One small step for man, One giant leap for mankind.
It is indeed a giant leap for not just mankind but also for the overall VFX scene that convincingly replicated the enigmatic tale of Neil Armstrong in the launchpad years before he marked his historic voyage to the moon. The movie, First Man, that covers the launchpad years of the noted astronaut before he stepped on the moon, has won the Academy Award for visual effects,trouncing a spate of competitors that included space-related fantasy movies like Star Wars and Avengers: Infinity War directed by Ron Howard and Steven Spielberg’s pop-culture movie Ready Player One.
With the aid of miniatures, archival footage, vintage filming techniques and colossal LED screens to re-create the 1969 space mission and the historic ramp-up to it, First Man visual effects supervisor Paul Lambert who also had bagged an Oscar for Blade Runner 2049 rendered his tremendous skills services to this project which managed to recreate the Apollo 11 mission by visual effects.
The Academy Award honours for First Man went to Lambert, Ian Hunter, Tristan Myles, and J.D. Schwalm. Hunter is a repeat winner, he had also won a space-travel Oscar for Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar in 2015.
First Man was directed by Oscar-winner Damien Chazelle and starred Ryan Gosling in the title role as astronaut Neil Armstrong. Backstage at the Oscars, Lambert spoke about the film’s mission and its approach to it.
While First Man bagged the award for the best visual effects, Avengers: Infinity War won the VES honours for the CG work on the archvillain Thanos played by Josh Brolin and brought to the screen through Digital Domain’s latest state-of-the-art facial capture techniques.