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We were sent a heads up about a video from Tippett Studio’s focusing on some behind the scenes footage of how the scene where Jacob becomes an Alpha was created. Some of this is included on the Breaking Dawn Part 1 DVD, but if you love to know all the details like I do, this is right up your alley!
Tippett Studio Breaking Dawn Wolves from Tippett Studio on Vimeo.
Collider interviewed special effects genius Phil Tippet about his involvement on on a number of projects including Breaking Dawn.
Last night, you talked about taking meetings with directors and they would tell you they wanted this and that for their project, and sometimes their requests weren’t particularly thrilling to you. I’m wondering what the strangest request you’ve ever heard from a filmmaker was, or if there was something that someone wanted that you knew couldn’t possibly be done. Does anything like that come to mind?
TIPPETT: One that I get over and over and over that just irks me is that everyone wants it to look “real.”
As opposed to what?! As if anyone would want it to look fake?
TIPPETT: Exactly! We try our best, but…”You mean you just want it to look good?”
THE TWILIGHT SAGA: BREAKING DAWN Part 1 posterYou’ve been working on the new Twilight movie, which is a franchise—if I’m being frank—I’m not a fan of…TIPPETT: Yeah, neither am I.
Well, that’s because we’re not pre-teen girls. But there are a lot of fans out there, and there is a huge amount of buzz about the next one. I’ve read some things in particular about the storyline of the last book, and some of the sequences that were written into that novel sound like they’d need some elaborate special effects to make it on screen. Like, I’ve heard there’s this C-section scene where a vampire baby crawls out of a girl? Can you talk a little bit about the effects that you designed for the new Twilight movie and if so…
TIPPETT: Well, I really just do the wolves on this [film]. I’m not the effects supervisor, so I’m not apart of designing and putting together all of that stuff. But, it’s a PG13 rated movie. I’ve seen some of the stuff and it looks pretty cool. It’s a real good production team, the director is very good, very inclusive, and we work well together.
Phil Tippet and company are back again for Breaking Dawn. Collider had the opportunity to slip in some Breaking Dawn questions while talking to Tippet and crew about another project. Collider writes:
Earlier today I got to talk with Dennis Muren, Phil Tippett and John Rosengrant about their amazing work on Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park. They were talking to the press this morning to help promote the October 25th Blu-ray release. While I’ll have the full interview online next month, for all you Twilight fans, I was able to ask Tippett and Rosengrant about their involvement in The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn.
Check out the video. Tippet is a Hollywood SFX legend and he gives high praise to Bill Condon!
MTV has a behind the scenes look with Phil Tippett, Eclipse’s legendary FX man!
“The Wolves Have New Fur, Eyes and Behavior
Weitz requested wolves that had more of a rangy look to them, with matted fur and eyes that more closely resembled human eyes than wolf ones. By contrast, Slade wanted his wolves just a bit more, well, coifed.
“They weren’t supposed to look like poodles, but [Slade] wanted them a lot sleeker looking and with shinier, shimmering coats,” Tippett explained.
Slade was also adamant that the “Eclipse” wolves revert to the wolf eyes you might see in nature. But it wasn’t just the wolf pack’s physical attributes that got a makeover for the third installment. Tippett and his team were also directed to adjust the wolves’ overall behavior.
“The ‘New Moon’ wolves, we played them as heroic sentries,” said Tippett. “When the wolves met the humans, we attempted to make it appear as though the wolves had a center of conscience that was definitely human. And David really wanted to play it that the wolves were far more primordial and much more wolflike. The wolves became less sentries sent from God and a lot more twitchy, uncertain, fairer animals.”
Perhaps the biggest similarity between both films’ wolves, however, is that neither set actually has genitals — a compromise necessary to secure a PG-13 rating. “We just deal with it by putting extra fur down there,” he laughed.”
Tippet Studio, that did the CGI work for New Moon talks about the process. If you are not normally into CGI articles, make an exception, and read this one. It is incredibly well done.
“The challenge wasn’t just to build a believable wolf, but to build five unique wolves of extraordinary size and weight, to portray that mass often with little more than the surrounding trees as comparisons, create believable fur and humanesque eyes that weren’t distracting. Nate Fredenburg, Art Director, helped to make sure those requirements were fulfilled, combining real-world attributes and CG magic.
“At Tippett Studio, we always look to real-life creatures for reference on how to design our characters, real or mythical. For New Moon, we had a special opportunity to travel down to wolf sanctuary in Southern California to observe wolves up close and personal. The key to looking at live reference is to form a knowledge base, study the creatures, their quirks and behaviors, the language between the pack. We looked for signs of what the creature was about and added those to the visual effects to make them believable.”
Check out the full feature here and make sure you click on everything! There’s a lot of content! Via Twilighters Anonymous
Phil Tippet is the legendary special effects genius who is behind the wolves of New Moon. He gave recent interviews to both the San Fransisco Chronicle and the LA Times.
“When that wolf checks out Bella, it’s not a wolf’s eyes, it’s Jacob’s. “We brought Taylor [Lautner] in and had him haul his eyelids back as far as possible and shot close-ups.” They then added those eyes to the giant animated timber wolf used in the scene.”
Read more in the LA Times.
“Q: Which movie had tighter security on the set, “Return of the Jedi” or “New Moon”?
A: For “Return of the Jedi,” I was totally oblivious to all the fandom. I didn’t notice anything, and most of the work was done on pretty secured sets. For “New Moon,” it was unbelievable.
It was like a CIA operation. Some of the locations we would go to, the production would be so concerned about fooling the paparazzi, they would take the arrows pointing to the location and turn them the other way. We were actually getting lost.
Q: Did you do much wolf-related research for the movie?
A: We nailed it down early that these were not going to be traditional beast-y horror movie things. … We watched a lot of documentaries and looked at every single picture book out there on wolves.
My co-supervisor, Matt Jacobs, took a bunch of the art department and animators to a wolf preserve outside of Los Angeles. They got into a pen about the size of this room with about 10 wolves and just spent the afternoon with them.”
Read more in the San Fransisco Chronicle.
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