Oscars 2020: Best Visual Effects Predictions
The VFX Oscar race this season offers plenty of innovative tech, led by Jon Favreau’s “The Lion King,” the photo-real, animated breakthrough by MPC Film masquerading as “live action,” along with the distinguished de-aging accomplishments of Ang Lee’s “Gemini Man,” boasting Weta Digital’s most fully convincing CG human in the form of Will Smith’s younger clone, Junior, and Industrial Light & Magic’s completely stripped down, unencumbered approach to making Robert DeNiro, Al Pacino, and Joe Pesci younger throughout the decades in Martin Scorsese’s Best Picture contender, “The Irishman.”
Additionally, Weta took facial capture to the next level with “Alita: Battle Angel,” the manga-inspired sci-fi adventure directed by Robert Rodriguez and produced by James Cameron and Jon Landau. The doll-like cyborg with big eyes (performance-captured by Rosa Salazar) looked very convincing and badass.
But “The Lion King” is the frontrunner, crossing the line between live action and animation, with its stunning illusion of reality. Favreau and his team created a virtual production game changer with a new way of shooting in Virtual Reality with a live-action crew (including six-time Oscar-nominated cinematographer Caleb Deschanel), and making use of life-like animated characters and environments from MPC. The result transports us to Kenya, which served as the inspiration for Pride Rock, the Elephant Graveyard, and the other iconic landscapes. And by staying in accordance with actual animal behavior, the animation team created the ultimate in naturalistic character performance, requiring improvements in the simulation of skin, fur, muscle, and joints.
“Gemini Man”
Paramount Pictures
“Gemini Man” (shot in 3D at 120 frames-per-second and 4k resolution by cinematographer Dion Beebe) revealed Will Smith vs. Will Smith as something more significant than digital de-aging. This represented Weta’s next evolution in performance-captured animation beyond the simian Caesar, necessitating the New Zealand animators to up their game, led by Oscar-winning production VFX supervisor Bill Westenhofer (“Life of Pi”) and Weta VFX supervisor Guy Williams. The 23-year-old Junior appears in more than half the movie, and expresses a range of emotions performed by Smith. Weta’s new methodology involved separate mo-cap shoots for Smith switching back and forth, and new animation based on the morphology of aging. The benchmarks included more realistic skin simulation and detailed eye work, and the development of a procedural software for pores along with robust modeling.
Technology caught up with need for “The Irishman” when ILM undertook a two-year, NASA-like science project (supervised by Pablo Helman) to develop a special camera rig (with cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto and ARRI) along with a markerless, light-based performance capture software called FLUX. Frankly, it couldn’t have been done any other way to preserve their career-capping performances in this zigzagging meditation on friendship, betrayal, and mortality, spanning four decades.
“This was a movie about conversations and we needed a new system because the actors wanted to be themselves,” said Helman. The costly VFX de-aging, therefore, became the tech centerpiece, with 1,750 shots created for two and a half hours of footage, which was the equivalent of making two movies in one — but in nine months instead of 18.
“The Irishman”
Niko Tavernise / Netflix
Other highlights include Marvel’s “Avengers: Endgame” (with the greatest battle in MCU history); “Ad Astra,” James Gray’s journey to the far side of the universe, starring Brad Pitt, which offers striking realism; and J.J. Abrams’ “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker,” the final battle between the surviving Resistance and the First Order, which promises a few new wrinkles.
Contenders listed in alphabetical order. No film will be considered a frontrunner until we have seen it.
Frontrunners for the Shortlist of Ten:
“1917”
“Ad Astra”
“Alita: Battle Angel”
“Avengers: Endgame”
“Captain Marvel”
“Ford v Ferrari”
“Gemini Man”
“The Irishman”
“The Lion King”
“Spider-Man: Far from Home”
Contenders
“The Aeronauts”
“Aladdin”
“Cats”
“Dumbo”
“Fast and Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw”
“Jumanji: The Next Level”
“Men in Black: International”
“Midway”
“Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker”
“Terminator: Dark Fate”