Pre-visualizing "Prince Caspian"
The Digital Eye: Prevising Prince Caspian
In this month's edition of "The Digital Eye," Previs Supervisor Rpin Suwannath provides an exclusive sneak peek of The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian.
In this month's edition of "The Digital Eye," Previs Supervisor Rpin Suwannath provides an exclusive sneak peek of The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian.
It was January 2006. I was having lunch with director Andrew Adamson and producer Philip Steuer in Los Angeles when the bill arrived. Andrew looked at me and said, "Since you're the only one officially working on Prince Caspian, shouldn't you be picking this up?"
That was more than 18 months and three continents ago. It's now August 2007, I'm in Prague and we've got about a month left before wrap and the show moves to London for post-production.
After Walt Disney Pictures' successful opening of The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (in association with Walden Media), the studio was anxious to get started on its sequel, Prince Caspian. Although he was still in negotiations with the studio, Andrew had some ideas that he wanted to start previsualization work on. There was a particular sequence he called the "Night Raid" that wasn't in the C.S. Lewis book that Andrew wanted to develop as a cut scene in conjunction with the work he and writers Chris Markus and Steve McFeely were doing on the script. After hearing their ideas, I knew this film was going to be a much bigger undertaking than the last one. This sequence alone was more complex than anything what we had done on the last film and it was happening only halfway through the story. I hired veterans from the first film, Mike Makara and Scott Meadows, to start building a digital library of sets and characters. Fortunately, the visual effects work that VFX Supervisor Dean Wright did on the first film was online, including scans of the actors and creatures, so we had much more specific models and textures for our digital stand-ins. This allowed us to "step up" the look of our previs work. On the first movie, we began previs well before casting finished so our models for the Pevensies were somewhat generic. This time, we had scans of Georgie Henley so our Lucy model looks like Lucy.
Starting previs this early gave us an opportunity to develop an improved work pipeline. On the last film, we would ultimately export QuickTimes to editorial for them to then import in their Avid system. Sometimes I would roughly cut sequences internally in our previs department using something like Adobe Premier but these sequences would always have to be reassembled in editorial because of software compatibility. On Caspian, we decided with Editors Sim Evan-Jones and Josh Campbell that I would have an Avid and cut the first pass of the previs before handing the timeline to them for further and final cutting. This system works great. To be able to seamlessly pass an edit back and forth between the departments with no interruption in workflow is fantastic and will hopefully become commonplace in the industry.
As pre-production ramped up, I brought on Kiwi Gerrard Southam, who worked on Lion (a local hire when the production moved to New Zealand) and Andreas "Chop" Hikel, an animator I worked with on Bryan Singer's Superman Returns. It was now June 2006. The "Night Raid" was coming along and the sequence was more or less transcribed into the script per our previs work. We had based our set on a castle in France that worked for the action we were staging with Andrew. Eventually, Production Designer Roger Ford used the previs model as a rough guide for his castle design that would be constructed months later on the Czech Republic backlot. As Roger's designs turned into set drawings, we modified the previs to work with these real sets so we could turn over technical breakdowns to vfx, art department and second unit that were accurate to what Andrew had imagined.
Just when we are getting comfortable with the pace of things, Andrew told me we should "start thinking about the ending," which included a gladiator style duel, an epic battle and a river god sequence. Enter The Third Floor. Realizing that we needed more quality artists quickly, Dean (who is joined on Caspian by VFX Supervisor Wendy Rogers) suggested The Third Floor whose work on the Star Wars prequels impressed us. I contacted Chris Edwards and our team grew with the addition of three Third Floor artists led by Joshua Wassung. Our previs team was seven strong and before we knew it, it was the middle of October and we were ready to head to location in the Czech Republic.
Josh and the Third Floor team stayed behind working as a separate unit in Los Angeles while the rest of us traveled to Prague. There, we hired four local Czech artists, including Jakub Mares and Ondrej Zajic, and "Swiss" Chris Greet, another artist from New Zealand who worked on Lion. Work continued with additional new scenes to previs, but much of the focus remained on the end battle especially once a location was chosen. Pre-production was now in full swing and by the end of the year, we were again preparing to travel to New Zealand where filming was scheduled to begin in February 2007. It had been almost a year now and while we had yet to shoot one foot of film, you could watch the entire movie in storyboard and previs animatic form.
Our three-month tour of New Zealand was quick. Scott and Mike spent the time in working in Los Angeles with Josh and Jakub and Ondrej remained at the Czech office. During any given 24-hour period, it was a pretty safe bet that somewhere, someone in the world was working on previs for Prince Caspian.
And before we knew it, we were back in Prague, about the end of March 2007. By May, the major set pieces that we had worked on (the Night raid followed by the End Battle and Rivergod sequence) were being deconstructed and turning into shooting boards. However, Andrew would continue to refine up to the last minute, sometimes getting as specific as what hand a character was holding their weapon in. It is rewarding, however, when the dailies come in and you can see the previs literally come to life as shots we imagined on a computer months are that closer to the final product.
We're pretty much done with previs now. The remaining crew, Chop, Jakub and Ondrej, have switched gears to post-vis, which entails getting live-action plates that editorial is using in their assembly of the film, tracking the shots and adding our previs elements to those shots so Andrew can watch a scene with temp effects relatively quickly. Basically, he watches an edit of what he shot with our previs elements tracked and composited in. The turn-around is usually about a day on our end.
Post-vis on Caspian will continue, with Chop supervising Jakub and Ondrej as I will wrap with the end of production in the Czech Republic.
Born in Bangkok, Thailand, Rpin Suwannath interned at Industrial Light & Magic while attending the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. Suwannath went immediately to work in visual effects on Warner Bros.' Batman Forever. Seeing the powerful workstations as potential art department tools, he moved to pre-production in 1998 and joined the art department, modeling set concepts in the computer for The Haunting. Soon after, he became one of the first independent pioneers of the pre-visualization field and contributed to a number of films, including the X-Men franchise, Mr. and Mrs. Smith and The Matrix sequels. Rather than using previs as primarily a visual effects tool, he created cut scenes with music and sound effects, enabling filmmakers to use the computer-generated animatics as story tools. After a successful relationship with Walden Media on The Chronicles of Narnia films, and directing some second unit, Suwannath is currently in development to direct his first feature with the studio.
That was more than 18 months and three continents ago. It's now August 2007, I'm in Prague and we've got about a month left before wrap and the show moves to London for post-production.
After Walt Disney Pictures' successful opening of The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (in association with Walden Media), the studio was anxious to get started on its sequel, Prince Caspian. Although he was still in negotiations with the studio, Andrew had some ideas that he wanted to start previsualization work on. There was a particular sequence he called the "Night Raid" that wasn't in the C.S. Lewis book that Andrew wanted to develop as a cut scene in conjunction with the work he and writers Chris Markus and Steve McFeely were doing on the script. After hearing their ideas, I knew this film was going to be a much bigger undertaking than the last one. This sequence alone was more complex than anything what we had done on the last film and it was happening only halfway through the story. I hired veterans from the first film, Mike Makara and Scott Meadows, to start building a digital library of sets and characters. Fortunately, the visual effects work that VFX Supervisor Dean Wright did on the first film was online, including scans of the actors and creatures, so we had much more specific models and textures for our digital stand-ins. This allowed us to "step up" the look of our previs work. On the first movie, we began previs well before casting finished so our models for the Pevensies were somewhat generic. This time, we had scans of Georgie Henley so our Lucy model looks like Lucy.
Starting previs this early gave us an opportunity to develop an improved work pipeline. On the last film, we would ultimately export QuickTimes to editorial for them to then import in their Avid system. Sometimes I would roughly cut sequences internally in our previs department using something like Adobe Premier but these sequences would always have to be reassembled in editorial because of software compatibility. On Caspian, we decided with Editors Sim Evan-Jones and Josh Campbell that I would have an Avid and cut the first pass of the previs before handing the timeline to them for further and final cutting. This system works great. To be able to seamlessly pass an edit back and forth between the departments with no interruption in workflow is fantastic and will hopefully become commonplace in the industry.
As pre-production ramped up, I brought on Kiwi Gerrard Southam, who worked on Lion (a local hire when the production moved to New Zealand) and Andreas "Chop" Hikel, an animator I worked with on Bryan Singer's Superman Returns. It was now June 2006. The "Night Raid" was coming along and the sequence was more or less transcribed into the script per our previs work. We had based our set on a castle in France that worked for the action we were staging with Andrew. Eventually, Production Designer Roger Ford used the previs model as a rough guide for his castle design that would be constructed months later on the Czech Republic backlot. As Roger's designs turned into set drawings, we modified the previs to work with these real sets so we could turn over technical breakdowns to vfx, art department and second unit that were accurate to what Andrew had imagined.
Just when we are getting comfortable with the pace of things, Andrew told me we should "start thinking about the ending," which included a gladiator style duel, an epic battle and a river god sequence. Enter The Third Floor. Realizing that we needed more quality artists quickly, Dean (who is joined on Caspian by VFX Supervisor Wendy Rogers) suggested The Third Floor whose work on the Star Wars prequels impressed us. I contacted Chris Edwards and our team grew with the addition of three Third Floor artists led by Joshua Wassung. Our previs team was seven strong and before we knew it, it was the middle of October and we were ready to head to location in the Czech Republic.
Josh and the Third Floor team stayed behind working as a separate unit in Los Angeles while the rest of us traveled to Prague. There, we hired four local Czech artists, including Jakub Mares and Ondrej Zajic, and "Swiss" Chris Greet, another artist from New Zealand who worked on Lion. Work continued with additional new scenes to previs, but much of the focus remained on the end battle especially once a location was chosen. Pre-production was now in full swing and by the end of the year, we were again preparing to travel to New Zealand where filming was scheduled to begin in February 2007. It had been almost a year now and while we had yet to shoot one foot of film, you could watch the entire movie in storyboard and previs animatic form.
Our three-month tour of New Zealand was quick. Scott and Mike spent the time in working in Los Angeles with Josh and Jakub and Ondrej remained at the Czech office. During any given 24-hour period, it was a pretty safe bet that somewhere, someone in the world was working on previs for Prince Caspian.
And before we knew it, we were back in Prague, about the end of March 2007. By May, the major set pieces that we had worked on (the Night raid followed by the End Battle and Rivergod sequence) were being deconstructed and turning into shooting boards. However, Andrew would continue to refine up to the last minute, sometimes getting as specific as what hand a character was holding their weapon in. It is rewarding, however, when the dailies come in and you can see the previs literally come to life as shots we imagined on a computer months are that closer to the final product.
We're pretty much done with previs now. The remaining crew, Chop, Jakub and Ondrej, have switched gears to post-vis, which entails getting live-action plates that editorial is using in their assembly of the film, tracking the shots and adding our previs elements to those shots so Andrew can watch a scene with temp effects relatively quickly. Basically, he watches an edit of what he shot with our previs elements tracked and composited in. The turn-around is usually about a day on our end.
Post-vis on Caspian will continue, with Chop supervising Jakub and Ondrej as I will wrap with the end of production in the Czech Republic.
Born in Bangkok, Thailand, Rpin Suwannath interned at Industrial Light & Magic while attending the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. Suwannath went immediately to work in visual effects on Warner Bros.' Batman Forever. Seeing the powerful workstations as potential art department tools, he moved to pre-production in 1998 and joined the art department, modeling set concepts in the computer for The Haunting. Soon after, he became one of the first independent pioneers of the pre-visualization field and contributed to a number of films, including the X-Men franchise, Mr. and Mrs. Smith and The Matrix sequels. Rather than using previs as primarily a visual effects tool, he created cut scenes with music and sound effects, enabling filmmakers to use the computer-generated animatics as story tools. After a successful relationship with Walden Media on The Chronicles of Narnia films, and directing some second unit, Suwannath is currently in development to direct his first feature with the studio.
Labels: pre-visualization, prevising, prince caspian
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