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Article
by Don Shay
When
Richard Edlund received a call from HBO asking if he was available
to work on a project called Angels in America, the four-time
Oscar-winning visual effects supervisor hesitated only long enough
to ascertain that director Mike Nichols would be at the helm.
The television miniseries, adapted by Tony Kushner from his own
two-part Pulitzer Prize-winning play, was a six-hour examination
of the burgeoning AIDS plague in the mid-1980s, and Edlund found
himself drawn in by the treatment of the subject and the intelligence
of the writing.
Edlund
flew to New York, where the production was being mounted, to meet
with Nichols and the producers; but ultimately a younger, less-experienced
supervisor was hired instead. Three months later, however, HBO
called again. The first half of the production was in the can,
and Nichols was dissatisfied with the effects in progress. Would
Edlund consider taking over?
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Although
most of the visual effects would appear in the second half
of the production, the first featured a hallucination sequence
in which Harper Pitt (Mary Louise Parker), the pill-popping
wife of a closeted gay man, finds herself in a fantasyland
Antarctica dressed with an icebound sailing ship and other
oddities. The sequence, filmed on a greenscreen stage, had
been poorly designed from an effects standpoint. "They
had built a miniature ship that was maybe ten feet long
-- not very detailed -- and they had just put it on the
floor of the set," said Edlund. "Of course, it
looked like a miniature sitting on the floor of the set.
They even had little kids dressed up in Eskimo garb to force
the perspective, but they looked like kids. Also,
they were getting video dailies, rather than film, and they
couldn't tell that there were focus problems."
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Edlund
took the sequence to R!OT in Santa Monica, where Michele Moen,
who had worked for him at Boss Film Corporation, was now visual
effects art director and lead painter. "Michele has a great
eye," Edlund asserted, "and I needed someone whose aesthetic
sense I could trust." Working with unsteady plate photography
for a lead-in shot that craned up from a New York sidewalk and
then descended on the Antarctic setting, Edlund and the R!OT team
produced a digital painting-enhanced transition, then went on
to rebuild the subsequent sequence. "We had to get rid of
the ship model, so we rotoed the actors whenever they walked in
front of it and painted in all the backgrounds -- including the
ship, which gave the sequence some visual interest."
The
show's most flamboyant effects come when AIDS patient Prior Walter
(Justin Kirk) is visited by an angel (Emma Thompson) who crashes
through his bedroom ceiling and hovers above him. Thompson was
fitted with enormous feathered wings and flown practically on
the set via a custom-built rig. "It was better to shoot Emma
with the wings on the set, rather than put the wings on later,"
said Edlund. "There was a lot of smoke on the set, and shards
of light, which would have made it difficult to add the wings
after the fact."
To
spare the actress the discomfort of hanging her on wires for multiple
days of filming, the special effects crew suspended Thompson,
upright, on a bicycle seat rigged to move her up and down and
side to side as she hovered and delivered her lines. Fans on the
set blew her hair and costume. R!OT did extensive roto and paint
work to remove the mechanical flying rig and cables used to support
both the rig and the rhythmically flapping wings.
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The
sequence climaxes, as it were, with the female angel seducing
the gay man as they hover slightly apart in midair. Flames
sear the garments off both characters in discreet head-and-shoulders
shots requiring the digital team to burn 3D clothing from
the undraped performers. Wide shots of the naked figures
in orgasmic frenzy featured Justin Kirk and an Emma Thompson
body double. "We made castings of the actors and built
body pans so they could lie on their sides, facing each
other, and be shot in profile from above," said Edlund,
"with the floor painted green beneath them." Edlund
photographed Thompson in closeup, then turned the material
over to the R!OT crew, which replaced the body double's
head with the actress.' "I had shot Justin and the
body double a few feet apart, so they could move their arms
around, but they were pushed closer together in the composite
and their arms were rotoed where they overlapped. We incorporated
some orgasmic body action, since the actors couldn't do
any of that in the rigid body pans, and layered in fire
elements and the angel's wings, which were shot separately."
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Late
in the film, Prior pays a visit to Heaven, a cross between modern-day
San Francisco and the remnants of ancient Rome, run by angelic
bureaucrats. The principal action was photographed at Hadrian's
Villa, a 2,000-year-old structure outside Rome, which was enhanced
with digitally painted backgrounds. "Mike wanted to impart
visually that this was a bureaucratic, dysfunctional place,"
recalled Edlund. "We were talking about how to do that, and
I said: 'Remember Orson Welles' The Trial, where there
was a room filled with this vast typing pool?' And he said, 'Exactly!'
So they got 60 desks equipped with old Olivettis and Underwoods,
and a bunch of angels in gray suits with little wings. We multiplied
them eight or ten times by shooting tiles, then comping them into
the background."
Working
with an acclaimed director on a prestigious, high-profile project
was a heavenly experience for Richard Edlund. "It was a rare
opportunity to be involved in something other than a bubblegum
movie," Edlund commented. "Mike Nichols and the actors
were terrific. Angels in America is one of my all-time
favorite filmmaking experiences."
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Peter
Donen : Visual effects supervisor Peter Donen died
recently of heart failure, at age 50, while completing
work on the firefighter drama Ladder 49. Over the
course of a distinguished career that spanned some 25
years, he supervised visual effects on such films as Altered
States, U-571, Freaky Friday and the first three Superman
movies, earning a reputation as both a consummate professional
and a generous friend and colleague.
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VES
Awards: The Visual Effects Society has announced nominees
for its annual awards. Vying for top honors in the category
of outstanding visual effects in an effects driven picture
are The Matrix Revolutions, Pirates of the Caribbean
and The Return of the King, the latter two topping
the list with seven nominations apiece. Competing for
best supporting visual effects are Bad Boys 2, Master
and Commander and The Last Samurai. Winners
in 19 categories will be announced February 18. Click
here for a complete list of nominees.
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Makeup
Oscar: AMPAS has announced its bakeoff list for best
achievement in makeup -- The Return of the King, Cold
Mountain, The Last Samurai, Master and Commander, Monster,
Peter Pan and Pirates of the Caribbean -- a
much healthier turnout than last year's anemic battle
between the Morlocks and Frida Kahlo's monobrow. Makeup
branch members will vote to select Oscar nominees on January
24.
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Van
Helsing: Stephen Sommers' new film is looking impressive.
Click
here to see Wellsian gadgets, some gorgeous matte
paintings and nice creatures in a trailer containing what
appears to be the full gamut of Universal Studios' classic
monster lineup -- well, everything but Psycho and
Jaws.
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Mission:
Impossible 3: French news resource Canal+ reports
that the third big-screen Mission: Impossible adventure
will shoot in Antwerp, Prague, Berlin and Ghana. Joe Carnahan
is directing and Tom Cruise stars with Ving Rhames, for
a planned May 2005 Paramount release.
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Olympos:
Variety reports Digital Domain and Barnet Bain
Films have optioned science fiction author Dan Simmons'
novels Ilium and Olympos. Simmons is adapting
his own stories, which are described as spanning 5,000
years of life in the solar system, based on themes and
characters from Homer's Iliad and Shakespeare's
The Tempest. Olympos is planned as a 2005 release,
with a possible franchise to follow. Barnet Bain and Scott
Ross will produce. A director and cast have yet to be
announced.
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Perfume:
AICN reports Run Lola Run director Tom Tykwer will
direct an adaptation of Patrick Süskind's brilliant,
but peculiar novel about an 18th-century serial killer
obsessed with olfactory senses. Orlando Bloom is slated
to star in this project, which has been a long time coming.
Ridley Scott was once associated, with a screenplay by
Caroline Thompson; then director Julian Schnabel had Johnny
Depp in mind. The story has some of the most vivid and
smelly depictions of Paris ever written.
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A
Day With Wilbur Robinson: Variety announced
Disney has greenlit its first all-CG movie, a story about
a boy who creates a machine capable of retrieving lost
memories, scheduled for release summer 2006. This follows
the recent closure of Disney's Orlando Florida 2D animation
studio, which produced Mulan, Lilo and Stitch and
Brother Bear.
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Seconds:
Yahoo Movies reports that director Jonathon Mostow
will write and direct this remake of the 1966 John Frankenheimer
film, based on David Ely's science fiction novel about
a man who is given the opportunity to be surgically altered
to resemble anyone on the planet. Director Jon Amiel was
once attached with a screenplay by Roger Avery, but Mostow
is apparently starting over, returning to the project
after first considering it before Terminator 3.
Production is gearing up to begin in February, for Paramount.
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Guy
Hudson: Visual effects supervisor Guy Hudson, a veteran
of Alien, The Empire Strikes Back and Jurassic
Park, died suddenly of a brain hemorrhage on December
24, at age 45. At various times in his career, he had
worked for Chris Walas, Disney Henson Productions, ILM
and Western Images; and at the time of his death was working
at FrameStore, in London, on Harry Potter and the Prisoner
of Azkaban.
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Star
Wars Episode 3: StarWars.com reports that on January
8, George Lucas turned over the first major action sequence
of his sixth and final Star Wars film to ILM --
specifically, the film's opening sequence featuring a
space battle of Republic vessels versus Separatist battleships.
ILM has apparently completed approximately 25 shots out
of an estimated 2,000. Visual effects supervisor John
Knoll is aiming to complete 160 shots by May, a year before
the film's release, to match a record set by Attack
of the Clones.
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The
Return of the King: A Danish website, DVDanswers.com,
has reported that the ROTK Extended Edition will
have an estimated running time of 4 hours and 15 minutes.
The theatrical version, meanwhile, which to date has grossed
$326.8 million domestically, was deposed this weekend
from the top boxoffice position after a four-week stand.
In compensation was its selection, on Saturday night,
as best picture by the Producers Guild of America. Ten
of the guild's 14 previous winners have gone on to win
the best picture Oscar.
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