Cinefex Weekly Update | Issue 46

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Article by Joe Fordham

In the opening of Miramax, Universal and Working Title Films' Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason, thirty-something Jones (Renée Zellweger) returns to her London media job, buoyant and in love, and passes a Piccadilly Circus Coca Cola sign that proclaims 'Mark and Bridget: It's the Real Thing.' Overseen by visual effects supervisor Jody Johnson at Double Negative, the effect was one of 12 designed to augment the film's quirky British wit. "The film was set in the real world but had odd moments of heightened reality," said Alex Hope, Double Negative managing director and visual effects producer. "The director, Beeban Kidron, wanted little moments of whimsy with a lovely light touch."

Kidron commissioned storyboard artist Tony Chance to conceptualize the most ambitious effect -- the 'lonely people' shot, which, midway through the film, depicts a lonely and unloved Jones after having split with her boyfriend. "Bridget is at her window smoking a fag," related Alex Hope. "The camera pulls back and, in Tony's storyboards, reveals an Alice in Wonderland view of very tall, elongated houses with happy, loving couples in hundreds of windows. Then we crane down to find Mark Darcy, Bridget's boyfriend, equally alone, walking through a park. It was a great idea; but the question was how to turn this fantastic concept into a shot that would work in a non-effects film."

For the opening of the scene, pulling back from Jones' window, production designer Gemma Jackson selected a location in South East London to represent Jones' apartment exterior -- a picturesque residence above a drinking establishment in Borough Market, previously seen in the Harry Potter films as the Leaky Cauldron wizard pub. The location did not afford easy access for a camera crane, so Double Negative took position on a neighboring rooftop using a motion control rig operated by Ben Goldschmidt and Ian Menzies and filmed tiled plates of the pub façade, shooting repeated zoom-backs of the left and right side of the building, sans Bridget.

To place Jones in her window, disconsolate with cigarette, the production built an exterior window portion on Jones' bedroom set and staged a second motion control shoot. Previz determined that the camera move, starting tight on Zellweger's eyes and then pulling back, held the actress in frame for approximately 700 frames, requiring a track of several hundred feet -- far exceeding the parameters of the Ealing Studios stage. Double Negative and motion control cameraman Ben Goldschmidt catered to the problem using a Milo rig on a 30-foot track, extended with CG. "We swung the camera back the first ten feet," explained Alex Hope, "then, as we tracked back, we feathered into an 'x' and 'y' move on the pan and tilt head. This gave us the perspective change we needed on Renée and, as we lost the 'z' track back, we blended into projections of her against the room interior."

Double Negative shot Zellweger in the bedroom window, then a repeat pass without the actress, and conducted a photographic survey of the bedroom set. Digital artists then took the first 300 frames of Zellweger in the window, rotoscoped and blended this to a 3D model of the bedroom set, created using camera projections and paint effects, and composited the element into the Borough Market pub exterior.

For the journey across the rooftops, Double Negative created a digital city from a photo-collage of structures. Artists photographed 500 buildings, representing locations that captured the romantic spirit of city, while avoiding clichéd tourist landmarks. "We've lived in London all our lives," said Alex Hope, "and we wanted it to feel like the city we grew up in."

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Matte painters Diccon Alexander and Alban Orlhiac mapped buildings to 3D geometry laid out on a footprint of city streets obtained from 1:5,000-scale Ordnance Survey maps, then augmented textures with matte-painted cracks, moss, paint stains and rust, and added a matte-painted sky, projected onto a dome with animated layers of cloud and an orange horizon glow. Artists then populated the city with live-action window elements.

"The complicated part was shooting elements to insert into our CG buildings," commented Hope. "The camera covered five city blocks, moving at 30 miles per hour, so we figured we needed at least 70 elements, 40 of which had to be motion controlled, and we had seven days to shoot them." Double Negative determined 'z' tracking moves would again be impossible to achieve in the space available and so developed alternative 'aimed camera moves' in previz, which they then imported to Menzies' Milo rig. "As the camera traveled back, we translated our 'z' axis motion to our 'x' and 'y' axes, rotating around our subjects. That gave us the parallax we needed; then we placed the people onto 3D cards and composited them in Shake."

Double Negative used frame-grabs of canoodling couples, photographed against bluescreen, to check perspectives and timings against previz on set. A second camera captured static views of each element, which compositors used for distant windows, where parallax was less apparent. Artists then composited vignettes into CG rooms and tracked elements into buildings.

The camera finally descends into live-action of Darcy (Colin Firth), filmed on location in the Hanwell Cemetery in West London. Director of photography Adrian Biddle set timings with a Super Technocrane move. CG supervisor Pieter Warmington then used the edge of Hanwell Chapel as a wipe from CG, and softened the transition with 3D trees. CG supervisor Rick Leary completed assembly of the shot, adding digital set extensions to transform the cemetery into a Notting Hill park square, with keyframe animation of a flight of birds, a rickety London taxicab and a passing double-decker bus.

One year in production, the final shot lasted 65 seconds -- a sophisticated centerpiece in an otherwise warm and fuzzy comedy. "A shot like this in a film like this doesn't come along very often," Hope concluded. "Working Title was committed to having one big moment in the film, and Beeban took real ownership of the shot, which enhanced the story by emphasizing the sense of melancholy in a comedy. I think more directors are seeing opportunities for using visual effects in this way. It's great to see that happening."

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Compiled by Joe Fordham

Evil Eye Pictures: John Jack, Dan Rosen and Matt McDonald -- three veterans of ESC Entertainment, the visual effects facility initially founded to produce visual effects for the Matrix films -- have formed a new studio, located in the San Francisco Bay area. Click here for more information on the formation of Evil Eye.
The Chronicles of Narnia: Click here to view a Dark Horizons presentation of conceptual art from director Andrew Adamson's upcoming adaptation of C.S. Lewis' fantasy novels.
King Kong: Click here for a Newsweek feature and conceptual art from director Peter Jackson's upcoming adaptation of RKO Pictures' giant ape classic.
The Dive: The Hollywood Reporter states that screenwriter Dana Stevens is adapting this story about free divers Francisco 'Pipin' Ferreras and his wife, Audrey Mestre, for filmmaker James Cameron and Twentieth Century Fox. Cameron's production company, Lightstorm Entertainment, acquired the rights to Ferreras' story and a Sports Illustrated cover story about the diver who set a world record for diving more than 520 feet while holding a single breath of air in his lungs. Click here for potential story 'spoilers' and more information about Ferreras' autobiography, published by Harper Collins.
Aliens of the Deep: Click here for a trailer to James Cameron's upcoming Imax 3D documentary, which plunges audiences into the ocean's depths, two and a half miles below the surface. The trailer also offers glimpses of a speculative journey beneath the frozen surface of an extraterrestrial planet. Opening in Imax theaters January 28, 2005.
Alexander: Click here for an article at VFXWorld.com on the work of BUF Compagnie and The Moving Picture Company for Oliver Stone's Macedonian warlord epic. BUF's contributions included Alexander's sweeping tumultuous battle against the Persian army at Gaugamela, eye-popping re-creations of ancient Babylon and Alexandria, and Alexander's hallucinatory visions. The Moving Picture Company provided shots for the film's horrific Indian elephant skirmish. John Scheele supervised visual effects and Trevor Wood supervised physical effects.
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King: Extended Edition: Click here to view a six-minute teaser trailer for the extended-edition of Peter Jackson's final Lord of the Rings installment. A 4-disc DVD boxed set of Return of the King, containing 50 minutes of new and extended scenes, interviews, documentaries and commentaries, is scheduled for release on December 14.
Robots: Imax Corporation and Twentieth Century Fox have announced they are preparing a digitally mastered release of Blue Sky Studios' upcoming CG-animated robot comedy. The film is scheduled to appear in large format theaters simultaneous to the regular-size release on March 11, 2005. Click here for more details.
The Shaggy Dog: Variety announced Tim Allen, Robert Downey Jr., Kristin Davis, Danny Glover and Craig Kilborn will star in Walt Disney Pictures' remake of its 1959 comedy about a man who occasionally changes back and forth into an Old English Sheepdog. Fred MacMurray and Tommy Kirk starred in the original, directed by Charles Barton, based on Felix Salten's novel The Hound of Florence, with special process photography by Eustace Lycett. Brian Robbins is directing the remake, which began filming in Los Angeles on November 15.
Cinesite: Cinesite announced it is completing model builds for Warner Brothers' upcoming fantasy films, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Director of models José Grannell is supervising both productions at Cinesite's Shepperton Studios model unit. The Potter work includes expansions to grounds and landscapes for Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, designed in collaboration with production designer Stuart Craig, while the Charlie work includes cityscapes and building exteriors, designed in collaboration with production designer Alex McDowell.
Whisper: The Hollywood Reporter states Gold Circle Films, H2F Entertainment and Deacon Entertainment are producing this supernatural thriller. The screenplay by Chris Borrelli is about a group of convicts who kidnap a young boy, then begin to realize the child is 'less innocent than he seems' when supernatural events occur around them. There is no word yet of a director.
Constantine: SuperheroHype.com reports that it has been privy to a screening of the first twenty-five minutes of Warner Brothers adaptation of DC Comics and Vertigo's Hellblazer horror comic. Beware story 'spoilers' and click here for the complete story. The film, which stars Keanu Reeves and Rachel Weisz, will be released February 18.
The Matrix Collection: Click here for CHUD.com's exhaustive review with screen grabs of the 10-disc super-duper DVD boxed set of Larry and Andy Wachowski's science fiction action epic Matrix trilogy. The collection includes The Matrix, The Matrix Reloaded, The Matrix Revolutions, The Animatrix and every permutation of bell, whistle and special feature imaginable. CHUD.com publisher Nick Nunziata calls the collection, "the first real life-altering film for a generation and as a result the debate and discussion about the film and its sequels is a powder keg almost unrivaled in the world of franchises...."
The State of Visual Effects: Click here for a Los Angeles Times story on the state of the Hollywood visual effects industry. The article includes comments from Scott Ross at Digital Domain, Tim Sarnoff at Sony Pictures Imageworks and Richard Hollander at Rhythm & Hues. Requires free registration.
The Twits: Variety reports Mark Mylod has signed on to direct this adaptation of a Roald Dahl tale about 'the smelliest, ugliest people in the world' and the revenge taken upon them by their poor abused pets, including a horde of caged monkeys known as the Muggle-Wumps. John Cleese has co-written the script and may star in the live-action/animated feature for Shrek producer John Williams at Walt Disney Studios.
War of the Worlds: Yahoo Movies reports Steven Spielberg and Tom Cruise are covering their Martian invasion in a 75-day shooting schedule, bringing the film to theaters less than eight months after the start of principal photography by shooting action segments first. The article states: "In the first weeks of shooting, production included action sequences with alien forces bombing streets, ripping up sidewalks and blasting apart buildings. A segment in early December with 1,000 extras in Athens, NY is already planned. Already sequences are being submitted to ILM and it's hoped by the time production wraps, ILM will either have finished or be working on at least half the FX shots." The film is scheduled to be in theaters June 29, 2005.
Double Edge Digital: In last week's Film Clips, Cinefex Weekly Update (#45) erroneously reported that Double Edge Entertainment, parent company of Double Edge Digital, was a Taiwanese consumer electronics manufacturer. Double Edge Entertainment is, in fact, a film production company based in Los Angeles and Taipei.