Computer Support Blog

One of the fastest-growing jobs in the computer industry is designing and programming computer-generated special effects for movies.  CGI artists are absolutely essential computer support personnel who bring the vision a director has to life.  Sony Pictures Imageworks is a CGI company with a massive studio and data storage facility and they were responsible for the computer-generated special effects for Green Lantern.

Workers at Sony Pictures Imageworks blend the artistry of a painter with the computer programming acumen usually held by professional computer support workers.  This is not surprising; CGI artists are computer support personnel working with film to transform reality as the director captured it into something extraordinary and unreal for the final movie.  Most people remain unaware of the massive effort and the impressive data storage demands creating the final images in a movie require.

Take Green Lantern, for which five members of the Imageworks staff provided computer support through developing the elaborate designs for the fantastic locations in the movie.  Green Lantern featured over 1400 effects shots created by the Imageworks team.  The time and data storage demands on the project were extensive as so many shots required CGI.

Data storage is exceptionally important on a project like Green Lantern because of the sheer number of digitally-rendered locations, costumes, characters and devices.  Sony Pictures Imageworks needed a massive data storage capacity to turn a few two dimensional drawings of the planet OA into a fully-realized digital model.  The data storage demands of turning a digital city model into a rich, color-filled environment that looks good on a giant screen is more than most viewers understand.  While a digital download of the Green Lantern film might be 2 – 8 GB, depending on the resolution of the download, the digital construction of the images required terabytes of data storage space to develop.  As the CGI artists create additional layers – from the colorless wireframe model to the filled in model to the fully colored digital environment – more data storage space is required.

Green Lantern’s data storage and computer support needs were greater than for most superhero films because the costume Ryan Reynolds wore as Green Lantern was a digital construct as well.  Reynolds and the other actors playing members of the Green Lantern Corps wore plain bodysuits with reference dots, which Imageworks used to create digital models of the actors for the costumes.  The digital models move frame by frame with the actors as an overlay, which has to be precisely timed, colored and shaped to create the realism viewers demand.  Creating those models required serious data storage that only studios like Sony Pictures Imageworks actually have.

Moviegoers seldom think about the how much computer space special effects movies take to develop, though they certainly enjoy the results of CGI done right.  Because Sony Pictures Imageworks has incredible data storage capacity and a crack team of computer support personnel working with filmmakers on projects like Green Lantern, they are a vital part of keeping the magic in movies today.

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