Post Magazine

December 2010

Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/21561

Contents of this Issue

Navigation

Page 22 of 51

on the camera is such that you can convince yourself you are in a little theater.Then all the decisions you make are based on how you feel sitting in the cinema.‘I am bored of him now, what’s over there?’ Or, ‘That’s an inter- esting sound.Who’s making that?’ It was very much like a documentary in terms of the way it was shot, but when you watch it, it feels like more of a drama. It’s all hand-held, but I am trying my hardest to keep it still.” POST: Did you do any image stabilization on it in post? EDWARDS: “No, and they [the produc- ers] were nervous about it. “I was adding a lot of CGI to scenes. So if the actors are doing something brilliant, I’d pan off them to the sky to nothing and the producers would get really confused watch- ing the rushes — ‘This is brilliant and your are panning away to nothing?!’ I’d say,‘I am going to add a helicopter. I have to do it when it’s brilliant or it won’t be in the film.’This hap- pened a lot because I was often resting the camera on my shoulder, because it was so damn heavy, and that looks very similar visu- ally to me panning up to a helicopter. “It was very confusing watching the rushes because I wouldn’t stop recording during those times.So they would see all this wobbly stuff and get worried. It really was sitting down with the editor when we got home and explaining,‘This is me resting.That is an effects shot.’ In Premiere we would type in text, like Tank, Helicopter, Ruins…” POST: How many VFX shots are there? EDWARDS:“About 250. It took so long to get a design and figure out how I was going to do it because I hadn’t really done creature an- imation before.When you see the creature, it’s made up of tentacles and I wanted it to be beautiful as well as scary. I couldn’t figure out how to do it, then I remembered there was a plug-in within 3DS Max where you can make ropes. So you tell the computer where this end of the rope is and where that end of the rope is, and it automatically releases physics to calculate how the rope swings and moves based on these points. I turned gravity to zero and re-simulated it, and this amazing anima- tion happened where it was undulating like a tentacle in water. “My strength isn’t 3D, it’s visual effects — After Effects — so I basically did it all in lay- ers. The creatures are bioluminescent. I made a checkerboard pattern and shrunk the creature and used the checkerboard and animated it over the creature, so you get these random black-and-white shapes over the same shape as the creature. I used that as a basis to how all the bioluminescence was done.You can colorize it, glow it, flash it, you get these undulating little pieces under the main texture that look really compli- cated, but really it’s just really randomly flash- ing blobs using lots of masks. Everything was composited in After Effects — I leaned so much more on compositing.” POST: You are a big Adobe user.Would you have been able to do as much yourself with another set of tools? EDWARDS: “When I try to learn other software I get frustrated that it doesn’t work the way the software I use does, so I aban- don it and go back to what I know. Software is written by engineers, and it seems like sometimes they do things because it’s easy instead of listening to artists.To be honest, all 3D software is like that; it works more like a mathematician created it, not an artist. I find that with After Effects, it’s like an artist has had a lot of input on how to use it. Funda- mentally, it works the way my brain works.” POST: What did you use for modeling? EDWARDS: “The creatures were de- signed in [Pixologic] Z-Brush; that tool is amazing. It’s a piece of software where someone said,‘Screw what is out there.How do we make the greatest modeling tool.’ I could never hope to model a creature in 3D; it’s so complicated, but I could pick up Z- Brush and do something in half an hour. It’s like using clay, not pushing polygons.” POST:What was your VFX workflow like? EDWARDS: “I’d wake up in the morning, open up Premiere. I’d right click on a shot, which sends it to After Effects, I’d start track- ing it in Mocha, start painting it in Photoshop and watch it back in Premiere. I’d make notes, change it again, make notes, change it again... always looking at my watch for what the cut off time is for that shot. My guide is a spreadsheet; it’s like a pace setter.Then I ask myself what approach can achieve it in that time? And it’s usually not the approach I’d de- fault to. It’s usually the crazier, quicker, dirtier approach. It’s amazing because about 70 per- cent of those quick fixes actually end up working completely in the final film. It’s the only way you can make a film like this. “To get it right for the majority of the audi- ence might take a day.To get it right for the one percent who work in the industry might take a month. I had the right balance. The whole process wasn’t,‘Can I make a film full of amazing special effects.’ My goal was to make a good film, and part of how we achieved that was with visual effects.” www.postmagazine.com Monsterswas edited on Adobe Premiere by Colin Goudie. December 2010 • Post 21

Articles in this issue

Links on this page

Archives of this issue

view archives of Post Magazine - December 2010