Original Animatic Of The 'Return Of The Jedi' Death Star Battle

Ken Ralston, who worked on the visual effects for Return of the Jedi, discusses the "moving storyboard" created for the film's climactic Death Star attack sequence. The effects team shot, on tape, a simple version of the space battle with models on sticks, cardboard cutouts, and blue screen. It was crude -- sound effects were made by the crew themselves -- but effective. "I was hoping it would be in the movie," Ralston jokes. "But I guess not."

George Lucas was impressed, and spliced these temporary sequences into the live-action footage he had. From there, Ralston and ILM were able to use their "moving storyboards" as a guide for creating the actual scenes.

A Featurette With A Look At The Digital Artistry Of 'Pacific Rim'

A quick look at the video FX from 'Pacific Rim'. I really enjoyed this film! Go see it if you can.


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'Pacific Rim' ILM Featurette

John Knoll, Chief Creative Officer from Industrial Light & Magic, explores how design decisions affect the success of a blockbuster visual effects shot.
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Behind the Magic: The Visual Effects of 'The Avengers'

Watch this showcase reel for some of ILM's Oscar nominated effects work for the 2012 hit film, "Marvel's The Avengers".The reel represents a small fraction of the work created by over 200 ILM artists, scientists, and engineers backed up by a world class production team.

The stop motion animations which open and close the reel were done the old fashioned way - by hand, one frame at a time. They were crafted by ILM's stop motion guru, Erik Dillinger specifically for this reel.

Behind the Magic: Anatomy of a Shot - 'Marvel's The Avengers'

I find these behind the scenes videos really interesting, especially when comparing what's actually filmed to what you see up on the screen.

While 'The Avengers' posed many visual effects challenges, one of the larger challenges was pulling together the "tie-in" shot during the third act of the film. Rather than frames, this single shot is measured in minutes on screen and is one of the longest effects shots in the film. It incorporates both practical special effects and extensive digital visual effects. The New York City environment that serves as the setting for this shot (and virtually the entire alien invasion) is computer generated by the visual effects team at ILM.


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