This weekend I attended the Visual Effects "Bake-Off" at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills. It was fascinating and entertaining look at the best visual effects in film for 2014, as presented by the visual effects supervisors and vendors who produced the final results. Previs was mentioned at times as well, which was nice. At this point in filmmaking, previs settles so many storytelling, art direction, and composition decisions early on, which allows the final vendors to concentrate more of their limited time on producing photorealistic effects.
Going in to the bake-off, the finalists to choose from for the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects are (bold = projects I worked on):
Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
Godzilla
Guardians of the Galaxy
The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies
Interstellar
Maleficent
Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb
Transformers: Age of Extinction
X-Men: Days of Future Past
After watching so many incredible shots throughout the bake-off, it was clear this is a very tough, competitive year. I have a feeling Marvel Studios will emerge with only one nominee. Transformers will probably be left out again. I have not seen Maleficent, but I know it did very well at the box office, which makes it a strong contender against other kid-friendly movies like Guardians and Godzilla. When all the dust clears, I think the finalists will be:
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
Godzilla
Guardians of the Galaxy
The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies
Interstellar
Showing posts with label godzilla. Show all posts
Showing posts with label godzilla. Show all posts
Monday, January 12, 2015
Monday, December 1, 2014
MPC's VFX shot breakdowns for GODZILLA
Bloody gorgeous. The buildings drop like Tetris pieces in the later shots.
Monday, November 10, 2014
New interview on the TALKING MOVIES podcast
Recently I was on a podcast talking about the previs and animation work that I have done on films here in Los Angeles. Topics covered include: The Avengers, Divergent, Godzilla (2014), Night at the Museum 3, Furious 7, and The Thief of Bagdad (1940).
Talking Pictures w/Paul Booth and Josh Lange, Previs for Divergent and Godzilla 11/03
Talking Pictures w/Paul Booth and Josh Lange, Previs for Divergent and Godzilla 11/03
Wednesday, July 9, 2014
Godzilla previs article on Animation World Network
Roaring Through the Previs of 'Godzilla' (full article, with previs/final comparison pictures)
Here are excerpts that describe two of the parts that I helped with when I was on the previsualization team:
It really was. As mentioned in an earlier Godzilla post, the first Maya scene I animated after graduating from Vancouver Film School was a fight between two enormous monsters in downtown Vancouver. To think that the experience from back then would help inform the motion of the real Godzilla all those years later makes my head spin.
Here are excerpts that describe two of the parts that I helped with when I was on the previsualization team:
"Dan Sarto (AWN): In terms of the third act, what were the biggest challenges you faced in with the previs?
Eric Carney (The Third Floor): The sequence consists of Godzilla, who is fighting two other creatures, the Mutos, in San Francisco. We've seen Godzilla before, and he's kind of like a big lizard, so we had a fairly good idea of how he might move. But one of the biggest challenges was figuring out how to animate the Mutos. When we were given the designs of the creatures, they were still in development actually. There was a lot of exploration work with Gareth in order to figure how the Mutos would fight and how Godzilla would fight them.
We started to look at footage of animals - Komodo Dragons, bears, even some winged creatures. Gareth sent us a lot of reference material of real animals fighting. So we started out doing a lot of fight tests and sending them over to Gareth, figuring out what he liked and didn't like and developing it further. He had a vision for the film, that even though it's a monster movie, it would feel very grounded in reality. So with that in mind you have to think of these monsters just as big animals, and research how big animals fight each other. A lot of the things you might think would be cool for a monster fight aren't the kind of things real animals do. So there was a lot of exploration in finding the right tone."
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DS: Any highlights from your work on this project?
EC: It was a great project. In the end we had about 40 minutes of previs, once everything had been edited down. So there was a large amount of footage. The halo jump was definitely a highlight, and a lot of the imagery in the final sequence, the trailer, and the poster are close to the previs we did. Working with Gareth too was really a fantastic experience. He was a very collaborative director and a lot of the suggestions we put forward made it into the movie. Seeing the final product was great!
It really was. As mentioned in an earlier Godzilla post, the first Maya scene I animated after graduating from Vancouver Film School was a fight between two enormous monsters in downtown Vancouver. To think that the experience from back then would help inform the motion of the real Godzilla all those years later makes my head spin.
Tuesday, May 20, 2014
FX Podcast interview with Gareth Edwards
FXGuide.com podcast link, with interviewer Mike Seymour @mikeseymour
Link to transcript by Ian Failes
Fantastic interview with Edwards where he goes into detail the struggles directors have with previs on big-budget feature films. In my limited experience, many of them seem to come into it with a somewhat adversarial attitude, and some stay this way until the end, but most warm up to it quickly after finding out how fast their ideas can be visualized with a team of 3D artists who are also versed in filmmaking and cinematography. He even mentions the "pitchvis" that was made to help get the film greenlit by producers, and which provided several moments that ended up in the final film.
Edwards humbly gives the proper credit to the people who helped get the film where it needs to be, including Eric Carney, who was the Third Floor supervisor on the project. This was great to listen to, and something that I hope becomes the norm for future directors as they openly discuss how helpful previsualization is to making modern, VFX-driven films.
An excerpt from the transcript:
The Power of Previs
“When we started this, I hated the idea of previs,” recalls Edwards. “I thought it was going to rob the film of its soul. The idea of trying to pick shots and decide exactly what we were doing six months before we even stood on the location or met the actors – I wasn’t really into that. Even though I used to do computer graphics, I just felt like that was the antithesis of what I wanted to do.”
But Edwards says his attitude to previs changed after working with The Third Floor and an in-house MPC team on crafting Godzilla’s major action scenes. “What I didn’t appreciate was that when you do previs, what you’re really doing is getting a chance to make a mini version of a movie without any interference from anybody – you’re completely given free rein – it’s just you and the previs guys.”
He also discusses the temptation to show everything about the monster up front, but for proper tension, there must be a "cinematic foreplay" to tease the audience, "and hopefully they won't hate you for it." When you see the movie, you definitely notice some unexpected choices that err to the side of preserving tension throughout the first two acts, for better or for worse. Learning his rationale for these choices from the interview was very interesting. I can't wait to see it again, knowing more about the theory behind the direction.
Other great, slightly paraphrased quotes
"Eric Carney, who was the The Third Floor previs supervisor, did an amazing job. There's a lot of people's DNA in this film, and I think the previs guys definitely should take some credit, because stuck to that previs a lot, and it was kind of like my crutch...When you have a video that you can hit play on and it kind of works, and you're excited about it and other people are, it's good to be able to circulate to get these shots. ..... so whenever we got to the set pieces we spent so long getting it right in the previs, so in those areas we would often just go back to the previs and get it pretty much exactly right."
"Previs became this Bible for what we were going to shoot."
Finally, here is his quote about making on a Godzilla sequel:
"We'll see what happens...I'm sort of itching to have another crack at it, because I feel like we can do something even much better next time."
Link to transcript by Ian Failes
Fantastic interview with Edwards where he goes into detail the struggles directors have with previs on big-budget feature films. In my limited experience, many of them seem to come into it with a somewhat adversarial attitude, and some stay this way until the end, but most warm up to it quickly after finding out how fast their ideas can be visualized with a team of 3D artists who are also versed in filmmaking and cinematography. He even mentions the "pitchvis" that was made to help get the film greenlit by producers, and which provided several moments that ended up in the final film.
Edwards humbly gives the proper credit to the people who helped get the film where it needs to be, including Eric Carney, who was the Third Floor supervisor on the project. This was great to listen to, and something that I hope becomes the norm for future directors as they openly discuss how helpful previsualization is to making modern, VFX-driven films.
An excerpt from the transcript:
The Power of Previs
“When we started this, I hated the idea of previs,” recalls Edwards. “I thought it was going to rob the film of its soul. The idea of trying to pick shots and decide exactly what we were doing six months before we even stood on the location or met the actors – I wasn’t really into that. Even though I used to do computer graphics, I just felt like that was the antithesis of what I wanted to do.”
But Edwards says his attitude to previs changed after working with The Third Floor and an in-house MPC team on crafting Godzilla’s major action scenes. “What I didn’t appreciate was that when you do previs, what you’re really doing is getting a chance to make a mini version of a movie without any interference from anybody – you’re completely given free rein – it’s just you and the previs guys.”
He also discusses the temptation to show everything about the monster up front, but for proper tension, there must be a "cinematic foreplay" to tease the audience, "and hopefully they won't hate you for it." When you see the movie, you definitely notice some unexpected choices that err to the side of preserving tension throughout the first two acts, for better or for worse. Learning his rationale for these choices from the interview was very interesting. I can't wait to see it again, knowing more about the theory behind the direction.
Other great, slightly paraphrased quotes
"Eric Carney, who was the The Third Floor previs supervisor, did an amazing job. There's a lot of people's DNA in this film, and I think the previs guys definitely should take some credit, because stuck to that previs a lot, and it was kind of like my crutch...When you have a video that you can hit play on and it kind of works, and you're excited about it and other people are, it's good to be able to circulate to get these shots. ..... so whenever we got to the set pieces we spent so long getting it right in the previs, so in those areas we would often just go back to the previs and get it pretty much exactly right."
"Previs became this Bible for what we were going to shoot."
Finally, here is his quote about making on a Godzilla sequel:
"We'll see what happens...I'm sort of itching to have another crack at it, because I feel like we can do something even much better next time."
Sunday, May 18, 2014
Godzilla credits
Biggest international opening of 2014 so far, and the Big G isn't done destroying yet. Great work, previs team.
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| The previs credits, with a logo added. Previs lead Eric Carney was credited separately up the list. |
Thursday, May 8, 2014
Godzilla crew screening
Last night I finally saw Godzilla at the Warner Brothers lot. Phones weren't allowed, but there was a keepsake:
The director, Gareth Edwards, gave a nice intro speech talking about how thankful he was for all the hard work the teams put in. Since he started from a visual effects background, he said he knew what it felt like to do so much work and have so much credit go to another person. Apparently the cast screening hadn't happened yet, and so other than the press, we were the first people it was screened for.
As usual, I can't go into any specifics that haven't already been confirmed by the film's marketing campaign, but I will say that I absolutely loved how it came out--and my expectations were very high going into it. Not only were the VFX jaw-dropping, but Bryan Cranston's performance kept me emotionally invested from the start. What can I say? Working on the movie turned me into a fanboy. When you go see it, be sure to see it on a huge IMAX 3D screen. Anything else is an injustice to the big guy.
Congratulations to everyone that worked on it. The Third Floor team got lots of names in the credits, which was great (you'll see mine on screen left). At the time I was on the project, we were working on the following sequences, with the shots I personally worked on in parentheses:
1. Godzilla approaching the Golden Gate sequence ('boat getting lifted on a big wave' shot, shots of soldiers reacting from the boats)
2. All hell breaking loose on the bridge (kids in the school bus looking out at the military preparing to fight, navy ships launching cruise missiles, soldiers scrambling around while the bridge bets blown up)
3. HALO jump (high angles on the group as they fell)
4. Very start of the Muto vs. Godzilla showdown in Chinatown
We also did some early motion design tests (6:30) of how Godzilla and the Mutos would fight, which was a lot of fun, even though they were animation exercises that weren't for any particular shots in the movie.
A final note to wrap up this post: Back in 2001, after finishing my Softimage 3.7 training in film school, I knew I needed some animation experience with the Maya program. My classmate Sony, a huge Godzilla fan, had built, rigged, and textured two giant monsters and a city block of Vancouver in Maya, and he asked me to animate them fighting. It was the very first thing I animated in Maya, outside of the Salty the Seal tutorial. Who would have thought that all these years later that experience would help to inform the motion of the latest Godzilla incarnation? What a weird coincidence...
 |
| The only evidence. |
As usual, I can't go into any specifics that haven't already been confirmed by the film's marketing campaign, but I will say that I absolutely loved how it came out--and my expectations were very high going into it. Not only were the VFX jaw-dropping, but Bryan Cranston's performance kept me emotionally invested from the start. What can I say? Working on the movie turned me into a fanboy. When you go see it, be sure to see it on a huge IMAX 3D screen. Anything else is an injustice to the big guy.
Congratulations to everyone that worked on it. The Third Floor team got lots of names in the credits, which was great (you'll see mine on screen left). At the time I was on the project, we were working on the following sequences, with the shots I personally worked on in parentheses:
1. Godzilla approaching the Golden Gate sequence ('boat getting lifted on a big wave' shot, shots of soldiers reacting from the boats)
2. All hell breaking loose on the bridge (kids in the school bus looking out at the military preparing to fight, navy ships launching cruise missiles, soldiers scrambling around while the bridge bets blown up)
3. HALO jump (high angles on the group as they fell)
4. Very start of the Muto vs. Godzilla showdown in Chinatown
We also did some early motion design tests (6:30) of how Godzilla and the Mutos would fight, which was a lot of fun, even though they were animation exercises that weren't for any particular shots in the movie.
A final note to wrap up this post: Back in 2001, after finishing my Softimage 3.7 training in film school, I knew I needed some animation experience with the Maya program. My classmate Sony, a huge Godzilla fan, had built, rigged, and textured two giant monsters and a city block of Vancouver in Maya, and he asked me to animate them fighting. It was the very first thing I animated in Maya, outside of the Salty the Seal tutorial. Who would have thought that all these years later that experience would help to inform the motion of the latest Godzilla incarnation? What a weird coincidence...
 |
| La Brea and Melrose, Los Angeles |
Thursday, April 10, 2014
Writeup about Proof, inc. in the Los Angeles Times this week/release dates for 2014
The Los Angeles Times has a nice writeup today of Proof, inc, the previsualization company where I am currently working on the upcoming film, Night of the Museum 3.:
Los Angeles Times: Previsualization firm Proof helps filmmakers plan for complex scenes
Be sure to look out for Night of the Museum 3 in theaters when it releases on December 19, 2014.
If you are interested to know where else you can see some of the fun projects I've worked on recently, here is a rundown for the release dates in 2014 (bold = available to see now):
300: RISE OF AN EMPIRE In movie theaters NOW. Released March 9, 2014. (uncredited)
DIVERGENT In movie theaters NOW. Released March 21, 2014.
DESPICABLE ME: MINION MAYHEM theme park ride, in 3D. Open NOW at the Universal Studios theme parks in Los Angeles and Orlando, Florida.
GODZILLA opens in theaters May 16, 2014.
X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST opens in theaters May 23, 2014.
TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES opens in theaters August 8, 2014.
THE MAZE RUNNER opens in theaters September 19, 2014.
NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM 3: SECRET OF THE TOMB opens in theaters December 19, 2014
It's good to be busy. Be sure to check back to this blog for updates with details on what I worked on within each project. Keep in mind that, due to confidentiality agreements, I am not able to write about anything that is not already public knowledge. That said, please come back often and please leave comments when you do!
Los Angeles Times: Previsualization firm Proof helps filmmakers plan for complex scenes
Be sure to look out for Night of the Museum 3 in theaters when it releases on December 19, 2014.
If you are interested to know where else you can see some of the fun projects I've worked on recently, here is a rundown for the release dates in 2014 (bold = available to see now):
300: RISE OF AN EMPIRE In movie theaters NOW. Released March 9, 2014. (uncredited)
DIVERGENT In movie theaters NOW. Released March 21, 2014.
DESPICABLE ME: MINION MAYHEM theme park ride, in 3D. Open NOW at the Universal Studios theme parks in Los Angeles and Orlando, Florida.
GODZILLA opens in theaters May 16, 2014.
X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST opens in theaters May 23, 2014.
TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES opens in theaters August 8, 2014.
THE MAZE RUNNER opens in theaters September 19, 2014.
NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM 3: SECRET OF THE TOMB opens in theaters December 19, 2014
It's good to be busy. Be sure to check back to this blog for updates with details on what I worked on within each project. Keep in mind that, due to confidentiality agreements, I am not able to write about anything that is not already public knowledge. That said, please come back often and please leave comments when you do!
Tuesday, February 25, 2014
New GODZILLA trailer is here!
It seems like only a few weeks ago that Godzilla had its first teaser hit the web. Now, there's a full-length trailer for people to enjoy. Bryan Cranston's voice completely puts you in the horrifying atmosphere of the film.
If it wasn't already clear by now, the movie is a complete 180 degree turn from the 1998 film of the same name. I couldn't be more excited for it.
If it wasn't already clear by now, the movie is a complete 180 degree turn from the 1998 film of the same name. I couldn't be more excited for it.
Wednesday, December 11, 2013
New teaser trailer for GODZILLA
Some of my HALO jump shots appear in the trailer. Sometimes when you do previs on a project, you have a feeling the movie will end up being very good. This was definitely one of those projects. See for yourself...
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