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cover story very specific with his animation direction for Ted, recalls Clark. "The majority of his notes focused on the lip assignment and mouth shapes. We had to make sure they felt right. When they looked overly done, it all fell apart." Clark says that MacFarlane was extremely aware of the needs of the animators. "Seth knew exactly what he needed and what we could be flexible with and leave open to the animators to embellish. His direction was always consistent yet he didn't micro-manage. Seth was very focused and clear, and very appreciative of everyone's work." Ted's plush fur was also challenging. "Most of the shows we've done, you try to achieve realistic fur of the real animals, like wolf or cat hair," says Clark. "But those attributes pro- required. "We created the 'Stunt Stuffy' with removable limbs. That way Mark always had a physical torso to struggle with, and we could put arms or legs on it if needed." Previs played a key role in this sequence, he notes. "Before principal photography began, stunt coordinator Scott Rogers and Mark's stunt double Sean Graham got blue- prints of the hotel room and choreographed the whole scene," says Clark. "Scott shot the previs over the weekend, and edited it togeth- er. Seth loved it and used it as the template for the shoot. The whole scene was shot in two days; there was no way we could have done it without that previs." The previs process was "great for the ani- mators, too," who redid two shots in CG only Iloura — and the shot looks amazing!" The plan was to use the time-honored trick of employing cloud cover or a lap dis- solve to transition past the logo to Boston. "But [Iloura] just kept going tighter and tighter and transitioned from Universal's new night- time logo to daytime Boston — it's such an impressive shot," says Clark. One shot didn't require the VFX that Clark anticipated. "Working with DP Michael Bar- rett, Webster Colcord prevised multiple angles and shots for a concert at the Hatch Shell amphitheater in Boston, figuring that if we were lucky enough to have 150 extras we could tile them throughout the stadium for crowd replication," Clark explains. "When we got there the place was filled to capacity, and duced a look that was too coarse or bristly for Ted. It didn't have that synthetic quality to it. So Tippett and Iloura had to carefully work at it with their proprietary tools and then match each other." Finding exactly the right texture so Ted Creative Cartel's Jenny Fulle: "Seth knew he didn't want Ted to look cartoony; he had to look photoreal." would look his age — well-worn — and always integrate well in the plate during the DI was tricky. "Go too high contrast and he started looking coarse," says Clark. "Go too much the other way and Ted looked fuzzy and soft, like cotton candy." THE FIGHT Integrating Ted into some scenes proved particularly tough. After years of pent-up frus- tration John and Ted have a knock-down- drag-out fight in a hotel. "That's where we broke some physical rules," says Clark. "Ted had to been kept in the realm of a plush toy but now had to pack a punch worthy of Mark Wahlberg and, at times, have the upper hand." Clark used a "stunt" version of the Stuffy to make sure that Wahlberg would have some- thing of consistent volume to hold onto yet be free enough to perform the movements 14 Post • July 2012 to make sure that the camera wasn't panning too fast from one point to another. "It helped us to always know where Ted was and what he was doing," Clark says. On-set previs artist Webster Colcord was instrumental in blocking out many sequences, including the Fenway Park fight scene at the end of the third act. "We had limited time at Fenway — a couple of nights — and couldn't waste any, " says Clark. "Webster showed iterations to Seth during principal photography, so by the time we went to Fenway we had a solid plan." THE OPEN & CONCERT Iloura was charged with creating the pic- ture's opening shot, which punches through the Universal logo and pushes into Earth to John's childhood neighborhood in Boston, blending into production footage of a snowball fight. But a complication arose when Universal rede- signed its logo for the its 100th anniversary. "We weren't even sure if it would have any resemblance to the past Universal logo," says Clark. Thankfully, it still sported a globe. "When the new logo was finished, we were almost out of time, but the files were sent directly to www.postmagazine.com the crowd stayed for the whole shoot. So we didn't need to do a single comp. Everyone was thrilled to be involved." MacFarlane's impromptu turns at the mic, trivia contests and songs by Wahlberg served as a thank you to the people of Boston for turning out. According to Jenny Fulle, "it's incredible what's not difficult to do anymore." Not that Ted was easy. Expectations were high, and the audience needs to suspend disbelief, which meant Ted had to be real to them. "I'm a big believer that the old ways of doing VFX are not as valid as the new ones," she says. "You can do them for a lot less money, be smarter and not compromise along the way. Ted vali- dates the idea of thinking outside the box." Blair Clark says throughout the film he kept hearing that people were "having so much fun. Ted spoiled us. We hated to see it end." Fulle bought into the visual effects so com- pletely that she had to keep telling herself that Ted was not real. "Both Tippett Studio and Iloura did amazing work. Ted is someone I'd like to invite to my Oscar party next February. Maybe Ted will arrive with a statuette of " his own.