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<\/a>Noah<\/a><\/i> has been out on Blu-Ray<\/a> for over a week now, and new interviews with the filmmakers are popping up here and there. The Chicago Sun-Times<\/a><\/i> has a new interview with Ben Snow, who oversaw the visual effects on the film, so I figured I might as well create an \u201cinterview round-up\u201d for the visual-effects artists similar to the round-ups I\u2019ve already created for director Darren Aronofsky<\/a>, co-writer Ari Handel<\/a> (updated today!) and cinematographer Matthew Libatique<\/a>.<\/p>\nSnow talks about how it all started with Aronofsky and Handel\u2019s screenplay, which came with \u201ca whole bunch of inspirational imagery,\u201d and he discusses the ideas behind the effects both small \u2014 such as adding stars to the skies in the daytime shots \u2014 and big, such as the \u201crock monsters\u201d (actually fallen angels encased in rock):<\/p>\n
Q. <\/strong>What about those giant stone Watchers?<\/em>
\nA.<\/strong> We\u2019d done some speculative design work on them. They were like giants with multiple arms. We sat down and talked about large creatures in films from the last 10 to 20 years [such as \u201cThe Transformers\u201d films]. We had a particular one we liked [from \u201cSnow White and the Huntsman\u201d], that I thought was particularly nicely done. But Darren wanted something that was quite unique from anything else.<\/p>\nQ.<\/strong> In essence you gave them personalities.<\/em>
\nA. <\/strong>Yes. Why did they feel the way they did? They were these divine creatures who were elegant and graceful and they came to earth and got trapped in these stone bodies. \u2026 We looked at videos of people with severe leg injuries and how they overcame them. The goal was to try and reflect some of that struggle and triumph [in the Watchers].<\/p><\/blockquote>\nRegarding the computer-generated animals, he says:<\/p>\n
Technically, positioning the animals was an enormous challenge. There are so many of them! We had 13,000 separate animals, two by two; every pair was different. A lot of them were hand-animated. Darren\u2019s idea of a \u201cbig shot\u201d is not really epic unless its 20 seconds; nowadays five seconds is the average and in action films it\u2019s maybe three seconds. The sheer organization of that one shot of them all entering the ark \u2014 they\u2019re not real, and in reality all these animals would not work together. There are computer programs for crowd simulators, where you have these hordes of humans for big battle scenes and so forth. We actually ended up using the software in the end.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Also, in a recent interview with Examiner.com<\/a>, Snow talked about what it was like to work with Aronofsky:<\/p>\n
How was your collaborative process with Darren Aronofsky? I\u2019m sure he had no shortage of ideas.<\/b><\/p>\n
No, he absolutely didn\u2019t, and he\u2019s someone who, as an artist, really tries to draw ideas out of the team he is working with as well. He has very clear vision, and he told me that he also wants to be sure he\u2019s getting the strongest vision he can out of his collaborators. He demands that you push back, he demands that you have ideas. It\u2019s interesting to get to work with that, because on one hand, he\u2019s emphatic about what he did or didn\u2019t like, but on the other hand, he\u2019d say \u201cI\u2019ll tell you when I don\u2019t like something, but I want you to put the ideas out there.\u201d It was very satisfying from that point of view. It\u2019s interesting because some people find that very exciting and stimulating, and I certainly did and most of my team did. That was one of the unique and fresh things about the project, an opportunity to try and be creative with things and to try things that are a little different from what we\u2019ve tried before.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The thinking behind the film\u2019s visual effects has come up in a number of my posts, but I\u2019ve never gathered them together all in one place. So, just for ease of reference:<\/p>\n
Aronofsky talked about how one of the animal shots in this film was the most complicated shot in ILM\u2019s history<\/a>, and how he made the decision to rely on digital animals for ethical and<\/i> practical reasons<\/a>. Snow also talked about how the effects team studied extinct animals<\/a>, and how the studio requested that the menagerie include some pachyderms so that audiences would have something they could \u201clatch on to\u201d.<\/p>\n
One story published at the time of the film\u2019s release looked at how one company \u2014 Look Effects \u2014 delivered over 300 shots<\/a> for the film, which was \u201cby far\u201d the largest project the company had undertaken in its 16-year history. Another story looked at how that very same company lost a lot of money<\/a> on the film because it took much longer to create their shots than they had originally anticipated.<\/p>\n
A press release issued by Technicolor-PostWorks New York<\/a> back in May noted that the film\u2019s complex visuals, including its many effects shots, \u201cmade it the largest feature film post production project ever undertaken in New York.\u201d<\/p>\n
Finally, some featurettes on the film\u2019s visual effects were of course included on the Blu-Ray editions of the film that came out last week. You can watch some clips from those featurettes here<\/a>, and read my thoughts on the featurettes here<\/a>.<\/p>\n
December 5 update:<\/b> I added a new interview with Snow<\/a> to my post on the movie\u2019s Oscar buzz<\/a>. Alas, the movie did not make the visual-effects shortlist<\/a> in the end.<\/p>\n
February 4 update:<\/b> Industrial Light & Magic released a new video<\/a> on the movie\u2019s effects, presumably because the Visual Effects Society awards are tonight:<\/p>\n