When VES director Eric Roth took to the stage at the opening of the 15th-ever VES Awards, he told the overflowing room at the Beverly Hilton that we were all there to honor “the most amazing work the world has ever seen.”
Well, okay, that does sort of leave things like the Sistine Chapel, King Lear, and the Mahabharata out hanging, but his point was well taken: Rendered digits are so life-like and fantastical all at once that sometimes reality itself seems permeable, or redefined… or questionable. That’s even the case with many of the categories that VES honors: For example, the big winner was Jungle Book, with Rob Legato and team nabbing awards for the work they did in conjunction with cinematograph Bill Pope and director Jon Favreau. As Roth also pointed out in his opening remarks though, the whole film was shot in downtown L.A. Nearly everything in it, except a few sets, and of course Mowgli, was “rendered.” Which is to say, “animated.”
So when Jungle Book won the night’s top prize for FX work in a “photoreal feature” (along with four other awards, including compositing and one for Christopher Walken’s turn as King Louie — beating out Idris Elba’s Shere Khan), was it really less an animated film than the night’s other big winner, Kubo and the Two Strings, which won the top animation prize?
Of course, Kubo looks “animated,” and Jungle Book doesn’t — and yet both are competing against each other for the same visual effects award at the Oscars.
Hmm.
In any case, a betting person might regard Jungle Book as the frontrunner for that statue now, though of course, a betting person might also have assumed that a person who gets the most votes in an election would be declared the winner, so it’s a time of altered realities for sure.
On which note, anyone conversant with Patton Oswalt’s twitterfeed might have expected him do a fairly incendiary job as he returned to hosting duties, and mostly they’d be right: He admonished everyone to enjoy this, “the last VES Awards,” and advised audience members to keep their dinner rolls for food in the coming dystopia, their tablecloths for potential clothing, and later, to take home their cocktails in plastic bags, since the alcohol could eventually be used for medicine “in the wasteland.”
Some of the moment’s political themes were also picked up by Victoria Alonso, ably introduced by Thor: Ragnarok director Taika Waititi as the Marvel Studios exec and FX producer was presented the VES Visionary Award.
She took the fact that there was a line for the women’s restroom at SIGGRAPH this year as a tangible sign of progress, thanked her wife of many years standing, and noted that she too, was an immigrant to the U.S., from her native Argentina. “Sometimes someone has to hold the banner,” she allowed, and she was willing to do that for “every little girl out there.”
And sometimes, as Lifetime Achievement honoree Ken Ralston noted, someone just has to put up with their child’s eccentricities, as he thanked his parents, Bob and Dolores, who, despite a lot of seeming head-scratching, allowed their son to keep doing tabletop animation in their garage. This, of course, lead to a visual effects career — “in the photochemical era,” as Ralston cracked — that took in the original Star Wars trilogy, some early Star Trek features, and a slew of FX supervisor roles on films like the Back to the Future trilogy, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Jumanji, Forrest Gump, for which he received one of his quartet of Oscars.
And speaking of Oscar, another of this year’s VFX nominees, Deepwater Horizon, grabbed a “Mellie” — though it may be quixotic to try and get the VES statue thusly nicknamed — in the supporting FX category, along with a nod for best model work for the rig, all of it rendered in another movie shot mostly in a parking lot, with actors being the only “real” elements.
In the VFX Oscar category, fellow nominee Doctor Strange won at VES for its New York city environment, while the fifth nominee, Rogue One, wound up being shut out.
On the TV side, Game of Thrones: Battle of the Bastards continued its mojo from the ASC Awards, winning for work in a photoreal episode, with Black Sails winning in the supporting category.
Afterwards, perhaps in a nod to Ralston’s “photochemical era,” none other than Popular Mechanics was sponsoring the post-award party, Vanity Fair-style. Whether they get branded that same way, or whether the party becomes its own center of award night gravity, all remain to be seen, though VES does find itself adding more and more tables each for its show, each year.
A beaming Rob Legato showed up at the later the proceedings, and perhaps his comments, in a sense bookending Roth’s opening remarks, aptly took in the whole evening — whether it was Kubo’s stop-motion animation being honored, or fully-rendered cinema that redefines what we mean by “animation” or “visual effects” in the first place: “You are all artists!,” he told the room.
Indeed. Let’s hope those artists can all negotiate Oswalt’s prophesied wasteland, to reassemble next year.
Winners of the 15th Annual VES Awards are as follows:
Outstanding Visual Effects in a Photoreal Feature
The Jungle Book
Robert Legato
Joyce Cox
Andrew R. Jones
Adam Valdez
JD Schwalm
Outstanding Supporting Visual Effects in a Photoreal Feature
Deepwater Horizon
Craig Hammack
Petra Holtorf-Stratton
Jason Snell
John Galloway
Burt Dalton
Outstanding Visual Effects in an Animated Feature
Kubo and the Two Strings
Travis Knight
Arianne Sutner
Steve Emerson
Brad Schiff
Outstanding Visual Effects in a Photoreal Episode
Game of Thrones; Battle of the Bastards
Joe Bauer
Steve Kullback
Glenn Melenhorst
Matthew Rouleau
Sam Conway
Outstanding Supporting Visual Effects in a Photoreal Episode
Black Sails; XX
Erik Henry
Terron Pratt
Aladino Debert
Yafei Wu
Paul Stephenson
Outstanding Visual Effects in a Real-Time Project
Uncharted 4
Bruce Straley
Eben Cook
Iki Ikram
Outstanding Visual Effects in a Commercial
John Lewis; Buster the Boxer
Diarmid Harrison-Murray
Hannah Ruddleston
Fabian Frank
William Laban
Outstanding Visual Effects in a Special Venue Project
Pirates of the Caribbean; Battle for the Sunken Treasure
Bill George
Amy Jupiter
Hayden Landis
David Lester
Outstanding Animated Performance in a Photoreal Feature
The Jungle Book; King Louie
Paul Story
Dennis Yoo
Jack Tema
Andrei Coval
Outstanding Animated Performance in an Animated Feature
Finding Dory; Hank
Jonathan Hoffman
Steven Clay Hunter
Mark Piretti
Audrey Wong
Outstanding Animated Performance in an Episode or Real-Time Project
Game of Thrones; Battle of the Bastards; Drogon
James Kinnings
Michael Holzl
Matt Derksen
Joseph Hoback
Outstanding Animated Performance in a Commercial
John Lewis; Buster the Boxer
Tim van Hussen
David Bryan
Chloe Dawe
Maximilian Mallmann
Outstanding Created Environment in a Photoreal Feature
Doctor Strange; New York City
Adam Watkins
Martijn van Herk
Tim Belsher
Jon Mitchell
Outstanding Created Environment in an Animated Feature
Moana; Motunui Island
Rob Dressel
Andy Harkness
Brien Hindman
Larry Wu
Outstanding Created Environment in an Episode, Commercial, or Real-Time Project
Game of Thrones; Battle of the Bastards; Meereen City
Deak Ferrand
Dominic Daigle
François Croteau
Alexandru Banuta
Outstanding Virtual Cinematography in a Photoreal Project
The Jungle Book
Bill Pope
Robert Legato
Gary Roberts
John Brennan
Outstanding Model in a Photoreal or Animated Project
Deepwater Horizon; Deepwater Horizon Rig
Kelvin Lau
Jean Bolte
Kevin Sprout
Kim Vongbunyong
Outstanding Effects Simulations in a Photoreal Feature
The Jungle Book; Nature Effects
Oliver Winwood
Fabian Nowak
David Schneider
Ludovic Ramisandraina
Outstanding Effects Simulations in an Animated Feature
Moana
Marc Henry Bryant
David Hutchins
Ben Frost
Dale Mayeda
Outstanding Effects Simulations in an Episode, Commercial, or Real-Time Project
Game of Thrones; Battle of the Bastards; Meereen City
Thomas Hullin
Dominik Kirouac
James Dong
Xavier Fourmond
Outstanding Compositing in a Photoreal Feature
The Jungle Book
Christoph Salzmann
Masaki Mitchell
Matthew Adams
Max Stummer
Outstanding Compositing in a Photoreal Episode
Game of Thrones; Battle of the Bastards; Retaking Winterfell
Dominic Hellier
Morgan Jones
Thijs Noij
Caleb Thompson
Outstanding Compositing in a Photoreal Commercial
John Lewis; Buster the Boxer
Tom Harding
Alex Snookes
David Filipe
Andreas Feix
Outstanding Visual Effects in a Student Project
Breaking Point
Johannes Franz
Nicole Rothermel
Thomas Sali
Alexander Richter
