October 25, 2019 • 49 mins
What is Industrial Light and Magic, and when did it get its start? What is ILM's relationship to Pixar? What technologies did ILM pioneer? Join Jonathan and Chris as they shed some light on ILM.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to tech Stuff, a production of I Heart Radios,
How Stuff Works. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with
How Stuff Works and I heart Radio and I love
all things tech. It's done, and my friends, not for
the quister. That's a different show, but a time for
(00:25):
another classic episode of tech Stuff. This episode originally published
November two thousand twelve, and it is titled tech Stuff
looks at Industrial Light and Magic, one of my favorite
companies looking into just because they were responsible for so
many memorable moments in cinematic history. Let's listen in Sitting
(00:49):
across from me as usual is senior writer Jonathan Strickland.
Hello from a podcast from long long ago and far
far away and far far away. I am pretty far
out there. So yeah, we wanted to talk today about
a special visual effects studio named Industrial Light and Magic.
(01:09):
And the reason why we decided to cover this particular
topic is that, well, Industrial Light and Magic is part
of h Well, it's one of the many things that
George Lucas created, including things like Lucasfilm, and that's been
the news recently because that's the recording of this podcast.
It has not been that long since Disney announced its
intention to acquire Lucas Film for the parents ly sum
(01:35):
of four point zero five billion with a B dollars
all stocks, mostly all of which apparently will be donated
to George Lucas's educational charity. Right, Yeah, it's pretty phenomenal.
George Lucas back in two pledged that he was going
to dedicate his wealth to philanthropic endeavors mostly due uh
(01:58):
to um are mostly towards education, which kind of it's
nice and it shows that he's following in the same
sort of vein as other notable rich people and philanthropists
like Bill Gates. Yeah, and that's not really what the
the podcast is about. We're not talking about George and things.
But I did want to throw that in there simply
(02:18):
because that was a a pretty amazing thing to do.
Everyone would do that, very cool thing to do. Uh.
It almost makes me not want to criticize him for
some of the decisions he's made. Well, I think it
gives us a picture of who he is as a person,
and although he does see himself, I think as a
as someone who is empowered to revise things that were
(02:44):
previously released, and then that that that does infuriate a
lot of people, among other things that he's done. But
you know, I get the sense to that, Hey, he's
not a bad guy. Of course, that's what he wants
us to think. But come on, come on, how who's
going to go to the extent of of donating the
majority of their wealth to education in order to convince
(03:05):
the world they're not a bad guy. He's clearly a
good guy. Yeah, I would say so. So he's a
better guy than I am. So so well, well done,
Mr Lucas. But but yeah, I mean he's he's also
the same kind of person that is driven creatively. He's
he's willing to come up with complete new uh businesses
(03:28):
to support his creative habits, we might say, even though
we may not necessarily agree with them. I would I
would say personally for me that you know, his heart's
in the right place. He's trying to create a good
story and it doesn't always pan out. You got you
gotta remember back, all right? So he founded Industrial Light
and Magic in Yes, now, that's two years before the
(03:51):
release of Star Wars and New Hope, one of the
best documentaries ever to be made. Well he um as
a filmmaker. His his filmmaking career began before that. Um,
but he you know, American Graffiti wasn't exactly m A.
It wasn't as it wasn't a positive experience, wasn't. It
(04:12):
wasn't a special effects driven masterpiece. You know, it was
a very good film. I liked it, but um, you know,
it wasn't. It wasn't the kind of film that George
Lucas has come to be known for. He made a
super effects blockbuster, which many would argue that he is
responsible for, and in part due to industrial lite and magic. Really,
(04:32):
the the two people I think who are responsible for
the blockbuster special effects extravaganza are Lucas and Spielberg. And
of course Spielberg has had quite a bit of involvement
in uh several of Lucas's endeavors. But anyway, yeah, he
so he founded this visual effects company, and it was
probably because Lucas he knew he wanted to do things
(04:54):
a certain way, and in order to do that, he
wanted to lit his dependence upon other companies as much
as possible. So he started to make stuff. He said, well,
there's no visual effects company out there that is going
to do the stuff I need to have done, so
I'm going to make it myself. And uh so he's
(05:15):
kind of a hacker. Yeah, it really is a lot
of ways. And and this was all due to necessity.
You know, he wanted to have as much control over
the project as possible in order to do that, and
then that he had to build all this stuff, and
so he set out to do it, and that's exactly
what he did. It's kind of amazing. Well, there's a
you know, the industrial line. Magic has been responsible for
(05:36):
many different advances in movie making technology over the years.
Back in nine, one of the first things they developed
was the Dixtra flex camera system that's named after John Distra,
who was actually the lead designer on this camera design.
Uh and it's it was made because if you if
(05:59):
well it's kind of hard to say, like if you
if you saw the Star Wars and New Hope back
in its cinematic release version, this is pre special addition.
All the effects there for things like the ship battles
and stuff, all the all the ships, all the the
Death Star stuff, all that was made with practical effects,
(06:21):
practical miniature models. That so, so the X wings going
through the Trench and Death Star. That was all done
with managers. So this is pre computer generated special effects
in that sense. Yeah. And the sound too, the the orchestra. Uh,
would you know they would put these models on the
(06:41):
dolly and then the orchestra will be on the dolly
behind them playing the music. No, let's going a little
too far in there, Chris, But but this long way
to go for a bad joke. This this camera, This
camera was special because in order to get the effect
that Lucas wanted, he wanted the spaceship scene to look
like um, like dog fights, like airplane dog fights from
(07:05):
World War two movies. Yeah. And and the reason that
those uh that that film, uh, and we're talking about
existing film. The reason that that film is so effective,
I think is because it's been it was shot by
another airplane in the air at the same time as
a dog fight. And this this motion control photography that
(07:28):
I LM developed for this UM used uh, basically was
using cameras that moved in with the spaceship models, so
it appeared that you were flying in the in the
dog fights between the different fighters or the Millennium Falcon
and the tie fighters. So it was there was a
(07:49):
real sense of movement right right. The camera was mounted
on a crane, and the crane was mounted on a
Dolly track, so they don't do a Hello Dolly joke.
I didn't any worry, Okay, So anyway, so the crane
can move back and forth along this track, the camera
could could move in various ways to adjust the pitch
(08:13):
or the tilt of the of the camera's angle so
it could follow the motions of the miniature and make
it you have this this really swoopy effect where like
Chris was saying, you're following the action very closely, and uh,
it was a necessity for him to achieve the effect
he wanted. So he builds this thing. Actually he puts
(08:35):
John Dixtra in charge of it, and John and his
team built it. I call him John Smart. Uh, and
they they shoot the movie and in nineteen seventy seven,
Star Wars New Hope hits theaters and becomes an amazing success.
And the two movies that that really launched the era
of blockbuster summer hits were Jaws and Star Wars um
(09:01):
and uh. You know what you get when you come
up with a new kind of special effects technology. An
Academy Award. Yes, they won that for Vision Visual Effects
in nineteen seventy seven. John Steers, I think of him
as Dike Strit, John Dikest, Richard Grant, Grant mckewn, and
Robert Blackock. I can't keep saying any of their names.
(09:23):
I'm just gonna call him the guys they're all John now, yeah,
it's a matter of fact. They also got a Special
Achievement Award in nineteen eighty Visual Effects. Right, but before
we get to nineteen eighties, something happens in nineteen seventy
nine that I want to talk about something, something special.
There was a special division formed in nineteen seventy nine
and Industrial Light and Magic. That division was called the
(09:45):
Graphics Group. Uh, specializing in computer animation and effects. Wait,
I feel like I should know who these guys are.
When we get to nineteen eight six, it'll all become clear.
But yeah, in nineteen seventy nine, the division, the Graphics Group,
forms an Industrial Line Magic. That division will become incredibly
important and influential and uh, but oddly enough, their most
(10:08):
influential days will be after they leave Lucas Film and
Industrial Line Magic. So moving on, uh, nineteen eighty that's
when Empire Strikes Back the second greatest documentary. Actually, I
think that people would argue that's better than Star Wars
most people. You know, I actually prefer a New Hope
(10:29):
to Empire, but I really love Empire too. It's just
one of those things where you know, a New Hope
really resonates with me, but Empire is great. So Empire
Strikes Back comes out. They do win the Special Achievement
Academy Award for Visual Effects for that. The nineteen one
Indiana Johnes and Raiders The Last Start Comes Out. Now,
that was another UH the project that UH had Spielberg's involvement,
(10:56):
and they won the Academy Award for Visual Effects for that.
They also made a movie Did you ever see Dragon Slayer? Okay,
so I saw Dragon Slayer back when I was a kid.
Dragon Slayer is a fantasy film, and it's pretty much
what you would think it is. It's a story about
a young hero who UH sets out to slay a dragon.
It's a little more cop kid and that, but that's
(11:17):
there just yea. So they designed a new kind of
filmmaking for this as well. They decided that there's a
problem with working with practical effects for monsters that are
um the go beyond like something someone in just a suit, right,
Because one of the things you could do is you
(11:38):
could do stop motion animation to create a monster effect,
because it's it's it's hard to build a giant monster
so and it it really it's hard to make it
look right. It takes a lot of work. If I've
shown my kids older monster movie bits, and it's kind
(12:00):
of easy to on the one hand, when you grew
up with pre I l M movies and technology and
and Jonathan and I probably barely qualify for that. But
you know, you look at some of the old monster
movies and you could see the zipper marks in the
costumes and the older stuff. You don't you're not freaked
out by that anymore. But you know, the practical effects
(12:24):
um could be done very very well, and even when
they're done very very well, it still doesn't have the
same effect that the newer ones do, right, And it's
just it's it's just weird to think about now. But yeah,
I mean, looking at the new stuff, it looks so
very very real. Yeah, well, back then, you know, with
the practical effects, that's pretty much all they had at
their their disposal. At this point back they developed something
(12:48):
called go Motion and Go Motion. Uh. The way that
they explain it on the Industrial Light and Magic website
is that it worked by fusing quote both electronic and
mechanical opponents into a device that could record the dragon
in Dragon Slayers movements based on an animator's design and
play them back so the camera could capture them as
(13:10):
they occurred. So the reason for this is because if
they if they were to do it in traditional stop motion,
there'd be no motion blur when something moves quickly, because
because all you're doing is just taking a bunch of
individual photographs really of objects that are not in motion,
(13:31):
and then you're playing them back to make it look
like the object was in motion. To get motion blur,
the thing actually needs to be moving. It helps, but
that's not how stop motion works because the name stop Anyway,
it was an interesting development. It was something that they
had um created two again to meet the needs of
(13:54):
the project that without having to you know, completely reinvent everything.
Two they they got another Academy award. Um I'm not
gonna go through every Academy award Industrial Line Magic has
won because that would be ridiculous. But they got it
for one of my favorite films as a kid growing up,
which was Et the Extraterrestrial. Yes, I loved this movie
(14:18):
as a kid. I think I must have seen it
three or four times this summer that it came out,
and I probably cried my eyes out every single time
I watched it because I'm a SAP. I'm gonna sap
all my life. I still am a SAP. I probably
could watch ET without crying now, but back as a kid,
there was just no hope. Um. But anyway, that that
(14:39):
was another very popular film made by h. Lucas and Spielberg.
So uh, and of course we should point out, uh,
Lucas's involvement in some of these films is more of
a kind of advisory sort of role. Industrial Line Magic
worked on lots of projects, not just lucasfilm projects, which
is why you know E t s an Eblin project,
(15:01):
not lucasfilm. Well. I wanted to point that out too,
that it would have been easy for George Lucas to
restrict Industrial Light and Magic to working on his films. Yeah,
but then we would have hardly any of them because
he didn't do very many. Well, I mean that's that's
part of it. But I mean he could have he
could have done say, uh, the Indiana Jones films and
(15:24):
the Star Wars film stuff that he was intimately more
intimately involved with, um, you know, the projects that he
and Spielberg worked on together in some capacity. But he
you know, they decided to spend this off into its
own company, and in doing so they made I would
argue that they made film richer for it. I mean
(15:45):
you could say that, you know, working on on Star
Trek two, um, you know, and one of the greatest
documentaries ever made it Ever, We're gonna take a quick
break right now and we will come back with more
about industrial light and magic. So you might say, well,
(16:10):
you know, start there, there's this whole Star Wars versus
Star Trek, which I think is silly anyway, um personally,
but you know they you might say, well, you wouldn't
necessarily you might want Star Wars to be the dominant
uh science fiction space franchise. You know, why would you
let him work on Star Trek. Well, I think, like
(16:31):
I said, it really populated film with the DNA of
industrial light and magic and made them the powerhouse that
they are now. Um, And yeah, I mean they got
a nomination for that too. Um. They did other work
for other of the Star Wars and Star Trek films
and going through You could see this in their the
(16:52):
timeline on the Industrial Light and Magic website. Um but yeah,
they really and they got involved in stuff. Now you
would say, also, these films are going to be heavily
dependent on uh special effects, and you would expect that
to be so. But um on other stuff like um,
you know you would see it too, for things like
(17:13):
Back to the Future, the Back to the Future franchise,
but he also worked on the Industrial Line. Magic also
worked on stuff like Out of Africa and Young Sherlock Holmes,
stuff that had special effects. But some of this stuff
is less special effect driven. The special effect the special
and special effects in this case is making it look
(17:33):
photo realistic rather than looking fantastic. Yeah, um yeah, I
agree the UH and and you know, there are other
analogs we can compare this to, like the wett A
Workshop which did all the work for the Lord of
the Rings movies, and the Hobbit has also done work
for other other production companies. That's so they have done
(17:57):
designed for lots of stuff, not just the Peter Jackson production,
So there are other similarities there. I'm glad you mentioned
Young Sherlock Holmes. Inive I l M achieved something no
one had done before. They created the first computer generated
character in a film, fully computer generated character. Uh that
(18:18):
stained Glass Man, Stained Glass Man from Young Sherlock Holmes. Uh.
In this case, what's happening for those of you who
have not seen Young Shelock Holmes, which is a pretty
good movie that's slowly paced, but it's I enjoyed it. Uh,
it's It's got a lot of cute references in it
that clue you into the man that Holmes will become
(18:39):
and actually the man that Watson will become as well,
though it really messes up their ages anyway. Uh, there's
there's this The plot involves this stuff, this substance that
causes people to hallucinate, and they hallucinate these terrifying visions
that drive them to essentially suicide. And in this particular case,
it's a character who is looking he's in a building
(19:02):
with stained glass windows, and one of the stained glass
figures comes to life, jumping out of the window, and
it's a night that is made out stained glass that
stalks the guy. So that's the scene. And that was
the first use of a computer a fully computer generated
character in the film Who's Stalking Nice. So in idea six,
here's where the spinoff happens. That um that I mentioned.
(19:27):
So back in seventy nine they had the Graphics Group Division,
and eighty six Lucasfilm spins off the Graphics Group Division
as its own company, with a healthy dose of funding
from a certain Mr. Steve Jobs who had kind of
lost his job. Yeah, he was, he had a gig
(19:49):
and then they cut him loose. Yeah, he he just
founded Apple and then got pushed off to the very
edges of that company and essentially they kind de fired
him without saying he's fired. And then he said, all right,
I guess I'm going and he left. And then but yeah,
he poured in a great deal of money to the
(20:10):
Graphics Group, which became Pixar. So Pixar at this time
was again really kind of pioneering computer graphics, computer animation.
It would of course be several years before um Pixar
would enter in it's uh, it's long and fruitful relationship
(20:33):
with Disney. Yes, so, but that that did have its
you know, start way back then, and yeah, they were. Um,
of course they weren't what they are now. But you know,
and you might say, I can't believe that George Lucas
allowed this to happen. But at the time it probably
wasn't so clear cut. It was very expensive to do
(20:54):
what they were doing, and there there were there were
no clear indicators at that time. I mean, or hardware
wasn't what it is now either. It would be a
good long decade before you start to see this really
kind of payoff, But boy did it. So. Industrial Line
Magic entered in with a partnership with a little company
(21:14):
called Kodak, which, uh, of course has seen some hard
times recently, but Kodak and I LM produced the first
high resolution film input scanner. Now this was important because
what I could let you do is digitally scan film,
then you could edit it with a computer, and then
(21:36):
you would print it back out onto film. And uh,
you wouldn't have to do all those edits manually using
the traditional methods of cutting film and editing that way,
So it gave a lot more versatility to the editing process.
And you guys may not be aware of this, but
it really is true that films are made in the
(21:59):
editing book that you can shoot hours and hours and
hours of footage of actors doing lines and and uh
and running around and explosions and whatever. But until you
get into the editing booth and put it all together,
you do not have a movie. And in fact, I
have seen evidence of amazing films coming from what you
(22:23):
would imagine to be um worthless footage, and it's all
due to a really creative editor finding ways to make
something interesting when before, like you might watch a sequence
that originally was twelve minutes long and you think, wow,
this is unusable, and then an editor gets ahold of
it and cuts it down to like seven and a
(22:44):
half minutes, and suddenly it's phenomenal. And so uh, this
is one of those important developments in the industry. Now, granted,
this is only important as long as film remains a factor,
and of course that doesn't always hold true. We've got
a lot of ditch old productions out there. In fact,
almost everything is digital now. Yeah, and now of course
uh thanks to who was that anyway? Um foreshadowing h Yeah.
(23:09):
Although this device used charged couple device UM image sensor,
it was not a digital camera in the way that
we think of now. You know, this was a scanner,
so it was you know, you you you, you did
use a film camera first and then use the scanner
and then it would again put film out, so that
you know, the projectors, the projectors and the projectors we
(23:30):
use were film projectors. They weren't digital yet, so uh yeah,
going fully digital was not a viable option at this point.
UM nine nine they created the first computer generated three
dimensional fluid based character. And boy, how many fluid based
characters I have loved in the cinema over the years.
(23:51):
I can't think of any right now, apart from the
alien water creature from the Abyss, which is what this
is talking about now. I saw, well, I don't know
if you if you argue that the terminators being sort
of liquid, okay, yeah, and we'll get to the terminators
as well, but yeah, I guess so so the T
one thousands, that's really higher so liquid metal? You know, no,
(24:14):
it was. I remember I saw The Abyss in the
theater and I remember not thinking as much of the
plot as I would have liked to have, but the
effects were amazing. The effects were amazing, and I still
remember watching, Um well, I shouldn't I suppose I shouldn't
give away one spoiler, but the pseudopod actually gets um
(24:36):
it's it's a movie that came out in Okay, spoilers
don't apply anymore. When the door shuts and cuts the pseudopod,
I's got to that point yet. I just get to
the point where the doors open and the pseudopods right there,
and it's friends, and I thought they were all going
to have a picnic. And so the pseudopod when it
gets cut, turns into real water and four floor. Um.
(24:58):
Just it was amazing, It was fantastic. Yeah, And that
that was one of those challenges. I mean, there are
several things that have been challenges for computer graphics artists
to recreate in a photo realistic way. Water was one
of them. Fire is another one. Hair is a big one.
So there are a lot of fire, a lot of
(25:20):
challenges that that that various people working on computer graphics.
I've had to try and find a way of of
designing so that it has that realistic feel on camera.
And of course Pixar was doing a lot of this
too around the same time. So in ninety one they
created the first computer graphics main character. This is the
(25:40):
one you were referring to the T one. Yes, that
was in ninety one and in Terminator two Judgment Day,
which I remember. I liked it a lot when it
came out, and as the years go on, I start
to change my opinion on that, mainly because of my
love for the first film, even as schlocky and goofy
as it is um because they kind of totally changed
(26:02):
the tea character Terminator character in that one anyway now
need too. They won their twelve Academy Award for Computer
Graphics Work, which is pretty amazing. They also had the
first time they with human skin texture computer generated human
skin texture. This was for the movie Death Becomes Her.
(26:24):
Did you see that, Alan, No? I have great effects
and it's an interesting concept, but I don't know, just
did not click with me. But but again, people, the
effects were amazing, so that's undeniable. The actual film, however,
it left me a little cold. Death Becomes Her It's stiff. Hey,
(26:46):
it's Jonathan from the President again here to say we're
gonna take another quick break and then come back to
conclude our episode about industrial light and magic. There wasn't.
It was a short time later when they actually created
(27:08):
a character that seemed to breathe with skin, muscles and texture.
This is a Jurassic Park. Now. Jurassic Park was one
of those movies again that when it first came out,
I remember that people were just completely stunned with the
quality of the of the digital dinosaurs, and that those
movies you would watch scenes and you'd think, Okay, that
(27:31):
had to be practical. They must have built a giant
robot dinosaur for this scene. And then most times that
was not the case. It was all computer generated from
today's standards. If you were to go back and watch
Jurassic Park, I say, it largely holds up, but there
are definitely bits where you'll think, Okay, I can kind
(27:52):
of tell that's computer generated. Apart from the fact that, yes,
we know that dinosaurs aren't walking around right now. Beyond that,
I can tell its computer generated. Uh, And there are
a couple of scenes that are more obvious than others.
But you gotta thank you know, for for nine it
was a pretty phenomenal achievement. And like I said, it
more it holds up more than it doesn't right now. Again,
(28:16):
another short jump to a film where they did their
first computer graphic photo realistic hair and fur. Yeah, and uh,
it's interesting because they had a great model to work
from with Robin Williams, who is probably the haryest, furiest
man on the planet. You're looking at me, funny, that
(28:38):
was a that was a joke. That was a joke.
He's a hairy man. But that's a joke. Make jokes
about that. They created the effects for all these computer
generated animals, and these animals were supposed to look not
They were supposed to like almost a slight fantasy version
of the real animal, because the idea was these were
(28:58):
all generated on this magical board game, and so it
wasn't They didn't need to look exactly like the real
world version of those animals. They need to look a
little hyper realistic, but not so much as to be distracting.
So that was the goal they had for that film. Um.
They also created, uh, the first synthetic speaking character with
(29:22):
distinct personality, so how they word it on their timeline,
That would be Casper from Casper the Ghost which uh,
good ghosts. I did not watch, but now these were
This was a case where you're talking about a computer
generate character that not only appears on screen but has
a large, an important presence in the film and has
(29:43):
to be able to convey emotion and meeting and motive. Uh.
And so that's you know, that's more challenging than creating
something that looks real. You have to have something that's
behaving in a realistic way and a believable way so
that the audience has an emotional connect with that character.
And then that's not easy to do. I mean, computer
(30:05):
animators and animators in general will tell you, you know,
once you developed that kind of style where you can
create that on a reliable basis, it's an amazingly effective
and useful tool. And before you get there, it is
just a painstaking process thinking, well, you know, I created
this character and the sad thing happens to this character,
(30:26):
but no one seems to care. It's I mean, it's
a tricky thing to to be able to invoke empathy
in your audience. Eight they were awarded to I l
M was awarded two patents for some techniques. One was
for hair, fur and feathers. Uh. In this case, it
was the hair, fur and feathers effects they made for
(30:48):
another movie, Mighty Joe Young, which was am I saw
the original Mighty Joe Young way back when I didn't
see the remake. Um, this one was hair raising, I'm sure.
And the other one was for facial animation, which was
again created originally for the film Casper, but was also
used on other movies like Men in Black ninety nine.
(31:12):
They created the most realistic digital human character ever seen
in film, which was not the Daddy. It was the Mummy.
Chris is not having a great morning right now. Hey,
I just listened by the way slight tangent. I just
(31:32):
listened to one of our older episodes, and uh, and
you ground my my will to live into the dirt
with your puns. So you're gonna sit here and you're gonna,
you're gonna, you're gonna endure this, all right? Two thousand Um.
That was with the real time on character motion capture
(31:54):
system developed for Star Wars episode one. So this is
this is where they have someone's favorite movie ball thank you. Yeah.
Star Wars episode one the phenominas, which I'll say this,
I think it's the best of the prequels. Alright, that's
as much praise as I can give it. But anyway,
(32:15):
Also it has jar Jar, so do the other two prequels.
It also has Darth Vader saying yippie, and I still
say it's better than the other two. Um, but that's
neither here nor there. What they developed was this motion
capture system that worked in real time. Now, this is
really useful, and that you could get an actor wearing
a special suit that would have sensors on our or
(32:37):
really it's not even sensors, it's just points of reference
for a camera to pick up UM and then the
actor could physically portray a performance within a space. And
then they take that information that the actor has created
by moving through the space and the camera picks up,
they feed it through software and that becomes the guideline
(32:58):
for the computer generated character that will replace the physical
actor who was moving through there. Jar Jar is an
example of that. That was one of the characters that
that used this UM this technology to create the performance. Now,
while I do not much care for the character of
jar Jar, I do admit that it was an interesting
(33:22):
use of technology to be able to give a computer
generated character more of a physical performance by actually mapping
it to someone's real movements, because otherwise you've got animators
trying to simulate real movements as best they can, and
sometimes it works great, and you watch and you're think, oh,
well that looks real, and sometimes you're like, huh, that
(33:42):
doesn't look right at all. Yeah, they're going to use
this technique again in some of the movies that are
coming up to to pardon my pun, great effect, um,
some of my my favorite recent more recent movies. Yep.
They also began to develop other stuff. In two thousand
and one, they developed ambient occlusion. Yeah that's uh what,
(34:03):
it's just what it sounds like. Which, there you go.
They actually used this in the movie Pearl Harbor. Like
it's just what it sounds like. I have no idea
what you mean. Basically, they were using a combination of
light and shadows that made the lighting appear realistic through
the use of computer graphics. And they really it really
(34:26):
showed uh showed up for the first time in Pearl Harbor,
the movie. Not not the actual actual Pearl Harbor, not
the place nor the historical event. Yes, but they Yeah,
I mean with the the planes in the attack on
the the American fleet and that you know, in the
early morning hours. Um, you know, it required a lot
of clever lighting. Yeah, and shadows. Yeah, you're talking about explosions,
(34:48):
you're talking about shadows being cast by lots of different objects.
You're talking about smoke. I mean, there's there are a
lot of effects here that we kind of you know,
you take for granted when you watch it on a film,
but to be able to recreate it realistically in a
computer environment is not easy, and that that's why a
lot of this technology went toward. That same year, they
also created onset visualization processes that would allow a filmmaker
(35:15):
to put actors into an environment, let's say, like a
big green screen environment, and look at the virtual sets
around the real actors, complete with the actual camera motions. Um.
This was This is useful when you're making a movie
where a lot of the backgrounds you create are digitally inserted.
(35:36):
It's not it's not a computer animated film. It's still
a live action film, but the the the sets might
be virtual. And we saw this in a lot of
the movies, like a lot of the Star Wars prequels
had it. The example they give specifically within the Island
timeline is with Steven Spielberg's movie AI Artificial Intelligence. Uh,
(35:58):
it's another let down. There's a lot of movies here
that I didn't really care for so much. Yeah, but
back to the future I loved So there's there's that
address a park. I love that too. So it's okay,
I'll just keep going, all right, two thousand three, or
do we You were about to say something, I'm sorry, Well,
I was going to point out that the U for
the ambient occlusion thing. They do point out that. UM
(36:22):
a few years later in the Academy of Motion Picture
Arts and Sciences gave them a cry Tech Award for
the ways in which ambient inclusion helped advance computer graphics
in the motion picture industry. Yeah so, I mean, you know,
looking at it in retrospect, it may not have seemed
like a big deal at the time. It may have
seemed all that that movie is lit and you know,
(36:43):
shadowed very well. But it has played a significant role
in many many other films since then. So yeah, yeah,
I mean that's went before we went too far. Sure,
these these developments they're making are things that are are
pushing forward the filmmaking industry across the entire industry, not
just for a single movie. Uh it really I l
(37:04):
M has done a lot to shape the way movies
are today. Uh. Without their influence, I would say that
we'd be we'd have very different films right now if
it were not for industrial light and magic. Doesn't necessarily
mean that they would be better or worse, but they
would certainly be different. They would So, yeah, you mentioned
(37:25):
the two thousand three or you mentioned the awards. They
also got an award for the way that they found
to render skin or translucent materials, uh from the the
good Old cy Tech Award. They also in two thousand
four created a digital baby for a lemony snicket. It's
(37:45):
a series of unfortunate events and it was this marked,
according to I l M, the first time that you
had a computer generated human character shown an extreme close
up y. So we're getting to the point now where
photo realistic computer generated characters are within the realm of
(38:06):
possibility for a serious filmmaker, um to the to the
point where it's not necessarily going to be distracting when
you watch it and you think, wow, that does not
look real. Doesn't mean that everyone pulls it off successfully
these days, but at least it's much more possible. Two
thousand six, they developed imo CAP, which was an image
based performance capture system, and this was for one of
(38:29):
the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. And that same year,
two thousand six, was when Disney made an acquisition. Disney
purchased Pixar. So you remember back in that's when Pixar
struck out on its own, not not struck out in
the baseball sense, but set out as its own company
(38:50):
under the the the financial support of Steve Jobs. Well,
two thousand six, Disney makes a move to acquire that company, Pixar.
Disney and Pixar had already been making several movies together
for several years, and uh, it was it was a
strategic move to guarantee that Pixar would remain under the
(39:10):
Disney family. And that also it was kind of a
talent grab because John Lasseter, who was the head of
Pixar at the time, would become the creative head of
Walt Disney Animation as well as a imagineering. So um
that that little acquisition was made for seven point four
(39:32):
billion dollars in stocks and other assets. So that made
Steve Jobs the largest shareholder in Disney at that time
and put him on the border directors to seven point
four billion. Now that to me is interesting because we
already mentioned, you know, Disney's buying or trying to buy Lucasfilm.
As of the recording of this podcast, the deal has
(39:52):
not been approved, but a Disney would be purchasing them
for four point oh five billions. So you've got a division,
a former division of Lucasfilm sold for uh, not quite
twice as much as what the parent company sold for.
That's interesting. So two thousand seven, Uh, at this point,
(40:16):
I LM is working on creating a system to simulate
fluid motion. And this again is tricky. You know, we
talked about getting a water effect is challenging, and that's true.
It's also challenging to simulate fluid mechanics, especially you're talking
about huge quantities, you know, with with the Pirates of
(40:38):
the Caribbean movies, you're talking about ships on the ocean.
So you need to be able to simulate the way
the ocean really moves and the way that objects floating
or otherwise you know, somehow in the water, how they
would move as well. So they did a lot of
work in two thousand seven to perfect that technique. Yeah,
they actually used a particular system that they called Zeno
(41:02):
and UH an engine, a graphics engine called fiz bam
um and this uh, this was the series I was
mentioning a few minutes ago, because they modeled these effects
within what they were calling a virtual water tank. But
of course in the in the last in the second
and third movies, in the installment UM, there were lots
(41:23):
of appearances by Davy Jones and his UH daydream Believers,
his crew, which were who had taken on aspects of
sea life. They lived underwater UM and they there's a
really cool picture out there where they show the UH
(41:46):
motion capture UM sticker things that they put on the
actors to UH while they are you know, pretending to
be or they're acting as the crew, and it's it's
kind of cool because they can't get weight. They don't
have alliant fish heads on UM. But that's you know,
how they did that, and the amazing sea battle effects
(42:07):
and all the things, the giant maelstrom UM just amazing stuff.
And then of course you know the YEP. And in
two thousand and eight they began to work on FEZ
because fezes are cool. They are according to a doctor
I know, yes, but no. FEZ was the name of
(42:29):
a facial animation system that they had been working on.
And again this is to refine that that ability to
capture an actor's performance to translate it to a computer
generated character. This is one of those things that really
is problematic. It's interest. It's an interesting question to ask
who is ultimately responsible for a computer generated character's performance? Um,
(42:55):
because if you have a performance within a film that
is award worthy, but it's a computer generated character, who
do you give the award to? Do you give it
to the animator who built or the people who built
the textures and rendered everything and made it now that
made sure they made all the tweaks to make the
character look exactly the way the character looks. Do you
(43:17):
give it to the actor who physically portrayed that character
and it's that actor's movements that you are watching, even
though it's a different, uh computer generated body that's doing
the motions. Ultimately it was an actor who went through
those motions. Is it the voice actor who may or
may not be the same person who did the physical motions.
(43:39):
It's a it's a complicated question because the performance comes
from so many different people working together to create this
thing you're watching. And I know that that was one
of those questions that came up during the Lord of
the Rings movies because there were people who were saying
that Andy Serkis should be nominated for his performance as
Gollum in those movies. But how much of that performance
(44:04):
would you say is his versus the animators who created
the uh I hesitate to use the word physical, but
the the visual version of the character that you see
on the screen. And it's I don't think there's an
easy answer to that question. It may very well mean
that one day we'll see a new category of award
come up where it's best performance of some sort as
(44:26):
opposed to just best Actor or Best Supporting Actor or actress. Yes, wow,
you waited all that time just to do that, all right?
Two thousand nine we had the very GPU engine which
was designed to create firestorms. So again you know, looking
at the stuff that's hard to make look real on
(44:48):
computer graphics. You know, fire and water, those are big
and for those are the big ones. Well they they're
working on the Harry Potter series of movies and they
for the sixth film, they needed to be able to
have realistic fire effects. So you know, it's it's the
I L M way. When if you don't have a
system that already does it, go build one yep. Well
(45:10):
and they did, and so this kind of wraps up
where they are today. I mean, i l M is
not the only property outside of Lucasfilm that will be
acquired by Disney if this deal goes through. Skywalker's sound
is also in there. And you know, Lucas has, like
we said, he's had a huge influence on the way
(45:31):
movies are shown today. I mean, th h X is
another example, uh, which Disney I was also going to get.
So really, when it comes down to the the technology
behind filmmaking and film projection, film screening, Disney is making
a huge move here and and some people are a
(45:54):
little nervous about it. I've got friends who work in effects.
They work for for affect houses that often we'll get
contracted to work on companies UM. And some of these
friends of mine are a little nervous because this is
sort of showing a consolidation of effects houses and that
could mean less competition and fewer opportunities for these artists.
(46:18):
So there are things to worry about, depending upon what
field you are in. Yeah, But nonetheless, I still think
it will be interesting to see and if some of
the people leave UM, you know, they may very well
take the ability to Uh, do these complex the knowledge
that it takes to to build these complex effects with them,
(46:40):
making the acquisition less valuable. There's always a chance that
people could strike out and create their own uh companies
as well and start competing with their old company. I
mean that's happened several times in the past as well,
So it's too early to say. But some of the
movies ALM has worked on we've talked about, of course,
(47:01):
the Star Wars series all the way from episode four
through six and then one through three. Uh, the several
Star Trek films generations first contact Star Wars are Star
Trek Wrath of con which is my favorite of all
of the Star Trek films because it's very cold. It's space. Yes,
it is fine Corinthian leather. Yeah. The Jurassic Park movies. Uh,
(47:25):
you know had the mask Forrest Gump, Twister. Never had
I felt that a cow really did fly past someone's
windshield until I saw Twister, Mission Impossible three. They they've
worked on many, many, many movies. I mean, if you
if you watch any film that has a lot of
special effects in it and you wait to the end, Uh,
(47:47):
it's amazing how many of them have industrial light magic
listed as at least part of the team that worked
on the effects. Also, it's it's interesting to realize how
many films you may not have realized have a lot
of special effects in them because the special effects are
to make the film look more like real life. Forrestcump
is a good one, although you could argue that no, no,
(48:10):
that's clear because you know, Tom Hanks never actually shook
hands with that many presidents still. But but even so,
that's that's one of those where the special effects are
there to create the story, but they're not you know,
it's not spectacle the way it would be in a
big science fiction film or something. Right, So, yeah, they
have had a monumental effect on the movie industry, definitely,
(48:33):
and uh, I'm sure they will continue to do so,
even whether whether Disney's deal goes through or not. I'm
sure it will remain a big player in the the
effects industry. And that's it. I hope you guys enjoyed
this classic episode of tech Stuff. If you have any
suggestions for future episodes that I should cover, well, why
(48:54):
not send me a message The email addresses tech Stuff
at how stuff works dot com, or you can drop
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tech stuff podcast dot com. That's where you're gonna find
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find a link to every single episode we've ever published
(49:15):
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(49:37):
and I'll talk to you again really soon. Text Stuff
is a production of I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works.
For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i
heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
Welcome to tech Stuff, a production of I Heart Radios,
How Stuff Works. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with
How Stuff Works and I heart Radio and I love
all things tech. It's done, and my friends, not for
the quister. That's a different show, but a time for
(00:25):
another classic episode of tech Stuff. This episode originally published
November two thousand twelve, and it is titled tech Stuff
looks at Industrial Light and Magic, one of my favorite
companies looking into just because they were responsible for so
many memorable moments in cinematic history. Let's listen in Sitting
(00:49):
across from me as usual is senior writer Jonathan Strickland.
Hello from a podcast from long long ago and far
far away and far far away. I am pretty far
out there. So yeah, we wanted to talk today about
a special visual effects studio named Industrial Light and Magic.
(01:09):
And the reason why we decided to cover this particular
topic is that, well, Industrial Light and Magic is part
of h Well, it's one of the many things that
George Lucas created, including things like Lucasfilm, and that's been
the news recently because that's the recording of this podcast.
It has not been that long since Disney announced its
intention to acquire Lucas Film for the parents ly sum
(01:35):
of four point zero five billion with a B dollars
all stocks, mostly all of which apparently will be donated
to George Lucas's educational charity. Right, Yeah, it's pretty phenomenal.
George Lucas back in two pledged that he was going
to dedicate his wealth to philanthropic endeavors mostly due uh
(01:58):
to um are mostly towards education, which kind of it's
nice and it shows that he's following in the same
sort of vein as other notable rich people and philanthropists
like Bill Gates. Yeah, and that's not really what the
the podcast is about. We're not talking about George and things.
But I did want to throw that in there simply
(02:18):
because that was a a pretty amazing thing to do.
Everyone would do that, very cool thing to do. Uh.
It almost makes me not want to criticize him for
some of the decisions he's made. Well, I think it
gives us a picture of who he is as a person,
and although he does see himself, I think as a
as someone who is empowered to revise things that were
(02:44):
previously released, and then that that that does infuriate a
lot of people, among other things that he's done. But
you know, I get the sense to that, Hey, he's
not a bad guy. Of course, that's what he wants
us to think. But come on, come on, how who's
going to go to the extent of of donating the
majority of their wealth to education in order to convince
(03:05):
the world they're not a bad guy. He's clearly a
good guy. Yeah, I would say so. So he's a
better guy than I am. So so well, well done,
Mr Lucas. But but yeah, I mean he's he's also
the same kind of person that is driven creatively. He's
he's willing to come up with complete new uh businesses
(03:28):
to support his creative habits, we might say, even though
we may not necessarily agree with them. I would I
would say personally for me that you know, his heart's
in the right place. He's trying to create a good
story and it doesn't always pan out. You got you
gotta remember back, all right? So he founded Industrial Light
and Magic in Yes, now, that's two years before the
(03:51):
release of Star Wars and New Hope, one of the
best documentaries ever to be made. Well he um as
a filmmaker. His his filmmaking career began before that. Um,
but he you know, American Graffiti wasn't exactly m A.
It wasn't as it wasn't a positive experience, wasn't. It
(04:12):
wasn't a special effects driven masterpiece. You know, it was
a very good film. I liked it, but um, you know,
it wasn't. It wasn't the kind of film that George
Lucas has come to be known for. He made a
super effects blockbuster, which many would argue that he is
responsible for, and in part due to industrial lite and magic. Really,
(04:32):
the the two people I think who are responsible for
the blockbuster special effects extravaganza are Lucas and Spielberg. And
of course Spielberg has had quite a bit of involvement
in uh several of Lucas's endeavors. But anyway, yeah, he
so he founded this visual effects company, and it was
probably because Lucas he knew he wanted to do things
(04:54):
a certain way, and in order to do that, he
wanted to lit his dependence upon other companies as much
as possible. So he started to make stuff. He said, well,
there's no visual effects company out there that is going
to do the stuff I need to have done, so
I'm going to make it myself. And uh so he's
(05:15):
kind of a hacker. Yeah, it really is a lot
of ways. And and this was all due to necessity.
You know, he wanted to have as much control over
the project as possible in order to do that, and
then that he had to build all this stuff, and
so he set out to do it, and that's exactly
what he did. It's kind of amazing. Well, there's a
you know, the industrial line. Magic has been responsible for
(05:36):
many different advances in movie making technology over the years.
Back in nine, one of the first things they developed
was the Dixtra flex camera system that's named after John Distra,
who was actually the lead designer on this camera design.
Uh and it's it was made because if you if
(05:59):
well it's kind of hard to say, like if you
if you saw the Star Wars and New Hope back
in its cinematic release version, this is pre special addition.
All the effects there for things like the ship battles
and stuff, all the all the ships, all the the
Death Star stuff, all that was made with practical effects,
(06:21):
practical miniature models. That so, so the X wings going
through the Trench and Death Star. That was all done
with managers. So this is pre computer generated special effects
in that sense. Yeah. And the sound too, the the orchestra. Uh,
would you know they would put these models on the
(06:41):
dolly and then the orchestra will be on the dolly
behind them playing the music. No, let's going a little
too far in there, Chris, But but this long way
to go for a bad joke. This this camera, This
camera was special because in order to get the effect
that Lucas wanted, he wanted the spaceship scene to look
like um, like dog fights, like airplane dog fights from
(07:05):
World War two movies. Yeah. And and the reason that
those uh that that film, uh, and we're talking about
existing film. The reason that that film is so effective,
I think is because it's been it was shot by
another airplane in the air at the same time as
a dog fight. And this this motion control photography that
(07:28):
I LM developed for this UM used uh, basically was
using cameras that moved in with the spaceship models, so
it appeared that you were flying in the in the
dog fights between the different fighters or the Millennium Falcon
and the tie fighters. So it was there was a
(07:49):
real sense of movement right right. The camera was mounted
on a crane, and the crane was mounted on a
Dolly track, so they don't do a Hello Dolly joke.
I didn't any worry, Okay, So anyway, so the crane
can move back and forth along this track, the camera
could could move in various ways to adjust the pitch
(08:13):
or the tilt of the of the camera's angle so
it could follow the motions of the miniature and make
it you have this this really swoopy effect where like
Chris was saying, you're following the action very closely, and uh,
it was a necessity for him to achieve the effect
he wanted. So he builds this thing. Actually he puts
(08:35):
John Dixtra in charge of it, and John and his
team built it. I call him John Smart. Uh, and
they they shoot the movie and in nineteen seventy seven,
Star Wars New Hope hits theaters and becomes an amazing success.
And the two movies that that really launched the era
of blockbuster summer hits were Jaws and Star Wars um
(09:01):
and uh. You know what you get when you come
up with a new kind of special effects technology. An
Academy Award. Yes, they won that for Vision Visual Effects
in nineteen seventy seven. John Steers, I think of him
as Dike Strit, John Dikest, Richard Grant, Grant mckewn, and
Robert Blackock. I can't keep saying any of their names.
(09:23):
I'm just gonna call him the guys they're all John now, yeah,
it's a matter of fact. They also got a Special
Achievement Award in nineteen eighty Visual Effects. Right, but before
we get to nineteen eighties, something happens in nineteen seventy
nine that I want to talk about something, something special.
There was a special division formed in nineteen seventy nine
and Industrial Light and Magic. That division was called the
(09:45):
Graphics Group. Uh, specializing in computer animation and effects. Wait,
I feel like I should know who these guys are.
When we get to nineteen eight six, it'll all become clear.
But yeah, in nineteen seventy nine, the division, the Graphics Group,
forms an Industrial Line Magic. That division will become incredibly
important and influential and uh, but oddly enough, their most
(10:08):
influential days will be after they leave Lucas Film and
Industrial Line Magic. So moving on, uh, nineteen eighty that's
when Empire Strikes Back the second greatest documentary. Actually, I
think that people would argue that's better than Star Wars
most people. You know, I actually prefer a New Hope
(10:29):
to Empire, but I really love Empire too. It's just
one of those things where you know, a New Hope
really resonates with me, but Empire is great. So Empire
Strikes Back comes out. They do win the Special Achievement
Academy Award for Visual Effects for that. The nineteen one
Indiana Johnes and Raiders The Last Start Comes Out. Now,
that was another UH the project that UH had Spielberg's involvement,
(10:56):
and they won the Academy Award for Visual Effects for that.
They also made a movie Did you ever see Dragon Slayer? Okay,
so I saw Dragon Slayer back when I was a kid.
Dragon Slayer is a fantasy film, and it's pretty much
what you would think it is. It's a story about
a young hero who UH sets out to slay a dragon.
It's a little more cop kid and that, but that's
(11:17):
there just yea. So they designed a new kind of
filmmaking for this as well. They decided that there's a
problem with working with practical effects for monsters that are
um the go beyond like something someone in just a suit, right,
Because one of the things you could do is you
(11:38):
could do stop motion animation to create a monster effect,
because it's it's it's hard to build a giant monster
so and it it really it's hard to make it
look right. It takes a lot of work. If I've
shown my kids older monster movie bits, and it's kind
(12:00):
of easy to on the one hand, when you grew
up with pre I l M movies and technology and
and Jonathan and I probably barely qualify for that. But
you know, you look at some of the old monster
movies and you could see the zipper marks in the
costumes and the older stuff. You don't you're not freaked
out by that anymore. But you know, the practical effects
(12:24):
um could be done very very well, and even when
they're done very very well, it still doesn't have the
same effect that the newer ones do, right, And it's
just it's it's just weird to think about now. But yeah,
I mean, looking at the new stuff, it looks so
very very real. Yeah, well, back then, you know, with
the practical effects, that's pretty much all they had at
their their disposal. At this point back they developed something
(12:48):
called go Motion and Go Motion. Uh. The way that
they explain it on the Industrial Light and Magic website
is that it worked by fusing quote both electronic and
mechanical opponents into a device that could record the dragon
in Dragon Slayers movements based on an animator's design and
play them back so the camera could capture them as
(13:10):
they occurred. So the reason for this is because if
they if they were to do it in traditional stop motion,
there'd be no motion blur when something moves quickly, because
because all you're doing is just taking a bunch of
individual photographs really of objects that are not in motion,
(13:31):
and then you're playing them back to make it look
like the object was in motion. To get motion blur,
the thing actually needs to be moving. It helps, but
that's not how stop motion works because the name stop Anyway,
it was an interesting development. It was something that they
had um created two again to meet the needs of
(13:54):
the project that without having to you know, completely reinvent everything.
Two they they got another Academy award. Um I'm not
gonna go through every Academy award Industrial Line Magic has
won because that would be ridiculous. But they got it
for one of my favorite films as a kid growing up,
which was Et the Extraterrestrial. Yes, I loved this movie
(14:18):
as a kid. I think I must have seen it
three or four times this summer that it came out,
and I probably cried my eyes out every single time
I watched it because I'm a SAP. I'm gonna sap
all my life. I still am a SAP. I probably
could watch ET without crying now, but back as a kid,
there was just no hope. Um. But anyway, that that
(14:39):
was another very popular film made by h. Lucas and Spielberg.
So uh, and of course we should point out, uh,
Lucas's involvement in some of these films is more of
a kind of advisory sort of role. Industrial Line Magic
worked on lots of projects, not just lucasfilm projects, which
is why you know E t s an Eblin project,
(15:01):
not lucasfilm. Well. I wanted to point that out too,
that it would have been easy for George Lucas to
restrict Industrial Light and Magic to working on his films. Yeah,
but then we would have hardly any of them because
he didn't do very many. Well, I mean that's that's
part of it. But I mean he could have he
could have done say, uh, the Indiana Jones films and
(15:24):
the Star Wars film stuff that he was intimately more
intimately involved with, um, you know, the projects that he
and Spielberg worked on together in some capacity. But he
you know, they decided to spend this off into its
own company, and in doing so they made I would
argue that they made film richer for it. I mean
(15:45):
you could say that, you know, working on on Star
Trek two, um, you know, and one of the greatest
documentaries ever made it Ever, We're gonna take a quick
break right now and we will come back with more
about industrial light and magic. So you might say, well,
(16:10):
you know, start there, there's this whole Star Wars versus
Star Trek, which I think is silly anyway, um personally,
but you know they you might say, well, you wouldn't
necessarily you might want Star Wars to be the dominant
uh science fiction space franchise. You know, why would you
let him work on Star Trek. Well, I think, like
(16:31):
I said, it really populated film with the DNA of
industrial light and magic and made them the powerhouse that
they are now. Um, And yeah, I mean they got
a nomination for that too. Um. They did other work
for other of the Star Wars and Star Trek films
and going through You could see this in their the
(16:52):
timeline on the Industrial Light and Magic website. Um but yeah,
they really and they got involved in stuff. Now you
would say, also, these films are going to be heavily
dependent on uh special effects, and you would expect that
to be so. But um on other stuff like um,
you know you would see it too, for things like
(17:13):
Back to the Future, the Back to the Future franchise,
but he also worked on the Industrial Line. Magic also
worked on stuff like Out of Africa and Young Sherlock Holmes,
stuff that had special effects. But some of this stuff
is less special effect driven. The special effect the special
and special effects in this case is making it look
(17:33):
photo realistic rather than looking fantastic. Yeah, um yeah, I
agree the UH and and you know, there are other
analogs we can compare this to, like the wett A
Workshop which did all the work for the Lord of
the Rings movies, and the Hobbit has also done work
for other other production companies. That's so they have done
(17:57):
designed for lots of stuff, not just the Peter Jackson production,
So there are other similarities there. I'm glad you mentioned
Young Sherlock Holmes. Inive I l M achieved something no
one had done before. They created the first computer generated
character in a film, fully computer generated character. Uh that
(18:18):
stained Glass Man, Stained Glass Man from Young Sherlock Holmes. Uh.
In this case, what's happening for those of you who
have not seen Young Shelock Holmes, which is a pretty
good movie that's slowly paced, but it's I enjoyed it. Uh,
it's It's got a lot of cute references in it
that clue you into the man that Holmes will become
(18:39):
and actually the man that Watson will become as well,
though it really messes up their ages anyway. Uh, there's
there's this The plot involves this stuff, this substance that
causes people to hallucinate, and they hallucinate these terrifying visions
that drive them to essentially suicide. And in this particular case,
it's a character who is looking he's in a building
(19:02):
with stained glass windows, and one of the stained glass
figures comes to life, jumping out of the window, and
it's a night that is made out stained glass that
stalks the guy. So that's the scene. And that was
the first use of a computer a fully computer generated
character in the film Who's Stalking Nice. So in idea six,
here's where the spinoff happens. That um that I mentioned.
(19:27):
So back in seventy nine they had the Graphics Group Division,
and eighty six Lucasfilm spins off the Graphics Group Division
as its own company, with a healthy dose of funding
from a certain Mr. Steve Jobs who had kind of
lost his job. Yeah, he was, he had a gig
(19:49):
and then they cut him loose. Yeah, he he just
founded Apple and then got pushed off to the very
edges of that company and essentially they kind de fired
him without saying he's fired. And then he said, all right,
I guess I'm going and he left. And then but yeah,
he poured in a great deal of money to the
(20:10):
Graphics Group, which became Pixar. So Pixar at this time
was again really kind of pioneering computer graphics, computer animation.
It would of course be several years before um Pixar
would enter in it's uh, it's long and fruitful relationship
(20:33):
with Disney. Yes, so, but that that did have its
you know, start way back then, and yeah, they were. Um,
of course they weren't what they are now. But you know,
and you might say, I can't believe that George Lucas
allowed this to happen. But at the time it probably
wasn't so clear cut. It was very expensive to do
(20:54):
what they were doing, and there there were there were
no clear indicators at that time. I mean, or hardware
wasn't what it is now either. It would be a
good long decade before you start to see this really
kind of payoff, But boy did it. So. Industrial Line
Magic entered in with a partnership with a little company
(21:14):
called Kodak, which, uh, of course has seen some hard
times recently, but Kodak and I LM produced the first
high resolution film input scanner. Now this was important because
what I could let you do is digitally scan film,
then you could edit it with a computer, and then
(21:36):
you would print it back out onto film. And uh,
you wouldn't have to do all those edits manually using
the traditional methods of cutting film and editing that way,
So it gave a lot more versatility to the editing process.
And you guys may not be aware of this, but
it really is true that films are made in the
(21:59):
editing book that you can shoot hours and hours and
hours of footage of actors doing lines and and uh
and running around and explosions and whatever. But until you
get into the editing booth and put it all together,
you do not have a movie. And in fact, I
have seen evidence of amazing films coming from what you
(22:23):
would imagine to be um worthless footage, and it's all
due to a really creative editor finding ways to make
something interesting when before, like you might watch a sequence
that originally was twelve minutes long and you think, wow,
this is unusable, and then an editor gets ahold of
it and cuts it down to like seven and a
(22:44):
half minutes, and suddenly it's phenomenal. And so uh, this
is one of those important developments in the industry. Now, granted,
this is only important as long as film remains a factor,
and of course that doesn't always hold true. We've got
a lot of ditch old productions out there. In fact,
almost everything is digital now. Yeah, and now of course
uh thanks to who was that anyway? Um foreshadowing h Yeah.
(23:09):
Although this device used charged couple device UM image sensor,
it was not a digital camera in the way that
we think of now. You know, this was a scanner,
so it was you know, you you you, you did
use a film camera first and then use the scanner
and then it would again put film out, so that
you know, the projectors, the projectors and the projectors we
(23:30):
use were film projectors. They weren't digital yet, so uh yeah,
going fully digital was not a viable option at this point.
UM nine nine they created the first computer generated three
dimensional fluid based character. And boy, how many fluid based
characters I have loved in the cinema over the years.
(23:51):
I can't think of any right now, apart from the
alien water creature from the Abyss, which is what this
is talking about now. I saw, well, I don't know
if you if you argue that the terminators being sort
of liquid, okay, yeah, and we'll get to the terminators
as well, but yeah, I guess so so the T
one thousands, that's really higher so liquid metal? You know, no,
(24:14):
it was. I remember I saw The Abyss in the
theater and I remember not thinking as much of the
plot as I would have liked to have, but the
effects were amazing. The effects were amazing, and I still
remember watching, Um well, I shouldn't I suppose I shouldn't
give away one spoiler, but the pseudopod actually gets um
(24:36):
it's it's a movie that came out in Okay, spoilers
don't apply anymore. When the door shuts and cuts the pseudopod,
I's got to that point yet. I just get to
the point where the doors open and the pseudopods right there,
and it's friends, and I thought they were all going
to have a picnic. And so the pseudopod when it
gets cut, turns into real water and four floor. Um.
(24:58):
Just it was amazing, It was fantastic. Yeah, And that
that was one of those challenges. I mean, there are
several things that have been challenges for computer graphics artists
to recreate in a photo realistic way. Water was one
of them. Fire is another one. Hair is a big one.
So there are a lot of fire, a lot of
(25:20):
challenges that that that various people working on computer graphics.
I've had to try and find a way of of
designing so that it has that realistic feel on camera.
And of course Pixar was doing a lot of this
too around the same time. So in ninety one they
created the first computer graphics main character. This is the
(25:40):
one you were referring to the T one. Yes, that
was in ninety one and in Terminator two Judgment Day,
which I remember. I liked it a lot when it
came out, and as the years go on, I start
to change my opinion on that, mainly because of my
love for the first film, even as schlocky and goofy
as it is um because they kind of totally changed
(26:02):
the tea character Terminator character in that one anyway now
need too. They won their twelve Academy Award for Computer
Graphics Work, which is pretty amazing. They also had the
first time they with human skin texture computer generated human
skin texture. This was for the movie Death Becomes Her.
(26:24):
Did you see that, Alan, No? I have great effects
and it's an interesting concept, but I don't know, just
did not click with me. But but again, people, the
effects were amazing, so that's undeniable. The actual film, however,
it left me a little cold. Death Becomes Her It's stiff. Hey,
(26:46):
it's Jonathan from the President again here to say we're
gonna take another quick break and then come back to
conclude our episode about industrial light and magic. There wasn't.
It was a short time later when they actually created
(27:08):
a character that seemed to breathe with skin, muscles and texture.
This is a Jurassic Park. Now. Jurassic Park was one
of those movies again that when it first came out,
I remember that people were just completely stunned with the
quality of the of the digital dinosaurs, and that those
movies you would watch scenes and you'd think, Okay, that
(27:31):
had to be practical. They must have built a giant
robot dinosaur for this scene. And then most times that
was not the case. It was all computer generated from
today's standards. If you were to go back and watch
Jurassic Park, I say, it largely holds up, but there
are definitely bits where you'll think, Okay, I can kind
(27:52):
of tell that's computer generated. Apart from the fact that, yes,
we know that dinosaurs aren't walking around right now. Beyond that,
I can tell its computer generated. Uh, And there are
a couple of scenes that are more obvious than others.
But you gotta thank you know, for for nine it
was a pretty phenomenal achievement. And like I said, it
more it holds up more than it doesn't right now. Again,
(28:16):
another short jump to a film where they did their
first computer graphic photo realistic hair and fur. Yeah, and uh,
it's interesting because they had a great model to work
from with Robin Williams, who is probably the haryest, furiest
man on the planet. You're looking at me, funny, that
(28:38):
was a that was a joke. That was a joke.
He's a hairy man. But that's a joke. Make jokes
about that. They created the effects for all these computer
generated animals, and these animals were supposed to look not
They were supposed to like almost a slight fantasy version
of the real animal, because the idea was these were
(28:58):
all generated on this magical board game, and so it
wasn't They didn't need to look exactly like the real
world version of those animals. They need to look a
little hyper realistic, but not so much as to be distracting.
So that was the goal they had for that film. Um.
They also created, uh, the first synthetic speaking character with
(29:22):
distinct personality, so how they word it on their timeline,
That would be Casper from Casper the Ghost which uh,
good ghosts. I did not watch, but now these were
This was a case where you're talking about a computer
generate character that not only appears on screen but has
a large, an important presence in the film and has
(29:43):
to be able to convey emotion and meeting and motive. Uh.
And so that's you know, that's more challenging than creating
something that looks real. You have to have something that's
behaving in a realistic way and a believable way so
that the audience has an emotional connect with that character.
And then that's not easy to do. I mean, computer
(30:05):
animators and animators in general will tell you, you know,
once you developed that kind of style where you can
create that on a reliable basis, it's an amazingly effective
and useful tool. And before you get there, it is
just a painstaking process thinking, well, you know, I created
this character and the sad thing happens to this character,
(30:26):
but no one seems to care. It's I mean, it's
a tricky thing to to be able to invoke empathy
in your audience. Eight they were awarded to I l
M was awarded two patents for some techniques. One was
for hair, fur and feathers. Uh. In this case, it
was the hair, fur and feathers effects they made for
(30:48):
another movie, Mighty Joe Young, which was am I saw
the original Mighty Joe Young way back when I didn't
see the remake. Um, this one was hair raising, I'm sure.
And the other one was for facial animation, which was
again created originally for the film Casper, but was also
used on other movies like Men in Black ninety nine.
(31:12):
They created the most realistic digital human character ever seen
in film, which was not the Daddy. It was the Mummy.
Chris is not having a great morning right now. Hey,
I just listened by the way slight tangent. I just
(31:32):
listened to one of our older episodes, and uh, and
you ground my my will to live into the dirt
with your puns. So you're gonna sit here and you're gonna,
you're gonna, you're gonna endure this, all right? Two thousand Um.
That was with the real time on character motion capture
(31:54):
system developed for Star Wars episode one. So this is
this is where they have someone's favorite movie ball thank you. Yeah.
Star Wars episode one the phenominas, which I'll say this,
I think it's the best of the prequels. Alright, that's
as much praise as I can give it. But anyway,
(32:15):
Also it has jar Jar, so do the other two prequels.
It also has Darth Vader saying yippie, and I still
say it's better than the other two. Um, but that's
neither here nor there. What they developed was this motion
capture system that worked in real time. Now, this is
really useful, and that you could get an actor wearing
a special suit that would have sensors on our or
(32:37):
really it's not even sensors, it's just points of reference
for a camera to pick up UM and then the
actor could physically portray a performance within a space. And
then they take that information that the actor has created
by moving through the space and the camera picks up,
they feed it through software and that becomes the guideline
(32:58):
for the computer generated character that will replace the physical
actor who was moving through there. Jar Jar is an
example of that. That was one of the characters that
that used this UM this technology to create the performance. Now,
while I do not much care for the character of
jar Jar, I do admit that it was an interesting
(33:22):
use of technology to be able to give a computer
generated character more of a physical performance by actually mapping
it to someone's real movements, because otherwise you've got animators
trying to simulate real movements as best they can, and
sometimes it works great, and you watch and you're think, oh,
well that looks real, and sometimes you're like, huh, that
(33:42):
doesn't look right at all. Yeah, they're going to use
this technique again in some of the movies that are
coming up to to pardon my pun, great effect, um,
some of my my favorite recent more recent movies. Yep.
They also began to develop other stuff. In two thousand
and one, they developed ambient occlusion. Yeah that's uh what,
(34:03):
it's just what it sounds like. Which, there you go.
They actually used this in the movie Pearl Harbor. Like
it's just what it sounds like. I have no idea
what you mean. Basically, they were using a combination of
light and shadows that made the lighting appear realistic through
the use of computer graphics. And they really it really
(34:26):
showed uh showed up for the first time in Pearl Harbor,
the movie. Not not the actual actual Pearl Harbor, not
the place nor the historical event. Yes, but they Yeah,
I mean with the the planes in the attack on
the the American fleet and that you know, in the
early morning hours. Um, you know, it required a lot
of clever lighting. Yeah, and shadows. Yeah, you're talking about explosions,
(34:48):
you're talking about shadows being cast by lots of different objects.
You're talking about smoke. I mean, there's there are a
lot of effects here that we kind of you know,
you take for granted when you watch it on a film,
but to be able to recreate it realistically in a
computer environment is not easy, and that that's why a
lot of this technology went toward. That same year, they
also created onset visualization processes that would allow a filmmaker
(35:15):
to put actors into an environment, let's say, like a
big green screen environment, and look at the virtual sets
around the real actors, complete with the actual camera motions. Um.
This was This is useful when you're making a movie
where a lot of the backgrounds you create are digitally inserted.
(35:36):
It's not it's not a computer animated film. It's still
a live action film, but the the the sets might
be virtual. And we saw this in a lot of
the movies, like a lot of the Star Wars prequels
had it. The example they give specifically within the Island
timeline is with Steven Spielberg's movie AI Artificial Intelligence. Uh,
(35:58):
it's another let down. There's a lot of movies here
that I didn't really care for so much. Yeah, but
back to the future I loved So there's there's that
address a park. I love that too. So it's okay,
I'll just keep going, all right, two thousand three, or
do we You were about to say something, I'm sorry, Well,
I was going to point out that the U for
the ambient occlusion thing. They do point out that. UM
(36:22):
a few years later in the Academy of Motion Picture
Arts and Sciences gave them a cry Tech Award for
the ways in which ambient inclusion helped advance computer graphics
in the motion picture industry. Yeah so, I mean, you know,
looking at it in retrospect, it may not have seemed
like a big deal at the time. It may have
seemed all that that movie is lit and you know,
(36:43):
shadowed very well. But it has played a significant role
in many many other films since then. So yeah, yeah,
I mean that's went before we went too far. Sure,
these these developments they're making are things that are are
pushing forward the filmmaking industry across the entire industry, not
just for a single movie. Uh it really I l
(37:04):
M has done a lot to shape the way movies
are today. Uh. Without their influence, I would say that
we'd be we'd have very different films right now if
it were not for industrial light and magic. Doesn't necessarily
mean that they would be better or worse, but they
would certainly be different. They would So, yeah, you mentioned
(37:25):
the two thousand three or you mentioned the awards. They
also got an award for the way that they found
to render skin or translucent materials, uh from the the
good Old cy Tech Award. They also in two thousand
four created a digital baby for a lemony snicket. It's
(37:45):
a series of unfortunate events and it was this marked,
according to I l M, the first time that you
had a computer generated human character shown an extreme close
up y. So we're getting to the point now where
photo realistic computer generated characters are within the realm of
(38:06):
possibility for a serious filmmaker, um to the to the
point where it's not necessarily going to be distracting when
you watch it and you think, wow, that does not
look real. Doesn't mean that everyone pulls it off successfully
these days, but at least it's much more possible. Two
thousand six, they developed imo CAP, which was an image
based performance capture system, and this was for one of
(38:29):
the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. And that same year,
two thousand six, was when Disney made an acquisition. Disney
purchased Pixar. So you remember back in that's when Pixar
struck out on its own, not not struck out in
the baseball sense, but set out as its own company
(38:50):
under the the the financial support of Steve Jobs. Well,
two thousand six, Disney makes a move to acquire that company, Pixar.
Disney and Pixar had already been making several movies together
for several years, and uh, it was it was a
strategic move to guarantee that Pixar would remain under the
(39:10):
Disney family. And that also it was kind of a
talent grab because John Lasseter, who was the head of
Pixar at the time, would become the creative head of
Walt Disney Animation as well as a imagineering. So um
that that little acquisition was made for seven point four
(39:32):
billion dollars in stocks and other assets. So that made
Steve Jobs the largest shareholder in Disney at that time
and put him on the border directors to seven point
four billion. Now that to me is interesting because we
already mentioned, you know, Disney's buying or trying to buy Lucasfilm.
As of the recording of this podcast, the deal has
(39:52):
not been approved, but a Disney would be purchasing them
for four point oh five billions. So you've got a division,
a former division of Lucasfilm sold for uh, not quite
twice as much as what the parent company sold for.
That's interesting. So two thousand seven, Uh, at this point,
(40:16):
I LM is working on creating a system to simulate
fluid motion. And this again is tricky. You know, we
talked about getting a water effect is challenging, and that's true.
It's also challenging to simulate fluid mechanics, especially you're talking
about huge quantities, you know, with with the Pirates of
(40:38):
the Caribbean movies, you're talking about ships on the ocean.
So you need to be able to simulate the way
the ocean really moves and the way that objects floating
or otherwise you know, somehow in the water, how they
would move as well. So they did a lot of
work in two thousand seven to perfect that technique. Yeah,
they actually used a particular system that they called Zeno
(41:02):
and UH an engine, a graphics engine called fiz bam
um and this uh, this was the series I was
mentioning a few minutes ago, because they modeled these effects
within what they were calling a virtual water tank. But
of course in the in the last in the second
and third movies, in the installment UM, there were lots
(41:23):
of appearances by Davy Jones and his UH daydream Believers,
his crew, which were who had taken on aspects of
sea life. They lived underwater UM and they there's a
really cool picture out there where they show the UH
(41:46):
motion capture UM sticker things that they put on the
actors to UH while they are you know, pretending to
be or they're acting as the crew, and it's it's
kind of cool because they can't get weight. They don't
have alliant fish heads on UM. But that's you know,
how they did that, and the amazing sea battle effects
(42:07):
and all the things, the giant maelstrom UM just amazing stuff.
And then of course you know the YEP. And in
two thousand and eight they began to work on FEZ
because fezes are cool. They are according to a doctor
I know, yes, but no. FEZ was the name of
(42:29):
a facial animation system that they had been working on.
And again this is to refine that that ability to
capture an actor's performance to translate it to a computer
generated character. This is one of those things that really
is problematic. It's interest. It's an interesting question to ask
who is ultimately responsible for a computer generated character's performance? Um,
(42:55):
because if you have a performance within a film that
is award worthy, but it's a computer generated character, who
do you give the award to? Do you give it
to the animator who built or the people who built
the textures and rendered everything and made it now that
made sure they made all the tweaks to make the
character look exactly the way the character looks. Do you
(43:17):
give it to the actor who physically portrayed that character
and it's that actor's movements that you are watching, even
though it's a different, uh computer generated body that's doing
the motions. Ultimately it was an actor who went through
those motions. Is it the voice actor who may or
may not be the same person who did the physical motions.
(43:39):
It's a it's a complicated question because the performance comes
from so many different people working together to create this
thing you're watching. And I know that that was one
of those questions that came up during the Lord of
the Rings movies because there were people who were saying
that Andy Serkis should be nominated for his performance as
Gollum in those movies. But how much of that performance
(44:04):
would you say is his versus the animators who created
the uh I hesitate to use the word physical, but
the the visual version of the character that you see
on the screen. And it's I don't think there's an
easy answer to that question. It may very well mean
that one day we'll see a new category of award
come up where it's best performance of some sort as
(44:26):
opposed to just best Actor or Best Supporting Actor or actress. Yes, wow,
you waited all that time just to do that, all right?
Two thousand nine we had the very GPU engine which
was designed to create firestorms. So again you know, looking
at the stuff that's hard to make look real on
(44:48):
computer graphics. You know, fire and water, those are big
and for those are the big ones. Well they they're
working on the Harry Potter series of movies and they
for the sixth film, they needed to be able to
have realistic fire effects. So you know, it's it's the
I L M way. When if you don't have a
system that already does it, go build one yep. Well
(45:10):
and they did, and so this kind of wraps up
where they are today. I mean, i l M is
not the only property outside of Lucasfilm that will be
acquired by Disney if this deal goes through. Skywalker's sound
is also in there. And you know, Lucas has, like
we said, he's had a huge influence on the way
(45:31):
movies are shown today. I mean, th h X is
another example, uh, which Disney I was also going to get.
So really, when it comes down to the the technology
behind filmmaking and film projection, film screening, Disney is making
a huge move here and and some people are a
(45:54):
little nervous about it. I've got friends who work in effects.
They work for for affect houses that often we'll get
contracted to work on companies UM. And some of these
friends of mine are a little nervous because this is
sort of showing a consolidation of effects houses and that
could mean less competition and fewer opportunities for these artists.
(46:18):
So there are things to worry about, depending upon what
field you are in. Yeah, But nonetheless, I still think
it will be interesting to see and if some of
the people leave UM, you know, they may very well
take the ability to Uh, do these complex the knowledge
that it takes to to build these complex effects with them,
(46:40):
making the acquisition less valuable. There's always a chance that
people could strike out and create their own uh companies
as well and start competing with their old company. I
mean that's happened several times in the past as well,
So it's too early to say. But some of the
movies ALM has worked on we've talked about, of course,
(47:01):
the Star Wars series all the way from episode four
through six and then one through three. Uh, the several
Star Trek films generations first contact Star Wars are Star
Trek Wrath of con which is my favorite of all
of the Star Trek films because it's very cold. It's space. Yes,
it is fine Corinthian leather. Yeah. The Jurassic Park movies. Uh,
(47:25):
you know had the mask Forrest Gump, Twister. Never had
I felt that a cow really did fly past someone's
windshield until I saw Twister, Mission Impossible three. They they've
worked on many, many, many movies. I mean, if you
if you watch any film that has a lot of
special effects in it and you wait to the end, Uh,
(47:47):
it's amazing how many of them have industrial light magic
listed as at least part of the team that worked
on the effects. Also, it's it's interesting to realize how
many films you may not have realized have a lot
of special effects in them because the special effects are
to make the film look more like real life. Forrestcump
is a good one, although you could argue that no, no,
(48:10):
that's clear because you know, Tom Hanks never actually shook
hands with that many presidents still. But but even so,
that's that's one of those where the special effects are
there to create the story, but they're not you know,
it's not spectacle the way it would be in a
big science fiction film or something. Right, So, yeah, they
have had a monumental effect on the movie industry, definitely,
(48:33):
and uh, I'm sure they will continue to do so,
even whether whether Disney's deal goes through or not. I'm
sure it will remain a big player in the the
effects industry. And that's it. I hope you guys enjoyed
this classic episode of tech Stuff. If you have any
suggestions for future episodes that I should cover, well, why
(48:54):
not send me a message The email addresses tech Stuff
at how stuff works dot com, or you can drop
me a line on Facebook or Twitter. Don't know the
handle for those, well, pop on over to our website,
tech stuff podcast dot com. That's where you're gonna find
links to where we are on social media. You'll also
find a link to every single episode we've ever published
(49:15):
of this show. I was gonna say recorded, but that's
a lie, because we've recorded a couple of episodes that
we've never published for good reason because they were bad
and I feel ashamed of them. But all the published
ones are there. You also find a link to our
online store, where every purchase you make goes to help
the show and be less bad, and we greatly appreciate it,
(49:37):
and I'll talk to you again really soon. Text Stuff
is a production of I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works.
For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i
heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
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Oz Woloshyn
Karah Preiss
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