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16 Post • March 2014 www.postmagazine.com control of the overall pacing of the sequence and providing them with the action beats they needed to cut from shot to shot," Fran- kel explains. Along with delivering the temp comps to editorial, the Proof team handed over the 3D Maya scene files they used to create the animation so the VFX vendors could use their work as a jumping off point for the final VFX production. The film's "Games Begin" sequence starts with Katniss saying good-bye to her friend Cinna as she is whisked up a glass elevator with the other tributes to the arena. Within moments, the sequence transitions from a sad good-bye to brutal slayings. Proof 's previs showed Katniss as she surveys her surround- ings for the first time and watches the clock countdown the final seconds until the games begin. "It's a choice of fight or flight, and we see the decision in her eyes," says Frankel. To make the previs successful, Proof 's team had to convey subtle shifts in perfor- mance and emotion, he notes. There's very little action at this point, and Katniss hasn't moved off the small platform she's standing on. The energy of the moment was built with carefully-constructed shots and by using Kat- niss's eyes to communicate her transition from fear to determination. Previs isn't known for capturing strong emotional per- formances, but Proof 's realtime toon shader proved very effective. "There is something about the illustrated look of the toon-shaded previs that is more evocative and visually forgiving," Frankel says. "The viewer naturally adds in the detail that isn't there, and the result is far more compel- ling and emotionally nuanced." Most recently, for Marvel's Captain Ameri- ca: The Winter Soldier, Proof "touched almost every shot during the editorial decision- making process before shots were sent out to VFX vendors," he reports. Frankel calls previs "a real story develop- ment tool that gives a last reality check before filming. It's almost like an insurance policy. You can shoot the scene knowing it will work, then spend time embellishing and improving it. Or you can leave a shot on the editing room floor because you realize it won't work and it would have been money wasted to film it. In a way, the biggest success of previs are its failures — when you dis- cover what's not going to work and put your money back into what's working on-screen." BARABOOM! STUDIOS Four-year old Baraboom! Studios (www. baraboomstudios.com) in Los Angeles provides previs for feature films, video games, commer- cials and motion-picture animation. It works primarily with Maya on top of which it adds proprietary scripts, plug-ins and code "to speed up and customize the process," says founder and animation supervisor, Pepe Valencia. He regards previs as a storytelling tool that helps define the cinematic and technical aspects of a project. "Previs connects you with a lot of different people; mostly VFX supervisors and directors, but production designers and art directors too," he says. Previs of the rabbit factory in Hop gave the production designer a sense of its scale and space while previs for The Impossible envi- sioned VFX for the monster tsunami that swept across south Asia a few years ago. "Previs artists have to know a lot about everything: animation, lighting, cinematogra- phy," Valencia says. "I was an animation super- visor at Sony Imageworks and, to me, previs can present more of a challenge than anima- tion. You need to speak the language of everyone involved in telling the story." Baraboom!'s previs for the new Fox docu- mentary series, Cosmos: A Space-Time Odys- sey, brought "very difficult concepts to life — microcosms, the scale of space and its universes," he reports. The show, presented by astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, follows up on Carl Sagan's iconic PBS series and is executive produced by Seth MacFarlane and Sagan's widow, Ann Druyan. "For Cosmos we worked with the VFX supervisor, director, showrunner and produc- tion designer to play with ideas and develop a look and feel for the show," says Valencia. Previs is "constantly evolving," and Valencia has plans to embrace some new tools, which he thinks will find a niche in the process. "I'm investigating how to integrate 3D printing into the previs pipeline," he says, "to help production and character designers. We could create a stage of a character and have a maquette in a couple of hours." Valencia is also looking at 3D scanning. "It has become relatively simple now to scan an actor or an object for quick mod- eling," he notes. Regardless of the tools, Valencia seeks to create previs that's a key part of the story- telling process without appearing to be engraved in stone. "When there's too much control of the image in previs, you can lose spontaneity," he says. "So we try to avoid being too artificial, too stiff. You need to leave some room for fresh ideas and the happy accidents that occur in production. That can be hard to do, but it's our goal." Baraboom!'s Pepe Valencia (sitting) and Mike Pryor. The studio handled previs for Fox's Cosmos: A Space-Time Odyssey. Previs