The Shallows - Visual Effects VFX Review

Movie - The Shallows
released - 2016
Director - Jaume Collect-serra
Cinematography - Flavio Labiano
VFX - ILPVFX (Important Looking Pirates) - Shark CGI | VFX - ObliqueFX - Other VFX |
Digital Sandbox |  Scanline VFX | MPC | Lola VFX | Spin VFX | Aaron Kupferman | Mammal Studios

The Shallows is a 2016 survival thriller starring Blake Lively, steven Seagull (Actual seagull) & Mr.Bad guy Shark itself. This Movie is a must talk about Visual effects piece as it got VFX work done by over 14 or more Studios & individuals.

Spoiler Alert------------------- The movie revolves around an incident that occurs at a beach & the movie stays in the same beach for more than two thirds of the movie where it cuts to old memories & getting to the location via a truck in the opening. Nancy who is a medical school drop out (after her mothers death), comes to the very same beach her mother used to surf. the beach is a secluded location only visited by a few surfers.

As nancy get to the water & surfs most of the day without any incident, she is confronted by a shark as she makes her final approach to beach at the end of the day. From that point, until she frees her self from the giant deadly shark  a race for survival begins with a cunning monster in it's territory & an injured young female surfer stranded on an isolated rock with a wounded seagull!

Back to Visual effects-----

After researching, I got to know that more than 14 Visual effects studios / individuals worked on this movie. The final movie is nothing like Terminator or Transformers where you could guess the CGI is being played. From the start to the end, the scenery & the story takes you into another dimension with it's momentum building slowly & then becoming intense as the fight between the shark & the surfer becomes personal!

The location is real!  It was shot in Australia & majority of shots involving shark was shot in a tank with blue screens (they had to replace them green screens to blue! & we call it Blue Screen) :) a digital 360 of the real location was created in the computer & was used to fill in the back plates when needed.

The Seagull--------------------------- not CGI

when in the early development stages, the steven the seagull was proposed to be full CGI as they thought it would be impossible to train a bird which was tried to be domesticated. On a visit to the Australian beach side  Blake Lively had a chance to feed a bunch of seagulls & the experience led the director to use a real seagull on the movie. So the Seagull is a real living bird that is shown in the movie.

these two shots above shows how well the Visual effects (VFX) team pulled these off.  as the director states every scene has a shot of the actual location & then footage created with VFX, while watching the movie, you never feel as it was VFX! Kudos to the team effort here!

 This shot is just added so you know the scale of it! The VFX team had to map all the details, both near & far, to create backplates so that every angle the director required later in the pool, can be manipulated using what they have!

 Mr. Shark needs a lot (I mean a LOT) of attention from a VFX perspective! Important Looking Pirates is the one & only go to when it comes to sharks! they are well known for there realistic sharks in Kontiki! ILP VFX did a lot of research 7 studied a lot of shark footage to create a humongous shark the Director wanted! the size of the shark had it's limitations when it came to agility & the top speed & also how the body weight reacted in action sequences! 

 Thanks to the marvel of  affordable super computers compared to the days of jurassic park, the Studio was able to simulate all the effects, such as weighing of skin, water bubble simulations & fluid with caustics & refractions! which could tax a heavy rig with just a few frames! when you look at the final movie you never feel any of the elements off the visual choreography that is carried out throughout!

This shot (I want tell you which part) is enough for a person with a simple knowledge in computer to understand how the electronic number crunching machines of 1950s have evolved to aid in wonders that are dreamed with limitless human mind!

thanks for reading, leave a comment if you enjoyed my research, taking screen shots & creating GIFs..

Some more shots of the small crab models used & the shark and several stages of simulation..

Automata Visual Effects Review

Movie - Automata
released - 2014
Director - Gabe Ibáñez
Cinematography - Alejandro Martinez
VFX - Wordwide FX

starring Antonio Banderas & Birgitte Hjort Sørensen, Melanie Griffith, Dylan McDermott, Robert Forster and Tim McInnerny, Automata is a movie about the incidents that takes place in a near future not far away from us.

it's 2030 & the sun's high radiation has killed almost all the human population & the remaining gather into safe areas & build robots called pilgrims.  The movie has these pilgrims throughout the story & the sandy visuals are all thanks to the magic of visual effects.

Worldwide FXs team delivered more than 800 Computer generated visual effects shots which included CG environments, CG set extensions, holograms, painting out puppeteers & some robot creatures work.

more than 100 of the pilgrims were built with different variations and stages of damage. these animatronic models were then shot on green screen where possible & CGI models were used in some shots where the models were not smooth enough to pull the visual effects or jumps & actions that required.

Unbroken - Visual Effects Review

Movie - Unbroken
released - 2014
Director - Angelina Jolie
Cinematography - Roger Deakins
VFX - Industrial Light & Magic | Rodeo FX

Rodeo FX delivered 240 staggering visual Effects shots for Angelina Jolie's biopic Unbroken, including the amazing air battle between the B24s and the Zero fighter aircraft, and in addition the arrival scene of the harmed B24 Superman plane at the Funafuti airstrip.

In light of the top rated memoir by Laura Hillenbrand, Unbroken recounts the narrative of war saint, Louis Zamperini (Jack O'Connell), whose B24 plane crshed in to Pacific. Zamperini was caught and put in more than two years in awful conditions in Japanese POW camps. With the supervision & Acting skills of Director Jolie, to essayists Joel and Ethan Coen, DP Roger Deakins, and to Zamperini himself, who was still alive amid creation – this is a prominent venture that required  Visual effects from more than 100 craftsmen who dealt with the film at Rodeo FX. The Director chose a visual styling that was true to the day and age with imperceptible VFX that did not occupy the viewer from the intense  movie.

Rodeo FX constructed high detailed 3D models of the B24 utilizing blueprints and verifiable photographs as references. "The plane resource was a test since we just had a set number of recorded photographs," Matthew Rouleau, VFX administrator at Rodeo FX. 

One of the difficulties Rodeo FX confronted was making these completely CG successions look photoreal, The cockpit insides were shot utilizing an incomplete model set on a gimbal, encompassed by a whitescreen to give more common light. Rodeo FX made the impact of appearance in the glass, and additionally compositing scratches, earth, and surfaces.

Rodeo FX has a long history of working with ILM, having made visual effects together on such movies as Pacific Rim, Terminator, Indiana Jones, Mission Impossible, and Red Tails. ILM's Bill George was additionally VFX manager on The Planet of the Apes (2001) and won an Oscar for the VFX in Innerspace (1987).

True Lies VFX review

Movie -  True Lies
released - 1994
Director - James Cameron
Cinematography - Russel Carpenter
VFX - Digital Domain 
Miniature explosions : Joe Viskocil

True lies is a james cameron directed 1994 movie starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jamie Lee Curtis, Tom Arnold, Art Malik, Tia Carrere, Bill Paxton, Eliza Dushku, Grant Heslov and Charlton Heston. Harry is a special task force operative under cover who leads a double life as a computer salesman at home.

This Movies Main action sequences use explosions, Harrier jet stunts & mid air fights which were very realistically done! lets have a look at how these effects were pulled off.

Climax of the movie had helicopter chase scenes, & harrier jet mid air hovering sequences while actors fought on the wings & cockpit. to achieve these John Bruno & his team from Digital domain were summoned. To achieve what james cameron wanted as the final result, it had to be a mix of practical effects & CGI.

A 47 foot replica of a harrier jet was made with fibre glass material & fixed to a metal frame. then the  setup was mounted on a motion control platform. the platform simulated the moves of the jet it could turn a 60 degree angle in any direction.

The harrier jets motion control system was controlled by computers. Computers controlled the hydraulic base which weighed 20,000 pounds which had the 7000 pound jet replica mounted on it. To add realism james cameron opted to move out of the safety of the sound stage & moved the whole setup on top of a 30 story building!

Because the jet was controlled by a computer, a sequence of moves can be programmed & repeated the same way over n over again, which gave the director freedom to focus on the actors & there emotions. all the parallel  up looking shots of the jet sequence were shot on this motion controlled stage.

GreenScreen effects came in to play when the more reisky actions involved, this shot shows the terrorist Aziz jumping on to the harrier jet, which was added later & then cuts to a parallel shot of him sliding on the plane.

Though the parallel & up looking shots were possible on top of the set, other shots required the use of the green screen which helped more control for the VFX artists. so the motion controlled setup was moved to a airforce hanger which served as the green screen setup.

The plus side of having a computer driven motion control system is that you get the same movements where ever you set it up. 

once the onset work was over, the VFX artists started adding the backplates, hovering jet engine fume effects to the shots. the hovering jet engines hot air effects were simulated & added to the moving & rotating jet which is seen very realistic in the movie.

John bruno who worked with james cameron in movies such as Abyss, had to pull wizardry on air this time around compared to the underwater shots of Abyss.

The Mask - VFX Review

Movie -  The Mask
released - 1994
Director - Charles Russel
Cinematography - John R Leonetti
VFX - ILM (Industrial Light & Magic) & Digital Domain

Mask is a popular movie based on the comic series of the same name. The movies plot is simple but still the movie along with it's special effects & the Cast made it a great to watch piece. Movies special effects starts with the mask coming to act on jim Carrey who plays the lead role. when donned, the mask turns the individual into a cartoon character giving him/ it the magical powers it has in the cartoon world which affects the real world too.

Relying on practical effects for a small portion of the movie, like makeups and latex green make over the head, all the visual effects are CGI.

ILM was tasked with creating jim carrey & other Actors cartoon charachetrs, or mix them with thier cartoon counterparts so that a real 7 cartoonish mix was achieved on the final production.


Match moving characters, erasing entire parts from screen and then replacing them with computer created cartoon counterparts was done by the team at ILM.

The Magnificent Seven - VFX Review

Movie - The Magnificent Seven
released - 2016
Director - Antonie Fuqua
Cinematography - Mauro Fiore
VFX - Zero VFX

The movie is a remake of the 1960 the magnificent seven. The film stars Denzel Washington, Chris Pratt, Ethan Hawke, Vincent D'Onofrio, Lee Byung-hun, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, Martin Sensmeier, Haley Bennett, and Peter Sarsgaard. 

Directed by Antonie Fuqua, the approach to VFX on this film is quoted as "I never want to see them, ever". The team at Zero VFX loved this. As a VFX studio they too reflect it on their name, the focus on not to show the viewer that VFX was used in the shots meant having a realistic output on every shot that required VFX.  

A total of 700 VFX shots were delivered by Zero VFX for The Magnificent Seven. The actual filming took place on the sets at baton rogue, a wetland with humidity & rain storms passing by now & then. The VFX team was tasked with converting this wetland scenery into an old texas landscape.

having worked with the director Antonie Fuqua on previous films, such as Equaliser, the VFX supervisor sean devereaux & the team were able to get involved in the film from it's pre production phases. The movie was all about the old west & all the VFX shots were laid out to support & enhance the narrative of the story. 

As the filming took place at Baton Rogue & Santa Fe offer, the Zero VFX team was responsible in creating the beautiful town of rose creek with vistas of mountains with fiery skies & keeping them consistent throughout the movie. making a few shots vs keeping them consistent in a full movie was no easy task!.

To overcome this, the VFX Zero team created a full 3D recreation of Rose creek with high quality LIDAR scans of every building on set. with this data, & the replicated VFX plates of Rose creek the actual set matched perfectly in every shot they wanted to do. they also shot more than a terabyte of scenery footage to use for the reference shots in creating the big background plates.

Horses Horses Horses

After the big problem of creating Rose creek & keeping it consistent was over, the VFX team took it to the big showdown between the good guys & the bad guys. Explosions, digital horses, flying debris were needed to enhance the effects & make the audience feel it was the last place they wanted to be during the big battles. 

Over 150 or at sometimes almost 300 actual horses were on set & the actual actors took part in the stunts. smoke bombs were set off during filming and the explosions had to be added later in the post production.

Volumetric effects with computer simulated explosions, smoke layers that acted as affected by winds & debris were made & mixed on post production. The level of realism is so believable, that when you watch the movie you connot tell between real & CGI!

Flubber - VFX review

Movie - Flubber
released - 1997
Director - Less Mayfield
Cinematography - Dean Cundey
VFX - ILM (Industrial Light & Magic)
Practical / Animatronics - 

If flying Robots & Flying robots aren't enough a gone wrong experiment gives life to a live n dancing jelly called flubber! Just to let you know that I'm not using any copy pasting here to write articles but my memory of the film & captures pulled from the net. If i got the movie with me I do my own captures too.

Flubber was a more open approach to ILM as the directors wanted their input's on forming the jelly goo. and it was something way different to the CGI characters ILM was doing at the time. Creatures like Dinosaurs or other animals retained their shape throughout a story unless they were damaged allowing ILM to use the same digital model for animations. but this jello guy had no boundaries when it came to popping heads, arms n legs when needed!

Professor philip portrayed by the great Actor 7 comedian Robbin williams, is a goofy guy himself. having a fully automated house with robots who make toast n eggs n sporting a one of a kind flying car "thunderbird" he lives a crazy life experimenting & blowing things off!

This movie is one of a kind for the time it was shot n produced as the main character of the film which is a CGI element will only be added in post production. so until then the Actor had to interact with an imagined character, Robin williams pulled this off as he had done a few movies before which had VFX including "Jumanji".

Weebo the flying robot assistant who flies around the house showing it's emotions via the two ear like hovering controllers is a hand held puppet.  It also uses it's LCD panel which it pops out when needed to display parts of movies to show how it feels. Weebo had a few models, one for flying around and functioning with all it's wings, another which would bump into walls & get hit.

the following clip shows a remake project of Weebo where the actual guy interviews the project head with all the crazy details n input & what he had to endure in the movie.

Godzilla 1998 - VFX review

Movie - Godzilla
released - 1998
Director - Roland Emmarich
Cinematography - ueli steiger
VFX - Viewpoint DataLabs
Practical / Animatronics - Tatopoulo & his studio

Godzilla is a 1998 Monster movie which was originally a concept of japan, the Japanese had done a few films in the 1950's and Godzilla was portrayed as a fire breathing dragon which could stand against any weapon that was used against it! The US version of the movie had a modified fresh looking Godzilla since it's origins in japan. The movie is also one of its kind as it did not go to ILM or stan winston (who were the kings in the VFX / Animatronics), instead they went with in-house & mostly new studios & teams.

The film starts with a nuclear explosion and some iguanas getting affected by it! it's an effective way to set the stage with no big theme park tours, and when a group of fishing trollers pick up a strange reading on their radar they has nothing to do but to sit n watch what unveils in front of them. attacked by a giant creature only one survives.

Ripped fishing boats, big footprints are shown with devastated land marks to build up the scale of the creature. This is one of those exaggerated moment's where some one with a little idea of realism will throw away the idea of sharp cut footprints on hard ground! but still the audience bought it!

The previous Japanese made Godzilla movies mainly used stop motion or people inside suits. 1998 Godzilla mainly used CGI to portray the refreshed fast moving creature. The creature is almost 30 stories high and moves faster and is able to manoeuvre itself within small spaces, either making no big deal or at times taking down entire skyscrapers with it's tail. The CGI is very good as it shows no signs of faking. The Apache chases and the explosions all add in to the story line too.

instead of showing water ripples, the Godzillas aproach is depicted by harsh & very big shakes. cars fly a few feet up & the finger nail of a foot is as big as a car's hood!

When the giant moves within the city, the damage done to the surroundings are maximum and the scene of Taxies thrown all over & rain all ad up to the final effect!

While the military tries to take down the city, the group led by the french secret service agent find the nest where 100s of eggs lie around. the eggs were all made and the hatching baby Godzillas were guys inside latex suits. The movie wen't onto be a moderate hit, all the future films were scratched due to being not a big hit as expected!