Cinefex Weekly Update | Issue 13

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Article by Jody Duncan

The Brady family did it. The Beverly Hillbillies did it. The bewitching Samantha Stevens is about to do it. All are characters from television series dating back 30 years or more who have made their big-screen debuts in nostalgia-driven films.

In 2002, a six-foot-tall, animated Great Dane with a speech impediment and a penchant for mischief joined their ranks with the release of Scooby-Doo, a feature-film spinoff of the Hanna-Barbera cartoon. Director Raja Gosnell, visual effects supervisor Peter Crosman and effects studio Rhythm & Hues reteamed to create the 2004 sequel, Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed, which, like the debut film, featured a computer generated Scooby-Doo interacting within live environments and with live actors.

Rhythm & Hues completed more than 400 shots for the film, among them 70 shots for a scene in which Scooby-Doo -- disguised in seventies-vintage afro, suit and platform shoes -- goes undercover in a nightclub and breaks into a disco dance to rival John Travolta's moves in Saturday Night Fever.

To create the dance sequence, Gosnell and Crosman decided to shoot a live performer on the set, then track a computer generated Scooby head to the dancer's body. "A real dancer gave Raja someone to direct," said Rhythm & Hues visual effects supervisor Betsy Paterson, "and gave the choreographer someone to work out the dance routine with. Also, Scooby was going to be surrounded by extras who were not accustomed to acting with an invisible CG character. We felt it would help them to have a real person to focus on and interact with."

To approximate the dimensions and body shape of Scooby, production incorporated prosthetics into the dancer's disco suit. Leg prosthetics gave her a canine bulked-out thigh and backward-facing 'ankle' joint situated mid-leg. "We also built up the chest area of the suit to create the barrel-chested look of a dog," said Paterson, "and she wore prosthetic paws on her hands. We wound up having to scale back the prosthetics a bit, because when she wore everything to build her up to Scooby's real proportions, she wasn't able to dance." To facilitate the postproduction attachment of the Scooby head, the dancer wore a white hood that was velcroed inside the suit's collar. "That gave us a smooth piece to roto against when we had to 'cut out' her head and replace it with Scooby's." Because Scooby is taller than the dancer, production attached a crude antenna piece to the top of the hood to approximate the appropriate eyelines.

Using its proprietary Voodoo software package, Rhythm & Hues tracked the CG Scooby head to the performer in the plate -- just the first step in marrying the head to the live-action body. "When it came out of tracking," said Paterson, "the head was attached to the body, but it was stiff -- like someone who has broken their neck and is wearing one of those big collars. Since the suit had an open collar, and you could see Scooby's chest and neck, those had to be tracked to the body and the suit, as well. We cyberscanned the disco suit, hand-tracked that to the suit in the picture, then attached to it a deformed model of Scooby's neck and chest area."

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Animators -- under animation director Leon Joosen -- animated the neck and head to follow the dancer's movements, and also created facial expressions to match body language and attitude. "The body was there and the performance was set," said Paterson, "so we had to make sure that the attitude in Scooby's expressions reflected what the body was doing." Matching the animation to the live performance became more challenging when on-set gags were rethought in postproduction. "We were rewriting Scooby's gags throughout production and beyond; and so, quite often we needed Scooby to do things that hadn't even been thought of on the set. We would have to take an action that had been intended for one thing while we were shooting, and make it work for this new gag that had been conceived."

One example of retrofitting action was a scene in which Scooby, at the nightclub bar, was to lean over to slurp up a patron's drink. In post, that gag was changed to Scooby popping pickled eggs into his mouth, and then, in distaste, spitting them out into the man's drink. "In the plate," said Paterson, "the body just bent over very stealthily, as if Scooby was sneaking his tongue into someone's beer. We had to find just the right moment in the take to make that movement work for the new spitting action -- which was less stealthy and more forceful."

Throughout the scene, Rhythm & Hues used its custom hair program to create Scooby's fur and afro wig. "Scooby has longer hair in this movie," Paterson noted. "In the first movie, he was smoother and looked more like a real Great Dane. But the studio wanted his fur shaggier and longer this time. It made him look a little less smooth, less clean, less CG. Longer hair meant messier hair, which went better with Scooby's character."

It is a truism of the movie business that one learns how to make a film in the process of making it; and when the next film comes along, the learning curve resets at the starting point. With Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed, the artists at Rhythm & Hues had the rare opportunity to apply everything they had learned on the original film to the sequel. "It was great to be able to do a show, having had the first one to practice on!" Paterson said. "It was a second chance to do everything right and to perfect everything we'd learned."

Compiled by Joe Fordham

Visual Effects Society Festival: The Visual Effects Society announced that it will hold its 6th Annual Festival of Visual Effects June 18-20 in San Rafael, California. The three-day event features presentations and panel discussions by visual effects professionals. Among other topics, this year's agenda will highlight the work done on Shrek 2, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, The Day After Tomorrow, Troy, Van Helsing and Around the World in 80 Days. For ticket and ordering information, click here.
The Terminal: Variety reports Steven Spielberg will present his upcoming 'dramedy' at the 61st Venice Film Festival, September 1-11, per the festival's artistic director Marco Muller. The film -- which tells the tale of bewildered Eastern European immigrant Victor Navorski (Tom Hanks) stranded at a New York airport -- is set for a domestic release from Dreamworks June 18. Click here for a look at the trailer.
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: The Hollywood Reporter states that John Malkovich will play religious cult leader 'Humma Kavula' in Spyglass Entertainment and Walt Disney Pictures' upcoming adaptation of Douglas Adams' science fiction satire about Arthur Dent, the pajamaed Brit displaced from his London home after earth is demolished by aliens to make way for an intergalactic bypass. Kavula was not part of the original BBC radio show, novelization or subsequent television series, and was reportedly created by Adams for the screenplay, completed before the author's death in 2001. Karey Kirkpatrick and Robert Ben Garant have subsequently contributed to the screenplay, which director Garth Jennings is scheduled to start shooting in London this month. Mos Def, Zooey Deschanel, Sam Rockwell and Martin Freeman also star.
3000 Degrees: Comingsoon.com and The Hollywood Reporter announced that Warner Brothers and Imagine Entertainment have axed production of this firefighting drama based on a real-life incident, amidst protests from firefighters who objected on behalf of the families involved in the tragedy. The studio issued a press release stating: "The process of making a film of this size and scope is complex and demanding, and requires the support and participation of many groups, including various firefighting organizations and a number of individuals. Due to circumstances beyond our control, we no longer have such support. We have therefore decided not to move ahead with this project at this time."
Thunderbirds: Click here to view the most revealing trailer yet for Jonathan Frakes' upcoming feature film adaptation of Gerry Anderson's 1960s puppet show, featuring Framestore CFC's shiny rocket ships, a secret island base and space station explosions, with an evil Ben Kingsley as The Hood and a very straight-shooting Bill Paxton as International Rescue leader Jeff Tracy, father of the five Thunderbird crusaders. The Universal Pictures film is due out August 6.
Chicken Little: Click here to see a Movie-list.net presentation of a teaser trailer for Walt Disney Feature Animation's first all-CG solo feature. Disney fansite Magicalears.com lists the director as Mark Dindal, with Zach Braff as the voice of Chicken Little, and reports that the film is scheduled for release July 2005.
The Wind in the Willows: The Hollywood Reporter states Walt Disney Studios has commissioned screenwriter Mark Friedman to write an adaptation of Kenneth Grahame's novel starring Mr. Toad, Mole and Badger, first adapted by Disney as an animated short in 1949. Producers Neal Moritz and Amanda Cohen, of Original Films, and Corey May and M. Dooma Wendschuh, of SekretAgent Productions, are planning to mount the film as a mixture of live-action and CG animation. There is no mention of a director.
The Chronicles of Riddick: Click here to see a trailer for Universal and writer/director David Twohy's Pitch Black prequel, more epic and more mysterious than its creature-feature predecessor. Vin Diesel is back as the gravel-voiced, steely-eyed, space-faring title character; but he is accompanied this time by Frank-Herbert-style desert civilizations and fleets of war-mongering spaceships. Internet spies have been chiming in with unauthorized reviews published recently at AICN, based on studio test screenings, and reactions have been mostly positive.
Hoyt Yeatman: An Animation World Network story reports that Dream Quest veteran visual effects supervisor Hoyt Yeatman has formed his own animation company, Whamaphram Productions. The Burbank studio will reportedly specialize in animated and hybrid CG/live-action films. Variety reports that Yeatman and producer David James have already been pitching their first project G-Force, a live-action family adventure about a National Security Agency secret unit of intelligent, talking animals. Yeatman is planning to direct the film, and is quoted: "We are all witnessing the natural evolution of visual effects houses becoming more involved with CG-animated features and content development. What is going to decide who crawls out of the pond alive will be which companies can develop and create interesting characters and compelling stories for a reasonable cost."
Disney Animation: Click here for a CNN story examining the trend toward CG animation and predicting the end of the road for Disney's cel animation department. This is despite the release of the studio's recent Home on the Range cel animation barnyard comedy, which took in $8.1 million in its opening weekend. The article does not mention the facility's extensive use of digital technology in their animation pipeline, which has been streamlining the technical process for years.
Skeletons on the Zahara: Variety reports Intermedia and DreamWorks are developing a movie adaptation of this nonfiction book by Dean King, which tells the story of a group of American sailors who were shipwrecked off the coast of North Africa in 1815, captured by the Bedouins and sold into slavery. The screenplay is by Carlo Bernard and Doug Miro. DreamWorks will distribute the film and Intermedia will produce with Baltimore/Spring Creek producers Paula Weinstein and Barry Levinson. No director or cast have been announced, but shooting is expected to begin at the end of the year.
The Incredibles: Yahoo Movies announced that The Incredibles, a Disney/Pixar CG superhero comedy, directed by Brad Bird, will be released on November 5, 2004, while another CG animated film -- the final one in Disney's production deal with Pixar Animation Studios -- is planned for a November 4, 2005 release. This seventh feature from Steve Jobs' CG animation powerhouse is called Cars, and will be directed by John Lasseter.