Isaac T.

there are (of course) over 2000 digital vfx shots! Every exterior ship shot (sorry to disappoint but we did not travel to space for this production) and plenty of set extensions indoors, and the in camera vix still require removing puppeteers adding arms etc. Half of Rocky's performance is cg animation with invention and character in every shot. While there were no green screens there was plenty of roto and grays and seamless work by digital artists!

First Christopher Miller clarifies, now Phil Lord. I am extremely grateful for them putting out this information.

Chris Miller: Some clarification here: "no green screen" doesn't mean "no VFX". There were, in fact, thousands of VFX shots in the film (2018!) Green screen is sometimes used in lieu of building sets or figuring out locations/lighting in advance, which can be noticeable if not done carefully, and is something we didn't want to do. We built the entire interior of the Hail Mary ship - but within the ship, there were still wire and puppeteer removals and ceiling replacements, etc. When Ryan is outside on the hull of the ship, we shot him in front of a black background for space and a shifting hue background when he was up against the aurora of a planet which allowed for truer interactive light on him than a green screen would. The wide space exteriors and spaceship shots were entirely digital and beautifully done by ILM. Rocky was a seamless blend of puppetry and animation from Framestore. And other great work from many more. It really does take a village and we had the best of the best on our side.

you can all stop asking me to comment now

"Project Hail Mary" (2026)

Screenshot from Variety article: “ 'Project Hail Mary' Director Says 'There's No Green Screen in the Movie Whatsoever' but Clarifies There's 2,018 VFX Shots: 'Not a Single Green or Blue Screen Was Used By Zack Sharf”

I saw this Variety headline and the mini @tvaziri.com, who lives in my head, laughed.

The Myth of the "Jaws" Shooting Star Update: If you've been here before, you absolutely need to scroll down to   Gigantic Update, 1/20/2025  for some new information. The GIFs...

it's as good a time as any to link to my piece, especially since I just updated it with even more evidence

The Myth of the "Jaws" Shooting Star
fxrant.blogspot.com/2018/09/the-...

Haha! Which one?

Sad to report that visual effects artist Chris Stoski has passed away. Chris was the ILM digital matte supervisor for "Star Trek" (2009), and was responsible for this amazing painting of the Enterprise under construction.

Suite Studios - S3 Native File Streaming Instantly enabling instant access to any s3 compatible object storage via Suite File Streaming. No migrations, no downtime.

Been a bit quiet around here. In part, because my team's been working on something special – S3 Native File Streaming:

www.suitestudios.io/s3-native

blog.suitestudios.io/article/suit...

#S3 #FileStreaming #CloudStorage #PostSky #PostChat

Tweet from a loser that says, "I will have 30k to make a fully AI film, what’s the plan? I’m supposed to have ideas by next week. cmon guys what would you want to see? I like sci-fi but it feels to obvious for AI 🤷‍♂️"

AI filmmaking is completely unserious.

You've got people with $30k begging the internet for ideas by next week because they have nothing of their own to say, it's just slop for the sake of slop. Embarrassing state of affairs.

"what's the plan?" my goodness - beyond self-parody at this point

WHAT'S THE PLAN? YOU'RE DESCRIBING THE ARTISTIC PROCESS YOU BOZOOOOOSSSSS

Iconic TIE Fighter shot from THE FORCE AWAKENS

Shot for thet teaser trailer of THE MANDALORIAN AND GROGU

George Lucas: It's like Poetry... It rhymes.

What's amazing is that 'Return of the Jedi"s epic space battle came from real practical models rigged to fly, and tiny mini ship models on rigs, with hand-drawn vistas on giant hand-painted glass backdrops. The VFX team moved them frame-by-frame with stop-motion, and layered shots by hand, incredible techniques that still look bigger than most blockbusters and then ILM account saying "nearly everything in your post is incorrect"

there's so much misinformation and disinformation on how movies are made

the account in this example has over a half a million followers on X, just out there making up stuff

Wes Cook and the Centralia McDonald's Mural A personal story about discovering a mural in a McDonald's, an unknown artist named Wes Cook, saving the mural, and a conference talk about the whole thing.

over a year ago, i gave a talk at the xoxo conference about a mural, a mcdonald’s, and a man. (but it was also secretly about life, and legacy, and meaning.)

finally, i’m blogging the full story, with behind-the-scenes details, and a video of the talk.

enjoy. cabel.com/wes-cook-and...

Ummm... both?

Before properly kicking off our anniversary year, we bring you 2025 in a nutshell: Lots of new features, free pro tiers, and a lot of work under the hood to get you some new apps this year.

👉️ Read the blog - buff.ly/g5yTCXh

#PostProduction #RemoteEditing #ProxyWorkflow #DIT #Offload

CommandPost v2.0.1 is out now!

You can read all about it on FCP Cafe:

fcp.cafe#8th-february...

How much CGI did F1 use? YouTube video by The Movie Rabbit Hole

F1 - is it CGI or not?

www.youtube.com/shorts/4Jm7h...

All you CG haters should read the comments that precede this.

Todd Vaziri delivering a masterclass in Class once again.

#VFX #FilmSky #PostSky #PostChat

WHOOOAAA

Visual effects breakdown folks: after seeing your finished breakdown, the audience shouldn't be MORE confused how the sequence was created than before they watched the breakdown.

Jumper v2026.01.27 (Build 2816) is out now!

On-device Machine Learning Visual, Speech & Facial Search for Final Cut Pro, Avid Media Composer, DaVinci Resolve, Adobe Premiere Pro & Standalone App - Mac, Windows & Linux.

getjumper.io

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie key art

Look Around You This unique combination of parody and homage to early 70s/80s British educational programs examines different scientific topics in each episode.

I've been leaning towards Tubi being the streaming service, and now I think it's official: they have Season 1 and Season 2 of one of the best science and technology comedy shows ever made… "Look Around You".

Thanks, Tubi. Thubi.

tubitv.com/series/30001...

We've updated the pricing of most of our Mac Apps!

Read all about it on FCP Cafe...

fcp.cafe/news/20260123/

Demo reels – figuring out how to get started? TOUGH.

• Who am I?
• What do I show?
• What do I call myself?
• How long should it even be?

Once you have it cut and scored and uploaded?

EVEN TOUGHER.

• Who is hiring?
• How do I connect?
• What do I do after applying?

CommandPost v1.6.0 is out now!

This release includes some long-awaited macOS Tahoe fixes. Thanks for your patience!

commandpost.fcp.cafe

News - 14th January 2026 Happy New Year! Hope you all had a fun and relaxing holiday break!

Let’s discuss Final Cut Pro and Apple Creator Studio over at FCP Cafe!

fcp.cafe/news/20260114/

F1® The Movie — Behind the VFX | Behind the Scenes | Apple TV Invisible by design, engineered for authenticity. This is the story behind the visual effects in F1® The Movie. #F1TheMovie is now streaming exclusively on Apple TV https://apple.co/_F1 From Apple Original Films and the filmmakers from Top Gun: Maverick comes the high-octane, action-packed feature film F1, starring Brad Pitt and directed by Joseph Kosinski. The film is produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, Kosinski, seven-time FORMULA 1 world champion Lewis Hamilton, Pitt, Dede Gardner, Jeremy Kleiner and Chad Oman. Dubbed “the greatest that never was,” Sonny Hayes (Brad Pitt) was FORMULA 1’s most promising phenom of the 1990s until an accident on the track nearly ended his career. Thirty years later, he’s a nomadic racer-for-hire when he’s approached by his former teammate Ruben Cervantes (Javier Bardem), owner of a struggling FORMULA 1 team that is on the verge of collapse. Ruben convinces Sonny to come back to FORMULA 1 for one last shot at saving the team and being the best in the world. He’ll drive alongside Joshua Pearce (Damson Idris), the team's hotshot rookie intent on setting his own pace. But as the engines roar, Sonny’s past catches up with him and he finds that in FORMULA 1, your teammate is your fiercest competition—and the road to redemption is not something you can travel alone. F1 also stars Damson Idris, Kerry Condon, Tobias Menzies, Kim Bodnia, and Javier Bardem, and has been shot during actual Grand Prix weekends as the team competes against the titans of the sport. Kosinski directs from a screenplay by Ehren Kruger. The film is executive produced by Daniel Lupi. Collaborating with Kosinski behind the scenes are his creative team, including director of photography Claudio Miranda, production designers Mark Tildesley and Ben Munro, editor Stephen Mirrione, costume designer Julian Day, casting director Lucy Bevan and composer Hans Zimmer. Apple Original Films Presents a Monolith Pictures / Jerry Bruckheimer / Plan B Entertainment / Dawn Apollo Films Production, A Film by Joseph Kosinski, F1, distributed worldwide by Warner Bros. Pictures. Subscribe to Apple TV’s YouTube channel: https://apple.co/AppleTVYouTube Follow Apple TV: Instagram: https://instagram.com/AppleTV TikTok: https://tiktok.com/@AppleTV Facebook: https://facebook.com/AppleTV X: https://X.com/AppleTV Giphy: https://giphy.com/AppleTV More from Apple TV: https://apple.co/32qgOEJ Apple TV is a streaming service with original stories from the most creative minds in TV and film. Watch now on the Apple TV app: https://apple.co/_AppleTVapp Subscription required for Apple TV #F1TheMovie #BehindTheScenes #AppleTV

Gotta say, this is a nice little regular-moviegoer-friendly featurette on the visual effects of "F1" (2025). There are around 2500 digital visual effects shots in the movie.

youtu.be/I_XJSaWMMo0?si=AokI3...

I love this story #Tetris:

archive.boston.com/news/globe/m...

A still from The Dark Knight, where half of Harvey Dent/Two-Face’s face is made out of computer graphics

my face when someone tells me "Christopher Nolan REFUSES to use 'CGI'"

SFGate story. Text about how ChatGPT gave a teen drug advice, leading to his death. Then an ad with a weird butter dispenser that is clearly AI generated. Then a house ad saying that you shouldn't "let Google decide who you trust" so that you can "prioritize writing by actual people, not AI."

Top: A well-reported story about how ChatGPT basically killed a kid giving him drug advice
Bottom: A desperate plea to help SFGate survive in the era of Google's AI summaries
In between: A GenAI ad for an impossible object that dispenses butter, and generates the money to pay for the reporting