The 1959 film version of “Ben-Hur” was a bone fide blockbuster in its day. So, did UWM alum Jim Rygiel, who directed the special effects for the recently released 2016 film version, feel any pressure?
The cool-as-a-cucumber Rygiel (’77 Drawing and Painting) said he was most worried about making one pivotal scene as memorable as its 57-year-old predecessor.
“When I was asked to work on this film, instantly I thought about the chariot race in the 1959 version,” he said in a talk via Skype with an audience of about 120 UWM alums and friends at an Aug. 25 preview event sponsored by the Alumni Association.
“I think they actually hired 1,000 extras to fill the arena for that scene. I knew that we would be doing it digitally for this film. But also, we were filming this time in a constrained area. So we had to make it look more exciting than it was.”
Rygiel became a go-to special effects master after he took home three Academy Awards as a member of the leadership team that worked on the “Lord of the Rings” movie trilogy. At the time, he was already well-established in Hollywood.
That blockbuster trilogy, he said, is still the highlight of his career so far, in part because of the close professional relationship he had developed with director Peter Jackson and the scope of the visual effects used.
Was it plain that Rygiel was destined for greatness while a student at UWM? Not really, said Kathy Schnuck (’79 Architecture), who attended the event.
As an undergraduate, Rygiel chose art after deciding against the highly structured path of architecture, said Schnuck, who met both Rygiel and her husband during freshman year. Both men had come to UWM after attending high school together in Kenosha.
“Jim was always kind of ‘out there,’” she recalled. “When one of the department stores downtown closed – I think it was Gimbel’s – he went there and collected all these mannequins. He used the legs of the mannequins in his senior project.”
Now a principal at Kahler Slater Architects in Milwaukee, Schnuck described the young Rygiel as a “humble and normal guy,” who embraced an opportunity through one of his part-time jobs to learn emerging computer skills. After some traveling, he decided on graduate school in California, where he still lives.
The pace of advances in digital technology keeps him in learning mode, Rygiel told the event’s audience. “It’s like I’m starting school again, because we’re finding new ways of rendering,” he said. “And it’s not just visual effects [changing rapidly]. With new camera technology, it’s also cinematography.”
Directors just expect you to bring new techniques with technology for every project, he said. “So you figure out how to bring it along from your last film. I’ve talked about the ‘visual effects salute’ before,” he added, showing both hands with crossed fingers.
And he watches what others in the field are doing. He mentioned, for example, being impressed with the computer-generated imagery in Walt Disney’s recent remake of “The Jungle Book.”
For his next film, Rygiel has been on location in China. “I can’t tell you about the project,” he told the gathering. “But I can tell you this: There’s a tidal wave of film activity in China right now. There’s a lot of super-creative, passionate people working in film there.”
