Proving Fantasy Is Real

Standing on stage, Stan Winston braced himself to defend his latest creation--the fuzzy, dancing robotic teddy bear that starred last year in the film “A.I. Artificial Intelligence.”

Hundreds of his rivals and fellow members of the visual effects branch of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences sat before him. Their job on this night was to pick the three films that would be considered for an Academy Award.

Winston, the man behind the Terminator in “The Terminator” and the aliens in “Aliens,” had been here before. To win an Oscar, he first must win the crowd at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills and prove that no computer-generated demon or crashing Black Hawk helicopter holds a candle to Teddy.

“There are far more points of motion in Teddy than any dinosaur,” Winston bragged.

Out in the audience, Oscar competitor Dan Taylor--the animation supervisor who helped build the dinosaurs in “Jurassic Park III”--ground his teeth. Minutes later, when it was his turn to stand beneath the 20-foot Oscar statue, Taylor was as catty as any Hollywood starlet.

“Our dinosaur could devour a teddy bear in one gulp,” he shot back. “Our spinosaurus kicks Teddy any day.”

Far from the red-carpet glamour and sequined sparkles of Oscar night in March is a down-and-dirty fight where the technicians behind the big screen’s illusions wage an increasingly high-stakes war. Their Oscar rules over robotics, miniatures, computer-generated visuals and wildly destructive explosions, which increasingly are the key to a film’s success. Their academy category, once an occasional honor, now sits on par with best actor and best picture.

The path to glory started last week at an annual ritual that, in un-Oscar-like fashion, is called the Bake-Off. It’s a rare process for the academy, whose top-tier categories such as best picture are nominated by voters from the comfort of home.

Unlike actors, directors and composers, whose work usually speaks for itself in a film, visual effects require hours of explanation about the grand illusions that, if successful, are invisible and spectacular at the same time.

Out of 248 films released in the United States last year, only eight of the flashiest are chosen to be here by an executive panel of academy voters who work in the visual effects industry. The nominees will have this one chance to explain their art, defend their science and proclaim their methodology better, quicker, faster than all those other cheap gimmicks on-screen.

The dress is always casual--most academy voters opt for rumpled khakis and Gap shirts--but the competition can be over the top. Although it’s fine to wear last season’s fashion, woe be it to anyone who dares to present last year’s technology.

Event Draws an Overflow Crowd

This year’s Bake-Off--held in the packed 1,000-seat Goldwyn theater--drew hundreds of fans, who scrambled to grab a chair and cheer for their favorite computer scientists.

Before the debate began, one organizer picked up a microphone and made a plea to the crowd: “There are not enough seats for the people who have to actually do something tonight. Your wives, your girlfriends, your future ex-wives, they all need to either stand or move, please.”

Caren Dohen, a 23-year-old college student and aspiring visual effects artist, refused to move. She had made the trek from San Francisco, and she wasn’t leaving until she met her heroes.

Dohen scanned the crowd, looking for famous faces. There was Winston, who has three statues including one for the original “Jurassic Park,” looking dapper in slacks and a sport coat.

Across the aisle was scholarly-looking Eric Brevig, who won last year for “Gladiator” and headed up this year’s team for “Pearl Harbor.” Nearby was Jim Rygiel, the visual effects supervisor for “The Lord of the Rings” and an Oscar virgin, who hours before had flown into town from New Zealand--and looked the rumpled part.

And of course, there was Dennis Muren, one of the wizards behind the “Star Wars” series. He has more Oscars in his home than any other living person--eight so far. This year, he’s allied with Winston for “A.I. Artificial Intelligence.”

Suddenly, Dohen spied Muren, sitting in an aisle seat and waiting for the program to begin. Leaping forward, she grabbed his hand and shook it furiously.

“It’s you!” she gushed. “Sir, you’re a genius!”

Muren, 55, whose wisps of thinning gray hair hang over his shoulders like a cape, smiled sheepishly.

“Visual effects are the driver of Hollywood,” said Tom Atkin, head of the trade group Visual Effects Society. “We can make a movie with a crap plot huge, and we can kill a movie with a decent story.”

The rising status of visual effects follows the enormous amount of money spent creating them and the huge crowds they can draw.

Warner Bros. spent about $125 million to make “Harry Potter”--with nearly half that set aside to cover the cost of elaborate effects such as the whooshing, broomstick-riding game of Quidditch. Just in the U.S., the movie has pulled in nearly $313 million so far, the top-grossing film of 2001.

This year’s other candidates for the visual effects nomination weren’t far behind. Fire demons and elaborate, elfish sets helped “The Lord of the Rings” gross about $256 million so far. “Pearl Harbor,” with its computer-generated scenes of the Japanese bombing, has nabbed $200 million. And “Jurassic Park III’s” few hundred dinosaurs pulled in $181 million.

Dinosaur Causes Cringes, Grins

The other four nominees were “Cats & Dogs,” “A.I.,” “The Fast and the Furious” and “Black Hawk Down.”

The audience cringed as a scaly tyrannosaurus lumbered across the screen. Human actors became snacks for the dinosaur, which growled at the camera with gore stuck like popcorn kernels between its 4-foot teeth.

Enormous speakers filled the air with rumbles, seeming to shove the crowd inside the reptile’s mouth with each crunch.

Taylor, who has been nominated previously but has yet to win an Oscar, grinned with relief. As the “Jurassic Park” clip ended with a bloodcurdling scream, the lights slowly warmed the room.

“Time to go,” whispered Taylor to his team, who strode up to the stage amid warm applause.

They have exactly five minutes. Go one second over and a fluorescent red light bulb in front of the podium pops on--the visual bouncer yanking the verbose offstage.

“Titanic” director and visual effects maven James Cameron stood on this stage several years ago and, deciding that he needed more time to explain his vision, unscrewed the bulb. He talked. And talked. And talked. For more than 30 minutes. He won that year.

Today, the bulb is glued into its socket.

Taylor touched on the “Jurassic Park III” crew’s desire to surpass the effects work of the previous two films. He pointed out the synthesis of the physical and the virtual. A computerized reptile can flex and move. Its skin can wrinkle and sweat. Yet its feet can’t crush real grass. The solution: Use a robotic leg to walk through the forest, and attach the rest of the creature’s body back in the computer lab.

Out in the audience, one computer artist rolled his eyes and whispered to a neighbor, “Oh, please. We’ve seen this stuff for years. Evolution is not art.”

Even the academy wrestled for decades with how, or if, it should recognize this field.

By the 1930s, effects technicians routinely worked on teams that were devoted to building visual and sound “tricks.” In the view of the academy, such effects were part of the physical production--not the artistic vision--of the film, a tool often on par with the set caterers.

Debating Their Take on Reality

The academy board of governors didn’t establish an official visual effects category until 1963 to honor Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s “Cleopatra”--particularly for the classic scene when Elizabeth Taylor enters Rome.

Still, there was no guarantee that an award would be handed out each year.

Visual effects kept improving, using better miniatures and uniting both photographic and animation elements in a single shot.

With the evolution of the computer, artists and computer scientists shifted from creating background elements to pushing their work to the forefront.

A turning point came with the 1989 undersea drama “The Abyss” and the liquid column that morphs into a face. Far more than a prop, this was one of Hollywood’s first virtual creatures, an unearthly entity that could help realize a writer’s work and a director’s vision on the screen.

“The effects are icing on the cake,” said “Harry Potter” director Chris Columbus. “When you’re dealing with 800 or 900 effects shots in one movie, of course, that’s a lot of icing.”

In 1995 the visual effects community convinced the academy it deserved its own chapter, which would ensure an annual award. The branch was formed with nearly 130 effects workers. Today, there are 230 members. All work in the visual effects field in some capacity--pyrotechnic gurus, model builders, matte painters, optical experts, computer software designers, digital artists. The branch makes the initial cut from eight to three Oscar nominees at the Bake-Off.

“Nearly all the other categories let their branch pick five nominees,” said Rich Miller, award administration director for the academy. “It’s a holdover from the past. I’m sure the visual effects branch would love to get five spots, but they’re just happy they have a guarantee of getting recognized on TV.”

Hours passed at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater and still the film clips rolled. Like college professors, the Bake-Off nominees debated their take on reality and used the strengths of their software programs and mechanical details as ammunition. Was the virtual hair on the virtual kids in “Harry Potter” more revolutionary than the hyper-reality race car shots of “The Fast and the Furious”?

Floating Candles Pose Danger

“Harry Potter” visual effects supervisor Rob Legato said the team built a contraption to float a sea of real candles above the dining hall in Hogwarts school. Everything worked great--until the lit candles began to drop on the heads of the child actors. Legato joked: “We switched to C.G. [computer-generated] candles. I don’t know what the fuss was about. They had hundreds of kids. It’s not like they were going to miss one or two.”

It’s well after 11 p.m. when the last film explosion fades to black. Yawning, the crowd shuffles out of the theater. Academy members sneak peaks at each other’s blue ballots, curious to see who picked what.

No one had dared to leave, as this was the only chance for members of the academy’s visual effects branch to cast their vote.

Downstairs, a pair of stern employees from PricewaterhouseCoopers guarded a cardboard ballot box. If voters tried to sneak out early, their ballots were destroyed immediately.

Fans, overwhelmed by the lush landscapes of Tolkien’s Middle Earth, swarmed around Rygiel of “The Lord of the Rings” team. Politely squeezing through the crush, Muren made his way to the ballot box and cast his vote.

On Tuesday at 4:45 a.m., Muren rolled out of bed, turned on his computer and logged onto the academy’s Web site. After an hour of scanning for clues, the news hit.

“The Lord of the Rings” and “Pearl Harbor” were in. So was “A.I.” Muren’s phone immediately began to ring.