Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/541232
www.postmagazine.com 29 POST JULY 2015 camera or move her back farther. It's a great tool for previs'ing." Cineview also helped with location scouting. "We could make sure Indominus and other dinosaurs would fit in the locations," Alexander says. "For almost every setup that would have a dinosaur in it, we'd take a snapshot to show Colin [Trevorrow, director]. I saved all those snapshots so we could pull them up later." However, for a sequence in which a helicopter crashes into a Pteranodon aviary, ILM did more traditional previs. Similarly, Pixel Liberation Front and Halon provided previs for the final fight and other action sequences. Working from the previs, animation supervisor Glen McIntosh, Tippett, the di- rector, and producers choreographed ac- tion scenes using toy-sized dinosaurs on miniature sets. Then, once storyboarded, previs'd, and choreographed, it was up to the animators to create believable per- formances for the prehistoric animals. A miniature set populated with two to three-inch printed models of the 3D dinosaurs helped the creative team block out the characters' movements and film them using lipstick cameras. "We had previs for the action se- quences, so Phil, who was our dinosaur consultant, Colin, the producers, and I would map out the choreography on these miniature sets," says McIntosh. "It's so funny... sometimes we deal with the most absolutely high tech, but we started with toy dinosaur models on a miniature set." Although the filmmakers wanted the look of the dinosaurs to harken back to the previous films, they also wanted the creatures "plussed." New technology and another decade or two of experience gave the artists tools and techniques to do that and much more. For instance, to help make the dinosaurs look believable, modelers created asymmetrical animals rather than building one side in CG and mirroring the other. "We also covered them with scars, nicks, and cuts to give them some history," McIntosh says. "They had been there for years. They didn't just show up to be filmed." Indeed, historic is an accurate descrip- tion of the work on the film — and the result at the box office. — BY BARBARA ROBERTSON SAN ANDREAS Earlier this summer, Warner Bros. Pictures took on the disaster film genre with director Brad Peyton's San Andreas, starring Dwayne Johnson. Shaking up the box office early on, the film grossed more than $134M at press time, and looks to end up as a season winner. The film, which takes place during one of California's worst earthquakes, fea- tures a rescue-chopper pilot (Johnson) making a dangerous journey across the state in order to find his wife and daugh- ter. To create realistic-looking sequences, visual effects supervisors Colin and Greg Strause called on a number of VFX hous- es, including UK-based Cinesite (www. cinesite.com) and LA's Method Studios (www.methodstudios.com). Cinesite, lead by VFX supervisor Holger Voss, shared the work between its two locations in London and its newly opened Montreal studio. Together, they completed the film's opening scene involving a young woman driving along a mountainous cliff, only for her car to go over the edge during the first earth- quake. "We did 160 [shots for that scene] — it was a lot of CG," says Voss. "Every ILM was tasked with creating the "fresh" dinosaurs featured in Jurassic World. VFX FOR SUMMER BLOCKBUSTERS