Cinefex Weekly Update | Issue 43

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Article by Estelle Shay

It isn't often that industry novices have an opportunity to impact a major Hollywood release, especially one that boasts A-list stars like Naomi Watts, Jude Law and Dustin Hoffman. But such was the case for visual effects supervisor Russell Barrett, visual effects producer Scott Puckett and visual effects artist Joe Kastely on I (Heart) Huckabees, a metaphysical comedy from Fox Searchlight, written and directed by David O. Russell. The three young men created all of the film's visual effects on just three Macintosh G5 computers loaded with Adobe After Effects software.

I (Heart) Huckabees follows Albert Markovski (Jason Schwartzman) as he embarks on a journey of self-discovery with cosmic implications. Troubled by a series of disturbing coincidences, Albert hires existential detectives Bernard and Vivian Jaffee (Dustin Hoffman and Lily Tomlin) to investigate, but soon finds them delving into his personal and professional relationships with disastrous results.

The visual effects, some forty shots contained in ten sequences, essentially fell into two categories -- those in the real world, and those happening in Albert's mind. The real world sequences occur at several points in the narrative, as Bernard expounds on his philosophy that everything in the universe is interconnected. As if to demonstrate that theory, characters pause briefly in mid-discussion, while small tiles -- like so many two-dimensional squares, each containing an eye, an ear, a nose or other feature -- float off their faces and intermingle before dropping out of frame. Effects in the second category occur in scenes in which Albert submits to guided meditation exercises, zipped into a sensory-deprivation, cocoon-like body bag. His thoughts take the form of cardboard-cutout memories featuring floating disembodied heads and images of his nemesis, Brad Stand (Jude Law).

In envisioning such shots, the director sought to put a modern spin on classic 2D effects like those seen in the old Monty Python's Flying Circus BBC shows and the 1980s' Talking Heads video And She Was. "David did not want anything slick," explained Barrett. "He wanted to present ideas with a simple, abstract approach. He felt he needed to convey emotions, not dazzle the eye, in order to get people thinking about what's really going on in those scenes or in Albert's mind."

Though the studio had initially contracted with an outside effects vendor for the shots, when early versions began coming in, Russell rejected the work as too polished-looking. At that point, Barrett and Scott Puckett, both of whom had pre-existing relationships with the director, stepped in. "We came up with a proposal that was an extremely cheap alternative," related Barrett, "which was to rent three G5s and do everything in After Effects. We felt all the ideas that David had, everything that he was describing, lent itself to what After Effects does best -- using two-dimensional images in a 3D world."

Barrett and Puckett proposed a test designed to convince the director that they could handle the work. "We scanned some of the show's filmed elements and produced two test shots," said Barrett, "putting them through our entire proposed process, all the way out to film. When they saw the screened tests, they said: 'You know what? You've got the job!'"

Equipped with three G5s, the duo -- joined later by Joe Kastely -- soon found themselves ensconced in a room at the back of a rented house where editing of the movie was underway. "The floating square effects were probably the least challenging of the shots," noted Barrett, "because we had hit the nail on the head with that right away. Then it was just a matter of how many squares were coming off the faces, and what the timing was when they start to dance. We tried various ways of affecting them once they came off the heads -- they change colors, start to stutter or blur, that sort of thing. But it was all the same basic idea."

Shots featuring Albert's disturbing visions were more challenging. In several scenes, Bernard attempts to guide Albert's meditation by encouraging him to picture the people in his life sitting in a tree in a field. "There was talk of making an amalgam of a real tree and a fake tree," Barrett recalled. "What we ended up doing, though, was a completely computer generated tree, textured in Photoshop with real textures. So it had this unreal cartoony quality, but still 3D." Plate photography for these and other shots was provided by director of photography Peter Deming. "Peter shot these really amazing plates. If it involved disembodied heads, he put a green collar around the actors' necks so we could separate the heads out and do whatever we wanted with them. All of the plates were shot to allow the most leeway possible, once we got them into the computer. They were shot flat, so we could add our own shadows and things."

Working in the same space where the film was being edited proved advantageous for the director, who received, on average, 35-40 versions of every sequence. "David could view a sequence, and we could go right back and make the changes he wanted, then render them out in no time at all," said Barrett. "We also came up with some homemade approaches to save money. We brought in a 50-inch high-definition monitor that dominated our little room. We found that we could hook it up to the G5s and preview all our effects in high-def, which turned out to be really helpful for finding little nicks and scratches and dust and things. It saved us a lot of money on outputting costs because we could really fine-tune the work."

"I think the thing we learned from this whole experience," Barrett concluded, "was that the technology is really getting to the point right now where you can take a do-it-yourself attitude toward visual effects. I had one class at NYU on After Effects, and I dabbled in it a little bit after I graduated. But it turned out to be the best class I ever took, because it enabled me to have the cajones to say: 'Hey, you know what? We can just do this ourselves!'"

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Compiled by Joe Fordham

The Incredibles: Variety reports Pixar's superhero comedy blasted off into 3,933 theaters on November 4, taking in an estimated $70.7 million on its opening weekend, and marking its sixth home-run in the nine years since Toy Story first knocked one out of the park in November 1995. The Hollywood Reporter notes The Incredibles had the second biggest animated film opening in history after DreamWorks' Shrek 2. Both Variety and The Hollywood Reporter are calling it Pixar's best work yet.
Cars: Buckle up and click here for candy-colored car capers in the first teaser trailer for Walt Disney Pictures' and Pixar Animation Studios' seventh CG-animated feature film, about a speed-obsessed race car, directed by John Lasseter and scheduled for release in November 2005. The trailer -- offered at Apple.com in 'compact,' 'midsize,' 'fullsize' and 'SUV' Quicktime formats -- begins playing in theaters this week with The Incredibles.
Oscar Consideration: Variety notes the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences has included The Polar Express in its list of films for consideration in the Best Animated Feature Film category this year, officially putting Sony Pictures Imageworks' ImageMotion performance capture process on the map. Other contenders include: Clifford's Really Big Movie, Disney's Teacher's Pet, Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence, Home on the Range, The Incredibles, The Legend of Buddha, Shrek 2, Shark Tale, Sky Blue and The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie. Click here for more details.
The Invisible: Variety states writer/director David Goyer will next direct this remake of the 2002 Swedish supernatural thriller, Den Osynlige. Mick Davis wrote the screenplay for the original film in English, based on a novel by Mats Wahl. Then the script was translated into Swedish and directed by Joel Bergvall and Simon Sandquist. The story focuses on two teenagers who become invisible -- one after his untimely death, the other due to the neglect she has endured since the death of her mother. Spyglass Entertainment and DreamWorks Pictures will produce the remake.
Revolver: Variety reports Sarah Michelle Gellar will star in this supernatural thriller, to be directed by Asif Kapadia for Rogue Pictures. The screenplay, by Adam Sussman, is about a saleswoman whose nightmares drive her to investigate the death of another young woman 25 years earlier.
Doll Master: Variety reports Dimension Films has acquired the rights to remake this South Korean horror film about dolls that assume their owners lives if the owners die. The original film, Inhyeongsa, opened in South Korea August 6, and was written and directed by first-time filmmaker Yong-ki Jeong.
King Kong: Should you harbor any doubts about the credentials of Universal's upcoming remake of RKO's monster classic, click here to view KongisKing.net's production diary, Day 42, in which filmmaker Peter Jackson displays treasured items from his personal collection of Kong memorabilia -- two miniature creature puppets used by Willis O'Brien in the 72-year-old RKO Pictures original. Jackson states, with obvious reverence: "These are the dinosaurs that inspired me when I was eight or nine years old, when I saw King Kong for the first time."
The Island: Click here for an article in the Detroit Free Press about location shooting for this DreamWorks/Warner Brothers futuristic thriller, directed by Michael Bay. The article describes how the production is taking advantage of local architecture and redressing downtown areas to represent Los Angeles 2044 for an elaborate car chase sequence. Click here for more behind-the-scenes photos taken by a Motor City onlooker and posted at Dark Horizons.com.
Troy: Visual effects fan site Vfxblog.com reports the widescreen 2-disc DVD release of director Wolfgang Peterson's Homer epic contains the featurette, Troy: An Effects Odyssey, including interviews with visual effects supervisor Nick Davis, director Wolfgang Petersen, writer David Benioff and second unit director/stunt coordinator Simon Crane, discussing creation of ships, Cablecam shots and battle sequences. An 'Easter Egg' hidden feature on the DVD also reportedly reveals additional visual effects tidbits. Widescreen and full-screen versions of the Region 1 DVD will be available January 4, 2005.
Transformers: Variety reports John Rogers, who last adapted Catwoman, will provide the screenplay for DreamWorks' and Paramount Pictures' live-action feature based on Hasbro's shape shifting robot toys. Steven Spielberg is executive producing for a Summer 2006 release.
Dungeons & Dragons: Variety reports Zinc Entertainment, a division of Joel Silver's Silver Pictures, is developing an as-yet-untitled third film based on the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game. Warner Brothers Pictures will release Dungeons & Dragons 2: The Elemental Might in 2005.
Tarantino Kung-Fu: The Associated Press announced filmmaker Quentin Tarantino has decided to shelve plans for his World War II film, Inglorious Bastards, and will instead next be preparing a kung-fu film in Mandarin and out-of-sync English. Tarantino is quoted: "I enjoyed shooting all the Japanese stuff in Kill Bill so much that this whole film will be entirely in Mandarin. If you're not up to watching it with subtitles, I really want to do a full-on dubbed version."
Slo-Mo: Variety reports rock star Michael Stipe and his producing partner Sandy Stern of Single Cell Pictures have optioned this spec' script written by, and to be directed by, John Krokidas. The feature will be based on a short film that Krokidas directed at New York University Film School about a writer who enters a parallel reality that operates on a slower time dimension than the real world, making it impossible for him to communicate.
City of Ember: Variety reports Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman of Playtone Productions have commissioned screenwriter Caroline Thompson to adapt Jeanne DuPrau's children's book, The City of Ember, described as a futuristic science fiction fantasy adventure with 'tentpole potential.' The story takes place in a 250-year-old underground city, built as a refuge from earth's toxic atmosphere, and revolves around two 12-year-olds -- Lina Mayfleet, who longs to venture above ground as a messenger, and Doon Harrow, who aspires to be a pipeworker, repairing the city's dwindling power supply. Gil Kenan -- currently working on his first feature film, Columbia Pictures' Monster House, using Sony Pictures Imageworks' Imagemotion performance capture process -- is slated to direct. Walden Media is co-producing and co-financing.
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe: Per ComingSoon.net, Walt Disney Pictures has announced that director Andrew Adamson's C.S. Lewis fantasy classic adaptation is moving to New Zealand's South Island this month to film a climactic battle sequence. Battle scenes are expected to take six weeks to film before production wraps in New Zealand and heads to Prague. Dean Wright is supervising visual effects, and vendors include Sony Pictures Imageworks, Rhythm & Hues, Weta Workshop and KNB EFX Group. IMDb.com lists Jason Durey and Randy Starr as special effects directors, and Martin McLaughlin as snow effects supervisor.
Fantastic Four: Click here to view a 12-picture gallery of what Inland Empire Strikes Back claims to be conceptual art for Twentieth Century Fox's upcoming live-action superhero adaptation, featuring the Fantastic Four's lounge and gymnasium, Dr. Doom's space laboratory, a 'Pogoplane' and street scenes.