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BITS & PIECES www.postmagazine.com 6 POST JULY 2016 PREVIS PUSHES THE BOUNDARIES LOS ANGELES — Being able to visualize and plan a film has become essential. Here's a look at how previs teams at The Third Floor (www.thethirdfloorinc. com) helped meet a range of challenges on some very different projects, in- cluding Captain America: Civil War, Warcraft and The Jungle Book. CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR Marvel's Captain America: Civil War has all the action you would expect in a superhero movie, with an additional twist: The good guys fight each other. Under previs/postvis supervisor Gerardo Ramirez and previs supervisor Austin Bonang, The Third Floor's teams were tapped to help map story flow and technical parameters for the main set pieces and explore ways characters and powers might clash. The "Airport Battle" was the most challenging due to its large number of characters and logistics. "Each beat needed a cause and effect, and a way for characters to get from point A to point B," says Bonang. "Working with visual effects supervisor Dan Deleeuw, we built a fictional movie layout for the airport, with assets that could be moved interactively to create the ideal layout for the story the filmmakers needed to tell." The team additionally staged virtual matchups between superheroes. "We would pair them off and try to imagine the best, most different combinations," Bonang says. "How would Falcon fight Giant Man, or Wanda battle Black Panther? How could we get from one fight to the next and switch opponents while keeping the main directive of the two teams intact?" For the "Splash Panel" scene, the previs also had to reflect the motivations of each character. "Black Panther was out for revenge, Vision was trying to calm the situation, Spider-Man wanted to prove himself and Captain just needed to get Bucky out of there," says Ramirez. "Here, you have a group of superheroes with usually deadly powers — how could you keep the stakes high without it looking like they were actually trying to kill each other?" Previs models and environments were created in Autodesk's Maya based on concept art, storyboards, set designs and location surveys. The previs was an- imated using motion capture for some of the ground-based action scenes and hand-keyed animation for specific story moments. When filming wrapped, The Third Floor collaborated with the editors to create postvis composites with CG elements and the live plates. WARCRAFT To help realize Warcraft, The Third Floor worked alongside director Duncan Jones and visual effects supervisor Bill Westenhofer to visualize action and story arcs for the film's Orc and human characters based on the script and storyboards. The previs sequences, which in some cases were taken to the set and used as a guide for the shoot and for virtual production, included blocking for action, choreography, camera and effects. To add realism to the previs and accelerate previs animation, the previs team recorded motion capture in-house, with artists jumping from the computer into motion-capture suits. "Beyond the large set pieces and visual effects sequences, a big part of vi- sualizing this movie was being able to effectively block complex shots between Orcs and humans for Duncan," says previs/postvis supervisor Shawn Hull. In another phase of production, the team used low-res versions of final CG characters and the actors' motion-capture performances to create an accurate silhouette for postvis. "This really helped depict the relationship between Orc and human interaction and scale," Hull says. THE JUNGLE BOOK As a project realized extensively through virtual production, The Jungle Book presented a unique assignment for The Third Floor, not as a traditional previs unit, but within the film's virtual art department. With the movie being acted almost exclusively with bluescreen or greenscreen, the filmmakers needed a way to approve key environments and give others a view of those settings before going to the stage. So working from concept art, Brian Pace and a group of artists created 3D digital environments for the director and produc- tion designer to review. "We paid a lot of attention to the color palette, which was very important to the mood," Pace says. "For example, there are bright, healthy hues in the green- ery around Baloo's cave to highlight the characters' budding friendship. We worked closely with production designer Christopher Glass to follow concept artwork and make the environments visually rich so they could be approved and used to inform production and visual effects." The virtual environments were built in Maya. Files were created to the specifications of the motion-capture set so the virtual 3D scenes were grounded in the reality of what could be shot, and matched where the per- formers would be stepping. "Given the nature of this show, it made sense for us to use accurate measure- ments of where the mocap performers would be standing as a foundation for these environments," Pace says. "The virtual sets were modeled with respect to their real-world counterparts on the motion-capture stage, which right away solved lots of technical issues for production. Once the virtual designs were approved, they were ready for the next team to translate for use in both MotionBuilder and Photon." The 3D environments were also used for virtual scouting. In the ear- ly stages, the scenes were optimized for Viewport 2.0 in Maya, allowing changes to be made right in front of the director before committing the scene to Photon. Notable sequences included Baloo's cave (exterior), shots at the bridge to the human village, landscapes for the monkey jungle and both interiors and exteriors for the ruins where King Louie lives. For related content, see our "Summer Blockbusters" features, beginning on page 14.