Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/22917
n n n n CG Environments Pioneers, people say, catch arrows in their backs, and that was certainly true for Disney’s groundbreaking film TRON. Re- leased in 1982, it was the first feature film to use CGI extensively. Not to create photoreal- ism, but to visualize computer technology in the future. Today, many people credit TRON with the birth of computer graphics in feature films, and the story about why TRON did not receive a visual effects Oscar is the stuff of CG legends. “It did not get nominated for a visual effects 6 December 2010 Oscar because AMPAS [the Academy] said that using computers was cheating,” says Sean Bailey, a producer of TRON: Legacy, Disney’s 2010 follow-up to the pioneering film. “When you see how we’re making [TRON: Legacy], it’s pretty damn ironic.” It was ironic even in 1982, given TRON’s story line: Kevin Flynn, a video game devel- oper played by actor Jeff Bridges, searches through a Master Control Program (MCP) to prove that another programmer had stolen his code. Digitized by a laser beam, Flynn enters the computer, a dark place where circuits of light outline characters, objects, and vehicles in an expansive virtual world. Once inside, Flynn, the computer User, battles captured Programs in life-or-death games, sometimes while riding speedy Lightcycles inside a Game Grid. Helping Flynn is Clu, a hacker Program Flynn wrote that looks like a mirror image of himself. Flynn escapes at the end, but MCP “de-rezzes” Clu. “Te guys who made that film were very much ahead of their time,” Bailey says. “Steve