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The project “Sea Rex – Jouney to a Prehistoric World” was nominated in the “Best Stereo 3D Production” category in 2011.
Dinosaurs have always been popular as film actors and will probably remain so. The opportunity to show animals that no human will ever see alive is too fascinating for film-makers, especially in 3D. The stereoscopic 3D film “Sea Rex – Journey to a prehistoric world” was produced for Imax cinemas and impressively shows the sea dinosaurs of the world’s oceans, which populated the earth long before the dinosaurs.
DP spoke to VFX supervisor and director Ronan Chapalain. The land dinosaurs have long been well known to film audiences. “Jurassic Park”, “Godzilla” and “The Lost World” are just a few examples of dinosaurs as main characters in films. The marine reptiles that populated the earth 20 million years before the dinosaurs, on the other hand, have never really been thematised in the media. For this reason, the T-Rex of the seas is nowhere near as popular as its well-known successor with solid ground under its feet. The two directors Pascal Vuong and Ronan Chapalain from France have therefore taken on the challenge of changing this with the project “Sea Rex: Journey to a prehistoric world”. The 3D film “Sea Rex” visualises the impressive sea creatures from the Mesozoic era almost in their original size and close enough to touch.
Scenes with real actors and nature shots were combined with CGI models for the 40-minute film. “Sea Rex” is one of the first French films in 3D and a 4K format and was produced over a period of five years. The two filmmakers realised this ambitious work with a budget of five million US dollars. Like many young boys, they had a great fondness for dinosaurs in their childhood. After their previous stereoscopic project, the short film “Monster of the Abyss”, showed a prehistoric marine reptile and the 3D effects were particularly well received by young viewers, they decided to make a larger project about this time and its creatures.
The enormous size of the animals seemed to the two artists to be ideal both for a 3D concept and for the huge screen of the Imax cinemas, which measures 20 by 36 metres. To link the scientific information with a storyline, two protagonists guide us through the film, the student “Julie” and the founder of vertebrate palaeontology “Georges Curvier”, who lived in France in the 18th century. Over 20 prehistoric dinosaurs are shown in the film. It was particularly important to the two directors that each individual animal depiction and its morphology and on-screen movement as well as the respective habitat were shown correctly. For this reason, extensive research was required in advance, for which Dr Nathalie Bardet from the National Museum of Natural History was available as the responsible scientific advisor. The film combines a story-based script with CGI scenes as well as historical re-enactments and appearances by renowned palaeontologists and naturalists. To give the CGI scenes in the film a natural look, the animal models were combined with real footage of their habitat. To this end, in addition to the studio shots in London and Paris, the film team filmed aerial shots in New Zealand and used underwater cameras in the Red Sea in Egypt. Despite their twenty years of experience with stereoscopic film projects, both filmmakers are of the opinion that not all film content needs to be produced in 3D. But if the concept and content of the film are right, 3D can give a film more expressiveness as an additional stylistic device.
Ronan Chapalain believes that “Sea Rex” is the Imax film with the most special effects to date, because in terms of VFX, stabilisation and 3D effects, there is not a single scene in the film that has not been reworked. DIGITAL PRODUCTION spoke to director and VFX supervisor Ronan Chapalain about the difficulties and challenges that arose when working on this demanding film and how to visualise animals in 3D about which there is hardly any scientific information and no real-life models.
DP: Why did you make the aquatic dinosaurs the focus of your film and not the more well-known terrestrial dinosaurs?
Ronan Chapalain: Before the terrestrial dinosaurs ever populated the Earth, the marine reptiles, with their innate survival skills, dominated the primordial depths of the oceans for a period of 180 million years during the Mesozoic era. After producing our short documentary “Monsters of the Abyss” in HD and 3D in 2005, Pascal Vuong and I came up with the idea of writing and filming “Sea Rex: Journey to a prehistoric world” a few months later. After intensive research and long discussions with the specialist Dr Nathalie Bardet from the National Museum of Natural History in Paris, we realised that, unlike the related terrestrial dinosaurs, there is hardly any information about the sea reptiles. Which we found absolutely incredible, because these animals were very interesting in terms of their ability to constantly adapt to changing environments and habitats.
DP: Was it important for you to make the film as realistic as possible or was the entertainment factor and the 3D visuals more important?
Ronan Chapalain: The film combines historical flashbacks, the interaction between the two protagonists, scenes with our scientific advisors and sequences that take the viewer underwater to the T-Rex of the seas. The combination of these different elements makes “Sea Rex” unique from a technical and artistic point of view. Our aim with the film was to differentiate ourselves from traditional documentaries and the way dinosaurs are usually explored and portrayed there. From a scripting point of view, we put a lot of thought and work into this. But it was equally important to us to make the scientific parts of the script visually surprising. Above all these questions of content, however, was the formal goal of writing the script specifically for the Imax 3D cinema format. We had to rethink the rhythm, structure, editing and stereoscopic 3D effects of the film so that they were suitable for a gigantic 20 x 36 metre screen. For example, a long, contemplative scene looks boring on a small screen, but extremely powerful and captivating on a large 3D screen.
DP: Why did the production take over five years? What were the difficulties here?
Ronan Chapalain: The first teaser was shown in September 2006 at the annual GSCA (Giant Screen Cinema Association) conference in Galveston/Texas and aroused great interest among industry professionals. Because it was the first French Imax 3D film, it took us a little longer to get the necessary funding for this project. We first had to convince people to become part of this new adventure and so it took a total of five years to produce this film. There were also major challenges on other levels: the production, the financing and the post-production work, which took place entirely in 4K format and stereo 3D. I think the film presents the largest amount of special effects and CGI ever done for an Imax film. It really was a unique adventure.
DP: Which VFX studios were involved in the project? How big was the team in total?
Ronan Chapalain: We worked with six French CGI studios: Cube, Mikros Image, Picto Filmo, Nayade, Treex and Alabootek. Our own edit and VFX studio, N3D Land, acted as the lead studio. Over 200 CG artists were involved in the creation of “Sea Rex”.
DP: How did you organise the VFX workflow?
Ronan Chapalain: The modelling and texturing of the CGI animals was done by independent artists. Our N3D Land studio then delivered the models to the other animation studios, whose job it was to do the setup, animation, lighting and rendering. Each studio worked on their own scenes with a preview background from editing. N3D Land Studio was responsible for the 3D camera set-ups, editing, 2D-to-3D conversion of the underwater backgrounds as well as the fi nal VFX and 3D corrections. The external studios supplied the rendered layers from the left and right cameras and N3D Land Studio produced the final compositing, including the studio’s own 3D backgrounds.
DP: What software was used?
Ronan Chapalain: Maya, Softimage, 3ds Max, Photoshop and ZBrush were used for the CGI work. We used Combustion, After Effects and PFTrack for compositing and VFX. Final Cut was used for editing. DP: What were the challenges of combining CGI images with live action scenes? Ronan Chapalain: Combining the 3D space of live shots with that of CGI scenes requires great precision. The best basis for this challenge is a stereography that is well prepared. That’s why I paid very close attention to all the shots and supervised every studio involved to make sure we ended up with good material for the final compositing.
DP: What tips can you give other artists who want to use this technique in their films?
Ronan Chapalain: Compositing in 4K and 3D often reaches the limits of software possibilities and computer performance. It is therefore crucial to carefully calculate the intermediate steps beforehand in order to simplify the entire process.
DP: In which other projects have you already gained experience with 3D technology?
Ronan Chapalain: The first N3D Land production “Monsters of the Abyss” was also my first work as writer and co-director. It’s a 12-minute stereo 3D film made entirely with CGI. In the past, I have worked as a VFX supervisor and flame artist on many stereoscopic 3D projects. For example, I helped create the films “Futuroscope” and “Vulcania” for theme parks. In the cosmetics and medical sectors, I worked on projects for Pfizer and LPG, as well as sports films and adverts for Michelin, Peugeot and BMW. From 1995 to 2005 – during the years when stereo 3D was not yet so popular – I had to find my own workflow and a good approach for 3D post-production, including 2D to 3D conversion.
DP: Which cameras and rigs did you use for the underwater shots in Egypt and the aerial shots in New Zealand?
Ronan Chapalain: All the underwater scenes in the Red Sea were filmed with a RED in 2008. Our cameraman for the underwater shots was Denis Lagrange, a well-known professional who had already worked on the film “Oceans”. We used a camera housing that was one of the first for the RED. in 2009, the aerial shots were taken in New Zealand with two RED cameras and a Libra head, which was gyroscopically stabilised with three axes and mounted on the nose of an Ecureuil helicopter. At that time, there were only two Libra heads in the world, which were developed for the aerial scenes in Peter Jackson’s “Lord of the Rings”. All other sequences were shot in Paris with two RED cameras mounted on a mirror rig. This special camera rig was developed by the French stereographer Alain Derobe.
DP: For which scenes did a special rig have to be made? What were the special features of the rig and what requirements did it have to fulfil?
Ronan Chapalain: For the opening scene of the film, which was a historical flashback with live action scenes outside, we asked French steadycamer Philippe Bordelais if he could shoot it with his carbon-based 3D steadycam, the so-called freestyle rig. At that time, the model was still a prototype, which Philippe tested for the first time under real conditions at “Sea Rex”. And both Philippe and the rig survived the snow and the outside temperature of five degrees on that cold January night!
DP: How many dinosaurs did you build for the film? What was the largest model and how many polygons did it have?
Ronan Chapalain: We designed 26 species with full texture and modelled ten dinosaurs for specific graphic scenes. The dinosaur models were worked out at different levels depending on how important they were to the film. For all models we used displacement in ZBrush. This method allowed us to work out the animals in great detail. Some maps were larger than 12K. To give a concrete example: For one and the same creature, the mosasaurus, we made four models. The Mosasaurus is the marine dinosaur depicted on the film poster, which we refer to as the T-Rex of the seas. The first model was the complete body, which was needed for the hunting scenes. For closer shots we needed the head alone and two other specific models were just its eye and the inside of the jaw. These two close-ups were needed for two important key scenes in the film.
DP: What was the bigger challenge: animating the dinosaurs in the water or the animals in the air? Which environment was more difficult to show realistically?
Ronan Chapalain: It doesn’t really matter which environment, the difficulty was always integrating the CGI reptiles into real shots. There was less interaction with flying animals than with swimming reptiles. In this environment, it was important to add FX elements such as water particles and light beams. If you want to create an environment, you have to ask yourself the following questions: What reference do people have? Because the sea surface is very familiar to every viewer, the CGI sea surface has to support this real comparison. If it doesn’t, it looks fake to the viewer. That’s why we decided to combine our CGI animals with real backgrounds so that everything looks as realistic as possible.
DP: Why did you produce the film specifically for Imax cinemas?
Ronan Chapalain: Dinosaurs and marine reptiles are particularly suited to the Imax format because they have one crucial factor in common – their enormous size! Amazingly, the Imax screen allows us to show the T-Rex of the Seas in its actual original size.
DP: What are your next projects?
Ronan Chapalain: We are currently writing a new Imax 3D film project and are still looking for funding for “Normandy 1944”. This is the provisional working title of the project. This film, which we plan to release in autumn 2013, will be the first Imax documentary film dedicated to D-Day and the Battle of Normandy. We produced a two-minute teaser last summer and have raised the technical level even further compared to “Sea Rex”, as we are shooting this film in 3D and 5K. The N3D Land team loves challenges and we want to make this project as spectacular as “Sea Rex”.
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