More-often-than-not, films rely on special effects. From the smallest, subtlety of a moving duvet in Paranormal Activity, to the epic battle scenes for Middle Earth in The Lord of the Rings; a lot of movies nowadays depend on the talents of visual effect artists to achieve a vision that otherwise wouldn’t be possible.

Developments in the special effects world have aided films in their quest to impress and astound audiences as they bring to life the wildest, most fantastical aspects of a director’s imagination. Arguably The Lord of the Rings set the modern benchmark for SFX with its numerous breathtaking moments of CGI, but since then even more developments have been made with the technology that was so effective in bringing Gollum to life. I am of course referring to motion capture, as well as the advancement of animation in general.  Examples of just how far technology has come can be seen in the shape of Spielberg’s The Adventures of Tintin and more recently the motion captured, Rise of the Planet of the Apes.

The ones at the forefront of such technological advancements are Weta Digital. Named after a species of 70 insects from New Zealand, Weta is a company that was founded by Richard Taylor, Jamie Selkirk and Peter Jackson in 1993, and took charge of the special effects in the latter’s film, Heavenly Creatures.

To date, the company have won 5 Oscars for Best Visual Effects for efforts on each of The Lord of the Rings movies, as well as for King Kong and Avatar.

Weta are responsible for developing and creating new technology and programmes such as MASSIVE, which is a piece of software that allows hundreds of moving characters to perform individual, independent actions all one screen simultaneously. This was used predominantly for LotR in the battle scenes that heavily feature, and looks stunning with the amount of creatures on display together.

They also came up with CityBot, which is a programme that can build an entire city, shot-by-shot, and was used in order to recreate 1933 New York for King Kong. Not only that, but for Kong’s fur they had to devise completely new modelling and simulation software in order to realistically re-create the beast. In fact, a staggering 460 billion strands of fur made up the giant ape in order for it to believably interact with different surfaces. MASSIVE was further developed for Avatar, with the help of senior visual effects artist, Joe Letteri, which was by in large a mo-cap, CGI and animation heavy affair of a movie.

In total, Weta Digital have worked on an impressive 30 films since their debut 19 years ago, including Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit, which is out December of this year, as well as 2013’s Man of Steel and second Hobbit instalment.

They’ve also had a huge part to play in films such as I, Robot, District 9 and X-Men: First Class, too, with Rise of the Planet of the Apes being the film to really showcase their capabilities in the next step of motion capture. For years, including sequences in the multi-Oscar winning The Lord of the Rings trilogy, motion capture has been achieved under close supervision and within the confines of a studio. However, for Rise, Weta Digital evolved their technology and captured the desired character movement and data unrestricted, whether it be on a set or on location; it opens up a number of possibilities for motion capturing action in a wide open space.

This year Weta are yet again up for Best Visual Effects for Rise of the Planet of the Apes, and would be an injustice for them not to win it considering how life-like Caesar et al look in the film.

It’s no secret that Weta Digital are industry innovators, with an amazingly talented team to make it all possible in the first place. They have proved a massive influence on the film industry with their combination of motion capture, SFX and exquisite animation that their films will be the cornerstone and model example for years to come, especially when we look back as perhaps we have done with the likes of Blade Runner and more recently, Jurassic Park, for its special effects and ground-breaking visual impact.