From the linked article…
In a day and age when literally everyone connected to a film production gets a credit, from craft services to on-set teachers of child actors to random “production babies” who didn’t even work on a film, it is utterly incomprehensible that vfx artists, whose work makes possible the final images that appear onscreen, are routinely omitted from screen credits.
I can attest to this, having worked in the field. Most of the work in TV and cinema goes uncredited, with team leaders or just the post houses at most being recognized with an end credit placement (by contract, of course). I understand totally that it is always a team effort and hardly any of the viewing public sits through the entire end credits roll. I totally get it. But when it happens that you are included, that small token of recognition does remind you why you’re doing 12-hour days erasing power lines, making day look like night, adding/removing people and/or signage from shots they weren’t supposed to be in and pushing greenscreened people in front of moving cars.
He also claims there isn’t even one CGI shot in the entire film. I don’t believe that. There aren’t any backgrounds filled in at all? No touch ups? If he used matte paintings you would be able to tell with IMAX, there’s too much definition to pass off a painting.
Given how extremely lackluster that nuclear explosion looked, it can’t be that far off from the truth.
That was so disappointing…
While I will agree that maybe Sir Christopher is possibly stretching the truth regarding CGI (it’s entirely possible there isn’t one entire, totally computer-generated shot), but computer-aided, computer-enhanced, no. Especially in this day and age, everything is touched by Inferno/Flame/Smoke/Nuke/AE/Blender/Maya/blah blah blah.
When you say “matte painting” you mean traditional, non-digital, paint-on-glass? Forgive my ignorance, but why would that be any more or less noticible in IMAX?
Imax has a huge resolution. It’s like watching a 4k copy of an old movie and being able to see how fake the materials used were.
He meant there’s no full CGI/green screen shots. He’s not completely averse to CGI.
The Dark Knight has Batman flying over Hong Kong and that was a CGI shot. Inception had folding city. Interstellar had mathematically created CGI of black hole.
Otherwise CGI is used by him to enhance existing shots or to hide wirework. Such as zero gravity scenes in Inception.