Montreal firm in Oscar spotlight for work on Blade Runner 2049
Montreal director Denis Villeneuve’s Blade Runner 2049 may not be nominated in the major categories at the Academy Awards this Sunday, but it is nominated in five craft categories and one of those behind-the-scenes Oscar nominations is shining the light on a booming Montreal visual-effects studio.
The Blade Runner sequel is nominated for the Academy Award for best visual effects, and one of the four Blade Runner VFX supervisors nominated is Montreal-based Richard Hoover, who is a visual-effects supervisor with Framestore.
Framestore, which is a Britishowned effects firm, did about onethird of the effects on the big-budget sci-fi and almost all of that work was done at its studio on de Gaspé St. in Mile End.
Four hundred people work at the Framework production centre here and the company is positively booming and is currently providing effects for several high-profile Hollywood films, including Marvel Studios’ Avengers: Infinity War, Christopher Robin, Deadpool 2, Mary Poppins Returns and Andy Serkis’s Mowgli.
Hoover and the rest of the Blade Runner visual-effects team — John Nelson, Gerd Nefzer and Paul Lambert — just won the British Academy Award for Special Visual Effects.
Other Montreal companies were involved in the work on Blade Runner 2049, including MPC, Atomic Fiction and Rodeo Fx, and Hoover said the strong contingent of Montreal companies involved is directly tied to the fact that the film was directed by a Montrealer.
There were another five companies from outside Montreal that did visual effects for Blade Runner 2049.
Hoover said the British Academy Award and the Oscar nomination should give a boost to the vibrant Montreal visual-effects scene.
“Quebec having a pretty sizable tax rebate (for visual effects) draws work from producers to (Montreal),” said Hoover in a phone interview Wednesday from Los Angeles.
“Doing work like this and getting this recognition legitimizes Framestore in Montreal to be a viable place for producers to bring their work, and they’re going to get top-quality work.”
Framestore did a significant amount of the most notable visual effects work in Blade Runner 2049, including the opening of the film, from the shot of the eye to the scene where K (Ryan Gosling ) goes out into the extreme desert. The company also did all of the Las Vegas scenes where K goes to meet Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford).
For the Vegas sequences, Framestore used Toronto-based company Esri Canada’s CityEngine software to recreate a futuristic Las Vegas. This is 3D modelling software that takes real-life data and transforms it into a visual-effects model of the city in the film.
Hoover said Montreal is now a key centre for visual-effects film work.
“It’s exploding,” Hoover said. “You can tell just by the volume of growth we’ve had in the last three years, and I think that’s pretty true in the town itself. All of the vendors have grown.
“My take on it is that the artists there are pretty well trained. They just hadn’t had the experience on really big movies when I got there a few years ago, and that’s really changed very quickly in the last three years. And they’ve been up to the task. They’re very passionate about their work.
“I think the educational system in Quebec does a great job of preparing people for this kind of profession.”
This is the third time that Hoover has been nominated as part of the team for a visual-effects Oscar, following nominations for Armageddon and Superman Returns. He is taking a philosophical approach regarding the possibility of winning Sunday night.
“This is my third time to the Oscars and what I’ve learned is that you never know,” Hoover said. “There is a lot of media guessing who it will be, but I’m just going in being happy I am here and if we don’t win I’ll still be happy. Just to make it to the nominations is wonderful. I think all of the artists at Framestore in Montreal are happy with that.”