Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/5474
"I wanted to gauge the production's abil- ity to utilize previs as soon as possible, so we would know how to schedule it in if necessary," says Hayes. Once the job was awarded, e Or- phanage's animation supervisor, Webster Colcord, worked with a couple of anima- tors at e Orphanage on several of the big sequences. e previs work was done using Autodesk's Maya. "As the show progressed, I ended up do- ing previs on set, on my 17-inch MacBook Pro, which was helpful for discussing lo- gistic requirements with the crew," Hayes points out. "ey say a picture is worth a thousand words. When you don't speak the language, it's worth a lot more." In November 2007, Hayes flew to China to meet with Woo in his produc- tion office—and didn't leave there for three days. "At this initial point, we ap- proached it like a normal production," says Hayes. "I pretended to be an AD and asked who was going to do this or that. I would make suggestions for what the art department could build and walked through the storyboard talking about how we'd achieve everything. I was very excited not only to work with John Woo, but also to be in China." It was then that Hayes, who had been a free agent, joined the staff of e Orphan- age. "It was a unique opportunity to both work in a facility and on the production at the same time," he says. "e up side is you have more flexibility to horse-trade with your own guys on the production." On the next trip to China, Hayes brought along a couple of animators from December 2009 43 Visual Effects n n n n Images courtesy Magnet Releasing.