This article contains both course notes and a short essay about film, animation and VFX. The notes and timelines are at the end of the article.
Mini-Essay:
Apparently, the history of film, animation and VFX are some big topics. It’s quite hard to cover all these historys in a short essay. Depending on my own interests, I would like to share my ideas about the history of film, animation aand VFX.
The film documentory that we have seen on week 1 course is just a brief introduce of early film history and stories of poeple who devoted themselves into film industry. However, we can still feel the passion of former artists by enjoying their film works through that short video. I was shocked by early artists’ creativity and the spirit of exploration. Some people said that the existence of film extends the life of people almost three times, which is defenitely ture. From Sci-fi films to feature films, people can enjoy different kinds of experience and feelings from them. Thanks for Lumière brothers and other film workers’ devotion. It is quite hard to imagine what the life will be if film doesn’t exist.
The history of animation, to me, is also a human visual recording history. Before camera and shotting devices were invented, people collected movements by drawing several painting on papers or small devices. Such simple behaviours final lead to the form of animation. Rencently, animation is far more than a form of art. It has been widely used by advertisement industry, medical treatment area and education. People used to watch animations for fun, but now, they already bacome part of our lives.
VFX(Visual Effects) is also a topic that people cannot ignore when talking about modern movies. It is quite unbelievable that even VFX has already been developed nearly 90 years. VFX is an industry which quite relies on modern techniques. From special makeups, stop motion to degital visual effects, the quality and developing efficiency of VFX has been significantly improved. Does that mean VFX has become better and better? Through out the history of VFX, I can say it is not quite true.
From my point of view, the quality of VFX not only depends on the level of techniques that people used in their work, but also the level of asthetic, hardworking and imagination that they have. Some classic VFX, like the liquid metal cyborg in Terminator 2 (1991) or the horrible creature in The Thing (1982), still makes people deeply shocked even after 20 or 30 years. Former artists devoted themselves into these artworks. They brought their imagination and asthetics into these works and finally gave audience the best visual and sound experience. Some recent films, however, combined with several CGI techniques but still make people feeling boring. Therefore, only VFX which has both great techniques and high-standard imagination can last longer in people’s memory, and that is what I have learned from the history of VFX.
It is quite boring to repeatedly talking about what VFX artists have DONE before. What the history of VFX will be in the future is something that I’m also curious about.
After the blockbuster AVATAR released, the modern VFX workflow almost became mature. Texture painting software for film production like Mari, was released in 2010. Render engines like Arnold, Redshift and Vray, are all quite capable for film and animation production. From The curious case of Benjamin Button (2008) to Blade Runner 2049 (2017), recent VFX techniques can already simulate high-quality human skin textures and photo-realistic hairs. Based on Facial Action Coding System (FACS), facial actions can be animated or captured with great details. It seems that recent VFX techniques can almost make everything come true, but the efficiency of production still need to be improved.
As far as I think, real-time rendering will provide a new workflow for VFX artists, which may have chance to become industry standard in the future. The release of Unreal Engine 5 seems quite exhilarating, but there is still some lacks. Visual efffect like particle simulation, fire and water, still not quite satisfied in real-time engine. Improvements may take years, but undeniable, real-time workflow may change the history of VFX in the near future.
The next step, I think, may be finding a way to lower the cost of VFX. When techniques are no longer the obstacle of VFX production, budget will be the biggest task. It include equipment cost, team employment and place rental cost. To solve this problem, future softwares must be more practical and easy-to-learn. What’s more, a non-linear workflow should be built. Maybe there will be some self-learning VFX softwares in the future, I think.
In conclusion, VFX techniques are going fast recently. It’s hard to predict what will happen in future development, but base on the history of VFX, I am sure that VFX will still astonish people again and again as before.
NOTES:
Mise-en-scène: overall look of film
Mise-en-scène is the stage design and arrangement of actors in scenes for a theatre or film production.
- Settings: indoor, outdoor, site…
- Costume: show actors identity or characteristic
- Lighting: 1.Three-point lighting 2.High key/Low key lighting 3.Hard/Soft light 4.Chiaroscuro 5.ambient lighting 6.motivated/unmotivated lighting.
- Color: 1.Black&white(B/W) 2.Tinting 3.color film 4.Color grading 5.Color palette
- Space: 1.Balance 2.Deep space 3.Shallow space 4.Offscreen space 5.Blocking
Camera
- Shot length: 1.wide shot/extreme wide shot 2.medium shot 3.two shot 4.close up/extreme close-up
- Angle: 1.Eye level 2.High angle (make person small/silly) 3.Low angle (make person large) 4.Dutch angle (strange/unnatural)
- Focus: 1.Depth of field 2.Deep focus 3.Shallow focus 4.Rack focus
- Lenses: 1.Telephoto lens 2.Wide angle lens 3.Fisheye lens
- Movements: 1.Handheld (holding camera, more freedom but less control) 2.Steadicam (stable)
- Move Methods: 1.Pan 2.Tilt 3.Zoom 4.Dolly/Tracking shot 5.Jib/Crane shot 6.Dolly zoom (zooming+ changing depth)
Editing
Sequence shot
Cut: the transition between the end of one shot and the beginning of another
Continuity editing Tech(reflect reality):
- Screen direction
- Match on action (movement carry from one to another)
- Eyeline
- 180 degree rule (camera always stays on one side of the characters) (help audience to find out the place and direction of characters)
- Crossing the axis (camera jump everywhere, can be used when the place of characters are clear, or in scenes that you want to make a chaotic feeling)
- Establishing shot (show where scene takes place)
- Master shot
- Close-up, Reverse angle, Insert shot, Cross cutting
Discontinuity editing Tech(reflect emotion):
- Freeze frame
- Slow motion
- Fast motion
- Reverse motion
- Jump cut
- Match cut
- Split screen
- Overlay
- Montage (series of shots link together to create a third meaning)
Timelines:
Timeline of Early Film:
1895 Dec 28th Lumiere brothers demonstrated their first moving pictures
1891 Thomas Edison perfected kinetoscope
1892 Emile Reynaud projected first animated film on his praxinoscope
1897 George Melia built first film studio
1901 Andre Deed (first film star)
1908 Max Linder became famous
1914 World War 1, Max Linder got terribly hurt
1917 and after Charlie Chaplin became more and more famous
End War Hollywood took the lead
Timeline of Animation:
1609 Magic lantern
1825 Thaumatrope
1900 Painted animation (people outfit changing animation)
1914 Gertie the dinosaur(First character animation)
1928 Steamboat Willie (Disney’s first shot) (First one use music and sound)
1929 Black Tuesday (Wall Street Crashed, People go to theatre for fun, industry and audience paid more attention to animation production)
1937 Snow White (First feature animation movie) (Multi-depth camera technique)
1970 Animation for advertisement
1986 Pixar spin-off as a corporation. CGI animation begin
1995 Toy Story exist
2009 Avatar (CGI film)
Timeline of VFX:
1933 King Kong
1958 The 7th Voyage of Sinbad
1963 Jason and the Argonauts (famous stop motion sequence: skeleton battle)
1985 Young Sherlock Holmes (ILM) (First photo-real computer-generated character)
1989 The Abyss (ILM)
1991 Terminator 2: Judgement Day (ILM) (impressive liquid metal robot VFX)
1993 Jurassic Park (ILM) (Creatures with skeleton, textured skin and detailed muscles) (real people test)
1995 Casper (ILM) (First computer animated title character)
1995 Toy Story (Pixar) (First feature-length film made entirely by computer animation)
1996 Dragonheart
1999 Episode 1-The Phantom Menace (ILM)
2001 Final Fantasy (First hyper-real fully CGI film)
2002 The Lord of the Rings:The Two Towers
2002 Episode 2-Attack of the Clones
2003 The Matrix Reloaded (Universal Capture)
2005 King Kong (Better facial expression and capture)
2006 POTC: Dead Man’s Chest
2007 Beowulf (Advanced motion capture)
2008 The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (Face scan) (Mova’s Contour Technology)
2009 Avatar