TechStuff Classic: TechStuff Looks at Industrial Light and Magic

another classic episode of tech Stuff. This episode originally published November two thousand twelve, and it is titled tech Stuff looks at Industrial Light and Magic, one of my favorite companies looking into just because they were responsible for so many memorable moments in cinematic history. Let's listen in Sitting across from me as usual is senior writer Jonathan Strickland. Hello from a podcast from long long ago and far far away and far far away. I am pretty far

out there. So yeah, we wanted to talk today about a special visual effects studio named Industrial Light and Magic. And the reason why we decided to cover this particular topic is that, well, Industrial Light and Magic is part of h Well, it's one of the many things that George Lucas created, including things like Lucasfilm, and that's been the news recently because that's the recording of this podcast.

It has not been that long since Disney announced its intention to acquire Lucas Film for the parents ly sum of four point zero five billion with a B dollars all stocks, mostly all of which apparently will be donated to George Lucas's educational charity. Right, Yeah, it's pretty phenomenal.

George Lucas back in two pledged that he was going to dedicate his wealth to philanthropic endeavors mostly due uh to um are mostly towards education, which kind of it's nice and it shows that he's following in the same sort of vein as other notable rich people and philanthropists like Bill Gates. Yeah, and that's not really what the the podcast is about. We're not talking about George and things. But I did want to throw that in there simply because that was a a pretty amazing thing to do.

Everyone would do that, very cool thing to do. Uh. It almost makes me not want to criticize him for some of the decisions he's made. Well, I think it gives us a picture of who he is as a person, and although he does see himself, I think as a as someone who is empowered to revise things that were previously released, and then that that that does infuriate a lot of people, among other things that he's done. But you know, I get the sense to that, Hey, he's

not a bad guy. Of course, that's what he wants us to think. But come on, come on, how who's going to go to the extent of of donating the majority of their wealth to education in order to convince the world they're not a bad guy. He's clearly a good guy. Yeah, I would say so. So he's a better guy than I am. So so well, well done, Mr Lucas. But but yeah, I mean he's he's also

the same kind of person that is driven creatively. He's he's willing to come up with complete new uh businesses to support his creative habits, we might say, even though we may not necessarily agree with them. I would I would say personally for me that you know, his heart's in the right place. He's trying to create a good story and it doesn't always pan out. You got you

gotta remember back, all right? So he founded Industrial Light and Magic in Yes, now, that's two years before the release of Star Wars and New Hope, one of the best documentaries ever to be made. Well he um as a filmmaker. His his filmmaking career began before that. Um, but he you know, American Graffiti wasn't exactly m A. It wasn't as it wasn't a positive experience, wasn't. It wasn't a special effects driven masterpiece. You know, it was a very good film. I liked it, but um, you know,

it wasn't. It wasn't the kind of film that George Lucas has come to be known for. He made a super effects blockbuster, which many would argue that he is responsible for, and in part due to industrial lite and magic. Really, the the two people I think who are responsible for the blockbuster special effects extravaganza are Lucas and Spielberg. And of course Spielberg has had quite a bit of involvement

in uh several of Lucas's endeavors. But anyway, yeah, he so he founded this visual effects company, and it was probably because Lucas he knew he wanted to do things a certain way, and in order to do that, he wanted to lit his dependence upon other companies as much as possible. So he started to make stuff. He said, well, there's no visual effects company out there that is going to do the stuff I need to have done, so I'm going to make it myself. And uh so he's

kind of a hacker. Yeah, it really is a lot of ways. And and this was all due to necessity. You know, he wanted to have as much control over the project as possible in order to do that, and then that he had to build all this stuff, and so he set out to do it, and that's exactly what he did. It's kind of amazing. Well, there's a you know, the industrial line. Magic has been responsible for many different advances in movie making technology over the years.

Back in nine, one of the first things they developed was the Dixtra flex camera system that's named after John Distra, who was actually the lead designer on this camera design. Uh and it's it was made because if you if well it's kind of hard to say, like if you if you saw the Star Wars and New Hope back in its cinematic release version, this is pre special addition.

All the effects there for things like the ship battles and stuff, all the all the ships, all the the Death Star stuff, all that was made with practical effects, practical miniature models. That so, so the X wings going through the Trench and Death Star. That was all done with managers. So this is pre computer generated special effects in that sense. Yeah. And the sound too, the the orchestra. Uh, would you know they would put these models on the dolly and then the orchestra will be on the dolly

behind them playing the music. No, let's going a little too far in there, Chris, But but this long way to go for a bad joke. This this camera, This camera was special because in order to get the effect that Lucas wanted, he wanted the spaceship scene to look like um, like dog fights, like airplane dog fights from World War two movies. Yeah. And and the reason that those uh that that film, uh, and we're talking about

existing film. The reason that that film is so effective, I think is because it's been it was shot by another airplane in the air at the same time as a dog fight. And this this motion control photography that I LM developed for this UM used uh, basically was using cameras that moved in with the spaceship models, so it appeared that you were flying in the in the dog fights between the different fighters or the Millennium Falcon and the tie fighters. So it was there was a

real sense of movement right right. The camera was mounted on a crane, and the crane was mounted on a Dolly track, so they don't do a Hello Dolly joke.

I didn't any worry, Okay, So anyway, so the crane can move back and forth along this track, the camera could could move in various ways to adjust the pitch or the tilt of the of the camera's angle so it could follow the motions of the miniature and make it you have this this really swoopy effect where like Chris was saying, you're following the action very closely, and uh, it was a necessity for him to achieve the effect

he wanted. So he builds this thing. Actually he puts John Dixtra in charge of it, and John and his team built it. I call him John Smart. Uh, and they they shoot the movie and in nineteen seventy seven, Star Wars New Hope hits theaters and becomes an amazing success. And the two movies that that really launched the era of blockbuster summer hits were Jaws and Star Wars um and uh. You know what you get when you come up with a new kind of special effects technology. An

Academy Award. Yes, they won that for Vision Visual Effects in nineteen seventy seven. John Steers, I think of him as Dike Strit, John Dikest, Richard Grant, Grant mckewn, and Robert Blackock. I can't keep saying any of their names. I'm just gonna call him the guys they're all John now, yeah, it's a matter of fact. They also got a Special

Achievement Award in nineteen eighty Visual Effects. Right, but before we get to nineteen eighties, something happens in nineteen seventy nine that I want to talk about something, something special. There was a special division formed in nineteen seventy nine and Industrial Light and Magic. That division was called the Graphics Group. Uh, specializing in computer animation and effects. Wait, I feel like I should know who these guys are. When we get to nineteen eight six, it'll all become clear.

But yeah, in nineteen seventy nine, the division, the Graphics Group, forms an Industrial Line Magic. That division will become incredibly important and influential and uh, but oddly enough, their most influential days will be after they leave Lucas Film and Industrial Line Magic. So moving on, uh, nineteen eighty that's when Empire Strikes Back the second greatest documentary. Actually, I think that people would argue that's better than Star Wars

most people. You know, I actually prefer a New Hope to Empire, but I really love Empire too. It's just one of those things where you know, a New Hope really resonates with me, but Empire is great. So Empire Strikes Back comes out. They do win the Special Achievement Academy Award for Visual Effects for that. The nineteen one

Indiana Johnes and Raiders The Last Start Comes Out. Now, that was another UH the project that UH had Spielberg's involvement, and they won the Academy Award for Visual Effects for that. They also made a movie Did you ever see Dragon Slayer? Okay, so I saw Dragon Slayer back when I was a kid. Dragon Slayer is a fantasy film, and it's pretty much what you would think it is. It's a story about a young hero who UH sets out to slay a dragon. It's a little more cop kid and that, but that's

there just yea. So they designed a new kind of filmmaking for this as well. They decided that there's a problem with working with practical effects for monsters that are um the go beyond like something someone in just a suit, right, Because one of the things you could do is you could do stop motion animation to create a monster effect, because it's it's it's hard to build a giant monster so and it it really it's hard to make it

look right. It takes a lot of work. If I've shown my kids older monster movie bits, and it's kind of easy to on the one hand, when you grew up with pre I l M movies and technology and and Jonathan and I probably barely qualify for that. But you know, you look at some of the old monster movies and you could see the zipper marks in the costumes and the older stuff. You don't you're not freaked

out by that anymore. But you know, the practical effects um could be done very very well, and even when they're done very very well, it still doesn't have the same effect that the newer ones do, right, And it's just it's it's just weird to think about now. But yeah, I mean, looking at the new stuff, it looks so very very real. Yeah, well, back then, you know, with the practical effects, that's pretty much all they had at their their disposal. At this point back they developed something

called go Motion and Go Motion. Uh. The way that they explain it on the Industrial Light and Magic website is that it worked by fusing quote both electronic and mechanical opponents into a device that could record the dragon in Dragon Slayers movements based on an animator's design and play them back so the camera could capture them as

they occurred. So the reason for this is because if they if they were to do it in traditional stop motion, there'd be no motion blur when something moves quickly, because because all you're doing is just taking a bunch of individual photographs really of objects that are not in motion, and then you're playing them back to make it look like the object was in motion. To get motion blur,

the thing actually needs to be moving. It helps, but that's not how stop motion works because the name stop Anyway, it was an interesting development. It was something that they had um created two again to meet the needs of the project that without having to you know, completely reinvent everything. Two they they got another Academy award. Um I'm not gonna go through every Academy award Industrial Line Magic has

won because that would be ridiculous. But they got it for one of my favorite films as a kid growing up, which was Et the Extraterrestrial. Yes, I loved this movie as a kid. I think I must have seen it three or four times this summer that it came out, and I probably cried my eyes out every single time I watched it because I'm a SAP. I'm gonna sap all my life. I still am a SAP. I probably could watch ET without crying now, but back as a kid,

there was just no hope. Um. But anyway, that that was another very popular film made by h. Lucas and Spielberg. So uh, and of course we should point out, uh, Lucas's involvement in some of these films is more of a kind of advisory sort of role. Industrial Line Magic worked on lots of projects, not just lucasfilm projects, which is why you know E t s an Eblin project, not lucasfilm. Well. I wanted to point that out too, that it would have been easy for George Lucas to

restrict Industrial Light and Magic to working on his films. Yeah, but then we would have hardly any of them because he didn't do very many. Well, I mean that's that's part of it. But I mean he could have he could have done say, uh, the Indiana Jones films and the Star Wars film stuff that he was intimately more intimately involved with, um, you know, the projects that he

and Spielberg worked on together in some capacity. But he you know, they decided to spend this off into its own company, and in doing so they made I would argue that they made film richer for it. I mean you could say that, you know, working on on Star Trek two, um, you know, and one of the greatest documentaries ever made it Ever, We're gonna take a quick break right now and we will come back with more

about industrial light and magic. So you might say, well, you know, start there, there's this whole Star Wars versus Star Trek, which I think is silly anyway, um personally, but you know they you might say, well, you wouldn't necessarily you might want Star Wars to be the dominant uh science fiction space franchise. You know, why would you let him work on Star Trek. Well, I think, like I said, it really populated film with the DNA of industrial light and magic and made them the powerhouse that

they are now. Um, And yeah, I mean they got a nomination for that too. Um. They did other work for other of the Star Wars and Star Trek films and going through You could see this in their the timeline on the Industrial Light and Magic website. Um but yeah, they really and they got involved in stuff. Now you would say, also, these films are going to be heavily dependent on uh special effects, and you would expect that

to be so. But um on other stuff like um, you know you would see it too, for things like Back to the Future, the Back to the Future franchise, but he also worked on the Industrial Line. Magic also worked on stuff like Out of Africa and Young Sherlock Holmes, stuff that had special effects. But some of this stuff is less special effect driven. The special effect the special and special effects in this case is making it look

photo realistic rather than looking fantastic. Yeah, um yeah, I agree the UH and and you know, there are other analogs we can compare this to, like the wett A Workshop which did all the work for the Lord of the Rings movies, and the Hobbit has also done work for other other production companies. That's so they have done designed for lots of stuff, not just the Peter Jackson production, So there are other similarities there. I'm glad you mentioned

Young Sherlock Holmes. Inive I l M achieved something no one had done before. They created the first computer generated character in a film, fully computer generated character. Uh that stained Glass Man, Stained Glass Man from Young Sherlock Holmes. Uh. In this case, what's happening for those of you who have not seen Young Shelock Holmes, which is a pretty

good movie that's slowly paced, but it's I enjoyed it. Uh, it's It's got a lot of cute references in it that clue you into the man that Holmes will become and actually the man that Watson will become as well, though it really messes up their ages anyway. Uh, there's there's this The plot involves this stuff, this substance that causes people to hallucinate, and they hallucinate these terrifying visions

that drive them to essentially suicide. And in this particular case, it's a character who is looking he's in a building with stained glass windows, and one of the stained glass figures comes to life, jumping out of the window, and it's a night that is made out stained glass that stalks the guy. So that's the scene. And that was the first use of a computer a fully computer generated character in the film Who's Stalking Nice. So in idea six,

here's where the spinoff happens. That um that I mentioned. So back in seventy nine they had the Graphics Group Division, and eighty six Lucasfilm spins off the Graphics Group Division as its own company, with a healthy dose of funding from a certain Mr. Steve Jobs who had kind of lost his job. Yeah, he was, he had a gig and then they cut him loose. Yeah, he he just founded Apple and then got pushed off to the very edges of that company and essentially they kind de fired

him without saying he's fired. And then he said, all right, I guess I'm going and he left. And then but yeah, he poured in a great deal of money to the Graphics Group, which became Pixar. So Pixar at this time was again really kind of pioneering computer graphics, computer animation. It would of course be several years before um Pixar would enter in it's uh, it's long and fruitful relationship with Disney. Yes, so, but that that did have its

you know, start way back then, and yeah, they were. Um, of course they weren't what they are now. But you know, and you might say, I can't believe that George Lucas allowed this to happen. But at the time it probably wasn't so clear cut. It was very expensive to do what they were doing, and there there were there were no clear indicators at that time. I mean, or hardware wasn't what it is now either. It would be a good long decade before you start to see this really

kind of payoff, But boy did it. So. Industrial Line Magic entered in with a partnership with a little company called Kodak, which, uh, of course has seen some hard times recently, but Kodak and I LM produced the first high resolution film input scanner. Now this was important because what I could let you do is digitally scan film, then you could edit it with a computer, and then

you would print it back out onto film. And uh, you wouldn't have to do all those edits manually using the traditional methods of cutting film and editing that way, So it gave a lot more versatility to the editing process. And you guys may not be aware of this, but it really is true that films are made in the editing book that you can shoot hours and hours and hours of footage of actors doing lines and and uh

and running around and explosions and whatever. But until you get into the editing booth and put it all together,

you do not have a movie. And in fact, I have seen evidence of amazing films coming from what you would imagine to be um worthless footage, and it's all due to a really creative editor finding ways to make something interesting when before, like you might watch a sequence that originally was twelve minutes long and you think, wow, this is unusable, and then an editor gets ahold of it and cuts it down to like seven and a half minutes, and suddenly it's phenomenal. And so uh, this

is one of those important developments in the industry. Now, granted, this is only important as long as film remains a factor, and of course that doesn't always hold true. We've got a lot of ditch old productions out there. In fact, almost everything is digital now. Yeah, and now of course uh thanks to who was that anyway? Um foreshadowing h Yeah. Although this device used charged couple device UM image sensor, it was not a digital camera in the way that

we think of now. You know, this was a scanner, so it was you know, you you you, you did use a film camera first and then use the scanner and then it would again put film out, so that you know, the projectors, the projectors and the projectors we use were film projectors. They weren't digital yet, so uh yeah, going fully digital was not a viable option at this point. UM nine nine they created the first computer generated three

dimensional fluid based character. And boy, how many fluid based characters I have loved in the cinema over the years. I can't think of any right now, apart from the alien water creature from the Abyss, which is what this is talking about now. I saw, well, I don't know if you if you argue that the terminators being sort of liquid, okay, yeah, and we'll get to the terminators as well, but yeah, I guess so so the T one thousands, that's really higher so liquid metal? You know, no,

it was. I remember I saw The Abyss in the theater and I remember not thinking as much of the plot as I would have liked to have, but the effects were amazing. The effects were amazing, and I still remember watching, Um well, I shouldn't I suppose I shouldn't give away one spoiler, but the pseudopod actually gets um it's it's a movie that came out in Okay, spoilers don't apply anymore. When the door shuts and cuts the pseudopod,

I's got to that point yet. I just get to the point where the doors open and the pseudopods right there, and it's friends, and I thought they were all going to have a picnic. And so the pseudopod when it gets cut, turns into real water and four floor. Um. Just it was amazing, It was fantastic. Yeah, And that that was one of those challenges. I mean, there are several things that have been challenges for computer graphics artists to recreate in a photo realistic way. Water was one

of them. Fire is another one. Hair is a big one. So there are a lot of fire, a lot of challenges that that that various people working on computer graphics. I've had to try and find a way of of designing so that it has that realistic feel on camera. And of course Pixar was doing a lot of this too around the same time. So in ninety one they created the first computer graphics main character. This is the

one you were referring to the T one. Yes, that was in ninety one and in Terminator two Judgment Day, which I remember. I liked it a lot when it came out, and as the years go on, I start to change my opinion on that, mainly because of my love for the first film, even as schlocky and goofy as it is um because they kind of totally changed the tea character Terminator character in that one anyway now need too. They won their twelve Academy Award for Computer

Graphics Work, which is pretty amazing. They also had the first time they with human skin texture computer generated human skin texture. This was for the movie Death Becomes Her. Did you see that, Alan, No? I have great effects and it's an interesting concept, but I don't know, just did not click with me. But but again, people, the effects were amazing, so that's undeniable. The actual film, however,

it left me a little cold. Death Becomes Her It's stiff. Hey, it's Jonathan from the President again here to say we're gonna take another quick break and then come back to conclude our episode about industrial light and magic. There wasn't. It was a short time later when they actually created a character that seemed to breathe with skin, muscles and texture.

This is a Jurassic Park. Now. Jurassic Park was one of those movies again that when it first came out, I remember that people were just completely stunned with the quality of the of the digital dinosaurs, and that those movies you would watch scenes and you'd think, Okay, that had to be practical. They must have built a giant robot dinosaur for this scene. And then most times that was not the case. It was all computer generated from

today's standards. If you were to go back and watch Jurassic Park, I say, it largely holds up, but there are definitely bits where you'll think, Okay, I can kind of tell that's computer generated. Apart from the fact that, yes, we know that dinosaurs aren't walking around right now. Beyond that, I can tell its computer generated. Uh, And there are a couple of scenes that are more obvious than others. But you gotta thank you know, for for nine it

was a pretty phenomenal achievement. And like I said, it more it holds up more than it doesn't right now. Again, another short jump to a film where they did their first computer graphic photo realistic hair and fur. Yeah, and uh, it's interesting because they had a great model to work from with Robin Williams, who is probably the haryest, furiest man on the planet. You're looking at me, funny, that was a that was a joke. That was a joke. He's a hairy man. But that's a joke. Make jokes

about that. They created the effects for all these computer generated animals, and these animals were supposed to look not They were supposed to like almost a slight fantasy version of the real animal, because the idea was these were all generated on this magical board game, and so it wasn't They didn't need to look exactly like the real world version of those animals. They need to look a little hyper realistic, but not so much as to be distracting.

So that was the goal they had for that film. Um. They also created, uh, the first synthetic speaking character with distinct personality, so how they word it on their timeline, That would be Casper from Casper the Ghost which uh, good ghosts. I did not watch, but now these were This was a case where you're talking about a computer generate character that not only appears on screen but has a large, an important presence in the film and has

to be able to convey emotion and meeting and motive. Uh. And so that's you know, that's more challenging than creating something that looks real. You have to have something that's behaving in a realistic way and a believable way so that the audience has an emotional connect with that character.

And then that's not easy to do. I mean, computer animators and animators in general will tell you, you know, once you developed that kind of style where you can create that on a reliable basis, it's an amazingly effective and useful tool. And before you get there, it is just a painstaking process thinking, well, you know, I created this character and the sad thing happens to this character, but no one seems to care. It's I mean, it's a tricky thing to to be able to invoke empathy

in your audience. Eight they were awarded to I l M was awarded two patents for some techniques. One was for hair, fur and feathers. Uh. In this case, it was the hair, fur and feathers effects they made for another movie, Mighty Joe Young, which was am I saw the original Mighty Joe Young way back when I didn't see the remake. Um, this one was hair raising, I'm sure.

And the other one was for facial animation, which was again created originally for the film Casper, but was also used on other movies like Men in Black ninety nine. They created the most realistic digital human character ever seen in film, which was not the Daddy. It was the Mummy. Chris is not having a great morning right now. Hey, I just listened by the way slight tangent. I just listened to one of our older episodes, and uh, and you ground my my will to live into the dirt

with your puns. So you're gonna sit here and you're gonna, you're gonna, you're gonna endure this, all right? Two thousand Um. That was with the real time on character motion capture system developed for Star Wars episode one. So this is this is where they have someone's favorite movie ball thank you. Yeah. Star Wars episode one the phenominas, which I'll say this, I think it's the best of the prequels. Alright, that's

as much praise as I can give it. But anyway, Also it has jar Jar, so do the other two prequels. It also has Darth Vader saying yippie, and I still say it's better than the other two. Um, but that's neither here nor there. What they developed was this motion

capture system that worked in real time. Now, this is really useful, and that you could get an actor wearing a special suit that would have sensors on our or really it's not even sensors, it's just points of reference for a camera to pick up UM and then the

actor could physically portray a performance within a space. And then they take that information that the actor has created by moving through the space and the camera picks up, they feed it through software and that becomes the guideline for the computer generated character that will replace the physical actor who was moving through there. Jar Jar is an example of that. That was one of the characters that

that used this UM this technology to create the performance. Now, while I do not much care for the character of jar Jar, I do admit that it was an interesting use of technology to be able to give a computer generated character more of a physical performance by actually mapping it to someone's real movements, because otherwise you've got animators trying to simulate real movements as best they can, and sometimes it works great, and you watch and you're think, oh,

well that looks real, and sometimes you're like, huh, that doesn't look right at all. Yeah, they're going to use this technique again in some of the movies that are coming up to to pardon my pun, great effect, um, some of my my favorite recent more recent movies. Yep. They also began to develop other stuff. In two thousand and one, they developed ambient occlusion. Yeah that's uh what, it's just what it sounds like. Which, there you go. They actually used this in the movie Pearl Harbor. Like

it's just what it sounds like. I have no idea what you mean. Basically, they were using a combination of light and shadows that made the lighting appear realistic through the use of computer graphics. And they really it really showed uh showed up for the first time in Pearl Harbor, the movie. Not not the actual actual Pearl Harbor, not the place nor the historical event. Yes, but they Yeah, I mean with the the planes in the attack on the the American fleet and that you know, in the

early morning hours. Um, you know, it required a lot of clever lighting. Yeah, and shadows. Yeah, you're talking about explosions, you're talking about shadows being cast by lots of different objects. You're talking about smoke. I mean, there's there are a lot of effects here that we kind of you know, you take for granted when you watch it on a film, but to be able to recreate it realistically in a computer environment is not easy, and that that's why a

lot of this technology went toward. That same year, they also created onset visualization processes that would allow a filmmaker to put actors into an environment, let's say, like a big green screen environment, and look at the virtual sets around the real actors, complete with the actual camera motions. Um. This was This is useful when you're making a movie where a lot of the backgrounds you create are digitally inserted.

It's not it's not a computer animated film. It's still a live action film, but the the the sets might be virtual. And we saw this in a lot of the movies, like a lot of the Star Wars prequels had it. The example they give specifically within the Island timeline is with Steven Spielberg's movie AI Artificial Intelligence. Uh, it's another let down. There's a lot of movies here that I didn't really care for so much. Yeah, but back to the future I loved So there's there's that

address a park. I love that too. So it's okay, I'll just keep going, all right, two thousand three, or do we You were about to say something, I'm sorry, Well, I was going to point out that the U for the ambient occlusion thing. They do point out that. UM a few years later in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences gave them a cry Tech Award for the ways in which ambient inclusion helped advance computer graphics

in the motion picture industry. Yeah so, I mean, you know, looking at it in retrospect, it may not have seemed like a big deal at the time. It may have seemed all that that movie is lit and you know, shadowed very well. But it has played a significant role in many many other films since then. So yeah, yeah, I mean that's went before we went too far. Sure, these these developments they're making are things that are are pushing forward the filmmaking industry across the entire industry, not

just for a single movie. Uh it really I l M has done a lot to shape the way movies are today. Uh. Without their influence, I would say that we'd be we'd have very different films right now if it were not for industrial light and magic. Doesn't necessarily mean that they would be better or worse, but they would certainly be different. They would So, yeah, you mentioned

the two thousand three or you mentioned the awards. They also got an award for the way that they found to render skin or translucent materials, uh from the the good Old cy Tech Award. They also in two thousand

four created a digital baby for a lemony snicket. It's a series of unfortunate events and it was this marked, according to I l M, the first time that you had a computer generated human character shown an extreme close up y. So we're getting to the point now where photo realistic computer generated characters are within the realm of possibility for a serious filmmaker, um to the to the point where it's not necessarily going to be distracting when you watch it and you think, wow, that does not

look real. Doesn't mean that everyone pulls it off successfully these days, but at least it's much more possible. Two thousand six, they developed imo CAP, which was an image based performance capture system, and this was for one of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. And that same year, two thousand six, was when Disney made an acquisition. Disney

purchased Pixar. So you remember back in that's when Pixar struck out on its own, not not struck out in the baseball sense, but set out as its own company under the the the financial support of Steve Jobs. Well, two thousand six, Disney makes a move to acquire that company, Pixar. Disney and Pixar had already been making several movies together for several years, and uh, it was it was a strategic move to guarantee that Pixar would remain under the

Disney family. And that also it was kind of a talent grab because John Lasseter, who was the head of Pixar at the time, would become the creative head of Walt Disney Animation as well as a imagineering. So um that that little acquisition was made for seven point four billion dollars in stocks and other assets. So that made Steve Jobs the largest shareholder in Disney at that time and put him on the border directors to seven point

four billion. Now that to me is interesting because we already mentioned, you know, Disney's buying or trying to buy Lucasfilm. As of the recording of this podcast, the deal has not been approved, but a Disney would be purchasing them for four point oh five billions. So you've got a division, a former division of Lucasfilm sold for uh, not quite twice as much as what the parent company sold for.

That's interesting. So two thousand seven, Uh, at this point, I LM is working on creating a system to simulate fluid motion. And this again is tricky. You know, we talked about getting a water effect is challenging, and that's true. It's also challenging to simulate fluid mechanics, especially you're talking about huge quantities, you know, with with the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, you're talking about ships on the ocean.

So you need to be able to simulate the way the ocean really moves and the way that objects floating or otherwise you know, somehow in the water, how they would move as well. So they did a lot of work in two thousand seven to perfect that technique. Yeah, they actually used a particular system that they called Zeno and UH an engine, a graphics engine called fiz bam um and this uh, this was the series I was mentioning a few minutes ago, because they modeled these effects

within what they were calling a virtual water tank. But of course in the in the last in the second and third movies, in the installment UM, there were lots of appearances by Davy Jones and his UH daydream Believers, his crew, which were who had taken on aspects of

sea life. They lived underwater UM and they there's a really cool picture out there where they show the UH motion capture UM sticker things that they put on the actors to UH while they are you know, pretending to be or they're acting as the crew, and it's it's kind of cool because they can't get weight. They don't have alliant fish heads on UM. But that's you know, how they did that, and the amazing sea battle effects and all the things, the giant maelstrom UM just amazing stuff.

And then of course you know the YEP. And in two thousand and eight they began to work on FEZ because fezes are cool. They are according to a doctor I know, yes, but no. FEZ was the name of a facial animation system that they had been working on. And again this is to refine that that ability to capture an actor's performance to translate it to a computer generated character. This is one of those things that really is problematic. It's interest. It's an interesting question to ask

who is ultimately responsible for a computer generated character's performance? Um, because if you have a performance within a film that is award worthy, but it's a computer generated character, who do you give the award to? Do you give it to the animator who built or the people who built the textures and rendered everything and made it now that made sure they made all the tweaks to make the

character look exactly the way the character looks. Do you give it to the actor who physically portrayed that character and it's that actor's movements that you are watching, even though it's a different, uh computer generated body that's doing the motions. Ultimately it was an actor who went through those motions. Is it the voice actor who may or may not be the same person who did the physical motions.

It's a it's a complicated question because the performance comes from so many different people working together to create this thing you're watching. And I know that that was one of those questions that came up during the Lord of the Rings movies because there were people who were saying that Andy Serkis should be nominated for his performance as

Gollum in those movies. But how much of that performance would you say is his versus the animators who created the uh I hesitate to use the word physical, but the the visual version of the character that you see on the screen. And it's I don't think there's an easy answer to that question. It may very well mean that one day we'll see a new category of award come up where it's best performance of some sort as

opposed to just best Actor or Best Supporting Actor or actress. Yes, wow, you waited all that time just to do that, all right? Two thousand nine we had the very GPU engine which was designed to create firestorms. So again you know, looking at the stuff that's hard to make look real on computer graphics. You know, fire and water, those are big and for those are the big ones. Well they they're working on the Harry Potter series of movies and they for the sixth film, they needed to be able to

have realistic fire effects. So you know, it's it's the I L M way. When if you don't have a system that already does it, go build one yep. Well and they did, and so this kind of wraps up where they are today. I mean, i l M is not the only property outside of Lucasfilm that will be acquired by Disney if this deal goes through. Skywalker's sound is also in there. And you know, Lucas has, like we said, he's had a huge influence on the way

movies are shown today. I mean, th h X is another example, uh, which Disney I was also going to get. So really, when it comes down to the the technology behind filmmaking and film projection, film screening, Disney is making a huge move here and and some people are a little nervous about it. I've got friends who work in effects. They work for for affect houses that often we'll get

contracted to work on companies UM. And some of these friends of mine are a little nervous because this is sort of showing a consolidation of effects houses and that could mean less competition and fewer opportunities for these artists. So there are things to worry about, depending upon what

field you are in. Yeah, But nonetheless, I still think it will be interesting to see and if some of the people leave UM, you know, they may very well take the ability to Uh, do these complex the knowledge that it takes to to build these complex effects with them, making the acquisition less valuable. There's always a chance that people could strike out and create their own uh companies as well and start competing with their old company. I mean that's happened several times in the past as well,

So it's too early to say. But some of the movies ALM has worked on we've talked about, of course, the Star Wars series all the way from episode four through six and then one through three. Uh, the several Star Trek films generations first contact Star Wars are Star Trek Wrath of con which is my favorite of all of the Star Trek films because it's very cold. It's space. Yes, it is fine Corinthian leather. Yeah. The Jurassic Park movies. Uh,

you know had the mask Forrest Gump, Twister. Never had I felt that a cow really did fly past someone's windshield until I saw Twister, Mission Impossible three. They they've worked on many, many, many movies. I mean, if you if you watch any film that has a lot of special effects in it and you wait to the end, Uh, it's amazing how many of them have industrial light magic listed as at least part of the team that worked

on the effects. Also, it's it's interesting to realize how many films you may not have realized have a lot of special effects in them because the special effects are to make the film look more like real life. Forrestcump is a good one, although you could argue that no, no, that's clear because you know, Tom Hanks never actually shook

hands with that many presidents still. But but even so, that's that's one of those where the special effects are there to create the story, but they're not you know, it's not spectacle the way it would be in a big science fiction film or something. Right, So, yeah, they have had a monumental effect on the movie industry, definitely, and uh, I'm sure they will continue to do so, even whether whether Disney's deal goes through or not. I'm sure it will remain a big player in the the

effects industry. And that's it. I hope you guys enjoyed this classic episode of tech Stuff. If you have any suggestions for future episodes that I should cover, well, why not send me a message The email addresses tech Stuff at how stuff works dot com, or you can drop me a line on Facebook or Twitter. Don't know the handle for those, well, pop on over to our website, tech stuff podcast dot com. That's where you're gonna find

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