By Garry Maddox
“It’s kind of surreal,” Australian animation supervisor David Clayton says. “To go to bed one evening knowing that when you wake up, whenever that is, you’re going to find out if you’re going to the Oscars or not.”
As it happened, the news that January morning was good: Clayton and three other visual effects team members who worked on the Robbie Williams biopic Better Man will be going to the 97th Academy Awards on March 3 (Australian time).
Jonno Davies performs on set in a motion capture suit in a visual effects shot for Better Man.Credit: Weta/Roadshow
The nomination for Australians Clayton, Peter Stubbs and Keith Herft and their British-Kiwi colleague Luke Millar continues a strong run for our VFX industry. This is the country’s 17th Oscar nomination in the category in the past 30 years, with wins for John Cox and team for Babe, Andrew Jackson and team for Tenet and Steve Courtley and team for The Matrix.
The four nominees for best visual effects at the Oscars for the Australian film Better Man. Clockwise from top left, Luke Millar, David Clayton, Keith Herft and Peter Stubbs
Big-budget Hollywood movies typically employ multiple companies for visual effects, with Australian firms frequently taking the lead (and scoring the nominations). Nods have come for Deepwater Horizon, two Iron Man films, two Hobbit instalments and Pearl Harbour, as well as the locally shot Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings and the locally produced Mad Max: Fury Road and Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World.
Though Better Man has struggled at the box office overseas, it has given a boost to the Australian visual effects industry, with New Zealand’s Wētā FX, the seven-time VFX Oscar winner, setting up a Melbourne branch to work on the biopic. The studio has continued to create effects in Australia for the next Avatar film and other productions.
Three other Australian VFX houses – Plural, Studio Blackbird and Rising Sun Pictures – also worked on Better Man.
The previous shot now features a performing monkey that Robbie Williams thinks he has often been during his career.Credit: Weta/Roadshow
On a Zoom call with the Better Man nominees, Millar says a lot of passion went into creating the CGI chimpanzee, largely based on British actor Jonno Davies’ performance in a motion capture suit, for almost every single shot in the film.
“It’s not just making one or two great shots but making 2000 great-looking shots,” he says.
Says Herft: “You just can’t afford to lose the audience in any one shot. He has to be this monkey that’s there in real life, interacting with real people, convincingly.”
VFX has become a substantial business in this country. Screen Australia says the federal government’s 30 per cent tax offset for PDV (post-production, digital and visual effects) encouraged work worth $589 million on Australian and international projects last financial year.
But how does our VFX industry compare globally?
“Really well,” Millar says. “The work on our movie is a testament to that. Obviously, Weta Melbourne is coming from [the] great pedigree of the Weta that has existed in New Zealand ... all of that knowledge, the toolsets, can [now] exist in Australia as well.
“But my takeaway was there was a lot of younger talent in the Melbourne office. These are people who would have loved to have the opportunity to work at Weta but might not necessarily have wanted to leave Australia. They are just incredibly creative, and enthusiastic to be there.”
Herft believes Australian houses and VFX artists punch above their weight.
Jonno Davies in performance capture gear for the making of Better Man.Credit: Ben King / PARAMOUNT PICTURES
“It’s a little more ... DIY is the wrong word, but people are very innovative and do what it takes to get the job done because of the smaller scale that, to now, has existed in Australia,” he says. “[It’s] doing a lot with a little, and that’s quite respected.”
The four nominees think Australia is training enough VFX talent, and they are getting to do cutting-edge work on big-budget movies and TV series. However, Stubbs believes more people need to be trained in special effects (practical effects such as flames, atmospherics and rain on set).
They think the current incentives attracting digital work and the exchange rate make Australia competitive.
So what do the nominees, who are up against Alien: Romulus, Dune: Part Two, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (which was shot in Australia) and Wicked, think of their chances at the Oscars?
“We’re definitely the dark horse,” Millar says. “We’re not [a] big studio film and ... the work that we’ve done is very different to a lot of the other films that are out there.”
Says Clayton, a long-time New Zealand resident previously Oscar nominated for Hobbit films: “We’re going in [to] have a great time, represent our movie, which we all love and, win or lose, we’ll be happy to be there.”
Stubbs believes the Oscars will be an adventure. “I’ve never done this before so it’s going to be fantastic,” he says.
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