Essay
In my Spatial and Visual Culture module we had to give a presentation on a multimedia subject that we selected from a bag of newspaper articles. Kind of like pulling a name out of a hat but it was newspaper articles and it was a bag not a hat!
I was lucky enough to pick out an article about Kerry Conran, the director of the film Sky Captain and the World of tomorrow, a film released in 2004 that was created entirely on computer with the exception of the actors.
It all started in 1994 when Kerry Conran had the idea of a film set in 1939 where giant robots were attacking the world. He knew that it would be very hard and very expensive to film a real set that bore any resemblance to a 1939 scene so he decided that maybe it would be a good idea to actually animate the scenery and it would only be a fraction of the cost that there would be if it were all live action (somewhere in the region of fifty million dollars). So he sat down at his Mac llsi and using Electric Image, Photoshop and After Effects he started to make the film by himself. He even said “…I didn’t care in a way how long it was going to take, because I knew it was possible.”
He based his original sets on photographs of New York as he had never actually been there!
After four years he had only animated six minutes of his film.
He said “It would take five minutes to process a single frame, for a simple comp, not even 3D. Five minutes just to see any changes take place.”
Things were looking pretty bleak for Kerry. It would take film forever to animate an entire movie on his own. (Actually if the film were 90 minutes it would take 22 and a half years if he continued at that pace!)
Luckily his brother Kevin Conran showed the six minute clip to a family friend, Marsha Oglesby. She was so impressed with the work that she advised the Conrans to show the work to a friend of hers. Jon Avnet, a producer.
They sent a video tape to him containing the six minutes of footage but also included a comic book and a small plastic version of the huge robots in the film.
He was even more impressed with the work than Marsha had been and decided to take the project on.
Jon Avnet helped Kerry get a script together and was always available to help when he hit problems with the story line.
He was also responsible for casting some big name actors. The first person he cast was Jude Law by simply showing him the six minutes of footage that Kerry had created. Although Jude Law wasn’t really the real American cowboy style hero Kerry and Kevin were expecting they were happy with the choice.
Next Jon Avnet also cast Gwyneth Paltrow and Angelina Jolie, again by showing them the six minute short and explaining Kerry’s ideas to them.
Jon Avnet also set up a custom Digital effects studio in a building in Van Nuys, the porn capital of America. Marsha Oglesby said that the building was ‘a machine shop and there was sawing and drilling next door.’
Jon Avnet also set about hiring a fleet of digital artists, animators, modellers and compositors to aide Kerry.
As the people in the film were going to be real actors, Blue screen technology was to be used. However the actors would find it nearly impossible to be in the right place on the set at the right time, so there had to be a 3D storyboard created with digital stand ins of the actors. This helped the actors get their bearings and using a top down view and markings on the set floor they were able to act a lot easier.
Before filming took place, nine months before actually, Jon Avnet set up a reading of the script so that Kerry would have a chance to meet the actors, but also so that they would have recording which they could then put together with the animatics that had been created.
When it came to filming, the footage of the actors was shot using HD cameras instead of tape so that the footage could easily be obtained from the cameras using the Macs that had been used for the entire production.
Filming took just 29 days in a location in London. Kerry said that “…directing wasn’t hard with these actors. With Jude Law in particular, there was never a moment, even when he was standing in the middle of blue nothing, when you didn’t believe he was somewhere.”
Kerry also insisted that any extras in the film that did not interact with the main characters had to be shot severalty so that they could be manipulated later without having to re-shoot the entire scene.
I was lucky enough to pick out an article about Kerry Conran, the director of the film Sky Captain and the World of tomorrow, a film released in 2004 that was created entirely on computer with the exception of the actors.
It all started in 1994 when Kerry Conran had the idea of a film set in 1939 where giant robots were attacking the world. He knew that it would be very hard and very expensive to film a real set that bore any resemblance to a 1939 scene so he decided that maybe it would be a good idea to actually animate the scenery and it would only be a fraction of the cost that there would be if it were all live action (somewhere in the region of fifty million dollars). So he sat down at his Mac llsi and using Electric Image, Photoshop and After Effects he started to make the film by himself. He even said “…I didn’t care in a way how long it was going to take, because I knew it was possible.”
He based his original sets on photographs of New York as he had never actually been there!
After four years he had only animated six minutes of his film.
He said “It would take five minutes to process a single frame, for a simple comp, not even 3D. Five minutes just to see any changes take place.”
Things were looking pretty bleak for Kerry. It would take film forever to animate an entire movie on his own. (Actually if the film were 90 minutes it would take 22 and a half years if he continued at that pace!)
Luckily his brother Kevin Conran showed the six minute clip to a family friend, Marsha Oglesby. She was so impressed with the work that she advised the Conrans to show the work to a friend of hers. Jon Avnet, a producer.
They sent a video tape to him containing the six minutes of footage but also included a comic book and a small plastic version of the huge robots in the film.
He was even more impressed with the work than Marsha had been and decided to take the project on.
Jon Avnet helped Kerry get a script together and was always available to help when he hit problems with the story line.
He was also responsible for casting some big name actors. The first person he cast was Jude Law by simply showing him the six minutes of footage that Kerry had created. Although Jude Law wasn’t really the real American cowboy style hero Kerry and Kevin were expecting they were happy with the choice.
Next Jon Avnet also cast Gwyneth Paltrow and Angelina Jolie, again by showing them the six minute short and explaining Kerry’s ideas to them.
Jon Avnet also set up a custom Digital effects studio in a building in Van Nuys, the porn capital of America. Marsha Oglesby said that the building was ‘a machine shop and there was sawing and drilling next door.’
Jon Avnet also set about hiring a fleet of digital artists, animators, modellers and compositors to aide Kerry.
As the people in the film were going to be real actors, Blue screen technology was to be used. However the actors would find it nearly impossible to be in the right place on the set at the right time, so there had to be a 3D storyboard created with digital stand ins of the actors. This helped the actors get their bearings and using a top down view and markings on the set floor they were able to act a lot easier.
Before filming took place, nine months before actually, Jon Avnet set up a reading of the script so that Kerry would have a chance to meet the actors, but also so that they would have recording which they could then put together with the animatics that had been created.
When it came to filming, the footage of the actors was shot using HD cameras instead of tape so that the footage could easily be obtained from the cameras using the Macs that had been used for the entire production.
Filming took just 29 days in a location in London. Kerry said that “…directing wasn’t hard with these actors. With Jude Law in particular, there was never a moment, even when he was standing in the middle of blue nothing, when you didn’t believe he was somewhere.”
Kerry also insisted that any extras in the film that did not interact with the main characters had to be shot severalty so that they could be manipulated later without having to re-shoot the entire scene.
posted by JH at 10:42 AM
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