ILM’s work on Michael Bay’s 6 Underground was overseen by visual effects supervisor Jason Snell. The action-packed film features a number of photoreal digital environments, hero digital doubles, and all manner of death-defying stunts, high-speed chases, crashes, and explosions. The team also created stunning car and motorcycle chase sequences, an elaborate fight sequence on a yacht, and CG stunt double work throughout. In addition, a few hundred gallons of water were simulated as a stunning glass-encased cantilevered rooftop pool gets shot up and rapidly empties over the side of the building all created in the digital realm.
Adding to the challenge, the film utilized nearly 20 different camera formats all of which had to be matched as visual effects work was seamlessly added to the shots.
For Bird Box, ILM extended their Academy Award®-winning toolkit for digital water simulations to generate highly detailed and complex river surfaces.
The antagonist of Bird Box is ’The Presence’, an indescribable force of evil, that can never be looked at, without losing your mind. Though the presence itself is never seen, ILM designed the supernatural effects it has on the environment, thus implying the horrors nearby. Photoreal replicas of the Redwood Forest and Wild Water Rapids were created to blend seamlessly with the shoot locations in surrounding shots. The team also completed a variety of invisible visual effects work including: crazy eyes, face replacements, exploding cars, augmenting special effects, and environment alterations and digital set extension.
ILM was responsible for 1600 total visual effects shots in Aladdin, which were split across our London, Vancouver, San Francisco, and Singapore studios.
The show had many challenges and technological breakthroughs, one of which was the first use of Disney Research Studio’s ‘Anyma’ in a film; this new markerless performance capture technology was used to record Will Smith’s facial performance as Genie. As there were no facial markers or tracking devices necessary, the technology gave him free rein to move and express himself as energetically as he pleased. ILM’s simulation artists and animators then created the swirling vortex which occupies Genie’s lower body – Virtually a character unto itself. In addition to Genie, the ILM team was responsible for creating the performances of the infamous macaw Iago, Aladdin’s lovable monkey Abu, the magic carpet, hundreds of parading elephants, and more, as well as the film’s most notable environments, Agrabah and the Cave of Wonders.
Fun Facts: Five of the musical numbers from the 1992 animated classic are featured in the film (“Friend Like Me”, “A Whole New World”, “Arabian Nights”, “One Jump Ahead”, and “Prince Ali”) along with a new original song “Speechless” by Alan Menken and La La Land songwriting team, Benj Pasek and Justin Paul. A handful of shots directly recreate moments from the 1992 animated feature.
Having been the lead visual effects on each of the previous 5 films in the Transformers franchise we were excited to collaborate on this film with director Travis Knight. Above all else, Bumblebee is a character origin story and, as it takes place in the 1980s, the Transformers have gone back to their roots with their generation one look as well. The main challenge the team faced was turning toys into realistic looking robots, and finding ways to use new technology to achieve a vintage effect. To achieve the simpler designs as realistically as possible, Bumblebee is a combination of CG and practical build.
Knight’s background in animation made him acutely aware of all of the small details of creating a CG performance, and his mission from the start was to make these characters as emotive and expressive as possible. Our animation team is always excited to think up new and interesting ways the Transformers can move and under Knight’s direction in Bumblebee we introduce the audience to never-before-seen “triple changers,” Transformers who can turn from robots, to ground craft and then into aircraft.
Among the other challenges posed on the film was the creation of Cybertron which is an entirely CG environment. Our environments team had a blast bring Cybertron to the big screen in such a unique way.
In the aftermath of Captain America: Civil War, Scott Lang grapples with the consequences of his choices as both a Super Hero and a father. As he struggles to rebalance his home life with his responsibilities as Ant-Man, he’s confronted by Hope van Dyne and Dr. Hank Pym with an urgent new mission.
ILM completed around 350 shots for Captain Marvel; the main focus of the work was the third act of the film which included battle sequences and many outer space sequences. Our effects team was challenged with a number of fully digital shots while maintaining a look that feels photographic and honors the sci-fi and fantasy comic book roots of Captain Marvel.
Working with production visual effects supervisor Chris Townsend, ILM created the signature binary look for Captain Marvel (Brie Larson). Some of the more challenging work involved creating shots where Brie is flying in space without a helmet, lit up with electricity, and still appear recognizable. We sought to strike a balance between a more sci-fi look and the reality of what this would look like in space which, as you can imagine, is very subjective.
We also created a hero Brie Larson digital double which is seen in many shots. At the time, it was one of the most highly detailed digital doubles we had ever created as it had to withstand the scrutiny of being seen in extreme close up. Many of the sequences that used the double simply couldn’t be filmed practically due to the amount of dynamics that the shots required.
In addition, ILM’s team also created the fan-favorite feline, Goose (actually a Flerken), who is introduced as a photo-real feline but in one memorable scene, enormous tentacles protrude from its mouth, grab a tesseract and then disappear as quickly as they appeared. This was achieved entirely with keyframe animation. The goal was for the sequence to look realistic, not cartoonish.
Additional ILM sequences include the fight between Captain Marvel and the other Star Force crew members, including Jude Law, on one of the shapeships; the Supreme Intelligence Interface, which manifests as ferrofluid-esque liquid tentacles which crawl up into Brie’s temples to extract information, bind her limbs, and control her mind; green screen shots on Ronan’s ship; and Jude Law’s anti gravity gauntlets.
Creating Atlantis was one of the biggest environments in recent history for ILM’s visual effects team. To bring the underwater environment to life, the team custom designed over a hundred shots from scratch. The task was monumental in scale–for comparison, Atlantis is five times larger than Wakanda in Black Panther.
To accurately simulate the way sea water absorbs light and color underwater, ILM engineers developed a new software tool called Spectral Absorption for the film. ILM software developers worked with the company’s color scientists to make this tool physically accurate while putting the control in the hands of the artists to be able to dial the effects up or down as individual shots required.
Another immense challenge was the replacement of nearly all of the lead actors hair with an individually styled computer simulated coif. ILM simulation artists leveraged the studio’s Academy Award® winning HairCraft technology to groom and simulate each hair since they all had to react to movement and sea currents in the underwater realm.
Between the construction of Atlantis, the third act battle, and the creation of hundreds of underwater digital doubles, ILM completed a total of 2,274 shots across the global studios with Vancouver leading the charge.
Meg Murry and her little brother, Charles Wallace, have been without their scientist father, Mr. Murry, for five years, ever since he discovered a new planet and used the concept known as a tesseract to travel there. Joined by Meg’s classmate Calvin O’Keefe and guided by the three mysterious astral travelers known as Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Who and Mrs. Which, the children brave a dangerous journey to a planet that possesses all of the evil in the universe.
