Nuit Blanche

There are tons of high-speed footage lying around YouTube, clips of people bursting baloons, bullets going through apples etc. While they are nice to watch, it has nothing you can carry with you or get you so engrossed as "Nuit Blanche". Its an amazing blend of slow-motion, Visual Effects - great use of camera projections and atmospheric elements, and the Music (gotta love that music by Samuel Bisson).

Nuit Blanche is a short film directed by Arev Manoukian for Spy Films. Watch it, be amazed and catch the Making of too.

Nuit Blanche.



Making Of :



Making Of Nuit Blanche.

Ed Catmull, Pixar: Keep Your Crises Small

Pixar, as a company has always inspired me. The way they began as a small computer graphics division in Lucasfilm, pioneering a lot of today's CGI technology and working on milestone effects in movies like Star Trek II and Young Sherlock Holmes, at the time when CGI was just being conceived. 

In 1986, Steve jobs bought over the Computer Graphics Division from LucasFilm, due some financial difficulties LucasFilm was facing and Steve Jobs had just left Apple Computer and he needed to invest his money in some company.

Pixar, with Jobs as CEO, Ed Catmull as President, started selling high-end CGI hardware. In the meantime John Lasseter's tiny animation dept. started creating animations to showcase at SIGGRAPH and started to gather a lot of buzz. Soon they started doing animation campaigns for TV commercials and grew stronger ties with Disney, to finally make Toy Story, just when the poor hardware sales threatened to close the company. The rest as we know is history.

Jan 2006, Disney bought over Pixar, making Steve Jobs one of the board of Directors in Disney with the largest share. This did not mean that the two studios were merging, in fact, additional conditions were laid out as part of the deal to ensure that Pixar remained a separate entity. Some of those conditions were that Pixar policies would remain intact, including the lack of employment contracts etc. Also, the "Pixar" name was guaranteed to continue.

Looking from where they have come from and the ride they have had, Pixar always impressed everyone with the way they handled themselves and the work they did, what makes the company tick?  

Ed Catmull answers them in this amazing 50 min talk at the Stanford Business School on how Pixar "keeps their crises small". 

To know more about Pixar's history I strongly recommend the book "The Pixar Touch" by David.A.Price

For those who cant see embedded videos - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2h2lvhzMDc

Barclay Card : Rollercoaster

With all the flashy glizty glam filled motion graphics induced commercials we see today its so refreshing to see a simple idea yet complicated execution come to life in this spot for BarclayCard done by post power-house The Mill.

I simply love the idea and the straight forward execution of the commercial. From spider cams to mo-con rigs this one's amazing. Dont miss the advertising world's signature glints and flares in reflections. A good mix of practical plates and CG environment, props and matte painting bring life and energy to the spot. Its commercials like these that make me miss the ad world.

Dont forget to watch the 'Making of'

Alex Roman Strikes again - The Third & The Seventh

This is truly amazing. Its a visual symphony thats what it is. Amazing visuals, brilliant shot compositions and great play of DOF. This guy is something.

Check out his compositing breakdowns, oh and btw its ALL computer generated.

The Third & The Seventh from Alex Roman.



Compositing Breakdown (T&S) from Alex Roman.

My Decade in Visual Effects

This year end roughly marks my decade long foray in the Visual Effects industry. A journey starting off as a 3D-CGI artist doing animated titles for local TV stations and currently traveling through Industrial Light and Magic as a Visual Effects artist.

2000-2003 

I secured my first gig in 2000, for a paid job doing animated opening titles for a local television channel. It was amazing to look at my just-passed-out-of college work on the tele. I was still doing my diploma in multimedia when a director visited the institute, looking for someone to do his opening titles - I was recommended and the journey began. After doing a few freelance title jobs using 3D studio Max v2.5 and an ancient software called Infini-D, I took up a course that taught "a state-of-the-art 3D software called Maya" at a time when people hardly knew what Maya was.

My love for effects got me hooked on to Maya's dynamics, which got me my first full-time job as an effects artist in a start up company. Its at this company that I discovered the art of compositing through Combustion and slipped into full time Compositing.

2003 - 2005 

While working on my first commercial as a compositor I met up with some enthusiastic and creative guys - Osmand Lu and Vikram Puttanna with whom I made a bunch of really experimental films. I quit my full time job to pursue making digital films. Osmand and I made three films in 2003 out of which one of them - Darkness was selected as one of the top ten online films out of 3000+ entires. This was before "you tube" and "google videos". We were celebrities in the short film circles in India with our pictures in almost all newspapers and our films being screened at all the important films schools in India to showcase "digital film making".

2005 - 2007

Osmand and I decided to take a break from film making and go out and learn more about the art and science of it all. I took up an intensive visual effects course in London, which was aimed at people already in the industry and spent 6 months there understanding, un-learning and re-learning Compositing and Visual effects.

I got back to India and joined an established animation company who were interested in starting up a division that would handle post production for Commercials. I enjoyed my time there as I started getting to visit film sets and put my visual effects and short film making knowledge to use. I also got to work on an interesting panoramic stereo project, involving Indian Mythology with some scientists from the Swinburne University, called i-Cinema.

 After a year, in 2006, the company found the commercials division non-profitable and decided to close it down and at the same time I was contacted by a Screen Writer - David Elder who also ran a production company in LA, asking if I'd be interested in making a short film out of one of his scripts, after he saw 'Darkness' on an online film hosting site. I gave Osmand a call and we ended up making a film with a budget, which was exciting for us.

After the film was done, I managed to consult and freelance visual effects for a few commercial directors in India which meant that I would go on-set, supervise the shoot and after the edit is done take the entire film and sit with the director at his office and composite his film. I was a mobile one-man-effects studio. On saving enough money, I planned a budget trip to Singapore with just enough money to last me five days. My mission : find a job there.

2007 - Now.

Before traveling to Singapore I  made appointments with a few post houses in advance so that I could hit those places on landing. After visiting a few places, who said they weren't hiring at the moment, I was all set to fly back to India and get back to the unstable world of freelancing. A day before I was to leave, I decided to visit one last studio - VHQ Post and throw my cards in. To my luck, after talking to the guys there they offered my a job as a Post\Visual effects supervisor counting on my previous on-set experience and knowledge in computer graphics.

I had a great time working at VHQ Post, where I supervised and completed 75 commercials for the Asia - Pacific market. At VHQ, I gained more on-set and production experience that got me traveling up to the far corners of Egypt. In time, at VHQ I learnt more about dealing with people and selling one's visual effects to a layman. I grew more a creative artist by writing scores of treatments and ideas for different agencies and Directors. In April 2009, I won the award for the Best Visual Effects in a Commercial, in SE Asia at the Goa Adfest, with Ravi Udyawar Films. The commercial was a uniquely designed Samsung ad, which was by far the most fun job I have ever worked on from start to finish.

Way back in 1998, I was watching a "making of" documentary on 'The Lost World' and I told my cousin that some day I would work in George Lucas's Industrial Light & Magic. In July 2009 I got a call from Lucas Film Singapore and after a few rounds of interviews I am now working as a Visual Effects artist with Industrial Light & Magic, Singapore.

These 10 years, I consider it just a prologue in my book. A long way to go lots more to come.

The things I have learnt in the last decade - 

Dedication - Love what you are doing and give it your best there is no place for second best.

Perseverance - Be patient, things will unfurl if you have the right atittude and put in your best. Rome wasn't built in a day.

Compete with yourself - Beat your own records and set a higher bar for yourself, remember you are not the best, some one somewhere is working right now to beat you to the finish.

Learn - Learn all you can, you'd never know where and when it will come to use. Just because you are an animator it doesn't mean you should not know about the other disciplines.

You dont need contacts to get a job - You need a good, solid showcase of work thats all. You dont need to know someone to get a job, you need your own dedication.

Work work work like the devil's after your soul. Strive to be the best and nothing else.

Design & Evolution

Man has seen evolution through different ages. We've had different eras where man has witnessed discoveries and life changing inventions. What's really interesting about the last couple of decades is the amazing evolution in design.

To start off, think about the amazing things Digital Technology does to us and how it has altered our lifestyles and how dependent we have become on it. Imagine one day with out your cellphone. I can't. I can't imagine a week or two of not being connected to the world wide web. Digital technology has in turn boosted the Design factors of our lives. As time passes, design becomes simpler and sleeker.

Look at the cars from the 1970s or even the 1980s and look at the cars manufactured now. Not only has the outward sense of design changed but also the inner workings of your car. Cars can now give you choice of traction, speed and other location based options. Like the Nissan GTR, that car detects when you are on a race track and turns off the speed limiter and at the same time the cars look like what people from the 60's thought would be alien ships from the another planet.

Another interesting factor in all of this is, the evolution of human thinking. The designs and concepts that are made today could not even be dreamt of as a concept a few decades ago. If you asked a product designer to make a concept of something he\she imagined 20 years from now it would be out of the world amazing for us. But 20 years from now that design would be prehistorically outdated. Our thinking process and perception evolves by the minute not by the years. At the same time, designs become simpler and more user friendly. People are bombarded by information from all directions now that the simpler things are designed the easier it seeps in our daily eco system. For eg. I over heard a person buying a cell phone at a store the other day and on making his final decision he asked the store owner if the phone had an "iPod". iPods have become the synonym for an Mp3 player. The buyer didn't ask if the phone had a "Zune" or a "Zen", he said "iPod". Why? because iPods became the most simplest and tactile gadgets to play music and it continued to make a significant progression, just like the iPhone became THE multi touch benchmark. On the similar lines, one doesn't say "can you search for this on the internet?" "Search" has been replaced by "Google". I know a lot of people, and myself, who are guilty of it and wishes we had a "google" in our daily lives.

The reason Apple's products and Google are so popular is because of the ease of use - simple user centric interface. This is a major step in Design Evolution. Design dictates strongly if your product is going to be a runaway success or if its going to drop down the abyss of criticism. The more the eye candy, the simpler the usage. Always keep the user in mind and look back and remember what we have evolved from.

Mystery behind the Story

Avatar - one of the most anticipated films of the year, or you could say 5 years since the time it was announced. Its mainly because of the technology used in the film - Its going to be stereoscopic, one of the firsts in the action genre; 45% of the film is computer generated, everything N'aavi (the blue people and their world) in the film is CGI and it definitely looks brilliant from what we have seen; lastly its James Cameron's directorial after Titanic. With the record he has - Aliens, Abyss, True Lies, Titanic; its expected to be a spectacular treat.

In all of this hype and frenzy, what bogs me down is the fact that we all know the story, we know how it looks and we know everything of the film. This seems to be a trend with all the films that are being released now-a-days. They let out everything from the film by releasing - teasers - trailers - 4 min "sneak-peeks" and scores of behind the scenes videos.

Where is the aspect of keeping the mystery? Where is the feeling of suspense? Remember when we saw "The Matrix" trailer? I was zapped. It kept everyone wondering what the film was about sans the spectacular visuals. Where is that now?

I remember going to watch The Matrix, itching to know what it was all about and when I saw the film I was riveted to my seat and glued to the screen. I wasn't looking for that one scene I saw in the "4 min sneak-peek. On the same lines - "Cloverfield" there wasn't a clue as to what the film was about until you saw it.

Well, one can say "dont watch the freebee if you want it to be a mystery". Really? Come on, if I dont see it, someone who did, will come yoodling about how amazing it looked or how crappy it was.

Anyways, thats not the point. What am wondering is - have Directors and Production companies lost faith in their audience, that they need to feed our visual greed with reminders that their film is around the corner? and we are talking about accomplished and well known Directors here.

We as audience also have gotten to incline towards substandard qualities of audio and video presentations. We seem quite happy to watch a horrible compressed video clip with bad sound on "you tube" or listen to a song on our cell phone external speakers. At the same time we tend to boast about our amazing flat screen television and our state of the art sound systems in our living room.

From the way I look at it, it looks like our need for information at our finger tips lets us make vast compromises just to be in the loop of current trends and events.

Little is more. A sneak peek should be a peak from behind the curtains to get a glimpse of what awaits, not tell the whole story in a few minutes. Keeping the mystery alive is an art, just like a magic trick. Keeping the suspense. To quote a dialogue from The Prestige -

Every great magic trick consists of three parts or acts. The first part is called "The Pledge". The magician shows you something ordinary: a deck of cards, a bird or a man. He shows you this object. Perhaps he asks you to inspect it to see if it is indeed real, unaltered, normal. But of course... it probably isn't. The second act is called "The Turn". The magician takes the ordinary something and makes it do something extraordinary. Now you're looking for the secret... but you won't find it, because of course you're not really looking. You don't really want to know. You want to be fooled. But you wouldn't clap yet. Because making something disappear isn't enough; you have to bring it back. That's why every magic trick has a third act, the hardest part, the part we call "The Prestige"."

To relate the above to film making - "The Pledge" would be the trailer, "The Turn" would be the film, "The Prestige" would be the essence or the climax of the film.

Alex Roman - Ultra real CG lighting.

All these years of being in the CGI\Visual effects industry, I have never seen anything like this. This body of work is fantastic. I have nothing more to say. Watch the videos for yourselves.

Remember: All that you see in these clips are FULLY computer generated. Nothing is real. Nothing.

Kahn's Exeter Short Film from Alex Roman on Vimeo.



T&S Teaser 3 from Alex Roman on Vimeo.


T&S Teaser2 from Alex Roman on Vimeo.


T&S Teaser 1 from Alex Roman on Vimeo.
 

"Alex Roman uses 3DS Max and VRay for Rendering, Photoshop for Texture work, AfterEffects for Compositing and Color Grading and Adobe Premiere for Edition. He born in 1979, in Alicante (Spain), and his real name is Jorge Seva, but uses "Alex Roman" as an artistic alias for publishing. After being trained in traditional painting at a few academies, Alex discovered this other world called CG. Although he hadn't any architecture training, was very interested in this art since an early age.

We appreciate a lot the "little" detail about his desktop is just an Intel i7 920 and the render time per frame spends 1:30 hours at 720p (1280x720). This kind of realism in the The Third & The Seventh short and the hard work behind scene, describes his personal skills and personality: a perfectionistic, enthusiastic, sensitive and willpower man. Good elements to become a successful artist.

The leitmotiv of the short title is based on the discussion about the order in the seven primary art forms, whether architecture should be the third or the seventh. Architecture, sculpture, painting, dance, music, poetry, and cinema, according to Ricciotto Canudo. This old discussion was started with the Friedrich Hegel's order (19th C.): poetry, music, painting, sculpture, and architecture. " - From 3Dup

Wine Legend

 
Making of Wine Legend on Vimeo.

I always find fire a very facinating element. Its shape and size is not constant, it looks brilliant (when in control) and when choreographed looks beautiful.

This particular spot done by DAf from Chile is amazing. Fire is always a tough call to make. Its not very easy to control on set, its not easy to make it look good in CG. Some of the best CG fires I have seen was in Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, done by Industrial Light and Magic, am not saying this because I work there but its really amazing. To read more about how the CG fire was created in The Half Blood Prince click here.

Its always best to shot plates of fire, as reference and if composited well it can be used in the final shot. Elements that way- fire, water, debris its best to get as many practical plates as possible. Nothing beats the real thing.

Enjoy the making of and the advert.