By Thomas Csercsa

What do the movies Super Size Me, 300, The Simpson’s Movie, and The Social Network all have in common?
Not much, other than the fact that they were all edited using Apple’s Final Cut Pro.

These successful films put Final Cut on the map as a legitimate option for production companies, but they still only represent a moderate sample of movies produced in Hollywood. That’s mainly because anywhere from 80 to 90 per cent of Hollywood films are still edited using Avid, a company that introduced non-linear editing software more than 20 years ago.

“There was a running joke in the industry that said Avid is now 99 per cent off, because Final Cut, for $1,000 could do everything the $300,000 version of Avid could do at the time,” says Adam Wiseman, a graduate of the Toronto Film School who has worked as a freelance editor for a variety of production companies using both Avid and Final Cut Pro. “I know an editor who mortgaged his house just to pay for an Avid system.”

Wiseman, who now works for 9 Story Entertainment in Toronto, says they are two very different systems, but they are the two main contenders in the market. Now that Avid’s software has been made available at a lower price, it’s become possible to compare the products on a much more even level.

The main consideration has to be that neither of these editing systems is flawless. What works for some editors is a complete deal-breaker for others.

“Some people, once Final Cut came out and it became more stable, were like ‘good riddance, I hated Avid, it’s too complicated, there were too many steps that didn’t need to be there,’” says Wiseman.

As an editor at 9 Story, Wiseman’s most recent project has been editing Almost Naked Animals, a weekend cartoon on YTV.

YTV’s Almost Naked Animals in Final Cut Pro- All photos courtesy 9 Story Entertainment

After editing an episode with Final Cut, Wiseman hands it off to co-workers who work with Avid, so the file must be in XML format to cross platforms.

“The limitation was previously that I could have all my edit points, but if I had a transition between scenes like a wipe or a fade, it wouldn’t preserve those,” says Wiseman. “XML preserves the edit points no matter what program you’re using, and then you can re-link the footage.”

Avid also has a solid reputation among experienced editors who were already working in the industry before competitors began introducing their own non-linear systems. “We get the question all the time from younger people: ‘when did Avid come around?’ For kids coming out of school, typically they’ve been using Final Cut, and when they see our tools, they think we’re new,” says Kent Petersen, senior application specialist at Avid Canada. “We’ve had to market towards young people so that the younger generations are more aware of our product.”

Although younger generations have yet to fully embrace what Avid offers, broadcasters across the country have been using it since it’s been available.

One advantage of using Avid in newsrooms is the ability to work across platforms, says Peterson. “In a news environment, they have always been very centered on PCs. Because our application is cross-platform, if you decide to change computer systems, you can do that without needing to buy new software.”

Avid’s industry-leading storage capabilities also help keep the system in Canadian newsrooms. “We’re offering not just editing, but shared storage,” Petersen explains. “We have a whole suite that works for the broadcaster, in the sense of shared storage.”

Craig Sansom has spent much of the last 27 years editing stories together in various newsrooms in cities all over the world, including Toronto.

When he first started in the business, non-linear software was a fantasy. He says the strides made in the past couple of decades mean the possibilities for the next few years are virtually limitless. “When the first Avid came out, it was like walking on the moon. It was amazing, the fact that you could manipulate a timeline.”

Although Final Cut Pro has expanded into the professional film industry, Sansom says Canadian newsrooms haven’t made the switch to Apple’s software but he can see that as an option down the road.

Andy Coon, an independent documentary filmmaker and producer, has used Final Cut Pro exclusively since he began working in the industry.

“I’m interested in learning Avid, but the problem is that it’s so expensive. You have to have top of the line equipment to use it, unlike Final Cut Pro, which will go on pretty much any Apple system,” he says. “You’ll see a lot of independent filmmakers using Final Cut Pro and even Hollywood filmmakers are using Final Cut Pro. I would say it’s creeping into the industry and it’s made a big impact.”

Gone are the days when using Apple’s editing software was disrespected in the industry. “I remember going to jobs and they would laugh at me,” says Coon. Now he’s teaching them.

“It’s come a long way.”

By Alex Zakrzewski

From Churchill’s Island – Courtesy NFB

Churchill’s Island holds the unique distinction of being the first Oscar-winning Canadian film and documentary. Produced by the National Film Board (NFB), it was also until recently, literally rotting away in vaults and archives across North America, forgotten by the generations of filmmakers it unknowingly influenced.

Thanks to the NFB’s commitment to film conservation, Churchill’s Island is in the process of being restored, digitized and preserved in new media formats for film enthusiasts everywhere to appreciate.

A 20-minute newsreel, Churchill’s Island was produced in 1941 during the Second World War as part of two separate NFB film series called Canada Carries On and The World in Action.  Albert Ohayon, curator of the NFB’s English collection, explains film series such as these were screened theatrically before feature presentations and were an important means of informing and mobilizing the Canadian public for the war effort.  Having personally viewed nearly 7,000 films during his 27-year tenure with the NFB, Ohayon says Churchill’s Island “stands head and shoulders above films that were made in that era.”

The film uses captured enemy footage and first-person interviews (both a rarity at the time) to bring home to Canadian audiences the determination of a besieged England.  “The film is very striking visually and the message is very, very strong,” Ohayon says. “England is under siege but the people are working together to counter the threat of the Axis powers.” Even 70 years later, it’s difficult not to feel moved as the booming voice of narrator Lorne Greene reassures audiences that the English people themselves “stand once more at the watchtowers and the bastions of Churchill’s Island.”

Ohayon explains that because of its international focus, The World in Action series also found an audience in the United States.  But as powerful as the film’s message was, people weren’t interested in revisiting it after the war, he says. As a result, Churchill’s Island and other NFB war material was left to languish in vaults and archives. The effort to save the film is part of the NFB’s plan to restore, digitize and preserve on new media formats some 13,000 titles dating back to 1939.
[pullquote]“The film is very striking visually and the message is very, very strong.”
- Albert Ohayon, NFB[/pullquote]
Richard Cournoyer, laboratory and conservation supervisor, explains that the first step in any project is compiling all available film material.   Images captured on 16mm or 35mm film went through a series of processes between the original camera negative and the final version sent to theatres. One of the immediate problems Cournoyer and his team have faced with Churchill’s Island is tracking down all the available material which is spread across the NFB vaults, the National Archives and the Academy of Motion Pictures in Hollywood.

All material is then examined for damage, fungus, and what Cournoyer calls “vinegar syndrome” – acidic molecules that infect the film causing decay detectable by a vinegar-like smell.

The next step is to create a Digital Source Master (DSM).  Each DSM contains a film’s component parts (sound, image, effects) and segments (titles, subtitles, credits) in all existing languages.  Images are digitized using one of two devices, an Arriscan scanner or a Datacine.  The sound is digitized using Pro Tools.  Two separate teams work to treat and restore image and sound separately, and as close to the film’s original state as possible, before synchronizing the components.  The result is a Digital Master (DM), which along with the DSM is saved to the NFB archives and kept should future restoration and improvement be needed.  Once the DM is complete, it’s compressed into a mezzanine file from which the film can be exported onto a range of digital formats including DVD, web download and mobile platforms.

Cournoyer says that the preservation process has come a long way since the NFB’s conservation efforts began in 1991.  He laughs when recalling the initial method for detecting “vinegar syndrome” was a student hired to go around smelling the film cans.  “We stopped that because it might be dangerous,” he says.

The NFB’s film preservation efforts can be at times controversial.  Thomas Waugh, professor of cinema studies at Concordia University and an expert on documentary film, is critical of certain aspects of the restoration and digitization process.   While Waugh agrees that important pieces of Canada’s film heritage should be preserved, he questions the artistic merit of some of their choices – including Churchill’s Island.  “The fact that it won an Academy Award does not necessarily mean it’s a very special and wonderful film,” Waugh says.  “It’s like an everyday film from the NFB and it’s wonderful in that respect but it doesn’t stand out from the others.”

Artistic tastes aside, Waugh says the main problem with the NFB’s restoration and digitization efforts is language.  During the digitization process all language versions of a film are scanned, restored and archived, and then made available to audiences. However, Waugh says that not enough is done to make films originally produced in only one official language available in both, if only with subtitles.  “The restoration activities should be taking a remedial approach to this,” he says. “They shouldn’t be trapped by the original linguistic policy of the NFB.  What they’ve done so far in making up for historical errors is pretty disappointing.”

Cournoyer says it is too soon to say when Churchill’s Island will be fully restored and digitized. Material and technicalities aside, the NFB is also a production house – Cournoyer and his skeleton staff of seven have to split their time between conservation and working on the new productions.  He says it takes his team nine hours of work to preserve just one hour of film.  Despite these difficulties, Cournoyer takes solace in the fact that once everything is digitized, it will be preserved hopefully forever. “It’s going to take us twenty years to do that if there’s no problems, no surprises, no end of funding,” he says.  “Ideally, we need special funding, but nobody has that.”

By Lindsay Tsuji

Big budget, green screen, Terminator-style explosions and special effects aren’t for everyone. That’s particularly true for filmmakers who simply don’t have the budget or manpower to make it happen.

Filmmakers and producers are often bogged down with rental fees for equipment, permits and paperwork. But lately, technology has been on their side. Handheld mobile devices could be just what these cinema enthusiasts need.

In January, Apple announced that more than 10 billion mobile applications have been downloaded by more than 160 million iPhone, iPod touch and iPad users worldwide. With over 350,000 different apps, people are discovering new ways to make life just a little bit easier. Who says it can’t be easier for artists, too?

Mobile apps can do a number of different things to help filmmakers create the film they’ve always wanted. Fine Cut checked out three that are already on the market.

First up is a storyboard app by Cinemek. Based in California, they are most well-known for producing the ‘G5’ 35 mm lens adaptor, an HD imaging device that allows for depth of field and field of view at 35mm. Cinemek launched the app in 2009 – it allows moviemakers to take pictures from their phone and create a storyboard on the road.

Photo courtesy of Cinema Inc.

Jonathan Houser, CEO of Cinemek, says his company saw an opportunity to make things a bit easier for filmmakers. “It allows you to play with your ideas so that you can get real time feedback on it,” Houser says.

As a seasoned cinematographer and former Seattle Film Institute professor, Houser says he saw his students struggling to convey their movie ideas on paper. The app can help you map out your film while you’re still in the inception stage, Houser explains.

“Before you start renting gear, before you start getting cameras, you can pre-visualize and think about your close-ups and think about your wide shots and play them back real time on your phone,” Houser says. “So you really get an idea of exactly how your film is going to look and then you’re educated a little bit more before you start production.”

For $20, Houser says it’s not the cheapest app out there but it can save you money in the long term.

Next on deck is an app from Moviola, a company that has been producing tools for filmmakers since the 1920s.

They released their Final Cut Pro Field Guide mobile app in March 2010. This $3.99 app tries to eliminate the uh-oh stages of editing. From a searchable listing of all Final Cut keyboard shortcuts to step-by-step instructions on how to troubleshoot audio sync problems, this app delves into the mechanics of editing with Final Cut software.

Randy Paskal, president at Moviola in Hollywood, California says this kind of technology allows filmmakers “to have the confidence to try new things while they’re right in the middle of action.”

The third app comes from film stalwart Kodak. Their depth of field calculator is available for a free download from the iTunes app store. It calculates the setting for a desired focus in a shot and can create different moods in film. The Kodak app lets you enter information like film format, F-stop, and focal length to calculate things like the near limit and far limit distances.

Nicole Phillips, director of web marketing for the Entertainment Imaging Division at Kodak, says this app allows people to use technology as they’ve always done but with more speed and efficiency. “It would just be easier than to have to look it up in a book or use one of those old-fashioned wheels to find out what the right numbers are for lighting or the distance from the character to the camera. The process requires the same discipline.”

[pullquote]“The mobile device is the most pervasive computer that we’ll probably ever see in the next couple decades. It’s just another way to engage the customers.”
- Ameet Shah, Five Mobile Inc.[/pullquote]

These three apps are different in focus, price and use, but what they do have in common is they’re trying to make it easier for filmmakers to make movies on the go. Whether you’re an established filmmaker or an aspiring indie moviemaker, you still want your idea to fully come to life on the big screen.

Ameet Shah is a managing partner of Five Mobile Inc. in Toronto. They’ve produced apps for Disney, Cineplex and Sony Pictures television. “At the end of the day, you gotta realize that the mobile device is the most pervasive computer that we’ll probably ever see in the next couple decades. It’s just another way to engage the customers,” says Shah.

“There are certainly people out there that are purists, but it depends on what your goal is. If you think of it as a business then you need to look at these things.” There have always been naysayers to technology that overreaches into the creative world, but Moviola’s Paskal says it allows for more free thinking.

“I think you’re also finding a lot more creativity becoming available as a result of these tools being around.”

By Joseph Engelhardt

There has been a lot said about the DSLR revolution. Cameras like the Canon 5D Mark II and 7D, and Panasonic D7000 have made waves in the filmmaking industry. For the first time, filmmakers are now speaking in terms of thousands of dollars rather than tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars to get their hands on a camera that will shoot high quality video.

“It’s democratized high-end filmmaking,” says Fred Konkin, manager of video sales at Vistek in Toronto.

For many, the revolution began with the announcement of the Canon 5D Mark II in September 2008, which promised full high-definition video in a product that was priced below $5,000. Soon, serious filmmakers began experimenting with what the 5D could do. Konkin says it wasn’t long before consumers began clamouring for the new cameras, eager to try out the latest new toys.

While it’s undeniable that this new wave of DSLR cameras are capable of shooting incredible video, for many there is a polarizing debate as to what the role of the DSLR should be in the industry, or if it should even be taken seriously.

Fred Konkin with a Canon 7D in a Redrock rig – Photo by Joseph Engelhardt

Konkin is quick to acknowledge that while the DSLR is a valuable filmmaking tool, it does have  limitations, perhaps most notably with audio quality.

“The audio quality of DSLR’s is poor at best,” he says.

Konkin says that while the initial hype of the DSLR is lagging, filmmakers are beginning to find niches where the cameras work best, such as filming close-up shots.

“Originally the swing was to throw away my video camera and do everything on DSLR, but now it’s swung back,” he says. “The video cameras are now used as the bases, doing wide angle shots, telephoto shots, and you’ve got continuous audio being recorded, and then you fill in the shots with the DSLRs.”

Christopher Huchenski, creative director at Vistek, agrees that while the initial trend of using a DSLR to shoot everything is coming to an end, they are still massively popular with filmmakers. “The fad will last another year, at least,” he predicts.

Both Huchenski and Konkin pointed to another valuable role that DSLRs have been able to fill for professional filmmakers. Due to their compact size and relative cheapness, Konkin observes that DSLRs are being used in places and situations where larger cameras either wouldn’t fit or were at risk of being damaged.

“You want to strap them all over a car and blow it up, and they don’t care because they’re so cheap,” he says. “And Rodney (Charters, director of photography for 24) did that, he had one car and must have had five to eight Canon 5Ds on it. From every angle I do one take. I get every shot I ever wanted to get and I don’t care if the cameras are destroyed.”

For independent filmmakers, DSLR cameras also offer great advantages in terms of cost. Jonathan Krimer, the president of the Toronto Filmmakers Association, says that DSLR cameras are giving independent filmmakers working on limited budget a huge advantage by substantially cutting the cost of the cameras themselves.

“You’re getting a film look for a very inexpensive price,” he says.

Krimer says that some of the technological advancements of the DSLR, such as control over depth of field, have made it particularly popular with filmmakers. “Before, everything was flat, so you have more control. You have the ability to tell the audience what to focus on,” he says.

While the DSLR camera does present filmmakers with a new, affordable alternative to more conventional means of shooting, it is not without opponents. Justin Oakey, a Toronto-based filmmaker who has produced short films using both DSLRs and more conventional cameras, feels that the availability of the DSLR camera to mass market consumers means it’s more difficult for filmmakers to establish themselves.

“People aren’t impressed when you make a film anymore, because anyone can do it now,” he says.

Oakey points to video-sharing sites like Vimeo and YouTube, which are now overloaded with videos shot on DSLRs that look professional but aren’t. He says this overload makes it hard for independent filmmakers to use these sites and get their work noticed. Having shot a film with a DSLR, Oakey also pointed to challenges he faced with the technology itself, including issues with file compression and frustrations when it came to editing the footage.

“It’s almost like the illusion of a really nice camera,” he says.

Oakey says that DSLRs – which are still primarily used for still photography – compress the images shot down to a level where the quality can be substandard.

Mark Tollefson, a filmmaking professor at Toronto’s Ryerson University, is also a vocal critic of the DSLR’s popularity, citing its many technical limitations as a huge drawback.

“I would hardly say it’s a technical advancement when you’re taking a huge step backwards,” he says, making specific reference to the audio limitations of the DSLR. “There are lots of real cameras that are not much more expensive,” he says.

Tollefson also says that DSLRs simply can’t handle certain types of shots, most notably ones that involve lots of motion. “It’s a motion picture camera that doesn’t do motion.” Tollefson, who is also active in the Canadian film and television industry, notes that many broadcasters simply won’t accept high definition footage from a DSLR camera. He said these broadcasters have issues with the quality of HD footage that a DSLR produces.

“Most of the HD broadcasters are very touchy about what is HD,” he says.

One area where both the advocates and opponents of DSLR agree upon is that the cameras are by no means the be all and end all of what the future of filmmaking is, despite what consumers might believe.

Konkin notes that some of the large video camera companies such as Panasonic and Sony have already responded to the popularity of the DSLR by producing affordable, high quality video cameras.

Konkin specifically points to the Panasonic AF-100, which was released at the end of December, as a major challenger to the popularity of the DSLR.

“It’s more versatile and the results are outstanding,” he says, noting that perhaps one of the biggest strengths of the AF when compared to a DSLR is audio quality.

While it’s undeniable that the advent of the DSLR camera has changed the way filmmakers view cameras and filmmaking, it also seems that it is far from the revolutionary game-changer that fans of the camera forecasted when the Canon 5D first launched. With painfully apparent limitations, it seems highly unlikely that a DSLR camera will be shooting Hollywood blockbusters any time soon. Instead, the DSLR has found a niche as a utility camera and goes places filmmakers would never dream of putting a conventional one.

Because if your camera’s only worth a couple thousand dollars, why not blow it up to get the shot?

By Katie O’Connor

The smell of chemicals hangs heavily in the air. A single light bulb casts eerie shadows on the students’ faces as they tear open bags of fixer and developer and stir them carefully into water using wooden spoons. “I can’t wait to see how this turns out,” gushes Natalie, a twenty-something girl sporting think horn rimmed glasses, as she clutches a reel of film.

It’s a gorgeous Sunday morning in February and a small group of students have gathered in a dimly lit darkroom at the offices of the Liaison of Independent Filmmakers of Toronto, a co-op dedicated to the preservation of film. The students are preparing to hand process celluloid film they shot the day before using a Bolex.

There is a palpable excitement in the air and its this feeling that brings the group out early on a Sunday morning to learn something that has been called a dying medium, an archaic art. They haven’t seen what their footage looks like yet.  The mystery adds to the anticipation.

Digital purists make the argument that when using digital, you see the results instantly. With film, especially for those new to it, questions of exposure, focus, lighting and angle aren’t answered until the film has been processed.

The results could be brilliant or dismal.

“The moment in the darkroom when the image starts to come is magic,” said Toronto-based filmmaker Phil Hoffman. “I don’t get that in digital. That is a thrill, an epiphany that I look for in making films. That’s why I don’t use a script, and I depend on the process and image to tell me things.”

[pullquote]“The moment in the darkroom when the image starts to come is magic.”
- Phil Hoffman, filmmaker[/pullquote]

Hoffman teaches production in the film department at York University in Toronto. Students spend their first year of the program shooting strictly on film. He has watched people who grew up on a steady diet of digital discover the world of analogue.

“What hooks them into film is the thrill of seeing what was in their head, and how it turns out,” he said. “It sometimes doesn’t work out, or it can work magically. That’s the magic of film that digital does not express in the same way.”

Hoffman believes that physical processes affect mental processes, and that in using film, the subconscious of the filmmaker will somehow become connected with the footage. “Things will start to happen that you don’t expect and those things are energetically connected with the project you need to make,” he said. “There is something different about that process that actually affects the creative process, that’s why I hold onto it.”

Digital allows an endless number of takes from various angles can be shot until the scene is just right. With film, there is a certain number of feet on a reel, limits the number of shots and takes that are possible creating a sense of unpredictability.

But some filmmakers see these limitations as a good thing. Tracy German, a Toronto-based filmmaker, has made a variety of short films and documentaries over her 14-year career, many of which were shot on film. “Limitations yield intensity,” she says. Being able to shoot hours and hours of footage takes away the preciousness of film. In having a limited amount of footage and space, filmmakers are forced to think about the shots that they are taking and what they need to form a visual narrative. “It’s about the process of being willing to go into the medium and trying to understand what you have shot and the form within it,” she says.

Chemicals to develop film - Photo by Mark Zanin

German finds that with digital, there is always the need for more. “The problem with more footage is you need more hard drive space, more high tech equipment. It’s a more more more system and nothing is good enough at a certain point.”

Coral Aiken is the community outreach co-ordinator for the Liaison of Independent Filmmakers of Toronto. She teaches community workshops to kids where they use super 8 cameras to make movies. The idea is to get them used to thinking about what shots they need to take, rather than shooting everything in sight.

“If you shoot on video you can take this endless amount of footage, and when you get into the editing room it’s sort of overwhelming,” she says. “The idea of these limitations forces you to prepare a lot more and limit what you shoot.”

Shooting with film also allows filmmakers to have a physical connection with their work. With digital, the footage is shot, transferred to a hard drive, and then manipulated with buttons. Until a DVD is created, there is nothing tangible. With film, a filmmaker can physically hold their work in their hands.

They hand crank the camera to power it, use their fingers to process the images and then project the finished product, listening to the whirring of the projector as the images they so painstakingly created appear on screen.

Aiken, who is a trained dancer and choreographer, was drawn to film because of this aspect. “The physicality is really important to me,” she says. “Super 8 is on these little plastic reels, and you can just have your movie in your hand and its very tangible and physical.”

For German, there is a sense of empowerment in working with film. After graduating from film school, German spent several years in the film industry until she became pregnant with her son. As a woman and mother, she began to feel invisible to the working world. She fought this feeling by continuing to make films using a do-it-yourself approach, where she shot, edited and processed everything herself.

“Filmmaking can be a big industrial complex where you don’t have very much control over it at all. [Working with film] takes it back down to its simplest and most accessible roots. You do have absolute control over it and you can imbue the medium with your own sensibility, your own quirky aesthetic and show that back to the world.”

There is a new generation of artists turning to analogue technologies to make and show their work, to rediscover what digital is so desperately trying to replicate. “It’s all just trying to re-create film, so why not learn a little about it and see what the big deal is,” Aiken says. “If people are super interested in looking at image quality, they are going to come back to film eventually or at least experiment with it.”

For Hoffman there will never be anything like film. “It has rich tones, it looks different. It has grain so it looks like an impressionist painting,” he says. In the age of Youtube, where anyone and everyone can shoot a movie, using film allows a filmmaker to stand out among the crowd, while gaining knowledge that enhances their craft.German sums it up perfectly. “You can do things quickly with the new technology, and edit something in a day, and that can be great, but overall it takes a long time to do a good film, and it takes a lot of work. You have to fall in love with something about it to keep you going for such a long period of time. You have to fall in love with it over and over again.”

Click here to find out how to process negative black and white film in your bathroom!

By Colin Ellis

It’s a mask so fascinating viewers can’t take their eyes off it.

Bringing to life Rorschach, the most infamous character in the classic graphic novel Watchmen, was one of the challenges for Zack Snyder when he adapted the novel by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons into a feature film in 2009.

Dressed like a detective from a film noir, Rorschach is arguably the most dangerous and compelling character in Moore and Gibbons’s book, an uncompromising anti-hero alienated from the rest of society. Part of what makes him so fascinating is his mask – a cloth with a constantly morphing inkblot. The designs they create are ambiguous patterns similar to the character’s namesake, a Rorschach test. They appear to have a mind of their own. They move across his face like liquid and are in some ways a reflection of the character himself: morally ambiguous and deeply mysterious.

Courtesy Randy Daudlin

Snyder employed the services of Intelligent Creatures, a visual effects company based in Toronto to help with the design of Rorschach’s “face.” To produce such a complex effect, Intelligent Creatures used Houdini 3D animation software for some of the rendering and shading work. They also used Maya software to add lip synch and muscle movement to the character’s face, and completed the final composite rendering using Nuke, a node-based compositing software. The results can only be described as magical, and highlight the evolution and importance of CGI in creating visually complex characters and stories.

Lon Molnar, CEO and senior visual effects supervisor of Intelligent Creatures, says the flexibility of CGI allows filmmakers to envision the written word as it was imagined in the writer’s head. “We’re seeing all these old books that have been around a long time starting to be conceived in film because they can be,” he says. “Look at what it’s done for Marvel. We’re seeing all their comics being turned into movies because you can envision it properly.”

CGI has come a long way since John Lasseter created the first fully computer generated character for the 1985 film Young Sherlock Holmes. Since then, movies like Jurassic Park, The Mask, and Avatar have used it to dazzle movie audiences. But how has this evolution in filmmaking affected more traditional film techniques like makeup and prosthetics? And how have makeup artists adapted to the CGI revolution?

Donald Mowat, a makeup artist on the movie The Fighter, says there was more flexibility in terms of shooting movies with traditional, out-of-kit makeup 20 years ago. But HD can sometimes make these tricks more noticeable, and directors have no choice but to use CGI in order to perfect the scene.

“Now everything’s so true to the eye,” Mowat says. “A lot of the tricks we used you can’t get away with and certainly at least 50 per cent of the prosthetic makeup that you used to see you would not buy anymore.”

Mowat says the use of CGI to enhance makeup on films has sparked a debate among makeup artists over what is and isn’t “pure” makeup. The three films nominated for best makeup at this year’s Academy Awards – The Wolfman, The Way Back and Barney’s Version – were enhanced by CGI. True Grit and The Fighter, which used more traditional, out-of-kit makeup were not.

Rather than go digital for The Fighter, however, Mowat was able to use some of his old makeup tricks to turn Mark Wahlberg’s face into a bloody pulp. “That was just done old school with some surgical gauze in his mouth and really colouring his face properly and creating an illusion,” he says. “I really take pride in being able to create a scar out of paint, latex, scar material and moulding material.”

Cost also factors into the decision to use CGI over makeup. Randy Daudlin, a makeup artist for the 2004 remake of Dawn of the Dead and author of two film makeup books Reel Characters and Hurt ‘Em Reel Good, remembers a cannibal movie he worked on last summer that saw his work get pushed to the side when the producers thought it would be cheaper to go with CGI.

“At the eleventh hour, whoever was doing their visual effects made a deal and took everything and so we got squeezed out,” he says. “It was the first time I ever got replaced by a computer.”

Of course, the results of strictly relying on CGI don’t always work in the director’s favour. Daudlin says the filmmakers of the cannibal movie he was let go from realized they made a mistake when the film ended up looking like a disaster.

“How is a computer artist going to have blood seeping and the wardrobe staining and changing colour? All the details we do as makeup artists and keep track of as part of our continuity they won’t do. They can’t. It would cost so much money,” he says.

The advantage of using CGI in makeup is it allows filmmakers to enhance or augment an existing prosthetic as well as fix mistakes that can arise during shooting, says Miguel Sapochnik, director of the sci-fi action film Repo Men. “Certainly in all the CGI work I do we spend as much time as possible to get it as amazingly detailed and clear-looking as possible,” he says. However, in creating suspension of disbelief, Sapochnik says the problem with CGI is how noticeable it can be if used incorrectly or to completely replace makeup or prosthetics. “CGI has many great uses, but the reason you would rather use the real thing is because it is the real thing, and so the way it interacts with light, atmosphere and ultimately the actor is very hard to recreate effectively.”

But the question of what looks more realistic on screen is one that both visual effects and makeup artists grapple with. While the technology has certainly come a long way from Young Sherlock Holmes, some question the realism of CGI compared to makeup and prosthetics. Kalene Dunsmoor, a former digital artist for Lucasfilm in Singapore, says CGI can sometimes turn audiences off.

“There’s actually scientific studies that say puppets can evoke a more positive human reaction versus something close to being a human like a robot or CG double,” she says.

Dunsmoor points to Tron: Legacy and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button as examples of digital effects being used to create digital human doubles, but says the effect isn’t always convincing.

“I don’t think anyone’s quite perfected the human digital double yet and I don’t think people are going to be accepting of them until we get it dead-on accurate.”

Indiana Allemang, a film and TV makeup artist from Toronto agrees. She says that regardless of the technological advances, the detachment people feel watching a movie with people alongside computer generated humans is still there.

“There are some things you can’t do with CGI,” she says. “You also have to think about it from an acting standpoint, where some people are not believable with their CGI counterparts, like Day After Tomorrow or Armageddon.”

CGI also removes some of the magic of great makeup, says Mowat.

A motion capture suit - Photo by Sarah Horwath

“I think it takes away a lot of the fun and creativity for people like me who came up in the traditional system before we had all this digital,” he says. “I don’t think it’s a bad thing, but I don’t think it’s always the right thing.”

But for Molnar, it all depends on your perception. “You can talk about it taking away from the movie magic, but look at what it’s done for movie magic,” he says. Without this technology, Molnar says movies like Lord of the Rings and Avatar would not exist. “Makeup artists may not necessarily like the fact that we can do some of that stuff but the fact is we can do it.”

Mike Habjan, a visual effects artist on Saw IV agrees, pointing out that older technology limited directors to using things like miniatures like in Tim Burton’s Batman films, where they used models to create the look of Gotham City. Now, computers are involved in almost every detail of a film’s production.

“For the work of compositors, there’s always touch ups to be done on scenes and little effects to be added. They go into scenes and you don’t even notice it. It just looks natural.”

Habjan notes that while some people criticize CGI for being too noticeable or fake, filmmakers are getting better at making it look as real as possible. “In most Hollywood movies, you’re not going to notice the CG, but it’s in there and that’s the goal.”

Despite the apparent tension between makeup and visual effects artists, there are times when the two work well together. Daudlin says that it all depends on the quality of the people working in both fields to make it look right.

“[Animators] are basing their animation on models that we create for them and that’s what makes it look real… It all depends on their skill sets, our skill sets. The better the actual artist, the better the end product.”

Molnar also says makeup artists are still needed, but that they need to embrace the new technology. “Their techniques and skill sets are integral. They’re the basic principles to what we do in the digital world.”

Ultimately, filmmakers are trying to tell a story, and CGI can help facilitate that in ways unimagineable ten years ago. CGI is part of the toolkit, Sapochnik says, and it can allow artists to run riot with their imaginations. But there’s also something endearing about tangible creations, like the creature in John Carpenter’s The Thing, or Yoda in The Empire Strikes Back. Both feel inexplicably real and accessible even if there’s something primitive-looking about them.

The goal of CGI seems to be perfection, not only in a films look but in getting the performance of an actor to synch with a director’s vision. But for Sapochnik, what makes film a unique format is its natural imperfections.

“What tends to happen [with CGI] is that it’s so clean and it’s so perfect it basically defies reality, and reality is imperfect.”

Whatever technique is used, story matters most. As Dunsmoor points out, the goal of visual effects should be invisibility. Ironically, both CGI and makeup are doing their best not to be noticed.