You rarely get this kind of analysis about VFX shots.
Full disclosure: I’m friends with ILM compositing supervisor Todd Vaziri. But I’m also a huge, huge fan. Ever since his days publishing at VFXHQ, through to his amazing work at ILM, his Tweets (oh man, his Tweets!), and his insightful posts at his FXRant blog that is single-handedly keeping Blogger alive, it’s hard not to appreciate what Todd brings to the VFX industry.
Which is why I was super-excited when he dropped his latest video, a sit-down with Vanity Fair breaking down a range of ILM shots from Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, Star Wars: Skeleton Crew, Star Trek Into Darkness, Transformers and Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens.
The shots Todd analyzes in this video are ones you may all be familiar with, but, I feel like we’ve never had them discussed like this before. You get such a strong sense of the artistic contributions (from Todd, along with other ILM artists) for each of the shots, many of which include a really fun level of problem solving — don’t miss what Todd had to do for Dungeons and Dragons, and the cool way he filmed a piece of rope and manipulated that footage for Skeleton Crew. The way he dives down into each shot and explains the process in very digestible fashion is fantastic (an added bonus is the insight into compositing, something maybe the average movie-goer isn’t always that familiar with).
We just don’t always get that kind of discourse about visual effects, and I so glad Todd exists to bring it to us.
