This article by Sabine Hatzfeld originally appeared in DP 03 : 2015.

For the film project “Le Gouffre”, Thomas Chrétien, Carl Beauchemin and David Forest quit their jobs, formed the Lightning Boy Studio and moved in together for cost and production reasons. A Kickstarter campaign brought the animated film with the unusual look to completion, which was nominated for an animago AWARD in the “Best Short Film” category in 2O14.

The trio met in 2006 at the Canadian college “Cégep du Vieux Montréal”(www.cvm.qc.ca). Carl Beauchemin and David Forest studied 3D animation, Thomas Chrétien 2D animation. In the third and final year of their studies, they decided to work together as filmmakers in the future. Thomas went on to complete a two-year 3D degree programme, while Carl and David gained their first experience in the industry.

After six months of developing the story, production finally got underway at the beginning of 2012 – despite all team members now working full-time. Carl and David worked as 3D animators at Modus FX on the first Canadian 3D feature film “The Legend of Sarila”, while Thomas worked as a VFX artist for mobile games at Gameloft(www.gameloft.com). There was only time for “Le Gouffre” at night or at weekends. So after six months, all three of them quit their jobs to work on their film full-time and only from time to time. To save costs, they also moved into a flat. We spoke to Carl Beauchemin about the project, which was successfully financed via Kickstarter towards the end. The film and makingof have been online on Vimeo since February this year(bit.ly/1zgSovu and bit.ly/1zMo3C1).

DP: Hello Carl, why didn’t you consider a crowdfunding solution or funding opportunity right from the start?

Carl Beauchemin: Our original plan was to get a government grant. But when you make a film for the first time, nobody trusts you. Our application was rejected three times in a row. At the same time, we realised that no company would support us as long as there were no presentable shots. That’s why we abandoned crowdfunding. Without actually rendered shots, how do you hope to convince people that you can make a good film?

DP: What hardware equipment did your budget allow for?

Carl Beauchemin: Each of us still had a good computer from our student days – because of the 3D homework. We also had a special computer at our disposal: in 2007 David submitted an illustration to a competition organised by cgsociety.com – and promptly took first place! The prize was a Maingear Shift(www.maingear.com), which we nicknamed “the beast” and which lived up to its name in the rendering.

DP: How was your pipeline structured?

Carl Beauchemin: The lion’s share of the work – i.e. modelling, animation, rigging, VFX, rendering – was done in Softimage. We also used ZBrush for the detailed work on some of the models. Concept art and storyboards were created traditionally on paper or in Photoshop. The compositing was done in After Effects and the editing was done in Sony Vegas. We also worked with Slipstream VX from Exocortex, a plug-in for Softimage. We used it to implement every particle simulation that can be seen in the film(exocortex.com/products/slipstream).

DP: How were Previs and Animatics used?

Carl Beauchemin: They were essential parts of our workflow. We spent months working on the animatic. We wanted to make sure that the timing was right and that the storyline was coherent. With the help of the Previs, we were able to create a rough version of our sets to get an idea of the proportions.

DP: What inspired you to make this film?

Carl Beauchemin: “Le Gouffre” is set in an undefined location. We did look at pictures of canyons, but we didn’t copy them one-to-one, we changed the scale and adapted them to our desired film look. For the characters, we focussed on a timeless look. We left out details such as zips or logos so that the design didn’t come across as too modern. Our aim was to give the film a special atmosphere, comparable to a legendary tale.

DP: How did the unusual look come about?

Carl Beauchemin: We had a very specific look in mind and it took us a long time to realise it. In the end, we had to paint all the textures by hand and find a clever way to put the shots together. During this process, we realised that in order to create a unique visual style, we had to forget everything we learned about compositing in school. Instead, we looked for a way to do it all in Photoshop with layers and paint brushes.

DP: How did you actually realise this for the sets?

Carl Beauchemin: For the sets, we first unfolded the meshes with UVs to assign the textures in medium resolution everywhere. This allowed us to make sure that everything looked good and looked painted from a distance. Up close, on the other hand, it sometimes looked really bad, but that didn’t matter: in such cases, we took a screen capture of the set from the camera angle of the shot and painted all the high-resolution details in Photoshop. We also often quickly created a greyscale texture shader for rendering in order to get more details on a new texture. Then we just had to project the whole thing back onto the original mesh. Of course, this only worked if the camera panning was not too strong. Otherwise you would have seen that the projection was expanding in a somewhat strange way.

DP: How did you approach the look of the characters?

Carl Beauchemin: Because they were animated, we couldn’t use the same projection technique. Instead, we relied on good, hand-painted textures and lots and lots of passes. We had a separate mask for the head, hands, eyes and hair, as well as for each individual item of clothing. We treated each light as if it were a colour layer. So we selected the exact colour we wanted to use in the lit scene and assigned it as a solid colour instead of having the layer in an additional mode. That helped us a lot to get rid of that classic CG look.

DP: Did you actually consider using an inexpensive MoCap system for animation references?

Carl Beauchemin: No. Firstly, that was never our intention and secondly, our budget wouldn’t have allowed it anyway. However, we ran through all the shots ourselves and edited them into a reference real film. This allowed us to see whether the flow of the film worked. We always tried to place the cameras in the same way as in the animated film so that we could also test whether the cuts worked. But the biggest advantage of the video reference material is that you can see all the fine little movements. This allowed us to make the animation in the film look as real as possible.

DP: What challenges did you face when rigging the film?

Carl Beauchemin: We already knew how to rig in Maya. But as we wanted to realise the project in Softimage – the programme we mainly worked with after our studies – we had to learn everything from scratch. So the first character rig was quite a challenge. It took us a month to finalise it. But after that it was just a matter of repeating the same steps. We made sure that the same parts of the rigs had the same names for all the characters. This allowed us to transfer the animation of one character to another, which sped up production considerably. This mainly concerned movements such as running, cheering or sowing. To simplify the process of animating faces and fingers, we had Visual Panels at our disposal. This allowed us to select animation controllers quickly and intuitively. But our biggest challenge was the bridge. It consisted of over 70 duplicated individual parts, so the rigging had to be well thought out right from the start.

DP: Which ZBrush tools were useful to you?

Carl Beauchemin: We used the ClayTubes brush the most, which is great for refining details, especially when used in conjunction with the Smooth brush. The brush also behaves very similarly to the one we used in Photoshop to paint our textures. Other useful brushes I can mention are Pinch and Slash3, which we used to paint all the crevices and details of the rock face or the folds in the clothing. The Decimation Master also turned out to be a lifesaver. We often had to create high-resolution set elements in close-up at the last minute. This plugin helped us to export meshes that had a lot of detail but could still be rendered quickly. ZAppLink also proved useful in our painting process, as it allows you to seamlessly integrate image editing software – in our case Photoshop – into ZBrush.

DP: How did the work with Sony Vegas go?

Carl Beauchemin: This editing software was used for the entire editing process. We updated the edit almost every day. That was brilliant for keeping an overview. We always knew exactly what had already been done and what hadn’t. We stacked many video tracks on top of each other: 2D animatic, film references, animation captures and final renders. When we added a new clip, we could play the whole sequence to make sure everything ran smoothly.

DP: Which renderer did you use?

Carl Beauchemin: Since we didn’t have the resources to render complex shaders and lighting, we used basic shaders, mostly surface shaders and lamberts. All the details were in the painted textures, so we didn’t need anything more complex than that. We even faked the subsurface scattering in some textures, such as the ears of the characters. Rendering was done in Mental Ray, the default renderer in Softimage. The renderer did a good job and produced our frames at a decent speed.

DP: How long did the rendering take?

Carl Beauchemin: We rendered frames every night and at weekends – for over a year. I can’t tell you the exact number of hours, but it must have totalled around 15,000. We couldn’t use the services of a render farm for budgetary reasons.

DP: How did Kickstarter help you in the end?

Carl Beauchemin: This crowdfunding platform was our last resort – and our best decision during the entire project. We ran out of money in mid-2013 and were looking for ways to pay our musicians and sound designer. This meant that a campaign, wherever it was launched, simply had to work. One crucial point was that we already had followers. Not many, but just enough to reach a few hundred people who shared our Kickstarter page with their friends after the launch. One of our goals right from the start was to build a fanbase. To do this, we set up a production blog and published concept art, insider information and lots of tips and tricks that we had learnt from our work there every fortnight. At the same time, we filled our Facebook page and continually posted in various CG forums. After a year and a half, we had quite a decent number of followers. But it took a long time and a lot of effort to build up this fanbase.

DP: But at that point you were already able to show your first results.

Carl Beauchemin: That’s right, we were already very far along in the film production. So, fortunately, we were not only able to show a lot of shots, but also cut a trailer that caught people’s attention. It was also very obvious that we had already invested a lot of time, effort and money in this project. So the message was not: “Give us money so that we can realise our dream”. Rather, it came across that we had already done everything we could on our own. Now it was just about that little push we needed to complete the project. I think this approach touched people and helped make this campaign such a big success: With 711 backers, we raised a whopping 24,155 Canadian dollars instead of the planned 5,000.

DP: Looking back, would you do anything differently?

Carl Beauchemin: No, I don’t think so. The biggest problem for us was that we misjudged the time. It took us two years to produce the album instead of one year as planned. Looking back, there was no other way to achieve the quality we wanted. Basically, our naivety and enthusiasm were an advantage. Because if we had known beforehand that it would take two years, we might have waited a few years until we had more money together. One of us would probably have changed our minds and decided to call the whole thing off. “Le Gouffre” probably wouldn’t have turned out like this if we had waited longer.

DP: What’s next for you?

Carl Beauchemin: The film has finished its festival run and is now online. It has been incredibly well received and we couldn’t be happier. From the beginning, our goal was to get the attention of people working in the film industry. We wanted to show what we can do as a team. We hope that this project will lead to new partnerships. As Lightning Boy Studio, we want to develop and direct projects. However, we are keen to work with other studios that take on the administrative parts such as renting space and hiring staff. We also all have our own jobs: after completing “Le Gouffre”, David and his wife founded “MrCuddington”(mrcuddington.com) and now create illustrations for board games from home. I now work as a 3D artist at Pascal Blais Studio(www.pascalblais.com), which specialises in animations for commercials, and Thomas works as a director and VFX artist at Hibernum Creations(www.hibernum.com), a mobile games company.

The post The power of the crowd first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Patrick Poti.

Rise | Visual Effects Studios(www.risefx.com) has been around since 2OO7 and now has four locations. With a location in Vienna, the team is even represented in German-speaking “foreign countries”. The Rise team explained to us how they managed to expand their VFX business without losing their overview.

Rise founder and VFX supervisor Florian Gellinger, who will also be on the animago jury again this year, manages the main Berlin location together with Sven Pannicke, Robert Pinnow and Markus Degen. The second studio in Cologne was initially an “on demand” location, which has since been converted into a permanent site. Its success was followed shortly afterwards by the opening of the Vienna branch. The Stuttgart location has recently been added and will be up and running by FMX(www.fmx.de) at the latest.

Rise | Visual Effects Studios is a regular guest at our animago AWARD & CONFERENCE(www.animago.com). So if you would like to meet the team in person, you should be there on 15 and 16 October. Entries for all nine categories can be submitted for the animago AWARD until 30 June.

You can find out more about Rise’s day-to-day work and pipeline in the studio portrait in DP issue 05/13.

DP: Hi Florian, why did you see the need to be represented at these locations with your studio and to expand in this way?

Florian Gellinger: We want to be as close as possible to young talent and artists. And in Germany, the industry is unfortunately spread out in all directions, in contrast to London or Vancouver, for example. Many domestic productions also make use of regional funding. The regions of Vienna, North Rhine-Westphalia and Baden-Württemberg in particular were quick to recognise the increasingly important role of digital visual effects. After all, up to 100 per cent of film images now come from computers – including the main actors.

DP: Is the first studio foundation the most difficult and all the others just routine work? Or did each studio challenge you anew?

Florian Gellinger: The first studio is always the hardest. You have to acquire orders while you build up the technical infrastructure. Cologne was our “trial balloon” for all other locations. We learned a lot from projects such as “Adlon – A Family Saga” and “Night Over Berlin” and used this knowledge to expand our decentralised production environment accordingly. In practice, we have found out how work at several locations can function best and that the efficient organisation of work processes is at least as important as the work on the effects themselves. Each new branch makes the organisation of distributed projects many times more complicated – but a larger artist pool also makes you faster and more flexible.

DP: Were there regional differences when setting up a studio?

Florian Gellinger: No, not really. But we were also lucky that our first people on site were previously long-standing Berlin employees who are well connected in the industry and know our work processes. We try to completely avoid competitive thinking between the locations by removing all barriers apart from the physical separation as far as possible. This means that employees in Cologne, Stuttgart and Vienna should feel as if they are working in the same building as the Berliners and vice versa. All workstations are networked with each other via VoIP and chat and you can also simply transfer control of your own workstation to others, for example to get help.

DP: How did you manage to finance each new location?

Florian Gellinger: The new locations are created from orders placed and additional capacity required. We can also use the software developed in Berlin at all locations, which means that the development work is spread across more users, making it increasingly cost-efficient. The Berlin location is extremely important due to its proximity to Studio Babelsberg(www.studiobabelsberg.com). We can visit production offices on the studio premises at any time, giving our customers more flexibility. At the same time, the animago is ideal for finding new talent. In addition to the excellent universities, Cologne, Stuttgart and Vienna are ahead of the game when it comes to promoting post-production – although in Vienna in particular there is currently no-one else on site with a comparable programme.

DP: What criteria did you use to select the premises at the respective locations?

Florian Gellinger: We love open, large spaces. That’s why we’ve always tried to put together as many artists as possible who are working on a project as an interdisciplinary group. That way, everyone can see what is being created on the monitors of the others and be inspired for their own work. The spatial concept facilitates communication and the result looks more consistent in the end. We actually see the entire company as a virtual open-plan office, regardless of where people are working.

DP: How many permanent employees do you have in total? How many freelancers also provide regular support?

Florian Gellinger: Our network has a total of 19 permanent employees. We see our work like that of a physical film production, which grows and shrinks according to demand: a few leads work in planning, preparing the projects and setting everything up according to our guidelines. For the work on the individual shots, we book additional freelancers and after the end of the project, they either jump to the next one or we downsize again.

DP: How do the locations differ in terms of technical equipment?

Florian Gellinger: The offices are all equipped according to their employee capacities – Berlin has the largest server and the largest render farm. However, these capacities can also be made available to the other locations at peak times. Berlin also has a DI facility with 4K 3D stereo projection. Approvals for larger projects also take place here.

DP: How does the data transfer between the locations work? Do you also use online render services?

Florian Gellinger: All data transfer between the locations takes place fully automatically in the background and is highly encrypted. Each location can access all data of an assigned project at any time. Our network is otherwise completely isolated from the outside world. Even if we wanted to, we would not be allowed to use online render service providers, as the security guidelines of some of our customers prohibit us from doing so. This is another reason why automatic render farm load balancing between the locations is so important.

DP: Do you have one licence server for all studios or a separate one for each location?

Florian Gellinger: That depends on the software. In some cases, there are only nodelocked licences for special software. In some cases, however, we also have floating licences that can be loaned out from Berlin to other locations. Our licence portfolio is structured very differently – depending on the software, the type of licence available from the manufacturer and our requirements.

DP: Do you use your internal Risebase database at all locations? For what in detail?

Florian Gellinger: Risebase is still the heart of the company and its further development enables us to work across the various locations. Review notes and comments on individual shots in particular can be sent across locations. For example, if it is necessary to do a review session with a client in Berlin, but the shots are actually being worked on in Stuttgart, the notes can be entered in Risebase in Berlin and the Stuttgart artists receive the corresponding comments in real time.

DP: What exactly does your cooperation with Pointcloud9 look like?

Florian Gellinger: Pointcloud9 is a subcontractor of Rise. Customers who use our LIDAR services shouldn’t feel like they have to book the rest of Rise’s VFX apparatus just for the LIDAR service they want. However, they can expect to receive results that we ourselves would want as a VFX service provider as a basis for our work. This means that Pointcloud9’s experience in handling LIDAR raw data is also growing as a result of our own projects.

DP: Do you have any other locations planned in the near future?

Florian Gellinger: So far, we are already quite busy with the four locations. But who knows what will happen next.

The post More locations, more VFX! first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Mirja Fürst.

… so “edited with Avid” in Klingon. J. J. Abrams is currently in charge of “Star Trek” and “Star Wars”. This shake-up in the fan scene led to expectations for the second instalment of the Star Trek reboot that can hardly be fulfilled. Nostalgia fans, who for decades have tried to interpret every twitch and accept poodles with unicorns glued on as aliens, meet blockbuster filmgoers with an affinity for bikini scenes.

What do all J. J. Abrams films have in common? Exactly: they all have Maryann Brandon as editor. Since the acclaimed series “Alias”, the two – and Mary Jo Markey – have worked as a team in the editing room. That’s unusual, to say the least. We had a chat with the editors. Maryann Brandon and Mary Jo Markey were mainly responsible for the editing. Rita DaSilva and Julian Smirke, the two “first assistant editors”, also took part in the interview.

DP: What was your workflow like on “Star Trek Into Darkness” and what will you keep for future projects?

Rita DaSilva: Our lab prepared the dailies for us, we then got the files in a bin on a hard drive, which we then shovelled into Avid. Me and Jules (Julian Smirke) then checked the footage to make sure everything was there and took a look at syncro, metadata and so on. That usually works, but if there are any problems, it’s much easier to fix them at that stage before Maryann Brandon and Mary Jo Markey – the editors in charge – touch the data. Since Maryann and Mary Jo have very different approaches, I and Jules have already adjusted the sorting accordingly – while one of the editors has already started script syncing. During the actual cutting, the VFX editor then loaded all the comps that were needed directly into Avid and created a good view that satisfied both the editors and the director, and when the OK came, we passed it on to the respective VFX studio for the scene.

DP: And how did 3D come into play?

Rita DaSilva: Since the film was being converted to 3D, we had to give everything to the 3D conversion company as early as possible, i.e. shots with and without VFX. And once a week there were VFX and 3D “review sessions” in which the director J. J. Abrams looked at the shots. These edited shots were also cut at the same time in Avid, and the film was developed further in many places at the same time. We also edited in 5.1 surround sound and our 2nd assistant editors were an invaluable help in getting the sound right. Fortunately, we also had a sound designer and re-recording mixer from Skywalker, who has been with Bad Robot (the production company) for a long time. We learnt an awful lot from him in terms of noises, speech and sound. Me and Jules mostly used the soundtracks from the first “Star Trek” for background sounds and SFX specifically for “Star Trek Into Darkness”. But whenever we couldn’t find something, we had sound designers who developed and recorded the sounds. We also had the conforming done directly at Bad Robot by a Mistika specialist and his assistant. And even one of the VFX departments and the music editor are based directly at Bad Robot. Of course, this made work incredibly easy for Jules and me, because we could discuss everything on foot and through short official channels.

DP: What did your editing suite look like and what can you recommend for the ideal workplace?

Julian Smirke: On “Star Trek Into Darkness” we all worked with Media Composer. We started with MC 5.5.3 and ended up with MC 6.5.2 – with all the updates that came out in between, of course. During our production time, Avid released things that helped us a lot, such as 5.1 audio. We used that right away for an evolving temporary sound mix throughout the post-production span. Everything was stored on a 64 TB ISIS 5000 and each system had an Avid Nitris DX as hardware.

I always work with a standing desk. With 12-hour days, I just can’t manage to sit for 12 hours at a time, it makes my bones ache. Apart from that, I like working with Wacom tablets, but that’s a “can”, not a “must”. We always use Filemaker Pro in the team, and I recently discovered “Keyboard Maestro” from one of our assistant editors, Nate Orloff. Similar to Autohotkey on Windows, it allows you to sequence different actions on a hotkey on Mac – and it saves an incredible amount of time, which means that dailies sync faster and get to the editor quicker.

Rita DaSilva: Well, it’s important to me that there’s a comfortable sofa in the room. I also need pleasant lighting and perfectly adjusted monitors – and of course I need to be as close as possible to Mary Jo’s editing suite. And – after this project – I would like to continue editing at Bad Robot again. We’ve been working here for 14 months now, and much more important than a comfortable armchair are motivated, imaginative colleagues – of which there are plenty here.

DP: What’s on your “Swiss army knife USB stick”?

Rita DaSilva: One of the assistant editors wrote a script called “EDL to Subcap Converter” that we all used excessively on this film. Whenever we needed to export Quicktimes with VFX names in the file name, we used this script instead of exporting manually. This script uses the EDL and converts it to the Avid DS Subtitle format. This was a phenomenal time saver. You can find it at www.evanschiff.com .

Julian Smirke: Will Files helped with the temp sound design and mix, and from him came three RTAS (Real Time Audio Suite) in Avid, which were great for us. This automatically brightened up the soundtrack in the frequencies of human voices, cleaned it up and made the dialogue more audible, especially in the big action sequences. That was enormously helpful.

And some more scripts from Evan Schiff, which Rita has already mentioned. They were incredibly helpful in synchronising the two editing locations. The main editing suite is here on Bad Robot, but during the shoot we were on set with J. J. Abrams – and keeping the two in sync was absolutely essential. We had to make sure that all the files, all the bins and all the projects were up to date, on both locations. And with Evan’s scripts, we have been able to eliminate the “human error” – in the past, everything was typed by hand … Now it’s neither time-consuming nor error-prone!

DP: You edited with Media Composer – was that your first attempt with Avid?

Julian Smirke: MC7 was unfortunately not yet available when we were in the hot phase – we ended up working on 6.5.2. However, I have to say that I’m very happy with the version – and we incorporated the 3D functions and 5.1 features directly into the “sharp” production workflow. Our team has been working with Avid for a long time – Maryann and Mary Jo edited “Mission: Impossible III” (2006) on Avid Meridien in OS9.

DP: In your opinion, does an editor need to master as many tools as possible? Or is specialised knowledge always the trump card?

Maryann Brandon: I use very few tools. Of course it helps to know different options and approaches when planning your workflow, but I’ve focussed on using Avid as efficiently as possible. Even though I sometimes wish I was a bit more tech savvy, for speed reasons my main focus has to be on using the tools for editing and story.

Julian Smirke: I don’t think more tools make you more efficient. You just have a wider range of tools that may be better suited to the task. On “Star Trek Into Darkness” we edited in Avid Media Composer, sound design and music editing came from Pro Tools, our VFX artists work with Nuke, After Effects, Maya and many, many other programmes. We used Cinesync for the VFX reviews. Mistika for 2D and 3D conforms – and we’re just at the beginning of the list here. All of these programmes are exciting, cool and definitely worth the learning time. But at the end of the day, I think there’s no substitute for the security that a well-known programme package offers. Because only when the technology takes a back seat can I as an editor concentrate fully on the material.

DP: Having already worked with J. J. Abrams: Does the job get easier when you already know the director?

Julian Smirke: This mainly applies to editors, but I can also say from my own experience, having worked with J. J. Abrams on all his feature films, that it gets easier and more enjoyable to work with him every time. You know what the other person expects and you find your own tone.

Maryann Brandon: It depends on the director. If someone is open to ideas and adapts the scenes, the job becomes a lot easier. That’s the case with J.J., who is very open to ideas and suggestions, gets on well with people and is happy to accept the team’s input and integrate it into the overall picture. I think that’s a stroke of luck – but in general you can work with any director who has a vision while he’s shooting. Then you already have a shared interest in the end product and can make something out of it.

DP: You’ve also worked together as a team before – for example on the films “Star Trek” (2009) and “Super 8” (2011) – does that help when working and are teams for certain tasks something that studios absolutely have to form?

Maryann Brandon: Yes, a permanent team that knows the processes – and also understands why they are the way they are – makes it very easy to switch between films. But I believe that a studio that has chosen a director should also let that director choose the other people involved. That way, logical hierarchies develop naturally within the team and you spend your working time with people you can work with. Julian Smirke: That makes a huge difference to efficiency. If you work with each other, you can adapt to each other at the interfaces and know what the other person needs. And in some cases you can do a lot up front, which is particularly helpful for us who work with the editors – we know what they need before they say it, and “downtime” and waiting times are reduced. But I don’t think a studio should be particularly involved – our industry works with people you already know anyway, and that kind of thing forms organically.

DP: In light of the Rhythm&Hues debacle, do you see too much focus on directors and actors in blockbusters that are largely VFX?

Maryann Brandon: Well, I’ve gotten out of the habit of expecting anything in that regard. I’m just as involved in the actors and their work as I am in the VFX or the grading. The success – at least the aesthetic success – of a film is the interplay of all these aspects, as well as a good script and good acting. But in my opinion, effects and sound contribute enormously to the impression a film makes.

Julian Smirke: Definitely. Editing is the most underrated aspect of filmmaking, and yet one of the most important.

DP: You’ve been editing since the early 90s – what has changed the most for you and where will we be editing in 20 years’ time?

Maryann Brandon: The most obvious difference, of course, is that there is no more film in the editing room (laughs). But I think editing physical film was the best possible training ever. When you did a cut in the workprint, it was an actual cut. Now I can look at 40 versions of a scene and choose which of the cuts and shots I like best. And for the future, I hope that we will continue to work together as a team on location. The back and forth between colleagues is the best way to work creatively. So many great scenes and edits in “Star Trek” came from discussions between the editing, VFX and sound departments. So the role of the editor hasn’t really changed overall. I still read the script as often as I need to, and I still can’t get involved in the design of a scene until the director has given his vision. In my opinion, the main difference lies in the CGI scenes, which have to be finished much earlier. I’m always on set for these scenes so that I can say exactly what needs to be done during the rough cut.

DP: You’ve switched between TV series like “Felicity”, cinema films and TV films. What’s the difference, and can you really cut “slower” in the cinema?

Maryann Brandon: I switched between media types for a number of reasons – it depended on the script idea, among other things, and the rest of the project depends on that. Differentiating by output medium doesn’t help in my opinion. A good cut looks good on any medium if it supports the story. But I can say that editing for TV was an important lesson. You really learn to work there, with the short production times and small segments and the immovable deadline of the broadcast date. That trains your instincts on how to get a good cut quickly. DP: Is there a fundamental difference for you in cinema films, for example between “MI:3”, “Kung Fu Panda 2” and “How to Train Your Dragon”? Maryann Brandon: There is only a difference in editing between live action and animated films. In live action film you take things away, in animated film you add things, which of course completely changes the possibilities of an editor. Simply requesting shots or a few more frames – as an editor, that’s a real pleasure!

DP: You were director and producer on “Alias”, sound editor, production assistant and much more. Do you have to know the other steps of production to be a good editor? And as an aspiring editor, should you also be involved in projects outside of the editing room?

Maryann Brandon: It’s always important to gain as much experience as possible from all areas of filming – that’s the only way to understand the complexity and potential stumbling blocks of the different steps. And only when you see that – at least in my opinion – do you realise what makes a scene special or how you have to shoot the scene so that it “works”. There is no substitute for practical experience.

DP: A question of taste: what is your favourite scene in “Star Trek Into Darkness”?

Maryann Brandon: (Spoilers!) That’s hard to say. The film is a series of cuts that are all equally good for me. I think the rhythm turned out particularly well. Good editing is best when it’s not even noticeable. But the way the scene in the conference room turned out, just before Pike dies – we arranged it so that Kirk only finds out after the fight with Harrison/Benedict Cumberbatch. That makes the shock for Kirk much clearer. And I also think the opening scene is very well done – a great introduction of all the important characters.

DP: And now the most obvious question: were you already a Trekkie before working on “Star Trek”?

Maryann Brandon: I wouldn’t call myself a hardcore aficionado, but I did watch the original series as a kid, of course – along with “Twilight Zone”, “Outer Limits”, “Lost In Space”, “Night Gallery” and “Chiller Theatre”. Still, I enjoyed working on “Star Trek” – it may not be the “Final Frontier”, but it’s still a universe you enjoy being in.

Julian Smirke: I was more of a fan of the “Next Generation”, so of course I was familiar with the world. And of course I’ve seen all the films. After such a template, it’s an honour to work on the latest iteration of the Star Trek films.

The post Maljaʼ tayʼ Avid first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

This article originally appeared in DP 05 : 2013.

Twelve years after the successful film “Monsters Inc.”, Walt Disney and Pixar Animation Studios are bringing a prequel to an animated film to cinemas for the first time with the film “Monsters University”. The first part, “Die Monster AG”, was released in cinemas worldwide in 2001. For this film, the hair and cloth simulation was developed for Pixar’s in-house 3D software.

At the time, it was difficult to realise the simulation for Sulley’s fur with its over 2.3 million hairs and the hair and cloth simulation for Boo for a 90-minute feature film. So Boo was quickly disguised as a monster and put into a suit that made the simulation of Boo’s shirt and hair superfluous. Computer technology has of course improved over the years and this is also reflected in the quality of the new film. There were already noticeable differences in the shading and rendering between “Toy Story” and “Toy Story 2” and also in the structure of the characters, which were completely recreated in the 3D software for the second part.

There were only two years between the productions of the two films and when the new stereoscopic conversion of the two films was made in 2010, there were initially problems opening the old scenes on the new machines with the current software. So how does the production of a second instalment change when it is made twelve years later, especially as this is not a sequel in the normal sense, but a prequel in which the characters first get to know each other and are significantly younger? There was already talk of a sequel to the popular “Monster AG” back in 2005.

At that time, the film was still to be released under the name “Monsters, Inc. 2” and was to be produced by Circle 7 Animation, a studio that Disney had opened solely for the production of sequels to Pixar films.

Company history

In 2006, Pixar was taken over by Walt Disney and integrated into the company structure and Circle 7 Animation was closed again in this context. Rumours that a sequel to “Monsters Inc.” was in the offing did not resurface until the end of 2010. In the original English version of “Monster Uni”, the voices have not changed and, as in the first instalment, the two main characters Mike and Sulley are voiced by Billy Crystal and John Goodman. The film’s screenplay also features familiar names and was written by Andrew Stanton and Pete Docter. Andrew Stanton is responsible for one of the biggest successes of the Disney/Pixar connection and was the director of “Finding Nemo”, which was released in cinemas as the sequel to “Monster AG” in 2003. Pete Docter, on the other hand, is the director of the first part of “Monster AG” and made the film “Upstairs” as his last directorial work.

The story

While the friendship between Mike Glotzkowski and James P. Sullivan played a major role in the first part, they can’t stand each other at the beginning of this prequel. Mike is a very insecure monster who would later like to work on the screaming floor. James P. Sullivan, on the other hand, is aware of his descent from a family of great screaming talents and makes little effort for this reason. Even without any great demonstrable talent, he is a well-known and respected monster at university who can hardly save himself from admirers. The two main characters share a room due to unfavourable events, but can’t really stand each other. Anyone who has seen the first part will have a rough idea of how the plot will develop.

Characters

While there were around 40 characters in the first instalment that brought the monster world to life, this time there are over 400 monsters, most of which are also hairy or wear clothes. Of course, it is not only the number of characters that has changed, but also the rest of the technology. The software is fundamentally changed for each production and is usually tested during the production of short films. For example, the lighting was fundamentally redesigned for the film “Cars” so that the individual shots could be lit more quickly. Previously, an image had to be rendered each time to display the shadows accurately, which was very cumbersome and took a lot of time. For the production of “Cars”, the software was modified so that different images with different lighting settings are automatically rendered in the background and saved in the software. This allows the software to access these images more quickly and enables more interactive lighting and faster visualisation of light sources and shadows. Such a variant was also implemented in Maya and Viewport 2.0 was developed. A new lighting function called Global Illumination was also used at Pixar for “Monster Uni”.

Renderman

The use of Global Illumination significantly increased the render times of the images, making it impossible to render the film completely in the specified time. It was only by changing and adapting the properties of Renderman to the new lighting tool by the Renderman technical team that the producers were able to render the film in the specified time. Renderman is part of Pixar’s own 3D software and can also be licensed and used by other companies. In Germany, the software can be purchased from the specialised software dealer Weltenbauer(www. weltenbauer.com/software/pixar-s-renderman).

Hairy crowd monsters

A lot has been done in “Monster Uni” with regard to the simulation of crowd scenes. For any animator or renderer, such crowd scenes are sheer horror and the cameras are adjusted so that you can see as little of the crowd as possible. For the first part, “Monster AG”, the cloth and hair simulator was developed and written for the first time. For this film, the functionality of these simulators was massively changed for the first time in order to simplify and refine the calculation of the simulations, which made it possible to bring almost permanently hairy monsters in all possible variations and colours to the screen. The last major change to the hair simulation was made for the film “Ratatouille”. At that time, there was the problem that the rats, which are all hairy, were constantly reflected in the many reflective objects in the kitchen and therefore required too much rendering time. To avoid having to calculate every single hair in the reflection and because the reflective objects usually only depicted the characters in a distorted and very inaccurate way, the software was optimised so that the rats in the reflections had no hair, but only consisted of grey areas, which is not noticeable to the viewers. At a distance, it is not necessary to show every single blade of grass or leaf, but only a green area is needed to give the impression of a tree. This reduction made it possible to render the masses of hairiness.

In this film, for the first time in an animated film, there is almost no shot in which at least 25 monsters cannot be seen on the screen at the same time. Only at the beginning are there a few shots with just one character.

The film is about the protagonists’ college years and, as is usual at US colleges, the fraternity parties and events get out of hand. The campus is also constantly bustling with monsters performing a wide variety of movements.

The animation cycle and identical movements in the crowds are hardly noticeable, only the repetitive types of monsters are a little noticeable, but not in a negative way. Due to the mass of characters, it became necessary to simulate 127 types of clothing, whereas in the first part it was already difficult to simulate and render the one T-shirt worn by Boo. The changes in the hair simulation also made it possible to control and calculate more hair. For example, Sulley still had around 2.3 million hairs in 2001 and up to 5.5 million could be simulated for this film – which sounds realistic, as the number of hairs in humans also decreases with age.

The Pixar Animation Studios attach great importance to the fact that their developments are not used exclusively in the studio, but are also used as a standard by other studios in the industry. To ensure that other studios also have the possibilities and access to the developments, Pixar not only works with its own in-house software, but also uses many off-the-shelf software packages that are accessible to everyone. The artists at Pixar Animation Studios work very closely with Autodesk on the further development of modelling and develop new solutions for the Maya software package. For example, all models from all films were created using Maya.

Pixar uses Open Subdiv Surfaces (open source subdivision surfaces) for modelling, where the artist does not have to constantly worry about the number of polygons and the design of the UVs when modelling. The so-called open subdivs are a further development of the subdivision surfaces. Unlike polygon objects, subdivision surfaces (or subdiv surfaces) can be displayed in different resolutions and therefore in regions where more detail is required, with a higher subdivision of the surfaces. Similar to Nurbs surfaces, the individual surfaces of subdivs are not moved directly, but are influenced by a wireframe that is displayed around the object. This outer wireframe behaves like a polygon model and can be edited with the poly tools, which are located in Maya in “Mesh and Edit”> Mesh.

Editing the outer wireframe affects the underlying subdiv model, which behaves like a nurbs model but also has the properties of a polygon model, such as the possibility of self-contained surfaces and UVs. Although subdivision surfaces require less geometry memory than polygons, the high-resolution models are still so heavy that the computer becomes too slow to work with them properly. The Open Subdivs are also referred to as “Feature Adaptive Subdivision” at Pixar, as when creating these surfaces an algorithm looks for ways to best connect the patches so that the resolution is sufficient and the computer still remains fast.

The model retains the same appearance as a subdivision model, but the surfaces are connected by so-called B-splines, transition patches, which also allow triangles, and irregular surfaces. This means that the models do not necessarily only consist of quads, but triangular surfaces can also occur. As the irregular surfaces are difficult to texture and can also have errors or distortions, the algorithms are programmed in such a way that the irregular surfaces become smaller and smaller as the number of subdivs increases and the newly created surfaces are filled with B-splines and transition patches.

Open subdiv

Artists do not have to worry about details with the Open Subdiv Surfaces. With polygons, you always have to consider where you need the details and that the polygons are roughly evenly distributed so that the model can be textured properly. With the open subdivs, the details can be inserted where they are needed. You don’t have to worry about the textures either, as they can be created later by laying out global UVs.

To speed up the calculation and display of the open subdivs, the GPU is also used to calculate the CPU. This made it possible to display a model with 300,000 subdivisions at the next level and thus 500,000 subdivisions. The display time was reduced from 100 milliseconds to 3 milliseconds by using the CPU and GPU.

The Open Subdiv technology can be licenced at graphics.pixar.com/opensubdiv/index.html. By using open subdivs, it was also possible to provide the animators with a higher-resolution model with a more accurate representation of the textures and displacement maps during production. This gave the animators the opportunity to see during the animation where the textures of the models were distorted or where the facial expressions used no longer worked. In previous productions, animation was done with proxy textures, where distortions in the textures only became apparent after rendering.

This resulted in a back and forth between animation and rendering, which can be avoided with the new technology and the accurate representation of textures and displacement maps.

The use of open subdivs also gave the riggers an advantage, as many details such as thorns were no longer modelled individually, but were only generated in the rendering by the so-called displacement maps, in which the geometry is changed by the property of the shader. This meant that there was less geometry that had to be rigged, but only became visible through the shaders. The interactivity between the high-resolution character and the animators allowed them to adjust the strength of the bump maps and displacement maps in the animation. The use of this new technology made it possible to realise “Monsters University” and bring the images to the screen in a manageable amount of time. As with the other Pixar films, it is worth seeing the film in the cinema and it is worth considering integrating the technologies developed by Pixar into your own pipeline.

The post Monster Uni first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Patrick Poti.