Hasta La Motion!

For the premiere issue of the Visual Effects Society’s new print magazine, VFX Voice, I set out to cover the effects of Ghost in the Shell. I was lucky enough to speak to visual effects supervisors Guillaume Rocheron and John Dykstra, and a whole bunch of artists from Weta Workshop. I was also able to interview director Rupert Sanders about his approach to the practical and digital effects in the film.

Now that VFX Voice is out – see the cover article here – I thought I’d feature the full-length interview with Sanders here on vfxblog, which covers a lot of the director’s thoughts that couldn’t make it into the magazine for space considerations. Hope you enjoy.

vfxblog: What attracted you to telling a live action Ghost in the Shell story?

Rupert Sanders: I think what attracted me to Ghost was there was an opportunity to exist in both worlds where you had a big spectacular action-packed film, but also you were left with something resonating beyond just spectacle. And there’s so much in that [original] film to borrow from about technology and humanity that seemed to me, that would make it a richer and more memorable experience. I think there’s too much, too many blockbusters are basically just – they exist for two hours and don’t exist beyond that, and to me it was important that we made something that satisfied both the desire to see something amazing but you know that would be more kind of cerebrally engaged and stay with people longer.

vfxblog: That’s interesting isn’t it because visually there is so much to draw from with the existing material, but how did you actually use that? Was that just the jumping off point or did you really take the chance to do new things as well?

Rupert Sanders: My first part of the process was to write and kind of collage from stills from the anime and Innocence and Stand Alone Complex, and I started just to collage lots of images and ideas that I liked within that. And then I wrote a story around that and built a kind of graphic novel. We were told early on by Oshii [director of the original anime] ‘do whatever you want, we’re not gonna be like beholden to, you don’t have to be beholden to what’s gone before. You guys should make the film that you see fit.’ And I think, you know, to me I’m a fan. I was, my big kind of pitch to Steven Spielberg when I first met with him on the project was, ‘You have to really embrace the anime and deliver in the film those things and some of those scenes that people expect to see and kind of demand to see. And you have to treat the original with respect.’ And he got that very quickly and that’s part of the reason he asked me to continue the work on it.

vfxblog: Jumping into the visual effects, you’ve obviously had quite a lot of experience with VFX with commercials, some of your shorts, and Snow White. Can you talk about the kind of things that you learned on those that you brought into Ghost in the Shell?

Rupert Sanders: I think a general kind of aesthetic, really. I mean I think most of my visual effects experience comes from learning Photoshop, you know. Visual effects are really a kind of expanded Photoshop. Once you understand how to work on those layers you kind of understand visual effects. But I’ve been lucky to work with great people along the road. And for me, I use visual effects to embellish and do things that aren’t achievable in-camera. I try and do everything else in-camera. We built a lot of animatronics, we did a lot of prosthetic makeup, we built a lot of sets, we did very little full green screen environments. In fact green screen was really just used for window extensions and sets, and a couple of sequences we did a bit more. But generally on the whole there was not much green screen on my set, which is, that’s why we went to Hong Kong. We got a good stable layer that had the grit and authenticity, and then on top of that we start to embellish it with visual effects.

vfxblog: One of the exciting things is the use of some miniatures and using that for photogrammetry, but also the geisha’s being handmade and the silicon suit being handmade. Tell me more about how those practical things really helped on set.

Rupert Sanders: I mean the miniatures were something that Guillaume [Rocheron, visual effects supervisor] and I discussed early on that, you know, we liked. I kind of liked the idea of having, building a miniature and then photographing it that gave you a kind of more photographic – instead of using every background plate needed a corresponding miniature plate and you do motion control and stuff. I thought it would be interesting just to like build the miniatures, photograph them, and then use them for texture so you’ve got a kind of miniature feel without having the kind of laborious process of miniature shooting. So it was really a new way of using miniatures and I think it’s been really successful in the process.

And the geisha, she was a character and it was important that she became quite a signature part of the film. I don’t think that she would have done if she’d just been a CG element. She was a character and a prop that kind of kept being used because it was so successful and we kept using it in lots of different scenes. And that definitely wouldn’t have happened if it had just been a girl in a green screen suit.

vfxblog: What about how all this impacted on your planning stages, and things like working up artwork but also previs? Can you talk about your experience there in that sort of crucial planning stage?

Rupert Sanders: We did very little previs actually. Most of it was fairly unplanned to be honest. But actually, you know, we actually didn’t have the money to do extensive previs and we had a very tight visual effects budget. We had a very tight production budget. So you know we were having to use our initiative and we were having to be, you know, clever and resourceful and there’s props in the film that are used three or four times for three or four different uses in order to kind of save money and to, you know, to create a kind of continuity through the film. It was pretty cost-effectively done and that kind of thing was inspiring really and helped us be creative because we had to be, we had to figure out creative ways of doing things practically. And so a lot of our ideas came during the shooting or the prep the next week. You know, what do we fill Kuze’s lair with? How do we hang Major from the ceiling? I think we ended up using the thing that repairs Batou’s eyes as the thing that hangs the Major from the ceiling in Kuze’s lair. So we were kind of free-forming a bit.

vfxblog: And that free-forming actually often allows for some free-form creative decisions. Can you think of any examples where you know you were surprised with the way that you went? The deep dive sequence seems to have come from lots of different ideas.

Rupert Sanders: Yes, that was something that I kind of storyboarded myself early on and it definitely changed a bit along the way. We had extras which are fairly inexpensive compared to visual effects, so we had a lot of extras and then I just got wardrobe design to make some plastic suits that we used. In that scene we covered them all in black oil and had them slipping around and grabbing at Major and pulling her back in. And then we used the same people, I was trying to figure out, what do we put in Kuze’s lair that makes him threatening? And I came up with this idea of having all these people in the same suits that were all linked together by cables that were generating his network. And then I was like, how do we make them different? So we kind of Vaselined over their eyes and then we doused them in flour. You know, what can we get cheap? I don’t know why they’re covered in flour. I’m sure there’s some kind of sci-fi reason for it but it just seemed like a good idea at the time. So then throughout that sequence we could then use, you know, flour along the hallways – we used it for people to be being prepared to go into these networks, they were being you know their heads were being shaved and they were being covered in this flour.

In the end it all kind of forms together but it was all very free-form and these were just like ideas of what have we got around us, you know it was literally like looking around the studio what have we got, you know, what can we do cost-effectively? There was a lot of re-appropriating sets and wardrobe and actors, neck ports and stuff and what textures can we get inexpensively? And so it was a creative way of solving paper problems.

vfxblog: I feel like, Rupert, you’ve got a great understanding of black oil based on one of your shorts, The Book of Eli, Passenger and Snow White.

Rupert Sanders: Yeah, I like black oil. I think liquids have always been good for practical effects. They’re something that’s very expensive to do digitally and it does have an amazingly kind of dream-like quality. In the shelling sequence we built the Major skeleton in entirety with 3D printing at Weta. And we built that, and we dunked it in liquid and we built mannequins of the Major that we dunked in white liquids. So, it’s a lot of practical effects I think that when you blend in some of the CG backgrounds you start to get more of a tactile feeling. I always wanted Ghost in the Shell to be a tactile world that you felt really existed and that you weren’t in something that felt thin and unrealistic.

vfxblog: I’m not sure that directors get asked this very much but after doing so much practical stuff in this shoot what was your post experience like? How did you interact with the editors and visual effects teams on a daily basis just to get this film finished?

Rupert Sanders: I’ve been in with John Dykstra who’s based with me in my office, I’m in with him three or four hours a day and then I’m in with the editorial department, my editor Neil Smith and Billy Rich, I’m in with them the other half of the day. I call them the ward rounds. You literally have to be very in tune with what’s going on across all departments to be able to really deliver it. And we’re still concepting as we’re doing visual effects. We’re still figuring out things that you get more kind of understanding of what you’re trying to do as the film progresses. So it’s been a very evolving process this one.

vfxblog: Just on two separate sequences or aspects of the film. I love the city and hologram views. Could you tell me a bit about your thinking behind how those were to look but also it was really interesting to hear how they were realized as well?

Rupert Sanders: Well, we came up with this very specific idea of what we called the ghost cam, which is these floating through the city shots as a way of showing the world. And I then wanted to populate them with what I called solograms, which are these kind of solid holograms where in an augmented reality you see a city that advertises to you and objects seem to hang in space or walk alongside you at a hundred foot tall. So we’ve got basketball players shooting hoops across streets. We’ve got city, NASDAQ information being speech bubbled out of people’s faces that are embedded in buildings. So it’s a real kind of kaleidoscopic kind of carnival of scale and kind of surrealism really that our cities exist in.

And Guillaume Rocheron, who is the visual effects supervisor who started on the film early with me, came up with an idea of – he mapped all the camera routes out using Google Maps. Our previs was based on Google Maps. We couldn’t afford to do full previs so he did them on his own using Google Maps which then gave us the flight path. We then flew a helicopter up and down those paths photographing textures and roof textures and then photographed the same place from the street so we could kind start to build an environment. Then we built wireframes and added those textures. Then we started to add our miniatures and our paint-overs that gave us the three dimensional city.

Then I tasked my creative assistant Julian Wayser with operating Dayton Taylor’s rig, which we designed for this film which is a kind of bubble of cameras that could allow a fifteen second take that was fully immersive. So you saw the actors from every angle and then it was glued together to create the action plate which then became the solograms and then Julian and I designed the world of solograms by creating commercials and adverts and graphic design. And all these sequences were then laid into the city. So there’s a lot of work that’s gone into a lot of layers and a lot of complex kind of graphic design with a great designer called Ash Thorp who did a lot of the building stuff with us for the solograms. So it’s a pretty dense world when you fly through it.

vfxblog: And just finally the other sequence I wanted to ask you about was the water fight in the flooded slum area. I’m just curious because that’s obviously an iconic one from the anime, but where you wanted to take it and also how you wanted it to be realized.

Rupert Sanders: I think that was one of the ones that I felt as a fan if I don’t see that in the film I’m gonna be really upset. So there were a few things that I felt it was very important to keep in the film and I think that was one of those. And so I wanted it to feel, you know, close to the anime.

So we built a water tank in New Zealand and that’s one of the few things that we did, you know, almost entirely green screen. And then we tiled a lot of Hong Kong, we scouted a lot of apartment blocks and tiled them, we built the first kind of path that was more realistic and then Guillaume and I started to design, you know, how you’d make that a bit more sci fi. But it’s definitely a big nod to the anime, that sequence.

For more coverage from the film check out my articles:

VFX Voice – Effects Elevate Dazzling Live-Action Remake of Classic Ghost in the Shell

Cartoon Brew – ‘Ghost in the Shell’ Marks Another Step Forward for Live Action-CG Hybrid Actors

Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) and Nazara Games launches the all new mobile cricket game ‘RCB Star Cricket’. The partnership aims to create the largest cricketing community on second screen. RCB will work exclusively with Nazara Games as part of a three year partnership to develop unique mobile gaming experiences for millions of RCB fans.

RCB Star Cricket is a social cricketing experience with India’s biggest cricketing stars like Virat Kohli, Chris Gayle and AB de Villiers. The game is designed to cater to casual players who like intuitive game play wherein they can easily pick up and play the game. The game requires reflexes and skills with innate understanding of cricket and the game controls are easy to understand, that is tap left when you want to hit on the offside and right when you want to hit on the onside.

Royal Challengers Bangalore, chairman, Amrit Thomas said, “Over the last 10 years, RCB has transcended from being just a cricket team to a lifestyle brand that connects with its fans across multiple touch points. We have millions of people who engage with RCB on digital platforms and we wanted to offer a more personalised RCB experience to these bold fans, hence we looked at creating RCB Star Cricket. We are very happy to have Nazara as our partner in this initiative and we look forward to working more closely with them to engage with the ever increasing community of RCB fans from around the globe.”

The game is currently designed to be played in two modes – Reward mode and Career mode. The Reward mode enables the player to play as a part of the RCB team against an opposing team within which the player can choose different options– Daily Leaderboard, RCB Games (as per current 2017 match schedule) and IPL Top 10
Leaderboard. It includes plenty of rewards for the players to win original RCB merchandise.

The Career mode, on the other hand, will enable the player to play as their favorite stars. To begin with you can step into the shoes of ace cricketer and RCB Captain, Virat Kohli. This mode offers the cricket fans to face 60 bold on-field situations that have been simulated from Virat’s real-life experiences on the field. This mode will soon have other cricketing heavyweights such as Chris Gayle and AB de Villiers.

Nazara Games, CEO, Manish Agarwal said, “At Nazara, we believe that mobile games around cricket enable millions of Indians to vicariously live the ‘on ground’ experience virtually and RCB’s strong army of decade old fans offer a perfect setting for this partnership. We at Nazara are confident that this partnership will build a strong and vibrant community of millions of cricket fans on second screen.”

Speaking to AnimationXpress, Agarwal asserted that they were approached by RCB in order to create the game and that they do not intend on making this an ‘IPL-only’ game, but rather a digital platform where fans can connect to their players in a virtual way. The prize giveaways would continue even after IPL is over.

The game is available for download on Google Play Store for android devices and will be available for iOS by mid-April 2017.

Nazara Games has also announced their venture into eSports in a big way. While operations details are scarce now, the league will be kicking off sometime in September this year.

The post Nazara Games partners with Royal Challengers Bangalore to launch a new game appeared first on AnimationXpress.

Imagine three bears stacked on top of each other, walking around in public places, trying to be friendly with humans, clicking selfies and posting pictures online. Sounds funny, eh? Well, it looks even more hilarious. Meet Grizzly, Panda and Ice Bear from the animated comedy TV series We Bare Bears, created by Daniel Chong.

Daniel Chong

Living in the Bay area of Berkeley, California, affected Chong’s appreciation for bears. “You see bears everywhere. So I think it just gets into your system,” laughed Chong. We Bare Bears is about three bear brothers who are trying to integrate into the human society. “People don’t freak out at the sight of them, but don’t really enjoy their presence either.” The bears are outcasts. Chong wanted to put them in a situation that would alienate them as much as possible, and “I felt that the modern world would accentuate that a little bit,” he explained. “Everyone’s on their phones, involved in their own thing. So I felt that the modern world would be a good antagonist for the bears.”

The bears are exactly like the actors who play them. Eric Edelstein (Grizzly) is lovable and outgoing. “He’s a guy who has his arms stretched out and just wants to embrace the world. That’s exactly who Eric is and that’s exactly who Grizzly is,” Chong shared. Bobby Moynihan (Panda), who came in through auditions had a sweetness and gentleness to his voice, a perfect match for Panda. Demetri Martin (Ice Bear) is able to deliver lines succinctly, quickly and pointedly, as Ice Bear’s character demands. “He doesn’t say a lot, but for what he says, it’s very on point.”

In the latest episodes, the bears try to become internet famous by posting their stuff online. So will they succeed in fitting into the human civilisation? “There will be exciting twists coming up,” Chong replied. The story will take us through the life of bears before they met Ice Bear. There will also be an episode showing Ice Bear as a cub on his own, trying to survive and find a home before all the bears got together.

The show, which across EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) is available in 19 languages and in over 142 million households in 70 countries, lays emphasis on storytelling. It shows the emotional side of the bears and their relationship with each other. “I think they have good intentions and want to do the right thing. They can’t always, but I think viewers find such characters to be honest and real.”

U.K. has an interactive We Bare Bears microsite that can be accessed via the Cartoon Network website there. On the website, one can play the show-themed games, watch videos and win prizes too. Chong also has plans to explore the gaming segment with the bears. There are plans for a movie too. “I would like to keep exploring bigger stories like this moving forward,” he said.

After interning at an animation studio at a young age, Daniel realised that being a story artist is what interested him. “Those guys got to write, draw and come up with all the business of the episodes. That’s something I gravitated toward, because I loved drawing cartoons and comics,” he recalled. Having worked at Disney, Blue Sky Studios, Pixar, Nickelodeon, and with people like Chris Sanders and John Lasseter, Chong feels that he has been influenced and shaped in a way that makes it possible for him to run his show.

“With We Bare Bears we’re hoping to give audiences something they’ve never seen before. We never set out to make a show for just kids, but a show that all ages will love and appreciate. The combination of cute and simple designs with more complex and modern stories will help relate to anyone who’s willing to watch it,” he concluded.

The post Daniel Chong talks about his bears who want to be internet-stars appeared first on AnimationXpress.

French agency Herezie has produced a pro-bono documentary, “With You We Can Heal It”, in partnership with Vaincre L’Autisme, following the day-to-day life of Enzo, a young boy with autism. Launched to coincide with World Autism Awareness Day (April 2, 2017), the film is designed to support global awareness raising and fundraising. For autistic Enzo, climbing stairs is like climbing Mt Everest. Expressing himself, nearly impossible, without being able to say simple words. One cannot imagine how this little boy or his parents do it. But, they do.

Baptiste Clinet, Executive Creative Director of Herezie explains the thinking behind the campaign:

“Spending a month to create this documentary to help raise awareness for autism and a call for donations, permitted me to witness, first-hand, what the child goes through –with determination– repeating the same exercise over and over again. It was one of the most humbling things I’ve had the chance to witness. We cannot comprehend how hard it is for the child, the parents and caretakers; but, we need to. This need to engage and help in any way we can, is what drove us to create the film to be shared widely by anyone and everyone in support and celebration of World Autism Awareness Day.”

Q&A Up close with Herezie

Q. What’s the story in 2 sentences? It’s the story of an autistic and non-verbal 5 years old boy who practices for 30 days to become the spokesman of an association.

Q. In your own words, what is the emotional reason people should care? In France, there are 650 000 people with ASD (Autistic Spectrum Disorder) and a real lack of infrastructure to take care of them. It could be their brother, their child, their life.

Q. Why this idea? To be able to speak, to be able to write.. All these simple things that get us through life, we take them for granted. We wanted to show the amount of effort, help and time an autistic person needs to achieve these simple things, and the fact that only money can assure these kids to be appropriately accompanied.

Q How does the idea position the marque? The idea shows how the association can accompany and take care of all the people with ASD. It also shows that it’s a « human size » association that needs money.

Q. Tell me about the tonality you chose and why? For too many people, « autism » is hard to define. We wanted to explain and show them what it’s like. Instead of showing tears and failure, we wanted to show determination, dedication and love. When you get to know the families who have to deal with ASD, you immediately get blown away by those precise qualities.

Q. Where did you shoot and why? We shot at the Futuroschool, where Enzo goes every day. It had to be 100% real. No acting, nothing.

Q. What was the most challenging part of pulling off this idea and how did you overcome it? The most challenging thing was to not disturb Enzo’s routine in the process of bringing this campaign to life. Besides, we didn’t know the outcome of all this. We had to adapt our message to Enzo’s capacities; and, yet, we weren’t sure he was going to succeed. With the help of his parents and all the people at the Futuroschool, we managed to spend enough time with him.

Q. Who was the director and why? With a very low budget, we had to find clever solutions to follow Enzo through this journey. We decided to partner with Auguste Bas and Robin Deriaud, two freshly graduated and talented students of Luc Besson’s school École de la Cité. This way, they could be with Enzo 8 hours a day for an entire month.

Autism Day in the Life Credits

The Autism Day in the Life campaign was developed at Herezie Group by executive creative director Baptiste Clinet, head of creative content Paul Marty, art directors/copywriters Jacques Denain, Nicolas Duménil, strategic planner Camille Lallier, PR directors Kim Ball and Morgane Le Rol, agency producer Barbara Vaira, COO Pierre Callegari, CEO Andrea Stillacci, associate general managers Edouard De Pouzilhac, Thomas Couteau, and associate managing director Arno Pons.

Digital work was done at 5eme Gauche.

Filming was shot by directors Auguste Bas and Robin Deriaud via FullDawa Production, Paris, with producers Boris Mendza, Gael Cabouat, Alexandre Bonaldi, production coordinator Maud ramos Guerrero.

Editor was Mehdi Lachhab. Grading was done at Bend the Colour Studio by colourist Raphael Kourisky.

Original music was by Eraldo Bernocchi and Lorenzo Esposito Fornasari, at TransmutationLtd.

A look behind the scenes of the short film “At The End of the Cul-de-Sac” a single take short film shot entirely from a drone. This video shows the process of animatic to rehearsal to final film. The take that ended up becoming the final film ended up being our first official take. You can check the film out here: Animatic: https://vimeo.com/145095898