The 3rd Day of FICCI Frames saw Oscar winning VFX Supervisor Harvey Lowry conduct a session on the Special Effects in Hollywood. Over the course of fifteen years, Harvey has supervised the production, special effects, makeup effects, visual effects, animatronics and specialty costumes for about 150 feature films, television shows, videos and commercials. Harvey has worked on films like Pirates of the Carribean: Curse of the Black Pearl, Curious Case of Benjamin Button, A Beautiful Mind and many more.
The 3rd Day of FICCI Frames saw Oscar winning VFX Supervisor Harvey Lowry conduct a session on the Special Effects in Hollywood. Over the course of fifteen years, Harvey has supervised the production, special effects, makeup effects, visual effects, animatronics and specialty costumes for about 150 feature films, television shows, videos and commercials. Harvey has worked on films like Pirates of the Carribean: Curse of the Black Pearl, Curious Case of Benjamin Button, A Beautiful Mind and many more.
Harvey spoke about the 3 different kinds of Effects and explained the collaboration between them. Special Effects are divided into- Particle Effects, Visual Effects and Make-Up Effects. Make-up Effects includes Character / Monster Make-up, Old Age Make-up, and Animatronics Make-up. Application and removal of make-up effects takes a long time.
Make-up Effects takes around 12-16 weeks to work upon. For the film, Watchman, Harvey’s team consisted of 30 people and the Make-up Effects for Brad Pitt’s character in Curious Case of Benjamin Button has costed the producers around 30,000 USD per stage and there were many stages in the film. Frankenstein’s Monster portrayed by Shuler Hensely in Van Helsing film has used Make-up Effects as well as Visual Effects to make it look more realistic.
The character of Andrew Martins played by Robin Williams in the film called Bicentennial Man has worn 14 silicon pieces to complete his Make-up effects. He was wearing a receding hair line, bald cap, wig, pieces on his hand to make them old looking. And the entire Make-up took 14 weeks to complete the effects.
According to Harvey, Animatronics mostly needs VFX. And the only time when Animatronics is use out of necessity is to create babies and animals. He also explained Gags, “Gags are basically ‘moving make-up’ used for arm breaks, mutilations or anything else that humans can’t do”.
Harvey threw light on the future of Special Effects saying, “Special Effects and VFX business is constantly evolving and VFX & MUFX companies are exploring new ways to collaborate. Lot of companies are developing their own softwares. I have also helped pioneer new techniques in effects by creating a CG company and many of these techniques were fine-tuned on films like ‘Passion of the Christ’ and ‘The Exorcism of Emily Rose’”.
Harvey who believes in searching the undiscovered talent and giving them an opportunity is currently working on the spoof called Paramormal Vactivity and will begin working on his directorial venture called ‘Trapezoid’. He is also planning to open a practical Make-up Effects facility in Mumbai.