Highlights from the Oscars

Congratulations to all the Oscar winners from the 83rd Annual Academy Awards. Here are some of the highlights from the awards ceremony.

Peter Bebb, Paul Franklin, Andrew Lockley and Chris Corbould backstage - photo Todd Wawrychuk / ©A.M.P.A.S.
DNeg with Inception wins visual effects Oscar

Double Negative’s work was honored when the visual effects award went to Christopher Nolan’s complex movie, Inception.

Double Negative provided all the visual effects on the film, including Limbo City, the Paris fold-over sequence and many other shots. One of DNeg’s founding members, Paul Franklin, was the VFX Supervisor on the film and was in attendance in the Kodak Theatre to receive the Oscar, along with fellow nominees, DNeg VFX Supervisors, Peter Bebb and Andrew Lockley, as well as the film’s SFX Supervisor, Chris Corbould.

The Oscar nod for DNeg comes after a long run of recognition for the VFX work on the film, including 3 VES awards and the BAFTA for Special Visual Effects, which the same team received on February 13th in London.

Following the Oscar ceremony DNeg’s CEO, Matt Holben, said, “We can’t ask for more from our artists than the fantastic work they produce, but we’re incredibly proud of the Inception team for this outstanding achievement. Coming after the wins at the VES and BAFTA, this has made for a great start to the year and has really put Double Negative on the map!”

The film also featured magnificent work on the hospital fortress from New Deal Studios.

See our coverage of Inception here at fxguide.

Shaun Tan and Andrew Ruhemann with presenters Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis - photo Todd Wawrychuk / ©A.M.P.A.S.
The Lost Thing wins best animated short film

Shaun Tan and Andrew Ruhemann won Best Animated Short Film for The Lost Thing, a film which took over ten years to bring to the screen. The delightful and beautiful film is based on a children’s book written by Shaun Tan.

Listen to our interview with Shaun Tan here at fxguide.

Toy Story 3 wins best animated film

Pixar’s Lee Unkrich, director of Toy Story 3, received the award. It is also worth noting that Pixar’s RenderMan software also set a record. RenderMan has been used on the winning film in the category of best VFX for 17 years in a row now, unbroken.

Wally Pfister wins with Inception for best cinematography

Inception’s Wally Pfister won for best cinematography. Inception is a brilliant film, with beautiful and very different looks for each of the film’s “levels”. The film used both visual effects and a lot of complex on set in-camera techniques to tell the story. Pfister has worked closely with Christopher Nolan for many years, commenting backstage, “…there’s a reason that I’ve been nominated for films with Christopher Nolan, because he’s a brilliant filmmaker and he’s got incredible vision and really, as I said up there, there’s no way I accomplish what I’ve accomplished without the brilliant vision of Chris Nolan.”

Pfister has been a member of the ASC since 2002. He has been nominated three times before (Dark Knight (2008), The Prestige (2006), Batman Begins (2005)).

Kirk Baxter and Angus Wall - photo Todd Wawrychuk / ©A.M.P.A.S.
Achievement in Film Editing

The Social Network’s team, Angus Wall and Kirk Baxter won for Best Editing. The film scored very strongly in the craft section of the awards.

This is considered a well earned award and a win for Final Cut Pro, which itself may be about to get some attention with a rumoured new version coming out at NAB.


Paul Franklin - photo Darren Decker / ©A.M.P.A.S.
Backstage

Backstage at the Oscars, Paul Franklin thanked all the crew at DNeg for their work on Inception, calling out the roto team for special thanks. Here’s the Oscars Q&A:

Q. Congratulations. So Inception was praised for marrying practical and post effects. Going forward as CG continues to improve, do you think that relationship will continue?
A. I hope so, yes, because I think that’s where you get the best possible results. If you’re always basing something in reality, it’s very important that everything in our film feel real all the time, that’s the story after all. But if you try to do that (unintelligible), I think you’re going to get a result that everyone can tell which was created in some sort of way, but I think the special effects are just as important as the visual effects.

Q. In the last years the trend in visual effects has been to reward digital characters, and this is really old school in some ways. I’m wondering if you can talk a little bit about how it feels to get some recognition for doing some stuff which seems to be a little bit out of fashion.
A. Well, you know, we do a lot of digital environments in the background, that’s where they’re supposed to be, the scenery was becoming part of the character of the film. I’d like to think of all Paris scenes as a character in their own right, so perhaps that’s what people recognize.

Q. Just curious, I know you guys are perfectionists and I’ve seen the film several times. I certainly don’t see anything, but is there a special effects film that makes you go, ah, I wish we could just tweak that just a wee bit more at all?
A. Actually, no, I know you’d expect me to say that, but really I genuinely mean it. There you go. Exactly.

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