Examining the nominees for best visual effects 2012

This year was an interesting period for film. Commercial blockbuster fare continued to rule the roost but the year end round up offered some surprising deep and adult fare. After nearly a year with non stop pummeling of superhero and noisy action fare, filmgoers were sated with some more dramatic offerings such as Zero dark thirty, Django Unchained, Hitchcock, Life of Pi, Beast of the Southern Wild and Silver Linings Playbook. As film years go, 2012 wasn't half bad as the nominees were announced, very little surprising or innovations seemed evident in the list of nominees.

The following are a list of nominees for Visual Effects

Life of Pi
Bill Westenhofer, Guillaume Rocheron, Erik-Jan De Boer and Donald R. Elliott

Marvel’s The Avengers
Janek Sirrs, Jeff White, Guy Williams and Dan Sudick

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
Joe Letteri, Eric Saindon, David Clayton and R. Christopher White

Snow White and the Huntsman
Cedric Nicolas-Troyan, Philip Brennan, Neil Corbould and Michael Dawson

Prometheus
Richard Stammers, Trevor Wood, Charley Henley and Martin Hill

All the nominees chosen represented excellent work. Prometheus, which fended off harsh criticism from fans and critics alike for being needlessly confusing, was visually very interesting but nothing in the film stood out as innovative or oscar calibre. What was stand out in that film for me as a viewer was that the filmmaker used a lot of location photography to depict the alien landscape as opposed to creating virtual environments which are technically somewhat of a mixed bag.

Marvel's Avenger was also visually satisfying and the technicians finally got the CGI Hulk to work after two moderately successful attempts. Avengers is at times  overwhelming in its visual content. I didn't feel much of a connect to the characters as I was awash in the relentless tide of CGI debris and explosions and alien onslaught that seem to be on a continuous loop.

The Hobbit, also well made and entertaining, offered nothing new or engaging in terms of it's visuals. It didn't seem to me that the film artists at WETA digital had made any considerable leaps in tech advancement or even art direction since their last Middle Earth outing nearly 7 years ago. It just seemed like more of the same gritty, earthy nirvana from Peter Jackson...running from Goblins, running from Trolls, large sweeping vistas etc, etc...the brief glimpse of Smaug the Dragon at the film end does promise some interesting visuals in the future installments. Snow White similarly also seemed to me more of the same CG "off- the -shelf" software solution to visual effects. 

For me the winner in this lot was Life of Pi. It took chances with the visual material and manage to make the CG animals believable and menacing. As I was watching the film it occurred to me that animal trainers will no longer be needed for films (provided the producers have the money to afford the expense of quality CGI). My prediction is Life of Pi will take the award.