The VES Awards, scheduled for Feb. 12, will be a big night for Alfonso Cuarón, director/producer/co-writer/editor of the film Gravity. He not only will receive the VES Visionary Award but will have Gravity in the running for assorted awards as the film leads the VES feature nominations tally. Gravity nominations span the following categories: Outstanding Visual Effects in a Visual Effects-Driven Feature Motion Picture; Outstanding Animated Character in a Live-Action Feature Motion Picture (for the character Ryan); Outstanding Created Environment in a Live-Action Feature Motion Picture (two nominations, one for the interior, the other the exterior of the film); Outstanding Virtual Cinematography in a Live-Action Feature Motion Picture; Outstanding Models in a Feature Motion Picture (for the ISS exterior); Outstanding FX and Simulation Animation in a Live-Action Feature Motion Picture (parachute and ISS destruction); and Outstanding Compositing in a Feature Motion Picture.
Tim Webber, VFX supervisor at Framestore, presided over visual effects for Gravity. He earlier shared with SHOOT some of the complex challenges the film posed to him and his team. “The initial plan was to suspend the actors on wires in spacesuits against partial sets, with them working on bits of the Hubble or whatever spacecraft they were interacting with, but it became clear to me pretty quickly that wasn’t going to work,” he recalled. “Zero gravity is very hard to simulate–until you start to work on it and realize just how far its effects go you don’t realize how tricky it is. Everything we do is affected by gravity, so whatever we do down on Earth is not the same as would happen up in space. For example you hold something and let go it falls to the floor, it doesn’t just float there. If you lift your arm up there is a strain in you muscle as you are having to lift it up against gravity. If you hold your arm for a few seconds there you can see the strain on your arm. If you’re upside down all the blood goes to your face and is visible which it wouldn’t if you are upside down in zero gravity.
“The other big challenge was Alfonso’s filmmaking style of shooting with the very long exploratory roaming developing shots that go from a wide-shot to a mid-shot to a close-up, then to a close-up of another actor who could well be upside down. A two-minute shot of intense dialogue will go to an action sequence for a few minutes. And all of this happening within the one shot. As well as having to craft shots that are that long, you have to find solutions to the zero gravity that will work in all those styles of shots and over an extended period of time. So whatever technique it is has to work for all the different types but also has to hold up to the examination that it would be under when there are no cuts, no changes of angles. Whatever it is you are looking at you can be looking at for minutes on end. That was tricky. Finally, it was not a massive budget for the film, it’s a slightly esoteric concept for a movie and it’s largely about one person marooned in space, and back then no one realized how popular it would be, or no one was sure it would be this popular.”
Webber also enjoyed a close-knit collaborative relationship with cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki on Gravity, which Lubezki discusses in this week’s Cinematographers & Cameras series.
As for Framestore’s multi-faceted work on Gravity and the integral contributions of several other shops, Webber related, “We basically came up with the concept of doing a huge part of the film in CG and a lot of the time just filming the faces, or occasionally the whole body (when Sandra Bullock wasn’t in her space suit) and occasionally some more traditional live action bits with visual effects done over the top. Around 80 percent of the film was created in the computer and the other 20 percent contains a significant amount of effects work and that was pretty much all done by Framestore. The whole concept, the design, solving the problems, the methodology, all of that was done by myself and the team here. I was then the overall supervisor as well, supervising Rising Sun who did a very tricky sequence, although it was less than two percent of the screen time of the movie, the rest was done by Framestore.
“Prime Focus did the dimensionalization of some sequences, those that were more live action-orientated, and Framestore did the dimensionalization of the more CG-orientated sequences. For the CG ones it wasn’t so much dimensionalization because when it was generated in the computer it was done as if it was native 3D (as if it was filmed in 3D) and so with the dimensionalization it made sense for Framestore to dimensionalize the live action parts in those too.”
Additionally a joint venture between Framestore and The Third Floor came into play. “They supplied three very good artists to help for a certain length of time with the pre-vis. The Framestore team was significantly bigger and did most of the pre-vis, but the Third Floor guys were great and provided some really useful help. The pre-vis for the movie was a very critical part of the process. It had to be intensely planned in very great detail for many reasons: the complexity of the long shots needed very careful choreography and the complexity of the techniques used to shoot it needed to be extremely well planned when we were shooting.”
Webber is no stranger to the VES Awards or for that matter the Oscars. Last week he received a VFX Oscar nomination for Gravity. Back in 2009, he was part of a team nominated for a Visual Effects Oscar for The Dark Knight. Webber has also been twice nominated for the coveted BAFTA Film Award for Special Visual Effects–in 2006 for Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and in 2007 for the Cuarón-directed Children of Men.
Children of Men additionally netted Webber a pair of Visual Effects Society (VES) Award nominations, with Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (directed by Mike Newell) garnering yet another.
On the television front, Webber was part of the VES Award-winning Framestore team on Dinotopia, which also accounted for one of his three primetime Emmy Awards as well as a BAFTA Television Award nomination.
Hallmark Entertainment’s Dinotopia actually won four VES Awards in 2003–for Best Visual Effects, Best Character Animation, Best Compositing and Best Matte Painting.
Webber’s other two Emmy Awards came in 1998 for Merlin which topped the category of Outstanding Special Visual Effects for a Miniseries or a Movie, and in 2000 for The 10th Kingdom, the winner for Outstanding Main Title Design.
The Mill
The Mill was also among the most recognized studios with 11 VES nominations–three for PETA’s “98% Human” (The Mill NY and Mill+), another three for Sony PlayStation’s “Perfect Day” (NY), two for Call of Duty’s “Epic Night Out” (L.A.), and one apiece for Sony PlayStation’s “Greatness Awaits” (NY), Southwick’s “Squirrel” (London) and Toyota Avalon’s “Formula” (L.A.).
PETA was nominated in the categories Outstanding Visual Effects in a Commercial, Outstanding Animated Character in a Commercial or Broadcast Program, and Outstanding FX and Simulation Animation in a Commercial or Broadcast Program. The recognition is earned as much for what’s in the spot as what isn’t. We see an ape about to commit suicide after enduring abuse while and after being forced to perform in a film. What’s amazing is the ad’s ending line which informs us that “no real apes were used in this commercial.” BBDO NY’s script called for a CG chimpanzee to be created that would appear completely authentic. BBDO and PETA wanted a key part of that message to be that CG animals could be created, precluding the need to use real animals in moving imagery.
As for what the VES nomination means to him, Angus Kneale, executive creative director and director on “98% Human,” said it serves as “confirmation that we are creating some of the most creative and innovative work in the world…Personally, it makes me want to reach even higher and take more creative risks. Professionally it means that we inspire our hard working team and that we continue to attract the best and brightest talent from around the globe; these are the types of projects that all artist are hungry to work on.”
Kneale added, “The biggest creative challenge was actually looking past the photo-real hurdles of ‘98% Human’ to focus on the subtleties of the characters performance. The tone of the piece was incredibly important, we wanted to get under the audiences skin, to completely draw them in and make them connect on an emotional level with our ape.
Gavin Wellsmen was head of 2D for The Mill on “Perfect Day,” one of the spots that helped Matthijs van Heijningen of MJZ earn a DGA Award nomination this month for Outstanding Achievement in Commercials for 2013. Out of agency BBH NY, “Perfect Day” tracks gamers through worlds of sword fighting, car racing, aliens and spaceships blowing each other up as players serenely sing in the style of Lou Reed. Each character is grinning while hacking, shooting and crashing, because there is no place they would rather be than having such an experience with friends. The spot is an ode to the greatness that lives in all of us–the greatness that gamers can achieve on PS4.
“Perfect Day” copped VES nominations for Outstanding Visual Effects in a Commercial, Outstanding FX and Simulation Animation in a Commercial or Broadcast Program, and Outstanding Compositing in a Commercial.
“One of the largest compositing challenges,” assessed Wellsmen, “was to integrate structures and ships etc. behind smoke and debris on a blown out gray background. There was very little to key and we used multiple elements to recreate what we thought we may see in front of a dark ‘Attack Cruiser’ or ‘Drop Ship.’ We had to create depth to our battle, losing more and more detail in our CG the further it moved into the background, which wasn’t easy. Generally with CG you always want more detail but in this case, we had to lose most of the detail and create shapes to make the CG integrated into the shot.
“I would say though, the biggest challenge hands down was to completely rebuild the last shot in the spot in CG. Originally we were only supposed to add our CG to a live action plate. The shot was the last shot of the day in our already limited two day schedule. We lost the light and also found that most of the footage from a camera on the Octocopter was unusable due to wind conditions. The day prior Joji Tsuruga, our CG lead, and myself had taken the time to completely scan the entire environment, 36 scans every 60 feet during our rehearsal day. Lidar scanning can become addictive and before we realized, four hours had passed. We suddenly realized that everyone had left the location and we were standing alone in a abandoned derelict power station park. It paid off, though, once the scans were combined we were able to rebuild the shot and camera move. This gave us complete control of the shot to meet the expectations of our clients as well as ours, creating an explosive finale for the ‘Perfect Day’ spot.”
Wellsmen described the VES Award as a coveted honor–especially in the compositing category. “As joint head of compositing at The Mill in New York, it sets a great example for my team….It is also a incredibly huge compliment to be in a category with so many other great and talented artists.”
