Plus, a look back at the miniatures work, and rarely-discussed motion capture approaches.
Today on the befores & afters podcast, we’re celebrating the 25th anniversary of Michael Bay’s Pearl Harbor and the groundbreaking work done on the film by ILM. Joining me are two ILMers – Ben Snow, who was a CG supervisor on Pearl Harbor, and Hayden Landis, then a sequence supervisor.
Pearl Harbor had, of course, so many stunning practical effects solutions, including massive gimbal work, and it had incredible miniatures, done by ILM. What was also developed on the film was ambient occlusion, offering up a way to render the CG planes and ships in a much more photoreal manner. That was adapted from reflection occlusion work already done at ILM, into an ambient occlusion approach. Ultimately, Landis, Ken McGaugh and Hilmar Koch would receive an Academy Sci-Tech Award for this work.
We chat a lot about ambient occlusion in the podcast, as well as about a range of technical and artistic developments made on the film that I knew very little about, including a number of motion capture innovations. There’s some really fun Michael Bay stories in here, and some great memories from Ben and Hayden just about innovating to get shots done.
This podcast is sponsored by RE:Vision Effects.
Here’s a quick quiz: Name the company that made VFX for these movies?
E.T., Who Framed Roger Rabbit, The Abyss, Terminator 2,, Forest Gump, The Mask, Twister, Mission Impossible, Spawn, Speed II, Saving Private Ryan, The Perfect Storm, AI, Minority Report, Cowboys and Aliens, Lucy, Kong: Skull Island, The Revenant, The Batman, Alien: Romulus and Running Man?
Thanks for inspiring us, ILM. A message from revisionfx.com.
Listen in, above, and check out a bunch of fun photos, below.
