Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/4522
A t their best, visual eff ects support a director's vision. Whether the direc- tor uses invisible eff ects in the back- ground or more visible digital charac- ters, the goal is always to support the story. In director Roland Emmerich's fi lm 2012, the story is about love, family, and the survival of the human species. Survival, that is, in the face of the entire planet's destruction. e end of the world. So, in this fi lm, the actors play people at the mercy of the eff ects. Actor John Cusack plays Jackson Curtis, a sci- fi author and limousine driver. Amanda Peet is Kate, Jackson's ex-wife. But, the real stars of Sony Pictures Entertainment's mega-disaster fi lm are the visual eff ects that rip apart Los Angeles, erupt Yellowstone National Park, fl ood the Himalayas, and cause massive amounts of mayhem around the globe. Co-producers Volker Engel and Marc Weigart supervised the eff ects. Both had worked with Em- merich on Independence Day, for which Engel won an Oscar for best visual eff ects. As is their practice, the two men expanded their production company, Uncharted Territory, to in- clude postproduction capability for the duration of 2012, hiring a crew of approximately 100, buy- ing hardware and software, and setting up shop on Sony's lot upstairs from Emmerich's editorial suite. e Uncharted Territory artists created 422 of the 1315 shots in the fi lm, and Engel and Wei- gart contracted with another 15 studios to wrestle the rest, each chosen at the outset for their par- ticular skills (see chart, pg. 28). "Half this movie is virtual," Engel says. " e ef- fects are about set extensions, particle work, and destruction." But, that hardly tells the story. e sets were monumental; the particle, fl uid, and rigid-body simulations that created the destruction were complicated. "People have done photoreal envi- ronments before," Weigart says. "But when the entire environment reacts to a physical event, it makes everything more than tenfold as complex." Listen to the visual eff ects supervisors at the November 2009 19