SUBMITTED BY Fred Hill

January 28, 2002 —

VFXPro took a look at some of the special effects shots used in Ocean's Eleven. There were rough 50 of them in the total movie, and most of them were of a implosion and an elevator shaft. They took a look mainly at the shaft.

'Ocean's 11,' Steven Soderbergh's most recent film, has eleven crooks pulling off the biggest heist in Las Vegas history. However, the heist wouldn't have flown without the help of Cinesite and Cinesite VFX supervisor Tom Smith. Smith led a team that created roughly 50 VFX shots in the film, revolving mainly around an implosion and an elevator shaft through which the eleven make their vault entry. Smith, who also worked on "The Limey" and "Erin Brokovich," talked with VFXPro about the Tao of Soderbergh and getting the CG shaft.

"It's always a pleasure to work with Steven Soderbergh because he has such a clear picture in his mind of what he wants to accomplish. Cinesite has worked on five of his movies, dating back to "Out of Sight." We were involved at the concept level on "Ocean's 11" working with Steven and Phil Messina, the production designer, regarding two main sequences in the movie. One was an implosion of a casino and the other sequence was extending an elevator shaft 200-feet down to where a vault is located.

"After our initial meeting, the next step was putting some ideas in front of Steven and Phil. We rendered animatics for both sequences and this proved helpful, so when we got to the set everyone had a pretty good idea what was going to happen. Things change on the day, it's always going to be that way. But the preparation with Steven made it less painful...

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