“In those days very few people were doing visual effects and it was difficult to find work,” recalls American Visual Effects Supervisor Phil Tippett. “Ray Harryhausen [The Golden Voyage of Sinbad] would do his kind of shows, and every once and a while somebody would do a fantasy or space movie. But generally, studios had disbanded a lot of their visual effects departments. There weren’t that many stop-motion animators so they didn’t do it.” The attitude changed with the arrival of filmmakers George Lucas (American Graffiti) and Steven Spielberg (Close Encounters of the Third Kind). “George and Steven were big fans of the same kinds of movies that we liked and embraced the technology; they had the resources that allowed us to pushed things farther.” After joining Industrial Light & Magic, Phil Tippett contributed to the scene in the original Star Wars (1977) where Chewbacca plays a game of chess against R2-D2. “Dennis Muren and I built all of the chess figures and animated them.” Stop-motion evolved into go-motion with the sequel The Empire Strikes Back (1980). “Stop-motion is a static puppet which is usually attached to the table or other kind of device that you can adjust with a blue screen incrementally. You basically sculpt the performance by hand. In Empire we attached the Tauntauns to some of the motion-control equipment to achieve a motion blur. It helped the stop-motion artifacts blend into the live-action scene.” The technique was also employed during the attack sequences on the ice planet Hoth with the Imperial Walkers. “By the time of Return of the Jedi [1983], the third Star Wars, everybody was like, ‘Okay, it’s time to graduate from high school now.’ But there were enough different things we could throw in. Dennis Muren wanted to do the Rancor as a big hand puppet which we did. Initially, George wanted the Rancor to be a man in a suit. They built a big suit and it didn’t look good.” The creative effort paid off as the final installment of the original trilogy won a Special Achievement Award for Visual Effects at the Oscars.
Reflecting on his Academy Award-nominated work in Dragonslayer (1981), Phil Tippett states, “The director Matthew Robbins and Hal Barwood, the producer, were friends of George’s. We had a lot of fun working on that. They allowed us to take what we had learned on Empire with the Tauntauns and take it to the next level.” Williow (1988) resulted in another Academy Award nomination. “Ron Howard is an even keel guy and gives good directions. There’s plenty of new and weird stuff in Willow. It was fun. Working with good directors is very rewarding.” Tippett was co-honoured with the Best Visual Effects Oscar for a dinosaur resurrection tale. “Jurassic Park [1993] was a hard one for me in that it was the big transition from stop-motion go-motion to computer graphics. At some point I was obsolete but it turned out that a lot of the computer guys didn’t understand all of the stuff you need to do to bring these creatures to life. We developed a bunch of technology to bridge the gap between computer graphics and stop-motion go-motion.” DragonHeart (1996) contended for Best Visual Effects at the Academy Awards. “I’ve worked with Rob Cohen in developing the design for the dragon and did not work on the production itself. We did a whole bunch of animatics for scenes to play out the action and gave that to ILM.” Tippett is proud of the picture which brought his Oscar nomination tally to five. “Starship Troopers [1997] was the big one for me. There were so many moving parts. It was a cool war movie. It was visceral and R-rated. I like Paul Verhoeven a lot; our approaches were in sync with each other. That was Tippett Studio's first big foray.” When asked about the infamous comic book adaptation Howard the Duck (1986), Tippett chuckles, “I got to design a wacky thing with a lot of moving parts; it was a fun and different kind of character to do.”
“The good thing about the Twilight series for us is that we could really develop the characters not only in their look but also in their behavior,” states Phil Tippett who has been involved in creating the wolves since they first appeared in The Twilight Saga: New Moon (2009). With The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1 (2011), a new director meant a different approach for the shape-shifting creatures. “Bill Condon [Gods and Monsters] wanted them lived in, and running through the woods with muddy paws and scraggily hair.” 186 wolf shots had to be produced. “We had about four months when we were prepping all the stuff. There is always this thing between the studios and the directors. The directors want more and the studios don’t want to have to pay for it. There is always a conflict there. We pretty much knew by the time we were starting, what type of shots there were going to be.” Assessing the current contribution by Tippett Studio to the vampire love story, Tippett reveals, “The adjustments we made to do the show are pretty significant in terms of efficiency and resources. These wolves are heavy duty rendering hogs and in the stories there are more and more wolves. We had to be careful about the technology. We would have to revamp as a director wanted different kinds of looks. The animators are really up on wolf behavior. On Breaking Dawn my co-supervisor Matt Jacobs took the art and the technical people to Wolf Mountain; they got into a big pen with some wolves. It was good because you can get a visceral sense of the wolves and we looked a lot up in documentaries.”
“It’s certainly influenced by George in terms of his direction style because like all good directors he’s very inclusive,” remarks Phil Tippett when discussing how his time spent at ILM influenced the way he operates Tippett Studio. “George would say, ‘Here is what we need out of the shot. Now go do it.’ He pretty much took what we gave him. There weren’t any real big issues. In Return of the Jedi there is a scene where the Ewoks roll logs down a hill and one of the Walkers trips over them and falls down. I remember working out that pantomime with George. Generally, he was good about it. He would visit us and we would ask him questions.” The VFX industry has become revolutionized by technology. “The big change has been computer graphics. Up until that point there were only a handful of people who could do what I do and now there are legions of animators.” There is a critical factor required if a VFX facility is to survive. “The key is doing high quality work. It is so competitive. It’s not a level playing field. Countries like India, Korea, China, England, and Australia are more expensive than we are but because of the tax incentives the studios go there.”There are certain elements required to be a successful visual effects supervisor. “Knowing the moviemaking process, having ideas and not being afraid to speak your mind are the main things,” advises Phil Tippett who has ventured behind the camera. “I’m a lot more sympathetic to the directors. Everybody should be made to direct a movie.” Tippett states, “I would encourage people to go to the Tippett Studio website and checkout Mutantland [2010] which is a little short that we made which was fun. If anybody is interested, I’m posting a bunch of stuff from a film I’m working on my own.” The cinematic project has been in development for the past 20 years. “It could keep going on. In fact I tell some of the guys there’s a title card that says, ‘The End.’ So if I was to have a heart attack in three minutes and they can just slap ‘The End’ on it and we’ll be done.” Contemplating his own ability to survive in VFX industry, Tippett says, “I’m hoping its skill and the attention to detail.” He adds, “Everybody’s creative process is different; it’s a matter of figuring out their take on things.”
Mutantland:
Twilight stills © 2011 Summit Entertainment.
Many thanks to Phil Tippett for taking the time out of his schedule for this interview.
For more information, be sure to visit the Tippett Studio website here.
Dawn Breaks: The Making of The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1
Trevor Hogg is a freelance video editor and writer who currently resides in Canada.
“I originally was a broadcast technical director doing NHL hockey and CFL football,” recalls Method Studios Visual Effects Supervisor Bruce Woloshyn who decided to make a career change. “I was at NAB [National Association of Broadcasters] in Las Vegas one year when Discreet Logic first came out with Flame. I was so floored with what I saw. I went back to the hotel, got my wife, and dragged her down to the convention centre. I said, ‘I’m going to work for whoever is going to buy me one of those.’ I was already working at a really advanced commercial facility in Seattle. It was six months later when Bob Scarabelli approached me to come to Vancouver to help start Rainmaker Digital Pictures and we were going to buy two Flames.” The native of North Battleford, Saskatchewan believes that there have been two major changes in the visual effects industry. “One of them is going from analog to digital technology. When I first started the best high end effects were all in television commercials because there’s nothing more expensive per-finished-second than a TV ad. The other biggest thing is processing power and storage. The other day I got a disk space report saying something to the effect that we were utilizing some ungodly amount. It was like 87 terabytes or something like that. All I could think of when we started Rainmaker was that, ‘Who the hell would need a terabyte?’” 
“We go and gather lighting references with gray and chrome balls,” states Bruce Woloshyn who makes use of HDRs (High Dynamic Range images) when constructing a 360 degree view of the whole set “so we know exactly where the lights were and how they were placed.” Assisting the effort to blend in the visual effects into the actual footage are reports detailing the body, lens, and positioning of the various cameras. “When pre-vizing shots to be filmed in New York for 
“When we were doing 
“I was the first guy to breakup a film into multiple vendors and that was on 
“When you see the jet flying it’s on a crane in camera,” reveals John Bruno who received an Oscar nomination for 
“I met Ivan Reitman who said he could get money to do this movie 
“Renny Harlin was fun to work with on 
“I’m looking forward to 
“At first I thought it was a biopic but really what it is a human character study,” admits Visual Effects Supervisor 
“One of the wonderful things working with Michael Owens is that he has a great read on what Clint Eastwood wants,” states Method Vancouver Visual Effects Supervisor Geoffrey Hancock. “A number of our artists here have worked on multiple Eastwood films so we’re into a bit of a groove as to what is their preferred style.” 
When Geoffrey Hancock had to leave the project, Ollie Rankin was given the task of filling in for him. “I was on the show as the Digital Effects Supervisor which meant that I was at the broader view of the entire 3D side and was responsible for asset creation, the crowd system, lighting and rendering,” explains Rankin. “Unfortunately, a couple months into the production he fell ill; I was asked to step up and take on his role which meant I was the Visual Effects Supervisor for the second half of the production.” Assisting the effort was an onset crew from Method Studios assigned with photographing every filming location and vehicle prop as well scanning the various wardrobes for the actors. “In a lot of instances,” says Hancock, “we were just another department in the production which was leveraging everything else being done so that things wouldn’t have to be reinvented in post.”
A virtual environment, CGI augmentation, and archival footage were all used to make the office scene where J. Edgar Hoover watches the 1969 presidential inauguration parade for Richard Nixon on the television set and reflects upon the same event which occurred back in 1932 with Franklin Roosevelt. “We did a lot of photographic research of the actual parade and there were certain things that Clint had specifically requested storytelling wise,” states Ollie Rankin. “He wanted there to be a visually recognizable iconography between the 1930s parade and the 1960s one.” Geoffrey Hancock explains, “We looked at things we could try to keep consistent like the actual street layout, where the sidewalks were, where people could be or could not be. In the beginning, we thought it would be similar but by the end it was very different between the 1930s and the 1960s.” The real Nixon footage influenced the design of the sequence. “Because we were trying to have a reoccurring visual cues between the two inaugurations, that was in many ways what drove the layout of our 1932 inauguration parade,” remarks Rankin who had to balance the need to be historically accurate with compositional requirements. “There were times where our historic trees had to split the difference in age and maturity between what was actually shot and what would be truly reflective of the time.” Contemplating the significance of the scene, Rankin observes, “That moment in the movie is really telling of change of Hoover’s position in power from the 1932 parade, he stands on the balcony and exchanges a wave with Roosevelt; whereas in 1969, he’s an embittered, embattled old man with no influence at all.”
“The burning of Chicago was another one that took a lot of figuring out in the beginning of exactly how we would show that,” says Geoffrey Hancock. “Would it be street level? Would there be riots? Would it be higher up to show more of the city? That evolved a lot as far as the composition and deciding what to show and what not to show. In the end, it was a very high angle matte painting with a lot of fire elements and interactive lighting.” To help construct the sequence, the Method Vancouver team referenced a previous project with Clint Eastwood and Michael Owens. “The only visual cue we had was one particular shot that both Clint and Michael liked on 
“One of the shots I was most excited about was of the nighttime Broadway District because it is a lively environment,” states Geoffrey Hancock. “There is heavy traffic [and] all sorts of people in the entertainment district coming and going from theatres. The neon signage was a new thing in the 1930s and that was played up on Broadway. It was exciting to research what was all of those old iconic signs, how they were designed and how could we recreate things that look like that.” Adding to the atmosphere for Hancock is the light reflecting off of the wet road from a searchlight turned on during theatrical premiers. When asked whether short shots are easier to construct, Hancock answers, “It is always easier to have shorter shots; there’s less scrutiny but it usually means you have more shots. In longer shots you’re playing up to people’s abilities to travel their eye around the frame and examine everything with closer detail.”
“Michael makes sure that we’re always grounding ourselves in the optics of cinema,” states Geoffrey Hancock who felt the effort paid off, especially, in the ability to emulate film stock. “A mistake a lot of people make is to forget the restraints of real filmmaking technology when they’re designing CGI shots,” says Ollie Rankin. “We worked hard to make sure our camera moves were ones that could be carried out by a real camera. Inserting the element of randomness in a virtual environment adds to its believability. "When you add a flaw or some kind of uniqueness to a digital element it suddenly becomes recognizable. Because a lot of our work is about trying to create things that can be reused, you have to balance it with the need to make them imperfect. A good example of that is our digital crowd system. We had a small cast of 12 people and a huge Wardrobe Department; they had 10 different pairs of trousers, a dozen different jackets, a dozen different hats, and for each of those trousers, jackets, and hats there are maybe 20 or more colour variations. By multiplying altogether all of those permutations you get an incredibly diverse crowd.” As for creating the populous in the 1932 inaugural parade and the racetrack sequence, Rankin remarks, “There were 30 odd crowd shots and they were all quite diverse in styles. In many cases our shot might involve only five or 10 digital people which are not traditionally considered to be a crowd shot but our pipeline here at Method is designed to be flexible.”
Lola VFX, a California-based company, was recruited by Michael Owens to handle some makeup enhancements “which proved to be not terribly problematic but nevertheless a task at hand.” The aging of Leo DiCaprio required no digital alterations but the appearance of the elderly Armie Hammer needed some modification. “We enhanced almost all of his shots as an older man. Clint in afterthought felt Naomi [Watts] didn’t look quite aged enough so we touched up her shots as an older woman. They also took Judi Dench and made her look younger for a few shots when J. Edgar is a young kid.” Owen observes, “It is a very expensive process to do it all digitally. It can be done that way. Usually, a hybrid method is better or physical makeup, assuming it is done really well. The reason is purely cost and time.”
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“It was trying to pick the moments that would payoff the best,” says Michael Owens when discussing 
“We replaced everything except for the players on every shot,” remarks Michael Owens in regards to the rugby matches in 
Comparing the period films 
“I grew up in the Bay Area,” states Michael Owens. “There was no moviemaking there. I fell into filmmaking when I was in high school.” Not wanting to move to Los Angeles, the teenager floundered. “When ILM [Industrial Light & Magic] came to Marine County, it was like, ‘There’s an opportunity for fun.’ I never thought I was making myself a career out of visual effects.” He thrived. “At that time, they were the forefront and you learned a lot visually. We’re working on multiple projects. It was quite a talent pool.” One of the movies Owens helped out with was the third installment of the original 
“Today you can almost do anything and the quality is way better,” reflects Michael Owens. “I remember early on in my career we were like a red headed stepson. Nobody wanted us on the set. They thought we were doing voodoo. They were like, ‘I don’t get this.’ Now, today you’re partnering with all of these people whether you needing a tear to fall or 10,000 spaceships to fly through.” The movie industry acceptance has come with a price. “Quite frankly, the tentpole films coming out are never considered to be good movies which is unfortunate; they’re big visual effects movies that make billions of dollars and are in 3D.” The latest trend in Hollywood has not completely convinced Owens. “The project I’m currently helping out with right now at Method is a post-conversion 3D. I’m not a big fan of 3D myself or stereo. It is a massive headache and complication to what you’re already trying to do. What we do naturally is put square pegs in round holes. This is 10 times worse now. I don’t know anybody you enjoys the process of it.” The technological transition resembles a previous one. “It’s like when you went from the silent era to the sound era. The camera just got nailed to the ground. It’s that same thing. It’s so cumbersome to deal with.”
Earlier this month I had the opportunity to speak to José Padilha, the acclaimed director of 
Well, while the first movie was very well received, it was also very polemic. Both movies that I’d done, 
Earlier today I was fortunate enough to interview José Padilha ahead of the UK home entertainment release of 
Gary Daniels was a successful kickboxer (a former world champ) who took the decision to leave his homeland in England to pursue a career in acting overseas in the late 80’s. He cut his teeth on celluloid in the Philippines before venturing to America to launch himself. 
Actually it’s not that big a role really. I think I’m only in two episodes. The character isn’t a real person from Bruce Lee’s life; he’s been made up for the film. I’ve not seen the finished product, but it’s very much a fantastical version of Bruce Lee’s life, as most Bruce Lee biopics tend to be. Just like 
