BAFTA nominees announced...

[ivanisavich]

Yea wtf is with Transformers not getting in there for best VFX?

[vfx fan]

Yea wtf is with Transformers not getting in there for best VFX?
The trend I notice is that the British Academy doesn't like Michael Bay movies. From what I understand BAFTA is, in certain respects, backwards from the Oscars in that the Academy members pick the nominees while the professionals determine the winners.

With the Oscars, professionals determine the three nominees while the Academy members determine the winner -- and they typically have no knowledge of the technical prowess that goes into making the films in the category or even why the visual effects deliver. So in the case of the Oscars, you're more likely to see the winner for Best Visual Effects as a movie that wasn't necessarily the best in the category it was nominated for but the best in general moviemaking quality.

Getting back to what I said early about the BAFTA vs. Michael Bay trend, they failed to recognize both Armageddon and Pearl Harbor, which were both extremely groundbreaking achievements at the time and among the most deserving films of their respective years, but with BAFTA's system, they don't nominate for the visual effects, they nominated more in line with the film's general quality.

The Academy voters are usually old people who probably suffer from sensory overload from watching Michael Bay films, but it could also be because of Bay's all-American style that turns European cermonies off.

But I really don't understand why At World's End is getting so much attention -- it didn't really have anything like Dead Man's Chest, other than the Maelstrom, which didn't really blow me away. After how impressed I was with the effects in Dead Man's Chest, I was sorely underwhelmed with At World's End; I expected more. The effects in Pirates 3 are still great, but Pirates 2 was amazing in 2006. Optimus Prime is the achievement to beat in 2007, methinks.

[j83]

How on earth the silly movie The Golden Compass could be anywhere close or above Transformers or POTC is beyond me.

[mattclinch]

If you look at the previous winners -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BAFTA_Award_for_Best_Special_Visual_Effects
I don't think you could say that they get it wrong very often. You'd have to go back to 2000 to find one that i dont necessarily agree with.

As for the Michael Bay thing, i wouldn't read too much into it, though i would say that IMO the BAFTA's tend to recognise, or be impressed more with films that use subtlty of visual effects to enhance (in the case of Apollo 13, Twister, Saving Private Ryan, Perfect Storm etc) or ones that create an entire visual fantasy language (LoTR, PoTC, Day After Tomorrow) and often largely use matte painting. Transformers, Armaggedon, etc don't really tend to fall wholly in one or other of these catagories.

I agree that the Academy voting procedure is a little backward though, compared with the Oscars.

[mindsample]

The trend I notice is that the British Academy doesn't like Michael Bay movies. From what I understand BAFTA is, in certain respects, backwards from the Oscars in that the Academy members pick the nominees while the professionals determine the winners.

[...]

Getting back to what I said early about the BAFTA vs. Michael Bay trend, they failed to recognize both Armageddon and Pearl Harbor, which were both extremely groundbreaking achievements at the time and among the most deserving films of their respective years, but with BAFTA's system, they don't nominate for the visual effects, they nominated more in line with the film's general quality.

The Academy voters are usually old people who probably suffer from sensory overload from watching Michael Bay films, but it could also be because of Bay's all-American style that turns European cermonies off.

[...]



Dont get me wrong, the effects in transformers are obviously fantastic, but unless I am mistaken the category for best visual effects is not necessarily the same as the a category that could be called "best technical achievement in visual effects". I know there is a thin line but to me there is a difference ...

The point with the MBay movies you mentioned up there is that just aswell as his films the effects are usually in pretty poor taste. Again, don't get me wrong, the guys who did transformers are gods and technically their work is fantastic, but I guess the whole thing was a bit soulless and without any redeeming qualities beyond that. Same with Pearl Harbour and Armageddon. I see it a bit more like an Artform award rather than a technical award, for that we have siggraph. The bafta's and oscars are for filmmaking.

Basically, I think the overall quality of a film has to have an effect on every category of nomination.

[dneg]

The category is called "Special Visual Effects", it actually gives equal weighting to special effects, not just visual effects. Thus a movie that was all sfx and no vfx could be nominated.

For those who are scratching their heads thinking "what's he talking about? Aren't sfx and vfx the same thing?", well yes and no: in the public mind sfx and vfx are synonymous, most punters always use the term special effects to describe anything effectsy. In the industry sfx are all the practical bangs and crashes on set (car wrecks, collapsing walls, fires, anything mechanical, pyrotechnics etc) and vfx is all the post-process work (CG monsters, compositing, particle animation etc).

So, whereas a movie like Transformers has peerless VFX, Bourne Ultimatum trumps it for SFX.

It must be mentioned that the Oscars also take into account SFX, but don't refer to it in the category title.

[vfx fan]

Dont get me wrong, the effects in transformers are obviously fantastic, but unless I am mistaken the category for best visual effects is not necessarily the same as the a category that could be called "best technical achievement in visual effects". I know there is a thin line but to me there is a difference ...

The point with the MBay movies you mentioned up there is that just aswell as his films the effects are usually in pretty poor taste. Again, don't get me wrong, the guys who did transformers are gods and technically their work is fantastic, but I guess the whole thing was a bit soulless and without any redeeming qualities beyond that. Same with Pearl Harbour and Armageddon. I see it a bit more like an Artform award rather than a technical award, for that we have siggraph. The bafta's and oscars are for filmmaking.

Basically, I think the overall quality of a film has to have an effect on every category of nomination.

I understand what you're saying. But I think that the category Best Special Visual Effects or Best Visual Effects should honor the visual effects of the film, not how they measure up to the holistic side of things...that should be saved for Best Picture.

Take last year, for example, when Poseidon was nominated for Best Visual Effects. The film had exceptional fx, and even though the film was unforgivably cheesy as a whole, the fx remained exceptional, and the award nomination honored the fx crew, not the filmmaking crew.

Same with Armageddon and Pearl Harbor (and apparently, to some, Transformers), just because the movies were dirt crap, does that mean that the fx artists who worked on the films should be less eligible to get a nomination? After all, with all those movies, they were the only ones doing their job, and for that, they should get the recognition.

And I understand what Paul is saying about sfx and vfx. But unfortunately, the practical fx tend to get clouded by the vfx these days (much more with the Oscars, actually). I remember the 2001 movie year, The Fast and the Furious was in the VFX Oscar long list. While it contained certain post-production enhancements such as digital cars, the real achievement was on the practical side of things. (Actually, a better example of this would be Casino Royale, which was in last year's long list.)

I think that Best Special Effects and Best Visual Effects should be separate categories, because movies that have superior sfx get shafted because of a movie that had superior vfx. That and the two fields are quite massively different. Sfx are no more related to vfx than makeup. These three fields all handle the visual illusions, but they each work on different sides of the triangle.

And often, particularly with Oscars, a movie nominated for Best Visual Effects will leave out the practical fx supervisor as one of the four contenders. So the category does indeed emphasize the actual vfx more than the physical stuff.

[malducin]

You are forgetting how the BAFTAs work, the inverse way the Academy does. The VFX nominees are voted on by the whole membership, and then the winner is selected by a committee of VFX experts. That's why usually you get some bizarre choices in the BAFTA VFX category (like including animated movies because they were done with computers :-P)

[vfx fan]

You are forgetting how the BAFTAs work, the inverse way the Academy does. The VFX nominees are voted on by the whole membership, and then the winner is selected by a committee of VFX experts. That's why usually you get some bizarre choices in the BAFTA VFX category (like including animated movies because they were done with computers :-P)

Ah, Malducin, it's been too long! :P

Yes, I remember how BAFTA nominated animated films like Shrek and Antz, to name a few, but now animated movies are beginning to make their way into the vfx Oscars, seeing how Beowulf and Ratatouille made it into the list of 15...just give it a couple years before they start making it into the final 3...and by then, I would hope to high heaven that the Oscar final 3 becomes a final 5.

I didn't really think the choices were particularly bad, but the absence of Transformers was just rather surprising, even shocking, as it was reasonably balanced for a Michael Bay film. (Sometimes I think the hatred of Michael Bay is just a hipster fad.)

I believe they nominated Kill Bill in the category back in 2004, but as dneg said, physical fx are considered to be in the category.

I suppose the other strange bit of the year was the omission of Spider-Man 3 from the VFX Oscar long list.

[malducin]

Ah, Malducin, it's been too long! :P

Yeah I'm back for the time being. Hopefully I'll be more productive now :-P.

Yeah it's a bit jarring to see animated films in the VFX category. It's almost akin to having include something like Snow White in the VFX category.

[vfx fan]

Yeah I'm back for the time being. Hopefully I'll be more productive now :-P.

Yeah it's a bit jarring to see animated films in the VFX category. It's almost akin to having include something like Snow White in the VFX category.

Well, The Nightmare Before Christmas was nominated for Best Visual Effects in 1994 (for 1993) -- I don't know, would that be considered an animated film?

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