Academy Award-winning Johannes Saam has loved movie magic since he was a teen. Photo courtesy of Framestore.
Johannes Saam’s early love of movies sparked his journey from computer generated imagery artist to frontiersman of real-time VR experiences.
When most people enter their teenage years, they’re just vaguely starting to consider college majors. Johannes Saam, on the other hand, already knew exactly what he wanted to do and was well on his way to making it happen.
“When I was 14, I fell in love with visual effects and special effects. Movie magic, basically,” said Saam. “I wanted to know how special effects were made, how you could fool people’s eyes.”
He plunged into the wealth of information available online to find out how 3D effects worked and began learning how to execute the “magic tricks” that mesmerized him on the silver screen.
In the decades since he was first inspired by cinema, he’s gone on to craft the dusty, post-apocalyptic world of Mad Max: Fury Road and bring the wonder of deep space to Earth in Prometheus.
His handiwork made the escapades of super-spy Ethan Hunt looked thrilling in Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol. The super powers of Thor and Captain America effectively straddled the line between incredible and convincing on the big screen thanks to Saam’s expert touch.
In fact, Saam’s work has pushed the boundaries of what the film industry could do with visual effects to such an extent that the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences honored him with a Technical Achievement Award in 2014.
Saam is one of the premier developers and visual effects artist in the industry, according to Raj Puran, Intel’s manager of commercial virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) experiences. Puran got a firsthand look at Saam’s talent when he seamlessly blended photorealistic and augmented elements to completely recreate an entire floor at the Smithsonian American Art Museum for SAAM VR, a collaboration with Intel.
“Johannes isn’t just an artist. He’s someone who is always trying to progress the technology used by his art form,” said Puran.
Saam applies existing visual effects to new mediums, such as VR, as well as crafts entirely new tools, giving artists the ability to create wholly unique experiences.
“It’s kind of like saying, ‘OK, I’m a painter, but I need my paint brush to do this.’ And instead of hoping someone else will create that paint brush, Johannes figures out how to make it himself.”
Saam and his collaborators won the Oscar for inventing a technique known as deep image compositing, which allows effects artists to assign 3D information to flat images, which can then be layered within one another.
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Source: IQ Intel