VFX Artists React 104: Gravity, The Dark Knight, Harry Potter

Hey, Corridor! A big fan... He wasn't talking about the 2010 Gulliver's Travels movie starring Jack Black, but rather the 1996 miniseries starring Ted Danson. Considering Goblet of Fire was filmed in 2004, it would be pretty hard to learn from his experience from a movie half a decade in the future. :)

Tim seemed very friendly and eager to explain but happy to hear y'all's thoughts on these works. Very enjoyable guest, hope to see him again.

Hey, cool to see. I actually lit the hospital bed shots of Harvey Dent, plus a few more of this effect. Of course there was a larger team, think it was about 3/5 of us just doing the lighting? It was actually Ben White who was the (CG? Supe) on this sequence of shots. I remember the REALLY hard work the tracking team did, to get the 3D model to match the real head, and to animate it to match. They even had to take into account the lenses used, as they can visually distort footage, so the footage is de-lensed, the VFX added and then the lense re-applied (as I recall) . All hidden work, but absolutely crucial for this to work, or the model would slip and slide around, which just could not have been allowed in these real close-ups. An interesting point I remember as well. We had mirror-ball environment for reflections, and the lighting used blurred versions of these, to do the more ambient lighting. These took about 25 minutes to render, before they could be used for actual lighting, and this was a big drag. Harry Bardak, one of the lighting team, suggested we use a video game .exe which did the same thing. And we did, and it took just 1 minute or so. A cool innovation there, brining in some game tech to speed things up. Oddly, I actually was not enthusiastic about working on this film for some reason, one I really cant recall now. But once I was on it, I realised the work was epic, and it's one of the things I'm really proud of looking back. I really think the whole team nailed these shots, and it should have won an award. But nothing as I recall. A couple of years later I worked on The Golden Compass at Framestore, and that DID win the VFX oscar. That's awards for you, quite fickle and often political.

That Harvey Dent FX is so good! Even zoomed in on the shot it looks incredible. Jaw-dropping.

Props for Aaron Eckhert for actually burning off half his face for the role. Aaron was just supposed to be a lawyer until he did that and Nolan went with it

The Harvey Dent hospital scene is one of the most tense moments in a movie theater I've ever experienced. The whole audience stopped breathing just waiting for the reveal!

Aaron Eckhert as two face has always been my favorite bit of CG from that series. The first time he turns his head in the hospital bed, was unexpected. I half thought they weren't going to show it and half thought it would be more toned down. The blood on the pillow really sold it for me at the time too.

Damn the actors in Gravity had to have so much confidence in the production team because those behind the scenes look so ridiculous. If I was Sandra Bullock id have a hard time not thinking "wtf are we doing?" But she put a great acting performance and the rest of the team did a great job as well

I never would have clocked that the entire baby was CGI. That's SO good. The light being not very bright and behind the baby also probably made it easier - a lot like the first time the T-Rex was shown in Jurassic Park. Harder to find imperfections in darkness.

Do the black hole 1979. Early CGI, great wire stunts, Matt paintings, and practical effects. It’s worth a look

That guest is really cool, love his way of presenting things. Seems humble and kind

Any of the scenes in MOON with Sam Rockwell and Sam Rockwell !! They're so well done and the cutouts and clever tricks they do make it still hold up!

I think it would be cool to ask the guests if they were part of any movie that had visual effects they didn't typically like. Kinda compare their best with their worst. They always highlight the best of their films, but it would be interesting to see scenes that didn't turn out like they hoped. Also could compare their first to their most recent, see how they improved overtime. I can see how most would not agree to highlight their worst, but it would be interesting. As I can remember, Seth Rogan talked a little about certain problems and making do with the outcome. I enjoyed that a lot.

Slight complaint but around 12:18, Tim starts talking about a technique he developed on a "show called Gulliver's Travels" which appears to be referencing a 1996 British-American miniseries. Footage for that is probably hard to find, but it's jarring that the footage used in the video is from the 2010 Jack Black Gulliver's Travels. While that movie is impressive, it doesn't appear that Mr. Webber worked on it at all and came out five years after Goblet of Fire.

I took my daughter to see Gravity when she was 10. The whole movie was really intense for her. When we left the theater she said “Well one thing’s for sure. When I grow up I’m never going to be an astronaut 👩🏻‍🚀.”

Children of Men still holds up so well. Great acting and an incredible story.

Tim Webber is absolutely insane. The attention to detail is insane... Even the smallest of details is faithfully recreated, moreover, every detail is so well considered, it's mind blowing. Just look at the light reflecting off the individual teeth for one thing. It's almost magic what has been done here.

A somewhat obscure film I don't think you guys have talked about yet: 1987's Innerspace. Dennis Quaid get's shrunk and pilots a microscopic submarine inside Martin Short. It won the Oscar for Best Visual Effects for how it realized the sub traveling through blood vessels etc. and some scenes with some LotR-esc shrunken actor camera tricks. Might be a fun one to check out. Love you guys! Keep em coming.

No matter how many videos I watch from this series I am always left baffled with what these artists can produce. It’s amazing and I really appreciate the work they put in. It’s insane.

Two-Face seemed incredibly realistic to me when I first saw the effect back in 2008, it's so good