Eric Saindon and Daniel Barrett each received their first Academy Award, and Richard Baneham accepted his second VFX Oscar.
Nobody was surprised when Avatar: The Way of Water won the Oscar for visual effects because of its breathtaking work, which helped the film earn more than $2.2 billion at the box office and become the third highest-grossing film of all time.
Joe Letteri, the production senior VFX supervisor at Weta FX, thus earned his sixth competitive Oscar in the field for 2023. He now shares the category’s five competitive Oscars with Ken Ralston (Forrest Gump), who also holds five. Both lag behind Denis Murren (Jurassic Park), who holds the record for the most Academy Awards in a single category with eight.
Richard Baneham, the visual effects supervisor who won the award for the original Avatar, accepted his second VFX Oscar with the victory for The Way of Water. On Sunday, senior animation supervisor Daniel Barrett and weta VFX supervisor Eric Saindon each took home their first Oscar.
Avatar from 2009, King Kong, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King were among Letteri’s prior Oscar-winning films. He received six additional nominations for I, Robot, the first and second films in the Hobbit trilogy, and the three most current Planet of the Apes films with Andy Serkis as Caesar.
The Way of Water from Avatar VFX firm Weta FX’s several innovative methods and innovations, including underwater performance capture, facial capture, water simulation, and real-time depth compositing, helped artists produce cutting-edge work.
