To commemorate its 50th anniversary which comes upon us in December, SHOOT continues a special series of features in which noted industry players reflect on the changes they’ve seen over the decades, the essential dynamics that have endured, and their visions and aspirations for the future.
Up until now, this series has entailed SHOOT asking questions directly of participants. To date, we’ve interviewed Lee Clow of Media Arts, TBWA Worldwide, and TBWA Media Arts Lab; Robert Greenberg of R/GA; Rich Silverstein of Goodby, Silverstein & Partners; Dan Wieden of Wieden+Kennedy; David Lubars of BBDO; Susan Credle of Leo Burnett; Tony Granger of Young & Rubicam; Kevin Roddy of BBH, N.Y.; Steve Simpson of Ogilvy & Mather; Bob Jeffrey of JWT; Kristi VandenBosch of Publicis & Hal Riney; former Interpublic Group CEO Phil Geier; Jon Kamen of @radical.media; Stephen Dickstein of The Sweet Shop; Larry Bridges of Red Car; Stefan Sonnenfeld of Ascent Media Services and Company 3; and directors Bob Giraldi of Giraldi Media, Joe Pytka of PYTKA, Noam Murro of Biscuit Filmworks, and the legendary Joe Sedelmaier.
But this time around, we ran across two talks at the recently concluded SIGGRAPH 2010 confab in L.A., which offered context and perspective on where the visual effects industry has been, where effects and digital filmmaking are today as well as where they’re heading. The SIGGRAPH speakers were Jim Morris, GM and executive VP of production at Pixar Studios, and Don Marinelli of Carnegie Mellon University’s Master of Entertainment Technology Degree Program. Their insights are particularly apropos for this issue of SHOOT which also features the third of this year’s quarterly VFX & Animation Series sections.
Jim Morris For Pixar’s Jim Morris, spotmaking proved to be a springboard which led to an ideal vantage point from which to witness and participate first-hand in the transition to cinema’s digital age. Morris reflected on his journey and that of the motion picture business during a keynote address at SIGGRAPH.
Morris kicked off his presentation by showing clips from Robinson Crusoe On Mars and Jason and the Argonauts, two films he saw as a kid which sparked his imagination and led him on a path to a filmmaking career. He began making 8mm shorts in the ninth grade, became possessed in his pursuit of experience and knowledge, gained a formal film school education, served as an animation cameramen, and then a news cameraman. He told his SIGGRAPH audience that he should have also shown a clip from The Black Stallion directed by Carroll Ballard. When Morris saw this film, it prompted him to move to San Francisco in 1980 so he could work with the filmmakers there such as Ballard, Francis Ford Coppola, Michael Ritchie, and John Korty. Though Morris wasn’t able to land a job with any of them, he continued his camerawork, and then segued into the ad agency sector, producing at JWT and FCB, San Francisco. Later he produced at a couple of spot production houses in the Bay Area.
This ad industry experience served him in good stead. Morris recalled that in the 1980s, Industrial Light+Magic “hit a bad patch” in the feature business and thus decided to diversify into commercials. He was tabbed by ILM to write up a business plan for its move into spot production. He became a part of that successful diversification (ILM has since pulled out of the commercialmaking business) and then branched out into ILM’s feature VFX operation. He produced effects for such features as Steven Spielberg’s Always and James Cameron’s The Abyss, the latter earning a best visual effects Oscar nomination. A pivotal sequence of about a minute and a half showed a watery pseudopod character which mimics human facial expression. The creation of this CG character opened the door in 1989, said Morris, for other CG character work. At ILM there was Terminator 2: Judgment Day (an Oscar winner for its visual effects) in which a CG bad guy came to fruition, with sequences showing the metamorphosis from the T-1000 to actor Robert Patrick. This step of integrating the production disciplines begat assorted breakthroughs down the road.
Then there was ILM’s work on Death Becomes Her, which via computer yielded viable, realistic human skin, as showcased on Meryl Streep’s 180-degree twisted neck in which her head is attached backwards to her body. It was this digital skin, observed Morris, which later made Jurassic Park possible. Full-scale dinosaurs in CG, though, were but one end of the spectrum–representing “anything is possible writ big,” related Morris. Conversely, “anything is possible writ small,” he continued, citing Forrest Gump in which the visual effects played a supporting role rather than an in-your-face marquee attraction.
Morris worked for Lucasfilm and its divisions for 17 years. He served as president of Lucas Digital Ltd. for 11 of those years, responsible for ILM, Lucasfilm Animation, and Skywalker Sound. At that time, Morris also served as ILM’s general manager, where he supervised a staff of more than 1,400 artists and technicians.
Under Morris’ leadership, ILM created visual effects seen in Jurassic Park, Death Becomes Her, Forrest Gump and some 150 other films. He earlier supervised ILM production for Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Hook, The Rocketeer, Backdraft, and Die Hard 2, among dozens of other titles.
Morris noted that Jurassic Park and Forrest Gump changed writers’ perspectives as scripts deemed impossible to pull off before were being dusted off–or new ones created–to take advantage of the evolutionary technological artistry offered in the unfolding age of digital cinema, creating “a swirl of VFX, animation, live action and CG” to advance storytelling. Morris additionally cited such pivotal breakthroughs as motion capture containing nuances of human performance as in The Mummy (’99), and Davey Jones in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies setting a high creative bar for digital characters.
While ILM was integrally involved in bringing the digital age and CG to live action, a former ILM unit called Pixar–which Steve Jobs bought from George Lucas–brought the digital transition to animation. Artisans like Ed Catmull and John Lasseter were bringing their creative footprint to bear initially on the short The Adventures of Andre and Wally B, which generated a buzz at SIGGRAPH in ’84, showing the character-driven storytelling prowess of an animation film done entirely in CG. This was followed by the ’85 release of Toy Story, which Morris described as “the perfect blend of form and content” and “the Casablanca of CG animation.”
Looking to move from an executive capacity back to a more hands-on production role, Morris joined Pixar in ’05. During his tenure there, he has served as production executive on such films as Ratatouille, Up and Toy Story 3. In ’09, he produced Disney-Pixar’s Wall-E which won the best animated feature Oscar. Morris is currently producing Disney’s digital/live-action film John Carter of Mars, directed by Andrew Stanton and which is scheduled for release in 2012.
Morris observed that this movie, with its live-action cast, is taking on many of the sensibilities of an animation film. On the flip side, he related that Wall-E crept into live-action film sensibilities. “We’re seeing more work that is blurring boundaries while pushing into new ones,” said Morris, noting that this meshing is one of the dynamics that excites him about the state of cinema today.
He acknowledged the criticism that moviemaking today is a triumph of form over content. Yet he dismissed those assessments as “b.s….There are as many great films today as there have every been.” He added that with the technological breakthroughs over the past 25 years, there are more tools than ever for better storytelling.
So now Morris aspires to continue to contribute to films that will inspire–with perhaps John Carter of Mars being for some youngsters the catalyst that Robinson Crusoe On Mars was for him as a lad. And perhaps those youngsters will be at SIGGRAPH 20 years from now and making the films that will inspire the next generation.
Don Marinelli Don Marinelli–co-founder of Carnegie Mellon University’s Master of Entertainment Technology Degree Program with Randy Pausch, the late educator/author/philosopher whose “The Last Lecture” provided inspiration to many–delivered a lecture of his own as a SIGGRAPH keynoter.
There were some parallels thematically between Marinelli’s SIGGRAPH presentation and Carnegie Mellon computer science professor Pausch’s famed lecture which was given on Sept. 18, 2007, at the Pittsburgh-based university. At the time, Pausch was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer and knew he had just several months to live. Still, his talk was upbeat and humorous, containing insights into education, building multi-disciplinary collaborations, and learning life’s lessons for happiness and personal fulfillment. “The Last Lecture” gained widespread attention and resulted in a best-selling book.
Breaking down barriers so that people could realize their dreams and aspirations was a theme from Pausch’s lecture that carried over to Marinelli’s 2010 SIGGRAPH talk. Marinelli recalled his being a theater professor at Carnegie Mellon years ago when he reached a crossroads. He could continue on a fast track to becoming “an old fart” lamenting the fact that more students were moving away from the live theater art form. Or he could gravitate to forms that students were embracing with the paradigm shift from passive traditional media to interactivity such as that found in videogames.
Marinelli chose the latter option, one day walking across campus to the computer science department, asking if it could use a theater professor. To his amazement, the answer was yes, spawning a coming together of art and technology as embodied in the eventual formation of the university’s Entertainment Technology Center, which is a joint initiative between the College of Fine Arts and the School of Computer Science, teaming technologists and non-technologists on projects that produce installations and content designed to entertain, inform, inspire or otherwise affect people.
“We broke down the barrier between theater arts and computer science,” said Marinelli, noting that computer science has a passion often associated with the arts and conversely theater performance and storytelling have structural elements like science.
Indeed the boundaries between and among artists, scientists and graphic experts have become more blurred. That is the underpinning of the Entertainment Technology Center. Marinelli and Pausch envisioned the Center as a “Dream Fulfillment Factory,” providing students with the tools, experiences and expertise needed to realize meaningful accomplishments, including the creation of entertaining, engaging, challenging content.
Still, Marinelli is concerned over obstacles to this “dream fulfillment,” noting in his SIGGRAPH address that universities maintain growing bureaucracies. He advocates a streamlining of bureaucracy, wondering out loud, “Do we need deans anymore?” Marinelli said just as countries are hemorrhaging money, so too are many universities due largely to being too top heavy.
Similarly regulations tied to federal funding are akin to “kryptonite” for progressive education. Another barrier is the “ivory tower mentality” at many places of higher learning. “Each university views itself as its own universe which is a problem,” said Marinelli, contending that all universities are part of the same real world universe, with direct connections to their surrounding communities.
He cited entrepreneurial media-related and content creation businesses that students in the Entertainment Technology Center have gone on to launch in Pittsburgh, helping to revive an economy that was hit hard by the implosion of the steel industry.
Marinelli, a tenured professor, went on to bemoan the tenure system which often undermines fairness and decency in education. “Good people can be corrupted by the system,” meaning that the politics of their jobs mitigate against what should be the top priority–the students.
Immigration regulation also hurts, claimed Marinelli who wants to see universities continue to draw students from the global pool, bringing different world perspectives to education.
Marinelli and Pausch created a curriculum that was light in classes and heavy in experiential learning which involves taking risks and not being afraid to fail. This is the antithesis of what Marinelli described as “the risk aversion at every level of higher education.” Marinelli lauded Pausch for launching at Carnegie Mellon the Penguin Award for “failing spectacularly.” Marinelli said, “We weren’t rewarding failure but rather recognizing daring, bold risk taking, which we need more of in American education.”
Lee Clow, chief creative officer/global director, Media Arts, TBWA Worldwide, and chairman, TBWA/Media Arts Lab
Bob Giraldi, award-winning director, Giraldi Media
Larry Bridges, director/editor & founder, Red Car
Robert Greenberg, chairman/CEO/global chief creative officer, R/GA
Click here to read Part II of this series. Hear from…
Rich Silverstein, co-chairman/creative director, Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, San Francisco
Stephen Dickstein, global president/managing partner, The Sweet Shop
Phil Geier, former Interpublic Group CEO and current chairman, The Geier Group, New York
Click here to read Part III of this series. Hear from directors…
Joe Pytka, award-winning director, PYTKA
Bryan Buckley, award-winning director, Hungry Man
Joe Sedelmaier, ground-breaking director
Click here to read Part IV of this series. Hear from:
Dan Wieden, founder and CEO, Wieden+Kennedy
Susan Credle. chief creative officer, Leo Burnett North America
Noan Murro, award-winning director Noam Murro, Biscuit Filmworks, Los Angeles
Click here to read Part V of this series. Hear from:
Tony Granger, global chief creative officer, Young & Rubicam
Kevin Roddy, chief creative officer, Bartle Bogle Hegarty (BBH), NY
Kristi VandenBosch, CEO, Publicis & Hal Riney
Click here to read part VI of this series. Hear from:
David Lubars, chairman/chief creative officer, BBDO North America
Jon Kamen, chairman and CEO of @radical.media
Stefan Sonnenfeld, president/managing director of Company 3
Click here to read part VII of this series. Hear from:
Steve Simpson, Ogilvy & Mather’s chief creative officer, North America
Bob Jeffrey, worldwide chairman and CEO of JWT.
