The 91st Academy Awards finally took off with splendour. The awards ceremony presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) has honoured the best films of 2018 in 24 categories including Popular Film, Visual Effects (VFX), Animated Feature Film, Cinematography, Costume Design, and Film Editing. Oscars 2019 was held on February 24 at Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California.
The nominees had been announced quite some time back and the wait by filmmakers, actors, and individuals from the film fraternity for the big day is finally over. As the 91st Academy Awards wrapped with all grandeur, applause, and smiles, let us take a look at the winner in the Best Visual Effects (VFX) category:
First Man
Ryan Gosling starrer ‘First Man’, a film based on Neil Armstrong’s 1969 Moon Landing, the first man to step in to the moon, won the Oscar for the best visual effects. The award for First Man went to VFX supervisor Paul Lambert along with Ian Hunter, Tristan Myles and J.D. Schwalm.
From LED screens and models and miniatures to practical stunts, sets, and restored archived footage and invisible effects, Oscar-winner Damien Chazelle’s ‘First Man’ beautifully projected the use of visual effects in a 21st century film. Damien Chazelle even went to the extreme to redefine shooting in-camera for the film. All these have gone into making ‘First Man’ not only a strong contender but also the winner for best visual effects in Oscars 2019.
While ‘First Man’ took away the Academy Award for its remarkable visual effects, here is the list of other contenders that participated in the best visual effects category in Oscars 2019:
Avengers: Infinity War
This is one of our favourites that made to the 2019 Oscar nominations for Best Visual Effects. ‘Avengers: Infinity War’ marked the 10th anniversary of Marvel Studios. A team of 160 VFX artists headed by VFX Supervisor Patric Roos and CG Supervisor Rob Allman created the dramatic opening scene of the film. The film had 2680 VFX shots in total. Some varied and marvellous works of VFX in the film includes the scene of Bruce Banner crashing into the Sanctum Sanctorum of Doctor Strange at Greenwich Village, ‘Race to Space’ sequence, crafting the Q-ship, building New York environment in CG, and making old and new CG friends, like Iron Man, Spider-Man, Ebony Maw and Cull Obsidian.
Christopher Robin
The overall visual effects of Disney’s Christopher Robin was led by Framestore’s Oscar-nominated VFX Supervisor Chris Lawrence. From creating lovable handcrafted stuffed furry animals to animating them so meticulously and with originality and creativity, every aspect of the animation in the film deserves applause. Out of 727 VFX shots, 677 featured the animated creatures.
Solo: A Star Wars Story
The visual effects for the film was provided by Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), Hybride and Blind LTD. ILM artists have layered together multiple live-action and computer-generated shots to create as many as 1800 VFX shots for the film. Around 627 VFX artists worked on the film with Rob Bredow being the film’s VFX supervisor and co-producer. Digital world, CG Spacecraft, and synthetic alien creatures, the film is full of astonishing visual effects.
Ready Player One
This American science fiction film produced and directed by Steven Spielberg is said to be the most difficult film after his ‘Saving Private Ryan’. The film is set in 2045, the era when people can enter into a digital universe and do whatever they want, go wherever they want, and be whoever they want to be. A significant part of the film was shot in a virtual space based on the Overlook Hotel in ‘The Shining’. The actors portrayed real-life roles while bringing out their avatar counterparts at the same time. This was made possible because of two things, computer animation and motion capture.
