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'Indiana Jones' and the digital jungle
SAN FRANCISCO -- In these hallowed halls, Indiana Jones almost seems out of place.
A banner with a two-dimensional cutout of the swashbuckling archaeologist swings through the lobby of Industrial Light and Magic, where life-size replicas of Darth Vader and Bobba Fett from Star Wars stand guard.
The home of George Lucas' visual effects company is a high-tech temple to everything from the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park to the talking robots in Transformers. But Indy can't take credit for the digital wizardry for which ILM has become famous over the last couple of decades.
Not yet, anyway. That's because he hasn't been around for 19 years, a time in which special effects has mostly migrated from soundstage to server.
The first three Indy films were gritty, sweaty and tactile affairs, largely because everything onscreen physically existed somewhere. Not so with Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull— though that was almost the case.
When first approaching the latest Indy, director Steven Spielberg considered dusting off his old-school approach.
"He thought maybe we should just go back to the way we did things before, like matte paintings on glass and things like that," said visual effects supervisor Pablo Helman. "We entertained that idea for a little bit, but we realized we could serve the story better by using our digital tools."
That decision ultimately led to a filmmaking innovation that brings the random reactions of a virtual world to the big screen, giving more control to ILM's computers than ever before.
To the children romping outside at ILM's in-house daycare located just past the lobby, the notion of a digital "environment" being responsible for much of what's onscreen will probably seem quaint someday. But to the adult audiences who've glimpsed the latest Indy escapade, it's a big part of the reason this one looks so different from Jones' last crusade.
Helman, who previously worked with Spielberg on Munich and War of the Worlds, was tasked with creating realistic-yet-fantastic environments and creatures for Crystal Skull, which finds Jones traipsing from New England to New Mexico, Peru and the Amazon. Working on the Indy franchise for the first time was a daunting task for the low-key effects guru.
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