything from how the director framed the shots, to how the actors interacted with each other, to how the film was edited, to how the animators were able to apply the actors’ performances to digital characters.

But Davy Jones also relied on the skills of animators who painstakingly studied and applied Nighy’s facial performance to the many tentacled character by hand. And, Davy Jones’ success depended on advances in lighting and rendering. “I think we got a high level of realism partly from using more sophisticated shading models that were not computationally practical on previous shows,” says Knoll.

Video reference of Bill Nighy also helped animators create Davy Jones’ facial performance. “ILM is R&Ding the heck out of facial motion capture, but for this film, where we were taking Bill’s performance and applying it to Davy, we were interpreting one language into another,” he says. “If I’m looking at a shot in dailies with Bill smiling and Davy smiling, but Bill looks sarcastic and Davy looks jolly, I didn’t want to ask what the ‘box’ was doing. I wanted to turn to an animator and say, “Let’s adjust the way the brows are shaped.’ I wanted to say those things to a human brain.”

Ironicially, using the director-friendly iMoCap system meant retraining the visual effects-savvy director, in a way. “We didn’t want Gore [Verbinski] to shoot a couple of takes and think, ‘We’ll make it cool in post,’” Hickel says. “If he went into it thinking that we’d replace everything anyway, that Bill [Nighy] was a placeholder, then he wouldn’t get the benefit of a terrific actor doing that great thing that happens in the moment.”