I'm Steven Bray, and I'm a visual effects artist.
I've worked on TV shows like Sherlock, Silent Witness and The Crown.
I'm going to break down my favourite moments in visual effects history for WIRED UK.
Released in 1968, 2001: A Space Odyssey, featured a revolutionary camera system.
This mechanical system enabled the camera to repeat moves very precisely.
The sequence features a variety of satellites, spaceships, space stations,
all of which Kubrick wanted on the same negative to maintain the highest possible quality.
In order to achieve that, they built a camera rig that could repeat its
movements over and over again with absolute precision. Space Odyssey remains the most
influential science fiction films ever made, both in terms of design and technology.
In this scene from Westworld, Yul Brynner playing the robot gunslinger, is pursuing one of the
human characters with the intent to kill him. His vision as a robot includes the ability to
see heat. Once he enters the building, he can differentiate the human character from the other
robots by the fact that the human has body heat. In order to film these things, the actor
was wearing white body makeup and white clothing on a dark background.
This footage was then scanned into the computer and broken down into individual pixels.
This enabled the technicians who worked on the film to increase the contrast and create
the effect of the robot vision. This work was so revolutionary,
so time consuming and so expensive that the technique was not used again for many years.
But it paved the way for future developments in film scanning and digital visual effects.
In this scene from Star Wars, in 1977, a squadron of X-Wings are attacking the Death Star.
This scene was shot using motion control. Motion Control enables the camera and the model to be
controlled simultaneously by a computer. The models are placed against a blue screen
and filmed by a computer controlled camera. The computer also controls movements of the model.
This enables very dynamic moves to be created, and was a genuine innovation.
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, released in 1982,
was the first feature film to use a particle system to create visual effects.
The Genesis effects sequence depicted the transformation of
a lifeless planet into one with life. "It is a process whereby molecular
structure is reorganised at the subatomic level into life generating matter."
Particle System calculates the movement of thousands of particles.
Everything in the sequence was created using computer graphics - the planet, the stars,
torpedo, and the Genesis effect itself. This was the first feature film to use this technology.
This scene from young Sherlock Holmes features the first fully
computer-generated character in a feature film. The stained glass night was created by ILM's
computer graphics division, which would later become Pixar.
Individual pieces that make up the stained glass night fly out of the window and then
form the figure that pursues the priest through the church.
Individual pieces of the night are semi transparent, and also reflect their environment.
The process of scanning the film and then outputting the finished visual effects shots to
film at the end of the process was a more advanced version of that which was used on Westworld.
This scene from Jurassic Park features the first appearance of the digital dinosaurs,
which feature only six minutes of the finished film, the original plan was to create the
dinosaurs in the movie and involve stop motion. But this changed once Spielberg saw the test
for the digital dinosaurs. Jurassic Park was enormously
influential, demonstrating that photo real CG characters could be created for feature films.
In this scene from Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, from 2006, a revolutionary motion
capture system was used. You can see that Bill Nighy is actually on set with his fellow actors
rather than requiring him to recreate his performance later, in a separate location.
Once Bill Nye's performance had been translated to the digital
Davy Jones character, additional animation, such as the tentacles, could be created.
This is the first time that a motion capture performance was recorded live on set.
2019's The Mandalorian offers a glimpse of the future of visual effects
with live computer graphics projected onto screens around the actors and partial sets.
As you can see, the lighting in this scene is much more naturalistic than would be
possible using blue screen or green screen. The wraparound screens also provide lighting on the
characters and the partial sets. Although incredibly expensive,
and difficult to set up, the potential savings in time and money are considerable.