Pauline B. Rogers,
The Art of Visual Effects: Interviews on the Tools of the Trade. London: Focal Press, 1999.
ISBN 0 240 80375 2 (pb)
360pp
A$ 70.98

(Review copy supplied by Butterworth Heinemann)

Uploaded 1 March 2001

My job now is a continuum of analysis, judgement, creativity, questioning, searching for excellence and taking chances.(Mark Stetson, 269)

Mark Stetson’s contribution to film culture includes some enduring images from late twentieth century film; the opening panorama of a hellish future Los Angeles in Blade Runner (1983), Chuck Yeager breaking the sound barrier in The Right Stuff (1983) and the explosive high rise finale of Die Hard (1988). The above quote indicates a considered artist at work, yet his role in the filmmaking community is not one critically adulated with pantheons, schools or movements.

A former maker of scale miniatures, the now visual effects supervisor would probably remain another anonymous Hollywood professional but for the fact that his field of endeavour, visual effects, seems to engender a particular fascination with film audiences. This fascination has been recognised and co-opted by the studios to the extent that is rare for a contemporary Hollywood blockbuster to be released without accompanying “makings of” articles and “secrets of” documentaries. Visual effects are key a component in Hollywood’s arsenal of production values prowess, part of Hollywood’s implicit value contract with the audience, that their ticket price will at least paid back on the screen. The lure of visual effects and the means of production is part of this process.

Profiting from but not intimately concerned with this fascination Pauline B Rogers’s Art of Visual Effects: Interviews on the Tools of the Trade comprises sixteen interviews with visual effects professionals like Mark Stetson, all currently practicing their trade in the Hollywood sphere. These individuals usually hold the position of visual effects supervisors; heading the team which produce all the elements that combine and form the completed visual effects shot. Their careers encompass some of the key blockbuster successes of the last twenty-five years, a period when the field has seen two significant revolutions. From the mid 1970s Motion Control allowed computer controlled cameras to repeatedly and reliably group images together into multiple layers. In the early 1990’s with Computer Generated Imaging this layering process gained almost infinite flexibility due to the lossless nature of combining these layers in a digital / mathematical fashion rather than a photographic process. Comprising a reasonable sample of the industry, the interview subjects of Art of Visual Effects straddle both these revolutions. Included are industry stalwarts such as Douglas Trumbull (2001 A Space Odyssey (1968). Silent Running (1971) and Ken Ralston (The Star Wars trilogy (1977-83), Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), Contact (1997) as well as some of the new young turks of the digital era; Rob Legato (Apollo 13, Titanic (1997) and John Knoll (Mission Impossible (1996), Star Wars episode one: The Phantom Menace (1999). The interviews explore each subject’s specific area of expertise; areas covered include model making, matte painting, computer software design, computer animation, compositing and ‘ride-films’,

The visual effects industry prides and promotes itself as a ‘cutting edge’ endeavour, where last year’s breakthrough innovation quickly becomes the new minimum standard. With such a technology/innovation arms race in operation, any book on the field faces the risk of being out of date by press time. Art of Visual Effects covers through 1998, which while spanning the consolidation of the digital revolution that followed Jurassic Park (1993), omits the popular advance of The Matrix (1999) which with its unabashed kinetic style and overt manipulation of imagery allowed effects to be ‘cool’ again. In discussing Mission Impossible the book anticipates the other recent development; the so-called digital backlot of films such as The Phantom Menace and Dark City (1997). In this practice the majority of live action filming takes place in front of minimal sets and/or green screens with the visual effects crew completing the film’s sets and environments later in postproduction. It is noteworthy that the Fox Showgrounds Studios in Sydney are proving themselves a focal point for this practice. With this aspect of pushing the technological envelope an important aspect of visual effects, perhaps they are best served in a periodical form rather than in a single collection.

A number of the articles have been reprinted from Rogers’s regular employ; International Photographer magazine, a trade magazine published by the Local 600 IATSE cinematographers union in Los Angeles. The frequent discussion of film stocks, light types and aperture settings within the pieces betray this heritage. Such details clearly place the book in the realm of craft based film writing, along with the likes of American Cinematographer and its ilk. This rarely examined sub genre has its own distinctive set of strategies that are worth exploring.

The interviews like those contained in Art of Visual Effects are a regular strategy utilised in craft based film writing. It promotes an anecdotal style that facilitates the communication of often technically obtuse material. By allowing the interview subject to explain their work on a particular shot or sequence through a narrative of arising problems and the subsequent solution. As the interview progresses through the career of the professional, these anecdotes also reveal the technological advances and progressions that have occurred in the field, thus reinforcing Visual Effects as “state of the art”. What emerges is a depiction of the effects professional as a humble approachable individual whose rationality, ingenuity and technical prowess are responsible for these works of “magic”. The mystique and cognitive confusion of the seemingly impossible image is displaced to a realm of professionalism in an unfamiliar but not unimaginable field. Engineering used to be this unfamiliar realm, the almost obsessive regurgitation of numerical values such as weights and scales and camera speeds within the explanations allowed a conceptualisation of the complexity involved. The industry shift to digital imagery poses a dilemma to visual effect writing. Model sizes and camera speeds provide a more tangible sense of complexity and scope of endeavour than discussion of subroutines and algorithms, computer software proving almost too abstract a realm to displace into.

This use of problem solving as the narrative spine of the discussion / interview is probably the reason for one of the more frustrating aspects of this type of writing, the lack of any attempt at analyses of the shot as an expressive object. The work of a visual effects supervisor is presented solely as the resolution of a logistical problem resolved, not anything resembling creativity. Ignoring arguments about Visual Effects Supervisors as authorial voices, it would seem hard to deny that they have no input into the expressive qualities of their shots. An effects sequence can be as intricately choreographed as a Busby Berkeley musical number, as graphically stylish as a Saul Bass credit sequence or as carefully timed as a Chuck Jones cartoon. The publications that discuss them seem to want no part of discussing the form as an artwork.

The sole goal that is referenced in these discussions is that of reality or the ‘invisible’ effect. This refers to the desire that the completed imagery gives no clue as to the its means of manufacture. Often referred to as photorealism, the completed image is intended to appear as if captured by the same camera that photographed the actors. Then the content of the image, say a dinosaur, can serve as the true ‘effect’. This endpoint of realism is either achieved or not achieved. By contrast, imagine an actor discussing his delivery of a line as either audible or not audible. This limited definition of success may be linked to the aforementioned use of visual effects as promotion for Hollywood technological prowess.

Occasionally in Art of Visual Effects material discussing artistic decisions seeps through, within the interview format’s strict focus on technical problems and solutions. An example is Rob Legato’s description of the need to push the technological envelope of Titanic’s effects in order to match the pride in technology that actual Titanic represented, hence the vertiginous, innovative bow to stern camera move at the beginning of the voyage (210). Such a statement indicates that these professionals do understand how a visual effect shot can complement or subvert a film narratively, can act as a further channel of meaning. Despite their protestations about their ideal work remaining invisible, these professionals are conscious of the expressive component of their work. Mark Stetson’s self-appraisal of his role that begins this review is, after all, a reasonable summation of the artistic process. Visual effects have their own aesthetics and how they integrate into the aesthetic of a film is a valid area for inquiry. It is a pity that Art of Visual Effects along with the great majority of the writing in this area completely disregards these possibilities.

The lack of concern with capital “A” art in this type of writing and Rogers book in particular can be seen as a godsend. Abstract and theoretical discussion is replaced with the practical and the achievable. The humble unassuming descriptions of process employed, choices made and solutions obtained, is refreshing when contrasted with the some times incontestable abstractions of film theory. This type of writing does provide valuable insights into the practical and logistical reasons for the choices made by visual effects artists, an important consideration in any form of stylistic analyses. A need does exists for a book on visual effects that analyses and interrogates their aesthetic function, that discusses the artistic choices made by visual effects practitioners and that truly explores the art of visual effects.

Pauline B. Rogers’s Art of Visual Effects is not that book, despite its title. Working within its own stylistic strategies it accessibly presents the techniques and attitudes of a leading group of professionals working at critical time in their fields’ development. While not representing the best of its type; see Don Shay’s consistently impressive quarterly publication Cinefex [1] ), Art of Visual Effects, appropriately, gets the job done.

Michael Powell
[1] Cinefex ed. Jody Duncan (Riverside, CA: Don Shay, 1979-)