Happy Saturday Hollywood tech nerds!

In this issue, you’ll learn:

🍄 The challenges when making The Super Mario Bros Movie

🤑 What Hollywood actors might be doing during the strike

🍿 Kernels: 3 links worth making popcorn for

Talking VFX for The Super Mario Bros Movie

The Super Mario Bros. Movie did $1.3B at the box office—and it wouldn’t be possible without Illumination, the VFX team behind it.

Illumination spoke with VFX Voice this week. Here were some of the biggest challenges when producing the film.

• “Rainbow Road was a complex challenge for us,” said Head of CG/FX Supervisor Milò Riccarand. Same here while playing Mario Kart! He explained some of the difficulties: the camera had to chase all the characters, the road was a volumetric entity with clouds inside, and everything had to look lit.

• Bowser’s volcanic world and home Lava Lake Keep was also a challenge. They used proprietary software for the smoke. To avoid having to use multiple simulations rending overnight, he explained that the lava had to be stylized and a bit more cartoony, but with realistic lighting. Much of Bowser’s world was also set during the night becuase “night sequences are easier to hide things with mist and darkness, and you can use high contrast lighting. When you’re outside in sunny daylight, it’s more complex to light the characters in a believable and interesting way.”

• The Mario Bros’ mustaches as well as Donkey Kong’s fur were challenging too. They were achieved using proprietary software. “Donkey Kong has numerous layers of fur,” Riccarand explains. “It has to have a lot of detail to feel real, but it doesn’t need to be realistic.

On Strike Doesn’t Mean Off-Limits

The Hollywood strike is still happening.

No one knows exactly what’s gonna happen or when it’ll be done, but here’s a few predictions of what actors might jump into:

• Musicians-actors will hop back in the recording studio. Since they can’t make television/movies, I’m betting that musician-actors will jump back in the studio and release a lot more music. Perhaps we’ll even see a lot more actors in music videos. Most importantly, hopefully this means we’ll be getting new Childish Gambino music soon 👀

• More celebrity audiobooks and podcasts. The strike doesn’t prevent actors from recording audiobooks or hosting podcasts (as long as it’s not about promoting TV or movies). With Spotify and Amazon known for courting celebs, it wouldn’t be a surprise if we see a lot more audiobooks and podcasts coming soon.

• Actors spending more time on social media and building up paid streams. Will we be seeing Tom Cruise eat virtual ice cream? Yum yum mission impossible so good. Who knows?

• Actors and writers becoming entrepreneurs. I predict we’ll see writers starting ad agencies, actors starting businesses with their faces on it like Jake Paul, and much more. The most ambitious actors are gonna want to get their incomes untied from the Strike.

I can tell you 1 thing we’re not gonna see for a while: actors promoting movies at the Red Carpet. During the Oppenheimer premiere, Cillian Murphy and Emily Blunt legit walked off the carpet when they heard about the strike.

Well perhaps we’ll see Cillian reading a nice audiobook soon 🤔

Kernels (3 links worth making popcorn for)

Here’s a round-up of cool links about Hollywood and technology:

Christopher Nolan talks OPPENHEIMER and more. A solid long-form interview with the 🐐 (link)

Will Smith says Steven Spielberg sent a helicopter to convince him to be in Men In Black. Will and Kevin Hart chat on Hart to Heart (link).

Did you know Joaquin Phoenix ate 1 apple/day to become The Joker? Check out this video (link).