In the second season, the Calvin family is back in the North Pole as Scott Calvin continues his role as Santa Claus after retirement plans were thwarted when he failed to find a worthy successor in season one. Now that Scott and his family have successfully saved Christmas, Scott turns his focus towards training his son Cal to eventually take over the “family business” as Santa Claus. However, a bit of North Pole magic brings an unexpected challenge to Scott’s plan
ILM contributed successfully to the first season with StageCraft LED work. For Season 2, ILM StageCraft was used once again and ILM contributed post visual effects as well. The visual effects work on the project was overseen by Trevor Hazel, with a seamless partnership between ILM’s San Francisco office and SDFX. Together, the team ultimately delivered 333 shots of Christmas cheer for the series.
For their upcoming U2:UV Achtung Baby Live experience, U2 approached Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) with an incredible challenge, to take the recently completed next-generation entertainment venue – Sphere – and make it disappear before the eyes of a live audience then take the surrounding city itself and essentially make it disappear as well in a unique, awe-inspiring fashion.
“U2:UV Achtung Baby Live At Sphere redefines the 21st-century rock concert.”
London-based Treatment Studio, the creative and technical team that created and produced the overall U2:UV show design, executed the first phase of the transformation and created an incremental buildup of insects against a backdrop representing the outer shell of the Sphere. As the entire ‘sky’ becomes blotted out by the insects, they begin to disperse in an intentionally artistic manner revealing ILM’s majestic Las Vegas cityscape. 4 months in the making, a team of 20 ILM visual effects artists crafted an ultra-high-resolution, fully CG version of Las Vegas as seen from the exact point of view of an audience seated within the Sphere utilizing cutting-edge visual effects. Concertgoers witness the city that has reinvented itself decade after decade deconstruct itself in a reverse timelapse beginning in the present and ending in the early 1900s when the territory was nothing but an empty desertscape. ILM leveraged every ounce of its artist’s vast expertise in creating fully CG photoreal environments to generate Terabytes of media at an eye-watering 16K x 16K resolution to fill Sphere’s 580,000 square feet of LEDs. The team also delivered multiple loopable segments at varying lengths that could be sequenced at random to suit U2’s desired performance timing all in service of telling a story like no other and enabling the band to, once again, push the bounds of what a live performance can be.
“…it works so well that, like the Abba’s Voyage show, you leave feeling confident this is an idea others are going to copy: clearly other rock bands are going to turn up to the Sphere in the future, bearing performances big on dazzling technology. Whether they’ll be as dazzling, or indeed as charming as this, time will show.”
Loki Season 2 picks up in the aftermath of the shocking season finale when Loki finds himself in a battle for the soul of the Time Variance Authority. Along with Mobius, Hunter B-15, and a team of new and returning characters, Loki navigates an ever-expanding and increasingly dangerous Multiverse in search of Sylvie, Judge Renslayer, Miss Minutes, and the truth of what it means to possess free will and glorious purpose.
Eddie Murphy stars in this holiday comedy adventure about a man on a mission to win his neighborhood’s annual Christmas home decoration contest. After Chris (Eddie Murphy) inadvertently makes a deal with a mischievous elf named Pepper (Jillian Bell) to better his chances of winning, she casts a magic spell that brings the 12 Days of Christmas to life and wreaks havoc on the whole town. At the risk of ruining the holidays for his family, Chris, his wife Carol (Tracee Ellis Ross), and their three children must race against the clock to break Pepper’s spell, battle deviously magical characters and save Christmas for everyone.
To understand life we must go back to the beginning. From executive producer Steven Spielberg and the Emmy® Award-winning team behind Our Planet, this is the story of Life on Our Planet. Capturing living breathing animals and creatures of all shapes and sizes in the living world the series required some spectacular filming techniques but not everyone realizes that creating the visual effects sequences was equally challenging. Take a look at the featurette below to get a glimpse of the filmmaking process.
At the turn of the 20th century, oil brought a fortune to the Osage Nation, who became some of the richest people in the world overnight. The wealth of these Native Americans immediately attracted white interlopers, who manipulated, extorted, and stole as much Osage money as they could before resorting to murder. Based on a true story and told through the improbable romance of Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Mollie Kyle (Lily Gladstone), Killers of the Flower Moon is an epic western crime saga, where real love crosses paths with unspeakable betrayal. Also starring Robert De Niro, Jesse Plemons, John Lithgow, Brendan Fraser, Tantoo Cardinal, Cara Jade Myers, JaNae Collins, and Jillian Dion, Killers of the Flower Moon is directed by Academy Award winner Martin Scorsese from a screenplay by Eric Roth and Scorsese, based on David Grann’s best-selling book.
Napoleon is a spectacle-filled action epic that details the checkered rise and fall of the iconic French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, played by Oscar®-winner Joaquin Phoenix. Against a stunning backdrop of large-scale filmmaking orchestrated by legendary director Ridley Scott, the film captures Bonaparte’s relentless journey to power through the prism of his addictive, volatile relationship with his one true love, Josephine, showcasing his visionary military and political tactics against some of the most dynamic practical battle sequences ever filmed.
From writer/director Gareth Edwards (Rogue One, Godzilla), photography from Greig Fraser (Rogue One, Dune, The Batman) and Oren Soffer (Fixation), production design by James Clyne (War of the Worlds), and a searing score by Hans Zimmer (Interstellar) comes an epic sci-fi action thriller set amidst a future war between the human race and the forces of artificial intelligence. Joshua (John David Washington, Tenet), a hardened ex-special forces agent grieving the disappearance of his wife (Gemma Chan, Mary Queen of Scots), is recruited to hunt down and kill the Creator, the elusive architect of advanced AI who has developed a mysterious weapon with the power to end the war… and mankind itself. Joshua and his team of elite operatives journey across enemy lines, into the dark heart of AI-occupied territory… only to discover the world-ending weapon he’s been instructed to destroy is an AI in the form of a young child (newcomer Madeleine Yuna Voyles).
Read more about The Creator on ILM.com:
The Creator: Gareth Edwards, ILM, and the Art of Collaboration
Visual Effects Supervisor Jay Cooper on The Creator
On Location of The Creator with ILM’s Andrew Roberts
