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via PrepShootPost by noreply@blogger.com (Eric Escobar) on 5/19/08
From this...
To this...
I directed an epic VFX project for Sony PS3. I wanted to share some about what that process and experience was like. First thing first, here's the set-up:
1) Its a two minute promotional piece showing off all the incredible things a PS3 can do, besides playing games.
2) It was fast, so very fast, 70 shots in two minutes.
3) The environment was entirely computer generated, only the talent were real.
4) The camera was constantly moving, as was the main talent in three directions.
5) We had a short period of time to pull it all together.
All live action shooting happened in a single day on a soundstage way out in Pleasanton (Goal Line Studios), its John Madden's place. The crew was incredible, they were the VFX production crew led by Marty Rosenberg and they had just come off of shooting the latest Indiana Jone's film. They are a well oiled machine of very talented film workers.
Our lead talent was Jonathan "Bionic" Bayani, one the top Pop Lock dancers in the world.
We shot with the Sony F950, an SR1 deck and all the 4:4:4 10 bit goodness that system records. We had a Pegasus crane, a massive dolly with curved track, and Marty rocked the handheld with a lens that cost more than a Porsche. It was a day of capital "F" Filmmaking.
Post was headed up by Core and the Flowseeker himself, Mark Christiansen. During the pre-light day, the Core team came in and placed green stickies in a grid arrangement on the three walls of the stage. These would later be used as tracking markers to replicate the movement of the real world camera with the virtual environments being built in Maya and After Effects.
The week before the shoot, Mark D.(co-director), Bionic, RJ Navalta (our 'nemesis' character) and I worked on developing the choreography and chapters of the two minute routine that formed the basis of the piece.
Jon and RJ worked really hard at coming up with a kinetic, story driven choreography that would work in a virtual world. As a director, it was my job to remind them of what the finished piece would look like and to keep their attention focused on the fact that in the end, there would be about 20 screens flying around them. With action for the talent happening in 360 degrees, as well as at various heights, we ended up placing markers in two concentric circles around Jon's center point. All activity occurred around these rings, and everything moved in counter-clockwise direction.
In production, creating a 360 shooting field was impractical, instead, we shot the choreography on direction, and then rotated the markers 180 degrees and Jon was able to rotate his starting point, and hence the choreography. Marty flipped the lights and we were ready to go.
Once production wrapped, the incredibly labor intensive project of post began. And that's a subject of another blog entry...
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