Date: Tuesday, November 19th
Time: 4:15pm 5:30pm
Venue: Great Hall 1&2

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Speaker: Guy Williams, Weta Digital, New Zealand

Abstract: In Ang Lee's action-thriller Gemini Man, Will Smith's character Henry faces off against Junior-a younger clone of himself. Weta Digital VFX Supervisor Guy Williams presents how they created Junior as a completely digital character. Creating a digital human has often been described as the 'holy grail' of visual effects. For Gemini Man, there was an interesting twist because at 23, Will Smith was already a very recognizable figure. Guy will share the extensive anatomical and physiological research Weta conducted to prepare for the creation of Junior, down to the movement of individual pores. All of this was to ensure they captured the youthfulness not just the likeness, of a 23-year-old Will Smith, Guy will talk about how this project pushed them to advance their character pipeline, to help artists reveal Junior in astonishing detail at 120 frames-per-second in 4K stereo. Image Courtesy: © 2019 Paramount Pictures. All Rights Reserved

Speaker(s) Bio:
Guy has over twenty years experience in the visual effects industry and specialises in photo-real effects and creatures for live action film. He came to New Zealand in 1999 to work on The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Since that time he has been Visual Effects Supervisor on Avatar, X-Men: First Class, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire as well as The Avengers and Iron Man 3, both of which earned him Academy® Award nominations for Best Visual Effects. In his role as Visual Effects Supervisor, Guy has taken on the many facets the role requires including managing the pre-production, look development and pipeline setup phases to onset supervision and finally to post production and shot completion. He is an active member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Guy's most recent films are Steven Spielberg’s adaptation of Roald Dahl’s classic The BFG and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. He is currently working on Ang Lee's Gemini Man.

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