Variety: With “No Time to Die,” Cary Joki Fukunaga took great care when it came to using VFX and special effects. From underwater fights to an Aston Martin DB5 shootout to an explosive finale, the latest James Bond installment “No Time to Die” is bursting with action-packed moments, but Fukunaga wanted to keep the emotional arc of the storytelling front and center. He didn’t want to undermine that sense of reality and use effects purely to enhance the emotional connection to Bond’s story.
3 comments:
I really enjoyed this article because it consisted of a lot of things I hadn't learned before. For example, I did not know you can win an Oscar after the season has passed. I think if it does win, it is quite fair, because it was truly a revolution for its time. Also, this is the third article from Variety about a Bond film I have done this year. That's pretty cool because I haven't really seen the bond films as something so technically advanced. I think its because it's not really marketed as such, however I found that these types of blockbuster films are often the most experimental and advanced because they constantly rely on new things to wow audiences. I really agree with the philosophy of Fukunaga who wanted to keep the emotional arc of the storytelling front and center. He didn’t want to undermine that sense of reality and use effects purely to enhance the emotional connection to Bond’s story.
Reading this article made me realise how much VFX weighs in modern movies because I personally feel like when I was watching ‘No Time to Die’, I’m so used to seeing VFX on the screen that I’ve forgotten how much work it takes and how much our technology can achieve. Obviously I knew the car chase and combat scenes involved a lot of VFX but even the scene of young Madeleine Swaan in the frozen lake?! I think that sometimes when reading these kinds of articles, I’m constantly jumping between “they did this with real actors in real life?” and “that was a VFX?”. Like there would be scenes where I think for the safety of everyone the shot should be VFX but is actually real; at the same time, there will be scenes where I think that looks real and turns out to be VFX. And this goes back to what the article was saying about blending VFX so smoothly into the shots that it becomes unnoticeable.
While I wouldn’t be surprised to see No Time to Die get a VFX nomination, I wouldn’t bet on it. In recent years, the nominations for the VFX category have been largely dominated by movies that create new worlds and characters digitally, not films that mainly recreate the real world. This type of “invisible VFX,” utilized more and more in film, is often ignored in favor of more flashy uses that can obviously be seen as special effects. However, in some ways, this defeats the point of having effects that blend and don’t call attention to themselves. This reminds me of the Oscar for best editing, especially Bohemian Rhapsody’s notorious win a few years ago. It seems like often the award will go to the film with the “most” of something, not the film with the “best.” For categories like editing, VFX, and makeup & hairstyling, this creates a problem when sometimes the best work is that which fades into the background.
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