Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/4585
environment they were flying through." Another challenge on the greenscreen was all the movement involved in look like the boys were flying the spacecraft. "We had tracking mark- the UFO so we could track the but a lot of the time the boys would moving around, so we had to do hand to get it to match," explains Petrie. tricky to get the canopy on and have exactly right. We used SynthEyes could but not ever y track will perfectly, so we had to rely on anima- match-move by eye." points to quality previs created at storyboard stage in making the dogfight work smoothly. "Our on-set VFX visor Giles Molloy built previs scenes those QuickTimes on set during the make sure we were getting right she explains."It was refined, and Giles y a few different cameras and and take it back on set and run it by director [Ralph Hemecker] again." L I E N L A I R match to concept ar t provided of producers wanted the alien hive PRPVFX built it from scratch in CG combination of 3D modeling and compositing. was an underlying theme so it corrosive and twisted, like a yucky environment," describes Petrie. "We getting feedback and refining that look producers; we were refining right up delivery." says getting the feeling of scale was challenge for this sequence, which meant to look like a humongous bug fac- would be like if the Titantic landed in a tically. We needed to show the fac- the focal point, but there was a hive of activity spreading out from the central focus, so there were lots of depth cues added. However it was a challenge not to let any of the elements we were using betray the im- mense scale we were trying to convey." A L I E N M O R P H In one scene, the NSA agent who has been after the boys turns out to be an alien, and we know this because he morphs into one right before our eyes. "We tried to get a chrysalis feeling, where the alien was breaking out of the skin," ex- plains Petrie, "and the challenge was to get the alien peeling off the real guy. We had one person — Stephen Donoghue— work- ing on that entire sequence, tr ying things out. We didn't want it to look too grotesque but more organic and natural. We got an in- teresting look that hasn't been seen before. It's definitely not your standard morph." PRPVFX's 3D tool of choice was Au- todesk 3DS Max. They even created digital versions of the aliens and boys in the soft- ware. Autodesk Combustion was used for compositing and The Foundr y's Nuke was called on to compile elements. Petrie credits early inter vention with making the project go smoothly. "Because we talked so much with producers [Richard C . Okie and Janine Dickins] and the director before hand, we understood what they wanted." She calls the preproduction process in- valuable. Something else that helped was getting high definition QuickTimes of shots before the cut was locked so PRPVFX artists could start trying things out. "And once we got the DP's [Rob Marsh] proper footage we could replace it and carry on, so there was no break in the process. We try to do that with everything we work on," she concludes. XD's Skyrunners take off created the CG alien spacecraft and alien hive using Autodesk's 3DS Max. F E C T S