Cinefex Weekly Update | Issue 32

Article by Joe Fordham

In 1993, animatronic creature makers predicted the end of filmmaking as they knew it as the dinosaurs of Jurassic Park cast long shadows, portending the onset of the digital revolution. More than a decade later, Stan Winston Studio, the prosthetic and animatronic facility in Van Nuys, California, has seen the ebb and flow of hundreds of artists who survived the change, and the studio's famous black-walled conference room is now filled with denizens of dozens of films made in the interim -- including sundry apes, aliens, robots and mutants, not to mention the inhabitants of three Jurassic Parks.

Adding to the cavalcade, in 1996, Winston launched his own film and television production arm, Stan Winston Productions, which currently has close to a dozen creature-related projects in production or development, and produced the 2003 horror thriller Wrong Turn. A toy and comic book production company, Stan Winston Creatures, appeared in 2001, shortly followed by the studio's youngest production arm, Stan Winston Digital.

Led by visual effects supervisor André Bustanoby, animation supervisor Randall Rosa and art director Aaron Sims, the in-house digital effects facility grew from Winston's earlier partnership with Digital Domain. Bustanoby had previously supervised DD's visual effects for the horror comedy Lake Placid and had collaborated with Rosa on the Michael Jackson music video Ghosts, which Winston directed. Winston Studio created physical creations for both projects and, after a fruitful collaboration, planted seeds in the digital artists' minds. "The digital and physical creations all started with physical sculpts," recalled Bustanoby. "That was very satisfying from a physiological, anatomical and artistic point of view."

After leaving DD in 2001, Bustanoby and Rosa approached Winston with a proposal to create a visual effects entity at Winston Studio, with an emphasis on character animation, offering one-stop shopping for physical and digital effects. Aaron Sims integrated existing tools into the new digital pipeline, having already established a small render farm using Avid Softimage XSI for conceptualizing the futuristic 'Supermecha' robots for A.I.: Artificial Intelligence. "We used a Windows work platform and hinged our technology around XSI," said Bustanoby. "XSI was especially effective for character work and in its hookup into mental images' mental ray; so we built on that, established relationships with the software manufacturers and, at the same time, capitalized on Winston Studio's character work."

The SWD team embarked on its first production with Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, supporting Winston Studio's design of the T-1 prototype Terminator robot and the film's futuristic female nemesis, the TX. In a hybrid creative process, the studio sculpted pieces digitally, then sent the data to rapid prototyping vendors, where pieces were milled from foam. Winston artists then took the milled form into the physical sculpting studio and finished pieces in clay. Molded, painted pieces were then scanned back into the computer for further revisions. The process was occasionally reversed -- starting in clay, then scanning and adapting digitally.

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On the heels of T-1 and TX, Winston presented SWD with its first solo project: developing a creature -- sculpted by Winston Studio veteran John Rosengrant, from a design by English comic book artist Simon Bisley -- for a Stan Winston Creatures comic book action figure, Trakk. "Stan handed us a highly-detailed, 20-inch-tall sculpture," recalled Rosa, "and said: 'Make it move. You've got a month and a half.'" In that short time, SWD set up an infrastructure, recruited six additional staff, and did animation, lighting, rendering, compositing and sound mix for a 90-second trailer that presented the character at the 2002 San Diego Comic-Con and the Wizard World Chicago comic book conventions.

SWD's subsequent assignments included supplying a mechanical 'crablock' and miscellaneous effects for the Doctor Seuss adaptation, The Cat in the Hat, and generating 2D and 3D animated animal lip sync for the live-action comic strip cat comedy Garfield -- both films led by Rhythm and Hues. The projects paved the way for SWD's most demanding assignment to date -- 106 shots of exotic creatures for director Kerry Conran's upcoming period fantasy, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. "All the jobs we took on before Sky Captain increased how much work and what type of work we could do," commented Rosa. "Going from 40 or 50 shots to 106 was quite a graduation."

SWD is not restricting its focus to fantasy fare. Currently in production for an intimate character drama for director Wayne Wang, Because of Winn Dixie, the studio is carving its own niche. "We could be perceived as one of the higher end 'boutiques' that is focused on creature and character work," said Rosa. "Our vision is to be focused, but not be exclusive to the creature and character world if there are other opportunities."

Competition for an up-and-coming visual effects vendor is fierce, not only with major established effects vendors, but also with smaller vendors now offering cost-effective alternatives to filmmakers in far-flung corners of the globe. One obvious resource that separates SWD from the pack is in its founding company's lineage. "What it comes down to is creativity," stated Bustanoby. "That is the core of what Stan Winston Studio has been doing for 30 years -- creating memorable characters, and offering that in a competitive way. That is what we are really leveraging here. It's our responsibility to carry that into the computer; and I think it's where the industry is heading. A majority of vendors at Siggraph this year were offering image-based acquisition tools: digital image scanners, scanning materials and high-resolution topology. For characters, in particular, the work must look photorealistic -- but Stan has been doing that exceptionally for most of my life!"

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Compiled by Joe Fordham

Kingdom in Twilight: Uncharted Territories, the visual effects company founded by Volker Engel and Marc Weigert, is finalizing 650 visual effects for this German fantasy production, which Engel likened to The Lord of the Rings. This production is scheduled to air as a miniseries in Germany but will be released theatrically in other territories, including Britain. Internet Movie Dababase states the film was directed by Uli Edel and written by Diane Duane, Peter Morwood and Edel, based on the German myth Das Nibelungenlied -- which inspired composer Richard Wagner's Rings Cycle opera about a young blacksmith who slays a dragon and inadvertently endangers the life of a Nordic queen. Engel is visual effects director and Max Poolman is special effects supervisor.
Coronado: Volker Engel's earlier production, a South American jungle adventure thriller developed and produced entirely through Uncharted Territories, is finally getting a DVD release in the U.S. and 44 foreign territories on December 28, distributed by Blockbuster and Warner Brothers.
Ryan: Click here for a National Film Board of Canada website containing imagery and a one-minute Real Player clip of one of the star attractions at Siggraph 2004's Electronic Theatre. This strange and stunning CG-animated short film, directed by Chris Landreth, is described as a tribute to Canadian animator Ryan Larkin, "created and animated without the use of live-action footage, rotoscoping or motion capture... but instead from an original, personal, hand animated three-dimensional world which Chris calls 'psychological realism.'"
Boa Vs. Python: CHUD.com has posted clips to this direct-to-video giant serpent flick -- apparently a sequel to direct-to-video classics Boa and Python 1 and 2 -- which you can slither through in Windows Media Player here or check out more thoroughly when it is released to video stores by Sony Pictures Entertainment on August 24.
Alien Vs. Predator: On-line horror magazine Bloody-Disgusting.com reports, in an interview here with Alien Vs. Predator director Paul W.S. Anderson, that Twentieth Century Fox enforced a PG-13 certificate on the film three weeks prior to its release. Anderson is quoted, "All of the best scenes were cut," and states that the film was conceived and shot with the intention of an R-rating, hence the abbreviated running time."
Blood and Chocolate: The Hollywood Reporter states Rupert Wainright will be directing this horror story, based on a book by Annette Curtis Klause, about a teenage female werewolf who attempts to adjust to suburban living, and falls in love with a mortal 'meat-boy.'
Surf's Up: Variety reports Ash Brannon and Chris Buck are co-directing this 'mockumentary' feature for Sony Pictures Animation. The film is described as a comedy version of The Endless Summer, with penguins, set during the Penguin World Surfing Championship.
Aeon Flux: Comingsoon.com reports Paramount Pictures has begun shooting at Studio Babelsberg in Germany on this Karyn Kusama-directed film, based on the futuristic MTV animated series created by Peter Chung. Charlize Theron stars as the PVC-clad assassin sent to kill a government leader 1,000 years in the future, and Frances McDormand will play the Handler, a futuristic rebellion leader. The shoot is scheduled to wrap in November and Yahoo Movies indicates this will be a 2005 release. The Internet Movie Database lists Ellen Sommers as visual effects producer.
The Life Aquatic: Click here for a Yahoo Movies presentation of the trailer for Wes Anderson's upcoming comedy starring Bill Murray as an oceanographer with family problems and a grudge against a man-eating shark. Anderson's customarily terrific cast -- including Owen Wilson, Cate Blanchett, Willem Dafoe, Angelica Houston and Jeff Goldblum -- is joined by colorful marine creatures and visual effects created by Gray Matter FX, Edge Innovations, Look! Effects and stop-motion animator Henry Selick. Opens December 25 from Buena Vista.
Freddy Vs. Jason Vs. Ash: The Hollywood Reporter states that New Line Cinema is now in negotiations for its next franchise mix, which will unite slasher film favorites Freddy Krueger and Jason Voorhees with Ash, the chainsaw-equipped hero of Sam Raimi's Evil Dead movies. The report indicates Raimi will not direct. Krueger and Vorhees first faced off against each other in the 2003 film Freddy Vs. Jason, Kreuger with six Nightmare on Elm Street films under his belt and Vorhees with ten Friday the 13th offerings behind him.
Runaway Train: Variety reports Twentieth Century Fox has commissioned screenwriter Mark Bomback to write this story about an out-of-control locomotive 'given the Apollo 13 treatment.'
The Magic Roundabout: Variety reports Ian McKellen will provide the voice of Zebedee, the boxless jack-in-the-box character in this Pathé CG animated children's film, due for a February U.K. release.
BloodRayne: The Hollywood Reporter states Kristanna Loken and Ben Kingsley will star with Michelle Rodriguez, Matt Davis and Michael Madsen in this video game adaptation about 'a sexy supernatural huntress named BloodRayne (Loken), who hunts down and eliminates supernatural threats around the globe for a secret society called Brimstone. Uwe Boll will direct and produce.
Mission: Impossible 3: Dark Horizons reports Paramount Pictures and Cruise/Wagner Productions have announced screenwriter J.J. Abrams will direct the third Mission: Impossible feature. Abrams has previously directed episodes for Alias and Felicity, the television series he created, and for a new television series Lost. M:I-3 will star Tom Cruise, Ving Rhames, Carrie-Anne Moss, Kenneth Branagh, and Scarlett Johansson. Shooting, which was recently postponed, is now slated to begin in the summer 2005, aiming at a July 2006 release.