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VES Awards 2007
Dennis Muren and Pirates of the Caribbean-Dead Man's Chest were the standouts at the 5th annual Visual Effects Society Awards in Hollywood.
February, 13th, 2007, by Raffael Dickreuter, Bradley Gabe
On February 11th, achievements in visual effects were honored at the Grand Ballroom of the Kodak Theater in Hollywood, CA. The fifth annual VES Awards and the 10th anniversary of the Visual Effect Society were celebrated. The evening was highlighted with the presentation of the VES lifetime achievement award to eight time Academy Award winner Dennis Muren by none other than his boss, George Lucas.
Lucas recanted the story of when he first met Muren, who was working the night shift at ILM, back in the days when the pacing was "slow and seemed like nothing exciting was going on." He continued through a brief history of how Muren helped advanced visual effects from one project to the next, providing insight into the attributes that made him not only a leader amongst his coworkers but a pioneer in the industry. He described Muren as "A wonderful human being, the guy who is the heart and soul of ILM and someone who has never yelled at anyone in an industry prone to yelling."
After the speech by Lucas, a retrospective about Muren's career, innovations, and influence was presented on the big screen. Muren is consistently described first as a student and skilled listener, and second as teacher and innovator. One example of his influence is how Muren is credited with transforming the dailies process into a collaborative event, attended and participated in by everyone, rather than the top down hierarchy of criticism it had always been before.
Muren accepted his award graciously from George and replied, "Without George where would we all be?” After offering thanks to the community, Muren spoke for a few more minutes about what drives him, how he strives to "Push the envelope on each new project to create something new and better than the last show." And then he seemed to catch himself for a moment and insert "...and of course still stay within budget." which resulted in sympathetic laughter from the audience.
Muren spoke of his current and future slate of projects, including the push for more realtime technology for the industry, collaboration with Pixar on an animation project, and a book he is authoring for CG artists about training the powers of observation for use within the visual effects industry.
While Muren may have been the special honoree of the evening, it was his effects house ILM that walked away with most of the awards. Dead Man's Chest swept every category in which it was nominated garnering six trophies in all. Cars edged out Happy Feet and Monster House in the animated motion picture category. While on the broadcast side, Battlestar Galactica and Zoic won two awards. Also of note was the addition of the "Outstanding Real-Time Visuals in a Video Game" category won by Fight Night Round 3 for PS3, perhaps a sign of more to come from the VES in recognizing work in the games industry.
One funny moment was provided by Tippet Studio in a presentation they put together to honor Muren's impact on the industry. After famous cuts from classic effects movies, dozens of CG artists expressed which film most inspired them to work in the industry. Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Dragonslayer, etc., the one common element in each inspirational film was Muren. The piece ended with a scene from "Monty Python and the Holy Grail," as a cartoon, robed figure ascends through a stage of clouds, opening to reveal the glowing head of Dennis Muren, casting god rays from the heavens.
Other memorable moments include:
Andrew Stanton, the director of Finding Nemo joking about being assigned to give out the award for compositing, when they do almost none at Pixar, and how while none of the 900 people at Pixar create integrated visual effects, they spend a lot of time trying to figure out how everyone else does them, and "it has to stop!"
Richard Taylor, known for his groundbreaking work on Tron who is now working in the games industry reminded the attendees that it was people who create these stunning visuals and not computers as often believed by the general audience.
Blues Brothers and Animal House Director John Landis wrapped up a funny presentation speech with comments about the progression of movies since the late seventies: "While the effects now are awesome, the big difference is now that the movies are shit!"
Backstage, John Landis recounted to Dennis Muren the story of many years ago, at the height of his success, he was asked to judge an animation competition at Cal Arts. Out of all the entries, he was blown away by only one, and compelled to shock the artist by personally dropping in on his dorm room and asking for a signed animation cell. The artist complied, and John Landis now has a signed, original animation cell from John Lasseter.
Happy Feet's Associate Digital Supervisor Olivier Ozoux.
Stan Winston's Bradley Gabe with Dan Sarto of AWN
Apple Co-founder Steve Wozniak with Lorne Peterson, ILM Chief Model Maker.
VES Founder Tom Atkin (left).
Tim Roth, VES Executive Director, Dennis Muren, George Lucas, Jeff Okun.
Muren and Lucas with Steve Wozniak.
Olcun Tan of Gradient FX.
George Lucas presents Dennis Muren with the VES Lifetime achievement award.
ILM's Pirates team with John Knoll (left) - Blues Brothers Director John Landis.
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