Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/65909
VISUAL EFFECTS [ Cont.from 19 ] lin] play certain scenes in relation to the environment and the audience makes them funnier." EMBRACING STEREO "Barry used 3D in a narrative way to make the movie more enjoyable and fun," says Redd. "Barry's shooting style actually lends itself to 3D: wide-angle lenses, deep backgrounds. Even in 2D you get so much dimension. So by the time you get to 3D it all just gets better." Ralston recalls that a lot of tests were done early on to see if Sonnenfeld wanted "all the additional bag- gage that comes with shooting native 3D. We arrived at the same conclusion as we did for Alice in Wonder- land [for which Ralston netted an Academy Award [ Cont.from 23 ] nomination]: converting later is easier on the shoot, and you get a greater amount of flexibility and artistic control in the conversion process. You can orchestrate the 3D to the scene as it takes shape in editing — we really pushed the 3D with Will's jump, for example." During production, Imageworks had "constant con- versations" with Sonnenfeld about where stereo 3D effects would be most effective, Redd points out. Imageworks delivered most of its VFX shots in 2D for conversion at Prime Focus World. Shots that involved heavily digital effects and simulations, such as the time jump and Cape Canaveral, were rendered in stereo at Imageworks to add to the conversion pro- cess. "There was a glass window exploding to camera so instead of rotoscoping every piece of glass, we cre- ated left eye and right eye versions of the breaking GREEN INITIA TIVES the end of its shelf life. This is when they drop off old equipment at e-waste recycling initiatives around the city. She credits local Apple reseller Tekserve in helping make this easier as well. "They partner with Lower East Side Ecology Center at least four times a year and host drop-offs. We had some beta decks we didn't need so we gave it to them. I believe they take all usable parts and re-use them. That is their first step; they don't just discard it." Quigley says things got easier for all when New York State passed an electric equipment recycling and reuse act in May 2010. It's supposed to ensure that every New Yorker has the opportunity to recycle waste in a responsible way. Now they provide drop-off days and information about e-waste, and they have created drop- off points in all five boroughs. "It's important," she says, "because there are so many hazardous materials in these machines — you don't want it to sit in a landfill and get into the environment. It's dangerous, and I don't think people understand that. Hopefully, with this new initiative, people are getting educated." Hooligan's green initiatives go beyond hardware and media recycling. In the post world, you have clients in- house for days at a time and that means offering certain amenities. "You have to have a refrigerator filled with soda, beer, wine, and everybody orders lunch in. So one of the things we are trying to do is have group lunches, which will help minimize the amount of containers you are throwing out every day." Quigley also personally makes sure that all of those bottles and cans find their way to the recycling bin. Water bottles are a huge offender, so the edit house has a filtered water system and glasses are used. The last person out each night is required to shut everything off. And where they can, according to Quigley, they use com- pact fluorescent bulbs. "But it's not as much as I would like because of the aesthetic. People are very particular. While the studio itself doesn't compost, individual employees do, and they take advantage of being near " NYC's Union Square, which hosts a farmer's market four times a week where employees can drop their com- posting. Some employees ride their bikes to work, which are kept in edit suites, offices or supply closets. A few tips offered by Quigley include using cleaning products that are better for the environment, "like 7th Generation, so you are putting gentle things into the water system rather than toxic stuff; and when you get a CD or DVD, reuse or recycle all the packaging. "We open stuff up, pull out paper, put that in paper recycling, we send the balance to trash recycling, we make sure as much as we can we are reusing something or sending it to properly be disposed of." Quigley says the key is considering all the choices we make. "Some people don't think about it a lot. They just throw something in the garbage. You personally have to care about it." [ Cont.from 40 ] who work here at Scholastic come in and cluck like chickens," he laughs. "I got them into the studio and had the picture going on the screen. I told them to just cluck whenever they saw two chick- ens in the frame. So they're clucking in realtime as the action is happening." Every Weston Woods project has its own custom- composed score. The Red Hen uses a simple guitar piece by Caleb Miles. It has a guitar track, drums and a mouth harp. Often, the music on the project will be wall to wall, and it can be tricky to weave it in and out 44 Post • May 2012 of the narration. "Since everything is based on the book, you really want to hear the dialogue clearly. This track really worked for The Red Hen. It had that coun- try feel to it. Technically, I liked it a lot because I had the music stems, so I had more control. I could dip one of the music stems to allow the narration to come through more clearly, as opposed to bringing the level of the whole music down. This way I can keep the energy going and just dip out that little offending instrument that might interfere with the voice track." The narrator on The Red Hen, Walter Mayes, is a www.postmagazine.com glass to add to the 3D conversion," says Ralston. "For the gun fight inside Wu's, which features goo, smoke, debris and even vomit, we selected what we wanted to come out to the camera and what we wanted to recede, then rendered left eye and right eye for the conversion," Redd explains. Method and Prime Focus World helped with the film's wire removals, set clean-up, sky replacements, cosmetic fixes, simple comps and light CG. EFilm per- formed some blemish removals; Cantina Creative completed the graphics for the Big Orb, Orb worksta- tions and time jump unit readout. At Imageworks, Spencer Cook was the animation supervisor, Kee-Suk "Ken" Hahn the digital effects supervi- sor, Corey Turner the 3D stereo VFX supervisor and Eric Scott the senior VFX producer. 2D TO 3D [ Cont.from 34 ] conversion, so they send us 2D DPX files and we evaluate how to break them down, which elements are to be isolated, and put them into 3D Reality Splitter." Nuke, Imagineer Systems' Mocha and Silhouette software are used in the isolation process. 3D Eye Solutions' creative team plugs in parameters for zero (screen level), positive (depth) and negative (dimensional) parallax to push and pull elements in and out of the screen. Once a shot is approved and levels corrected, stereo left and right eye DPX files are rendered for the client to deliver to DI or the lab. "We have implemented certain automations to cut down on time-consuming labor," says Gibilisco. All work is performed in its 10,000-square-foot studio, which can accommodate four or five features a year. A big advantage for 3D Eye Solutions is that once a shot is dimensionalized "we can tweak and view it in realtime before we render it," he notes. 3D Eye Solutions has worked with Hollywood stu- dios, networks and broadcasters; the lion's share of its feature work has been new releases, although library content is also in the mix. Among 3D Eye Solutions' credits are Michael Jack- son's This Is It, the Weinstein Company's Hood Winked Too, Gulliver's Travels, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voy- age of the Dawn Treader and Conan the Barbarian 3D. The company has also worked with TFI in France and other foreign companies on autostereo (glasses-free) digital signage placed in malls, sports arenas and air- ports worldwide. AUDIO FOR ANIMATION widely-acclaimed expert in the field of books for children and teens. His experience as an audio book narrator helps to bring Red Hen alive. "He just becomes the character. He met our director of pro- duction a couple of years ago. He said, 'I want to work with you guys, and I can do Chicken Little, and here's what it would sound like,' and he did an audi- tion right there. A couple of months later he was narrating Chicken Little for us." In the past, Syarto has also recorded James Earl Jones, Sarah Jessica Parker, and many other actors.