Jeffrey A. Okun reflects on the somewhat tumultuous VFX history of the classic sci-fi film.
Category: Retro
The tech of ‘Terminator 2’ – an oral history
Everything from Make Sticky to Body Sock and painting a grid onto Robert Patrick.
You might be surprised how Thing was made for ‘The Addams Family’
‘Casting’ a hand was a tricky job.
The secrets behind the life (and death) of Titanic’s propeller guy
VFX crew from ‘Titanic’ reflect on the saddest character of them all.
40 years of ‘Star Trek: The Motion Picture’
The film is back in cinemas for a super-short time.
‘Computer pajamas’: the history of ILM’s IMocap
How Davy Jones launched ILM’s on-set performance capture system.
Remembering this killer ILM shot from ‘Deep Impact’
Chris Horvath revisits some early ILM CG fluid sims.
Re-visiting Waldo
Henson and PDI’s motion captured CG character.
That time James Cameron gave ILM a day to come up with a test for ‘The Abyss’
What should a CG water tentacle should look like, anyway?
A fine line between grotesque and hilarious: making ‘The Mask’s’ landmark nightclub transformations
The film’s director and key ILM crew share their stories on ‘The Mask’s’ 25th anniversary.
‘The sooner you kill me, the happier I’ll be’: a VFX oral history of Samuel L. Jackson’s shocking ‘Deep Blue Sea’ departure
The making of a classic death scene.
Before you see the new CG ‘Lion King’, re-visit the CG of 1994’s ‘Lion King’
‘Stampede. In the gorge. Simba’s down there!’
‘True Lies’ at 25: blowing up the causeway miniature
Behind the scenes of that Florida causeway scene in the James Cameron spy adventure.
‘I want to see it!’ ILMers on the time Gary Sinise first saw his missing legs in ‘Forrest Gump’
…and other stories about the film’s classic invisible VFX.
A deep dive into shooting ‘Speed’s’ miniature L.A. Metro scenes
Crashing models, crafting sparks old-school, front projection (!), simulating anamorphic lens flares, and the mistake that stayed in the film.
‘Speed’: a tale of many buses
One bus had a section made of rubber, just in case Keanu ‘got into trouble’.
Look closely and you can see the cable pulling the ‘Speed’ bus towards the plane before it explodes
But, so what…’splosions!
Shooting ‘Speed’s’ opening titles almost destroyed the miniature elevator
‘We shoved so much light into the miniature that it was literally melting and coming apart.’
The bus in ‘Speed’ wasn’t supposed to land like a 747
But it did, and it was still spectacular.
‘He lost his head’
How they made Keanu Reeves and Dennis Hopper fight atop that train in ‘Speed’.
The first big explosion in ‘Speed’ was very nearly a major disaster
And it was thanks to someone who thought they had missed their bus.
Jar Jar Binks was nearly a practical suit and a CG head
All about that ILM Jar Jar test which proved the character should be all-digital.
‘It cost about $65 to have a cold pizza delivered in the middle of the night to Skywalker Ranch’
The intensive previs process on ‘The Phantom Menace’.
The world already loved lightsabers, but then ‘The Phantom Menace’ made them even better
How new ways of shooting, new digital tools and lots and lots of roto resulted in the laser swords of ‘Episode I’.