Beginning with silent film at the start of the twentieth century, the movie industry quickly grew to be a major escapism for people worldwide. As the decades passed and technology improved, a film’s ‘wow’ factor shifted from actors exchanging verbal dialogue in the 1930s to computerized, lifelike sequences that create a once-inconceivable world onscreen. Incorporating mesmerizing technology into the stories of film has undoubtedly transformed the movie industry, allowing for memorable performances while enhancing the suspense of disbelief.
The definition of innovative technology once applied to very basic concepts in movies. Nowadays, it’s almost silly to think that color in film was groundbreaking, but 1939’s The Wizard of Oz was one of the first films to prove that color’s presence could be a valuable storytelling device. Filmmakers used Technicolor to achieve a colorful Oz, a process in which a specially designed camera recorded a scene through colored filters on three different film strips.
However, while advanced for its time, The Wizard of Oz ’s inclusion of color is far from being a radical use of film technology. Notable advances began nearly 50 years later within the films of the 1980s. Mirroring the storyboard technique of animated films, the practice of digital previsualization, known as pre-viz, plans action and visual effects scenes before filming. VFX artists chose to previsualize scenes in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier(1989), a revelation that led to animator Lynda Weinman using Swivel 3D code to prepare shots of the Enterprise. Such a decision marked a growing reliance on computers in filmmaking.
Some newer tech of the ‘80s involved the (albeit, still tame) expanding of older discoveries. In 1961’s The Parent Trap, an actress appeared on screen playing twin sisters at once, but the crew was limited from achieving this shot with a moving camera. VistaGlide, a robotic, motion-controlled camera dolly system, resolved this setback in the filming of Back to the Future Part II (1989). As seen below, a VistaGlide camera panned upwards to show a shot of three characters, all played by Michael J. Fox, at once. This camera system also collaborates with a computer that controls the pan, tilt, focus, and zoom of the shot.
Crafty camerawork was often the extent of fancy tech before the 2000s, but the end of the century saw a rise in computer animated films and their accompanying technology. After launching its first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, in 1995, Pixar’s growing success seemingly predicted the computerized trend of the new millennium’s films. Eventually, Pixar’s dominance of the animation field essentially drove out traditional, hand-drawn film animation, showing the industry’s widespread preference for virtual models filmed in a digital space.
Contrary to classic animation, Pixar’s digitally animated films require the creation of 3D computer models of characters, props, and sets. The models are either hand-sculpted and then scanned in as 3D figures or are directly modelled with 3D animation software. Adding onto an image from its bare outlines, animators then include “avars” (hinges) onto the object to make it move. The crew must then choreograph characters in a shot, using computer controls and avars to establish characters’ major poses. Animators eventually have to complete a rendering process, which translates all of the details into files that make up shots into a single frame of film. Pixar has software called RenderMan that interprets the data, computing every pixel from the model, animation, shading, and lighting details. A single frame can take up to 6 hours to render, demonstrating how complex animation is even with the ease of technology.
Computers have contributed to unprecedented movie technology, particularly seen in 2009’s blockbuster Avatar. Director James Cameron placed his actors in skull caps with camera enhancements that monitored their eyes, mouths, and other facial movements to perfectly capture their expressions for the motion-capture conversion to 3D footage. The project was filmed on a massive “performance capture” stage, where Cameron had access to a virtual monitor that showed motion capture results in real time. He and his team were also able to develop an advanced filming rig that included stereoscopic cameras with lenses imitative of human eyes. This groundbreaking design allowed the camera to adjust and focus on nearby or distant images, and the cinematographer to capture two shots at once. Avatar and its effects, seen below, went on to earn a domestic gross of over $700 million, making it the top all-time highest grossing film worldwide.
Even the modern abilities of things such as lighting have ultimately benefitted the technical look of contemporary films. In 2013’s Gravity, a need arose for rapidly changing lighting as characters jolted around in outer space. As a solution, actors were placed inside a “light box” made of 196 panels, each consisting of 4096 LEDs. Light panels were adjusted to fit cameras, while an effects team had the ability to change any of the LEDs from outside the box. An image a solitary actor is meant to react to could also project on a panel for the actor to see. Such a primitive concept could only succeed with modern tech, needing the strength of contemporary lighting to succeed.
Technology has influenced the film industry so fiercely that it’s rare when a well-performing film does not include visual effects of some kind. “Much of what we see today is visual effects for the sake of visual effects, effects that are distracting the viewer, begging for attention,” said Randall Smith, a visual effects supervisor. A preference among those in the field leans towards quality over quantity when it comes to strong computer technology.
On the other hand, some practical visual effects professionals feel that their work is increasingly becoming discredited because of how accustomed audiences have grown to computer-animated graphics. Some audiences are also known for expressing annoyance at how many 3D films are released now, becoming agitated by the price of 3D films and how they’re marketed. Although top grossing films consistently include computer animation each year, could this mean that consumers are dissatisfied even if they choose to see a movie with visual effects?
“We shouldn’t strive to pull the rabbit out of the hat with as much fireworks and fanfare as possible,” said 2D supervisor Guido Wolter about how harshly visual effects should be judged. “What turns heads is when you can subtly feel the passion, the pain, the endurance, and creativity a project demanded of its crew.”
While modern technology sometimes causes an overwhelming amount of computerized film sequences, it has ultimately helped film achieve unimaginable feats.
Source: Smithsonian, CreativeCow.net, Futurepedia, Pixar Animation, Science Focus, The Guardian, Cinefex, Space.com, Geek-E
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