Godzilla-1.0 Wins Best Visual Effects Award at 96th Academy Awards: How a Small Team Created Big Impact in VFX Industry

As director Takashi Yamazaki himself says at the beginning, 35 people is quite a small number to make a work like “Godzilla-1.0”. This is an order of magnitude smaller than Hollywood blockbusters. It is truly a work of wisdom, and I highly recommend that anyone who has never seen it watch it.

However, I think that the measures taken due to the small number of people are causing some misunderstanding.

After “Godzilla-1.0” won an award, it was reported that “old-fashioned handmade work has won over Hollywood” and “low budget has been praised.”

But that’s a little different.

First and foremost, “Godzilla-1.0” was acclaimed because of its high quality. There may be some reviews saying it’s “for the budget,” but films with inferior quality will never win an award.

Next, the VFX of “Godzilla-1.0” is not classic. It’s not just CG, but CG is also created using the latest technology and knowledge. In the first place, Hollywood productions do not only use CG.

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So how was it possible to achieve a quality that was worthy of an award?

The reason lies in the control over the entire project.

As you can see by watching the main story, “Godzilla-1.0” has quite a few strengths and weaknesses in its use of VFX. The number of scenes where Godzilla goes on a rampage was limited, and the VFX was carefully controlled to cover scenes that were difficult to shoot.

Since we don’t have the budget to use VFX in every part of the film, the team led by the director considers how the entire film will be structured and where and how to use VFX from the beginning of production. .

The team in charge of VFX was the White Team, to which director Yamazaki belongs. The quality was probably achieved with a compact team and small budget because it was created through close communication with a closely related team.

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Due to the coronavirus pandemic, “compact systems” are attracting renewed attention

While watching the above-mentioned making-of video, when I heard about the need for a “compact team,” I was reminded of the time I was reporting on VFX in Hollywood last fall. This is an interview about the live-action drama version of “Yu Yu Hakusho,” which was released on Netflix at the end of last year.

VFX is used throughout “Yu Yu Hakusho,” but the focus of the interview was on the CG production of the villains, the Toguro Brothers.

What was used in this was a “volumetric capture” technology that converted the acting and facial expressions into 3D data.

When creating a character using CG, the characters’ gestures and facial expressions are generally captured as motion, and the characters are moved according to the joints (rigs) installed in the CG model. However, doing so would require a corresponding increase in the amount of work needed to reproduce detailed expressions, including wrinkles and complexion.

Therefore, Scanline VFX, which was in charge of the CG production of the Toguro brothers, adopted a method of “capturing the facial expressions of the actors as they were” as 3D data. This is “volumetric capture.” It is a system that takes advantage of the advantage of CG, which allows you to “create shots from any direction,” while preserving the actors’ facial expressions and complexions.

Kenichi Takito, who played Toguro-ni, had his facial details captured in a Hollywood studio using a volumetric capture facility.The performers stand in the center and perform, and a large number of cameras record their faces in all directions at the same time.

This technology was developed by Scanline VFX and is now used in many Hollywood movies.

The reason they developed this technology was to find out how to make movies during the coronavirus pandemic.

It is difficult to gather a large number of people in the studio, and it is difficult to gather a large number of cast members. However, this does not mean that it can be created using CG without acting.

“Then, how can we convert realistic performances into data with a small number of people and quickly start actual production?”

The idea was to utilize volumetric capture in movies.

In reality, the number of people involved in this work is small. There only need to be a dozen or so people in the studio, including operators, directors, and performers, and the work can proceed in a concentrated manner.

The state during volumetric capture.Refine your performance while looking at the recorded data

Recently, the use of “virtual production” in which actors perform in front of giant LED displays has been promoted, and this is also a way to reduce the amount of travel required for location shooting and increase overall cost benefits.

Hollywood struggles with VFX budget “Low cost” trial and error

There was another low-budget film in the special effects category at this year’s Academy Awards.

“The Creator” directed by Gareth Edwards.

Although it is a work that depicts the near future with impressive VFX, the production cost is said to have been $80 million (approximately 12 billion yen), less than half of a Hollywood blockbuster.

Director Gareth Edwards, like director Yamazaki, has a background in VFX. Here too, we were able to create high-quality scenes by controlling the entire scene and working with a compact filming team.

In fact, even Hollywood believes that there are issues with large-scale, costly VFX. The Scanline VFX experiment is one way to address this dilemma.

A large number of people are invested in a major production that utilizes VFX. If you don’t do that, you won’t be able to make it in time, but the more people you use, the more difficult it becomes to control and the more it costs. If you don’t exercise control over how to create an efficient and impressive scene, the costs will increase without limit.

At this year’s CES, I heard an interesting story on that point.

This is when I interviewed Kenichiro Yoshida, CEO of the Sony Group.

One of the core of the Sony Group is movies, and many of them are blockbusters. CEO Yoshida has the following to say about the challenges faced:

CEO Yoshida: There was a Hollywood strike, but its impact on the film industry will probably be bigger than the coronavirus. Because the screenwriter stopped writing. This will affect future content output.

Writing is the upper level of creation, and it involves turning ideas into stories and forms. From there, you can visualize it, but the “time it takes” becomes a cost and has a direct impact.

If this is the case, we should make creators’ time more effective and efficient, and create opportunities for them to “try things out” in their upstream time. As a creative entertainment company, it makes sense to provide solutions for this, and game engines have a big role to play here.

VFX in virtual production and post-production (post-shooting processing) expands the possibilities of movies. However, both require considerable costs to actually produce. Trial and error on site will only increase costs.

There will be a virtual production demo at the Sony Group booth at CES.The degree of freedom in shooting increases, but this also comes at a considerable cost.

Last year, Sony built a facility called Torchlight near Sony Pictures Studios in Los Angeles, USA.

Sony built “Torchlight” in Los Angeles last year.It is actually a very strategic facility.

This is a dedicated facility for “pre-production” and “pre-visualization,” which involves considering how to create images before producing a movie or drama.

This facility is equipped with a “virtual camera” and “virtual lighting” that use a game engine, allowing visitors to freely experiment on a small scale with “what kind of visuals can be created?”

Sony’s “Torchlight” explanation video

In other words, by “trying and erroring on a small scale first” to decide what to do with shooting and VFX, you can properly determine the policy and optimize costs after shooting and production begin… …I’m saying that.

We won’t know for a few years how much these efforts will help lower movie production costs, but it’s worth keeping an eye on.