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5. Rough Magic
The attack mode is a good one for an effects specialist to be in these days, when frustration and anxiety temper the exhilaration of being in demand. The typical request for effects shots per picture has skyrocketed from the dozens to the hundreds. The chaos has sent the small but burgeoning industry into a tizzy. Special-effects houses can go under from not winning big contracts or underbidding for them, by failing to meet deadlines or producing less-than-brilliant results. The cost of software, computers, and animators has shot up as quickly and fatally as a Plasma Bug's spume. For its investment to pay off, a company must generate a stream of assignments. But sometimes it's hard to snag new business when you're swamped by a single huge project -- like Titanic. ILM's chief competitor in the live-action field, L.A.-based Digital Domain, got the contract for Titanic, but industry talk has it that the company underestimated the project and lost money. Digital Domain laid off 31 workers when the company couldn't segue into another jumbo production.
Jon Davison admits to feeling worried for Tippett, who expanded his West Berkeley base and built his staff to 100 while laboring on Starship Troopers. "One of the things that happens is you end up acquiring more people, more machines, more software, more space -- more overhead. And as the overhead expands, so does the risk that you won't be able to support it." Davison takes the collapse of the 90-strong Boss Studios in L.A. last August as a cautionary tale. The studio's founder, Richard Edlund, achieved industry-wide fame at ILM for his effects work on the Star Wars trilogy; later, Boss won its own acclaim for films like Ghostbusters and Die Hard. But, Davison says, "the profit margin in the effects business is very small, and because every time out of the box you're trying to create something new and different, it's a risky financial venture. You can get a director who changes his mind and sinks you; software problems can sink you."
In this crazy all-or-nothing period, even studio-backed companies like Warner Digital (Batman and Robin) can go belly up. And undeniable special-effects bonanzas like Starship Troopers hit the screen with blocks of credits that are patchwork quilts. Sony Pictures ImageWorks did just as eye-opening a job on the outer-space flak-fights as Tippett did on giant bugs. But completing the film required a half-dozen other effects sources, including ILM and the late, lamented Boss. Despite the competition, at moments like that an all-hands-on-deck feeling permeates the field. As Jim Morris told me in August, "The studio came to us and asked us to help them get the picture done, and of course we [did]. For a number of reasons: It doesn't do anyone in the effects business any good if effects pictures don't come out on schedule looking good, and the director, Paul Verhoeven, is somebody with whom we've worked before and hope to work with again."
Since the effects realm has become an ever-fragmenting environment, it's no wonder that breakthrough digital work often gets done at places that are less like factories and more like artists' guilds. As Morris explained to The New York Times, "The effects industry grew up with owner-operators; they paid their bills and they broke even because they got to do what they loved."
No matter what you think of the Star Wars influence on the art of movies in general, Lucas brought a Yankee tinker's obsessiveness and inventiveness into the realm of fantasy -- and his diverse followers have carried on that legacy. That's what gives their work on dull or silly projects its own integrity. Even if you can't stay awake through Casper, you have to recognize that it's a milestone for computer-graphics characters. Dragonheart may be a pale medieval dilute but the dragon itself is a marvel of expressive design.
If the Bay Area's most prominent digital sorcerers have survived the industry shakeouts that have tumbled houses in L.A., it's because they've kept their individual personalities and owner-operator status. Tippett's partners in Tippett Studio are his wife, producer Jules Roman (the company's vice president), and design-collaborator Hayes (who carries the title of art director and visual effects supervisor). Davison sums up their approach: "They hire artists and train them to use technology, as opposed to people who hire experts in technology and then try to force the art."
6. Fantastic Voyage
Right now, Tippett's working on effects shots for Virus, with Jamie Lee Curtis and Alec Baldwin, and Disney's big-screen My Favorite Martian, starring Christopher Lloyd. His next all-out project -- tentatively called Expedition -- could be an artistic breakthrough for the same computerized image-making that almost put him out of business. As far as the plot goes, he and producer Davison will say little more than it's "about an expedition to another world." If Tippett gets his way, everything in it will be computer-generated, including its human characters. Of course, Toy Story was fully computer-generated, too. But that was a family cartoon (albeit one with 3-D depth of animation), and its humans were deliberately peripheral and more two-dimensional than its toys. Tippett insists that he can bring off Expedition as an adult feature whose computer-generated protagonists are as complex as humanity. If he succeeds, he will open uncharted realms of expression to high-tech artisans.
For the audience, this could mean new levels of pop transcendence. Look at it this way: If all goes according to plan, this movie will have the mesmeric effect on moviegoers in 2001 that 2001 had in 1968. Tippett has conceived it as a visual tour de force, but in an opposite direction from that sci-fi classic. Kubrick achieved a documentary dystopia with remarkably detailed miniatures and full-scale props; he persuaded audiences of the hollowness of future men and the vitality of diverse space vehicles and a super-computer, HAL. In a sense, HAL will be making Expedition. Even Kubrick in 2001 couldn't pull off the emergence of a "star child." All the (non-stoned) audience saw was an aged human abruptly become a giant bulbous-headed baby in a clear-skinned egg. But if Kubrick's aesthetic had contained and unified every aspect of human and alien behavior and design, he might have convinced the most hardened skeptics. The computer makes that overarching control possible.
