Summary
VFX artists explain whyGodzilla Minus One’s CGI looks so good despite its $12 million budget. Directed by Takashi Yamazaki, the hit Japanese monster movie takes the titular kaiju back to its roots, chronicling its destruction of post-war Japan.Godzilla Minus Onereleased to glowing reviewslast year, and ended up taking home the Oscar for Best Visual Effects at this year’s Academy Awards ceremony.
The VFX artists atCorridor Crewnow take a look atGodzilla Minus One’s impressive visual effects during a recent episode of their “VFX Artists React” YouTube series, diving into why the film’s CGI looks so good.
The artists celebrate thatYamazaki, in addition to serving as director, also served as the film’s VFX supervisor, allowing him to closely manage a team of only 35 artists for the film’s 610 VFX shots. The Corridor team highlights thatGodzilla Minus Onesmartly uses “anime animation styles” for select shots, while other shots, such as those involving a large ship, use inventive camera maneuvers instead of a complex gimbal rig to sell motion. In his comment below, host Niko Pueringer points out one another smart trick that was used:
“One thing that really caught my eye in this film is the symmetry on Godzilla. So Godzilla is super highly detailed, like we’re talking hundreds of millions of polygons and displacement maps all over the place. And to do something like that, you have a sculptor basically on a computer going in and inch by inch along the surface, just sculp, sculp, sculp, sculp, sculp. The thing is, you have to do that for the entire character, unless you just do it for half the character and just have a mirror line down the middle and mirror it to the other side.”
How Hollywood Can Learn From Godzilla Minus One
Hollywood Movies Have Become Too Expensive
It’s no secret that Hollywood blockbusters have become remarkably expensive. Most Marvel movies seem to cost more than $200 million these days, but other non-superhero movies are also costing more as well. Using the standard Hollywood rule of thumb,a movie with a $200 million budget is looking at a break-even point of roughly $500 million at the box office. In an age where audiences are more selective about what movies they see in theaters, these large investments can be major risks.
Godzilla Minus One’s box officetapped out at $115.9 million worldwide, making it a major success.
Godzilla Minus One, however, was made on a fraction of the budget of its Hollywood contemporaries, and it arguably looks just as good if not better. The success of the film from a visual standpoint is likely due in large part to the entire philosophy that Yamazaki approached the project with. Instead of the standard Hollywood VFX practice of numerous iterations and changes in direction in post-production, Yamazaki, a skilled VFX artist himself, had a clear plan that he executed forGodzilla Minus One, and no resources were wasted as part of shifts in vision.
Godzilla Minus One Ending Explained
Godzilla Minus One featured a few twists that require explaining, along with where all of the characters wound up at the end of the action.
The value of having an experienced VFX supervisor direct a VFX-heavy film can also be seen with Gareth Edwards andThe Creator, a film that was made on a relatively small (for its scope and scale) $80 million budget. With movies relying more and more on CGI,it’s clearly incredibly valuable for directors to have an intimate knowledge of the VFX process to ensure that money actually ends up on the screen.Godzilla Minus One’s success critically and commercially suggests Yamazaki will get to bring another effects-heavy spectacle to life in the near future.
Godzilla Minus One
Cast
In Godzilla Minus One, set in postwar Japan, an unyielding Godzilla emerges in a landscape already ravaged, leaving survivors to unite against the monstrous threat. With no aid from military forces or government, the community must confront their fears to fend off the escalating peril.
