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<\/a>(Credit: Disney).<\/p>\nThink of the most iconic films of the 1980s and there\u2019s a good chance that among those unforgettable films would sit Tron<\/a> (1982), a movie that changed the cinematic landscape in ways its makers couldn\u2019t possibly have imagined.<\/p>\n First conceived in 1976 by writer\/director Steven Lisberger as an animated adventure, a 30-second promotional video made with producer Donald Kushner soon blossomed into a combination of backlit animation, live-action footage, and 2D computer animation to create the visual world of Tron. With Walt Disney Productions both financing and releasing the film, it debuted in North America in July of 1982, setting the stage for the computer graphics boom that would follow.\u00a0<\/p>\n Step forward 28 years to 2010, and Tron: Legacy, which saw Lisberger return as producer, now with first-time director Joseph Kosinski at the helm. Production on Tron 3 was next, as announced by Lisberger in 2010. However, a series of stalled attempts saw that initial iteration of the sequel fade away. But by 2017, elements of a draft began to develop, and by January 2024, production had begun on Tron: Ares<\/a> (2025), directed by Joachim R\u00f8nning.<\/p>\n The film is a dazzling return to the world of Tron, bringing characters from the digital realm into the flesh-and-blood reality of today. The skills of the artists at Industrial Light & Magic were entrusted with the responsibility of not only creating something fresh and engaging, but honoring the styles, designs, and vision that had come before.\u00a0ILM.com had the good fortune to sit down with three of the artists based at the Vancouver studio who are behind the visual effects of Tron: Ares \u2013 visual effects supervisors Abishek Nair and Vincent Papaix<\/a>, and animation supervisor Mike Beaulieu \u2013 to discuss the return of the Grid to cinemas worldwide.<\/p>\n Classic Inspiration<\/p>\n \u201cIt was a lot of fun to look back to Tron with its early 2D computer graphics, and Tron: Legacy, where new CG was established,\u201d explains Vincent Papaix. \u201cYou could see the design upgrade. We looked at the broad shapes and rebuilt the assets from scratch. On Tron: Ares, we were paying tribute to both movies and seeing how we could incorporate both styles.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s a sequence when Ares goes back into the old arcade game and meets Flynn,\u201d Papaix continues, \u201cso that retro 1982 look was needed, but the rest of the movie steers closer to the more futuristic, up-to-date look of Tron: Legacy.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe goal of the animation department was figuring out how we can make things look like they belong to the Tron aesthetic,\u201d says Mike Beaulieu, \u201cbut exist in the real world, which is something we\u2019ve never seen before in a Tron film. You always saw those vehicles in the Grid. It was the early days of computer animation, and some of the things the bikes did, like turning 90 degrees in a one-frame turn, we couldn\u2019t do in the real world. If the bikes turned that quickly, we\u2019d have lots of injured actors, so there was no way to marry the physics to something that stylized.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe needed to make sure that when the Light Cycle and the Recognizer were printed into the real world, the designs were upgraded because they needed to feel believable,\u201d adds Papaix. \u201cFor example, the Recognizer had engines because we now had to show how this massive thing flies.\u201d<\/p>\n Tron arrived in an era when visual effects had captured the imagination of audiences worldwide, thanks to films like Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan<\/a> (1982), which landed in cinemas a week after Tron in 1982 and featured its own groundbreaking CG effect in the fractally-created landscape shown in the Genesis sequence. ILM was breaking ground with every project they participated in, but the company had never entered the Grid \u2013 until now.\u00a0<\/p>\n Mike Beaulieu describes his special connection to the film. \u201cI didn\u2019t talk about it much during the production, but it was very personal for me because Tron is my father\u2019s favorite film. It was the first film he saw where the action heroes were computer programmers and computer geeks, and that\u2019s what he was. He came up in the age of computers really becoming a thing, so it\u2019s one of the movies he\u2019s always loved. It was really exciting to be involved and have that little feather in my cap. I went to see it for the first time with my dad, so that was pretty cool.\u201d<\/p>\n On Location<\/p>\n Coming onto the project two months before principal photography began, visual effects supervisor Abishek Nair worked closely with production visual effects supervisor David Seager<\/a> to oversee on-set duties. With the digital world of the Grid about to enter the real world, this newest Tron story required some changes.<\/p>\n \u201cInitially, there wasn\u2019t a plan to have a splinter unit or a second unit,\u201d Nair explains, \u201cbut with the schedule, challenges with the weather, and different locations, it was decided that a second unit would shoot the stunts, car crashes, and visual effects-related work.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Nair\u2019s place on the set allowed him to form an important connection between phases of production. \u201cIt was amazing because I had so much context on what was happening, as well as what we had and hadn\u2019t shot.\u201d It also offered another set of options for the ILM team. \u201cI could tell them not to worry because we had photography of the set that we could derive data from, or we had props that had been scanned. I could form a bridge between production and post-production and give that sense of coverage for the entire project.<\/p>\n \u201cWe had a small visual effects team that had started working with assets and building some of the environments for the show,\u201d Nair continues, \u201cbut when I was on set, I could chat with the team and say, \u2018We couldn\u2019t shoot this stuff, so we\u2019re going to have to build these things,\u2019 or \u2018I\u2019m going to shoot this tomorrow, so tell me what you need. I might just be able to cover all that for you guys as well.\u2019 It became a symbiotic process where I could internally work with my effects team while working with my on-set team. It really made a difference, and it helped us better prepare for post-production because there were fewer surprises.\u201d<\/p>\n With that increasingly essential bridge between the second unit and the visual effects team in place, Nair was able to contribute even more to the production.<\/p>\n \u201cI have a pilot\u2019s license, so I could work with the aerial unit and plan the flight routes, which helped the pilot because I sat next to him with my navigation charts, and there was a trust because he knew I wasn\u2019t going to lead him into some crazy areas. We shot most of the aerial footage for the movie over four evenings. We were this little unit with an aerial cinematographer sitting at the back of the helicopter with my monitor, storyboards, and charts laid out in the chopper as we shot plates.\u201d<\/p>\n Nair knew what could be done for real on the streets of Vancouver, what could be achieved by ILM, and the places where the two processes met.<\/p>\n \u201cI would say to Scott [Rogers, second unit director and stunt coordinator], \u2018Let\u2019s actually flip the car and see what we get out of it.\u2019 That got them excited, that we were pushing to shoot as much as we could in camera, and then augment with visual effects to take it to the next level. Why shoot an empty street when we\u2019ve already got a lot of this stuff here? Let\u2019s smash stuff up, get the garbage bins to fly, and then see what we need to augment or clean up, and make it as visceral as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n The Light Cycle Chase<\/p>\n As the Master Control Program (aka Ares) leaves the Dillinger Grid with his second-in-command, Athena, they arrive in the real world to hunt down Eve and the all-important Permanence Code that will allow constructs from the Grid to survive longer than 29 minutes in the real world. To do that, they ride Light Cycles, but unlike the Light Cycles of the 1982 original, these would have to adhere to the physics of our own planet. Before ILM could start their impressive work to create this unforgettable chase sequence, Nair and his team had to film the real-life scenes on the streets of Vancouver, which they did in early 2024.<\/p>\n \u201cWe shot the Light Cycle chase over a couple of nights in Vancouver,\u201d Nair recalls. \u201cThe trickiest thing was the secrecy of it. Thankfully, we were shooting in the middle of the night, so paparazzi weren\u2019t much of a problem, but you can imagine the excitement of unveiling a Tron motorcycle in the middle of Vancouver and riding it down the street. David Seeger and I decided to bring the real-life cycle in for close-ups, because we could get the reflections and atmosphere that you naturally get with a physical shoot.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Vincent Papaix adds that \u201cwe called that the proxy bike. It was a Harley-Davidson with a stunt rider, and we attached red LEDs to create an interactive light.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThey had GoPros to capture the data that we needed,\u201d Nair continues. \u201cThe bikes weren\u2019t self-propelled, but they were on a rig that could be made to feel like they were actually being ridden around. We would look at sequences and decide which to use. For the high-octane sequences, we used the proxy motorcycles, and when we needed cutaways or close-ups of the riders, we\u2019d use the practical Light Cycles.\u201d<\/p>\n Onset footage and visual effects then needed to be blended together, a process that took considerable departmental collaboration, as Beaulieu explains.<\/p>\n \u201cFrom the animation point of view, we start with what had been filmed on location. If the bikes were in shot, we would put our CG assets in there and replicate what had been done on set. Then we would take a look and say, \u201cOkay, our asset is going at the same speed and is in the same position as the stunt bike, so what do we want to improve upon or change?\u2019 We start from the grounded reality of the shot first before saying, \u2018You know what, the bike feels a little slow here, let\u2019s make it faster.\u2019 Or maybe we want to completely change what the bike is doing.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSometimes we\u2019d track the bikes and replace them with our CG Light Cycle,\u201d Papaix explains, \u201cbecause the energy was there, but most of the time, Mike and the animation team took over and made it more dangerous or epic in terms of the performance. That meant a lot of cleanups removing the bike, which is easy to remove, but when moving the bike somewhere else, we have to remove the interactive to create another one, so that was a lot of effort to create the clean plate.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Beaulieu agrees. \u201cI\u2019d often have conversations with Vincent about how we would place the bikes in an environment if we deviated from what the onset lighting was giving us, which would add more complexity to a shot. If you moved the bike away from where the stunt bike was originally, it meant a lot more work for other departments, so we would have conversations about what we were deviating from and try to make informed choices that weren\u2019t moving stuff around for the sake of it.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Once that decision was made, Papaix and his team would then continue with their work. \u201cWe would create a digital twin,\u201d he says, \u201cthen blend between plate and CG and make sure that everything matched. It\u2019s a lot of attention to detail to have a replica in CG and then render all our assets into those plates and integrate that with quite a bit of compositing work.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Plenty may have been filmed on the streets of Vancouver, but ILM added significantly more in post, as Papaix continues. \u201cPeople know the Light Cycle isn\u2019t real, but they won\u2019t realize that we added CG cars to make it look more dangerous. There were plenty of practical cars, but for safety reasons, they were in the distance, so when you see a car in that sequence, is it CG? Is it real? You don\u2019t know, right? That\u2019s a testament to the job we did.\u201d<\/p>\n Live-action footage, CG vehicles and characters, animation, and more. It\u2019s a complicated mix of disciplines. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of energy and types of effects shots you can have in a five-minute sequence,\u201d says Papaix. \u201cSome shots have practical light, so all we did was minimum cleanup and add the gyro [the spinning engine of the Light Cycle], and it looked fantastic. Then we cut to a city shot, and now it\u2019s fully CG, a full CG Light Cycle, full CG character, and it needs to have the right contrast, the same feeling about the animation, everything. Then you go to the next shot where the main character will be on the blue screen, CG city, and then cut to the next one, and it\u2019s a plate of the real-world city, but with the CG Light Cycle character.\u201d<\/p>\n For Beaulieu, the project was notable for its complexity. \u201cThis was one of the biggest projects I\u2019ve worked on at ILM as far as the collaboration between animation and effects. On a lot of shows, animation will do their thing, then they\u2019ll pass it to another department, who do their thing in isolation from animation, but on this show, there was a lot of back-and-forth and a lot of conversations. Ultimately, we want to make sure that the sequence blends seamlessly, so the audience never really thinks about it.\u201d<\/p>\n The classic Light Cycle chase of the original Tron featured a light wall trailing behind the bikes that would bring their opponents to a sticky, pixelated end. With the Light Cycles now travelling through the streets of Vancouver, that posed some interesting challenges for Beaulieu and his animation team.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Light Cycles were dragging light walls behind them, so any movement we did on the bike would instantly be visible in the path of the light wall. That was a big challenge for animation, because we couldn\u2019t just go crazy and add a lot of subtle movements and bumps and things like that on the bike to make it look real, because then you would have a light wall that looked like a spaghetti strand, and that\u2019s not what we wanted. That wasn\u2019t part of the visual language of Tron. You\u2019d expect the light wall to be smooth and clean, not have a lot of noise in it. We\u2019d animate, pass it off to effects, they\u2019d do their thing on top of it, and then we\u2019d analyze it. \u2018Okay, what do we need to change in the animation?\u2019 or \u2018What can effects do to get the look or the effect that we want for the shot?\u2019\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Ultimately, the goal was to make viewers believe they were looking at an actual bike travelling down an actual road, as Beaulieu describes. \u201cWe tried to make sure the Light Cycles felt like they belonged on a real road as far as having interaction with uneven ground, but still behaving like you\u2019d expect a Light Cycle would. It has almost otherworldly handling, it\u2019s very fast, very smooth, and it corners very easily.\u201d It sounds simple enough, but it takes a village to create such a complicated sequence.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cYou don\u2019t want viewers to be lost in a chase sequence that doesn\u2019t make sense just to include a cool flashy sequence,\u201d says Nair. \u201cThere are a lot of story beats in there, but you\u2019ve got to keep them engaged. We wanted the audience to feel like they\u2019re part of the chase on another Light Cycle, so keeping the progression of the story while keeping that sense of tension was important.\u201d Beaulieu agrees. \u201cWe always ask, what gives the shot a little bit more punch? What can we alter and change? What tells the story?\u201d<\/p>\n The Dogfight<\/p>\n With the battle for the Permanence Code reaching its endgame, Julian Dillinger loses control of Athena as she attempts to carry out her primary objective to get the code, causing a Recognizer to arrive in the real world, along with countless drones. As well as creating mechanical vehicles that have to follow the laws of physics, ILM also needed to build a digital city to host the Light Cycle chase and the aerial dogfight when two F-35s roar in to take on Athena in her Dillinger-built Recognizer.<\/p>\n \u201cAn F-35 moves at 300 miles an hour in a city environment,\u201d explains Beaulieu. \u201cAt that speed, they\u2019re going to be through the city and gone in about five seconds, so we had to figure out how to maintain the speed that we wanted, but still make it feel like we\u2019re in the city and not just buzzing by. That was a challenge because we didn\u2019t want to repeat landmarks that you could see in the distance, like a Looney Tunes cartoon, so they would customize things. In animation, we would block in rough geometry of buildings as we were trying to stage the action around it, and then we would pass it over to the environment team and say, \u2018Go do your thing and put in some cool buildings.\u2019\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe environments team looked at some of the plates we\u2019d shot and said they could use aspects from them,\u201d Nair continues, \u201cbut they needed to make Vancouver look way bigger than it actually is to give the jets enough space to fly around and come back for a second pass.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe environment team tracked those plates, and we built a CG asset of the whole city, which we could render from any viewpoint,\u201d Papaix adds. \u201cThen we told Mike, \u2018Okay, you can have your fun. Design and animate a dogfight, put the camera wherever you want, and make an awesome sequence.\u2019 It\u2019s a full CG city.\u201d<\/p>\n With the location being developed, Beaulieu and Nair plotted the dogfight. \u201cEarly on, there were only two or three of us pre-vising that sequence,\u201d says Beaulieu. \u201cWe blocked out what we wanted to do with the F-35s and the drones that were chasing them. We\u2019d already seen previews of some of the flashier gags, like the light walls of the drones cutting the wings off the F-35, which was always there from the beginning, but it was important to find camera work that felt grounded and didn\u2019t feel like a CG camera.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cMike and I agreed that while there\u2019s the fantasy aspect of the Tron world,\u201d Nair continues, \u201cso let\u2019s keep the jets following the laws of physics as much as we can because that\u2019s the only way to make this look real. With the choreography of the jets, we tried to make it feel like you were an observer filming from one of the rooftops, or on another jet, or a drone that was following. That way, you get the sense of movement and speed.\u201d<\/p>\n They used some old-school techniques to plan the sequence, reminiscent of George Lucas\u2019s creation of animatics for Star Wars: A New Hope <\/a>(1977). \u201cMike and I edited clips of the Blue Angels [the U.S. Navy\u2019s flight demonstration squadron] to block out the sequence,\u201d says Nair. \u201cIt was our gospel in terms of camera angles. If I had to really film this, where would I place the camera? Also, because we knew there was the fantasy side with the Recognizer and the drones, how do we ground this with the F-35s while keeping it believable?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Believability in the sequence was key, as Nair explains. \u201cWe can observe and learn from real-life stuff, like the little flutters in the jets or things that you would see when you place a camera on the wing. Some of the control surfaces move based on how the jets are banking and how tight the turn is made, but to get that sense of speed, we had all these reflections on the canopy that came from our CG environment. That gave us the sense of flying low level through the city with all the lights flashing by. Details like that definitely make a difference.\u201d<\/p>\n Despite that impressive work, there were other considerations to take into account. \u201cHaving the dogfight against a dark sky was also a challenge,\u201d says Beaulieu, \u201cbecause we have to stage the F-35s in spaces where they had something behind them, so you didn\u2019t lose the silhouette of the object you\u2019re looking at. The Grid vehicles illuminate themselves, but with the F-35, we had to make sure to keep the horizon a little bit higher than the wings to keep it visible.\u201d<\/p>\n Nair was also in the perfect place to be starstruck. \u201cAtticus Ross and Trent Reznor [Tron: Ares composers] were the pilots for the F-35 sequence. It was awesome to meet them in person, one of the best days on set. They were in the cockpit on a gimbal, and Scott Rogers was like, \u2018Hey, Abi, you\u2019re a pilot. Why don\u2019t you tell them how to fly the airplane?\u2019 I haven\u2019t flown jets, but at least I could tell them how an airplane works. We shot them on set, and the next day we were up in the helicopter to shoot the plates, which we could use as a reference to get the sense of motion of the jets across Vancouver.\u201d<\/p>\n Beaulieu expands on the concept of visual effects that viewers have no idea are even there. \u201cTron: Ares is a good example of what\u2019s been coined lately as invisible visual effects. People assume that what they\u2019re seeing is real because they know it was filmed on location with real actors, but it doesn\u2019t bump their eye as they\u2019re watching it. There\u2019s a lot in this film \u2013 the dogfight, the Light Cycle chase, the end battle \u2013 that are completely CG. The actors are CG, the bikes are CG, the Recognizer, so many things are going on. The more spectacular shots, well, of course, that\u2019s CG, but a lot of shots in the sequences that lead up to that you might assume were real, but they\u2019re not.\u201d<\/p>\n Memories and Moving Forward<\/p>\n A major motion picture like Tron: Ares not only has the eyes of its fandom and the wider genre world on it but also marks waypoints in the careers of the cast and crew who helped make it, as well as creating memories and experiences they\u2019ll take with them.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cOur director, Joachim, found a storytelling device to keep loyal fans engaged with callbacks to the old films while bringing new fans into the fold,\u201d says Abishek Nair. \u201cWe go into the modern Dillinger Grid, bring that Grid to the real world, and go back to the retro 1980s Grid, where we added all these little Easter eggs. It was a very, very well-balanced movie.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The film also gave Nair the chance to travel to some amazing locations. \u201cAside from filming up at 5,000 feet in a helicopter, we went to Alberta to shoot the snow sequence at the start of the film, where Eve is on her snowmobile. It was minus-30 degrees Celsius, and we were trying to avoid avalanches and snowstorms, so we went from sea level in Vancouver to the peaks of Alberta and everything in between. It was quite the experience.\u201d<\/p>\n Vincent Papaix feels much the same. \u201cWe knew it was something special, but seeing the final film with the music created an amazing spectacle. The Light Cycle sequence is definitely one of the highlights, as is the Recognizer attack. So many good things that I enjoyed. I\u2019m really, really proud.\u201d<\/p>\n Mike Beaulieu sums up his thoughts on making the film. \u201cWhen you work on a project, it can be hard to watch afterwards because you\u2019re so close to the work, it\u2019s difficult to enjoy it as an audience member. It\u2019s hard to turn that part of your brain off, but with Tron: Ares, I went into the theatre and was blown away by what we\u2019d done. When the Light Cycle chase was over, I wanted to watch it again, and I\u2019m not saying that from the point of view of being part of the team. As an audience member, that was a lot of fun to watch. It was good to have that experience because you don\u2019t get that on every project you work on.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Read more about Tron: Ares here on ILM.com:<\/p>\n The Grid Hits the Streets: ILM\u2019s David Seager on the Visual Effects of \u2018Tron: Ares\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n ILM\u2019s Jeff Capogreco and Jhon Alvarado Take Us Into the Grid of \u2018Tron: Ares\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n Inside the ILM Art Department: \u2018Tron: Ares\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n \u2013<\/p>\n<\/a>(Credit: Disney).<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>(Credit: ILM & Disney).<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>(Credit: ILM & Disney).<\/p>\n<\/a>(Credit: ILM & Disney).<\/p>\n<\/a>(Credit: ILM & Disney).<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>(Credit: ILM & Disney).<\/p>\n