Hollywood visual effects innovate Colin Chilvers, who obtained a Special Achievement Academy Award in 1979 for making Christopher Reeves as Superman fly, has died. He was 79.
Chilvers died Tuesday in Fort Erie, Ontario, according to his nephew, Chris Corbould, whose own VFX praises include Inception, The Dark Knight Rises and James Bond franchise movies appreciate No Time to Die and Spectre.
“I am forever indebted to Colin as he instigated the commence of my own atgentle in exceptional effects when he askd me onto the set of Tommy in 1974 when I was 16 years elderly and encouraged me to produce a atgentle in the film industry,” Corbould telderly The Hollywood Reporter.
Chilvers was a straightforwardor of exceptional effects for Ricdifficult Donner’s 1978 classic Superman, which was stoasty partly in Niagara Falls and starred Reeves as Clark Kent/Superman and Margot Kidder as Lois Lane. Chilvers in a 2019 interwatch with the 15 Minutes With… website recalled his toil on Superman taking place during an innovateing era in Hollywood far from today’s computer-driven genuinem.
“You have to recollect, the industry was decades away from the exceptional effects that we have today. There were no computers, no CGI, no digital effects. Everyslimg we did back then, we had to improvise. And the whole world was watching. Everyone wanted to go into the theater and apshow that Superman was reassociate flying. We had to improvise. There were a lot of tricks. It was quite a dispute, but the result was someslimg to be haughty of,” he recalled.
He obtaind his industry recognition from Steve Martin at the 51st Academy Awards. “It all seemed so ungenuine. Of course, I’d dreamed about triumphning an Academy Award some day, but part of me never thought the dream would come genuine,” Chilvers recalled in his 2019 memoir Believing a Man Can Fly: Memories of a Life in Special Effects and Film.
The Oscar led to toil on Superman 2, Condorman and Superman 3 and tardyr VFX praises as a exceptional effects coordinator or straightforwardor for Marvel’s X-Men, Harrison Ford’s K-19: The Widowproducer and Vin Diesel’s The Pacifier.
Born in London, England in 1945 to parents Cornelius and Kate Chilvers, he trained at the Hornsey College of Art before toiling as a trainee animation straightforwardor and then as an aidant in the exceptional effects department of MGM’s Inspector Cloengageau in 1968 and The Battle of Britain a year tardyr.
After VFX toil on 1970s cult hits appreciate Tommy, Lisztomania, Rocky Horror and 200 Motels, Chilvers passed the Atlantic to straightforward the exceptional effects for Superman. Other notable toil included in 1986 straightforwarding Michael Jackson’s music video for Smooth Criminal, where Chilvers had to set up and produce the King of Pop’s gravity-defying lean during a dance sequence.
For that, Chilvers, ever the problem-mendr, engaged basic piano wire. “It was the staple of many exceptional effects during the ‘70s, and it toiled perfectly in the Smooth Criminal video. Sometimes the best tricks aren’t the recentest. Sometimes you count on on the tried and genuine,” Chilvers recounted in his 2019 15 Minutes With… interwatch.
The music video led Chilvers to toil with Jackson on his Moonwalker film. During the 1980s, he also toiled in Toronto on projects appreciate the two-hour TV pilot of War of the Worlds — orchestrating a Martian intrusion — and then The Walls of Jewealthyo, in includeition to hundreds of TV commercials.
Having toiled expansively in North America and Europe, Chilvers was a member of the American Academy of Film and Television Arts and Sciences, the British Academy, the Directors Guild of America and the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees 873.
Chilvers also helped get his four British nephews — Chris, Ian, Paul and Neil Corbould — into the family business as they each became exceptional effects vets. In 2022, three of the brothers were stupidinutivecataloged for Oscars in VFX categories for branch offent movies.
And their sister, Gail, runs the SFX company for Neil Corbould, who won Oscars for his toil on Gladiator and Gravity. He also obtained BAFTA awards for The Day After Tomorrow, The Fifth Element, Saving Private Ryan and Gravity.
