The contributions of post, visual effects and animation artists 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 doesn’t always do full justice to them. Striving to go a bit deeper, SHOOT sought out reflections from different artisans relative to the creative challenges presented by notable projects.
At times, key projects can even represent landmarks for individual companies and their artists, a prime example being the box office hit Salt, the Columbia Pictures action thriller starring Angelina Jolie as CIA officer Evelyn Salt whose loyalty is tested when a defector accuses her of being a cold-blooded Russian sleeper spy. Salt goes on the run, using all her skills and years of experience as a covert operative to elude capture. Salt’s efforts to prove her innocence only serve to cast doubt on her motives, as the hunt to uncover the truth behind her identity continues and the question remains: “Who is Salt?”
Directed by Phillip Noyce, Salt turned out to be significant not just for the challenges it provided visual effects house Framestore but also because the experience led to the company’s decision to form a full-fledged film division in New York. (Framestore also maintains its longstanding VFX studio in London. It’s New York operation was launched nearly seven years ago to serve the commercialmaking community.)
Framestore New York was the lead VFX house on Salt and was responsible for key creative direction, technical CG, and compositing. (Also in a high profile VFX role was CIS Vancouver, with other contributing effects houses including Phosphene, Gravity, Nina Saxon Design, Tikibot VFX, Hammerhead Productions and UPP.)
“The stunt work in the film is fantastic and in keeping with Phillip Noyce’s desire for realism, our VFX team worked heavily with the stunt crews to achieve key shots that would blend seamlessly within the stunt sequences,” said Ivan Moran, Framestore’s VFX supervisor on the film.
Framestore’s Sarah Dowland, executive producer of VFX on Salt, added, “This was a great film to come out of our new film division at Framestore NY, building on the Framestore legacy for VFX. We knew how key the VFX work would be to the success of the film. There were many scenes and stunts that could not have been achieved without VFX involvement, and if those VFX moments were not realistic, the viewer would not believe the story. The demand for realism and transparency from director Phillip Noyce was a challenge, but we were confident we would meet his expectations and we did.”
The film features assorted stunts, explosions and car chases, each propelling the narrative forward and providing U.S. government agent Salt with a number of narrow escapes. Framestore worked with director Noyce and cinematographer Robert Elswit, ASC, to carefully map out what could be captured in camera. As a lead vendor on the movie, Framestore worked on over 300 shots (as did CIS Vancouver).
“The real challenge was to realistically recreate objects and effects that people see every day,” said Framestore CG supervisor Theo Jones. “People are so familiar with some of the objects and experiences that we were building in CG and animation, so we needed them to be spot on or people would immediately sense that something was off and the believability of the scene would be in jeopardy.”
Framestore created a variety of CG crowd extensions, vehicles, and set extensions to achieve the scale that the director was after. Framestore’s VFX and animation work was vital to several key moments in the film, assisting the storytelling as well as making the action more compelling. Framestore even built, cracked, and eventually disintegrated the floor of St. Patrick’s Cathedral using advanced CG and VFX techniques.
Framestore was also on hand and helping to oversee one of the most impressive stunts in the film, when Salt drives off the 59th Street Bridge. A rigged SUV was actually pulled off a bridge exit ramp, smashing spectacularly into the taxis below.
“Multiple cameras,” said Moran, “were placed to film the stunt with perhaps the most ambitious being a camera rigged inside the vehicle itself, to be used as the backplate for a composite shot of Evelyn Salt seen from inside the vehicle on impact.”
To achieve this, the impact camera was later matched on a bluescreen stage, with vehicle seats and rigged airbags built for Jolie to perform against. During the bluescreen shoot, Framestore was able to quickly comp Jolie’s takes to provide invaluable feedback for the director as to how the performance was matching the inside footage of the real SUV crash. For the final shots, CG dust and debris were added to blend the plates together and combined with the surrounding stuntwork. The result is a stunning sequence of Salt’s escape.
Framestore New York took on Salt while continuing its commercials operation at full speed. Jon Collins, president of Framestore N.Y., noted that he initially adopted a wait-and-see attitude to assess the viability of launching a feature film department in N.Y. “I wanted to make sure that it did not dilute what we have established in commercials, which has been our core business–and that in fact it could only add to what we could do for our commercial clientele. Our artists benefit from broader-based experience, new challenges, and R&D opportunities which only enhance what they can offer our clients.”
So while Framestore NY began working on Salt in March 2009, it wasn’t until about a year later that Collins and his colleagues, after analyzing the impact of the film on the facility, came to the conclusion that indeed diversifying with the formation of a film department would be prudent. Underscoring the commitment to both the commercial and feature operations is the securing of additional space on another floor of the New York building which houses Framestore. This extra space is slated to be completed in October, giving the film department room to spread its wings, with commercials also gaining more capacity in the process.
On the workforce front, as a number of commercial staffers brought their talents to bear on Salt, new talent was recruited to pick up the spot slack. Some of these new recruits now complement the artisans who have returned to commercials from Salt, further fortifying resources for the ad community.
Dowland noted that the commercials pipeline in place at Framestore NY provided an infrastructure on which the feature pipeline for Salt could be built. This was conducive to generating momentum for Salt from the outset. And now with these two pipelines fully up and running, a dynamic whereby the commercial and feature disciplines not only co-exist but benefit from each other has been created in New York akin to that enjoyed by the artisans and clients at Framestore London. Staffers are energized by opportunities to work not only on high-end commercials but features as well.
Dowland related that Framestore N.Y. passed a stringent test as Salt evolved. Originally the plan was to split the effects work on the feature 50/50 between Framestore N.Y. and London. At first, the facilities were slated to work on 68 shots with some quite intensive 3D work. However, the nature and scope of the project changed, growing to more than 330 shots with all of the key creative for VFX, all the 3D, all the final compositing work, interaction with clients on dailies, reviewing progress with the director, being handled by Framestore NY. Framestore’s London and Iceland offices provided support paint, roto and camera tracking work. “Though it happened gradually, the size of the project wound up changing dramatically and the people and resources we had at Framestore New York were up to the task while not skipping a beat on the commercials side,” said Dowland.
While Salt proved to be a fulfilling ride from business, creative and technical standpoints–not to mention an exciting ride for cinema audiences–other houses have had their share of projects which represented challenging rides as well.
To reflect on their challenges and accomplishments this year, SHOOT posed the following question to postproduction and VFX/animation professionals:
• What project (film, TV, commercial, other content form) has represented your greatest creative challenge this year and why?
Martin Andersen & Line Andersen
(a.k.a. Andersen M Studio)
partners/directors/animators, London Since completing “Going West” [the New Zealand Book Council spot which won a Film Craft Gold Lion for Animation at this year’s Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival], we have been busy developing new techniques and looking for new interesting scripts to work on. A couple of months ago we directed and shot another stop-frame animation, “The Distant Hours” for publishers Pan Macmillan, to promote a forthcoming novel by Kate Morton–it was a short but challenging one. The book had not yet been written, which meant we had very little information to base our storyboard on. Luckily we were allowed great creative freedom to experiment with new and different techniques: we got to work with pigment dust, smoke machines and most excitingly we got to literally burn down an entire paper forest that had taken days to create.
Phil Crowe,
creative director/VFX supervisor,
The Mill LA One of our greatest creative challenges and also one of our greatest rewards this year was Old Spice’s “The Man Your Man Can Smell Like”. The fact that the spot is one take (with an actor, crane and a horse!) pushed the difficulty factor in every way. To make that feel seamless was a significant effort on our part, but well worth it for the incredible results. The project started with us long before post. We had a pre-pro meeting here at The Mill with MJZ and Wieden + Kennedy to plan everything out to the exact mark. The script-to-shoot collaboration and the highly detailed pre-viz kept everyone focused. The stage was actually built inch-for-inch using the pre-viz. The sophisticated clean-up in Flame was up there in degree of difficulty with some of the most effects-heavy projects of our past. Amongst many of the intricate effects, one of the more complicated components was rebuilding an ocean background where there originally was none. The creatives preferred the take where the horse appeared to be laughing, so we did a complicated head replacement. It took a week alone just to create the right shape and quantity of diamonds in Isaiah’s hand [actor/former pro football player Isaiah Mustafa]. Isaiah had amazing delivery, but it inevitably was two seconds too long, so we worked our magic to bring it down to 30 seconds. Most directors would read this script and shoot it in segments; however, that boldness is what sets Tom [director Kuntz] apart. He’s a purist who didn’t want to take the easy route and it really paid off with this one.
Dan Glass,
sr. VFX supervisor,
Method, Los Angeles
Certainly one of the most challenging projects I’ve worked on since joining Method has been as visual effects supervisor for the two-minute Halo:Reach featurette Deliver Hope. Although this is a promotional piece for the eagerly anticipated game, we at Method treated every facet of this production as we would a feature film.
Working with live-action director Noam Murro of Biscuit Filmworks, our goal was to translate the power and dynamism of the game into a cinematic world. That required a commitment by everyone involved in this project to create fine detail on aspects of the game and have the materials hold up on cinema-sized screens.
The project involved a great deal of previsualizing and look development. As I have with many features, I shot extensive live-action elements to work with the CGI, making the overall effects more realistic. I oversaw CG teams led by Dan Seddon and Matt Dessero in creating Deliver Hope’s expansive world and dramatic battle sequence.
The work I did along with Method’s great staff, agency215 and Murro was very technical, of course, but it also involved a massive number of creative choices about how to translate a game world familiar to millions of devoted Halo players into an equally powerful movie-like experience.
Stephen Nakamura,
DI colorist,
Company 3, Santa Monica Working as the DI colorist on Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood was some of the most challenging and rewarding work I’ve done this year. Scott wanted a very different look from other action films. He and cinematographer John Mathieson were aiming for a somewhat colder, softer, more “medieval,” more “British” approach to the images. The cinematographer built a lot of that look into the negative, but it was an interesting challenge refining and shaping the look.
The resulting look has a more “organic” feel than many summer blockbusters, and it required a high level of control in the DI suite. We had to be very precise in order to maintain the exactness of Scott’s desired look throughout his action-packed, battle-intensive feature, which was shot under a wide variety of weather conditions.
I’m really pleased with the way we were able to go through the entire project — especially the battle scenes –and almost imperceptibly use a variety of image sharpening tools during the color grading to enhance the feeling of power and danger from the many swords and other weapons in the film.
I am always proud of my work when it can affect an audience’s emotion and sense of the story in a very organic-looking way without having my contribution or the work I put into the project declare itself. I think Robin Hood is a very good example of that.
Dan Sanders,
VFX supervisor,
MPC London Well before shooting Nissan LEAF’s “Polar Bear” spot, we realized that it would be tricky to capture the hug sequence.
Agee, our polar bear weighs around 600 pounds and although relatively friendly, she was not going to do anything she did not feel like doing!
Armed with lots of good quality sausage as an incentive, we filmed an embrace between bear and trainer, the idea being that we’d then only need to shoot a head replacement plate with our actor to complete the shot in post.
To have captured a hug at all was a big bonus, but our trainer was a bit unsteady on his feet from the weight he was shouldering and Agee was more interested in her next sausage! The shot was going to need some work.
So we filmed various plates of our actor hugging a stand-in for the bear, hoping to combine these with elements of our real bear and trainer.
I spent six days in Flame replacing the trainer with the actor, adding a different take of the bear’s head, re-animating the bear’s arms, retiming the hug, resizing and repositioning both bear and guy, creating contact shadows, and generally refining the whole sequence. It was really satisfying to find a realistic solution to a very tricky sequence of shots.
Thanks to [director] Daniel Kleinman [of Epoch Films and Rattling Stick], the camera crew and Mark the trainer, the material we shot of Agee was fantastic. So the rest of the spot required compositing of the bear into background plates, some rig removal, and some beauty work. We also created a CG butterfly.
There is one shot that has a full CG bear. Ahmed [Gharraph] and his CG team at MPC London did such a great job, I doubt you’ll be able to spot it.
Rik Shorten,
VFX supervisor,
Zoic Studios, Culver City, Calif. Creating the frozen moment shot for the Season 10 premiere [of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, the “Family Affair” episode which won this year’s Emmy Award for Outstanding Special Visual Effects For A Series] was very challenging on many levels. The first was access to the main sets and principal actors for three days. Considering a normal television schedule is eight days, asking for this kind of time was no small request. The second was the incredible amount of practical rigging and articulated props needed to sell our “frozen moment.” Wardrobe, Hair/Make-Up, Props, Set dressing, Lighting–all departments had to contribute to sell the effect. Once the sequence was shot, the artists at Zoic Studios began the immense task of cleaning out all our rigging wires, green screen poles and building our stitched plates. With our clean up complete, our 3D department had a giant list of assets that needed to be modeled, textured and tracked into our scene. When completed, this shot was over 11,000 frames long! From shooting through final delivery, we spent almost two months on this sequence. Thousands of production and artist hours went into the premiere and the result was a seamless tableau that allowed the audience to experience CSI in a whole new way.
