The Creator

Gareth Edwards made this one by reversing the usual order. Instead of built sets the unit shot at roughly eighty locations worldwide; Edwards says a plane ticket costs less than building a set. There were no motion capture suits, tracking markers were kept limited, no HDRI balls were used, and Edwards operated the camera himself alongside cinematographers Greig Fraser and Oren Soffer. They shot on a Sony FX3, almost never seen on a picture this size. The real decisions came in the edit. Edwards describes the method as gathering beautiful photography and good performances at real locations, then deciding in the cutting room what the world looks like and who is a robot. Which extras became simulants was picked almost at random while reviewing scenes. Effects were laid over a finished cut; Edwards puts the cost at 80 million dollars and says the same work by conventional means would have run to 300 million. It took two Academy Award nominations, Visual Effects and Sound, and won neither: Godzilla Minus One took Visual Effects, The Zone of Interest took Sound. A good fit if you would rather see that a temple or street was really there than have it drawn. Not for you if you want the novelty in the story; both categories the Academy counted are craft ones.