Assorted technological means and breakthroughs spanning production, post, audio, and visual effects can be cited in the making of a blockbuster like The Amazing Spider-Man, now in worldwide release in 2D and 3D. And while their deployment all figured prominently in helping teams from across Sony Pictures Entertainment (SPE)–including Sony Pictures Imageworks as lead VFX provider, the Sony 3D Technology Center for stereography consulting, Sony Pictures Post Production for sound services, and SPE’s DI facility Colorworks for final color grading and editorial finishing–to come together collaboratively on the Marc Webb-directed film for Columbia Pictures, often overlooked is the obvious, the proximity of all these resources to one another on the Sony lot in Culver City.
That logistical convenience isn’t lost on Gary Martin, president, Production Administration at Sony Pictures. “So much was done on this lot. We can shoot [a significant share of shooting for Spider-Man took place on eight of the Sony Pictures Studios sound stages], edit, dub it, do the music, color time, add the visual effects all within our own complex here. All these entities got together before the feature was shot and planned out how we would attack it. We let the filmmakers know our concerns and requirements and they cooperated by giving us what we needed when we needed it. The time saved by us all being in close proximity–to only have to walk 50 feet when dubbing to look at the color grading, for instance, is very efficient. The involvement early on of all the entities is also key to efficiency. It used to be that no one cared about color timing before the shoot. That’s all changed.”
Martin noted that keeping director Webb in the loop relative to the varied aspects of the project being done on the Sony lot “started well before shooting ever began. He was introduced to the people and the process. They had access to each other at any time. We were all in a one-stop shop with everyone familiar with what was expected and what we were going to provide.” Continuing in the proximity theme, Martin said that Webb and his production colleagues had set up shop in a building across the street from the lot, able to access whatever they needed at any juncture.
“Marc was fantastic, a quick learner,” assessed Martin. “Coming off (500) Days of Summer, he jumped right in. What he didn’t know, he found out about and learned. He and his team were on top of everything and worked so well with our team. The technical decision was made to shoot in 3D with the RED [Epic] camera, and it was the right thing to do given the timeline. This decision was made when not too many people had shot an entire major feature in 3D. The 3D camera, the rig, the equipment are big. Moving through the set, you had to make adjustments. We obviously didn’t quite have the time or money that Avatar had. Marc and his team adapted and came through big time. In my 33 years in the business, he’s one of those directors who’s totally won my respect.”
Webb is indeed a director of all disciplines–from a charmingly atypical romantic comedy in (500) Days of Summer to The Amazing Spider-Man blockbuster, to roots in music videos before diversifying into commercials. He continues to be handled for spots and clips by Hollywood-based production house DNA.
Strong Backbone
As for the alluded to technical aspects that facilitated fruitful collaboration on The Amazing Spider-Man, consider SPE’s Production Backbone shared storage environment. Located within the Colorworks facility, the Production Backbone is a central repository for original camera source elements and corresponding metadata. The film’s editorial team, Sony Picture Imageworks and Colorworks shared access to the Backbone and were able to draw data as needed in appropriate file formats.
This workflow enabled editorial, VFX, color grading and finishing for both 2D and 3D versions of The Amazing Spider-Man to proceed simultaneously. As the editorial team finished cutting 3D sequences, they passed them onto Colorworks for conforming at 2K. Finished VFX shots arrived from Imageworks and were processed in a similar manner. Conformed scenes then moved to color grading, with 2D and 3D versions graded in parallel in adjoining DI theaters.
“The Backbone is set up right from image capture to archive your product. To have it in one place and to be able to work on it with different people at the same time brings artists together and makes the workflow process efficient,” said Martin.
3D pipeline
Among the technological advances spurred on by The Amazing Spider-Man was one due to it being the first native-3D film for Sony Pictures Imageworks. This necessitated Imageworks’ development of a specialized 3D pipeline and toolset for the project. Rob Engle, 3D visual effects supervisor at Imageworks, explained, “In particular, the most important aspects of a native 3D show (as opposed to one that is converted or originates as all-CG) is that the front-end pipeline which includes plate preparation, matchmoving and paint needed to be adapted to handle stereo plates. This also meant that we needed to add a step of stereoscopic plate alignment and color matching (used to ensure a comfortable viewing experience) before doing any plate work.”
Engle noted, “Even though this is our first ‘native’ 3D show at Imageworks, we have many stereoscopic shows under our belt including all-CG (Polar Express, Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs, etc.) and live-action hybrids (G-Force was first 3D live-action conversion/animation project, Green Hornet, Green Lantern, Alice in Wonderland).”
Oscar-nominated (for Stuart Little) sr. visual effects supervisor Jerome Chen led the Imageworks team in producing more than 600 shots, which included fully CG versions of Spider-Man and his nemesis The Lizard, a nine-foot tall, bipedal reptile. Imageworks also created several photo-realistic, fully digital environments, including the hallways of Midtown Science High School, a subterranean sewer system, and Manhattan skyscrapers. The film’s climactic battle, set atop the 135-story Oscorp Building, is also a predominantly digital sequence.
“Marc [Webb] had a specific vision for Spider-Man’s world: an organic, naturalistic New York City, a place full of dirt, scaffolding, and steam,” said Chen. “He wanted Spider-Man to be more physical, to really react with this environment, rather than a stylized version of the character. I loved this concept, but I knew that an organic, naturalistic Spider-Man would make the visual effects work a lot more challenging, because the CG imagery would now demand a higher level of visual sophistication.”
The film’s soundtrack was completed on a dubbing stage at Sony Pictures Studios by re-recording mixers Paul Massey and David Giammarco. Massey and Giammarco have collaborated on a number of films, including 3:10 To Yuma, which brought them a 2008 Academy Award nomination for Best Achievement in Sound Mixing. Sound design and editorial, Foley, ADR and scoring were also completed by Sony Pictures Post Production Services.
At Colorworks, digital intermediate colorists Steve Bowen and John Persichetti led a team that completed final post work and prepared a variety of 2K distribution masters (in 2D and 3D for film, digital cinema and IMAX projection), as well as analogous 4K masters for archival purposes.
Still, not everything was done on the Sony lot. It should be noted, for example, that a prime lensing venue for the film was the New York Street Backlot at Universal Studios, Universal City, Calif. Still, much was accomplished within the Sony complex, which is also home to the studio marketing department. Martin said the proximity to marketing proved convenient. “We were able to satisfy their needs, making sure they had in a timely fashion all the elements they needed to market the film as we were getting everything together.”
