By Mark London Williams "Visual effects have gotten so sophisticated that sometimes even visual effects professionals cannot tell what they are seeing." That's a quote from Jeff Okun, a man who knows his visual effects. Not only is he a visual effects supervisor (Fantastic Four, Elizabethtown and a pair for Ed Zwick - The Last Samurai and Blood Diamond - among his credits), but he helped found the Visual Effects Society's own "VES Awards" for excellence in the field. How do the experts in visual sleight-of-hand give awards to their colleagues and confreres? How do magicians, in other words, know which "tricks" are among the year's best, when it comes to giving out VES statues - or the Oscar®? Well, for starters, they bake. We refer, of course, to the Academy Awards bake-off, wherein reels of FX highlights are culled and shown to eligible award voters, an event which, Okun says, "serves to showcase the work in a less distracting environment than within the entire film. There has been more than one case where seeing the bake-off reel has changed my mind, and those of my friends, about the work in a show." Okun is also keen to note differences about the Bake-Off and the VES' own "Show and Tell" - the latter soon migrating to online presentations for easier and more widespread viewing among potential voters: "The Show & Tell event for the VES is a different sort of beast. It occurs before the Academy Bake-Off, but so close to it as to have no effect whatsoever on which of the seven films get selected to go to the Bake-Off. The VES Show & Tell is about demonstrating the material within the context of the project (both broadcast and film) as well as showing and explaining the ‘before and after' material - a sort of hand-held walk through the 'how we did it' exercise. The Academy does not allow before and afters." Industrial Light & Magic's Scott Farrar - FX supe for Spielberg on AI and ILM's honcho on its share of the Narnia work, says the Bake-Off experience is "different from the film-going experience" and that sometimes, at the end of one of the 15-minute reels, he'll be left thinking "this is dazzling" when viewing effects that didn't dazzle nearly so much during their original theatrical run. Both Farrar and Okun make special mention of Dennis Muren's Oscar-nominated - and VES-winning - work in War of the Worlds, each observing that being able to watch the effects themselves - a mix of digital and miniature work - made them stand out, especially the initial "Martian attack" sequences. This contrasts to eventual FX winner King Kong, where, during the whole movie, you were reminded of the excellent FX work - since such work was, in fact, the lead "actor." Farrar also notes that he started his career working behind an actual camera, and wants FX work - his own and the films he nominates - to "look real." He points out, "If you shoot it, texturally [there's something that happens] photographically when light gets exposed on film." No technique is favored. What will grab his attention is any mix of miniatures, mechanicals and CG work that avoids the "telltale" sterility that can tip off an image made of digits, that serves to reveal "the eye of the artist" and that is "ultimately satisfying." Since Farrar works so extensively with CG effects himself, does it matter to him if, while watching a "great magic trick" on the screen, he knows precisely how the magician in question read the cards or yanked the rabbit? Farrar allows that a certain "wow" factor doesn't hurt, especially if you're familiar with all the available tools - from green screens to the latest iteration of Maya software - and still look at a colleague's work and say, "I don't know how you did it." After all, even magicians want to believe in magic. Image from Fantastic Four (courtesy The Ronald Grant Archive), 20th Century Fox/Marvel Enterprises. | 
