{"id":4456,"date":"2016-04-22T21:26:11","date_gmt":"2016-04-23T01:26:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/2016\/05\/04\/bringing-the-virtual-to-reality\/"},"modified":"2022-11-06T20:52:49","modified_gmt":"2022-11-07T01:52:49","slug":"bringing-the-virtual-to-reality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/bringing-the-virtual-to-reality\/","title":{"rendered":"“Bringing the Virtual to Reality”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Visual effects artist Joe Letteri, who has received four Academy Awards\u00a0for his pioneering work on such films as Avatar<\/em>, King Kong<\/em> and The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers<\/em>, will speak on the Furman University campus Tuesday, May 3 at 6:30 p.m. in McAlister Auditorium.<\/p>\n

His talk, \u201cBringing the Virtual to Reality: Creating the VFX Image,\u201d is free and open to the public. It is sponsored by the Academic Dean\u2019s office at Furman.<\/p>\n

Letteri will give a visual presentation about his work in films, answer questions from the audience and be available to sign movie posters and DVDs.<\/p>\n

In addition to winning Academy Awards\u00ae<\/sup> for Best Visual Effects on Avatar<\/em>, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers<\/em>, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King <\/em>and King Kong<\/em>, he has received four other Oscar nominations. He has also received the Academy\u2019s Technical Achievement Award for co-developing the subsurface scattering technique that brought Gollum to life in the Lord of the Rings<\/em> films.<\/p>\n

Letteri joined Weta Digital as Visual Effects Supervisor on The Two Towers<\/em> and, over the last 11 years, he has led Weta Digital to become one of the world\u2019s premiere visual effects studios.<\/p>\n

He developed many techniques that have become standards for bringing photographic quality to digital visual effects. He specializes in the creation of compellingly realistic creatures, from the dinosaurs of Jurassic Park<\/em>, to Gollum in The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit<\/em>, the 25-foot gorilla in King Kong<\/em>, the Na’vi in Avatar<\/em>, and Caesar in Rise of the Planet of the Apes<\/em>.<\/p>\n

As Senior Visual Effects Supervisor on Avatar<\/em>, Letteri oversaw a program of research and development over four years that produced shots larger and more complex than ever attempted before. This involved shooting on a virtual stage with a new camera system, along with the development a full pipeline of tools effectively launching a new approach to filmmaking called virtual production.<\/p>\n

Most recently, Letteri led the team at Weta Digital back into Middle-earth for The Hobbit<\/em> trilogy and guided the studio\u2019s work on Dawn of the Planet of the Apes <\/em>and Furious Seven.\u00a0 <\/em>He has also been involved in Steven Spielberg\u2019s adaptation of the Roald Dahl classic The BFG<\/em> and Luc Besson\u2019s new sci-fi epic, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets<\/em>.<\/p>\n

For more information, contact Furman\u2019s News and Media Relations office at 864-294-3107.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Visual effects artist Joe Letteri, who has received four Academy Awards\u00a0for his pioneering work on such films as Avatar, King Kong and The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":265,"featured_media":4457,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-top-stories"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/265"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4456"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4456\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4457"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}