From Aintitcoolnews, "...probably the saddest news to appear before my bespectacled geeky eyes in a long, long time. In a way, this is an obituary for ILM's miniatures and model department.
Lucasfilm is selling off its physical production unit, which handles everything that is not CGI work at ILM. Now, I understand business isn't as booming for practical effects these days as it was in the '80s, but goddamnit. To me this represents the magic of ILM, not the digital world. I grew up with these guys, my imagination was fed a steady diet of ILM's work. STAR WARS, INDIANA JONES, GHOSTBUSTERS (2), POLTERGEIST, WRATH OF KHAN, DARK CRYSTAL, LABYRINTH, GOONIES, COCOON, BACK TO THE FUTURE, NEVERENDING STORY and so many more...
I love CGI. Some masterful work has been done on screen, including ILM's work on JURASSIC PARK and more recently WAR OF THE WORLDS and A.I. There were moments in A.I. that had my jaw hanging open. However, when I think of the magic of cinema I think of those tried and true magic tricks... Models, make-up, glass, mirrors, forced perspective, manipulation of light... To me that's the magic of cinema.
The news isn't all bad. The unit is being sold to a man by the name of Mark Anderson, a model maker at ILM for more than 15 years. The new name is Kerner Optical and it will get priority whenever ILM needs to farm out physical effects.
I had a chance to visit ILM a couple years ago when they were trying to pimp the VAN HELSING DVD. I hated the movie, but I couldn't pass up an invitation to ILM, no matter how many crappy she-vampires and werewolves I'd have to watch. When I was there I saw 3 matte paintings. The first one took my breath away. It was of the big shield generator dish sticking above the trees of Endor from RETURN OF THE JEDI. I'd seen that image a hundred times as a kid and there it was, up in the lobby where I was getting my vistor's sticker. The second of three was up in the same lobby and was of NeverNever Land from Spielberg's HOOK. Not as breathtaking, but a work of art in its own right.
I saw the last matte painting in one of the hallways of the building. It was of a snowy tarmac. DIE HARD 2. I was told that was the lasty matte painting ILM ever did. That really made me sad. That was then almost 15 years old.
I guess the physical effects house still lives on in Kerner Optical, but it's now not part of ILM. To me Industrial Light and Magic is now simply Industrial Light. The Magic leaves with its physical effects department."
7 comments:
Wow, that's lame. I guess now I'll have an answer when people tell me I should go work for ILM. I'll say "you mean Kerner Optical." Then they'll hit me.
The complaint is absolutely ridiculous.
"I want ILM, the best effects house in the world, to continue using techniques that make me nostalgic, explicitly for this reason and for no other."
It's like somebody refusing to accept electric cars because the smell of gasoline conveys "transportation" to them in a way that ethanol never will. Or a stockbroker convinced that everything died "the day we started using newspapers rather than those wonderful old tickertape machines."
(Okay, it's not quite like that, but Jesus, anyone who's seen War of the Worlds and says "The problem is they didn't use models" is an idiot.)
When they re-did "Star Trek The Motion Picture" two years ago, they had to come up with shots that were storyboarded in the 1970s but never actually executed for time and budget reasons. So ILM did a CGI "refit" Enterprise that was specifically lit and shot to "look model-y" so it would blend in perfectly with the existsing footage.
I challenge Harry Knowles or anyone else to watch the movie and identify the new material. It's absolutely impossible.
No room for nostalgia, Jordan? I dislike Harry as much as the next guy, but I see no complaint here about the quality of the effects past or future. It's not like practical effects are obsolete like gas-powered cars or tickertape machines either; they're not ceasing the use of such effects, they're just farming them out. When I think of those plaid-shirted guys driving a pickup-mounted camera past a Death Star surface model in 1976 or so, it saddens me to know that ride is over.
Love that pic, JPX. Not just because it's Harryhausen, but also because that's SF's Embaradero being menaced by that giant octopunk. Two miles to the west and it could be tickling George's new office window.
Yes, but he's saying he doesn't want them to do what they're doing. I'm nostalgic about:
-Black and white New York Times
-cassette "mix tapes"
-"Side 2" (of a record)
-"The answering service"
In the years and decades to come I will be nostalgic about:
-Glasses
-"Clockwise" (Except I somehow think they'll be making round clock faces for hundreds of years
-"Catching a cold"
-Mailing checks
But the AICN guy seems to actually think that they should NOT be doing this. When IBM sold their PC/laptop manufacturing concerns (ThinkPads are now branded "Lenovo" rather than IBM) It was the end of an era, but there was also a legitimate question of whether they were doing the right thing getting out of that business. This is different.
Any time someone wants to go back and use analog mixing desks (as George Martin insisted on for Beatles Anthology) or get thumbs in the clay like Nick Park, I'm all for it. Any time someone wants to put a pencil on a piece of paper or mush some clay and involve a camera, that's fine with me. But special visual effects are about mimicking photography, and ILM knows as much as anyone about how that's done.
Of course I'm nostalgic. Are you kidding? I'm the only guy I know who actually pays enough attention to ILM that I know who each person is. Phil Tippet, Stan Winston, all those guys from 1976... *sigh* it was incredible, obviously.
I don't want them to do what they're doing.
"But special visual effects are about mimicking photography, and ILM knows as much as anyone about how that's done."
And sometimes that involves physical effects, and they know that and will use KO for them in the future. I doubt this has to do with the march of progress as much as it has to do with real estate; they've got their new Presidio facility and physical effects need space and they're dirty.
I've read the AICN piece a couple of times and I still don't see a reaction based on anything but emotions. A world in which ILM didn't do this doesn't seem like a philosophical/progress-related/whatever impossibility. So it's too bad.
Okay.
Post a Comment