Archive

Minority Report

[20th Century Fox/Dreamworks]

Working on a Steven Spielberg film always carries high expectations, and ILM was up to the task, developing new techinques for Minority Report to enhance the CG elements and environments in the futuristic world of the film.

Director: Steven Spielberg
ILM Visual Effects Supervisor: Scott Farrar
ILM Visual Effects Art Director: Alexander Laurant
ILM Visual Effects Producer: Dana Friedman
ILM Studios: San Francisco

Case Study

Minority Report

Release Date: June 21, 2002

One of the most important aspects of ILM’s work on Minority Report was the development of new techniques for the creation of computer-generated models from photographic images. The photo-modeling technique had significant advantages over the creation of CG models by hand.

Matchmoving is the foundation of much of the work that ILM does. While an artist might match an element he or she creates quite closely to the rest of the objects in the frame, the viewer can still perceive a problem. If one element moves inconsistently against another even in the slightest way, it results in an unnatural “slipping” that audiences immediately pick up on. The complex 2-D work on Minority Report forced ILM to develop new methods for tracking matchmove data.