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www.postmagazine.com 23 POST NOVEMBER 2014 THE BOXTROLLS ANIMATION Laika takes stop-motion animation to the next level with The Boxtrolls, the studio's third feature fi lm. Cheese- bridge is a Victorian-era town with quirky buildings, cobblestone streets, a town square, and a castle-like Guild Hall, where snooty, rich, cheese-ob- sessed aristocrats and the Cheese Guild's "White Hats" meet. Below the streets, live the Boxtrolls, a gang of harmless, box-wearing, dump- ster-diving creatures that are mistak- enly perceived as evil. Laika created physical puppets for the production. CG was used, in part, for back- grounds and secondary characters. OSCAR OUTLOOK GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VISUAL EFFECTS James Gunn's sci-fi space fantasy, Guardians of the Galaxy, took movie-goers to new worlds, while also turning out to be the summer's big box offi ce winner in the process. The Marvel Studios'/Walt Disney Pictures' hit churned out some truly inspiring VFX. From a walking/ talking tree, to a kick-ass, foul-mouthed raccoon, and some outstand- ing 3D environmental work, Guardians relied on more than fi ve VFX studios to bring it life, including the collaborative talents of three major post houses: Imageworks, MPC and Framestore. MPC (Vancouver) completed 857 VFX shots for the fi lm, including the full-CG character Groot, environments and spacecraft, and worked closely with Frame- store on Rocket Raccoon for many scenes. Sony Imageworks (Culver City) completed 88 shots, including the engine room sequence and the Dark Aster ship. According to Pete Travers, VFX supervisor with Sony Imageworks, this is "the stuff I love. Honestly, just watching people of diff erent skill sets work together to fi gure out a solution of how to get something done so quickly and successfully." EDGE OF TOMORROW VISUAL EFFECTS The Doug Liman sci-fi thriller, Edge of Tomorrow, may be a bit of a dark horse for the visual eff ects category, but the 3D and visual eff ects work of VFX supervisor Nick Davis and the pooled eff orts of MPC, Sony Imageworks and Framestore (along with previs by The Third Floor) just couldn't go without mention. Tom Cruise stars as an army public relations special- ist who suddenly gets thrust into active duty. Killed within moments of landing on a beach, in a brutal and relentless battle with aliens, Cruise is forced to live yet another day, time and time again, fi ghting the same battle until he gets a step closer each time to beating the enemy. With more than 1,000 visual eff ects shots in the fi lm, Liman says they "were all equally tough, as I didn't want it to look like there are any VFX shots. The Bourne Identity had 200 VFX shots and you can't spot any of them. But that's a far easier situation. Here, once you have an alien, the audience inherently knows the shot's not real, so that's a tough challenge — to make it look real."