Global BC News Hour - B.C. VFX studio has Oscar connection

Thu, Feb 21 - A Vancouver visual effects studio, already nominated for an Academy Award in 2010, has done pivotal work for one of this year's best picture front-runners. Elaine Yong reports.

VINCENT FREI | ART OF VFX | FEB 19, 2013 | Original Article

How did Image Engine get involved on this show?

Early last year (February I believe) the Executive Producer on ZERO DARK THIRTY (ZDT), Colin Wilson got in touch with us about the show. We sent them some of the vehicle and environment work we had done on THE THING. That lead to me heading over to meet with Colin, Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal on location in India during the first week of shooting… we were on the show a week later.

How was the collaboration with Director Kathryn Bigelow?

Let me start off with saying it was a true honor to work with her, she is an amazing filmmaker and it was pretty awesome to get a look into how she approaches her movies. Second I must stress how much of an appropriate word “collaboration” was. She let you do your job trusting you to do it and to become part of the overall creative process. If she ever calls on me again to help with one of her films I wouldn’t have to think about it for a second, not just because of who she is in the industry but because I had a great time on it and really enjoyed working with her.

What was her approach to visual effects?

Words she would use when describing what she wanted were “authentic”, “gritty”, and “honest”. And I will say that she has a much better eye towards visual effects than she gives herself credit for.

What have you done on this movie?

I was the production Visual Effects Supervisor and Image Engine the primary visual effects facility. We were involved heavily during production, supervising, designing and shooting for visual effects. And during post, handled a large variety of work from matte paintings to augmenting a number of different environments from military bases, to the Bin Laden Compound, to the CIA headquarters, wire and rig removal from complicated physical effects set-ups, augmentation of practical effects, explosions, lots of crowd/environmental clean-up in order to make things as authentic and true to the locations they were intended to portray, gore enhancement… and of course the numerous Stealth Helicopter shots. There was also a lot of plate grading and sky replacements to help set a tone and consistency for the raid.

Cont...

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PAUL HELLARD | CG SOCIETY | FEBRUARY 5, 2013 | Original Article

Zero Dark Thirty is a military term referring to thirty minutes past midnight. ‘Dark enough so you can go in and none can see you,’ someone might say. Director Kathryn Bigelow says, “it refers also to the darkness and secrecy that cloaked the entire decade-long mission." On the night the marines flew over the quiet suburbs of Abbottabad inside Pakistan, there was no moon in the sky and up in the north of the city, it was “quite peaceful.”

Image-Engine dug in and created over 300 shots for Zero Dark Thirty, ranging from digital environments, hard surface animation, and some very deep compositing. There were Stealth Hawk military helicopters, created digitally to mould over choppers filmed on set. The military camps like Camp Chapman and Area 51 were also created, with expansive matte paintings and over 400 digital soldiers and vehicles, weapons, hardware and camp gear that makes up all the activity one would expect at a military outpost. In addition to all this, the dust, exhaust and dirt was composited into the mix to make this a living breathing environment.

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IAN FAILES | FXGUIDE | JAN 23, 2013 | Original Article

When U.S. Navy SEALs raided a Pakistan compound on May 2nd, 2011 and killed Osama bin Laden, it was an almost moonless night. So when director Kathryn Bigelow sought to re-create the raid in Zero Dark Thirty, she and DOP Greig Fraser had a very clear mandate to film the scene in almost pitch darkness. The result is an authentic re-telling of the hunt for the Al Qaeda leader, but also one that posed a significant challenge for the visual effects crew from Image Engine, called upon to create photorealistic stealth helicopters used in the daring raid, as well as several other key effects in the Oscar-nominated film.

The helicopters – avoiding the game look

Two full-sized stealth helicopters were built in London for the film. Initially, these were designed to be filmed on large gimbals for shots of the SEALs traveling to the compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan and for exterior views, where rotors and environments would be added. Ultimately, due to changes in the action and lighting issues (discussed below), most of the helicopter exteriors were achieved as Image Engine creations.

However, the stealth helicopter props were invaluable in providing reference for Image Engine in designing and modeling CG versions. “They were all CNC milled so we got the original 3D data for them which was a huge jumping off point,” says visual effects supervisor Chris Harvey. “Then it was a process of taking them and making them look real, with dents, divots, scratches, grooves and bolts. We’d work on the lookdev until you couldn’t tell the difference.”

One of the hardest aspects of the chopper design was that, by design, they looked like game models. “They’re a few flat polygons with sharp edges,” notes Harvey. “So they kind of look CG anyway – even the real ones. Actually even Kathryn kind of called them ‘gamey’. They were really sensitive to reflection angles. When the helicopter moved, it’d be bright and the next time it’d be black. So we had to do some funky curve reflections and some animated reflection cards that we’d track on, just so they wouldn’t pop on with weird reflections.”

The dust effect

For scenes of the stealth helicopters taking off, landing, and later for a crash sequence, Image Engine had another major challenge – dust. But Harvey took the bold step of recommending to production that they shoot real helicopters – Black Hawks – that would later be replaced with the stealth versions. “Well, they straight away said, ‘What about the dust?’ I basically said it was better to get real interaction with the environment and we’ll replace what we have to replace.”

Cont...

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VANCOUVER, BC – January 14, 2013 - Image Engine today announced it has provided over 300 shots for the critically acclaimed feature film Zero Dark Thirty, which is now playing in theaters nationwide, and has been nominated for a 2013 Visual Effects Society Award for Outstanding Supporting Visual Effects in a Feature Motion Picture.  This included creating the computer generated Stealth Hawk helicopters (top-secret military vehicles used during the operations), as well as augmenting the bustling military encampments with computer-generated environments, digital soldiers, vehicles and FX. 

“Zero Dark Thirty really required the crew to push reality to the limit,” said Geoff Anderson, Visual Effects Producer at Image Engine. “It was of critical importance to the filmmakers that the CG elements were as true to real events as possible, so we had to pay attention to every detail with rigorous scrutiny.”

Much of the action takes place in almost pitch-black conditions, which was one of the greatest challenges for the visual effects crew.  “This zone had the thinnest light margins I’d ever seen,” said Chris Harvey, Visual Effects Supervisor for the production. “It was a very important detail, to keep the film true to real events, but it also made it much more difficult to produce a convincing performance from the computer-generated elements. The crew did a tremendous job of getting things to be interesting, clear, and technically sound in such a narrow band of light. This was achieved through highly nuanced look development and taking a creative approach to lighting each individual shot.”

The digital environments involved a large team over two months to recreate the feel of bustling military encampments, which were finished to a very high level of detail.  This involved the addition of upwards of 400 digital soldiers, extensive background matte paintings, ground vehicles, planes and computer generated desert dust simulations. The dust clouds generated by the CG helicopters included detailed debris such as bottles, plastic bags, cardboard pieces and clothing, which all had to behave differently.

“High-end ‘invisible’ effects such as digital environments and hard surface animation have become increasingly important core competencies at Image Engine,” said Steve Garrad, Visual Effects Executive Producer. “A film like Zero Dark Thirty relies upon Image Engine for highly nuanced, photorealistic effects, and I think the results speak for themselves.”

For a decade, an elite team of intelligence and military operatives, working in secret across the globe, devoted themselves to a single goal: to find and eliminate Osama bin Laden.  Zero Dark Thirty reunites the Oscar® winning team of Director-Producer Kathryn Bigelow and Writer-Producer Mark Boal (The Hurt Locker) for the story of history's greatest manhunt for the world's most dangerous man.

CHRIS McMAHON | 3D ARTIST | NOV 14, 2012 | Original Article

In this excerpt from issue 48′s feature on creating affordable Hollywood-grade VFX, Image Engine’s Shawn Walsh discusses how complexity always rises with cost.

“Complexity always creates cost, regardless of who is executing it,” he says. “If you look at something like Battleship, we worked on a very economical portion of the film – a single, contained sequence of around 80 shots where we created a creature and embedded it into an action sequence.

“Industrial Light & Magic, however, completely rewrote all of its water tools in order to execute the work. When you’re delving into that level of complexity that requires a research and development phase beyond standard tools, I think that’s a very legitimate reason for costs to increase.”

...

“With smaller budgets where there isn’t the same sense of flexibility it causes people to not only think more creatively, but also get to a decision more quickly. Things get approved in a much more fluid manner simply because everyone knows that they need to be. On a lot of bigger-budget projects they’ll explore, take more avenues, play around more and [experiment with] a lot of things simply because they can, and that can cause a huge amount of cost. When you’re on a more meagre budget you have to be focused on solutions.”

Read the full excerpt here

You can read this entire feature article in issue 48 of 3D Artist.

Find out how to get hold of a copy of 3D Artist Magazine here...