This month’s Ausfilm newsletter meets Ben Snow, Senior Visual Effects Supervisor at Industrial Light & Magic’s Sydney studio, to learn more about his role in crafting some of cinema’s most iconic visual effects. With decades of experience, having worked on franchises ranging from Star Wars to Twisters to the MCU, Snow shares his insights into the creative and technical challenges of modern filmmaking.
What is your role at Industrial Light & Magic and what’s it like working there?
I am a senior Visual Effects Supervisor, which means I lead the team of artists creating the visual effects for projects that we contribute to – representing the director and helping them develop the visual effects for the film. Visual effects means creating anything that we cannot actually film – that could mean a fantasy character or vehicle like a dragon or spaceship, building an imaginary castle, or even creating something that cannot be filmed on the day for practical or budgetary reasons.
As Visual Effects Supervisor on Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, Snow oversaw the work of several studios around the world, including this shot by the VFX team at ILM’s Sydney studio. The Sydney team created the stone dragon and extended the environment to add the roofs and background buildings and trees.
Twisters featured VFX from ILM’s teams in Sydney, Vancouver, and San Francisco.
I’m excited to be back in Sydney at ILM’s studio here. The Sydney leadership team of Rob Coleman and Luke Hetherington have built up the Sydney studio to a world-class facility with over 600 artists. Both my last two projects, Twisters and Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, had terrific work created by the team here in Sydney. As one of our newest studios, Sydney has an energy similar to what I found when I first joined ILM in San Francisco over 30 years ago. Working at ILM is a blast and has given me tremendous opportunities. The company has consistently been at the forefront of visual effects, and virtual production developing new technologies and working with innovative filmmakers.
In terms of the role, my job often starts early on in the process, sometimes before a director is attached to a project. The studio might send ILM a script and ask us to estimate what could be done in visual effects and how much it might cost. In pre-production before filming, I’ll work with the director, art department, and often with a previsualisation company to make visuals to show what the director has in mind for some of the more difficult scenes – particularly those which will need to be largely created via visual effects. Then, I’ll work with other heads of department like the Director of Photography, the Production Designer, the Special Effects Supervisor, the stunts team, and so on to work out how much we can capture safely in camera and what is necessary to capture to give us the best foundation for our visual effects.
Top: A filmed background plate for Twisters is scanned into the computer where artists create a rough visualisation for the Tornado (the checkerboard funnel). Bottom: The final shot from the film, with the time of day and sky altered and a computer graphics tornado added.
During filming, I’ll be on set to help make sure we get what we need, and work with our on-set visual effects team to collect data and record information about the sets, props, actors, cameras, and lighting so we can match, recreate and add to that photography in post production.
After filming I work with the director and editor to help select the material that we’ll be adding our visual effects to and then during post-production I guide the visual effects team in creating the final images – working with the technical team on different approaches we can take; representing the director in giving feedback to the artists and presenting their work back to the director and film-makers; and working with the VFX production team to make sure it all happens on schedule and within budget.
How did you get started in the VFX industry?
I studied computing with a media major at the University of Canberra and got my start as a runner in a computer graphics company after a few years of working as a computer programmer. That was in the early 1990s when computer graphics was becoming an important tool for making movie magic. I started at the bottom and worked my way up to computer artist while working in London and Sydney, making commercials, title sequences, and corporate videos.
When computer graphics started being used more and more in films, I got a job at Industrial Light & Magic in San Francisco, which was then and still is leading the charge with digital technologies for film. My first project there was Star Trek: Generations where I did materials development (working on how an object looks in the computer), lighting (lighting it in the computer, like the DOP would light something on set), compositing (combining the different visual effects and photographic elements – like you might combine layers in photoshop) and effects (making dust clouds, smoke, starbursts and magic out of tiny particles). After Star Trek: Generations I helped develop the tornadoes on the original Twister then a couple of years later graduated to leading the digital team as computer graphics supervisor on The Mummy (1999). I got my break as an associate visual effects supervisor on the films Galaxy Quest and Pearl Harbor and I became a full visual effects supervisor on Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones, following that with Van Helsing and Peter Jackson’s King Kong.
One of Snow’s first projects as an associate VFX supervisor was overseeing shots of the Rock Monster and other creatures in the comedy Galaxy Quest.
You’ve just recently returned to Australia having spent much of your career in San Francisco, what is unique about working in Australia? What excites you about being back?
When I left Sydney in 1994 we were doing some computer graphics for commercials here but were just starting to get into doing CG for movies. I went to ILM to improve my skills, but one thing led to another and I ended up staying for thirty years. I’m glad to be able to finally bring that experience back and to share it with the team at ILM Sydney. Plus, while it’s already proven its worth, ILM’s Sydney office is only a few years old, and there is an energy and enthusiasm here that I remember from the early days of computer graphics at ILM in San Francisco. It’s great to feel that sense of discovery and the desire to learn how to make the best images we can. I look forward to the excitement of working with new artists as they improve their skills and discover what they love about visual storytelling.
I’m looking forward to the chance to work with Australian filmmakers as well as to continue to work on the international blockbuster movies and groundbreaking television series that ILM is known for. And it’s great to be back near family and to be able to enjoy the Australian culture and lifestyle.
What’s the biggest highlight of your job?
I’m very lucky in that I love most aspects of the job, and my career has given me a huge variety of opportunities. I’ve worked on everything from tentpole movies with George Lucas, Peter Jackson, and the Marvel Studios team to films with amazing directors such as Darren Aronofsky and Yimou Zhang. In addition, I’ve had the chance to help push new technologies, I’ve done projects using real-time graphics like game engines, and I’ve directed successful virtual reality projects.
I really enjoy thinking about and discussing how we can make something that seems impossible look real on the screen – working with the film-makers to work out how best to capture a foundation for it, and working with the visual effects and computer graphics team on how to actually create the final images. I particularly love it when an idea the visual effects team suggests – be it a visual, a gag or even a story idea makes it to the screen. In my job you get used to throwing a lot of ideas out there and being very happy when one of them survives.
Snow’s first full VFX Supervisor credit was on Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones, on which he led the unit creating the climactic Clone War battle. It led to his second of four Oscar nominations.
You recently served as the VFX Supervisor on the blockbuster movie Twisters, what was it like revisiting the franchise?
It was great to be able to use the powerful visual effects toolset that we have now to make our tornadoes and scenes of storms and destruction. The original Twister will always have an important place in my heart – we were making it up as we went along and when we began we were not even sure we could make a computer graphics tornado look believable.
Now we know a lot more about the science behind tornadoes, and we have access to a wealth of visual material on how they look. Of course, so does the audience so our work needs to look more real than ever. Luckily director Lee Isaac Chung had a passion for making the tornadoes as real as possible and for letting us work with the film-makers to get the best material we could to do what we needed to. We had a great team at ILM in Sydney, San Francisco, and Vancouver all contributing amazing sequences to the movie.
An image from Twisters created by ILM Sydney team showing the destruction of a mid-western motel by an EF5 Tornado.
What were some of the biggest challenges in creating such hyper realistic natural disaster elements like the tornadoes?
To make tornadoes that convince an audience that is used to seeing the real thing on YouTube and weather documentaries, we needed to use a ton of computing power to drive very complex simulations. We used as much computing power on one of our big EF5 tornado shots on Twisters as we’d used for the whole of the original film.
Making them look real involves both science and art – you’re still pushing particles around on the screen like we did on the original film and the trick is to make it fast enough, even given the greater complexity of our simulations, for the artist driving the simulations to be able to shape them into something that meets the director’s vision and hopefully dazzles the viewer.
What has been your favourite production you’ve worked on at Industrial Light & Magic?
It’s hard to choose! I loved working alongside George Lucas on Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones because he created that universe and helped champion a lot of the filmmaking technologies we use. We had so many visual effects on that project and limited resources so we had to be imaginative in our approaches. I got to combine miniatures, computer graphics, practical explosions, and all sorts of tools. Many years later I got to revisit the Star Wars universe when I directed the three-part VR project Vader Immortal for ILM Immersive. I got great satisfaction from the challenge of creating realistic planes and destruction for Pearl Harbor, the tornadoes of Twister and Twisters and making Iron Man fly for the first time, in the film that launched the Marvel Cinematic Universe. But I especially love the quirkier projects I’ve gotten to do like Galaxy Quest, Mars Attacks, The Mummy and Darren Aronofsky’s mother! It’s been great to mix things up.
Snow led the ILM team on Jon Favreau’s Iron Man, which launched the Marvel Cinematic Universe. He received an Oscar® nomination for the film.
The Mummy (1999) was one of Snow’s favourite projects.
Snow had the opportunity to revisit the Star Wars universe for the award-winning Vader Immortal, a real-time virtual reality storytelling project he directed for ILM Immersive.
How have you seen the industry change and how do you see it changing in the future?
Like every industry, technology has advanced rapidly and there are budget constraints that constantly rear their heads. We’ve gotten much faster as artists and our tools are constantly evolving and improving. When I graduated college there was a sense that computers were a threat in many industries and would take people’s jobs, then when I started in movies the model shop artists were wary of digital artists. In fact, the model shop expanded during the 1990s and was at its largest on the Star Wars prequels – and at the same time, many of the artists from models and motion control photography transitioned into computer graphics. There are more visual effects artists working today than ever before, and more demand for what we do. Obviously, AI represents a vast new toolset that is developing almost faster than we can imagine, but like all those earlier developments I think it will be another tool we learn to develop and use to improve what we do.
Having worked closely with real-time computer graphics for virtual reality projects, I’m also very excited by the potential we’re seeing as that technology matures into a tool that we can use for film-quality effects.
What advice would you give to someone who wants to work in the visual effects industry?
It is a tough industry with long hours and crazy deadlines. Like most creative endeavours and particularly the film industry, you really want to love the work you do. That means being willing to start at the bottom and to muck in and do whatever it takes to get the job done. But the reward is having people around you that share that passion, and when it all works to have the satisfaction of creating experiences and memories for family, friends and strangers that they cherish and remember.
What is your all-time favourite film or TV series?
I like all types of films, but particularly the types of movies I work on. Amongst my favourite films are Mad Max 2 (aka The Road Warrior), The Good the Bad and the Ugly, Jacques Tati’s films, and The Night of the Hunter. Dredd, Holy Motors, and Flash Gordon are guilty pleasures that I love to revisit.
What keeps you busy when not at work?
Other than watching movies, I like travelling, reading, cooking, and doing a spot of gardening. I like bushwalking and, although I haven’t had much chance in recent years, I still like to navigate an orienteering course when I get the chance.
ILM Sydney