Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/9707
VFX FOR TELEVISION [ cont. from 30 ] “The television business is becoming the lead innovator in [VFX] because we can move so much faster,” says Nicholson. As far as he’s concerned, effects-driven filmmakers need to start paying more attention to broadcast TV.“The in- novations that we do in television are actually going Stargate founder Sam Nicholson in Mumbai while shooting 360-degree locations for a new sitcom called Outsourced. to start appearing in feature films now. Digital imaging is all about television.” Based in Pasadena and Vancouver, Stargate Studios (www.stargatestudios.net) has provided VFX for nu- merous TV episodics, including 24, Heroes, Grey’s Anatomy, ER and CSI: New York. Nicholson’s early background is in film and optical printing. While he recalls optical printing as “a pain,” Nicholson allows that today’s digital processes are evolved from the old techniques. But what’s done today has been completely enabled by digital technol- ogy, he says, adding,“Where it’s going is completely off the charts.” For gathering location footage, Nicholson shoots Canon cameras exclusively:“The 1D, 5D, 7D — still cameras that shoot motion in high def.” Regarding Outsourced, he says, “Traditionally pilots don’t have enough time and money — particularly in the half- hour format — to go a lot of places. But this is the way we’re ‘opening up’ the show and making it stand out — it’ll look like they’re in Mumbai each week.” To shoot a 360-degree environment for use on Outsourced Nicholson and crew set up an array of eight Canon cameras: “When we’re driving, we’re looking straight for- ward, straight back, side- ways, three-quarter-front, three-quarter-back and reflection passes, all rigged on a car in traffic.We get a 360-degree view of most of the places we shoot; then we can go [to LA] and remap that onto a three-dimensional set. It allows you full freedom of camera movement, hand- held, as if you were really shooting a scene and wanted to walk around someone.” Once the footage is back at Stargate Studios the plan is to mount an auto-rickshaw (a three-wheeled moped popular in India) onto a turntable on a green- screen stage.“We have a stage specifically built for shooting realtime visual effects on greenscreen. It’ll look like we’re doing 360’s around an auto-rickshaw.” So there’s your Mumbai. On the greenscreen stage Nicholson shoots Sony F-35s and is getting into the new Alexa camera from Arri — both digital cameras are designed to emulate 35mm.The camera operators can circle the actors in the rickshaw with the Mumbai location footage pro- viding a backdrop from every side.“The plates that I shoot [in Mumbai] will be streaming in realtime and be composited so the actors can look out the win- dows and see ‘where they are’ in Mumbai — which is a tremendous help for acting and for directing.”To ac- complish this, Nicholson needs to be extremely thor- ough on location and shoot the scene from every conceivable angle — close-ups, wides, establishing shots, etc. — without the actors. By contrast, a show like Heroes requires labor-in- tensive post production to depict a virtual environ- ment like a devastated New York City or to create a photoreal virtual human being. Meanwhile, Nicholson says, “in 24, we’ve been putting New York in this en- tire season and the actors have not had to travel to New York.Wouldn’t it be cool if you could go out in a backlot and take a camera and look up in the air and New York was there? Or Paris or London? That’s what this is and we’re seeing it now in realtime, which is what’s so exciting onstage.We don’t have to wait for weeks to see every painstaking composite done — we’re compositing live onstage.” Stargate uses After Effects for compositing and Maya and LightWave for CG. Outside LA, Nicholson has digital artists set up in the Vancouver sister-shop as well as talent working in Toronto, Malta and Mum- bai. All can communicate and collaborate easily using a proprietary Stargate program called VOS — Virtual Operating System. Back in Mumbai Nicholson has trained people ready to feed him additional 360-degree plates for upcoming scenes in Outsourced. He’s also planning to set up an official Stargate India facility to provide out- sourced back plates etc. Stargate is presently creating a “Virtual Backlot” set that will be square miles in size with shops and build- ings that you can virtually enter — a “3D virtual real- ity that looks photoreal. It’s essentially texture- wrapped reality — wrapped like wallpaper onto a CG environment.” Nicholson asserts that the age of punishing writers for writing “unproduceable” scenes is coming to a close.“The innovations that come out of television are going to be absolutely stunning over the next 10 years.There are some very exciting things coming down the pipeline — ambitious filmmaking that’s never been tried before in television.” THE P ACIFIC [ cont. from 20 ] effects library — thousands and thousands of choices — so that was the basis of what you hear. But, obviously, we added Foley. Every episode has a huge amount of Foley because we really wanted to hear the foot- steps, in the battle scenes, of the men running across the field.You would hear their sacks and guns rattle, so all of that was added in post. Pretty much everything you hear was replaced through the library.The gunshots, explosions, and canons were shot on-set, but [were] replaced for creative and realistic concerns.” POST: How long did you have to complete it? BELLFORT: “We ultimately worked for 38 weeks, so it was a total of nine months from start to finish.The schedule was originally two months shorter than that, but because of changes by the picture department, it took us longer.” POST: What are you using for editorial? BELLFORT: “[We’re] all on [Mac-based Digidesign] Pro Tools, and all of the el- ements that we grab are on a master server at Soundelux.” POST: Did the final mix take place at Lantana? BELLFORT: “[Yes, with] the tremendously gifted Michael Minkler. He’s won three Oscars [Dreamgirls, Chicago, Black Hawk Down]. I’ve won one, so it was 50 Post • April 2010 www.postmagazine.com pretty much the ‘A Team’ selected for this job.” POST:With so many sound effects, did you perform panning prior to the mix? BELLFORT: “The main effects editor, Ben Cook, did a lot of panning, level work and 5.1 because we had so many tracks running at the same time and so little time to mix.We were somewhere between television and feature in terms of the time to mix all of these elements, so we were pretty much compelled to premix 5.1 stems or sessions.We’d have it consolidated and Mike Minkler would decide if he wanted to change things. Obviously, he had a tremendous amount of creative input, so if he didn’t like something, he could undo it. But for the sake of streamlin- ing,we attempted to come in with a 5.1 for Mike to be able to work with.” POST: What were you trying to achieve forThe Pacific’s soundtrack? BELLFORT: “I would say that our job as sound editors on this series was to create an envelope, a soundscape that put the viewer viscerally inside the soldiers’ experience and reality as they marched from island to island. And the attempt to recreate that environment that dealt with heat, rain,mud and fear.That was really our goal — to create — viscerally — that environment sonically. It was a big chal- lenge and hopefully what we achieved.”