In 1982, Tron’s CG visual effects were so new that they completely confused Oscar voters. Animator Bill Kroyer recalls what happened. Released in July 1982, Tron wasn’t the Star Wars-level smash that Disney had hoped, but one thing was for sure: nothing else released that year looked quite like it. The sci-fi fantasy, largely set ... Why Tron didn’t get a VFX Oscar nomination in 1982
In 1982, Tron’s CG visual effects were so new that they completely confused Oscar voters. Animator Bill Kroyer recalls what happened.
Released in July 1982, Tron wasn’t the Star Wars-level smash that Disney had hoped, but one thing was for sure: nothing else released that year looked quite like it. The sci-fi fantasy, largely set in a virtual world of vector lines and candy-coloured polygons, made previously untested use of CGI, paving the way for the effects-heavy digital blockbusters we see today – not least its latest sequel, Tron: Ares.
In the new edition of Film Stories magazine, available now, we talk to animator and VFX veteran Bill Kroyer about his remarkable career. Having trained as a traditional 2D animator, he made the jump into the then-new realm of computer graphics for Tron in the early 80s – a film whose 15 minutes of digital VFX required the invention of new processes and animation techniques.
“The famous thing is, we basically sold Disney a film that we had no way to make,” Kroyer told us. “When we started the movie, the tools to make it didn’t exist. [Director Steven Lisberger] had the balls to go in with this idea and say, ‘We’re gonna figure it out.’ I don’t think there’s ever been a film like Tron. I mean, everybody’s inventing things as they go, especially in the world of technology, but the degree to which that occurred on Tron was quite stark.”
At the time, there were no 3D modelling or rendering software packages; instead, every point and vector had to be plotted in three-dimensional space, resulting in huge tables of numbers which had to be punched into a computer by hand. The animators working on Tron had no idea whether the results had worked or not until they were printed onto film and projected on a screen.
“We couldn’t move anything,” Kroyer said. “We never saw anything moving on our computer screens. We had to literally render every object in 24 different places for one second. You have to have what you’re trying to create in your mind very clearly.”
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Criminally, Tron wasn’t even considered for a Best Visual Effects Oscar in 1982. The commonly-shared story here is that Tron was disqualified by the Academy because of its use of computers; Kroyer refutes that oft-used word, but suggests that something even weirder happened instead.
“It wasn’t disqualified,” Kroyer said. “It simply was not recognised at all.”
Oscar nominees are selected by Academy members from a specific branch – so directors are responsible for choosing which films should be on the shortlist for Best Director, and members of the Visual Effects Branch Executive Committee choose what should be eligible for a Best Visual Effects award.
Nominees are then asked to provide, among other things, names of four primary effects artists who worked on the film and a description of what they did, as well as showreel of the shots themselves. A film’s visual effects supervisor – in Tron’s case, Richard Taylor – is also allowed to address voters and ask any questions. According to Kroyer, Academy members looked at Tron’s VFX and were completely confused by what they saw.
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“The branch looked at it, but they just didn’t get it,” Kroyer recalls. “It was so unlike anything they had ever seen. These are the world’s greatest visual effects artists – they looked at it and couldn’t figure out what they were looking at; they had the suspicion that we had cheated by using the computer.”
When Taylor finished his presentation, he asked the Academy voters in the room if there were any questions. There was an awkward silence before a solitary hand finally went up. The voter asked, “What kind of camera did you use?”
In the end, Blade Runner, Poltergeist and E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial were nominated for Best Visual Effects at the 1983 Oscars, with E.T. eventually taking home the prize.
“That was clearly an oversight,” Kroyer said of Tron’s absence from the nominations. “That’s another one of those crystal-clear examples of just how transitional and revolutionary the film was. Nothing like that has happened since, where the world’s best experts don’t even know how to respond to it.”
Nevertheless, Tron’s use of computer graphics left an indelible mark on the film industry, prompting other artists to experiment with CG themselves; most famously, Disney animator John Lasseter saw Tron’s lightcycle sequence and was so “blown away” by it prompted him to look at how he could use computers to make moving images. Pixar was founded two years later.
Kroyer finally found Oscar recognition in 1988 for Technological Threat – a short film that ingeniously mixed hand-drawn and CG animation. Now an Academy member, he’s seen first-hand how the approach to selecting Best Visual Effects nominees has changed in recent years.
“The next big transition that happened was that visual effects got so good that even the best visual effects experts couldn’t tell what was an effect anymore,” Kroyer said. “That’s why they have a thing at the Academy now called the Bake Off, where they have the top 10 qualifying films presented to the entire branch.
“It used to be that they were allowed to show an eight-minute clip of the film. But in the last few years, we finally changed the rule, where they have to show a clip which actually breaks down what you’re seeing, because you couldn’t tell [how it was done].”
You can read the full feature on Bill Kroyer and his work – from Disney to Tron to Ferngully and beyond – in Film Stories issue 57, available to purchase from our store. Kroyer’s book, Mr In-Between: My Life In The Middle Of The Animation Revolution, is also out now.
