Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/7700
40 Post • March 2010 www.postmagazine.com "We used Panasonic Varicams," Jarrett recalls of the 28-day shoot throughout 10 Eu- ropean cities. "We had to find [a] balance. For the guys I work with, they consider it a fairly good run- and-gun camera. It's not too heavy and they can store it. It travels pretty well and still brings back an amazing HD image." The decision to shoot the first season in standard definition was driven by budgets, says Jarrett, but they were able to move up to HD for the second season without adding much more expense. "There are always going to be color correction issues," he says of SD footage. "We found that the extra costs of the [HD] camera rental and tape stock, all of that gets offset because there is not a 'bumping up' process later." The crew consisted of two DPs and two audio en- gineers, along with a tech supervisor who was there to troubleshoot equipment issues. As the director, Jar- rett was also on location for both tours. All of the production gear, as well as the talent, comes from Be- yond Our Reality (www.beyondourreality.com). Jarrett was able to secure the same production team for Season 2 as he had for Season 1, and that helped considerably. They were used to working to- gether on a crowded tour bus, and also gained the trust of the Jonas brothers themselves. When they landed in Milan to begin work on the second season, Jarrett says they were able to begin shooting almost immediately, thanks to the comfort level. The challenge of producing this show had less to do with the fact that the production team was over seas — they brought NTSC cameras with them — and more to do with the constant travel of the tour itself. "When you are on a tour like that, and are not in any city for more than a day, the challenges become the things you take for granted, like charging batteries to full capacity," says Jarrett. "It was all of the logistic things that come with traveling in Europe that make the shoot really challenging." The first season of shor ts averaged in length around five minutes each and ran at scheduled times, making them appear more as programming than as interstitials. Fifteen shorts were produced and posted for broadcast on Disney Channel, and another two were created exclusively for the Web. The second season would follow a similar structure, and like the first season, was posted entirely at PostWorks in New York City. In fact, Jarrett Creative Group is located in the same building as PostWorks on Sixth Avenue. "We do so much post that we've been working al- most exclusively with PostWorks over the past four years," says Jarrett. "They have been great with us and we have an amazing office space. They love the work that we bring them and we love their facilities, so it's the best of both worlds." Jarrett Creative Group will rent out space for edi- torial — usually on a weekly basis — with a three- month window for posting the Jonas Brothers pro- ject. The show makes use of two rooms, each equipped with an Avid editing system, and is cut by editors that Jarrett has on his trusty list of freelancers. "It's pretty tough," he says of the editing schedule. "Even though they are shorter blocks, we treat them as if they are full episodes in terms of story and the content. They still have a beginning, middle and end. They are much closer to how you would produce a reality show than to any sor t of shor t-form promo. This season, we probably shot anywhere between 200 to 250 hours. When all is said and done, there might be up to 90 minutes of content." The show is finished on an Avid Nitris system at PostWorks, but the program's logo and graphics were created outside the studio. "Disney will design, in-house, the general look and logo, but then we as a production company have a designer — Merge Creative — and we do all of our graphics and animation through them," says Jarrett. And while shooting unscripted events on the road presents its challenges, Disney still demands the same high production quality as the rest of its programming. "It has to feel polished, and has to match the tone of Disney programming," says Jarrett, "but is also has to match Jonas Brothers programming, which is really high end." [ cont. from 25 ] R E A L I T Y T V little snap to it that's not quite real. We star ted off with a basic foundation with the motion capture, but we readily realized we don't want to use this, it's not all that interesting, so we started moving away from it." POST: I know they were all challenging, but can you describe one of the most difficult effects sequences? RALSTON: "There is a scene where the Mad Hatter is being brought into an arena — essentially an execution scene — and it's filled with people on the ground and in the balconies. The Red Queen is up on a balcony surrounded by her sycophants. Down below there are animals mixed in with the people and you have the all-CG executioner. Stayne is down there. It's an entire CG environment with lots of live actors thrown in wearing weird costumes — quite a few of them spread all over the place. It was just a complicated combination of live-action el- ements, CG elements, CG characters and making the lighting look interesting and feel like a live-action mo- ment, even though every image you are seeing is so strangely surreal. "It was all a huge challenge. When we shot the principals, like the Red Queen and Hatter, none of the other background people were shot. Although we did have voice talent in green outfits to do their versions of the Cheshire Cat, the Caterpillar, and all the other characters. When you see this scene, keep in mind the Red Queen is sitting on a throne that wasn't there, in a balcony that wasn't there and surrounded by people who weren't there. It was really just Helena with a couple of people in green outfits and everyone else was shot about a month or two later once we had an idea of the cuts we wanted to use. That's the same for all the people on the ground. It was all at a later shoot, so it all had to match the live action stuff we shot months earlier." POST: Any other things come to mind? RALSTON: "The combination of things was so dif- ficult. It was a mixed bag of interesting tricks. The shrinking/growing shots with Alice were very compli- cated because some of it is a CG Alice and some of it is a live Alice wearing a CG dress that's growing when she's shrinking or shrinking when she's growing. The costumes are all CG too and simulated on a lot of the characters. Trying to make it look like Stayne is really wearing that CG cape. "All the different atmospheric effects — ever y shot is crammed with a lot of different tricks to give you a sense of interaction of the characters within those worlds and to help you feel like you are there…and not distracting you from the story." POST: Did other houses work on the film? RALSTON: "We did most of the effects work. Other houses were helping on the 3D conversion, al- though Café FX did some shots. A movie like this is ver y hard to break up into vignettes or sequences that aren't tied together because of all these charac- ters — you are designing and developing and lighting and finding exactly how they should look. It's hard to pass it off to someone else because no one has the same proprietar y software to make it look the way you want it to." POST: How is the 3D conversion process? RALSTON: "We are in the last throes of ever y- thing. In fact, we still have a couple of 2D shots to final in the next couple of days. It's all happening in parallel. They are all done at the same time when possible, so when scenes are finishing and shots are finaled we're moving them right into the 3D realm. We couldn't wait to start it or it would never get done. "It's difficult, but working ver y well. We actually shot tests in 3D and Tim and I were debating the dif- ficulties of that on a movie this shor t and the com- plexity technically, and also making it all come to- gether later in a satisfying way. Basically, for most of the movie we are surrounding our actors that we are shooting greenscreen in a CG environment and building both eyes, left and right. So if we do a con- version on them and plop them into this CG world, I don't think you will ever know we are doing this. It will look exactly like if we had shot it real 3D. It just won't take as long." POST: Is all the 3D work being done at Imageworks? RALSTON: "We are doing a lot of it here. InThree helped dimensionalize the 'bookends' of the film, as did Sassoon Film Design. Legend3D helped with the Wonderland part." Disney's Alice in Wonderland hit theaters March 5. [ cont. from 15 ] A L I C E I N W O N D E R L A N D