87th Academy Awards VFX Shortlist

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced a while back that ten (10) films remain in the running in the Visual Effects category for the 2017 Oscars edition.

The Academy’s Visual Effects Branch Executive Committee determined the shortlist. All members of the Visual Effects Branch will now be invited to view 10-minute excerpts from each of the shortlisted films on Saturday, January 7, 2017.  Following the screenings, the members will vote to nominate five films for final Oscar consideration.  Nominations will be announced on Tuesday, January 24, 2017.

Arrival
The BFG
Captain America: Civil War
Deepwater Horizon
Doctor Strange
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
The Jungle Book
Kubo and the Two Strings
Passengers
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

The 89th Oscars will be held on Sunday, February 26, 2017, at the Dolby Theatre at Hollywood & Highland Center in Hollywood, and will be televised live on the ABC Television Network at 7 p.m. ET/4 p.m. PT.

Arrival
Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival is almost an anti-alien invasion film. It’s subtle and purposeful use of visual effects was orchestrated by vfx supe Louis Morin, who enlisted vendors including Hybride, Oblique FX, Rodeo FX, Framestore, Raynault VFX, Folks FX and Alchemy FX to render everything from odd-shaped spacecraft to even odder-shaped aliens. In this interview with vfxblog, Morin discusses the invisible nature of the effects work and some of the harder shots to pull off.



The BFG
Steven Spielberg's new movie, the 24-foot titular Big Friendly Giant is the creation of Mark Rylance and Weta Digital and its four-time Oscar-winning senior visual effects supervisor Joe Letteri.



Captain America: Civil War



Deepwater Horizon
Pete Berg wanted everything to feel real… period. He knows from past experience what that means in a movie like this. He pushed everything as far as it could go in camera. The sets were as big and authentic as they could be, the special effects were as big and complex as they could be while maintaining safety for all involved but in the end, it’s real actors portraying an insanely dangerous situation so a lot has to be done in post.
What he was after from the visual effects was to absolutely plunge the audience into the chaos of the situation, to provide a visceral experience of just the kind of hell these people had to fight through to in their attempts to try to overt the disaster that would ultimately unfold and save the lives of everyone they could. He kept telling me that he knew ILM could do beautiful work, but that’s not what he wanted. He wanted it to be “dirty and nasty.” Everything from exposures to framing to lens artifacts – He wanted the audiences to be able to feel the heat and taste the smoke.



Doctor Strange
The effect was quite difficult to nail down, as to how far we should go with it, especially when our live-action characters had to be integrated within those scenes. Mark Wilson VFX Supervisor. The Astral Form was one of the hardest effects we’ve had to deal with at Framestore; finding the right balance of a look that was subtle but also beautiful. Alexis Wajsbrot CG Supervisor.



Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
The Harry Potter prequel, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, finds Eddie Redmayne performing a mating ritual in front of a massive computer-generated beast. Using a combination of puppets and CGI, a slew of effects houses were able to craft convincing monsters to populate J.K. Rowling’s imaginative world.



The Jungle Book
Although it’s grouped in with Disney’s recent slate of live-action remakes, The Jungle Book is made up almost entirely of CGI, with young Neel Sethi’s Mowgli serving as the only substantial “live-action” element. The studio has released a new series of photos that showcase the insane amount of work that went into the film’s impressive visual effects, and it might make you do a double-take.



Kubo and the Two Strings
From the opening minutes of Kubo and the Two Strings, directed by Travis Knight, it's clear that team at LAIKA broke new ground for the company with the vast amount of water effects in the film. That's not to say there hasn't been any water on screen in their previous films, but it was treated as a practical effect and not CGI.



Passengers


Rogue One: A Star Wars Story