VFX Research: Joe Letteri

The next VFX artist that I wanted to look at was Joe Letteri as he has a fantastic career as a visual effect artist and worked on some of my favourite films, creating some amazing film visuals that have really inspired me in the past.

Joe Letteri, born 1957, is a senior visual effects artist who career spans back to the early 90s when he did initial work on Jurassic Park, one of the reasons why he is one of my favourite visual effect artists. His film list is impressive to say the least, started out his career working on The Abyss, Jurassic Park, Mission: Impossible and the remastered version of Star Wars in 97. These are all incredible examples of CG in films in which it wouldn't have been possible to make without them. For there time, the early 90s, they look exceptional, especially Jurassic Park, which is a film I cannot rave about enough as its incredible how good the dinosaurs actually look for a film that came out in 1993.

After this starting point he then joined the company Weta Digital in 2001, which is responsible for so many heavy CGI films including The Avengers, The Day the Earth Stood Still and District 9; all incredible to watch and include fantastic CGI, especially in District 9, as the aliens look so real. At this time Letteri worked on the last two Lord of the Rings films, possibly my favourite film series ever created, and these included some lovely CG work as there were so many creatures that had to be designed and modeled to interact with the actual actors. Due to the fact that he now continues to work with Weta Digital, he has also been the visual effects supervisor for the new Hobbit films as well, which I am so excited to see and watch as they are so well designed and created and the visual effects are incredible and so inspiring.

Possibly the reason that I wanted to look at Joe Letteri in the first place for this project, despite already loving him for his work on The Lord of the Rings films, he also worked on Avatar. Although I wasn't a big fan of this film as I believe it is just a modern day remake of Pocahontas, which contains basically the same storyline, but I do think the digital graphics are incredible. They ultimately cannot be faulted do to how incredible they look and how perfectly crafted and designed they are. I think the entire world created for it has been beautifully brought to life and the storyline really does turn this film from something that could be one of the best films ever made to a glammed-up pretty remake of something that was such a good and original idea for a film in the first place.

And to conclude, since the wonderful start to his career he has become the owner of four Academy Awards, four BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) Awards and also four VES (Visual Effects Society) Awards, an impressive run for someone who's career has been 20 years or so long, which is incredible to say the least.