This article explores how the “War of the Worlds” movie changed the course of VFX scheduling.
Introduction
War of the Worlds is a 2005 science fiction thriller film directed by Steven Spielberg adapted from the 1897 novel by H. G. Wells with lead role Tom Cruise. The plot revolves around an ordinary man who tries to protect his children during an alien invasion. The film was nominated for 3 Academy Awards – Best Visual Effects, Best Sound Mixing, and Best Sound Editing.
The film was shot in 73 days, Industrial Light & Magic was the main special effects company for the movie, ILM Visual Effects Supervisors were Dennis Muren, Pablo Helman. Spielberg used 3d previs/animatics for the first time. The usage of CGI shots and bluescreen was limited, with most of the digital effects being blended with miniature and live-action footage The CG team used Alias Maya and Avid Softimage.ILM used Flame and Inferno for compositing.
Design
The Tripod and the aliens had been designed to appear aquatic shape yet mechanical. Spielberg did not want any blood or gore during the Heat-Ray deaths, the laser blasts or death rays are actually from flame’s particle system. the cloth falling from the laser blast is clean-ups of live-action cloths and digital cloth sim cloths
Muren decided to test ILM’s new in-house creation Zeno software package. The bridge destroying sequence alone took around weeks to achieve. Smoke stock elements were added using additive keying methods. The forcefields are stock explosion tracked and projected simple spheres inside the flame.
The post-production lasted only 2 months, Industrial Light & Magic create around 400 invisible VFX shots. The crew ramped up from 50 to 179 digital artists and an additional support staff of 60. Half of the VFX shots were completed in the final month. Timing like these unheard of those days.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=oy_uTerw6dA
Result
After the release, The entire film industry was impressed by the results, from that moment on film studios slowly started demanded VFX studios for post-production schedules similar to the war of the worlds. Spielberg and Industrial light and magic set a new trend of creating quickly big high-quality VFX with less time. But other film studios forgot how closely the director had to work together with the VFX studio to pull off the VFX for War of the worlds.
Impact
Instead of demanding premium prices from clients for fast and quality delivery, the VFX studios started to underbid each other while handing down the pressure to their VFX artists. After the War of the worlds, clients slowly started making unrealistic deadlines progressively. since profit margins for companies are so small they started to accept that timeline, and eventually, the stress gets passed on to the artists.
Digital killed deadline. every project there are some cases of “looks good, keep going” clients who finally decide that it’s not looking good anymore week before the deadline. There’s another issue that there is a constant line of 18-22-year-old newbies. They don’t know any better. They want to get ‘in’ and get experience. Then suddenly after 25 and overworked for the companies, they are burned out, and guess who replaces them?.
References:
https://www.amazon.in/Inside-VFX-Insiders-Effects-Business/dp/1503349241
https://www.awn.com/vfxworld/war-worlds-post-911-digital-attack-0
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