Cloud-powered creativity shines at the 2023 VES Awards

Winners “Avatar: The Way of Water,” “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power,” and Frito-Lay “Push It” created with AWS

Hollywood’s awards season is heating up with the Oscars less than three weeks away. Black tie events abound in Tinseltown as trade organizations recognize accomplishments in their respective crafts from animation to cinematography, visual effects (VFX) and beyond. At the 2023 Visual Effects Society (VES) Awards, held at the Beverly Hilton Hotel on February 15, 2023, VFX professionals from around the world converged to celebrate the most stunning digital artistry and innovation across commercials, episodic television, feature film, video games, and special venues.

Dominating the evening, James Cameron’s multi-billion-dollar blockbuster “Avatar: The Way of Water” won nine awards, including the night’s top honor – Outstanding Visual Effects in a Photoreal Feature. Created by Wētā FX in New Zealand, the feature’s VFX clocked 3.3 billion thread hours, an “eye-watering” feat detailed by TVBEurope.

Amazon Studios’ “The Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power” took home statues for Outstanding Visual Effects in a Photoreal Episode, Outstanding Created Environment, and Outstanding Effects Simulations. To deliver the dazzling new Middle-earth adventures across eight hours for the series’ debut season, production captured 38,090 shots, including 9,164 VFX shots, in 4K UHD totaling 860TB of data. With an end-to-end pipeline built on Amazon Web Services (AWS), the show tapped 12 VFX studios around the world to create 9,164 VFX shots, with cloud collaboration a key enabler. Check out this IBC365 feature for details.

Untold Studio’s hit Super Bowl LVI spot featuring a group of singing, break-dancing animals, “Push It” for Frito Lay, landed the award for Outstanding Visual Effects in a Commercial. A team of 45 artists based around the globe brought the seven CGI creatures to life using the power of their studio in the cloud built on AWS. The Untold Studios team shared a behind-the-scenes look at the project during an AWS Innovators Session at SIGGRAPH 2022.

Other highlights from the evening, hosted by comedian/actor Patton Oswalt, include stop motion Netflix feature “Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio” winning Outstanding Visual Effects in an Animated Feature, and special award presentations to VES Lifetime Achievement honoree Gale Anne Hurd and the VES Board of Directors Award to former Executive Director Eric Roth.

A massive congrats to all extremely talented winners and nominees!