Hasta La Motion!

[NEWS=”http://www.cgnews.com/wp-content/uploads/robinhood-small.jpg”]29085[/NEWS]In 2010 Academy Award winner Russell Crowe and visionary director Ridley Scott were reunited onscreen for the untold story of the man behind the legend of Robin Hood. World renowned production facility MPC (The Moving Picture Company) completed over 570 shots for the film which co-starred Mark Strong and Cate Blanchett, and was produced by Universal Pictures.

MPC’s Richard Stammers, the overall VFX Supervisor for the show, worked closely with Universal’s VFX Producer Allen Maris to achieve a wide range of visual effects including CG armies, CG boats, digital environments and CG arrows.

VFXTalk recently presented Richard Stammers with questions from the VFXTalk community focused on the incredible work created for Robin Hood by the MPC team. This article includes Stammers interesting and thoroughly detailed response to those questions, and a few more on MPC’s general workflow besides!

About MPC
MPC leads the world in post production and visual effects for the Feature Film, Advertising, Digital and Television industries. Based in London, Santa Monica and Vancouver, MPC works on some of the most exciting commercials and feature films produced in the world today.

Recent and memorable MPC creative work has included spots such as Nick Gordon’s Cadbury; ‘Spots V Stripes,’ Michael Gracey’s Evian; ‘Skating Babies,’. Feature film work that MPC is proud to have worked on in past months includes; ‘Prince of Persia,’ (Mike Newell) ‘Robin Hood’ (Ridley Scott) and ‘Clash of the Titans,’ (Louis Leterrier) and they are currently revisiting earlier work on the next outings for both the Narnia and Harry Potter franchise.

About Robin Hood
In 13th century England, Robin and his band of marauders confront corruption in a local village and lead an uprising against the crown that will forever alter the balance of world power. And whether thief or hero, one man from humble beginnings will become an eternal symbol of freedom for his people. (Universal Pictures, 2010)

In this interview VFXTalk speaks to overall VFX Supervisor Richard Stammers on MPC’s work on the Ridley Scott epic Robin Hood. VFXTalk would like to express appreciation for Richard Stammers time and immense contribution to this article.

VFXTalk: The team at MPC must have been very excited to work on Robin Hood, what was the mood/vibe like at the facility before you started?

RS: I think Ridley is pretty high up on everyone’s list of directors they’d like to work with. For sure, everyone was excited about the thought of working with Ridley again. Although Ridley had worked with MPC previously on ‘Kingdom of Heaven’, much of my team, myself included were new to the Ridley experience –it was a great opportunity.

VFXTalk: How many shots were required for completion of your work on the film, and how long did the entire project take?

RS: MPC worked on around 575 shots for Robin Hood. I started on the project at the beginning of principal photography in March 2009 and we delivered our last shot in April 2010. However, we didn’t really get going on full vfx shot production until September 2009.

VFXTalk: How large is your visual effects team and how is it divided? Do the vfx artists do the compositing work as well?

RS: Globally around 250 of MPC’s employees were involved in the project. In London, I creatively oversaw around 150 digital artists, but we also had a significant team in our Bangalore facility handling Roto/prep and Matchmove. MPC’s workflow is by department, we’re much more efficient that way, especially on big projects or sequences.

VFXTalk: How often do your clients visit your studio to see the shots in progress and are there any tools or procedures you use to make remote collaboration a smoother process?

RS: It depends on the schedule, but as any project nears the deadline the amount of work to review tends to increase so visits may be daily, or every other day, up to around 15 hours per week. Ridley was in LA for post-production so we saw very little of him. We regularly sent work in progress to editorial and he and Pietro Scalia (the editor) would review shots in the cut. We also used cinesync with the VFX producer Allen Maris, who was based in LA with the editorial team. These sessions tended to be more interactive as we could sketch notes on shots as we reviewed them. Ridley came to London twice in post, each time for a week. We screened every shot as digital 2k whether it was work in progress or for final approval. These were very productive visits as he was focused purely on the vfx work.

VFXTalk: What was the ‘pre production to final stage’ planning process you used to come up with the vfx shots for the film? What sort of freedom are you given in creating the looks for the sequences you are in charge of?

RS: MPC and myself came to the project quite late, so much of the pre-production decisions were worked out directly between Ridley and visual effects producer, Allen Maris. This was mainly about what could be afforded within the budget, with some discussions on the approaches to types of shots. When I started on the project the main things we had to plan in advance of shooting were mainly concerning our digital environments – medieval London and the enhancements to the final Battle’s beach location. Ridley would always know the style and scale of the elements he wanted to use, but he would leave the details for me to work out with our vfx team and the art department.

In terms of creating any look, I’d say we were very much governed by John Mathieson’s photography, and Ridley’s compositions. The work we created in most cases was there to support images that they created. Where there was licence to play with the lighting of the CG we were adding, I would offer suggestions that I thought would remain believable. In some cases Ridley would draw references for us. From a planning point of view, one thing that I learned over the years is if you plan things too much, you either get frustrated that it doesn’t go to plan or shots can look very staged.

Very often the pre-production process includes previs which can be a very useful tool if you have some technical challenges that you have to work out and share with the crew, but if you’re trying to tell the story before the director can, or without their constant input, then don’t be surprised if it works out different on the day of the shoot. We did very little previs on Robin Hood, mainly because Ridley is able to sketch out what he wants from a shot and previs wasn’t going to show him something he could already visualise. Many of his storyboards are very similar to the final shots.

VFXTalk: When your team is faced with the challenge of creating their effects what are the typical work patterns you follow? Is the final result always as you originally envisioned it, or does the process often change and adapt as new ideas or challenges arise?

RS: When you work with so many artists, you have to adapt with the challenges and listen to their solutions. Quite often I find myself moderating the options presented, so I can best steer the results closer to my interpretation of what Ridley will like. We work in a departmental way at MPC so shots go through Matchmove, Layout, Animation, FX, Lighting, Roto/Prep and Compositing in an overlapped but mostly linear way. The key for me personally is to look at things from a scene point of view, and try not to get too caught up with individual shots. For instance the end battle sequence had around 250 vfx shots in the edit. The first thing I did was sketch on a frame of each shot in the edit, to ascertain all the CG elements that were needed, and where there would need to be compositionally to maintain continuity in the cut. We then shared this with Ridley and Allen, and if there was anything specific to change Ridley would provide his own sketch. This helped hone down the shot brief early on and minimised changes during vfx shot production.

VFXTalk: How do you work with the guys on-set? Do you have onset high-speed compositing artists or is all your post work done in house?

RS: We didn’t do any on set compositing; in fact we barely did any mix and overlay either. We had a handful of shots in the French siege where the 400-500 extras just weren’t enough so we split screened some passes. Otherwise most of our work was adding full CG armies or environments, all done in post.

VFXTalk: What were the biggest challenges in terms of visual effects in Robin Hood and how did you overcome them? Were there different treatments or techniques required to achieve them? Which sequence was the hardest to work on, and why?

RS: I think most of the work we did was using tried and tested methods. We’ve had so much experience doing CG crowds and boats, and there’s not much that our environment teams hadn’t technically accomplished before. That’s not to say there were no challenges, but the teams in each department were able to build upon their recent experiences and improve them for this show.

We did approach the arrows in a new way though. We needed a really efficient pipeline for the number of arrows we had to create. We had a good 3D particle based arrow tool that we’d written for ‘Kingdom of Heaven’, but however good it was, it meant each shot had to go through Matchmove, FX, Lighting and Comp. I was convinced we could do about 40-50% of the arrow shots in compositing only – I had really good results in the past animating tennis balls in Shake for the film ‘Wimbledon’, but it meant having a small comp team that were good at animating. Then one of the show’s compositing leads, Axel Bonami took the process further by developing a series of shake macros, which only required the artists to place the start or end position of an arrow. The macro would use a still of a real arrow at the most appropriate perspective to work for the shot and then automated the animation process. He added further controls for impact oscillation to so the artists if necessary could dial this in. We added arrows to over 200 shots, with 90% of these being handled by the whole compositing team using mostly Shake and some in Nuke. We did still use the 3d particle arrows on a few shots where the numbers of arrows were vast.

Feature Specific

VFXTalk: Being in such a crucial position how early on were you involved in the process?

RS: Surprisingly late, I started officially in the first week of principal photography, although I had been involved with the bidding before then. Had it been a more complex vfx show this might have been detrimental. There are a lot of key decisions that happen in pre-production on big vfx heavy films, but the nature of the work in Robin Hood meant that this wasn’t so crucial. Allen Maris the vfx producer had worked out many of the potential problems with Ridley in pre-production, so I have him to thank for a smooth introduction to the project.

VFXTalk: When you end up with a final shot count from the script, is that really the final figure that you must work to? Who bears the rap if that figure escalates northwards in post?

RS: We always have to work within the confines of the vfx budget set by the studio. Much of the pre-production planning is about getting the shot count to fit that budget. Ridley had many ideas for sequences that were too expensive so, alternative solutions had to be found that didn’t involve vfx work. This has to be done before filming starts and set the shot count we work to. During production things change and evolve, some sequences become more complex and others simpler, there’s a constant give and take –but the goal is to keep it within the same total cost. There were a few instances where things didn’t work out so well in the filming and more money was needed in vfx to deliver what Ridley wanted. This would need to be approved by the studio. A good example of this was a sequence of shots where the merry men return to England in King Richard’s ship. The production weren’t able to shoot this boat at sea, and Ridley wanted it to be windy and rough so the chances of shooting the right kind of sea plate were slim. It was storyboarded as one wide shot only so we looked into stock footage to use, but Ridley wasn’t happy with any of the options. Instead he turned to a previous film of his, ‘White Squall’, and cut in a sequence of shots from there, which featured a modern sailing ship and included insert shots of the sails. The 5 shots we created involved replacing this ship with a medieval CG replacement. There were no similarities between the 2 styles of boat, and further more it was so close to camera we had to completely rebuild our asset to a higher level of detail, and populate the deck with CG sailors, horses and windy canopies. We had no camera information for the plates and they were ‘scope anamorphic’ so the matchmoves were trickier too. Naturally large amounts of additional vfx work like this comes at a price, but if Ridley felt it was important for the story the studio will be likely to approve it. But interestingly the final shot count, when the changes and omits were taken into account, the vfx costs fitted with in the original budget.

VFXTalk: The French armada and ensuing battle scenes on the beach look very complex , combining many types of work; please can you describe how you approached these sequences.

RS: During the end battle most of MPC’s work was supporting what was already present in the plates, in some cases the number of extras was sufficient, and we’d be only adding a few boats into the background. But with 10 cameras filming and only 8 practical boats, most shots needed MPC’s digital armada, CG soldiers or environment work to augment the background. There were also a handful of wider shots where MPC created the entire invasion or battle and much of the background landscape too. Each CG shot went through the same basic pipeline: first the film scans would go to the matchmove department for camera tracking and to the comp department for colour balancing to create a ‘neutral’ grade for consistent CG lighting. The prep team would also handle any clean up such as marker removal or camera crew removal at this stage. Once a Maya camera was available the environment department would handle creating the cliff and the layout team would place the armada, which started from a master boat formation. The animation cycles could then be scaled or offset to suit the conditions of the sea. We usually go through a couple of versions of refinement to make it work compositionally and in context to the cut. Once I had approved the boat layout, the crowd and layout teams set to work with our ALICE software (MPC’s proprietary crowd tool) to place all the soldiers in the boats and the beach with the appropriate animation. We would also send a temp version to the editorial team to cut in so Ridley and Pietro Scalia, the editor, had a chance to comment. Now we’d know the CG content of each shot and could accurately identify the rotoscoping requirements to create all the mattes necessary to place the cg behind the foreground live action. Whilst we waited for feedback on our layouts we continued into lighting and rendering and got the effects team working on the water interactions for the boats and crowds. Once we’d established a few key shots this process worked well. There was generally little or no feedback from Ridley so we could progress into comp quickly and get the shots looking more final.

VFXTalk: How long did it take to shoot the beach battle scene and what were the main challenges of compositing footage shot on location with CG footage? How much of the environment was enhanced?

RS: The Battle was shot over a 3-week period in Pembrokeshire, Wales. Over this period we had every kind of weather and lighting condition. Many of the plates were very different but we did our best to balance their grades to a matching colour temperature. We grouped shots with similar lighting conditions and build light rigs based on HDRI 360’s that best matched these conditions. This helped keep our lighting and compositing process consistent.

For the beach environment, MPC had to create cliffs that surround the location, and were added to 75 shots. Once approved in concept, the cliff geometry was modelled using Maya and interchangeable cliff textures were projected depending on the lighting conditions. The only other digital work we did to the location was to maintain continuity with the quality of the sand, this included adding or removing footprints, adding arrows stuck in the sand or moving the position of the sea to keep the tide line constant.

VFXTalk: Do you follow the edit of the film closely? Are you allowed to? and if so how amenable is everyone in the edit room to suggestions not strictly related to VFX…from VFX the artists?

RS: Following the edit was essential, I’d always try to make the best decisions based on the current cut, but this was constantly evolving during the post process. Occasionally we create animations or compositions to help the edit, but then the cut would change before we could show the editor, and we’d have to change our work again. There were a couple of times when we asked if shots could be changed back, because we’d done a lot of work by then. As far as editing suggestions not related to VFX sequences, that’s not my role! If I were asked, I’d be happy to comment though.

VFXTalk: Some of the dolly shots that ped up/down appeared to have quite a bit of vibration in them. If you caught something in the edit or dailies would you offer to fix them if they were not good in your opinion?

RS: If they were shots we’re working on anyway- sure I offer. Anything else is going to come with a more significant cost so that would be the production’s decision. We could ball park a cost so they could decide to reshoot or fix in post.

VFXTalk: Can you take us through some of the corrections you ended up giving your team?

RS: I had to see 150 artists nearly every day. We’d do group reviews for each discipline or department, so there’s a constant stream of feedback. It rarely feels like corrections, but more like steering the process. Occasionally I’d make mistakes, by taking a shot in the wrong direction, so the team would suffer the consequences, but thankfully these were generally minor compositional adjustments or changes to the number of soldiers in a shot.

VFXTalk: Is it possible for roto/paint problems to slip through QC and make it to you?

RS: Yes. We had a really tight schedule that often meant that there wasn’t enough time for the lead artists to review everything before I saw it. Also a few of the shots were really difficult so these went on for a while, and I couldn’t avoid seeing the work in progress. It wasn’t really an issue –we had a great roto/prep team – they did an awesome job.

VFXTalk: One of the best parts in the movie was in the INN when everyone bursts into a jig – it had a great vibe. Which were your favourite parts in the movie and which didn’t you like?

RS: I have a tendency to like the parts we had the least to do with! Nothing to do with not liking my work, but it’s largely unfamiliar. I liked the humour in the film and visually Ridley created some beautiful shots, especially in the town of Nottingham. I liked the siege on the French Castle at the start of the film, it’s a good action sequence to introduce Robin, and whilst we added lots of arrows here the shots are great regardless. There’s not much to dislike really, perhaps the moment when Marion joins Robin on the beach for the end battle, but this suffered a little because of cutting changes that meant her original dialogue didn’t work in context, so she ended up saying almost nothing. Felt a bit weird to me, but then I doubt if anyone who wasn’t aware of the process would be bothered by it.

VFXTalk: Could you tell us more about the creation of the titles which look very rich – prologue does contain a few elements. Could you explain how the type and font was finalised and were they exactly what Mr.Ridley wanted for the film ?

RS: Sorry can’t answer that one. I had nothing to do with the titles. I saw them for the first time when I went to the cinema! I thought they were great though.

VFXTalk: can you let us know how much work was needed to cover over any modern landmarks, machinery or general modern day life? What scenes needed the most work in this area? What was the most interesting unwanted background detail that you had to work on?

RS: We had a few cars, fences and roads to paint out, not too many though. The worst offenders were the camera crews. In the action sequences Ridley would have up to 10 cameras shooting, and inevitably cameras and crew would appear in shots. We did our best to disguise them during the shot by putting them in costumes or covering the camera with medieval props, but there’s only so much you can do to hide a steady cam or a crane on a trailer being pulled by a tractor!

Tools & Workflow

VFXTalk: It would be interesting to know details of the workflow for this project. Not just the process of constructing the elements and cleaning plates and comping; but also how many people worked on each of these stages and for how long?

RS: Well, as I covered general workflow in other questions, let me give an example of the details involved in creating CG army shot. The first stage of preparing for a large crowd show like Robin Hood is to identify the motions that are going to be required. MPC has it’s own proprietary software for this called ALICE (Artificial LIfe Crowd Engine) It has a very sophisticated underlying motion syntheses engine that can take multiple inputs from any combination of motion capture clips, key frame animation cycles & physics simulations which it can manipulate to give us the resulting simulations we see on screen, this gives us a great deal of freedom when deciding how to tackle a show.

For Robin Hood we relied predominately on MPC’s existing mo-cap library but extended it with new mo-cap data captured over a 2-day shoot, specifically targeted towards the disembarkation of soldiers & mounted cavalry, along with the rowing motions for the boat crews in each of the different boats. Once all the new motions arrived at MPC they were processed into the existing library through our motion capture pipeline, where our crowd team started to create the motion clip setups and motion trees which would drive the agents for the whole show.

With ALICE being fully proprietary it allows us to quickly write anything from a new behaviour, such as inheriting motion from the boat the crowd agent is occupying, to simple tools that automate and simplify tasks for other departments. For the first time ALICE was used by our Layout department who took on the challenge of populating the whole Armada.

The crowd team produced a large number of different caches for each of the different rowing motions and disembarkations required for the various different boats. We then wrote a simple interface, which the Layout team could then use to rapidly set-up, randomize, change, and offset the caches to populate all of the boats in a few simple steps.

Once the first pass had gone through layout, the crowd team would take over any of the shots, which required more complex simulations to top up the action. This generally involved tweaking/adding to the disembarking to make it feel more chaotic, ranging from people being dynamically hit with arrows to stumbling through the water whilst providing the data required for the FX team to add in the interactions.

Once I was happy with the combined work of crowd and layout the next stage was to do the cloth simulations for all of the agents. Most agents only required the looser cloth of the lower body and any flags that were being carried to be simulated and this was handled by ALICE’s inbuilt cloth solver, before the resulting caches automatically flowed into FX and lighting departments.

VFXTalk: Could you tell us which software tools you have access to, and which ones were utilized for the making of this film?

RS: We use 3d equaliser and occasionally boujou for matchmoving; Photoshop is used for Matte painting; Texturing with a combination of Photoshop and Bodypaint; Flowline is our choice for water simulations, and everything is rendered in PR man. Most of our compositing was done in shake with some shots in Nuke. For our current shows, we’re almost entirely nuke.

In addition to all these MPC has a good set of proprietary tools written by our R&D department. We have custom camera tools, animation and lighting rigs that all integrate in to Maya. We also have our own crowd generation software ALICE, which we used extensively on this movie.

VFXTalk: Which parts or scenes did you use After Effects in and how was it used?

RS: We don’t use After Effects at MPC for features work.

VFXTalk: Did you have any shots you knew the result will look better in fluid fx yet due to time constrains you used particles instead?

RS: Although a combination of fluid fx and particles were used, time constraints were not a factor in this choice, it was solely down to the type of fx.

VFXTalk: How much time do you have for pre-production on a feature like this and how large is your RND team?

RS: MPC were not contracted on to Robin Hood until the first week of production so technically we had no pre-production time at all. I think that’s an important point though. MPC have a really good set of tools and experience in handling the type of work Robin Hood entailed. We’re also a large facility so we can handle large volumes of work –these were the deciding factors in giving the work to MPC. So whilst MPC has a software development team of 20 or so, we didn’t really rely heavily on them other than day-to-day support for our custom tools.

There was however testing and setup time involved. The FX team had the most significant pre-shot work to do. They had to develop a library of water splashes and interaction for the CG boats and crowds. The crowd team also had significant development work to do. For example, solving the problems of how to get horses disembarking from moving boats. The transition from a moving surface to a static surface was not something we’d done in ALICE before.

VFXTalk: Did you use any 2d particles? If so for which shots and how were they used?

RS: No we only used 3d Maya particles, and even then those were only used for 1 component of the boat wakes and for our arrow tool when large volumes of arrows were required.

VFXTalk: How do you work with the graders on the picture in order to get the final comp to fit in seamlessly with the film?

RS: I’d say around 80-90% of the work we were doing was adding CG elements to plate photography that remained unchanged by our involvement so for the most part there was little interaction with the final grading process. However, Ridley wanted to see all visual effects shots graded before he would final anything, so we set up short grading sessions with Company 3 to review batches of shots, all in advance of the final grade. Ridley knew what he could achieve in the grading process, so we’d discuss what we could do to help, or leave our shots as is so we didn’t create a ‘look’ in vfx the couldn’t be replicated in the DI process with non vfx shots that they would inter-cut with.

A few shots got sent back from the DI review for us to push an element further, for which we had greater control over. For example, we had some day for night shots that we had to comp a night starry sky into but essentially leave the shot in daytime mode, so the whole grade could happen in the DI. We could preview a temp grade but this didn’t reflect how much contrast and sharpening Ridley would add so we might get a note like ‘make the sky ½ stop darker and the stars a little brighter’.

VFXTalk: What render engine did you use for final rendering of the shots that you worked on in the film?

RS: We use Pixar’s Renderman for all our 3d.

VFXTalk: What’s the size of your renderfarm? Is it intel or amd? is it 32bit or 64 bit? what software do you use to manage your renders?

RS: We use 64bit Intel machines. The size of our render farm is always changing. Currently we have around 5600 cores. Alfred is used to manage the farm.

General Questions

VFXTalk: Is there a logical progression for an artist like yourself to take to directing eventually?

RS: For some vfx supervisors there is. When you get so involved in the whole movie making process, it can become a tangible aspiration. I had a taste of directing when I was in my early twenties, when I was working as a designer and animator. I directed a few TV idents and commercials that were in the ‘comfort zone’ of my knowledge at the time. But when it came to working with actors, and directing performances I found my limits. In fact this was a major reason for wanting to focus on creating visual effects and not pursue a directing career, and nearly 20 years later, I’m still happy with my decision.

VFXTalk: What are your thoughts on the current vfx education system?

RS: This is not something I have a huge amount of knowledge on, but compared to when I was studying there is an amazing amount of possibilities for vfx artists to learn their trade. There are some excellent courses here in the UK ranging from 3 weeks to 3 years, and online training seems to be pretty popular too. MPC have taken on some excellent graduates over the years, and it still amazes me how much skill and knowledge they have when they are just starting in the industry.

VFXTalk: Would you please describe the fx pipeline for what you consider the most challenging scene?

RS: The effects team were responsible for creating all the interaction for our CG elements. The end battle was the most challenging for them – we had to create dust, smoke, hoof kicks of grass, mud and sand for all the horses and soldiers. On the ocean there’s all the boat and crowd related wakes and splashes. These were all generated from pre-cached Flowline fluid simulations or Maya particles. The FX team built a library of water elements, basically if it touched the water it had a splash, surface foam or wake. By the time we started working on shots we had a system that automatically called up the splash simulations at render time depending on the position and depth of each member of our CG crowd. So as a process, when you take a shot that had CG boats with disembarking soldiers, I’d approve a layout of boats that worked with the continuity of the cut, this got passed on to the crowd td’s, who would populate the boats, the water and beach with our ALICE crowd agents. Next this would go the FX departments and they’d run the shot through their set up. Different artists would handle different things, to get the all elements ready for lighting.

VFXTalk: How often were you in contact with the director? and at which stages did you show him shots for review?

RS: I’d be with Ridley throughout the shoot when we were filming any visual effect shots. If he had any particular request or I had any questions he’d often do a quick sketch, based on the framing of a shot we were doing. I would also show him development work throughout the shoot too. This was mostly concept stills, so we could get approval of layouts or to clarify a brief before we got into the time consuming work.

Once the shooting had completed in the UK, Ridley and the editorial team returned to LA to cut the film. Allen Maris, the vfx producer, went too and I remained in the UK to oversee MPC’s day to-day work. We’d regularly send work for review; in fact this was a daily routine in the last few months of post. We’d specify if things were to be reviewed in the cut or just for discussion –but there were no set stages of approval we would adhere too. If we had a shot, which showed the layout of the French Armada, we’d send it so it could be reviewed in the cut, but we couldn’t wait for approval on each and every shot, there wasn’t time in the schedule. I would have to approve the stages so the teams could continue to the next step. There were a couple of times I got it wrong, and we had to make changes – but overall this was still a far more productive process.

VFXTalk: What’s next in the pipeline for MPC?

RS: Since Robin Hood, our crews have delivered sequences for Clash of the Titans, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part1, Narnia; Voyage of the Dawn Treader and Sucker Punch. MPC are now busy working on the final Harry Potter, Fast and the Furious 5, Pirates of the Caribbean 4, and X-Men: First Class to name a few. There’s a load more in the pipeline too, which will keep us busy through ‘til mid 2012.

VFXTalk: What would it take for a kid anywhere in the world to have “Richard Stammers” mentor him?

RS: Ha! Easier said than done. In an on set scenario, the best way to get involved with visual effects is going to be as a production assistant or a data-wrangler, but there’s little training for such roles, and it’s hard to get anywhere without some past experience. So the best way in is as a runner, but you’re going to have to be really good, which for the most part means having good common sense and being proactive. Having knowledge of the industry and its procedures is going to help too.

At MPC it’s even harder to take on a mentoring role. We’re a large corporation so there are legal, and practical hurdles like where it to sit someone (think that every spare seat has an overhead and has to be ideally occupied by someone creating revenue). We have (but rarely) taken on people for work experience. They would spend a bit of time with different departments but mostly shadowing a runner. Any mentoring program we do have tends to be helping existing employees reach the next step that they would aspire to. So in my case I would help colleagues who are already 2d or 3d supervisors learn to be vfx supervisors.

RELATED LINKS:
www.dneg.com
www.ironmanmovie.marvel.com

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[NEWS=”http://www.cgnews.com/wp-content/uploads/robinhood-small.jpg”]27616[/NEWS]VFXTalk are happy to announce that next up in the VFXTalk Master Interviews is world renowned post production and visual effects facility The Moving Picture Company (MPC). This month you will have the opportunity to quiz overall VFX Supervisor Richard Stammers on MPC’s work on the Ridley Scott epic Robin Hood. Stammers worked closely with Universal’s VFX Producer Allen Maris to achieve a wide range of visual effects including CG armies, CG boats, digital environments and CG arrows.

MPC leads the world in post production and visual effects for the Feature Film, Advertising, Digital and Television industries. Based in London, Santa Monica and Vancouver, MPC works on some of the most exciting commercials and feature films produced in the world today. Recent and memorable MPC creative work has included spots such as Nick Gordon’s Cadbury; ‘Spots V Stripes,’ Michael Gracey’s Evian; ‘Skating Babies,’. Feature film work that MPC is proud to have worked on in past months includes; ‘Prince of Persia,’ (Mike Newell) ‘Robin Hood’ (Ridley Scott) and ‘Clash of the Titans,’ (Louis Leterrier) and they are currently revisiting earlier work on the next outings for both the Narnia and Harry Potter franchise.

Robin Hood
In 13th century England, Robin and his band of marauders confront corruption in a local village and lead an uprising against the crown that will forever alter the balance of world power. And whether thief or hero, one man from humble beginnings will become an eternal symbol of freedom for his people. (Universal Pictures, 2010)

Academy Award winner Russell Crowe and visionary Director Ridley Scott reunite for the untold story of the man behind the legend. In an age of oppression and shameless tyranny, an outlaw becomes the unlikely hero that saves a nation and inspires generations to fight for freedom. Scott’s Robin Hood is an adventurous tale of epic proportions, portraying the story of the man behind the legend that is Robin Hood…

MPC Work on Robin Hood
MPC completed 570 shots for Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood, creating a wide range of visual effects including CG armies, CG boats, digital environments and CG arrows. MPC’s Richard Stammers,the overall VFX Supervisor for the show, worked closely with Universal’s VFX Producer Allen Maris to achieve the finished results.

One of MPC’s main challenges was to create the invading French Armada and the ensuing battle with the English army. A CG fleet of 200 ships and 6000 soldiers were added to the 8 practical boats and 500 extras used in principal photography. MPC used Alice, its proprietary crowd generation software to simulate the rowing and disembarkation of French soldiers and horses, with all water interactions being generated using Flowline software. The defending English archers and cavalry where also replicated with CG Alice generated clips and animated digital doubles. MPC relied predominately on its existing Motion Capture library for much of Robin Hood, but a special mocap shoot was organised to gather additional motion clips of rowing, disembarking troops and horses.

MPC’s digital environment work was centred on two main locations; London and the beach setting for the French invasion and final battle. A combination of matte painting and CG projections were used to recreate the medieval city, which featured the Tower of London and included the original St. Paul’s Cathedral and old London Bridge under construction, in the city beyond. The production’s football field sized set provided the starting point for MPC to extend vertically and laterally, and in post production alternate digital extensions were also created to reuse the set three times as different castle locations. Each extension was a montage of existing castles chosen by Ridley Scott and production designer Arthur Max. For the beach environment, MPC had to create cliffs that surround the location, and were added to 75 shots.

MPC was also responsible for creating the arrows for various sequences on the film. Practical blunt arrows were used in production where ever possible, but most shots presented safety issues so digital arrows were animated instead. Arrows were added to over 200 shots, with 90% of these being handled by the compositing team using Shake and Nuke. MPC developed proprietary 2D and 3D arrow animation tools to assist with the volume of arrows required.

Speak to Richard Stammers at MPC!
So now here is your chance to ask overall VFX Supervisor Richard Stammers about MPC’s work on Robin Hood. Gain insight into the processes that they used, the difficulties that they encountered, and the final shots that MPC was most proud of! This call for questions will be open for two weeks and will be closed at the end of working play on 12 October 2010.

*Because this thread may contain spoilers from the movie, it is recommended that you go see the movie before proceeding further!

Related Links:
www.robinhoodthemovie.com
www.moving-picture.com
MPC Press release
MPC Podcast
MPC Breakdown

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