Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/57245
An even newer component on some live- action and animated feature projects is the Virtual Art Department. "Once you have your Maya previs scene files set up, you can provide directors with the ability to fly through their shoot with virtual cameras and see a version of their 3D world in place of the usual greenscreen. You can try out differ- ent shot angles and compositions and even record final framings for the film." Journey 2 is based on a Jules Verne novel and takes place on a mysterious island. Actor Josh Hutchinson returns and is joined by Dwane "The Rock" Johnson, Michael Caine and Vanessa Hutchins. They find a treasure map and set out to find this myste- rious destination — they crash land, and adventures ensue. The Third Floor, which also has an office in London, came on board in the early part of pre-production, working with visual effects supervisor Boyd Shermis and visual effects producer Randy Starr. "We created previs for five or six key scenes," reports Smith. A majority of the work focused on two major chase sequences — one involving lizards and the other giant bees. For the lizard chase, The Third Floor worked from storyboards, shaping the fairly large sequence a bit further. "The scenes had a lot of speed ramps to create a feel of accelerated or slowed down motion and it was important to nail the 3D down ahead of time," says Smith. Postvis was also provided on the bee chase using green- screen footage captured on a soundstage. "We did stereo- scopic previs and postvis, which was a really unique process for us," he says. "You set up the previs to already incorporate what the scene will look like in stereo 3D, so everyone can see the depth shot to shot. It's really evolved into a whole new era of previs where you are addressing questions like 'how far do we want this character to pop off the screen'? It's possible to provide shot-to-shot 3D score and depth cues, so when shooting begins, the production knows in advance what lenses to set up and how much separation to use on those lenses." Another process provided by The Third Floor team for Journey 2 was techvis (techni- cal visualization). "The bees are large, grandi- ose characters and the filmmakers needed to figure out how large they should be in relation to the actors. We provided scale reference diagrams that mapped out differ- ent possible size proportions. Stereoscopic postvis was done for this sequence as well and was incorporated into internal screen- ings. We wrote tools out of Maya that allowed us to work with the proper plate separation and marry that to our 3D plates." The team also used tools including After continued on page 46 PLF prevised this Kia Soul spot featuring dancing hamsters and warring robots. Method Studios provided final visual effects (bottom). See page 46 for more on PLF and the piece. S T UDIO MANAGEMENT SOF TWA R E Propel your business. 1.800.450.5740 1.818.955.9550 www.postmagazine.com www.studiosuite.com Post • March 2012 19