Sight Effects, a decade old visual effects house, has always set its sights high. Lately, however, the company has been peeking out at the world from a dogs eye view, specifically, from the POV of Gidget, the little chattering Chihuahua in the popular Taco Bell spots that were directed by Rocky Morton of Morton Jankel Zander (MJZ), Los Angeles. Sight Effects is responsible for making Gidget speak in spots such as Viva Gorditas, via TBWA/Chiat/Day, Los Angeles. The Taco Bell campaign is just one in a series of recent Sight Effects jobs that has helped raise its already high profile in the production community.
Like many successful effects boutiques, Sight Effects started small. Partners Alan Barnett and Melissa Davies joined forces in 89 as a company with no permanent address. They leased space at various facilities around town, including Unitel and POP. It gave us an opportunity to learn a lot about supervision, handling clients, how to deal with complete jobs, because we didnt have the backing of a facility [and its] staff, notes Barnett, whose title is visual effects supervisor. We had to do it all ourselves. In 92 they opened their own office in Venice.
We saw a real need for agencies to go to the directors who werent doing effects at that point, who had the great idea, could put a beautiful spot together, and [needed to] incorporate their effects, explains executive producer/visual effects supervisor Davies.
This approach has provided the company with the opportunity to work with a long roster of A-list directors who are not usually associated with visual effects; including Morton, for whom the company also labored on the DGA-nominated spot Egg for Sega Obsidian, via Ground Zero, Marina del Rey, Calif. Sight Effects has worked recently with Plum Productions Eric Saarinen on Chevy Tahoes Garage and Drifts for Campbell-Ewald, Warren, Mich. Another recent client is bicoastal Mars Media director Samuel Bayer, with whom the company worked on Mountain Dews Parking, via BBDO New York.
Such experience has taught the company, among other lessons, says Barnett, that theres more than one way to skin a cat. You can look at a job and have alternatives in most arenas; it just depends on the approach of the director in terms of his style, and likes and dislikes. [Some people, for instance], dont like to be hampered by motion control or blue screen.
Neither was used for one of Barnetts favorite recent spots, Bayers humorous Parking, which features a parking attendant driving a mans precious BMW Evil Knievel-like between two tall buildings. The highly composited spot centers around an initial jump off a 12-foot-high wall in an airport. Multiple cameras were put on one actual airport jump, explains Barnett, and then plates were shot in downtown L.A. It was complex in terms of taking the correct measurements and angles, getting the right perspective, the right lighting and matching up the pieces. The visual effects work was produced at Sight Effects by Jeff Blodgett; and the visual effects artists on the job were Phil Brennan, Doug Spilatro, David Neuberger and Scott Polen.
Drifts, directed by Saarinen, is another Barnett favorite. In it, a Chevy Tahoe drives through a desert, wheels creating sand dunes, as it navigates the difficult terrain. When they approached us with the boards, we knew it would have to be CGI, says Barnett. Eric wanted to keep the camera moving and shoot the plates in Africa, so we had to combine the car driving here with plates from the helicopter moves, and create moving sand dunes coming off the back of the car. We did a lot of R&D, and started out with a water creation program; [we were] thinking waves would look like water, but that didnt work. We actually ended up animating [the dunes]. Our CGI guys did amazing work by hand. The effects work was produced at Sight Effects by Nicole Tidwell; animators were Michael Capton and Ricky Sevy.
Sight Effects, which has 27 people on staffaincluding five full-time compositors, five full-time CG animators, six producers and four visual effects supervisorsacoordinates all aspects of visual postproduction, from storyboards to shoot supervision, compositing, and CGI. Their facility is in an old gas company, and they have approximately 9,000 square feet of space. A sister company called In-Sight Pix shares the space. It specializes in CGI, 3-D animation and visual effects for both feature film and TV.
Barnett explains the rationale behind opening In-Sight: In the A80s we knew where the business was going; we knew thered be high resolution. The Harry was not capable of it then, no devices were capable of it, but we knew thats where it was going. It was obvious that there was a need to do for film what we could do for video. And we thought it would end up on a more open platform, which was one reason we headed into CGI. Also, as we became this all-encompassing type of company, small though it was, we got jobs where we were farming out CGI.
In 1993, Sight Effects brought in chief engineer/partner Rudy Hassen whom Davies and Barnett had met in the mid A80s at now-defunct Polycom. Together, the three partners opened yet another Sight Effects division, Digital Lab, to provide hardware and software for digital compositing.
Barnett points out that as technology becomes less costly, theres also the need to stay a step ahead, which was one reason for their latest purchase: a Philips Spirit Datacine. The company hired colorist Mike Cosola, formerly of Hollywood-based 525 Post Production (now 525 Studios.)
I attribute that [Spirit purchase] to Rudys foresight, says Barnett. It gives us a foothold in high-def; now were able, as high-def comes down the pike, to transfer high-def and not just sit with boxes capable of compositing it without being able to grab the input.
The Spirit was, to say the least, a nice chunk of change. But, notes Hassen, I would say its life span is [realistically] five to seven years, which is huge. And thats fine. It was a hugely expensive room to put together. He adds that its a great room, as well, in that its integrated with the rest of the company. We have a huge amount of interconnection; its expensive, but only upfront, says Hassen.
The bottom line, says Barnett, is that everybody creates some hype about themselves in this business. We try not to hype ourselves, but to reinvent ourselves, to stay one step ahead of the curve. In other words, to keep their sights set high.1
