New, more sophisticated digital postproduction systems have allowed some filmmakers to adapt video methods for film work
Not long ago, the postproduction tools and techniques for film and video existed in separate worlds — they were housed in different post houses and wielded by distinct artists. Times have changed. With the advent of digital technology, these high-tech methods are blurring boundaries, creating an arena in which output is less important than image. As computers have gained speed, and digital tools have acquired more strength and flexibility, digital technology has begun to migrate from video to film.
Rick Schulze, associate visual effects supervisor at Industrial Light & Magic, has observed that evolution. As a director/visual effects director of commercials (as well as an associate visual effects supervisor on Jurassic Park: The Lost World), Schulze has participated in the changes which began in the Eighties with Quantel’s Paintbox. "It was a huge shift in the topography of how animation effects were created," he remembers. "Optical effects shut down, and it all moved onto computers that were faster and more controllable. Those processes began in commercials."
Since video-resolution images are much less megabyte-intensive than film-resolution images, the advertising arena, with its imperative for new imagery, became the perfect playground for experimental digital technology, led by such pioneers as Robert Abel & Associates, among others.
Nowadays, more potent digital tools are commonplace in feature film postproduction, and techniques such as digital compositing have virtually replaced photochemical film opticals. But the migration of techniques has continued, and some innovative filmmakers are seizing opportunities to apply video postproduction techniques to movie work. In the following pages, AC takes a look at two different examples of such recent advances.
Transition to Digital Timing
Pavlov Productions director Barnaby Jackson was faced with an interesting challenge in creating the 75-second theatrical logo trailer "Volcano" to showcase the Sony Dynamic Digital Sound (SDDS) system in the 5,600 SDDS-equipped movie houses around the globe. (Other versions, titled "Quest," "Jungle," and "Underwater," were later released in May of 1998.) The "Volcano" trailer, which was shot in the Super 35 format by cinematographer Gary Waller and underwater cameraman Don King, is an experiential trip which begins under the ocean surface and flies the viewer over the water, through the jungle and into an active volcano.
"Volcano" had a complex and physically grueling production period. The initial sequence began in the darkness of a lava tube and was photographed at 8 or 12 fps, through the dome port of a watertight housing with a wide-angle lens by Jackson and Waller, who were clad in scuba gear off the Kona coast of Hawaii’s Big Island. To capture the next sequence, a helicopter equipped with a nose-mounted 10:1 zoom lens flew directly at the jungle terrain. To penetrate the wild undergrowth, Jackson relied on a Steadicam rig outfitted with a 10mm lens. Another helicopter shoot over the volcano captured the raging geological formation from afar, and a final CGI sequence created by Sony Pictures Imageworks allowed the filmmakers to plummet viewers into the hot lava of the volcanic core. "We wanted it to be real, not an effects piece," explains Jackson. "What made it a challenge was that speedwise, each of the shots had to feel connected to the previous one, even though they were all done with different lenses, at different speeds, and with different object-to-camera relationships."
In creating the transitions necessary to "sell" the piece, Jackson turned to digital technology, which, in turn, led him to rely on techniques he had learned in commercial video postproduction. To accelerate the transition from the underwater work to the helicopter shot, for example, Jackson and artists at Planet Blue in Los Angeles utilized Discreet Logic’s Inferno to speed up the footage and enhance it with splash effects and a manipulated horizon which generated the illusion of speed. "We could really slam the horizon down as if we were exiting the water at an incredible rate," explains Jackson. "The foreground splash objects helped to make it look as if we were breaking out of the water at 100 miles per hour. It’s as if we continued the underwater shot in the flying shot, with the two overlapping."
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