The contributions of editors, post and visual effects artisans to the success of projects can be integral and profound. While some of these artistic and technical accomplishments end up being acknowledged on the awards show circuit in one fashion or another, such recognition only scratches the surface.
To go a bit deeper, SHOOT sought reflections from different artisans relative to the creative challenges presented by notable projects, as well as surprises and lessons learned from the experience of being involved in those jobs.
These projects ranged from broadcast commercials and campaigns to a grass-roots PSA, short films, a web video, branded content for a primetime network series, and theatrical features.
In the mix were The Hurt Locker, this year’s Academy Award winner for Best Picture and Best Director (Kathryn Bigelow who’s also repped for spots by RSA Films); The New Tenants, this year’s Oscar-winning Best Live-Action Short Film helmed by commercials director Joachim Back of bicoastal Park Pictures; James Cameron’s breakthrough film Avatar, which took home the Best Visual Effects Oscar as well as multiple honors at the Visual Effects Society (VES) Awards; the documentary short titled 6 directed by Jeff Bednarz of Dallas-based commercial production house Directorz, and which debuted at the recent South By Southwest (SXSW) Festival in Austin, Texas (SHOOT, 3/19); and such new theatrical feature releases as Greenberg starring Ben Stiller, and Clash of the Titans.
We touched base with such artisans as a visual effects supervisor on Avatar (which garnered VES Awards for models and miniatures, matte paintings, best animated character in a live-action feature, best single effect in a feature film, best visual effects in a VFX-driven film), the colorist on The Hurt Locker, the editor of The New Tenants, the senior editor on Greenberg (directed by Noah Baumbach), a visual effects supervisor on Clash of the Titans (which was directed by Louis Leterrier), and the editor of 6 (a 20-minute documentary providing insights into the high school kids who play Six-Man Football and their coaches, as well as the small Texas communities that come together as a result of their games).
In terms of commercials, we also have perspectives from the senior colorist on Target’s “Liberty of Love” campaign; the visual effects executive producer on Nike’s high-profile “Human Chain” spot; the senior creative editor on the Verizon Droid campaign; and the editor of the ShelterBox PSA titled “Results.”
The latter was based on a concept by copywriter Andrei Chahine and art director Ryan Stotts of Cramer-Krasselt, Chicago, who won Optimus’ second annual One Shot contest. The up-and-coming agency team garnered two major prizes. For one, their winning concept designed to promote disaster relief nonprofit foundation ShelterBox got produced from beginning to end by Optimus, Chicago, and its in-house production arm ONE. Secondly, Optimus then committed to buying local airtime for the finished commercial, giving meaningful marketplace exposure to the work.
The One Shot contest was devised and developed by Optimus and its marketing agency Scott & Victor, Chicago. ONE’s Mehdi Zollo directed ShelterBox’s “Results.”
We additionally gain some backstory from the senior digital colorist on Honda’s branded content for the NBC series Chuck, as well as from the editor on BBDO Minneapolis’ “Laminate Rocks” web videos.
SHOOT posed a pair of questions to a cross-section of industry artists regarding select projects:
What was the biggest creative challenge you faced?
And what noteworthy surprise or surprises arose (a lesson learned or an unexpected discovery) during the course of the project?
Here’s a sampling of the feedback we received from editing, postproduction and visual effects talent:
Russell Icke, editor, The Whitehouse
(Project: The Academy Award-winning short film The New Tenants)
The film came together very quickly. The tone and pacing were already in the script. If I had to pinpoint our biggest challenge, I would say deciding how much music to put in or take out. Initially we had more, but we realized it was better to let the scenes play out organically. We had a taut script and honest performances, so more music was a band-aid we didn’t need.
Having to trim the husband character’s performance was a good problem to have. We kept it extended for a long time because it was so strong, but in the end decided its length was unbalancing. We wanted to introduce these characters and the space in a unique way. Playing with angles and keeping it claustrophobic until it was absolutely necessary to go wider yielded some unexpected results. I’m very proud of how the story unfolds. Overall, we all had a lot of fun putting this together and I think that’s evident in the film.
Sue Lakso, senior colorist, Crash+Sues, Minneapolis
(Project: Target’s “Liberty of Love” spot campaign)
Over the past decade (Minneapolis agency) Peterson Milla Hooks (PMH) has called upon me to color correct dozens of challenging Target spots. This year, creative director Dave Peterson once again raised the creative bar with the national retailer’s most recent campaign, “Liberty of London.”
Dave designs the distinctive, vibrant palette that has become a signature of Target spots. This spot was loaded with color and the patterns of the Liberty of London products. There were many layers shot on film including green screen, foreground and background elements. The challenge was to color correct the multiple layers of the model-esque talent, trendy furnishings, intricate patterns and surreal environments to match the footage and create a seamless flow between scenes.
On the forest scenes there were blue flares coming and going. Many times I’m called upon to diminish the color and intensity of flares but in this case we worked with the blue to enhance the blue, green and pink products and the mood and color scheme we were creating. Another challenge was keeping the rays of light at a good level, yet keeping the people bright. I used keys, wipes, and dissolves on the moves to keep it ethereal yet bright with color and detail.
With color correction there’s always an element of surprise when we see the final spot after it’s edited and composited. We’ve learned to trust our instincts and rely on the collaborative relationships we’ve built with the agency.
Producer Aldo Hertz and PMH’s team keeps building upon the strong visual brand they’ve created for Target–and over the years Crash+Sues has continued to thrive on just that kind of challenge.
Carlos Lamas, editor, Fischer Edit/FX, Minneapolis(Project: BBDO Minneapolis “Laminate Rocks” web videos)
One interesting thing about the “Laminate Rocks” project was that the cameraman was a character within the story. “Keith,” the character documenting (and, by default, editing) Gary’s adventure, is an amateur wedding photographer. Therefore, the real-life director, Josh Thacker, had to fight the urge to shoot cutaways or reverse angles, and instead shoot in-character, as “Keith” would.
This led to an interesting challenge in the postproduction process: how to best tell an entertaining story while keeping an intentionally amateurish quality present. I realized that, as a professional, working the way an amateur might is harder than it sounds. We were lucky to have a lead actor with great timing and improvisational skills, which allowed some flexibility. For instance, I was able to hold single shots without having to cut around performances, which in turn helped maintain the in-character editing.
Another challenge was of the “embarrassment of riches” variety–there were many very funny segments, and we were limited in picture length, so it was tricky weighing the relative strengths of different vignettes against each other to decide what to include. We ended up generally leaning towards conciseness, after one specific punchline caused the creative director to comment, “that’s kind of a long walk for pantyhose.”
Justin Lane, managing partner/executive producer, MassMarket, New York
(Project: Nike’s “Human Chain” commercial)
The biggest creative challenge we faced was to devise a complex mathematical and technical methodology to create what appears in the end to be simple and subtle. The original concept features many athletes, all part of a giant “Human Chain” that highlighted their individual sports and talents, but also conveyed the interconnectivity of sport in general. Outside of the logistic issues of which athletes/sports were locked down and changing which sports went into the next, the pre-production phase required extensive planning to shoot athletes completing multiple iterations of the same move while capturing the subtleties and slight changes each time they completed the move. Each of the athletes “iterations” were shot as separate takes; cameras, moves and athletes’ positions were then re-timed each take, to place the athlete in the right position throughout the scene.
We worked very closely with Brian (director Beletic of Smuggler), the DP, AD and crew to establish blocking for each scene, the objective being to shoot a great take for each iteration while avoiding having the athletes cross over their other iterations from take to take. These passes were then composited in Flame, where the layouts were tweaked and refined until they appeared like a finely choreographed dance. Add in multiple other players/defenders or a bull and you have quite a challenge. By the end of a long shooting process, the crew had it down, but we also realized what makes some athletes super-human; their ability to repeatedly hit a cue with slightly different movements or actions and make it look easy.
Chris MacKenzie, senior editor, Deluxe New York
(Project: The feature film Greenberg)
We recently completed the postproduction on Focus Feature‘s Greenberg. For this film, we were tasked with finishing a modern film evoking a 1970s’ aesthetic envisioned by its director (Noah Baumbach) and cinematographer (Harris Savides). Much of this look was achieved through creative grading in our EFILM Digital Intermediate theater, but the graphics and digital opticals proved to be an interesting creative challenge. Digital elements had to be designed to complement this overall creative choice and not appear to be too modern or out of place. Noah and the editor (Tim Streeto) had found several examples of vintage credits to use as inspiration, but we avoided trying to directly mimic a specific 1970s’ credit treatment. To achieve the result, I built a luminance key that created a slightly soft and exposed look to the text but avoided other imperfections like bounce and jitter that are usually evident when these elements were added by a traditional optical process. When trying to replicate a look from another era, I think it’s important to create work that doesn’t clash with the overall artistic style of the production. Noah had a great vision and we were very proud to help execute that for him.
Stephen Nakamura, colorist, Company 3, Santa Monica, CA(Project: The Hurt Locker, Academy Award winner for Best Picture)
I wouldn’t say that anything about my work on The Hurt Locker was a surprise so much as a confirmation of what I’ve known: My best work as a colorist comes from working with collaborators who have definite ideas about what they want, but who also give me the freedom to explore how best to express those ideas with the tools I use in the digital intermediate bay.
In this case, producer/director Kathryn Bigelow was very focused on the concept in the film that the lead character, Sgt. James, played by Jeremy Renner, is basically “addicted to war”–that unlike the other soldiers we encounter in the story, he is exactly where he wants to be.
Kathryn told me her ideas and the kind of emotion she wanted to convey and then gave me a lot of creative freedom to try to do what I thought would be best for the movie. The images–army uniforms and vehicles surrounded by desert and sand–weren’t filled with bright, saturated colors, but I thought it would work if we really did bring out the color that was there: the blue in the sky, the green in the uniforms, even the colored wires in the explosives. It’s very subtle but it helps audiences see through James’ eyes and feel what Kathryn wanted them to feel.
It isn’t an immensely complicated film from the color-grading standpoint, but I’m proud of my work on it and I think my contribution plays into the overall effectiveness of the film.
Katherine Pryor, editor, Optimus, Chicago
(Project: Shelterbox’s “Results” PSA)
The concept of the Shelterbox spot is simple. It’s not about the tragedy or aftermath, it’s about people getting back to normal. The goal was to draw attention to Shelterbox and get people to go to their website and hopefully donate. What makes the spot intriguing is that we see glimpses of life around the world, without knowing right away what the product is or that there was even a disaster.
The hero of the spot is the box. My biggest challenge was deciding just how heroic the box needed to be. Do we make it the focal point of each vignette or keep it a secret until the end? We (the creative team and I) decided to be somewhere in between with our box. We needed to identify Shelterbox, but we wanted it to feel like we just happened to capture these people going about their lives, in an unobtrusive way, yet still convey the box’s presence.
I had to deconstruct a little bit after my first cut, which is also tough to do. Instead of focusing on the box being the main character and worrying about anybody “getting it,” I ignored the box and focused on the stories. Then, I tried to find the most organic shots of the boxes, and finally I tucked them back in at the right moment to fit with the copy. So the box became the “we” in the voice. And we intentionally kept that from the audience until the third vignette to build interest.
It’s always fun to unravel something and rebuild it in a new way. Ultimately, this spot came together quite naturally.
Stephen Rosenbaum, VFX supervisor, Digital Domain, Venice, Calif.(Project: Avatar, Oscar winner for Best Visual Effects; Rosenbaum worked on the film during his tenure at Weta Digital, Auckland, N.Z.)
One of the more significant creative challenges we overcame on Avatar was convincing the audience that the characters were alive. It was an early mandate from James Cameron that the actors’ performances should directly translate to their CG character without embellishment. Jim believed that this would lead the audience to accept them as truly sentient beings. The key to accomplishing this was capturing and then interpreting the nuances of what an actor’s face was expressing and feeling, particularly the eyes. Once we understood how to read the myriad facial gestures and micro-expressions that faces can portray, we could breathe life into the Avatars and Na’vi.
Making a movie in 3D requires a creative shift in how to best deliver the stereo experience. The DP needs to approach lighting and shot composition in a way that accounts for the audience’s tolerance of stereo imagery, and the editors need to be mindful that it can be jarring to cut some 3D shots the same way a 2D (flat) movie is cut. In visual effects, forethought and attention needs to be paid to how elements are created and layered into a shot. Most importantly, setting the stereo space of a movie so that it enhances the experience–rather than becoming the experience–is something we were taught early on by Jim. Watching Avatar is a far more enjoyable and immersive adventure in 3D than in 2D, because he took care to not beat people over the head with excessive and gratuitous stereoscopic images.
Adam Schwartz, senior creative editor, Beast NY
(Project: Verizon Droid campaign)
The Droid campaign was a real departure for Verizon, which made it challenging in a number of ways. The spots were as much about creating emotion as storytelling, and the director, Benzo Theodore (Park Pictures), gave us a wealth of material to work with. The goal was to produce a visceral emotional reaction in 27 seconds–a bare-knuckled bucket of does. The storyboarding and script gave us a lot of latitude, and as an editor, that’s the scariest and most exciting kind of job you can get.
What made these spots so different from past campaigns were the textures, layers and other elements used to evoke the rough feel of machinery or a metal foundry. The DP, Guillermo Navarro, shot multiple passes on metal grates and plates as well as melting wax and liquid dyes, and for some portions we even used stock footage. I was encouraged to be as creative as I wanted, and I dove in, pushing boundaries as far as I could for the first cut. To my surprise, there were almost no revisions.
What I learned from this project is an old lesson that might sound a little cliché, but is still incredibly vital: you have to chase your best work, and not be afraid of what the reaction might be. I’ve worked with the agency, mcgarrybowen, for a number of years, which really helps to foster the trust and mutual respect essential to going after your best. Ultimately, projects like this are why we all become editors. They don’t come along every day, but when they do, they remind you why you got into this business in the first place.
Simon Stanley-Clamp, visual effects supervisor, Cinesite, London(Project: The recently released film Clash of the Titans)
One of the biggest creative challenges we faced on Clash of the Titans was some very complex compositing work. Our main sequence was a battle involving giant scorpion-like creatures called scorpiochs which we created in CG. We were using both Shake and Nuke for compositing. Although we’ve used Nuke before, we really pushed it in ways we hadn’t before for one particular shot. We had 26 filmed plates which were shot from above as locked off tiles which we had to project onto rudimentary 3D geometry of the terrain and set. You simply can’t do that in Shake.
Once we’d imported and reprojected the plates onto the geometry to construct the terrain, we imported our scorpioch model–and refined the 3D camera move for the shot which involved a lot of to-ing and fro-ing between animation and compositing. This process isn’t possible in Shake because it doesn’t have a 3D architecture. But Nuke is a hybrid 2D/3D tool which works in real 3D space so we were able to reproject stills onto geometry to create a terrain with a pseudo-3D look.
We have unlimited licenses of Shake and there are lots of artists who can use it, whereas at the time we had fewer seats of Nuke and it has a smaller user base. But being a relatively small team, everyone used Nuke on some of their shots. We even used it to do some very sophisticated clean-ups. We’ve since expanded our Nuke licenses as it’s a very sophisticated tool and definitely the way forward. We now have a Nuke site license which is 500 seats.
Sparkle, senior digital colorist, Technicolor, Hollywood
(Project: NBC Chuck–Honda Branded Content)
I do a lot of work for director Joseph Lee and NBC’s in house branded content agency (NBC Creative Partnerships and Innovation); we’ve got our workflow down: they bring in RED drives and I convert the files to MFX for the edit and when they have their EDL, I pull for their conform and assemble.
This was supposed to be a project like all the rest, this one for Honda and the series Chuck. When Joseph came in for the final, they threw me a curve; not only did he have his RED EDL, but in addition, they had 30p footage from the Canon 5D Mark II as well as visual effects materials delivered in DPX that all had to be assembled for the final–all in the time that they had booked.
I work on a Clipster, constantly pushing DVS to the limits with what I do with it for spots, so I threw it another challenge and put the various elements into the same timeline, compressing the 30p material to the right length, allowing the project to be completed in the allotted time.
Lessons learned? Be flexible and have plans A, B, C and D!; surprises will invariably continue to happen as new digital cameras and processes come on line; and work with a system that allows for flexibility.
Jack Waldrip, VP/senior editor, charlieuniformtango, Dallas(Project: The short film, 6)
Technically, the biggest challenge with 6 was constructing the narrative solely from OC interviews and dialogue, particularly since it involved parallel story lines. This approach requires sifting the film through multiple filters. Ordinarily, a scripted VO serves to set up situations, tells you what to feel, creates transitions, etc., and the interviews elaborate and reinforce whatever purpose the VO is serving. With 6, the interviews had to carry the total weight of the exposition without the benefit of VO shortcuts.
Emotionally, the challenge was to keep football in a supporting role. The main story was that these small towns are a throwback to a distant age. An age when hard work, individualism, and a sense of community defined America, and they are disappearing. When they can no longer support a six-man team, they die—slowly and literally. I can’t say that I discovered, or was surprised by anything on this project. It did, however, reaffirm my love for my craft. Commercial editing requires a cocktail of different skill sets. It is competitive, fast paced and intense. I love the challenge. It demands that you knock the shit out of any ball thrown at you. Taking on projects that distill editing down to its purest form helps me stay sharp and passionate. To that end, I’ve always taken on non-commercial work when possible. I have cut over 200 spots for director Jeff Bednarz. I was honored that he wanted me to cut his first long form project, and that it was one of only nine short docs chosen for SXSW.
