The mind behind the Matrix

Nov 13 2003 By Jenny Parkin, The Huddersfield Daily Examiner

So just how did Brighouse woman Janet Yale end up jetting all over the world with film stars such as Keanu Reeves? She explains her amazing career in special effects to JENNY PARKIN.

To achieve this, Janet and her team created a computer-generated Keanu that had to look and move exactly like the actor, as well as whole cities and other sets.

Janet explains: "Most of our development work was spent finding a way to make our computer-generated faces match those of the actors as exactly as possible.

"For Revolutions, we also had to work out how to integrate pouring rain and lightning into everything.

"This sounds like it should be easy but it actually makes even the simplest shots a problem.

"It's always harder to make shots match reality than a fantasy world. The human brain is so used to seeking things like faces and rain that even if you can't figure out what's wrong with it, you know that something is."

Janet continues: "For the siege sequences the biggest problem was sheer volume.

Many of the shots have more than 5,000 Sentinels plus multiple battle machines, gunfire, smoke, fire, debris and general chaos, all to be achieved by computer.

"We shot a lot of pyrotechnic elements - it's always fun blowing things up - but there's really no way to do a swarm of flying Sentinels, other than in computer generated images."

Janet, who went to Whitcliffe Mount School in Cleckheaton then St Hugh's College at Oxford University, began her amazing career in 1980, working for a London company on film title sequences and optical effects.

She says: "This was before computer graphics and all film effects work was done with chemicals, rostrum cameras and optical printers.

"It was basically a craft skill, there was no formal training for it. I stumbled in with an English degree and no real idea of what I wanted to do."