fxguide: Today in Hollywood, War for the Planet of the Apes was nominated for a Visual Effects Oscar. Nominated was Joe Letteri, Daniel Barrett, Joel Whist and Dan Lemmon. (Interestingly, Weta was also part of the team on Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2 and while Weta is clearly glad to be a part of the Guardians team, lead by VFX sup. Guy Williams... but Apes is very much a 'Weta film'.
2 comments:
I truly can’t quite comprehend that we have been able to do with computer graphics since the origin of the term in 1960 by William Fetter. In just under sixty years we have been able to take human actors and turn them into photorealistic creatures with enough fidelity that consumers are willing to watch a feature length, live action movie with a main character that is not live. Listening to Dan Lemmon talk about how the animators work to make the characters seem even more real and lifelike without actually using animation was very interesting. It’s the small touches like how actors’ eyes look right before they well with tears that gives a human connection in a way that is extremely difficult to replicate. However with today’s technology these animators have been able to do it and create artificial characters how don’t seem to be artificial. In fact they seem to be about as real as you and I.
I definitely would agree that WETA is well deserving of an Oscar for their ludicrously detailed and seamless work on the "planet of the apes" movies. I have never been as impressed by the visual effects of a movie as in the "apes" films, even more than CGI event movies such as Avatar. The CGI work on these films is simply breathtaking, rendering the eponymous ape characters down to their pores. When combined with the impressive motion capture performances of the films, this CGI succeeds in actually making the CGI ape characters more compelling and interesting than their human counterparts. I've never been a big fan of CGI as a whole, but in these movies I must make an exception, simply due to the impeccable quality of the effects. The "Apes" movies are standard setting in the film industry when it comes to special effects, and should be recognized as such. Give them an Oscar already!
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