BRITISH FILM COMMISSION
UK IN FOCUS 2016
There was a time when VFX threatened to con-
sign special effects to history, and Practical
Effects Supervisor Chris Corbould pins that to
1995 when he was overseeing a tank chase in
St Petersburg for James Bond film
GoldenEye
.
“The feeling among VFX supervisors was that
everything would soon be done digitally,” he
recalls.“Instead,as the scope of films got bigger,
there was a knock-on effect.My crew on
Golden-
Eye
was 40, but these days a typical size is 100.”
In a medium saturated with digital effects,
Corbould is prized for his ability to stage, say, a
120ft rotating corridor in
Inception
, an Under-
ground train crash in
Skyfall
or flipping an
18-wheel articulated lorry in
The Dark Knight
—
all on camera and without the aid of a single
post-production pixel. His team placed explo-
sions in the desert around the Millennium Fal-
con in
Star Wars: The Force Awakens
, and he is
working on the next film in the franchise.
“Certain directors prefer to capture as much
as possible on camera and then manipulate the
image in post,” says Corbould, whose career
began at the pre-dawn of computer graphics in
1978.“The script is the blueprint, but then it’s
a question of howwe can make it better.My job
is to come up with ideas and then hire a great
team to make it happen.”
The Corbould passion for effects is shared
among four brothers,each in the business and
pre-eminent in their field. “Fortunately, we
never pitch for the same film because we
tend to work on different genres,” says Cor-
bould. “I love doing more contemporary
films, my brother Neil likes the more
gritty action and war pictures [with
credits including
Saving Private
Ryan
,
World War Z
and
Alien:
Covenant
] and Paul fell into the
world of Marvel [
Captain Amer-
ica: The First Avenger
,
Doctor
Strange
].”The fourth sibling, Ian, took on
Jungle
Book: Origins
as his first sole
supervision.
Whatever project they work on, the Cor-
boulds are tasked with creating everything
from atmospheric effects such as fog, rain and
snowstorms to bombastic explosions and
designing hydraulics,robotics or pneumatics for
groundbreaking films including
Gravity
, which
seamlessly meshed physical and digital effects.
“This was a game changer.Even seasoned VFX
supers in Hollywood couldn’t work out how it
was done,”says Neil Corbould,who won an Oscar
for the film. “Sometimes animated objects just
don’t feel right and the audience won’t be fooled.
If you fire an object 100 metres, the speed, tra-
jectory and weight of impact will be real in a way
computer artists can find hard to replicate.”
According to Chris, it is this evolving blend of
CG and practical effects that keeps this defi-
antly analogue craft in demand. “The biggest
advantage is in the actor’s reactions,” he says.
“You get a very different reaction from actors
against a 360-degree green screen, as opposed
to when live pyrotechnics are shooting off.”
The family has trained dozens of UK-based
crew, some of whom are already snapping at
their heels.SteveWarner,mentored by Neil,was
a Bafta and Oscar nominee for
The Martian
.
“There are so many specialised courses, from
welding to driving forklifts, modelling and CAD
[computer-aided design],” says Chris,“that there
is talent in the UK primed, here and now, to take
this work forward.”
prACtiCAl MAgiC
THE CORBOULD FAMILY
“
THE SCRIPT IS THE
BLUEPRINT, BUT THEN IT
’
S
A QUESTION OF HOWWE
CAN MAKE IT BETTER
”
Chris Corbould, Practical Effects Supervisor
Chris Corbould
Chris Corbould’s team was
responsible for the explosive
introduction of the Millennium Falcon
in Star Wars: The Force Awakens
$2bn (£1.4bn) was spent on feature films here
— a staggering 83% of which was inward
investment—helping to propel the value of the
UK’s creative industries to $119bn (£84bn).The
recent extension of film tax relief to 25% of UK
spend, alongside a reduction in the minimum
UK spend required to earn rebates for high-end
TV, has cemented the country’s financial com-
mitment to attracting the biggest productions.
“There is a tendency to panic about where
the next tax break is coming from but, even if
places like Canada emerge as a centre of excel-
lence, you can’t replicate the organic growth of
the UK overnight,” says Cohen. “The UK is very
strong in creative and digital industries.”
team ethic
Part of the success of the UK’s effects industry
is also a question of geography, in particular
the unique tight-knit film community of Lon-
don’s Soho.
“The proximity of rivals within walking dis-
tance has helped to keep expertise and innova-
tion at a high level and means ideas and skills
evolve fast,” says Hope. “All of us compete
fiercely for work but, once awarded, we all
ensure the project comes first. That’s a hall-
mark of British VFX culture and fundamental to
its growth.”
It has also led to a population swell of VFX
artists who have taken pleasure in setting down
roots in a place where work is plentiful. In turn,
studios can be secure in the knowledge that
freelance talent is not dissipating after a major
production, but staying put to work on the next
project. This is increasingly valuable as the
complexity and scale of productions has rock-
eted.Where
Gladiator
contained fewer than 100
VFX shots, for example,
Star Wars: The Force
Awakens
featured 2,100; a volume that is fast
becoming routine for tentpole titles.
“VFX tends to refer to the very visually obvi-
ous use of effects on screen but quite a bit of
what we do is invisible, such as digital extras,
set extensions and environments,” explains
Sargent, who dubs this work “digital pro-
duction”.“With large productions regu-
larly carrying 2,000 shots, facilities
need scale [of artists and infrastruc-
ture] even to win partial awards.”
As a result of their tremendous suc-
cess, UK effects houses are taking on
an increasingly international presence.
Framestore, for example, spans the Atlan-
tic with 1,000 people in London, New
York, Los Angeles and Montreal. Dou-
ble Negative is even larger, with
around 4,500 employees and offices
in Mumbai, Singapore and Vancouver
to keep productions going around
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