Pleasantville
Ryan
impressed. But I know the name of the group, so my comments/questions will
be focused. Does anyone know where I could find a VERY detailed
review/explanation of how they did all the stuff in there. Some of the stuff
(the burning tree, the lake scene, etc.) was nothing short of spectacular.
Thanks a lot
Ryan
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"The line between insanity and genius is measured only by success."
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derek
>
> Well, I saw Pleasantville the day it opened, and was all around very
> impressed. But I know the name of the group, so my comments/questions will
> be focused. Does anyone know where I could find a VERY detailed
> review/explanation of how they did all the stuff in there. Some of the stuff
> (the burning tree, the lake scene, etc.) was nothing short of spectacular.
>
> Thanks a lot
> Ryan
Currently... no. But if you can wait three months... I think Cinefex 76
is going to cover Pleasantville at the time it covers What Dreams May
Come and Mighty Joe Young. Now, I realize this is no immediate help, but
it's the best I know of. I hope you get a numebr of replies to your
question, 'cause I want to see them as well.
chris
> Well, I saw Pleasantville the day it opened, and was all around very
> impressed. But I know the name of the group, so my comments/questions will
> be focused. Does anyone know where I could find a VERY detailed
> review/explanation of how they did all the stuff in there. Some of the stuff
> (the burning tree, the lake scene, etc.) was nothing short of spectacular.
>
> Thanks a lot
> Ryan
>
> --
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> -------------------
> "The line between insanity and genius is measured only by success."
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> -------------------
There will in fact be an article in Cinefex. Three months is a long time so
here's a short synopsis...
Pleasantville was shot on color stock: mostly 5248 and 5298. Dailies were
transferred at 24fps (pulldown) in color and in BW, to DCT and beta
respectively. Beta was used as BW source for the editors, and the DCT was the
source for the video-res version:
The film was edited on the Lightworks, which (with great pain) was able to
output a list of the current cut. From there, Mac software written by me (in a
development environment called Panorama) took the Lightworks list, and added
black frames between each shot so that the pulldown was always in phase. The
software then output a standard CMX list, which was used to assemble the cut,
with black frames. This was loaded into a Henry, which removed the pulldown
all in one go. The shots were then laid off to D1, which was what was supplied
to the animation company that did the video res color animation. (read on...)
As the cut changed, we had to keep the cutting copy updated. Lightworks change
lists pretty much suck, so I wrote another Mac program (called LogansFolly,
after Logan Breit, the best effects editor ever), that compared a full reel of
the old cut to a full reel of the new cut. This way, we knew which shot in the
new cut was an extension or trim of which other shot in the old cuts. Each
reel took about 10 minutes to process on a Mac G3/300. I don't know what we
would have done without this: sometimes there were hundreds of changes that
needed to be turned around in a matter of days!
In this manner, the whole film, including all the effects, was done at video
resolution. The straight BW color correction was done on the Quantel Henry, as
were some of the simpler color animation shots. The more complex color
animation was done on SGI boxes using a program called Colortrac, which was
used to selectively desaturate parts of the frame and also to add new color to
parts of the frame that needed it (for example, Joan Allen's blue dress was
originally grey)
The entire video version was recorded to film at E-Film. This became the
cutting copy, and the copy that was used for preview screenings.
After preview mania, and several minor recuts, we were ready to start the 2K
version. For lots of reasons, we elected to keep the work in-house, and start
our own little (at first, anyway) effects house. Unfortunately, the software
that we had used for the video version has many limitations: it doesn't work at
2K, it only works at 8 bit, and it doesn't know about log color space. We did't
have access to the source for ColorTrac, so we wrote new software, from
scratch, that let us use modern standards and image formats to get the work
done. To save time, we used Colortrac as a "front-end", which allowed the
animators to use a familiar interface, while allowing more sophisticated image
proceesing algorithnms to do the actual work. (This software was written by
Raymond Yeung, who, for the record, is a genius) Anyway, on to the process...
(asleep yet?)
Scanning!
168,300 frames, 1673 shots, were scanned at 2K on the Spirit Datacine. (Yes,
the Spirit does full 2K... I promise) We had to get Kodak and Philips to
install a new internal LUT for the machine: as smart as the Philips people are,
they have no concept of color space! We scanned to DTF tape, the *only* tape
format useful for high volume jobs!
Animation happened on SGI 5K O2s. Rendering was either on the host machine
(for test renders and previews) or on our Origin 200, which is a 4-proc Cray,
basically. It was fast and we liked it a lot! The interface the animator
worked with let them define a region with a polygon. Inside this region, they
could do various things: increase/decrease saturation, desaturate completely,
remap luminance values to new chrominance values (colorizing, basically), and
adjust color/contrast/etc. for the whole frame. One of the packages that we
used a lot (every shot, actually) was Shake, by the very nice people at Nothing
Real. Shake is a command-line driven thingie that you can call from inside
your C-shell or C++ program. It will do all manner of color corrections, and
if asked nicely it's a good little compositing engine too. We also liked it
because it's cheap, and has a nice viewer.
We had 2 film recorders in-house: Solitaire Cine 3's. We started with a Cine
2, but it sucked badly, so we threw it out. The Cine 3s were for temp renders
only of the animation stuff: they are great recorders, but, for many reasons,
CRT recorders are too slow for this type of work. We did calibrate them so
their output would look like the output of the Kodak Lightning Recorder at
Cinesite, which is where we did the final recording.
After animation, we did a lot of "post-animation" color correction: mostly
tweaking the saturation of the color elements to keep things looking even. For
maximum interactivity, and due to the huge number of frames involved, we did
this mostly on various Infernos at various effects facilities around town.
People we are especially grateful to for this are those at CFC and Pac
Title/Mirage.
Now a quick note about black and white...
Putting black and white images on color stock is a BIG PAIN IN THE ARSE.
Basically, (and this is just one reason!) the differences in lab gamma from day
to day (in the neg bath) make a negative that is close enough for color work,
but for mono images, you cannot print Monday's neg with Tuesday's neg and have
it match. The subtle shift in color is less than 1 point (the minimum you can
print out) but is still big enough to be noticeable. So we took extraordinary
measures, some of which are secret, to make sure that the color timing of the
film stays consistent. (The prints I have seen lately have tended toward blue,
but they are dead consistent all the way through) In a nutshell, we basically
recorded the shots, with handles, two editorial reels at a time. That way,
even though the color of the stock, the lab, the recorder (not!) might shift,
the shots were recorded in sequential order so any change would be gradual. We
are especially grateful to Kodak for making an incredibly reliable, consistent,
rock solid film recorder. We had something like five bad outputs out of all
the shots.
If you aren't asleep yet, and you want more details about particular scenes,
just ask, and I'll post some more tomorrow.
Chris Watts
Visual Effects Supervisor, Pleasantville
http://www.bigfoot.com/~dvlmask
Panorama shareware server: http://home.earthlink.net/~dvlmask/sw
Paul Oberlander
This is the kind of post that makes wading through all the petty fighting and "How
do they
do that 'freeze and pan' posts worth it.
Paul
chris wrote:
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> mailto:obr...@earthlink.net <
> <
> To see a World in a Grain of Sand - W. Blake <
> <
> The wise man can pick up a grain of sand <
> and envision a whole universe. <
> But the stupid man will just lie down on <
> some seaweed and roll around until he's <
> completely draped in it. <
> Then he'll stand up and go, "Hey, I'm Vine Man." <
> -- Deep Thoughts, by Jack Handey <
> <
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Saul Pincus
chris wrote:
(big snip)
Chris,
Please let your crew know your effects work actually benefitted a strong, moving
film.
Saul Pincus.
chris
After having scrutinized every frame of the picture for over a year, sometimes one
forgets that it's actually a movie and a plot. When viewing effects footage, one
rarely has access to the soundtrack. As a result, the whole flavor of the movie
changes, especially after repeated (10-100 times) viewings. One makes up one's own
dialog (rarely as good as the original) in dailies which is added to and expanded
every day by every member of the effects crew that goes to dailies. When you
finally see the whole movie cut together, with an audience, it's something of a
revelation! So thank you.
I should also mention that we used a couple of other packages *extensively*. There
were about 175 "traditional* FX shots in Pleasantville, ranging from the
"basketball shot" to pink petal sequence,and lots of others in between.
Most of the comps and removals were done using a combination of Avid's Media
Illusion and Matador. Illusion and Matador can both be fussy, finicky, and at
times incredibly annoying, but they absolutely get the job done. We had an
Illusion setup that was comparable in speed to a Floctane (people refuse to believe
this, but it's true...) The secret is fast disks. And then we had a little roto
division using Matador. Ron Kalleson was at the drivers' seat of our illusion
setup.
Also used extensively was Commotion, from Puffin Designs. We didn't take advantage
of lots of the features that it has (mostly because it was so new, and the people
we had were already up to speed on other packages) But we did use it for at least
500 shots worth of dirt cleaning. As time went on, we also used it for some simple
removals... especially in the fire scene, where there were some "jets" from the
propane system that were visible. We are *really* grateful to Puffin Designs for
designing a roto/paint system that costs LESS than $10,000 inclusing hardware!
(Matador is $15K) And the 8-bit log capability makes it ideal for film work.
Best regards,
Chris
mcc goodguy-1
>
> chris wrote:
> (big snip)
>
> Chris,
>
> Please let your crew know your effects work actually benefitted a strong, moving
> film.
>
> Saul Pincus.
Hey Chris. Just say the picture. Same thing here. Good movie takes
great effects one step further. Sometimes notice the FX oscar don't
necessarily go to the blockbuster, but when people can take the tried
and true and push it to extremes.
Better start practicing holding a heavy statuette.
Guillermo
You did a great job with Pleasantville and I am thankful that you take
the time to post here.
I have some questions for you. Which kind of drives did you use with
your Illusion to make it so fast, and how were they set up? Were you
running Illusion in an Octane? if so, which model? Do you think
Chalice would be as fast with a similar setup?
Thank you for your help.
Guillermo