Tag: ILM

STAR WARS: EPISODE VII – THE FORCE AWAKENS Blu-ray Review

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STAR WARS: EPISODE VII – THE FORCE AWAKENS

Wow. Just the sound of it rolling off the tongue… Who would have thought this would happen? We all dreamt about the possibility of the saga being taken further than six episodes, even if as secretly closeted fans, but did we ever truly believe it would happen? Now it has and I do not feel I am alone in saying it’s been worth the wait. Even those who found the film little more than average have to admit, this is something truly special, even generational, for some.

I’ve admired J.J. Abrams as an all-around, fully immersed filmmaker for some time now. From his original content on television and the big screen to revamping STAR TREK and now STAR WARS, he’s a special kind of movie geek. No one can argue that his heart and soul isn’t in every fiber of making a fantastic movie and doing it right. This, more than anything else, is why I personally have looked forward to being able to revisit this film at home, in depth and experience it on a more intimate level, separate from but equally thrilling as the experience of seeing it in a packed theater.

For some of us, the Saga took a heartbreaking turn to the dark side with the “prequelogy,” a time of lost hope and shattered dreams. An era we yearned for so deeply that, for many of us, ended up stabbing us so cruelly, so heartlessly in the backs. We had our strong moments, our proud moments in that clouded age of anger and disappointment, but the journey was long and wrought with banality and shame. One word… midichlorians. One name… Jar Jar Binks. Oh, the sounds still send shivers down my spine.

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If Star Wars were a religion, one could make the argument that Abrams is the messiah. That’s not my outlook, but I can see the case taking a solid foothold with a segment of the fandom. Every epic yarn has it’s peaks and valleys, a dark age followed by a renewed renaissance. Who better to usher up the new enlightened period than Abrams?

Wait… I can hear them now. I hear the groans and poorly annunciated digs on THE FORCE AWAKENS as simply being A NEW HOPE recycled. Fair enough. There is some merit in that argument, on the surface. I encourage those that feed on this, however, to look within the ancient lore that has so heavily influenced this and so many other modern fables and make a case that this is, at it’s core, a traditional and proven method of storytelling. The Buddhists believe in reincarnations. The Christians believe in the resurrected savior. Why not, then, can we not have our Jedi come in familiar cycles of discovery and enlightenment?

On with the story… darkness reigns and the secretive, ruthless Sith influence once again threatens freedom and peace throughout the galaxy. Once again, the bad guys have a nasty toy, only this time it’s way bigger and meaner. They call themselves the First Order, are eerily reminiscent of the Nazi Third Reich, and are led by a psychotic, ill-tempered sociopath who blames others’ for his own shortcomings. Kylo Ren has daddy issues as well as anger management issues, struggling to fit into grandaddy Vader’s big black boots. Meanwhile, a spunky young loner girl named Rey scrapes out a meager existence on a desert planet as an under-appreciated scavenger while the force lies dormant within her.

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Yoda, Qui gon and Obi-wan are dead, Luke has gone AWOL and there seems no hope of a Jedi resurgence to save the day. Instead, Princess Leia leads her rag tag resistance against unsurmountable odds until a cowardly storm trooper gets cold feet on his first day, helping the best pilot in the resistance escape captivity in the process of defecting and thus begins the dawn of a renewed fight.

All of this is shot in breathtakingly beautiful, larger than life scope and accompanied by yet another impressively iconic score from the legendary John Williams. Much to Abrams’ credit, the film utilizes as much practical special effects as possible and it pays off. The detail and immense realism, placing the audience amidst the action and eerily familiar foreign landscapes allows us the immerse ourselves deeper into the childlike fantasy of the Star Wars saga. Abrams understands this and succeeds in rekindling that youthful flame whereas the prequels were more focused on attracting the fresh young flickers while greatly ignoring the long-glowing embers.

Rich in color, design and detail, the sets and the locations alike are painstakingly evident when taking the time to study the blu-ray edition of THE FORCE AWAKENS. The initial home release of the film, which included both the blu-ray, the DVD and the digital copy, opens up the new chapter to fans in all it’s unencumbered theatrical glory. We need not be concerns about which version or re-edit we’re stumbled upon. It’s the one, the only, the intended version.

New creatures and characters, a fresh young cast, reminiscent of what we were given in the original trilogy, whereas these relative unknowns prove two things: first, that Abrams is a casting genius, and second, that these “rookies” nailed it, especially Daisy Ridley as Rey. Giving a jaw-dropping, fully convincing performance of emotion, physical ability and adaptiveness shows me we are in for a real treat as certainly she will pursue her connection with the force and train to become Jedi. When it comes to girl power, Rey is right up there with Weaver’s Ripley and Theron’s Furiosa. Converse to this is Finn’s unheroic reluctance to anything noble or courageous, but in contrast to Rey is strangely fitting and the two rub off an one another, leading Finn to have a change of heart and mind.

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THE FORCE AWAKENS is, in many ways familiar, but is in just as many ways fresh and invigorating as well. While this initial home release does contain some worthwhile extras, by the current modern standards is fairly basic. Certainly, future editions will reveal existing golden nuggets being held back in secrecy and new ones to be mined from the archives, a la Special Limited Anniversary Collectors’ Editions, et al. With that said, this one is far from bare-boned and has merit amidst it’s menus.

My own experience, having revisited the film at home on blu-ray with my boys, 11 and 8 years old, was a wealth of revelatory glory. Glued to the events unfolding on hi-def, these three pairs of eyes were, and as the film ended, I found myself not forsaken, but accompanied during my quest to conquer the bonus features by my 8-year old, equally glued to the documentarian escapades as myself, when he turned to me and said “we’re just a couple of movie geeks.” I wipes a tear from my eye and realized all is well in the world and Star Wars has returned in a way with which we can all be proud.

Bonus Features:

  • Secrets of the Force Awakens: A Cinematic Journey — Having originally premiered at SXSW to help promote the film, this documentary is as much a marketing tool as it is an engaging, light-hearted glance behind the scenes of the film. This documentary s longer than most made for home release, is not so long as to intimidate a viewer. The film also unveils some lesser realized casting choices that non-die hard fans may not have otherwise known. A good chunk of the film does feel a bit like collected junkets, but one ting that certainly was not lost on me while watching this was how grateful and humbled the cast and crew involved with this filmmaking experience are to the fact that this is a story of meteoric cultural significance and should be treated as such.
  • The Story Awakens: The Table Read — A rather truncated, brief but revealing feature that gives the audience a fascinating insight into the actors’ journey of discovering, adapting and becoming a role as part of a larger story.
  • Building BB-8 — Perhaps my favorite bonus feature of this release, the research, time and skill that went into bringing this little guy to life in awe-inspiring. Not since No,5 from SHORT CIRCUIT have a connected so fully with the cuteness of a self-aware robot.
  • Crafting Creatures — What’s a Star Wars film without the obligatory featurette about how they created the monster/creature makeup and effects? Nonetheless, well worth viewing as a standard option available on most similar genre films.
  • Blueprint of a Battle: The Snow Fight — Kylo Ren, Rey and Finn, and how they made this fight look so darn good! It takes a lot of practice time and hard work to perform a convincing, realistic, emotionally-charged, thrilling light saber fight and this helps to explain.
  • John Williams: The Seventh Symphony — Basically, a short, but well-deserved tribute to a living legend.
  • ILM: The Visual Magic of the Force — A short, but insightful glimpse into what ILM does and what puts them at the top of their game.
  • Deleted Scenes — There are only a handful of relatively short deleted scenes, but undoubtedly there are many more that may likely reveal themselves in future releases. With that said, these are some interesting omissions and are curious to consider.

STAR WARS: EPISODE VII – THE FORCE AWAKENS will be available on a Blu-ray/DVD/Digital Copy Combo Pack on Tuesday, April 5th, 2016

Overall Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

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WAMG At MARVEL’S THE AVENGERS Blu-Ray Press Day

With Marvel’s THE AVENGERS about to assemble on BLU-RAY 3D™, BLU-RAY™, DVD, DIGITAL & ON-DEMAND tomorrow, I was invited to ILM in San Francisco, California to speak with Jeff White (ILM Visual Effects Supervisor), Jason Smith (ILM Associate Visual Effects Supervisor) and Marc Chu (ILM Animation Director) about their work on the film.

Jeff White (ILM Visual Effects Supervisor for THE AVENGERS) joined Industrial Light and Magic in 2002. Since arriving at ILM, he had worked as a Creature Technical Director on a variety of films including : Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, War of the Worlds, and Star Wars: Episode III “Revenge of the Sith”. White served as Digital Production Supervisor on Transformers, and Associate Visual Effects Supervisor on Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and Transformers: Dark of the Moon.

Jason Smith (ILM Associate Visual Effects Supervisor for THE AVENGERS) joined the ILM team in 2001 as a Technical Assistant. Some of his notable projects include Rango, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, Star Wars: Episode III “Revenge of the Sith”, and Super 8. Smith is also a member of ILM’s technology advisory group.

Marc Chu (ILM Animation Director for THE AVENGERS) came to ILM in 1994 as a 3D artist. In 1996 Chu transferred to ILM’s features division to work on Men In Black. He served as Associate Animation Supervisor and Lead Animator for Davy Jones on the second and third installments of the Pirates of the Caribbean saga. In February of 2007, Chu’s work on Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest was recognized with the Visual Effects Society award for Outstanding Animated Character in a Live Action Motion Picture. His talents can be seen in such films as Iron Man, Iron Man 2, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, and War of the Worlds.

Check out some of ILM’s Hulk effects here:

Melissa: The Hulk has been established on-screen quite a few times before – what were you most eager or excited to change about the Hulk when you found out that was what you were going to be working on? And how important was it for you to make the Hulk your own?

Jeff White: I think, you know we were really excited about the initial previews that we got because Josh clearly understood like the kind of performance people wanted to see the Hulk do. And I think for us, you know we’ve had a lot of developments in terms of the technology side of it, both in terms of performance capture and in terms of rendering and muscle simulation and everything. So for us it’s kind of this ultimate like okay, let’s throw everything at it that we’ve got.

Jeff White (Cont.): And then my background is working as a character TD, so really kind of like rigging and simulation and anatomy and so, you know you can’t think of a better problem to try and solve than working on something like the Hulk.

Jeff White (Cont.): So, you know we were very – you know I was the most worried about it, but when we saw the initial designs where we’re going with the more de-saturated scan and we’re incorporating Mark Ruffalo into it, that gave us some really tangible goals in terms of how we needed to make this Hulk different than the previous ones.

Melissa: You mentioned Joss Whedon’s understanding and his initial previews. Does this mean that Joss had this all lined up exactly how he wanted or did he just have a few ideas?

Jeff White: They had an art department down in Los Angeles that iterated on his design for a while. So we started with a piece of artwork, a mockquette – and that was a great basis to start from. But there are a lot of questions and problems that come up when you try and translate that into 3D and put it on-screen. So that’s where I think, you know we were able to really get involved in the process.

Jeff White (Cont.): But I think it really came down to some initial really good design decisions by Joss in terms of what his body structure looks like, letting us put, you know body hair all over him. That’s not something, you know the fans could have reacted very negatively to a sort of hairy-chested Hulk. But – I don’t know if you saw in the breakdown, but when you zoom into his eye, like everything’s there down to like little nose hairs. And I think that lends a lot of credibility.

Jeff White (Cont.): Plus we knew – we’d already saw in the previews, like there was gonna be a foot close-up, face, you know hand. So we never said okay, this area you can go more low-res. Like we built him top to bottom to be able to hold up really close to camera.

Melissa: The facial hair on the Hulk is so detailed. Can you tell us how you go about designing something like that, and why do you think details like that are so important for the audience?

Jason Smith: Yeah. So in the Hulk’s case, we knew we had a shot that went kinda from lip to, actually lip to eyebrow early on in the movie. And then later on in the movie, we had something going from about chin to forehead. Right? And so when we started developing the asset, we put a camera – even though we didn’t have the camera’s on, we put a camera in about that position and started looking at the asset every day that close up.

Jason Smith (Cont.): And it was in those moments where we realized – and it was even less in the stubble than up on the eyebrows, we realized that you got this black hair and it just goes and stops in a way that your brain just says immediately “that’s not right.” And you would think who would obsess about something like that? It’s insane. But I think that to trick the brain, the brain is so subtle in what it notices that stuff that you don’t even know you’re noticing, but if one thing is an iota off, you get into that creepy realm or the realm where you know it’s CG. So yeah, we based it on shots and just kind of tried to match the camera early on.

Check out some of ILM’s Iron Man effects here:

Melissa: You’ve mentioned tailoring the Iron Man CG with Robert Downey’s movements. Did you give him tips on how to walk, as if wearing a suit or did you leave the movements all up to him?

Marc Chu: Well, we never interfere with what Robert will do, so he’s just going to walk the way he does. And we just want him to be natural. In the end, all those shots are tight shots, right, they’re all going to be like this on his body, on his shoulder or whatever. So it wasn’t that important. When he first lands and he starts walking, that’s completely CG. And that’s something that we did on our mobile cap stage. And that’s us interpreting his walk and putting it on the CG character. And then once it gets to him, it’s just a matter of brute force, imagination, let’s figure out how this thing works.

Melissa: You used cameras to capture New York for the film, and had more than 100 people out there positioning them at different levels. Can you elaborate on that?

Jeff White: They’re cameras you can buy. They’re Canon 1Ds Mark IIIs, you know so they’re high-end cameras, but anybody can purchase one. And then we have a special rig that’s kind of an arm out and an arm up. And it just – there’s an automated one and kind of a hand-click one that just goes, shoots a frame, turns, shoots a frame, turns, shoots a frame.

Jeff White (Cont.): So when we hang it off the side of a building you have a little computer controller. You hit go and it starts shooting the 360 degrees and that way we’re able to do, you know – like especially rooftops. That’s the trickiest part. We always have to have grips up there that build the rigs for us to hang it out the window or off the side of the building.

Jeff White (Cont.): But the other hard thing is lighting in time of day are difficult. So if we get street closure for a Park Avenue viaduct, we’ll do one side and then have to go someplace else and then come back at the same time the next morning and try and do the other side. And, you know if it’s overcast then you almost can’t shoot. So it becomes a very time consuming process to shoot all that photography, but in the end it is just standard kind of prosumer cameras that we’re using.

Check out some of ILM’s NYC effects here:


Melissa: At ILM, you are constantly developing new technology for special effects. Because the Hulk has been out of your hands for a little bit, what could you see yourself improving on at this time?

Jeff White: I think, you know one of the things – a lot of the hair was difficult, especially, you know his hair design and how different it came out in each shot. I think there’s more that we can push as far as the simulation of his skin and the muscles underneath. And it’s always a matter of like the level of detail that we can incorporate into him.

Jeff White (Cont.): And some of the shots, you know especially where he’s at a mid-ground, those are some of the toughest for us to solve in terms of, you know the sweat starts to look a little plasticky and things like that. So, you know if we can start from the basis that we have now – you know there were shots like the close-up smile where we got a long way, but we wanted to add little spit bubbles in between his gums and, you know things that we see in photo reference that there just wasn’t time for. So I think it would be great to have another opportunity to keep pushing that forward.

“Marvel’s The Avengers” stars Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Hemsworth, Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner and Tom Hiddleston, with Stellan Skarsgård and Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury. Directed by Joss Whedon, the epic action-adventure film is based on the ever-popular Marvel comic book series “The Avengers,” first published in 1963 and a comics institution ever since.

MARVEL’S THE AVENGERS assemble on BLU-RAY 3D™, BLU-RAY™, DVD, DIGITAL & ON-DEMAND September 25th