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A few weeks ago I got a chance to visit Tippett Studio and was given a tour by Phil Tippett himself. He was seven-years-old when he saw Ray Harryhausen’s The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad and knew what he wanted to do with his life. Since then he has worked on Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, received his first Academy Award nomination for his dragon in Dragonslayer, was awarded his first Oscar in 1984 for his work on Return of the Jedi, worked with Paul Verhoeven on both RoboCop (the terrifying ED-209) and Starship Troopers (the even more terrifying alien arachnids), would win another Oscar for his visual effects on Jurassic Park, and the list goes on…
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At the time that I dropped in, the employees at Tippett Studio were hard at work on visual effects for a Chinese fantasy film. Also in the pipeline: an amusement ride for a theme park in China titled Dream of Anhui, which will screen at 6K and 48fps which used “drones to collect exhaustive photogrammetry data to reproduce real-world mountains with significant photographic and geographic accuracy.”
To hear Phil talk about it, he was reluctant to take on the project but Wanda, China’s largest commercial property company and the world’s largest cinema chain operator, had very specific guidelines for who could be hired. Being an Oscar winner was one of the requirements, and Phil ended up going to China to do location scouting and come up with other ideas for how to transport the audience “across twelve distinct and beautiful locations in the Anhui province of China in one, uninterrupted shot.” The drones and photogrammetry data would all help to digitize the landscapes and historical landmarks. Sadly, they couldn’t use any aerial shots for the sky in China because the pollution was so bad.
I viewed the demo and Tippett Studio delivers on its promise of soaring camera movements with photorealistic CGI panoramas. What I was not privy to for the demo were the additional perks that the Chinese audience would get: a completely immersive experience that straps them into dynamic seats that move with the motion of the camera while you are surrounded by the dome-projected images to give you the sense that you are swooping Superman-style over bridges and rivers. Still, I would not trade their experience for that of breathing relatively clean air, although I’m sure there are already plans to monetize that experience too – and not just in China.
I can’t help but think of Soylent Green and the similarities. In this case it’s distracting a population from its polluted miseries with a simulacrum of blue skies that no longer exist. But who am I to point a finger at other cultures? Here in America we have a dizzying multitude of things that help distract us from the climate changes that will effect us all. Unlike Soylent Green, however, I don’t think we’ll be resorting to eating people. Some will be able to adapt to food and water shortages in ingenious ways, and indeed a Soylent powder drink already favored by Silicon Valley workaholics seems to be gaining traction.
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Image may be NSFW.
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Image may be NSFW.
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Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.
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Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
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Image may be NSFW.
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Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.
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More info on Tippett Studio:
Oh, and just for fun, a P.S.A. we shot with Mr. Tippett to remind our movie-going customers on matters of etiquette: