Oscar Contenders

The 92nd Academy Awards, which take place earlier this year on Feb 9th, are almost here, and the nominations will soon be in. And as usual, the spring and summer releases and biggest box office films of the past year, including such global juggernauts as Avengers: Endgame (the year’s top-grosser which pulled in an astounding $2.8 billion-plus haul), The Lion King ($1.6 billion), Spider-Man: Far From Home ($1.6 billion), and such other members of the billion-dollar club as Captain Marvel, Toy Story 4, Frozen 2, Aladdin and Fast and Furious Presents: Hobbs and Shaw, will have to vie for voter attention with the crowded fall and winter crop of potential contenders. 

Toy Story 4

And while all those sequels, reboots, retreads and spin-offs still drive the box office, they don’t galvanize Academy members when it comes to voting and awards. Instead, audiences will see the golden boys handed out to films that many of them haven’t even seen (or even heard of). For ‘tis the season when the studios momentarily turn their backs on familiar brands, sequels, tentpoles, money-making toons, superheroes and escapist fare (i.e. every one of those blockbusters), and give their full attention to such (mostly) serious, Oscar-worthy prestige projects as “The Irishman,” “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” “1917,” “Parasite,” “Little Women,” “Just Mercy,” “Joker,” “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood,” “Jojo Rabbit,” “Uncut Gems,” “A Hidden Life,” “Cats,” “Judy,” “Marriage Story,” “Bombshell,” “Waves,” “Downton Abbey,” “Ford v. Ferrari,” “The Good Liar,” “Hustlers,” “The Personal History of David Copperfield,” “Clemency,” “Harriet,” “The King,” “Us,” “Dark Waters,” “The Lighthouse,” “The Aeronauts,” “Motherless Brooklyn,” “Pain & Glory,” “Dolemite Is My Name,” “Gloria Bell,” “The Report,” “The Two Popes,” “The Farewell” and “Richard Jewell.”

Avengers: Endgame

So will Oscar, as usual, largely turn a blind eye to popular summer popcorn hits (except in sound and visual effects) in favor of fall and year-end releases? Impossible to tell, but with all that in mind, we now look into our crystal ball and present our annual top picks list of likely nominees.

BEST PICTURE/ BEST DIRECTOR

Oscar has always loved a good period film — and especially a good period war film, and while at press time these top races were still very much undecided, some strong frontrunners have emerged — most of them period pieces.

Martin Scorsese’s “The Irishman,” starring Robert De Niro, Al Pacino and Joe Pesci, is an epic, three-and-a-half hour-long saga of organized crime in post-war America told through the eyes of World War II veteran Frank Sheeran (De Niro), a hustler and hitman who worked alongside some of the most notorious figures of the 20th century. Spanning decades, the film chronicles one of the greatest unsolved mysteries in American history, the disappearance of legendary union boss Jimmy Hoffa, and offers a monumental journey through the hidden corridors of organized crime: its inner workings, rivalries and connections to mainstream politics. 

The Irishman

But there’s a twist to this latest Mob drama which Scorsese directed for Netflix from a screenplay by Steven Zaillian. Gone are the flashy wise guys and the glamour of “Goodfellas” and “Casino.” Instead, the film examines the mundane nature of Mob killings and the sad price any survivors pay in the end — old age, loneliness, illness and death in an old folks’ home.

Editor Thelma Schoonmaker has been Scorsese’s go-to editor and key collaborator over the course of some 25 films and half a century, winning Oscars for “Raging Bull,” “The Aviator” and “The Departed,” and she should get some Oscar love for her meticulous, detailed work on the saga. Talking about her process on editing the film and the main challenges, she reports that Scorsese and she “edited for a year and the footage was so incredibly rich, the only challenge was to make sure we chose the best of it and took advantage of the wonderful improvisations the actors gave us. It was a complete joy for Scorsese and me to edit this film. After we locked the film we turned over to ILM so they could do the “youthifying” of the actors. That took about seven months.”

1917

Sam Mendes, the Oscar-winning director whose credits include “Skyfall,” “Spectre” and “American Beauty,” looks like a very strong contender with his World War I epic, “1917.” Co-written by Mendes and shot by frequent collaborator and Oscar winner Roger Deakins, it tells the story of two young British soldiers, Schofield (“Captain Fantastic’s” George MacKay) and Blake (“Game of Thrones’” Dean-Charles Chapman) who are given a seemingly impossible mission — to cross enemy territory and deliver a message that will stop a deadly attack on hundreds of soldiers — Blake’s own brother among them. Just technically, the film is a tour-de-force that tells its story in one, nearly uninterrupted shot, which Mendes told me needed “over half a year of planning and rehearsing” to get right. Deakins’ bravura, immersive work makes it almost certain that the 14-time nominee — who finally won for his work on “Blade Runner 2049” — will be nominated. Other possible noms could come for “1917’s” production design, sound mixing, score and editing, although  Lee Smith’s editing may be unfairly dismissed by voters as ‘too easy’ a challenge in a “one-shot” film, as was the case with “Birdman’s” editing team of Douglas Crise and Stephen Mirrione.

Once Upon A Time In Hollywood

“Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” another period piece, set in the late ‘60s, is the latest film from two-time Oscar-winner Quentin Tarantino. Starring Oscar-winners Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt, it’s the director’s nostalgic love letter to Tinseltown, the movie industry and a studio system and era undergoing huge changes. For veteran production designer Barbara Ling, who previously created another ’60s L.A. facelift — for Oliver Stone’s “The Doors,” “the biggest challenges were dealing with busy Hollywood Boulevard and Westwood Village, and re-facading and restoring buildings, as they were tearing them down faster than we could shoot, and Quentin didn’t want any CGI for anything up close. He wanted it to look as real and authentic as possible.” While Ling, whose wide-ranging credits include “Batman & Robin,” “Batman Forever” and “Fried Green Tomatoes,” oversaw the work on real locations, VFX houses including Luma, Lola and Pixel Pirates provided visual effects to help create a seamless trip down memory lane. 

South Korean Bong Joon Ho is rising in the Oscar race for Best Director for his unsentimental but emotional thriller “Parasite,” New Zealander Taika Waititi deserves attention for his black satire “Jojo Rabbit” and Spanish master Pedro Almodovar has been getting a lot of buzz for his latest drama “Pain and Glory,” and all may be the latest foreign filmmakers in a long line of winners over the past decade, following such recent recipients as Mexico’s  Guillermo del Toro (“The Shape of Water”), Alfonso Cuaron (“Gravity,” “Roma”) and Alejandro G. Inarritu (“Birdman,” “The Revenant”), England’s Tom Hooper (“The King’s Speech”), France’s Michel Hazanavicius (“The Artist”) and Taiwan’s Ang Lee (“Life of Pi”). The only American director in the group? Damien Chazelle (“La La Land”).

Joker

Oscar-nominated writer/director Todd Phillips may have begun his career in comedy and made some of the most successful comedy films in Hollywood (his global blockbuster franchise “The Hangover” made $1.4 billion), but with “Joker” he left comedy far behind — and a long line of outraged critics in its wake, as the bleak, disturbing and chilling tragedy racked up an astounding worldwide total of $1 billion — and counting, making it the seventh highest-grossing film of 2019 and the highest-grossing R-rated film of all time. Co-written with Oscar-nominated Scott Silver (“The Fighter”), the filmmaker’s original vision of the infamous DC villain is an origin story and exploration of Arthur Fleck, who is portrayed — and fully inhabited — by three-time Oscar nominee Joaquin Phoenix, who deserves another nomination.

Like “The Irishman,” “Joker,” another period piece, relied heavily on location work masterfully shot by Phillips’ go-to director of photography Lawrence Sher (“Godzilla: King of the Monsters,” “The Hangover” trilogy). The team used locations all around New York City, “a big challenge as it’s far harder than it sounds,” says the director. “But it was so important to the vibe and feel of the movie, and so many superhero movies use lots of CGI, but I needed that gritty reality of the actual streets. And I think that’s why it’s so unsettling to people as it does feel so real. Luckily we had Emma Tillinger Koskoff, who’s one of the great New York producers and was key in getting locations.” Ironically, Koskoff was also instrumental in finding locations for “The Irishman.”

The mean streets of New York City also starred in filmmakers Josh and Benny Safdie’s latest crime thriller, “Uncut Gems,” a twisty, tense tale that explores with bracing immediacy the tragic sway of fortune, family and fate. It also stars Adam Sandler in a career-defining performance as Howard Ratner, a profane, charismatic New York City jeweler who’s always on the lookout for the next big score, and the comedy-drama is a symphony of propulsive intensity crafted by two of the most exciting young directors working today, who combined relentless pacing with gritty visuals (courtesy of DP Darius Khondji), razor-sharp editing by co-editor Ronald Bronstein, and a score from Brooklyn-based experimental composer Daniel Lopatin. 

Uncut Gems

Other films in the running include “Little Women” and Greta Gerwig (see my Post Nov/Dec issue story), who may find herself up against partner Noah Baumbach and his acclaimed drama “Marriage Story.” Then there’s the well-received “Ford v Ferrari,” directed by James Mangold, which chronicles the story of race car legends Carroll Shelby (Matt Damon) and Ken Miles (Christian Bale) and their cars that culminates in the historic showdown between the U.S. and Italy at the grueling 1966 24 hour Le Mans race in France. “We built and shot  real cars,” says Mangold, “and we shot the Le Mans race all in camera, rather than using CGI, although the film has quite a few VFX — more than you’d guess.” Olivier Dumont, the visual effects supervisor and VFX Supervisor for Method Studios, led the Method team. The movie is another period piece, but because the original Le Mans course doesn’t exist anymore, the filmmakers used several locations in Georgia to double for the famous racetrack and the film’s climactic sequence which lasts some 40 minutes.

Bombshell

“Bombshell,” the timely film about sexual harassment at Fox News directed by Jay Roach is a gripping docudrama about how Megyn Kelly (Charlize Theron), one of the Fox stars, and Gretchen Carlson (Nicole Kidman), a former star who was fired, brought down the lecherous and all-powerful Roger Ailes. And Terrence Malick’s “A Hidden Life” is a haunting true story of faith and bravery in wartime, about an Austrian farmer who refused to serve in Hitler’s army, and who paid the ultimate price for his refusal. War is also the backdrop to another timely film, “The Report,” and another true-life drama. The political thriller stars Adam Driver as Daniel Jones, the Senate investigator who spent years documenting the truth of America’s use of torture in the years after 9/11, and it’s masterfully helmed by writer-director Scott Z. Burns. And then there’s the harrowing Civil Rights drama “Just Mercy,” a true-life legal drama starring Michael B. Jordan as social justice attorney Bryan Stevenson in an Oscar-worthy performance. And Jamie Foxx as a death row inmate, sentenced for a murder he didn’t commit, is another strong acting contender. Powerful, and yet both in-your-face and subtle, the film was directed by Destin Daniel Cretton, whose credits include the indies “Short Term 12” and “The Glass Castle.”

Richard Jewell

Legendary Oscar favorite director Clint Eastwood may also be in the running with his new film “Richard Jewell,” a story of what happens when what is reported as fact obscures the truth (ironically, the film has now generated a lot of controversy over its portrayal of a female reporter at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution who broke the story that the FBI was investigating security guard Jewell for the bombing in Centennial Olympic Park during the 1996 Olympics). Starring Paul Walter Hauser in a breakout role as the titular character, it details the events surrounding the fatal bombing and how Jewell, who reported finding the device, was initially pronounced a hero whose swift actions saved countless lives. But within days, the law enforcement wannabe became the FBI’s number one suspect, vilified by press and public alike, his life ripped apart. Eastwood’s creative team included director of photography Yves Bélanger and Oscar-winning editor Joel Cox (“Unforgiven”).

Had enough of war, crime, murder and heavy drama — but still prefer a period piece? Well, voters have at least two good options, including “A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood” starring Oscar-winner Tom Hanks as Fred Rogers in a story of kindness triumphing over cynicism. It’s helmed by award-winning director, writer, and actress Marielle Heller, who most recently directed three-time Academy Award nominated film, “Can You Ever Forgive Me?”

Downton Abbey

And if, like millions of other fans around the world, enough voters root for “Downton Abbey” with its comforting blend of light melodrama, nostalgia and glamour, Oscar could smile warmly on the hit film directed by seasoned TV and theater director Michael Engler, whose diverse credits include “30 Rock,” “Empire,” “Deadwood,” “Nashville,” “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt” and several episodes of the TV series “Downton Abbey.” The big difference between shooting the TV shows and doing the movie? “The need to ramp it up, even though the TV series was always ambitious cinematically and we knew that the template would be a good one to build on,” says Engler. “The film is far more sweeping, with more camera movement. It’s elevated for the big screen.” Engler and DP Ben Smithard, who shot “Blinded By The Light” and “Goodbye Christopher Robin,” went for “a big, rich film feel and look, so we shot it in 6K and Ben does such beautiful work with the lighting, which really helped take the edge off the digital look. We did all the editing at Hireworks in London with editor Mark Day and his team, and sound at Hackenbacker Studios and Abbey Road where we recorded with an orchestra twice as big as any we had on the series, which also elevated all the sound and music. Framestore did all the VFX, and we did the digital intermediate at Molinare with senior colorist Gareth Spensley.”

VISUAL EFFECTS & POST WORKFLOW/ EDITING & SOUND

Some of the year’s biggest hits — “Avengers: Endgame,” “The Lion King,” “Toy Story 4,” “Spider-Man: Far From Home,” “Hobbs & Shaw,” and “Captain Marvel” — also feature some of the year’s most spectacular VFX. 

And it took many hands to do the heavy lifting on “Endgame” (Weta, ILM, Framestore, DNeg, Cinesite, Digital Domain and others worked on some 2,500 VFX shots), “The Lion King” (MPC used over 1,250 artists and animators from 30 countries), “Spider-Man: Far From Home” (Sony Pictures Imageworks, ILM, Luma, Scanline and others), and “Hobbs & Shaw” (DNeg, Framestore, Rise, Crafty Apes, Cantina, One of Us, and Outpost).

Avengers: Endgame

At press time, it’s shaping up to be a tight race between The Russo’s “Endgame” and Jon Favreau’s photo-real “The Lion King” in the VFX contest. And “The Lion King” looks like the favorite thanks to its ‘Is it live action or is it animation?’ stunning visuals. Favreau and his team, led by VFX super Rob Legato (“Avatar,” “The Jungle Book,” “Titanic”),  created a revolutionary virtual production by previs’ing and then shooting in VR with a live-action crew that included six-time Oscar-nominated cinematographer Caleb Deschanel, and marrying that with MPC’s animated characters and environments (no animals were even scanned or motion-captured). The team combined meticulously researched character and set design to render each scene within a VR environment that spanned hundreds of virtual miles using the Unity video game engine. The characters themselves took about six months to create, with all their hair, muscles, facial expressions.

It was also a year of innovation, especially in 3D CG animation (check out Thanos and Hulk in “Endgame,” Godzilla in “King of Monsters,” and Pixar’s beautiful global illumination in “Toy Story 4”). And while in years past a time machine often featured at the center of many a sci-fi movie, now a new kind of time machine — digital de-aging — helps drive the plot, as evidenced by such diverse films as Scorsese’s “The Irishman” and “Captain Marvel.” Both pushed the envelope with de-aging techniques, while “The Lion King” and Tom Hooper’s “Cats” did the same thing for fur and whiskers.

The Lion King

ILM used new de-aging software to create a younger Robert De Niro (who plays the titular character, a hitman reflecting back on his violent career), Al Pacino (who plays Jimmy Hoffa) and Joe Pesci (who plays a crime boss) for “The Irishman’s” decades-spanning mob tale. 

But there’s a downside to the innovative technology, which, because of its huge costs, reportedly helped push the final budget of “The Irishman” to a record-busting $160 million for a drama aimed at adults. Sure, Netflix can afford it, but some voters I talked to felt the results seemed and looked a bit stunt-driven at times. 

‘De-aging’ was also key to Ang Lee’s “Gemini Man,” as the script’s high concept of Will Smith battling Junior, his cloned younger self, drives the entire movie. But Lee, an innovator who’s  been experimenting with new technology for the past decade, starting with “Life of Pi,” opted for CGI as the solution. “I knew right away it had to be a digital clone,” he reports. “So Junior was a totally CGI creation as it’s a main lead character where you need all the details and performance. Maybe the de-aging is fine for a quick flashback, but it’s also very expensive to do.”

Gemini Man

Shot in 3D at 120 frames-per-second and 4k by cinematographer Dion Beebe, the film represents a tour-de-force for a team led by Oscar-winning production VFX supervisor Bill Westenhofer (“Life of Pi”) and Weta’s VFX supervisor Guy Williams. Building on Weta’s advances showcased in the “Planet of the Apes” franchise, the team developed a number of new techniques. The result? A 23-year-old version of Will Smith. “Creating a fully digital believable human being has been one of the hardest things to do in movies, but now we can,” says Lee. 

To finally achieve this Holy Grail of VFX, Lee and his team started integrating post and all the VFX “before we even started anything, and a big part of the budget went to doing a lot of tests, new equipment, R&D and so on.” They also set up their own technology base and lab at Final Frame in New York, so they could process data and dailies, and also bought all their own servers and computers. Technical supervisor Ben Gervais oversaw the operation which was also shipped to Budapest and Savannah for part of the shoot.

The film featured over 1,000 complex VFX shots in addition to the CGI work on Junior which was all done by Weta. Other work was spread out to several companies, including Scanline and Clear Angle. “It was the most complicated post pipeline I’ve ever had,” says Lee.

Alita: Battle Angel

And Weta took facial capture and also pushed the envelope in the sci-fi adventure “Alita: Battle Angel,” directed by Robert Rodriguez and produced by James Cameron, “Maleficent: Mistress of Evil,” directed by Joachim Ronning, whose credits include co-directing “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales” (an $800 million box office hit) and the Oscar-nominated “Kon-Tiki,” deserves some Oscar love for its spectacular VFX — over 2,000 shots, “with complex logistics and a huge scale, and many fully-CG characters that carry the movie along with the actors, and I didn’t have that in ‘Pirates,’” he notes. Ronning’s workflow relied heavily on previs, “then using visualization during the shoot, and then post-vis in the computer, in 2D and 3D, with a team of over 100 people just doing that, and that’s the real miracle-worker on this movie.” Post was all based in London, “and we did all our VFX mainly at MPC, but we also had teams working on it at MPC in Montreal, Vancouver, Bangalore, plus we used some other houses, including Gentle Giant, Trace VFX and Mill Film. And my post production producer, and lifesaver, was Bryan Carroll,” he adds.

Rocketman

Glam rockers and director Dexter Fletcher had another huge year. After getting the $903 million global smash “Bohemian Rhapsody” over the finish line (he was brought in to direct after Bryan Singer was fired), Fletcher helmed “Rocketman,” another music film about another legendary performer, Elton John.  But while the Freddie Mercury film was more of a conventional, family-friendly biopic that opted for a PG-13 rating and approach that sidestepped a lot of the darker elements of the singer’s life, ‘Rocketman’ fully embraced its R-rating and dives headfirst into the sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll circus that was Elton’s life at the time. “We posted at Hireworks in London, and then we did all the sound and the mixing at Goldcrest,” he reports. “All the big musical numbers were the big editing challenge for editor Chris Dickens, as you have make the music and visuals all work together, and you’re working to a playback track. And you’re very exposed when it comes to changing the tempo or rhythm of a scene. You can’t just cut a few words, as you’re locked into the track. And everyone knows the songs. And songs like ‘Your Song’ and ‘Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me’ were done totally live, so it was pretty complicated. But Chris is very experienced with all that, as he cut stuff like ‘Slumdog Millionaire.’ That end musical number there is a total triumph of editing.”  With the goal of making “an epic musical, and something that was different and imaginative,” Fletcher also used a lot of VFX.  “Cinesite in Montreal did them all, with a few by Atomic Arts, and we had a lot of artists and VFX guys working on them, as we had so many, from fireworks to scenes with people floating, and of course all the crowd scenes at stadiums where we had to recreate fans in the ‘70s,” he notes. So some of that stuff was fairly standard, but they did a brilliant job I think. I quite like working with VFX, as it allows you to do so much more with a period piece like this.” The DI was done at Goldcrest with colorist Rob Pizzey. “It’s very important to me and [DP] George Richmond who’s worked on every film I’ve made. We wanted to get a very particular look and texture to it, and in the DI Rob, me and George worked very closely on it.”

Joker

And “Joker” deserves some Oscar love for its crafts, including its great attention to editing and sound. Director Todd Phillips and go-to editor Jeff Groth (“War Dogs,” “The Hangover Part III”) carefully built up a complex portrait of the infamous DC villain, and an origin story infused with, but distinctly outside, the character’s more traditional mythologies.”There are a lot of delusions in Arthur’s head, so it was a big challenge to know when to hide them and when to reveal them,” reports Phillips. “The scene order in the final film is pretty different from the scripted order, and that’s all about deciding when to reveal information.” He goes on to note that “I direct movies and go through all the stress of production and shooting just to get to the editing room. Post is your last shot at getting the script right.”

To get the sound design right, and to bring the film’s immersive soundscape to life, Phillips turned to supervising sound editor Alan Robert Murray, a two-time Oscar winner for his work on “American Sniper” and “Letters From Iwo Jima” (he was also Oscar nominated for “Sully,” “Sicario” and “Space Cowboys”). “Todd had a very well-crafted plan about the sound design going in,” reports Murray. “He wanted to evoke a Gotham living on the edge, that was gritty and had this ‘70s style – meaning you heard these big V8 engines and mufflers on the street, with aggressive horns, and people shouting in their apartments. And he was so specific about certain things, like the sirens.” Murray also worked hard to make sure that the sound design dovetailed neatly with the film’s dark and mournful cello score by Hildur Guðnadóttir, as well as with such soundtrack elements as Cream’s iconic “White Room.” “That song worked so well for the riot scene, and we made a point of keeping the timbre of the sirens so they’d be there and play through the music,” he notes. “Joker’s” soundscape was mixed in Atmos on the lot at Warner Brothers by Tom Ozanich and Dean Zupancic. 

Although not flashy, “Joker’s” bloody VFX play a big role, and were overseen by VFX super Edwin Rivera who used various VFX houses, including Scanline, Shade and Branch. “There was no real blood  — not a drop — used on set, and that’s one of the great things about VFX now — that you can do all the blood work in post,” notes Phillips. “And that’s so liberating.”  The DI was done at Company 3 with his regular colorist Jill Bogdanowicz. “We shot it digitally, though the original plan was to shoot 65mm large format, and when that fell through, to shoot 35mm. Then [DP] Larry Sher and I did a lot of tests, and decided we’d shoot digital and make it look like film, and thanks to the way he lit and all the work he and Jill did, it has this weird photo-chemical feel and look. It’s not quite film, but it’s definitely not digital. It’s somewhere in the middle, its own thing.”

Uncut Gems

“Uncut Gems” also deserves attention for its multi-layered, Altmanesque soundscape. The Safdies worked closely with Oscar-winning re-recording mixer Tom Fleischman (who also did “The Irishman”), Skip Lievsay and Warren Shaw. “The soundscape they built in Atmos really achieved something like life, and it also had areas for music and sound design that are so meticulous and rich that we’d watch the movie without the dialogue,” the Safdies report. “For sound we started off at Soundtrack and then went to Warner Brothers Sound, and Brainstorm did most of the crazy VFX.”

“Harriet” also features an impressive soundscape thanks to Terence Blanchard’s soulful score, which combines African drums, traditional spirituals and electronic elements, and the work of supervising sound editor/re-recording mixer Blake Leyh (“Into the Woods,” “The Wire,” Emmy-winner for “Treme”) and re-recording mixer Skip Lievsay (Oscar-winner for “Gravity,” nominee for “Roma”). The film makes great use of the natural world and its sounds, from cicadas to buzzing flies, the whoosh of a waterfall, and the ripple of rivers that become an escape route, as well as of eerie silence during the escape sequences.

Harriet

Other movies that might charm voters include “The Aeronauts,” the epic period 19th century ballooning adventure starring Eddy Redmayne and Felicity Jones, with some impressive VFX work by VFX supervisor Louis Morin, whose previous credits include “Arrival” and “Beauty and the Beast.” His team was instrumental in augmenting the duo’s flight with a myriad of wind and weather VFX, and for a scene where the balloon starts to ice over and Jones has to climb the rigging to break open a stuck valve, Morin turned sound stages full of blue screen into the heavens and worked seamlessly with a special lighting rig cinematographer George Steel’s crew created. Any occasional obtrusive shots of the rig then had to be cleaned up in post.

 “Midway,” yet another period war film, directed by Roland Emmerich, featured numerous VFX shots overseen by supervisor Peter Travers, including adding grit and shrapnel whenever the fighting looked too tidy. Emmerich’s emphasis on historical accuracy also led Travers to extensively use pre-visualization — both during pre-production, and then in post in order to plan out the film’s breathtaking dive-bombing sequences.

Midway

And don’t count out year-end blockbuster releases like “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker” and “Jumanji: The Next Level” for their impressive VFX work.