{"id":4308,"date":"2024-03-26T11:33:13","date_gmt":"2024-03-26T11:33:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.mustardjobs.co.uk\/?p=4308"},"modified":"2024-03-26T11:33:13","modified_gmt":"2024-03-26T11:33:13","slug":"best-visual-effects-oscar-2024","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mustardjobs.co.uk\/best-visual-effects-oscar-2024\/","title":{"rendered":"Best Visual Effects Oscar 2024"},"content":{"rendered":"

Godzilla Minus One – the lizard of La-La Land<\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/h2>\n

Every year we\u2019re expecting it, and every year precisely nobody accurately predicts it. We\u2019re talking, of course, about that Academy Awards \u2018moment\u2019.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

A mesmerised public are thrown annual curve balls that range from <\/span>unwise choices of outfit<\/span><\/a> (a leopard print bikini, Ms Edy Williams?), to <\/span>announcing<\/span><\/a> the wrong winner<\/span><\/a> (2017\u2019s <\/span>ultimate<\/span><\/i> admin fail).<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But this year\u2019s talking point is thankfully, for genuine film buffs, not the Daily Mail\u2019s Sidebar Of Shame. So, without further delay, 2024\u2019s big moment goes to the winner of the <\/span>Best Visual Effects<\/span><\/a> Oscar.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It would be fair to say that most ordinary folks expected the might of Marvel to march up to the podium, but this year it was the turn of a genuine underdog \u2013 <\/span>Godzilla Minus One<\/span><\/a>. In fact, when Takashi Yamazaki, Kiyoko Shibuya, Masaki Takahashi and Tatsuji Nojima <\/span>took to the stage of Hollywood\u2019s Dolby Theatre<\/span><\/a> to collect their Oscar, they couldn\u2019t have looked more surprised.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/h4>\n

Takashi Yamazaki – an Oscar-quality visionary<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/h4>\n

And it doesn\u2019t take a genius to understand why. With a budget of just $12 million, the <\/span>Toho<\/span><\/a>\u2013produced monster movie had to make <\/span>every<\/span><\/i> VFX decision count. To give you a sense of quite how low-cost this Japanese epic was, consider the greenbacks stacked behind the other nominees \u2013 Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3 ($250 million), The Creator ($80 million), Mission: Impossible \u2013 Dead Reckoning Part One ($291 million) and Napoleon (around $150 million).<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

“The moment we were nominated we felt like Rocky Balboa,\u201d joked director <\/span>Takashi Yamazaki<\/span><\/a>, referring to Stallone\u2019s back-street hero of the Rocky franchise. \u201c[We were] welcomed into the ring as equals by our biggest rivals, which was already a miracle.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But not so much for those of us who\u2019ve seen Yamazaki\u2019s masterpiece. Because Godzilla Minus One has quite jaw-dropping visual effects, especially coming from a franchise that, outside of its rabid fanbase, was once regarded as a bit of a joke for its shonky VFX.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But that all changed when Yamazaki got his hands on it. Wearing not just the director\u2019s hat, but also taking on the role of visual effects supervisor, he used his vast VFX experience to launch Godzilla into the cinematic stratosphere.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Reading hesitantly from a sheet of paper, Yamazaki gave us some valuable insight into his major influences. \u201cMy career began 40 years ago,\u201d he said, \u201cafter the shock of seeing Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. To someone so far from Hollywood, even the possibility of standing on this stage seemed out of reach. But here we stand!\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The rise of the lizard\u2026<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/h4>\n

The Godzilla series started in 1954 and has chalked up a whopping 38 films (33 Japanese movies produced and distributed by Toho, and five American features). For most of them, its titular monster was portrayed by an actor wearing a large rubber suit. It\u2019s only relatively recently, certainly for the Toho films, that the scenes incorporated CGI, and in Godzilla Minus One\u2019s case, entrusted the job of directing to one Japan\u2019s leading visual effects wizards.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

That Godzilla Minus One could compete against the Hollywood big-timers is testament to the work put in by Yamazaki and his team. All 610 of the film’s visual effects shots were created over a period of eight months by a crew of 35 artists at <\/span>Shirogumi<\/span><\/a>‘s studio in Tokyo.<\/span> Overseen by Yamazaki and his fellow visual effects supervisor <\/span>Kiyoko Shibuya<\/span><\/a>, the Los Angeles Times reported that between a quarter and a third of the film’s budget was spent on the visual effects.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The short-listing of Godzilla Minus One for Best Visual Effects sparked the first nomination and win for a Japanese-language film in the category, and provided proof that a movie doesn\u2019t necessarily need a Marvel Studios-level budget to wow cinemagoers.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Asked backstage how this win could impact the Japanese film industry, Yamazaki replied, “It feels very surreal right now. I still can’t process what’s happening around us. But I do believe that perhaps the success of Godzilla Minus One will open up a new opportunity for a lot of Japanese filmmakers. I think it’s important because Japan is such a small country that we need international box office and revenue to be able to sustain the industry. So, this should be the start of something – something bigger, I hope, for the industry as a whole.”<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Are you ready to be part of something bigger, yourself?<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/h4>\n

If you\u2019ve got an inkling that you could snatch an Oscar from a \u2018dead cert\u2019 winner, then we want to talk to you! We regularly fill job vacancies for the best studios worldwide, who are looking for the next special effects genius on the block. So, push your mouse to one side, and dial our hotline now – the <\/span>mustard FX<\/span><\/a> team can be reached on 0117 929 6060.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Godzilla Minus One – the lizard of La-La Land\u00a0 Every year we\u2019re expecting it, and every year precisely nobody accurately predicts it. We\u2019re talking, of course, about that Academy Awards \u2018moment\u2019.\u00a0\u00a0 A mesmerised public are thrown annual curve balls that range from unwise choices of outfit (a leopard print bikini, Ms Edy Williams?), to announcing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":4319,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,1],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mustardjobs.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4308"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mustardjobs.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mustardjobs.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mustardjobs.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mustardjobs.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4308"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.mustardjobs.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4308\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4320,"href":"https:\/\/www.mustardjobs.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4308\/revisions\/4320"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mustardjobs.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4319"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mustardjobs.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mustardjobs.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mustardjobs.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}