“It’s always a surprise,” admits visual effects supervisor Stephane Ceretti during our recent webcam chat (watch above) when asked about his Oscar nomination for “Doctor Strange”. “You think that you’re going to be nominated, but it’s always good to have the confirmation.” This Marvel Studios release stars Benedict Cumberbatch as Dr. Stephen Strange, a former neurosurgeon who learns the mystic arts from a sorcerer (Tilda Swinton) after a debilitating car accident.
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The film’s mind-bending premise allowed Ceretti and his VFX team to create many stunning visual effects. “It was a challenge visually,” he divulges. “There was lots to figure out, in terms of the everyday magic with the sparks and going through portals and things, and then the more advanced magic of the forming cities, and then the time-backwards sequence in Hong Kong, and then the Dark Dimensions.” Ultimately, there were, “so many things that we had to create and figure out how to do for the first time.”
Ceretti received his first nomination for Marvel’s “Guardians of the Galaxy” (2014). He shares this bid with Richard Bluff, Vincent Cirelli, and Paul Corbould. They compete against “Deepwater Horizon,” “The Jungle Book,” “Kubo and the Two Strings,” and “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.”
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