The temperatures are high, ice cream drips, and the sound of waves – or the splash of the pool – fills the air. Kids are on vacay and the summer spills endlessly. But what heralds the summer in the northern hemisphere as much as bar-b-que and mosquitoes, is the super summer blockbuster – a concept that almost disappeared during the Covid pandemic as people stayed out of theaters and streamers found ways to launch the action genre in our homes.

But what Tom Cruise‘s Top Gun: Maverick demonstrated as it crossed the $1billion mark worldwide, is that the movie theater experience is not dead. For the right product, people will flock to theaters again.

Cast your mind back over some of your favorite childhood flicks and the chances are, if they are not animated, they happened during those long languid summer days when you slipped into the darkness and the air-conditioned space of the local cineplex and were transported.

Movies like Star Wars, Men in Black, Jaws and of course the Marvel and DC movies, often release in late May and gather to a sizzle in the summer. Action movies like Raiders of the Lost Ark, Jurassic Park, Terminator Sequels 2 and 3 – the list is as long as you are old – launched in the summer.

What unites all these blockbusters is the thrill of CGI as we are carried away and our minds expand at possibilities of which we never dreamt. Think back to E.T.The Extra-Terrestrial, Independence Day, even Forrest Gump, and the chances are they have two things in common – a summer release and the magic of CGI.

Given how popular the summer blockbuster is, it’s interesting that there is no award for Best Action Movie, which – with some exceptions – is what makes a summer blockbuster. Much is required of the modern action hero. Invariably, action stars have to be a jack of all trades: think Harrison Ford, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Chris Hemsworth, Gerard Butler, Vin Diesel and the thing that unites them is the range of their appeal. They are good with comedy, they have an “Everyman” quality, they’ve delivered serious fare, but when they are in an action film you know you are going to be entertained. They are, at heart, character actors, who make you believe the CGI that is only created in post. They are masters of acting in the old-fashioned sense – as one does on stage – creating a world that lingers in the imagination long after the set has closed, and the crew has gone home.

So who are the masterminds behind the scenes, who fill in the other half of what makes these films great, who create the landscapes that the action blockbuster star has to keep in mind as they take millions on the ride of a lifetime?

Recently the HFPA sat down with one of these geniuses: Paul J. Franklin, who is a double Academy Award winner (Inception 2010; Interstellar 2014), and started out as an editor, before focusing on digital visual effects. In 1998 he co-founded Double Negative Visual Effects – a choice he attributes to having watched movies like Star Wars as a youth. The London-based studio has grown to be one of the world’s largest providers of VFX for feature film.

Franklin has a long-running collaboration with director Christopher Nolan, which began in 2003: he has created visual effects for all three of Nolan’s Dark Knight films, Inception and Interstellar. Paul’s short, Fireworks, is the reason he sat with the HFPA.

Of equal interest to the technical process, is the collaboration between these technical masters and the stars, who through their acting, make the manufactured imagery come to life. Franklin elaborates on his connection with the actor – one that may have ultimately paved the way for his first foray into directing.

“It’s always important that the cast understands what it is you are trying to achieve,” he explains. “Sometimes the director feels that’s their purview. Chris (Nolan) was inclusive on Inception. For the famous folding city shot, I had a pre-visualization animation we created on the computer. There are paparazzi photographs of me showing Leonardo DiCaprio and Elliot Page the animation off my laptop. Chris is holding my laptop, using it to cue the actors as they’re watching the city (fold in on itself). Speaking as a director on the set of Fireworks, for me, it was vital that my cast understand the world that we were creating and the intention of the film.

“Working on Venom, being able to give Tom Hardy and Riz Ahmed an idea of the creatures that they’re turning into, where the creatures might be and what we’re doing – it’s super cool.”

One of the advantages of working on action films is that one often gets to work with future stars – as was the case with Franklin and Vin Diesel, with whom he worked on Pitch Black. “I got the same amount (of money) as Vin on Pitch Black,” he notes. “On Chronicles of Riddick, Vin was on about 11 million points on gross; I was on the same money as the first film.” He laughs.

In 1998, when the industry was still young, Diesel was an exception in understanding the intricacies of visual effects work. It was the era of huge budget movies, so when a relatively low budget film like Pitch Black came along, it required the filmmakers to be ingenious with limited resources, leading to some amusing – at least in retrospect – antics on behalf of the VFX team.

“We had full-size rubber monster puppets which me and my business partner would run around on set, carrying. Alex would balance (the monster) on his head; I’d run behind carrying the tail. That’s how we showed people then, physically showing them what the monster might do and where it might be. We’d puppeteer sticks to allow Vin to wrestle with the monster and hold onto its wrists. These days we demonstrate through pre-visualization or give the cast VR goggles to immerse them in a virtual version of the set.”

So as you peek through your fingers this summer, or marvel at a Marvel movie, know you are doing what millions have before you: embracing the magic of movies and helping to ensure the summer blockbuster. But later, give a nod to the actors and masters behind the scenes who make you suspend reality and believe in the fantasy that carries you away.