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Even in the live theater, computer technology can work its wonders. George Coates' Invisible Site: A Virtual Sho, a mixed-media phantasmagoria now onstage in San Francisco, tells a story like TRON's or The Lawnmower Man's: of travelers and hackers in a virtual-reality video game. But from the first moment, with the image of a huge (computerized) concrete chute belching (the image of) computer-generated smoke, the effects are the real story. The audience, wearing 3-D glasses, watches a live actor getting poked by a giant computer-generated glove, or scenery changing with the tapping of a computer key. "3-D is an old technique," explains Coates, "and computer graphics is a new one. There were no rules for mixing them. We made them up as we went along." The result is a blend of film, computer projections and reality -- whatever that is -- that has the viewer wondering, Is it live, or is it Macintosh?
"We operate in a virtual world," Dippe says, and at ILM the effects are virtually perfect. What the ILM makers can give to the film image they can also take away, with a kind of computer Clearasil that removes those unsightly production blemishes. Until recently, the wires that held up "flying" actors had to be erased laboriously, frame by frame. Now the cables that supported Julia Roberts as Tinkerbell can be removed digitally -- and the background restored the same way -- with no evidence of tampering. The 2-in. pipe that supported Michael J. Fox's space-age skateboard in Back to the Future was erased to give the impression that Fox was zipping around in midair. For Memoirs of an Invisible Man, computers removed Chevy Chase from his clothes, then filled in the displaced background. "If there's a problem on the set," says Williams, "no problem. We can fix it."
But these effects are like Lego blocks compared with the task confronting < ILM now: Spielberg's Jurassic Park, from the Michael Crichton best seller about dinosaurs roaming through a modern theme park. The mammoth mechanized beasts being assembled at Stan Winston Studio in Van Nuys, Calif., will be filmed, broken down into computer code and inserted onto the live-action frame to interact with the humans. Spielberg's requirements for absolute movie realism will mean a 21st century marriage between the modelmaking Gepettos in Los Angeles and the video futurists in San Rafael. One ILM animator says the challenge is "10 times more difficult" than bringing to life T-1000 in T2.
"All this is just the first generation," Muren proclaims. "There will be images you've never seen before." What he strives for is "physical realism," making the effects not the star of the movie -- showstoppers like the T2 morphing -- but so realistic, so believable, that the audience never notices them. "I don't know where the end of this stuff is," Muren says. "I mean, how real is real?"
With ILM at the console, who needs reality? "We have conquered the physical properties of nature," Williams declares. "We can do tree bark; we can do grass blowing and water rippling. But we have only begun with computer- generated humans." At the moment, special-effects experts have trouble making the skin look authentic, and, as Williams notes, "hair is hard." Not to worry; just to wait. "A real human being -- I think we'll get it," he says. "Not much is impossible."