IL&M is probably the greatest VFX company in existence today. Founded originally by George Lucas in 1975, Industrial light and magic have done the special effects for over 300 motion pictures. Including all of the Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Back to the Future and Jurassic Park series.
Almost certainly one of the greatest special effects teams in existence and the movies I have referenced really do prove this. The Star Wars series for example. Despite the incessant slandering of the prequel trilogy, I personally, love them. I mean, why wouldn't you ? Why doesn't anyone want to see more lightsaber battles and full scale alien wars ? its beyond me, but the point is that the special effects in all of the star wars films were outstanding. Even more so in the prequel trilogy as the advancement of VFX technology has vastly increased since the 70s and 80s.
Whats most impressive about the company is that since the 70s they have managed to keep a consistent quality of VFX. This is pretty incredible since the special effects in Star Wars and Indiana Jones still look really good against todays standards, which just proves to me that special effects don't have to look shit, but sadly thats the way it appears to be going these days.
The two images I have selected above are from The Pirates of the Caribbean. As you can see before Light and Magic came in, Bill Nighy's make up looks like an accident. However once Light & Magic got involved you can see that all those little dots are tracking markers used to make sure that the model (middle image) fits perfectly onto Nighy's face so that his facial expressions can be replicated in the model so that it looks as if he actually has an octopus on his face.
This is something that I need to take into consideration when doing my own VFX pieces Poor tracking marker set up will result in a dodgy converge between the footage and the model. If this happens, even once, the whole ruse of 'special effects' is ruined and we see it for what it is. Great special effects are the ones which make you wonder if it was special effects or was it real.
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