Computer Graphics World

June 2009 44 n n n n Broadcast smaller-budget TV shows, like e Middle- man, can feature digital creatures galore. "We had a terra-cotta warrior who came to life when a terra-cotta roof broke and the pieces formed into the warrior, who then transitioned into a live actor," explains Lebed, who says the effect was created with Autodesk 3ds Max's Particle Flow. "at was challenging mainly because all the pieces had to swim around in a way that allowed us to control them and tweak them to suit the needs of production," Lebed says. "Once they formed into the warrior, there was a moment where the digital warrior opened his arms and struck a pose." Another CG character was the toothed Peruvian flying pike, a fish with wings that chased after the protagonists. e original idea was to use a practical fish. An effects com- pany built a fish puppet, with the idea that a puppeteer would move the fish throughout the scene and Mechnology would paint out the stick. "It didn't quite work out the way they wanted," says Lebed. "We had already done a couple of CG shots of the fish, and we ended up doing nearly all the shots. Only one shot ended up being the puppet." According to Lebed, the challenge was to get the CG fish to match the environment. "One shot had the fish under a shade tree with mottled lighting," he explains. "We shot a lot of lighting reference on set and spent a lot of time with lighting and shad- ers so it had the same reflective and trans- lucent qualities of the puppet." Ida, the cranky librarian, is played by ac- tress Mary Pat Gleason, but according to the story, is supposed to be an android, leaving Mechnology to create her robotic abilities. Mechnology also helped build the kind of immense sets ordinarily found in block- buster feature films. On stage, the produc- tion created the bare bones of a Mayan temple. "ey had a big chair where the Mayan king sat, and [it was] built up with sand," recalls Potter. "e camera started at the top of the stage, then came down and did a slow reveal to get our audience into the temple. We built the rest of the temple in 3D and tracked it in there." It wouldn't have been a sci-fi show with- out the parallel-universe episode, and e Middleman put effort into theirs. "We have two Wendys, the good one and the evil one," says Potter. "ey met up and exchanged dialog, so there was quite a bit of split screen and greenscreen so they could do that." e scenes were shot on location in an immense power plant. Mechnology turned that into an Orwellian futuristic world, adding, among other touches, a 3D monorail system. It's a Wrap At the end of the 12 episodes, says Za- vada, the crew worked on 2.2tb of data, for a total of 33 minutes of visual effects. But it wasn't the quantity of the effects that proved to be the biggest challenge. It was the schedule. "In any episode, we had a 10-day turn- around, so the challenge was to build a concept that we could execute in those 10 days and that, obviously, the production company, show-runners, and network all liked," says Potter. "If we were going to build a monorail, a fish, a gun ray, or space- ship, we had to come up with those designs and have them approved quickly. But we often didn't have much lead time. We knew that we'd be building a fish for Episode 4, for example, but we were so busy building Episode 3 that we didn't have the time." e approval process became more streamlined as the first episodes were turned around. "But the writers would see what we were doing and up the ante the next week," says Potter. "ey'd say, 'ese guys did eight shots of a fish, so next week they can do a 3D car with a jet engine on top of it and three shots of an explosion.' " Nevertheless, both Lebed and Potter en- thuse over working with Grillo-Marxuach. "He'd come up with a concept in the script, and if he liked the direction we were going, he'd just let us keep going," explains Potter. Adds Lebed, "is was the most fun I've had while working on a show. ere was a great crew, the producers were wonderful, and every script was so well written that I couldn't wait to grab the next one and dive right into it." With such enthusiasm, it's no wonder that Mechnology successfully completed its weekly missions on e Middleman. Unfortunately, this unique series was not "super" enough for the network, which cancelled it after its initial season. n Debra Kaufman is a freelance writer in the entertainment industry. She can be reached at dkla99@verizon.net. Working on a tight TV schedule, Mechnology had to analyze the shots and come up with the most effective solutions to make them work. Sometimes that meant using a prop augmented with CG.

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