Technicolor’s MPC has won the Oscar® for Visual Effects on 1917 at the 92nd Academy Awards. Also, Roger Deakins won Best Cinematography for work on the same production.
Production VFX Supervisor Guillaume Rocheron accepted the award on behalf of MPC Film’s talented team of VFX artists, production crew and software engineers based in Montreal, London, Los Angeles and Bangalore. “What an honor to be recognized by the Academy for our work on 1917!,” Rocheron said. “I am grateful for the opportunity to collaborate with Sam Mendes on such a unique and memorable film and I am proud to share this award with the team at MPC that made this cinematic experience possible.”
Working closely with Director Sam Mendes and Cinematographer Roger Deakins, MPC Film was proud to lead the visual effects work, with approximately 600 artists contributing to the film. The team’s work included digital environment extensions, including; No Man’s Land, the canal crossing, the burning village of Écoust and Schofield’s jump into the river, as well as destruction, pyro and water effects.
ONE SHOT
As most viewers reading this will know, ‘1917’ wasn’t in fact a one-shot war epic. But the techniques employed to make it appear seamless, were in a word, quite seamless. I spoke with Guillaume Rocheron, CG Supervisor at MPC, the studio behind the visual effects in this astonishing ticking time bomb classic of a movie. “The best way to tell this story is to have the audience dragged along with those two men. And the best way to do that is to force the audience to almost take part. There are no rests when the story keeps rolling. Without a cutaway, the audience is not given a way out at all. Mendes was inspired to give this a go after watching his children play First Person Shooter games (FPS), like Red Dead Redemption,” he said.
Each of these incredible sequences was rehearsed tirelessly, some larger, longer takes went through over six months of rehearsals.
MPC’s VFX work was also recognized at the BAFTAs where they won the award for Special Visual Effects on 1917.
Related links:
VFX SCIENCE 
1 comment