Rhythm & Hues‘ recent Chapter 11 bankruptcy declaration (SHOOTonline, 2/15) was a topic touched upon briefly on stage during the Academy Awards on Sunday and expounded upon backstage a little later that same evening. Sparking the discussion was Life of Pi winning the Visual Effects Oscar with Bill Westenhofer of Rhythm & Hues serving as the overall VFX supervisor on the film. At the tail end of his Oscar acceptance remarks, Westenhofer started to talk about Rhythm & Hues, noting that the studio was “suffering severe financial difficulties right now.” But he was then cut off in mid-sentence as his time on stage ran out.
Shortly thereafter, though, Westenhofer completed his thoughts backstage, noting, “What I was trying to say up there is that it’s at a time when visual effects movies are dominating the box office, that visual effects are struggling….Visual effects is not just a commodity that’s being done by people pushing buttons. We’re artists and if we don’t find a way to fix the business model, we start to lose the artistry. If anything, Life of Pi shows that we’re artists and not just technicians.”
Westenhofer described Rhythm & Hues as a place that caters to and supports artists. “We’re hopeful that we can pull through the bankruptcy but it’s a concern in all of our minds that the culture is preserved. As long as the key people are maintained in that environment, I think it will carry on.”
Ang Lee, who won the Best Director Oscar for Life of Pi, was asked backstage whether he would again like to work in a visual effects-intensive movie as well as with 3D. Lee affirmed that he very much would like to again be involved in VFX and 3D. He said of visual effects, “it’s a great, great visual art…The bad news, it’s too expensive. It’s very hard. We heard about Rhythm & Hues.”
And Claudio Miranda, ASC, who earned the Best Cinematography Oscar for Life of Pi, also acknowledged the “hard times” being experienced by Rhythm & Hues. Miranda noted that the Rhythm + Hues artisans “did an amazing job on Pi; that tiger [the Richard Parker Bengal tiger character] looks amazing and I really feel we should support those people a little bit more if we can.”
(In a separate development, key members of the Rhythm & Hues design team have come together at Eevolver Inc., which offers one-stop design and creative solution services to film, entertainment, advertising and new media clients. The new venture is headed by president Stacy Burstin.)
VFX reflection
The Oscars reflected on a couple of VFX fronts what transpired at the VES Awards earlier in the month when Life of Pi topped four categories, including the marquee honor for Outstanding Visual Effects in a Visual Effects-Driven Feature Motion Picture. Life of Pi also won for Outstanding FX and Simulation Animation in a Live-Action Feature Motion Picture (Storm of God sequence), Outstanding Animated Character in a Live-Action Feature (Richard Parker), and Outstanding Compositing in a Feature (for Storm of God). Lee also received the VES Visionary Award that night. And in his opening VES Awards show remarks, Eric Roth, executive director of the Visual Effects Society, alluded to Rhythm & Hues facing “an uncertain future.”
“There’s a lot of change going on in our industry and many of you are worried about your jobs or which country you need to live in to have a job,” said Roth on that VES Awards evening. He cited big-picture dynamics like “globalization” and “hard financial realities,” which include no guarantee of sufficient cash flow for visual effects houses to keep things going during interim stretches between projects. Roth affirmed that a shared dialogue needs to take place to explore “a new business model going forward.” At the same time, paradoxically, despite financial precariousness for many, Roth noted that the visual effects industry has become “the absolute center of the entertainment universe.”
Spot pedigree
This is the second Oscar win for Rhythm & Hues; Westenhofer won an Academy Award in 2008 as VFX supervisor on The Golden Compass. Two year earlier, Rhythm + Hues earned a VFX Oscar nomination for The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. Whereas he was FX supervisor for Rhythm & Hues on The Golden Compass and The Chronicles of Narnia, Westenhofer was the overall VFX supervisor on Life of Pi spanning several studios For example, while Rhythm & Hues handled character creation, all the calmer water scenes and the morning after the storm, MPC did the actual storm sequences with tremendous crashing waves.
VFX supervisor Guillaume Rocheron–who won his first career Oscar on the strength of Life of Pi–and VFX producer Genevieve West led the MPC team on the Lee-directed movie, delivering over 110 shots in native stereo. MPC’s main areas of work included creating two massive storm sequences: the sinking of Pi’s cargo ship The Tsimtsum, and the Storm of God, the dramatic climax to Pi’s journey aboard his marooned lifeboat. Other work included animating over 20 panicked animals aboard the sinking ship, creating a CG lizard, hornbill and Cassowaries for the opening titles and the first shots of Pi leaving India on board The Tsimtsum.
Having been Oscar nominated five times in the past, this is the first Academy Award for Technicolor’s MPC. There were four VFX Oscar recipients for Life of Pi: Westenhofer, Rocheron, Rhythm & Hues’ head of the character animation team, Erik-Jan de Boer, and special effects artisan Donald R Elliott.
Besides working on Life of Pi, Rhythm & Hues and MPC share another bond–both studios are known for their work over the years in commercials. Rhythm and MPC are two of several entities with spotmaking chops that scored on Academy Awards night. Others include:
o Miranda who made his initial major splash in commercials and now has his first Best Cinematography Oscar. Life of Pi was his second career Academy Award nomination, the first coming in 2009 for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Miranda is handled by Dattner Dispoto and Associates across the board for features, TV and spots.
o Mixed media studio Passion Pictures saw its film division honored with the Best Documentary Oscar for Searching For Sugarman, a Red Box Films/Passion Pictures Production in association with Canfield Pictures and The Documentary Company. Searching For Sugarman introduces us to a musician–or rather makes us aware of the existence at one time of a musician–who was discovered in a Detroit bar in the late 1960s by two noted producers struck by his soulful melodies and prophetic lyrics. They record an album which they believe is going to secure his reputation as the greatest recording artist of his generation. In fact, the album bombs and the singer disappears into obscurity amid rumors of a gruesome on-stage suicide. But a bootleg recording finds its way into apartheid South Africa and, over the next two decades, it becomes a phenomenon. Two South African fans then set out to find out what really happened to their hero. Their investigation leads them to a story more extraordinary than any of the existing myths about the artist known as Sixto Rodriguez who turns out to be alive, well and a man of great humility. Directed by Malik Benjelloul, this documentary deals with themes of hope, inspiration and the power of music.
o The husband-and-wife directing team of Sean Fine and Andrea Nix Fine won the Best Documentary Short Subject Academy Award for Inocente, which tells the story of a homeless teenager in Southern California who never gives up on her dream of being an artist. The young, talented artist came up on stage with the directors when they accepted their Oscars. Inocente was Sean and Andrea Nix Fine’s second career Oscar nomination, the first coming in 2008 for Best Documentary Feature for War Dance, which focused on three children who live in a displacement camp in northern Uganda and go on to compete in their country’s national music and dance festival. The directorial duo works under The Fines monicker as commercialmakers at production house Rabbit.
