Producing pair pioneered f/x in films

VES: Lifetime Achievement Award

By SHEIGH CRABTREE

'E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial'
• Photo gallery

Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
Unleashing the wrath of God on a gang of Nazis fell to rising ILM stars Richard Edlund and Chris Walas. Edlund delivered 100 ethereal apparitions (actually silk fabric hung over wire armatures floating in water tanks) by mixing motion-control photography with optical effects and multilayered mattes. To vaporize the Nazi heads, Walas blasted evildoer Belloq's cranium with an air cannon, two shotguns and explosive charges; he melted Toht's gelatin face in 100 time-lapsed step-frames; and he outfitted a mechanical head with inflatable bladders to deflate and mummify Dietrich's face.

E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1982)
"They don't mind taking risks as long as there's a very good chance it'll pay off," says ILM's Dennis Muren, who remembers when Steven Spielberg and first-time co-producer Kennedy granted effects maestro Carlo Rambaldi 5,000 man-hours and $1.5 million to create the stumpy cable-actuated mechanical effect known as E.T. -- a creation expected to carry the picture and convincingly perform onscreen with a kid (Henry Thomas). Because most of the character work is mechanical, "E.T." contains only 50 optical effects shots. Muren mixed go-motion (animation and motion control) with live-action plates, using miniature bikes and riders to create the moonlit bicycle sequence that became Amblin's logo.

Gremlins (1984)
With Joe Dante at the helm, the filmmakers brought in mechanical effects whiz Walas, who designed and created legions of adorable pet mogwais and their unkempt alter egos. In the most sustained character sequence, one part "Porky's" and one part "Star Wars" cantina, dozens of prankish gremlins invade Dorry's Tavern. Walas built puppets with inflatable stomach bladders and nose-picking flexibility (they even included one dressed as Dante). After production wrapped, Spielberg added a break-dancing gremlin seen spinning on his back.

Young Sherlock Holmes (1985)
According to Muren, by the mid-'80s, ILM had a fledgling CG group they were itching to test out. Along came Barry Levinson's teen detective caper. "If we were going to try this, it had to be radically different from anything anybody had seen before," Muren says. "Kathy gave us six or seven months to pull it off." The result: Hollywood's first completely CG feature character -- a stained-glass knight who leaps from his window for a 30-second duel.

Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988)
Robert Zemeckis' toon noir cast animated characters alongside humans, leaving Michael Lantieri to figure out how to create real-world causes-and-effects (such as a puddle splash) from a cast that didn't physically exist. "We didn't know how to blend animation, live action and mechanical effects. It had never been done," Lantieri says. "But we thought, 'If we can figure it out, other people will want to see it.' For the first time we looked at visual effects as making a story tellable that could not otherwise be told."

Jurassic Park (1993)
Assaulting tour vehicles in a downpour isn't so easy when you're T-Rex, a 20-foot-tall, 40-foot-long rubber puppet with 57 mechanical functions. "Stan Winston built beautiful, lifelike hydraulic dinosaurs," Lantieri says. "But there's a reason you only see T-Rex's head poking from a bush." Made of spongy foam latex, the menacing puppet absorbed water like a mop, tripling its weight, which required long, handheld blow-drying sessions and emergency surgery. "That's where you see the genius of Kathy Kennedy," Lantieri says. "Steven doesn't need to get bogged down in the fix. She takes him over to a new setup, and not one minute of production time is lost." Meanwhile, Phil Tippet and ILM tackled full-body CG shots. "Kathy went to bat for us early on," Muren says. "She saw a test that our CG department came up with -- a herd of dinosaurs -- and said, 'These guys are onto something.'"

Twister (1996)
ILM spent 10 weeks conjuring what Muren dubbed a "menacing monster of a tornado," yielding a digital test so convincing it was used in the film's trailer. The computers behaved, but Mother Nature didn't, serving up unseasonably perfect weather (not a cloud in the sky) for the duration of plate photography. John Frazier, master of large-scale disaster, built lightweight farm equipment to be dropped from helicopters and showered sets with detritus blown by 707 Boeing engines -- all on sunny plates that had to be rendered stormy after the fact.

A.I. Artificial intelligence (2001)
The third act of "A.I." is set in the far future, where Manhattan is carved from ice in a 2,224-frame CG excavation shot that combines live-action footage, practical models and more than 2,000 digital models. The ILM-made shot took five technical directors and five compositors seven months to complete. Spielberg and Stanley Kubrick's shared vision also owes a small debt to Clint Eastwood, who inadvertently provided the sequence's opening frames -- stock helicopter footage from 1982's "Firefox."

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008)
Kennedy/Marshall had the script in hand long before the tools and techniques existed to make reverse aging economically feasible onscreen. Developed at the behest of David Fincher by vfx supervisor Eric Barba and Digital Domain, which combined performance-capture software with CG head replacements so Brad Pitt could play the character from infirmity to infancy (backward, of course). Co-star Cate Blanchett also underwent digital age reduction courtesy of Lola VFX.

Tintin (2011)
Kennedy intends to push the medium forward once again with the Tintin franchise. The first film is shooting now, with Spielberg using performance capture to create a realistic riff on Herge's graphic novel style. "We're not trying to match the look of an actor," Kennedy explains. "This allows us a little bit of freedom." The plan is for Peter Jackson -- who used similar technology to animate his Gollum and King Kong characters -- to direct the second installment.

Tip Sheet
What: 7th VES Awards
When: Saturday, 7 p.m.
Where: Hyatt Regency Century Plaza Hotel, L.A.