Don Levy: A cinematic journey through visual effects

77,682 views ・ 2013-01-04

TED


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Translator: Joseph Geni Reviewer: Morton Bast
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The filmmaker Georges Méliès was first a magician.
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Now movies proved to be the ultimate medium for magic.
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With complete control of everything the audience can see,
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moviemakers had developed an arsenal of techniques
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to further their deceptions.
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Motion pictures are themselves an illusion of life,
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produced by the sequential projection of still frames,
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and they astonished the Lumière brothers' early audiences.
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Even today's sophisticated moviegoers
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still lose themselves to the screen,
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and filmmakers leverage this separation from reality
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to great effect.
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Now imaginative people have been having fun with this
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for over 400 years.
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Giambattista della Porta, a Neapolitan scholar
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in the 16th century, examined and studied the natural world
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and saw how it could be manipulated.
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Playing with the world, and our perception of it,
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really is the essence of visual effects.
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So digging deeper into this
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with the Science and Technology Council
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of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
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reveals some truth behind the trickery.
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Visual effects are based on the principles of all illusions:
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assumption, things are as we know them;
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presumption, things will behave as we expect;
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and context in reality,
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our knowledge of the world as we know it,
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such as scale.
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Now a fourth factor really becomes an obsession,
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which is, never betray the illusion.
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And that last point has made visual effects
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a constant quest for perfection.
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So from the hand-cranked jump cut early days of cinema
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to last Sunday's Oscar winner, what follows are some steps
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and a few repeats in the evolution of visual effects.
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I hope you will enjoy.
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Isabelle: "The filmmaker Georges Méliès
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was one of the first to realize that
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films had the power
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to capture dreams."
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(Music) ["'A Trip to the Moon' (1902)"]
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["2011 Restoration of the Original Hand-Tinted Color"]
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["'2001: A Space Odyssey' (1968)"]
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["Academy Award Winner for Visual Effects"]
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["'Avatar' (2009)"] First doctor: How are you feeling, Jake?
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Jake: Hey guys.
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["Academy Award Winner for Visual Effects"]
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Second doctor: Welcome to your new body, Jake.First doctor: Good.
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Second doctor: We're gonna take this nice and easy, Jake.First doctor: Well, do you want to sit up? That's fine.
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Second doctor: And good, just take it nice and slow, Jake.
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Well, no truncal ataxia, that's good.First doctor: You feeling light-headed or dizzy at all?
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Oh, you're wiggling your toes.
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["'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' (1972)"]
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Alice: What's happening to me?
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["'Alice in Wonderland' (2010)"]
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["Academy Award Nominee for Visual Effects"]
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["'The Lost World' (1925)"]
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["Stop Motion Animation"]
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["'Jurassic Park' (1993)"] [Dinosaur roars]
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["CG Animation"]
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["Academy Award Winner for Visual Effects"]
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["'The Smurfs' (2011)"]
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["Autodesk Maya Software - Key Frame Animation"]
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["'Rise of the Planet of the Apes' (2011)"]
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Chimpanzee: No! ["Academy Award Nominee for Visual Effects"]
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["'Metropolis' (1927)"]
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(Music)
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["'Blade Runner' (1982)"]
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["Academy Award Nominee for Visual Effects"]
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["'The Rains Came' (1939)"] Rama Safti: Well, it's all over.
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Maharaja: Nothing to worry about, not a thing.
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['Academy Award for Special Effects - (First Year of Category)"]
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(Explosion)
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["'2012' (2009)"]Governor: It seems to me that the worst is over.
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["CG Destruction"]
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["'Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King' (2003)"]
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["Massive Software - Crowd Generation"]
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["Academy Award Winner for Visual Effects"]
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["'Ben Hur: A Tale of the Christ' (1925)"]
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["Miniatures and Puppets Bring the Crowd to Life"]
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["'Gladiator' (2000)"]
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["CG Coliseum and Digital Crowds"]
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["Academy Award Winner for Visual Effects"]
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["'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2' (2011)"]
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["Academy Award Nominee for Visual Effects"]
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["Produced in conjunction with the Academy's Science and Technology Council."]
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(Applause)
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["'It is today possible to realize the most impossible and improbable things.' — Georges Méliès"]
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Don Levy: Thank you.
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