Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/6960
For a teenager to think he's a Greek god is prob- ably not all that unusual, but in director Chris Columbus's latest fantasy fi lm, teenager Percy Jackson discovers that he actually is. A demigod, to be precise, the son of Poseidon. And he's only one of many mythologi- cal beings living in the 21 st century appearing in 20th Century Fox's fi lm Percy Jackson & the Olympians: e Lightning ief. Based on the fi rst book in a series of adventure/fantasy titles by Rick Riordan, the fi lm stars Logan Lerman as Percy Jackson. He and his best friend, Grover (actor Brandon Jackson), a satyr, it turns out, and An- nabeth (actor Alexandra Daddario), who learns she's the daughter of Athena, must save Jack- son's mother (Catherine Keener), return a stolen lightning bolt to Zeus (Sean Bean), and prevent a war between the gods. Various mythological beings, including Hades (Steve Coogan), Me- dusa (Uma urman), hellhounds, a Mino- taur, and a Hydra stand in his way. Kevin Mack supervised the visual eff ects, managing the work of several studios that created more than 900 shots on a tight schedule. e start date for the fi lm was April 2009; the release date is this month. "When I fi rst met with Chris, they were still writing the script," Mack says. "We started working on the shots in postproduction before he fi nished fi lming, and Chris cut the fi lm as he went. So, we've been at a dead run for a year now." At the end of postproduction, 800 shots had made it to the fi nish line. e primary racers were the artists at Digital Domain and MPC Vancouver (the Mov- ing Picture Company), with crews at Luma, Pixomondo, Rhythm & Hues, Evil Eye Pictures, Trixter Film, Rise Visual Eff ects, Method, Slash FX, Whiskey Tree, and Image Engine also joining the marathon. For previs, Columbus and Mack worked primarily with story artists at Fox in the studio's Cinedev department, although Vancouver-based Image Engine helped as well. Columbus shot most of the fi lm on greenscreen stages in Vancouver, then edited it, and did the digital intermediate work in San Francisco. Mack worked out of Columbus's San Francisco offi ces. "CineSync is a powerful tool," Mack says, referring to the software program developed by Rising Sun Research that allows people to view and annotate the same image from various loca- tions. "We were able to work remotely from a viewing environment in San Francisco, and you know, it wasn't that diff erent from working in the studio. You look at pictures and draw on them, and that's kind of how I like to work, anyway." Of the 800 visual eff ects shots in the fi lm, Digital Domain artists created approximately 320 and the crew at MPC close to 170. e rest of the studios worked on the other 310 shots, with Luma handling 88 of those, including Medusa. Uma urman plays that mythological creature; Luma added the snakes, dozens and dozens of snakes of all types and sizes, that cover her head. "It's stun- ning," Mack says. " ey have the snakes rubbing against her, caressing her. Animating the snakes was a ton of work. But, they did a fantastic job." February 2010 23 Simulations ■ ■ ■ ■ It seemed impossible that the children could defeat the Hydra (shown at left and above), especially when one severed head grows back as two, until Digital Domain animators decided that the heads hate each other. Inter- necine squabbles gave the children a fi ghting chance.