Screening and Pub Event – Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes IMAX (WASHINGTON) (2024)

By TREVOR HOGG

Images courtesy of AppleTV+.

If the success of Everything Everywhere All at Once has proven anything, it is that parallel universe storylines are not confined to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Following that trend is the AppleTV+ series Constellation, which explores the concept of transitional points in time and space known as liminal spaces. The science fiction psychological thriller created by Peter Harness consists of eight episodes and revolves around a mysterious experiment onboard the International Space Station causing a devastating accident that prompts an astronaut to question her reality. Tasked with 1,582 shots and ensuring that everything was visually coherent and consistent upon repeat viewings was the visual effects team supervised by Doug Larmour and consisting of One of Us, Outpost VFX, Jellyfish Pictures, Mathematic Studio, Spectral, Studio 51 and Dazzle Pictures.

“In terms of the style and feel of what directors Michelle MacLaren, Joseph Cedar and Oliver Hirshbiegel and Peter Harness were going for, it was along the lines of putting yourself outside of your comfort zone to make you feel as if, ‘Are you sure as a viewer yourself that you have seen what you have seen?’” Visual Effects Supervisor Larmour explains. “We were aware through the editing process, how much do you reveal of the alternative realities while still tricking the viewer into thinking that it is a linear story. We would put little quirks in the plates so that you think, ‘Was that the right or wrong thing I just saw?’”

Liminality influenced the visual aesthetic of the show. “We experimented with several different ideas involving reflections, light changes and lens warping. Whenever you see Jo Ericsson (Noomi Rapace) in Sweden or in a liminal moment where she is transitioning from one reality to another, we used quite a lot of lens effects to create a more tunneled view with a wavering double imaging so you felt the change. Within that, you have the idea of slowness of time. We had to create a particle system of snow, build those individual snowflakes and make them slow down or speed up whenever going through the liminal forcefield.”

Natural elements like embers were treated differently in outer space as opposed to on Earth because of the absence of gravity. “We shot lots of elements of embers for the fire that you see in the cabin later on in Episode 107, but the zero-g embers were fully made in Houdini,” Larmour reveals. “There has not been much in the way of experiments with fire in space because obviously it’s quite dangerous. No one knows what a big zero-g fire would look like other than it’s not withheld by gravity and is not so up and down but a broader flame. It was the embers that gave the fire a floaty feel because they were moving every which way.” The snow was treated completely differently from the embers. “We had some effects guys who were able to create on-set snow in the Arctic Circle, but at the same time we had two units shooting across a frozen lake and forest, so it was impossible for us to cover the entire area all of the time. There was a whole continuity thing where we had to match the bits that had snow with the ones that did not,” Larmour adds.

Rather than having a space capsule splash down off the coast of Florida, the water has been replaced with the desert environment of Kazakhstan. “I don’t think it’s a pleasant experience landing in a Soyuz capsule!” Larmour notes. “When it works well, they land in Kazakhstan which is a flat area of tundra. There are rockets that fire just before it hits to slow it down. We did a lot of research in making sure that our landing matched all of the footage that we had of Soyuz capsules landing.” A dog-wolf crossbred threatens Jo upon the capsule door opening. “Thankfully, it wasn’t CG, but it took a lot of handling to make it to do the right things at the correct time, like growl. There were different bluescreen plates for Jo in the capsule and of the wolf. We didn’t have them onsite, so we had to shoot the background when we were in Morocco. It was a three-plate composite whenever you see Jo and the wolf together.”

Invariably, comparisons with Gravity will be made because of the destruction of the ISS, which is ironic because both projects had the same Production Designer, Andy Nicholson. “It was a brilliant piece of hiring because of the whole wealth of experience that Andy brought from Gravity, not only from having done that show, but the problems that they had shooting that and where it had gone well and hadn’t gone well,” Larmour states. “The first thing I did was to get The Third Floor involved, which allowed us to do a virtual tour of the whole ISS and give Michelle one or two months just sitting with The Third Floor, flying her way through the ISS and working out where she would like to put things, where the actors would be and go from one to place to another; and where to put the camera so at least we shot the whole scenes in the ISS before we actually had to shoot the [full scene]. Based on that, we were able to go to Andy and say, ‘These are the shots. For the big wide expanses of the ISS, let’s do those CG. The things where you are seeing a real close-up, it doesn’t matter as long as it has something in the background. The hard ones are the mid to wide shots where you see them travel and touch lots of bits of the ISS. Those are the bits we have to build with enough room to fly there.’ That meant roofs that they could take off and big greenscreen teasers all of the way down the massive stage we had in Berlin. Previs helped us to know exactly what we had to shoot.”

Anti-gravity movements were mimed by the cast. Larmour explains, “When it came to moving slower than usual, the actors stood on one leg so they could drift through a frame. After a certain period of time, you get used to the idea of what that feels like to shoot. Stefan Sosna, our camera operator, got used to the idea of having a little bit of float. There are so many videos of NASA astronauts or cosmonauts filming while they’re floating, and the camera is always slightly moving because itself is floating. It never felt static. Having seen that with the full CG shots, we tried to integrate that as well. Whenever there wasn’t enough of that, we tried to integrate it in post in order to get that feel. Then you have lots of CG objects.” Carnage unfolds inside of the ISS resulting in blood simulations. “We had a famous American astronaut, Scott Kelly, as our expert advisor, and he had created some experiments in space with fluid. We completely used those as a reference guide for what a blob of fluid would look like floating through the frame. The special effects makeup guys spent two weeks making me some zero-g blood. It was an aloe vera-type substance that would stick and wobble like jelly, but it wouldn’t drip. Quite often on set, when it was going to be a blood scene, we would put a blob of this zero-g blood on the wall behind them so we could dress it as if it floated off and stuck to the wall,” Larmour says.

UI had to be created for the various computer monitors. “We worked with [graphic designer] David Henry, who had previously collaborated with Michelle on The Morning Show, which also had a lot of screens,” Larmour remarks. “Whenever you see a lot of screens, there are some that are practical. There was never just a whole wall of blue. Usually, there were at least two or three screens out of the 35 that had something on them. However, we didn’t always keep what was there. The ISS was built 20 to 30 years ago, and a lot of the operating systems of the personal computers that are up there are different and older. We had to make sure that our screen graphics were matching the actual screen graphics in the ISS now. Also, being an Apple show, you have to make sure that your Apple products are exactly right in terms of their operating systems, how they work and when and how you swipe. A lot of effort went into making sure all of these screens were exact.”

In the middle of the multiple-reality chaos is a container called the Cold Atomic Laboratory (CAL). “We did that in-house. It’s a lot about feel because you don’t want it to feel too magical; you want to base it on the idea of being an electrical appliance. It has to react in a way that creates double realities. There are these massive mad experiments that are a kilometer underground with gold rooms, which are there to capture small particles from the sun. What you see are little sparks, so we used the idea that you would have little pinging particles along with the double exposure because that’s what it’s creating and it’s electrical so it feels like a blue LED running through it. You put it all together and go, ‘That’s nice, isn’t it!?’”

By TREVOR HOGG

Images courtesy of Netflix.

When a young bride becomes an unexpected offering to a dragon, both the creature and the royal family that betrayed her get more than what they bargained for as she has no intention of carrying on the sacrificial tradition. This is the premise for the Netflix production of Damsel directed by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo (Intruders) and starring Millie Bobby Brown, Ray Winstone, Nick Robinson, Shohreh Aghdashloo, Angela Bassett and Robin Wright. Dividing the visual effects work for the dark fantasy feature were supervisors Nigel Denton-Howes and Nicholas Brooks. “I came in at the beginning of post-production to help bring the dragon along because my background is doing creature stuff,” Denton-Howes states. “The original supervisor was more of an environments person.”

Responsible for the production design was Patrick Tatopoulos. who has made a name for himself as a creature designer. “Patrick was brought back as well in post, which is unusual,” Denton-Howes notes. “I managed to get him to work with the artists at One of Us, and I finished off the look development and all of the details that are needed to make [the dragon] look real when you get into the shots.” The desire was not to go for a lizard-inspired dragon like Game of Thrones. “Our dragon is much closer to a panther, which is why when we brought her into the environments and caves, she is just as comfortable running around the caves as she is flying around them. Whereas your stereotypical dragon is lumbering on the ground and graceful in the air,” Denton-Howes explains. Tatopoulos’ designs for the dragon were refined with the original version having a strong graphical orange line going down the flanks and back of the neck. “We followed the line to the spine and tail. That allows her to stand out in the caves. But the whole textural approach is that she is part of this environment and is supposed to blend in,” Denton-Howes says.

Shohreh Aghdashloo provides the voice of the dragon. “There are certain sounds that are awkward for a mouth that big and a muzzle that long to make,” Denton-Howes remarks. “There is some lip sync, and we’re using the jaw a lot, but a lot of the motion and mechanics were actually done with the neck. When she inhales, the neck plates open, and it compresses like bellows when she exhales. We added a shiver to the neck plates to correspond to her emotional state. When she is confident, there is very little flutter in them and when she gets angry, they vibrate like crazy. That informed the sound design.” Something unusual for Denton-Howes was getting an opportunity to work directly with the sound design team. “We did a bunch of loops back and forth of animation and sound tests until we got a final dialogue sound that was going to work.”

Environments were enhanced to get a proper interaction with the dragon. “A lot of the environments are CG, but on the sets that were built we added all of the rocks and debris on top of them because they were actually bare,” Denton-Howes says. “When the dragon is walking, she can kick stones, and everything extended in the background is CG. When she is interacting with characters, like when one of the guards gets grabbed, it’s a takeover into an all-CG character. For some of them, the whole shot is CG. When we’re interacting with Millie, like when the dragon’s hand is on her neck, on set there were interactive elements such as claws that could press down to allow her to feel some of it. Then we also bent her skin in 2D to add indentations, and, in the dragon, there was some modeling to push in the pads of the thumbs and fingers to make them squishy so you can feel that the two are really touching each other.” Each cave was distinct. “One had stalactites and stalagmites. The main action area has giant columns and looks like a cathedral. Then there is the crystal cave that Millie climbs up. It’s done so you don’t feel as if you’re in the same place all of the time.”

Light continuity was the biggest issue for when Elodie (Millie Bobby Brown) is tossed into a crevasse that leads to the caves inhabited by the dragon. “You were starting at one place and knew what was going to be at the bottom,” Denton-Howes describes. “They were totally different stages and sets, and you’re telling a story of moving through space with bespoke shots where no two shots are the same, so you’re not reusing anything other than the digital double.” Assisting the cave lighting were glow worms. “Glow worms don’t have magical healing properties, but they actually exist. The bluish white light was part of the production design, and Larry Fong (Kong: Skull Island), our DP, ran with that. Throughout the whole thing we were trying to be photographic. When Millie falls down and has the pomander, it goes to black and slowly comes back into lighting. The idea is that your eyes are adjusting to the dark. We were trying to find photographic reasons for there to be light, and glow worms were one of them. Even in the main caves, it was a tricky lighting scenario on the set because Larry didn’t have a lot of choice of how he lit because the stages were small.”

Primary vendors for the 1,202 visual effects were One of Us, who was responsible for the dragon, Rodeo FX, who did a lot of environments and glow worms, Pixomondo, who handled the dragon, dragon lair, the opening and end sequences, and Important Looking Pirates, who created the harbor environment and Elodie’s homeland. Other contributions came from The Yard VFX, Rising Sun Pictures, Rebel Unit, Atomic Arts, Primary VFX, NetFX and TPO VFX. “Later in reshoots, we added the opening scenes of Elodie’s homeland as visual contrast, as well as for storytelling reasons,” Denton-Howes states. “When you get into Aurea, it needs to look realistic but really lush and beautiful. In the grade, [director] Juan Carlos Fresnadillo pushed it into gold and warmed things up even further, which is a subtle change.”

As for the Stone Mountains that loom over the castle, the feline anatomy was an inspiration, thereby tying the ominous natural landmark with the design of the dragon. “If you were to zoom out, the main mountain is analogous to a tooth of a cat, and for the lower mountains, you could put a jaw of a cat there,” Denton-Howes reveals. “The base of the castle is real in close-up shots extended up, and for most shots it’s entirely CG. That was time-consuming to do. Castles are like digital people where everybody knows what they look like, so you know when it’s not quite right. We did a lot of work on that, balancing fantasy with realistic. Initially, Juan Carlos wanted the castle to be clean and beautiful, but when you do that it doesn’t look real. You need to grunge the castle up and allow it to have a couple of centuries of weathering, but it’s still beautiful and magnificent.”

By CHRIS McGOWAN

Chris McGowan

Motion capture, performance capture and volumetric video technologies are rapidly advancing, incorporating AI and ML to a greater extent and focusing on enhancing realism, precision and accessibility. Peter Rabel, Technical Product Manager at Digital Domain, comments, “The trend towards real-time capabilities has become prominent, allowing for immediate feedback and integration into virtual environments, video games and live events. As we integrate artificial intelligence and machine learning as tools to enhance these functions’ capabilities further, it will enable automated analysis and capture of movements in real-time, which will help save time on the process, leading to cost savings. It’s essential for us to stay updated on recent developments and industry trends to understand the current trajectory of these capture technologies as technology continues to evolve so we can better serve our clients.”

Lazzaro continues, “We also released a more informative and intuitive version of our mocap software, which is now compatible with all OptiTrack mocap cameras. Motive 3.1 is aimed at simplifying high-quality, low-latency performance motion tracking, offering users easy-to-use presets and labeling for tracked items that deliver the best possible motion data while saving time and eliminating extra steps. Customers also have greater visibility into possible issues and can automatically resolve against the harshest of tracking environments.”

O’Brien adds, “Our mission is to democratize motion capture, allowing independent content creators and streamers to create incredible and immersive stories and experiences. To achieve this, we have a long-term goal of getting our gloves down to a true consumer price point, which will really open up the space. At $795, we think our latest StretchSense Studio Glove is the biggest step the industry has ever taken towards this goal; less than two years ago, something with similar performance would have cost well over $5,000.”

“Mocap has a bright future in a variety of markets,” OptiTrack’s Lazzaro says. “This includes but is not limited to movies, video games, medical applications, robotics, measurement and VR. Mocap techniques are also becoming more commonplace with V-Tubers and other prosumer applications.”

By TREVOR HOGG

Images courtesy of Netflix.

A unique cinematic moment involves an oil tanker being sliced by nanowires as part of an elaborate trap to capture a hard drive belonging to a cult that supports the San-Ti invading Earth. “People get sliced every 50 cm, which we did mostly with digital doubles and a few practically built hallways and interior buildings. When you slice something that heavy vertically at 50 cm increments, the weight of what’s above it keeps it in place until the bow hits the shoreline. The dish on top of it collapses into the Panama Canal, which we created as a full CG environment,” Fangmeier states.

Opening the series is a massive crowd gathering at Tsinghua University during the Chinese Cultural Revolution to watch the torture of intellectuals, and because of the controversial nature of the subject matter shooting in Beijing was not an option. “Ultimately, we built the environment from photography and then took some liberties,” Visual Effects Producer Steve Kullback describes. “We wanted it to be realistic, but how big is the quad? What did the buildings actually look like? I don’t think anybody is tracking it quite that precisely, but what we ended up with is having 100,000 screaming students in front of us, and that was all shot quite virtually with a stage set that was built out and extended. It was an array of bluescreens on Manitous that were set up to move around and reposition behind 150 extras.” Crowd tiling was minimal. “We did one shot, which was a poor artist’s motion control. The director wanted a shot where the camera is pushing out towards the stage over the crowd, so what we did was start in the foreground pushing over it, repeat the move pushing over it and move everyone up. We put the pieces together, and it worked quite well. We didn’t have a motion control crane, just a 50-foot Technocrane and a good team that was able to repeat their moves nicely,” Kullback says.

Another key environment build was the Red Coast Base where astrophysics prodigy Ye Wenjie makes first contact with the San-Ti in the 1960s, which sparks an invasion conspiracy. “For Red Coast Base, we had part of an observation base in Spain that was on a mountaintop, and it was a windy day with no rain, so we had some nice sunsets and great clouds,” Visual Effects Supervisor Rainer Gombos remarks. “Some of the buildings didn’t match what we wanted, and the main building was missing the large radar dish. We only had the base built for that. We had some concepts from the art department for how the extensions should work, and then we did additional concept work once we had the specific shots and knew how the sequence would play out.” The years leading up to the present day have not been kind to the Chinese national defense facility. “The roofs have collapsed, so we had to design that. It had to look like winter and cold when it was actually a hot spring day with lots of insects flying around, which had to be painted out. There is a sequence where the radar dish is being used for some test, and birds are flying from the forest and get confused by what is happening, fly close to the dish and die. There were a lot of full CG shots there and CG birds that had to be added. Also, one of the characters revisits the base to commit suicide, so we had to introduce a digital cliff that allowed her to walk up to the side of the dish and look over,” Gombos adds.

Simulating what life is like on Trisolaris is a virtual reality experience developed by the San-Ti that demonstrates the global catastrophes caused by living in close proximity to three suns. “It was described as a simple arid desert landscape,” Fangmeier explains. “The more unique aspect of that was a certain lighting change. One sun, small and in the distance, was rising, and then suddenly that goes away and it’s night again. Having the light on the actors move that quickly was tricky to achieve on set. We decided along with Jonathan Freeman, the DP for Episodes 101 and 102, to shoot that in a LED stage with a bunch of sand on the ground where we could animate hot spots and the colors of the panels even though we were going to replace all of that in CG.” Being in the realm of VR meant that the destruction could be fantastical, such as 30 million Mongol soldiers being lifted in the air because gravity no longer exists, or witnessing the entire landscape engulfed by a sea of lava. Fangmeier explains, “Then, we have some pseudoscience, like going inside of a particle accelerator. The San-Ti have sent these two supercomputers the size of a proton to stop the progress of human technology, so when they arrive 400 years later [Trisolaris is over three light years from Earth], we won’t be able to easily destroy their fleet. The proton [referred to as a sophon] unfolds into this giant two-dimensional sphere that then gets etched with computer circuitry. We talked a lot about going from 10 dimensions down to two and then going back to a 10-dimensional object. It’s stuff where you go, ‘That’s what it said in the book and script. But how do you visualize that?’”

To preserve their species until the chaotic era gives way to a stable one, the San-Ti have a specific methodology that involves dehydrating and rehydrating their bodies. “It happens in two places and provided us with unique challenges and creative opportunities,” Kullback observes. “The first time we see it is when the rolled-up dehydrated bodies are being tossed into the water by the army to bring our characters back to life. The rolled-up bodies that get rehydrated were a prop that was designed by the prosthetics artists and looked quite beautiful. We go underwater and see the roll land and begin to unfold. The camera is below it and the sun is above the water, so you have these beautiful caustics and an opportunity for all kinds of subsurface scattering and light effects that make the image magical and ethereal and support the birthing process that it’s meant to represent. At the end of the experience, you have a beautiful nude woman who comes to the surface. Then, you find there are other nude folks who have been rebirthed. We shot in a tank at Pinewood to have the underwater shots and the shots of the woman, who is the final realization of this rebirthing. For the elements of the roll landing in the water, we did shoot one for real, but ultimately that was CG. Then the environment above the surface was fully CG. But then you go to the virtual reality game where Jin Cheng is walking with the Emperor and the Follower, and a chaotic era suddenly comes upon us, and there is no room to hide behind a rock from the immense forces of the sun getting ready to melt everybody. The Follower lies down on the ground in a vast desert with the pyramid off in the distance and has to dehydrate. That one presented a bit more of a challenge because you didn’t have the opportunity to travel around her and have these beautiful caustics. We heavily researched the footage of things dehydrating, like fruit left in the sun rotting, to try to get a look that was like how the body would deflate when it was completely sapped of water.”

Being able to digitally reconstruct sets and locations was made even more important by having a highly reflective VR headset. “The reflective headset required some photogrammetry type work while you were shooting because it was often in smaller places, and there’s some crew, all of the lighting equipment, and everything is dressed in one direction,” Gombos remarks. “You had to capture that three-dimensionally because as production turned around, you needed it for the paint-out from the other direction. We had HDRI panorama photography of that, but then we also had good spatial information about the room and how that would connect to the shot lighting we would do. We wanted to be precise, and on top of that, we often did a special reconstruction shoot after we were done. I would come in for a few hours and do the photography and LiDAR required for locations. These assets were created on the fly, so we had them to review our work but also to send off to the vendors, and they were using them in post. The 3D assets were helpful in quality-controlling the work and a good tool for orienting our teams. I could have this little 3D representation of the set and share and discuss that with the DP or director. I would say, ‘If they are here, it’s going to look like this.’ It wasn’t theoretical but quite precise.”

“One thing that was a bit different for me was that I did a lot of the concept work,” Gombos observes. “I enjoyed doing that for set extensions that then Stefen and the visual effects vendor working with him would execute.” Fangmeier is intrigued by what the viewer reaction will be beyond hardcore sci-fi fans of the books. “It’s not your typical sci-fi where you spend a lot of time in outer space or meet aliens, and it’s not an alien invasion per se. It’s the first season, so it’s fairly mellow and highbrow. It’s deals with concepts other than the stuff that people are usually used to when they watch sci-fi. I’m curious what the mainstream viewer will think about that.”

There is a core mandate no matter the project for Kullback. “If we are able to help tell the story visually in areas where you can’t photograph something, then that’s our dimension. We’re never creating eye candy for the sake of eye candy. We work hard to have everything that we do fit into the greater whole and to do it in a seamless and attractive way. And, most importantly, in a way that communicates and moves the story forward and realizes the vision of the filmmakers.”

By Trevor Hogg

Images courtesy of Pixar Animation Studios.

With the release of “Self,” a cautionary tale about the desire to please and be accepted by others, Searit Huluf got an opportunity to showcase her filmmaking talents as part of the Pixar SparkShort program. The project was partly inspired by her parents trying to adjust to life in America after immigrating from Ethiopia, which, at the time, was ravaged by civil war.

“My mom and dad separated, so it was just my mom looking after me. I had a lot more independence because she was working a lot. I mainly stayed in the east side of Los Angeles, which became my playground. It wasn’t until I got to UCLA that I started to explore more of Los Angeles, in particular the west side, which felt like being in a different country because everything is so clean, and there were a lot more shops.”

An opportunity presented itself to visit Ethiopia right before the coronavirus pandemic paralyzed international travel. “It was our first mother/daughter trip, and I had forgotten what it was like to be under my mom again,” Huluf recalls. “While in Ethiopia, my mother was cautious because the capital of Addis Ababa is not where my people are from, which is the Tigray region. It wasn’t until we got to Mekelew where my mom’s side of the family lives that we got to relax and meet people.” Huluf watched her aunts make coffee called ‘buna’ from scratch. “After roasting the coffee, they take it to everyone to smell to say thanks before grinding. Then you have to hand-grind the roasted coffee with a mortar and pestle. My friends and I made it every day. It was so much fun.”

Participating in sports was not an affordable option growing up, so Huluf consumed a heavy dose of anime consisting of Sailor Moon, Naruto, One Piece and Bleach. What was made available to her in high school was the ability to take community college classes on computer coding and engineering through STEM [Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics] programming. “I did a website competition inside of which there was a film competition, so I did a live-action short with all of the seniors in my group, and afterward I was like, ‘I want to go to art school.’” The art school in question was the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television where she studied screenwriting and stop-motion animation. “I was trying to figure out what is the closest I could get to animation but not have to draw, and it was stop-motion; that was the happy medium because I do love live-action and animation. My schooling was live-action, but a lot of my internships were animation; that’s how I divided it up.”

Internships included Cartoon Network and DreamWorks Animation, then Pixar came to UCLA. “I kept in contact with the recruiter and started at Pixar as an intern in production management while making films on the side,” Huluf remarks. “I am also big in the employee resource groups within Pixar. I spearheaded the first celebration of Black History Month at Pixar and decided to make a documentary where Black Pixar employees talk about what it is like to be Black in America. The 19th Amendment documentary came about because I cared about people voting for the 2020 elections. It was a way to promote Pixar fans to go out and vote by having Pixar women talk about why they should do it and the complicated history of the 19th Amendment. Documentaries are scary because you go in with what’s there and make the story in the editing room. That was a lot of fun, and I gained more confidence to be a filmmaker, and I switched back to making narrative films.”

Huluf has a support network at Pixar. “Luckily for me, I’m not the first Black shorts director at Pixar. Aphton Corbin made “Twenty Something,” so it‘s nice to be able to talk to her about it. Michael Yates did the Win or Lose streaming [series for Disney+], and I keep regular contact with Kemp Powers. It’s nice to talk to people who are in your arena. Personally, too, that’s why I do both live-action and animation, because there’s something about both mediums that gives me motivation and hope.”

Like Mark Osborne with The Little Prince, Huluf was able to combine computer animation and stop-motion to make “Self,” where the protagonist is a wooden puppet surrounded by environments and metallic characters created digitally. “I got to work with Tippett Studio, which I love! I studied stop-motion at UCLA, so I know what the process looks like, but I have never done it in a professional setting, and I’m not the animator; other people are doing this who have worked on James and the Giant Peach and The Nightmare Before Christmas. There’s that Pixar comfort where everybody knows each other or someone adjacent. But these were complete strangers, and there was a big age gap between us. A little bit of me was going, ‘Are they not going to respect me?’ And it was the exact opposite. They were so loving and caring. I still text with them.”

A significant lesson was learned when making “Self.” “I did a lot of my independent films by myself, and this time I had people who are paid and wanted to be involved,” Huluf notes. “Working with the animators was one of the most insightful moments for me. I would film myself and say, ‘How about we do this?’ They would be like, ‘We could do that, but how about this?’ And it was so much better. In the beginning, I was very precious about it and slowly realized, ‘They know what this film is and what needs to be told, too.’ It was a learning curve for me.” The transition to feature directing is more likely to first occur in live-action rather than animation. “That’s primarily because the stakes are higher in animation than a live-action film. This is purely based on budgets.”

“When I think about filmmakers I look up to, I see that they start with smaller indie features. Barry Jenkins is a perfect example. Moonlight was only a couple of million dollars, and then he made a higher-ground film If Beale Street Could Talk. I want to start small and slowly build myself up. The big jump for me now is to do a feature. Luckily for me, I’m not too intimidated to do it. It’s more about when someone will give me the chance. I do believe in my ideas and storytelling capabilities. Right now, I’m writing and seeing how things go. I look forward to people watching ‘Self’ and being able to talk to them about it because that’s something new for me.”

For a long time, the digital double of Self was a placeholder for 19 shots that utilized stop-motion animation. “But as things progressed, we turned off our character as she is now being added in the comp,” states Nathan Fariss, Visual Effects Supervisor of “Self.” “The amount of color tweaking and general polish that was happening in comp, and even the color grading steps in post, were much more than any of our other projects because we needed to match a photographic element to our CG world and vice versa.”

Previs and layout dictated the shot design for the stop-motion scenes. “We had a first lighting pass that was already done and even before Tippett started lighting everything up,” Rosales remarks. “We sent members of our lighting team over there to do the last bits of tweaking. Searit acted out every single shot that Tippett was going to do. She did it in her living room by herself. To sell the foot contact, Tippett ended up building a concrete slab out of Styrofoam so we were able to see Self physically walking on top of something.”

Self makes a wish upon a falling star that enables her to exchange wooden body parts with metallic ones. “I usually talk about what the character is feeling at the moment,” Huluf states. “The way we talked about that scene of her jumping off of the roof, I wanted to show how she goes from, ‘Oh, cool these body pieces are falling from the sky,’ to slowly becoming more obsessive in finding them. That face is the last piece for her. ‘I’m going to finally belong.’ A lot of people do a lot of crazy things to belong. In Self’s case she’ll rip herself apart to be like everyone. Self-jumping off of the roof is the climax of the film because it’s her craziness and obsessiveness all wrapped into one as she falls into darkness. We had a lot of conversations about how she snaps out of it, and for me, your face is who you are. As she steps on her own face, it snaps her back into reality and makes her realize and go, ‘Oh, my God! Why did I do this?’”

The cityscape did not have to be heavily detailed. “We ended up settling up a look that was a flat color or a gradient so it felt like there was a little bit of life in the city and things were lit up,” Fariss reveals. “There were other people present in the buildings, but it didn’t necessarily draw the audience into the lives that are going on in the buildings around there. The cities were mostly hand-built. There wasn’t enough scope to warrant going a procedural route to put the cities together, so they were hand-dressed, and there was a lot of shot-by-shot scooting some buildings around to get a more pleasing composition.”

More problematic was getting the hair right for the puppet. States Dubeau, “Once we figured out what urethane to use then we did all of the hair. However, we found out it was too heavy for the head. We had to go back and make two pieces of hair that go down and frame either side of her face. Those were made out of that material and painted. We hollow-cast the ones on the back, which had a wire that went into the head, and then you could move those pieces around, but you couldn’t bend them. The ones in front could swing and twist. It totally worked. Now you got the sense of this light, fluffy hair that was bouncing around on her head.”

“Self” was an educational experience. “One of the things that we learned from Lisa Cooke [Stop-Motion Producer] at Tippett is you end up saving your time in your shot production,” Rosales notes. “It’s all of the pre-production and building where you’re going to spend the bulk of your money. There was a lesson in patience for us because with CG we can take everything up to the last minute and say, ‘I want to make this or that change.’ But here we needed to zero in and know what we’ve got going on. Once the animators get their hands on the puppet and start doing the shots, the first couple of shots take a little bit of time. After that handful of shots, they get a feel for the character, movement and puppet, and it starts moving quickly. Then we were able to get our team on, and they were able to start learning their cadence as well. It started becoming a nice little machine that we were putting together.”

By TREVOR HOGG

Images courtesy of FX.

Inspired by the power struggle in feudal Japan that led to the rise of Tokugawa Ieyasu to Shōgun and his relationship with English sailor William Adams, who became a key advisor, James Clavell authored the seminal historical fiction novel Shōgun, adapted into a classic NBC miniseries starring Richard Chamberlain and Toshiro Mifune. Forty-four years later, the story has been revisited by FX and Hulu as a limited 10-episode production under the creative guidance of Justin Marks and Rachel Kondo.

“What we felt made Shōgun interesting today would be to tell more of an E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial story of an outsider who has shown up in the world that we let the audience inhabit,” states Justin Marks, Creator, Executive Producer and Showrunner. “We worked with our producers and star, Hiroyuki Sanada, as well as Eriko Miyagawa [Producer], to use their expertise to craft the dialogue in the right kind of Japanese.”

Regarding depicting the Sengoku Period, compromises had to be made. “There will always be a gap between accuracy and authenticity, which means negotiating which spaces are necessary to keep distance and which ones you need to close the gap,” states Creator and Executive Producer Rachel Kondo. “We were constantly defining and redefining what we’re trying to be authentic to. Are we trying to be authentic to a time or people or specific place?” Originally, the plan was to shoot in Japan, but the [COVID-19] pandemic caused British Columbia to become the stand-in for the island nation. “Very little cleanup was required relative to what it would be in Japan where you would be removing power lines all day just to get something to look natural, and then you want to plus it to the premise of the story,” Marks says. “With Michael Cliett [Visual Effects Supervisor and Visual Effects Producer], we worked out a system that would keep us flexible in post-production with what we would call a high and low appetite version of a shot; that element of protection was for storytelling reasons but largely for budget reasons. Then, what it allowed us to do was to say, ‘This is a show about landscapes,’ and on some level, we have broad landscapes and what we called ‘landscapes of detail,’ such as close-ups of tatami mats because they were shot with macro lenses.”

Osaka was the most straightforward of the three cities to develop because extensive reference material exists from 1600 and the general topography has not changed. “Ajiro was a gorgeous little cove on the waterfront, but the area itself wasn’t quite large enough to create a whole village. So, we had to make a mental jump to say that the upper village is where the samurai class live and the lower village was where the much poorer fishing folk live,” Production Designer Helen Jarvis explains. “We ended up using two different locations and then knit them together in a few establishing shots. Edo [modern-day Tokyo] was the city that Yoshii Toranaga [cinematic persona of Tokugawa] was actually in the process of developing and building at the time. We saved a portion of the waterfront Osaka set and didn’t fully develop it until much later in the series knowing that we had to create two city blocks that were in the process of being built. One of our set designers did a preliminary model of the shape of the city and how the castle might relate to the city; that ended up being much more in Michael Cliett’s hands. He had people scanning the buildings that we had and we had various other 3D files of buildings that we would like to see represented, like temples.”

Exterior garden shots of Osaka Palace were captured inside of Mammoth Studios, requiring soundstage ceilings to be turned into CG skies. “There was a lot of fake bounce light as if the set was lit by the sky rather than sunshine,” reveals Christopher Ross, Cinematographer, Episodes 101 and 102. “We would light the garden as if it was an exterior and then each of the sets would not only have direct light from whatever lighting rig, but they also had borrowed light from the gardens themselves. The way to create chaos in the imagery was to allow the sun to splash across the garden at times then let that borrowed light from the splash of sun push itself into the environment. Thanks to the art department, all of the ceilings were painted wood paneling, and we could raise and open each of them. Each ceiling had a soft box, so for the interiors there was a soft-colored bounce fill light that we could utilize should we need to.” A complicated cinematic moment was executed onboard the galleon, which gets hit by a huge wave. “You start on deck, end up below deck then return to the top deck, all within the space of a two-and-half-minute sequence. It required a lot of pre-planning and collaboration between the departments and in total unison with the performers on the day, getting the camera to track with one character, change allegiance and track with a different character, and track with yet another. It forced everybody to be very collaborative. It was great that we could pull that sequence off, and it looks epic.”

Contributing to the collaborative spirit was Special Effects Supervisor Cameron Waldbauer. “You take the boat sequence, for example. We’re dumping water on a ship that is on a gimbal, and Lauro David Chartrand-DelValle [Stunt Coordinator] has guys going off the side of the boat, and we’re rehearsing that and putting that together. Then, Michael Cliett takes that, puts it out into an open ocean, and it looks seamless in the end,” Waldbauer says. Storyboards were provided early on. “We would do tests of things and make things that we wanted to do. We would almost go backward so they would get the information from those tests and put that into the storyboards that were presented to everybody else,” Waldbauer adds. Shōgun offered an opportunity to return to old-school special effects. “I’ve done several superhero movies with lots of greenscreen and stage work, and that wasn’t what this was. This was interesting for me and the crew to work outside for the next seven months. Now you’re dealing with all of the weather and elements, and you’re working on a show that doesn’t have the time to come back to do it later. You deal with what’s happening on the day. We did get the weather that we wanted for the most part. The desire to get everything in-camera meant incorporating effects rigs into sets and hiding them on location. We have tried to match what would actually happen on the day and what would happen at the time. A sword hits a person in 2024 the same way as it did in 1600. However, you need to make sure to get the look that the director wants out of it dramatically, instead of having to adhere to what it used to look like,” Waldbauer explains.

Serving as a translator between Yoshii Toranaga and John Blackthorne is Toda Mariko (based on Akechi Tama), portrayed by Anna Sawai. “For Shōgun, there wasn’t that much acting with visual effects,” Sawai notes. “It was more, we have an amazing set, and on top of that when they go in on a wider shot, they’ll be able to see through visual effects what Japan looks like. There is an ambush scene, which was supposed to be arrows flying and, obviously, they weren’t going to do that, so we had to pretend they were coming at us. For the ship scenes, I would have to look out into blackness because we were shooting that at night and visualize it being a beautiful ocean. It’s difficult when they zoom into my face, and you’re thinking about, ‘I’m visualizing this, but I’m actually seeing a camera thrown right in my face!’ Those things are hard, but it’s part of our job that we use our imagination.” Two years were spent training at Takase Dojo prior to production. “Then on Shōgun,” Sawai continues, “I found out that I had to do the naginata fighting, which is a completely different thing because now you’re working with something that is super long and hard to control because it’s heavy, which it should be because if it’s light it’s not going to show that you’re actually fighting.” Performing stunts is not a problem for Sawai. “I love it! I love it so much! I feel lucky that when Lash [Lauro David Chartrand-DelValle] saw me fighting, he was like, ‘Let’s try to use as much of you as we can, and other times we will go with Darlene Pineda [who did an amazing job as my stunt double].’”

“We didn’t have a lot of previs for this show, which is unusual considering the scope of it,” observes Maria Gonzales, Editor, Episodes 101, 104, 107, 110. “We did have some storyboards and used those when we could. I stayed in touch with Michael Cliett as much as possible because he was my go-to in terms of understanding the potential for some of these shots. You try to put the thing together in the way that makes the most sense, and some of it we had to pick up later on once we met with the directors and talked with Michael. Sometimes, he was able to send me artwork that helped guide us in a certain direction.” Temp visual effects were created within the Avid Media Composer by the editorial team. Gonzales adds, “I did the pilot episode where there was a huge storm and some of those big reveals of Osaka. Our guys decided to pull in as many shots as they could to give an idea what the real scope of the scene was going to be.” The cliffside rescue of a drowning Vasco Rodrigues was a mindbender to assemble. Gonzales explains. “I had some of the close-ups and wider shots. I had no idea of what this was going to look like and what the height of the cliff really was. My first assembly was very different from what you saw in the final. Once Michael and Justin came to the cutting room, we were able to finesse it and get it to what you see today. But it was with Michael’s help that I was able to finally see what this was supposed to be. It’s like, ‘No. No. No. These guys are supposed to be way up and Kashigi Yabushige is supposed to be falling way down.’”

Three different locations were involved in creating the scene mentioned above. “We were on a six-foot-high set piece in a field of grass in Coquitlam, B.C.,” reveals Michael Cliett, Visual Effects Supervisor and Visual Effects Producer. “Everything on the top of the cliff was shot on that set piece. Every time you looked over the top, that was all CG water, coastline and Rodrigues. We did another set piece that was on the side of the cliff when Yabushige was repelling down. We shot all of the profile shots and him hanging from the top down on a vertical cliff piece in our backlot over where we had the Osaka set ready as well. Then we had the gulch where the water was out on a 60-foot tank special effects setup with the rocks. We were praying for the right weather and light at all three locations because each of them was outside.” Another dramatic water moment is when the Portuguese carrack known as the Black Ship attempts to prevent Toranaga from leaving the harbor of Osaka. “The galley was stationary, but we did put the Black Ship on 150 feet of track. We got the Black Ship from Peter Pan & Wendy that had just finished shooting here, chopped it up and made our own design. It’s roughly one-eighth of the ship. We did have some motion where it appeared that the ships were jostling for position. We shot a bunch of footage, but at the end of the day we weren’t quite sure how we were going to fill in the gaps, what the ships would be doing, what shots we needed of the ships that were going to be all visual effects and how that story was going to come together. ILP and I cut things together differently and tried to fill in those gaps. Over two months in the summer of 2022, we finally had it working with a bunch of greyshade postvis.”

Over the 10 episodes, 2,900 shots were created by SSVFX, Important Looking Pirates, Goodbye Kansas Studios, Refuge VFX, Barnstorm VFX, Pixelloid Studios and Render Imagination, while Melody Mead joined the project as a Visual Effects Associate Producer, allowing Cliett to focus more on supervision side of the visual effects work. “At the beginning of Episode 105, Toranaga is arriving with his 100,000-person army, which was 99% digital, as we rise up and move past him,” Cliett remarks. “The Japanese have a way of moving and walking, so we did do a number of motion capture shoots with Japanese soldiers and instilled a lot of that into the digital versions of them.” Toranaga’s army establishes a base camp on an encampment that subsequently gets destroyed by a massive earthquake. “This is why we had to put mountains surrounding the training fields, because there are huge landslides that come down which bury the army, and we had to make it on the magnitude where we could sell that 75,000 people died,” Cliett notes. FX Networks Chairman John Landgraf raised a narrative question when trying to lock the pilot episode about how the Erasmus, the Dutch ship piloted by Blackthorne, gets to Ajiro. Cliett explains, “I said to Justin, ‘Why don’t we look into having the ship being towed in? The samurai are running about 50 skiffs, but the villagers are doing all of the work. Then, we can fly past the ship into Ajiro, which you get to see for the first time.’ Justin loved it. Then, John Landgraf loved it. I ended up taking a second unit out, directing that plate and doing that whole shot. It’s one of my favorite shots of the series.”

By TREVOR HOGG

Creating CGI places some of the highest demands on the technology used, so it’s important to make sure that you’re keeping up with new technology. There is probably more happening now than at any other time as advancements in machine learning and how the exponential growth in computing power impacts our industry. But there’s also been some reversal in trends. For example, in some cases utilizing the cloud hasn’t been the best fit, so there’s been a migration back to on-premise for various reasons that include saving costs or maintaining more control over data and security.

With machine learning and the move towards game engine integration, it’s going to be more important for artists to hold onto their foundational skills. In general, I’ve noticed a promising trend among companies discussing and wanting to move more female colleagues into supervisory or lead roles, but there doesn’t seem to be enough mentorship support once those positions are filled. There’s definitely always room to improve.

The matte painting step represents around 10% to 20% of the entire work we actually produce on a show. The bulk of the work is now done using 3D packages. “Environment/Generalist” would be a more correct name to define what we do. The tools evolve quickly, and the current AI breakthrough will likely bring new tools to our toolbox soon. It is already happening with software like Photoshop and Nuke, which have some AI-driven tools. The real-time engines are also being incorporated into the visual effects industry as a solution to render final pixel. It is something we keep a close eye on, and are slowly integrating in our pipeline.

TOP LEFT TO RIGHT:

Aaron Eaton

Alicia Carvalho

Cameron Ward

Cameron Widen

George Sears

Jason Martin

Jeremie Lodomez

Jeremy Melton

Katie Corr

Maike Fiene

Meliza Fermin

Michael Billette

Niklas Wallén

Patrick Haskew

Sam Keehan

Stuart Ansley

Thomas Mouraille

Alan Puah

Patrick Smith

All photos by Danny Moloshok, Al Seib and Josh Lefkowitz.

Captions list all members of each Award-winning team even if some members were not present or out of frame. For more Show photos and a complete list of nominees and winners of the 22nd Annual VES Awards, visit vesglobal.org.

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