Todd Vaziri and "Mission: Impossible III"
by Manuel Alducin, ILMFan.com
Copyright 2006 All rights reserved
Todd Vaziri is of course well known around VFX circles since he started
the amazing VFXHQ website,
the benchmark of VFX websites. His career has spanned Flat Earth Productions,
on the Xena: Warrior Princess TV show, Banned From The Ranch, on such
projects as Inspector Gadget, Hollow Man and Doctor Dolittle, and Pixel
Magic on projects like Driven and Hart's War. He joined ILM to work
on Star Wars: Episode II Attack of the Clones and has since served
as digital and compositing artist on such projects as Hulk, Pirates
of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, Van Helsing, Star Wars:
Episode III Revenge of the Sith, War of the Worlds and Harry Potter
and the Goblet of Fire.
He completed work as Sequence Supervisor of J.J. Abrams' Mission: Impossible
III which was supervised by Roger Guyett. He recently took some time
to discuss some of the secrets and extensive "invisible effects" in
the film.
Jump to The ILM Mission: Impossible III Credits
Manuel Alducin: For Mission:Impossible III you became
a Sequence Supervisor, what sequences you worked on?
Todd Vaziri: Personally, I was sequence supervisor of
the bridge extraction sequence, along with Doug Sutton. Doug was in charge
of all 3D aspects of the sequence, and I was in charge of compositing.
The sequence is in the middle of the movie: it starts when the IMF agents
are escorting prisoner Owen Davian (Philip Seymour Hoffman) to CIA headquarters.
They drive a huge convoy of SUVs onto the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, with
Davian in an armored car, when his bad guy buddies break him out. It
was one of the main sequences ILM handled, with over 100 shots in the
sequence.
MA: This is the second time you worked with Roger Guyett.
You worked on Mustafar shots he supervised. How is it working with him?
TV: It was great. The great thing about this show was
that is was so different than the normal ILM type of show. Usually, to
give you a great example, we do this completely otherworldly environments,
creatures, aliens and things that we're working so hard to make come
to life and believable. The complete flip side of that are shows like
Mission: Impossible where we do everything we can to make our work as
seamless and invisible as possible and overall still make it interesting
and exciting. And Roger did an amazing job of shifting our gears towards
just letting our stuff fill the frame and do its job and not call attention
to itself. That's one of the reasons I actually wanted to work on this
project: truly invisible visual effects is a passion of mine and something
you don't get to do very often at ILM. It's something we all felt we
were up to the task. Roger definitely geared us in the right direction
in all of that. He is an extremely talented guy. No matter what the project
is, he seems really to pull it out, come up with great strategies to
make it all work.
MA: Did you have to go to the location shooting or did
you stay at ILM?
TV: I was here at ILM. Roger was on the set the whole
time and our Associate Visual Effects Supervisor Russell Earl was on
location for a little bit, Dennis Martin was at Shanghai, Russell was
also on the bridge set along with CG Supervisor Gerald Gutschmidt in
the Virginia shoot. We also had a matchmover, Duncan Blackman, on set
as well the whole time. So really a small ILM contingent on location,
but I was here at ILM the whole time.
MA: What preparation work for the bridge sequence can
you do while shooting is going on?
TV: M:I:III was shot in anamorphic which basically means
that everything relating to visual effects is that much harder, so we
had to do a lot of prep for that. Every composite, every render is much
harder. There is severe lens distortion, you get all sorts of exposure
changes, lens aberrations, weird different types of flares, edge of frame
effects that are going to be inherent to anamorphic film photography.
So I did a lot of research on that, how it all relates, what types of
"gotchas" are we going to come across. The lens issue was definitely
the big one and one of our matchmove leads, Brian Cantwell, perfected
a lens warp plugin tools, that we have that were originally created for "The
Island" and some other projects. We just took them to the next level,
making them easier to work with. That was a big thing.
Of course, for all the characteristics of anamorphic photography, like
chromatic aberrations, the lens flares, etc., I developed a huge library
of reference, of anamorphic movies that the entire team of compositors
could look at. Trying to get like similar lighting, the environment,
similar night time skylines, etc. We looked at the movie Heat a lot,
that was one of our main sources of inspiration. Die Hard definitely.
That library really helped us out, sometimes to point at our synthetic
shots and say "no, that flare is too CG-y, we need to make it
look more like this," and point at a real anamorphic shot. So
that was a big point of research for me. This may sound silly but every
time I crossed the Golden Gate Bridge or the Bay Bridge here in San
Francisco, definitely made a lot of mental notes. Our Lead Digimatte
Artist Giles Hanckock definitely took a lot of reference photography
of the bridges here to get a sense of atmosphere, the lighting, the
surrounding environment, how water looks like from the top of the bridge,
things like that.
It should all be prefaced by mentioning that no actors or stunts from
Mission: Impossible III were ever on the real Chesapeake Bay Bridge.
No first unit, there was a second unit that took some photography,
actually the very first shot of the sequence where the armored cars
are driving on the bridge, that's the only thing shot there. That shot
is all the real Chesapeake Bay Bridge. To create the backgrounds, we
knew we would have to shoot a lot of "generic"
plates of the real bridge in Virginia. We did go out with a helicopter
and tried to shoot the bridge from similar angles from the Calabasas
shoot. And with a helicopter as your primary platform, we knew we were
going to get close to the angles we needed, but it won't be exactly perfect.
And the helicopter pilot ILM was working with got amazingly close to
the backgrounds we needed. We were basically trying to create a library
of Virginia plates that then we manipulate and composite into our Calabasas
shots.
While a lot of the action, explosions and stunts were done for real on
the Calabasas bridge set, ILM added elements such as the water to make
it appear it was shot on the
real Chesapeake Bay Bridge.
They (the art department) built a bridge set on a hillside in Calabasas
here in California. Almost like a semi-racetrack, somewhat like an
oval, where cars could really go, the whole thing was shot there. All
in all, the bridge set was a couple of hundred feet long. It was built
on a hillside so that when literally you're standing on the bridge,
depending on the angle you were looking at, you couldn't see a horizon.
So you had a very similar feel to being in the real Chesapeake Bay
Bridge. Of course once the camera got looking above 4 or 5 ft. the
height off the bridge the illusion is kinda blown. You see all sorts
of stuff, mountains and hills and houses, stuff like that. So all the
stuntwork, all the action with Tom Cruise and Ving Rhames and Hoffman,
all of it was shot on that fake bridge set. But whenever that camera
went above 5 ft. or a wide, establishing shot, the illusion was blown:
you could see the hillside. That's where we came in. Pretty much every
shot needed full matchmoves with complicated camera moves, adding water,
adding the bridge, adding extensions of the real bridge. We used the
whole cache of different techniques to totally make it feel like all
that action happened on the real bridge.
To create the wide shots ILM composited the water, Virginia plates, extended
the Calabasas bridge set to place the action on the Chesapeake
Bay Bridge. They also added such details as the missile contrail
to complement the pyro shots.
MA: So it seems most of the work was 2D.
TV: We tried to do as much in compositing as possible
because we knew our digital matte paintings would be focused on other
things, and because I knew we could do it. In the bridge sequence in
particular the destruction that happens, the missile that destroys part
of the bridge and the giant gap, part of that was the set that had to
be extended. The set was dressed really well, with actual set-dressing
of a blown out bridge piece: a nice job for some shots. Any time you
see like a wider shot of the destruction of the bridge we used an extremely
detailed digital matte painting for the bridge destruction itself, and
then we in compositing added the water, horizon, and extended the bridge.
Giles and Joe Ceballos made some great artwork for the blown-out gap
in the bridge. Their work allowed our compositors to focus on things
like all of the water, bridge supports, smoke, fire, and other tasks
in compositing. So it allowed our team to focus on things like that and
in Shanghai we tried to do as much of the layering and creation of the
background, as well as for the bridge, in compositing. I was really happy
how that all worked out.
MA: How much 3D work and miniatures were used in the
sequences?
TV: In the bridge sequence the UAV (unmanned aerial
vehicle) was entirely computer generated. All the missiles and contrails
were also done by the CG department for the bridge. The bridge destruction
paintwork and extensions were done by our Digital Matte Department. Other
than that it was entirely done in compositing, with significant contributions
from our matchmove department and our roto/paint team. The rest of the
movie included much more significant CG work. We had a lot of CG helicopters
in the helicopter chase. Shanghai was a huge digital matte painting and
CG effort. The vast majority of miniatures we built were related to the
helicopter chase sequence. We had a 1/6 scale Cobra and it got rebuilt
for the destruction of the Cobra when it lands by the windmill lane,
which worked really well. We also built something for the giant big pyro
blast that the Cobra flies through it. That explosion was really cool.
And then we built a couple of set pieces for when one of the windmill
crashes and lands unto a truck and then a couple other windmill destruction
type of things. Relatively a modest Model Shop show but it was definitely
incredible.
The ILM Model Shop and stage crew setup a huge pyro element for this
shot of the Cobra going through it, in the Berlin sequence.
MA: What a lot of people want to know is that shot when
Tom Cruise gets slammed to the car on the bridge as the missile strikes.
There has been a lot of speculation how was that done, especially since
it features prominently in the trailer.
TV: I know that shot very well, I comped that shot.
That was one of the first things we started on because we knew it was
going to be a tough shot... (laughs) of course I really didn't expect
it to become a cornerstone of the marketing (laughs). I just knew it
was going to be really hard. Yeah, it was really an amazing experience
to work on that shot. And I read a lot of things online like from VFX
folks that were like "wow, ILM really did good digital double work,
and the transitions and morphs from stuntman or face replacement...",
and stuff like that. It was really great to read that stuff because none
of those guesses were even close. Actually it's great because, by J.J.
and Roger's design, the shot is pure illusion. Even if you start thinking
about the shot you might come up with all these ideas. It was designed
to be as natural and in-camera as possible, and after all the compositing,
it feels very natural and in-camera. All of the theories about how the
shot was done (and how wrong they were) and that really means we were
doing our job and selling the illusion of the shot, the illusion of filmmaking.
In actuality Tom was photographed performing the stunt on a wire, with
a jerk rig or something like that is called. He would basically run
full blast towards the camera and at certain point he got jerked with
the cable sideways at a tremendous rate and speed, lifting him off
the ground and and slamming him into the white Dodge with plenty of
padding there. He slammed into that and fell to the ground which also
had padding painted to make it look like concrete, with no explosions
happening behind. It was far too dangerous to be performing that explosion
behind him. Also, throughout the whole shot, the camera is dollying
backwards. So basically we did all that.
I watched that footage more than anyone on the planet and it's just stunning.
When you do digital double stunt-work, you have to work so hard to
get all of the spontaneous details right. In this case, since the actor
did his own stunt, I didn't have to alter any of his motions at all
because they were so raw and so real. Like his facial expressions,
for example.The fact that you can always recognize it's him the whole
time really helps sell the shot. For that I did have to paint out a
lot of the padding and stuff like that.
I should say that the other main piece of footage was the truck pyro
explosion, a huge, massive explosion with the camera dollying backwards.
In addition in the same pass, the white Dodge's rear windshield breaks.
The on-set Special Effects guys did such an amazing job choreographing
all those events. It was really a remarkable source of photography
to work with. It worked so well. I wished it had been motion controlled
but the realities of film production are such that it is very rare
to have first-unit motion control anymore. The time it takes to setup,
break down, execute it all, it's not feasible anymore, from an economic
standpoint. Time is money, on the set, and when they're spending tens
of thousands of dollars a day (or per hour) on the set, no producer
wants to approve the potentially time-consuming process of motion control.
Roger and the camera operators did the best they could matching the
camera moves from the Tom plate and the truck explosion plate.
In addition to make things even harder for me, Roger and J.J. wanted
to make sure that we had enough image flexibility to create any kind
of camera moves we wanted in compositing because we were working on
a shoot with J.J.'s trademark handheld style. The entire sequence has
a raw, energetic camera style: lots of handheld camera work and long
lenses. For this shot, we needed the plates to be as solid as possible,
to aid in all of the compositing work. So the passes were shot with
as little camera bobble as possible. Plus, we didn't want to shoot
it anamorphic because of lens issues and things like that. So to maximize
the photography and get as much out of it as we could, Roger designed
an ingenious two camera rig which allowed us to double the horizontal
field of view, and shoot spherically. So we had two cameras on a rig,
with their lenses as close together as possible, basically recording
twice as wide a field of view with some overlap for both the Tom pass
and the explosion pass. We also had a third anamorphic camera behind
the main rig for both passes. In the end that meant 6 pieces of footage,
all non-motion controlled that needed to be blended together: the Tom
stunt, the explosion, the helicopter behind the truck, the exploded
gap in the bridge, the bridge extension, and the Virginia water. To
pull it all together, the shot required an enormous amount of roto,
paint, 3D tracking and 2D tracking, to make it all work. We didn't
have to embellish the explosions very much, however. I added a subtle
like a shockwave effect, and dust being kicked up after the explosion,
to wrap around Tom and hit the camera.
This shot was created from six main non-mocon shots: two tiled of Tom
Cruise performing the stunt and two other tiled of the explosion; plus
two other plates. ILM would also add the UAV, helicopter, shockwave
and additional debris and dust.
Tom was completely removed from his plates, and put into the truck plates.
The UAV opening fire and missile trails that were all CG. As soon as
it hits and the UAV passes overhead, J.J. asked us, while the shot
was already in production, "oh, wouldn't it be great when the
UAV passes overhead that we pan and tilt to follow the UAV and kinda
come back to see Tom afterwards". We didn't have the plates for
that so I had to paint a big set extension for that and then they extended
the shot by about 3 seconds. So it was all very straightforward! (laughs)!
MA: I guess you could call it the signature shot of
the film!
TV: In addition to all that, I comped it all as steady
as possible. But the finishing kiss of reality to the shot was adding
J.J.'s trademark handheld camera move and crash zooms to the shot. I
love creating real, believable, appropriate camera shake and movements
to shots in 2D, and I knew this would be a tough one. J.J.'s style is
very distinct, and I had to be careful not to overdo it. But with that
massive explosion happening behind Tom, I didn't want to oversell the
camera shake on that event, because I didn't want to make it seem like
we were hiding something. There's tendency to hide stuff with 2D camera
shakes: it's all too easy to just slam the camera in post to give a hard-hitting
feeling to a shot, but that becomes old and cartoony really fast. Plus,
we didn't want to lose the moment, of being able to see Tom the whole
time, and clearly illustrating that he was doing the stunt. Finding that
balance of creating a believable, exciting camera move and still maintaining
the quality of Tom's performance was a huge challenge. I think it turned
out really well.
MA: I imagine a lot of the other tasks was adding things
like fire so that the actors could perform without danger.
TV: The whole purpose of that shot is let Tom do what
the amazing Tom could do, which is absolutely brilliant. The rest of
the shots are a combination of Calabasas fire elements, adding appropriate
Virginia plates, motion tracking, 3D compositing, digital matte painting,
etc. The gap which Tom jumps over to get to the other side, the full
shot looking into the water right over Tom's shoulder really worked out
well. Those leaping shots and him scrambling up the edge were comped
by Marcel Martinez, Cathy Burrow, Kela Cabrales, Barry Safley, and Will
McCoy. Those are all real camera moves, we rarely had to embellish the
natural camera movements. J.J. never really wanted to have unrealistic
or implausible camera moves and choreography, and with very few exceptions,
everything had to appear real and raw because the plates were shot very
real and raw. We couldn't have a Spider-Man moment or a Van Helsing type
moment, where (laughs) you just go "what the heck!!! there's no
way they got that shot!!!". And that was the whole purpose of the
show, part of the whole style of the shoot as well. Mainly from the point
of view which is very very raw so we had to make sure all our shots fit.
ILM enhanced the Calabasas bridge set to enhance the apparent danger
of the shots.
MA: You also worked on part of the helicopter chase
sequence.
TV: Yeah it turned out really well. It was one of those
awesome combinations of fantastic stunt piloting shot on location and
visual effects. The pilots flew so close the windmills, and like what
the pilot shot in Calabasas, we were looking at the shots and saying "those
guys are nuts!!!". Absolutely insane how close they got to the real
windmills, but of course in Hollywood, never close enough. So we had
to augment a lot of shots, sometime have full CG shots of the whole windmill
farm. We built CG windmills, CG terrain and two helicopters as well,
the Huey (good guys) and the Cobra (bad guys). By the end of the show
we were creating shots totally from scratch in a few weeks with full
on choreography and lights. It turned out really well. So we had a combination
of in-camera, stunt work, there was a lot of bluescreen, all of the interiors
in the helicopters were shot bluescreen, crazy handheld camera moves
and wacky lighting which created a huge compositing challenge; that was
a huge challenge. Bruce Powell and Mike Conte were the sequence supes.
We had a bunch of plates we knew we had to add CG windmills and then
a few that needed miniature shots, all miniature or partial miniature
work combined with the live action. That was a good sequence that basically
showcased a lot of different techniques. Personally, I did a few shots
at the end, where the Cobra gets slammed by a windmill blade, they were
fun shots to work on.
MA: So how was your typical day like?
TV: This is my first sequence supervising gig at ILM.
I've done a bit of compositing supervision before, but never at ILM.
The difference was that it was really a thrill to not only get to work
on a lot of shots but work with the team and handle the collaboration
of the show: TDs, compositors, matchmovers, roto artists, animators,
etc. Everybody had a hand and great ideas to make it all work. A lot
of folks here say this was their favorite ILM show because of the environment
that Roger, with Shari Hanson (our producer) and J.J. created. J.J. is
an amazing director and guy who cares so much about every aspect of the
production.
MA:Do you have any other interesting tidbits about the
film, something we should watch out for or maybe something we don't realize
is VFX?
TV: Lets see. For the bridge sequence none of the actors
were on the real bridge, that's something that really shocks people.
For Shanghai, although there were a lot of amazing views of the city,
Tom was never jumping off the rooftop in Shanghai, nor ever on any rooftop
of Shanghai at all. That was staged with a lot greenscreen then combined
with our Digital Matte Dept. in compositing, it worked really well. Basically
all of the shots of Tom in the air swinging were entirely digital matte
paintings or environments. The only real, 1-to-1 elements was Tom Cruise
doing the gag. When he jumps off that rooftop he was really jumping off
from the studio parking structure to an airbag. Once again just like
the explosion on the bridge, it's him, that jump he's doing is scary
and it's really dangerous but we didn't have to augment his performance
in those types of shots.
Of course everything around him is completely synthetic. When he's jumping
off the rooftop in Shanghai, that's him and the entire environment
is synthetic, where for safety sake we got plates of the complete Shanghai
skyline. What it gave us was a lot of flexibility to move the camera,
to completely art direct it. It also gave us the realism of real physics
with Tom doing the jump. I really love that shot: him psyching himself
up for the jump, he goes right by the camera, and looking over the
edge, and that's really Tom getting ready to jump into the airbag down
where all Shanghai is. The physics from him are all there and that
gives it more credibility than other approaches. That's pretty cool.
ILM recreated Shanghai, including the building which
Tom Cruise jumps off.
The whole Shanghai sequence really showed off the amazing talents of the team,
particularly our comp supe Pat Tubach, and the sequence supes Robert Hoffmeister
and Richard Bluff. They all did some stunning work on the Shanghai shots that people
will never guess are visual effects. Of course, none of it would have been possible
without Beth D'Amato and her brilliant crew of roto/paint artists.
Director J.J. Abrams directs the action in the Shanghai hotel room set
with a giant greenscreen. ILM would later add the Shanghai skyline
to the shot as Tom Cruise explains the plan.
The mask making sequence were pretty interesting in the way they were
designed: a lot of CG augmentation with some makeup work. I love that
shot where Tom puts on the mask. Your first thought when the camera
goes behind Ving Rhames "oh well they'll just cut or wipe to Philip
Seymour Hoffman", kinda quaint and old fashioned. But the shot
just hangs there as you're watching Ving adjusting the mask around
Philip's neck, and you're asking yourself "what is it? is that
a mask? and what is happening around his eyes?". You see Ving
adjusting the mask, pressing around the eyeballs. You could really
feel the mask being put on and that was totally cool. That was a lot
of intense matchmoves and CG and roto and comp work by Leandro Estebecorena,
Tia Marshall, David Hisanaga and their team.
There are a ton of augmentations throughout the movie. We had over 520
shots. In terms of shot count it was huge.
For the helicopters shots, none of the actors were inside the flying
helicopters.
I did read some of the complaining about the ILM CG fireballs not being
that realistic; I would definitely take it under advisement that we
didn't have any CG fireballs in Mission: Impossible III. There were
many fireball shots that were real at 1-to-1 scale and we did have
one miniature fireball. I think part of that had to do with color timing,
they really pushed it, they were very aggressive with anything that
would be moderately saturated with fire or with any bold colors. They
pumped the sh*t out of it so it's really lit like lava. Especially
if it's like a daylight scene, the fireball is outdoors so to push
its saturation, you have to darken the shot (or part of the shot).
When you start bringing all that stuff down in color timing you want
to have that stuff more visually exciting but it kinda blows what you
expect from a real one.
MA: Thank you very much Todd for all the insight! And
have a great vacation.
TV: Thank you very much man.
Todd would like to thank Roger Guyett and the entire ILM Mission: Impossible
III team.
The ILM Mission:
Impossible III Credits
Special Visual Effects by
INDUSTRIAL LIGHT & MAGIC
A Lucasfilm Ltd. Company
San Francisco, California
Visual Effects Supervisor
ROGER GUYETT
Visual Effects Producer
SHARI HANSON
Associate Visual Effects Supervisor
RUSSELL EARL
Digital Production Supervisor
PATRICK TUBACH
CG Supervisor
GERALD GUTSCHMIDT
Animation Supervisor
PAUL KAVANAGH
Model/Miniature Supervisor
BRIAN GERNAND
Sequence Supervisors
TODD VAZIRI
DOUG SUTTON
LEANDRO ESTEBECORENA
SEAN MACKENZIE
ROBERT J. HOFFMEISTER
MICHAEL CONTE
RICHARD BLUFF
BRUCE POWELL
Lead Digital Matte Artist
GILES HANCOCK
Visual Effects Art Director
ALEX JAEGER
Digital Model Supervisor
PAMELA J. CHOY
Lead Layout & Matchmove Artists
DUNCAN BLACKMAN
BRIAN CANTWELL
TERRY CHOSTNER
Digital Paint & Rotoscope Supervisor
BETH D'AMATO
Lead Visual Effects Production Coordinator
KATIE LYNCH
Animators
DERRICK CARLIN
DAVID SHIRK
CHRISTOPHER MITHCELL
SCOTT BENZA
STEVE RAWLINS
Digital Artists
DENNIS MARTIN
JACK "EDSEL" HAYE
ZAIN HOMER
JOSEPH SUEN
TONY SOMMERS
PAMELA HOBBS
JOE CEBALLOS
DAVID MANOS MORRIS
AMY SHEPARD
RITA ZIMMERMAN
MARCEL MARTINEZ
TIMOTHY GIBBONS
KIM ROSS
CHRIS BAYZ
DAVE HANKS
SCOTT DAVID
ALAN ROSENFELD
CATHERINE BURROW
JASON ROSSON
JEN HOWARD
JEFF GREBE
RONNIE WILLIAMS JR.
GRANTLAND GEARS
CAM GRIFFIN
ALAN TRAVIS
MARK CASEY
WILL MCCOY
KELA CABRALES
BEN O'BRIEN
KEN NIELSEN
ERIC CHRISTENSEN
DAN FEINSTEIN
JENNIFER MACKENZIE
TIA MARSHALL
BARRY SAFLEY
GUS DIZON
MICHAEL KENNEDY
JOSHUA LIVINGSTON
HEIDI ZABIT
PASCALE VILLE
ROLAND YEPEZ
ANGELA GIANNONI
JOHN LEVIN
LEILA CHESLOFF
KEITH JOHNSON
SEBASTIEN MOREAU
JOSEPH METTEN
BRIAN FLYNN
SELWYN EDDY
JEREMY COOK
KEVIN PAGE
JONATHAN HARB
NATASHA DEVAUD
LUKE LONGIN
JOSHUA ONG
REGAN MCGEE
SCOTT MAY
ALYSON MARKELL
DEAN YURKE
SIMON CHEUNG
ADAM HOWARD
KEIJI YAMAGUCHI
YANICK DUSSEAULT
PHILIP METSCHAN
GIOVANNI NAKPIL
J.J. ABRAMS
Visual Effects Coordinators
BRIAN BARLETTANI
RYAN MAYEDA
NINA FALLON
DAVID GRAY
Visual Effects Editor
NIC ANASTASSIOU
Assistant Visual Effects Editor
JEROME BAKUM
Visual Effects Production Assistants
CHRYSTA BURTON
SHANE O'CONNOR
Visual Effects Director of Photography
PATRICK SWEENEY
Visual Effects Stage Production Manager
MARK ANDERSON
Visual Effects Camera Assistants
DENNIS ROGERS
BOB HILL
PATRICK MCARDLE
Chief Modelmakers
MICHAEL LYNCH
FON DAVIS
Modelmakers
BRYAN DEWE
MICHAEL JOBE
JOHN DUNCAN
JON FOREMAN
STEPHEN GAWLEY
CAROL BAUMAN
KEVIN WALLACE
VICTORIA LEWIS
DONALD BIES
LORNE PETERSON
RANDY OTTENBERG
MARK WALAS
NICHOLAS D'ABO
PEGGY HRASTAR
ALAN PETERSON
DANIEL WAGNER
MELANIE WALAS
PRESTON DONOVAN
MARK BUCK
NEAL HALTER
Practical Effects Supervisor
GEOFFREY HERON
Practical Effects Technicians
CHARLES RAY
ROBERT CLOT
RICHARD CLOT
JOSEPH FULMER
JASON BRACKET
PHILIP HERON
CRAIG MOHAGEN
Stage Technicians
MICHAEL OLAGUE
WILLIAM BARR
THOMAS CLOUTIER
MARTIN BRENNIS
CLARK HIGGINS
GREG BEAUMONTE
LANCE BRACKETT
CARL ASSMUS
BUCK O'HARE
Research and Development
ARKELL RASIAH
FRANCESCO CALLARI
BILL ANDERSON
FLORIAN KAINZ
JEFF YOST
ROBERT MOLHOLM
Production and Technical Support
MARIA BRILL
SIMON FILLAT
GEORGE GAMBETTA
NICK PROVENZANO
ERIK PAMPEL
MICHAEL MORGAN
FRANKIE KWAK
CHRISTOPHER BALOG
KAI CHANG
RYAN SMITH
THADDEUS PARKINSON
ROBERT BONSTIN
MICHAEL PARKINSON
LARRY HOKI
CRAIG MIRKIN
Production Accountant
MARC NEULIGHT
ILM Senior Staff
VICKI DOBBS BECK
LYNWEN BRENNAN
CHRISSIE ENGLAND
CLIFF PLUMER
COLUM SLEVIN
Visual Effects Executive Producers
MARK MILLER
DENISE REAM
For Paramount
Visual Effects Producer
TOM C. PEITZMAN
Many thanks to Megan Corbet for all the help conducting this interview
and to Todd Vaziri as always for his time and amazing insights.
All Mission: Impossible III images © Paramount Pictures. Courtesy
of ILM.
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