The Province

Vancouver-based inventors nab Oscar for green screen

-

DELTA — As Godzilla rises from the ocean depths and attacks the Golden Gate Bridge, movie audiences suspend disbelief at the captivatin­g onscreen spectacle.

But strip out the immense monster that’s clawing apart cables and what’s left is a group of actors in military fatigues and one gargantuan, inflatable green screen.

The unique screen, stretching more than 200 metres for the 2013 Godzilla film shoot, has garnered its Vancouver-area inventors Hollywood’s highest honour — an Academy Award.

Four partners — David McIntosh, Steve Smith, Mike Branham and Mike Kirilenko — have been named Oscar winners for engineerin­g and developing the cutting-edge green screen, called the Aircover Inflatable­s Airwall.

The Technical Achievemen­t Award will be presented Saturday at the annual Scientific and Technical Award ceremony in Los Angeles.

“We took a huge risk. We built these units without knowing if they’d ever work. We all believed it was a good idea, but we didn’t know,” said Smith, CEO of Aircover Inflatable­s, based in Delta. Some other major motion pictures that used the visualeffe­cts tool include Tomorrowla­nd, Avengers: Age of Ultron, Captain America: Civil War, X-Men: Apocalypse and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales.

The invention was the brainchild of McIntosh, who wanted to lessen the dangers of another device — an overhead frame — used by lighting and rigging technician­s during filmmaking.

 ??  ?? The Vancouver-based -inventors of the Aircover Inflatable­s Airwall will be honoured Saturday with the Technical Achievemen­t Award.
The Vancouver-based -inventors of the Aircover Inflatable­s Airwall will be honoured Saturday with the Technical Achievemen­t Award.

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from Canada