David A. Smith is currently a Digital Effects Supervisor at Sony Pictures Imageworks. (www.imageworks.com) His most recent work is The Amazing Spider-Man 2, but has also worked on Green Lantern, I Am Legend, Harry Potter and The Sorcerer's Stone and many other films. Before he took the position as Digital Effects Supervisor at Imageworks, he was a technical director at Warner Digital and worked on projects like Batman And Robin.
He talks about the different processes and decisions that went into different aspects of the film.
This talk was interesting because even though I have not seen the film, I got to see how certain shots were put together. There were over 400 artists that worked on the film, so it is obvious it was a very large scale project. The pre-production started as early as October 2012, most of the shots were filmed in New York State and Rochester locations.
He talks about the different processes and decisions that went into different aspects of the film.
The director Marc Webb decided to shoot the film in anamorphic style because it felt that it would give the audience a different experience and shooting in anamorphic means that with the quality they wanted to deliver, detail was an important factor.
Spider-Man:
Instead of using the old suit, it was decided a new suit would be used in
the new film, the new suit allowed the actors to pee which was an improvement for their comfort in general, the material was more dynamic, it
fit loser, the light reflected better of it so it looked better in shots.
Physics helped the animators bring the mindset of a real world set, they used a stuntman and asked him to jump from ladders, hang on ropes, so they could apply real world physics
to Spider-Man when flying so it looked realistic. The stuntman was a great reference to understand the motion of falling and jumping.
Spider-Man's Webs : Simulation artists worked more closely with
the shots and had to use paint effects in Maya to edit each shot of the webs to give
it more unique look.
I found this interesting because what may have been a minor detail was actually taken into much consideration.
Electro:
MPC (Moving Pictures Company) did the scene where Mark, the journalist becomes Electro
from falling in a tank containing mutated eels.
The E-skin on Electro
was inspired by reference images and videos of lightning storms, and how the storms lit atmospheric volumes, they also looked at biometric creatures. The idea was that he would look like he was glowing from
within, like a light/energy source powered from inside.
The electricity
emitted from Electro was to have a unique look to it, for reference they looked
at plasma, more lightning storms, the way lightning branches out, studied high voltage
electric events, space nebula plasma also.
I liked how they continuously tried to keep themselves informed with reference images and videos so they could really understand how to produce the desired effect.
More Villains
For the Power Plant, a set was
created and attention to detail was important for future shots so that the animators knew what scale they were working with.
Tech:
- Render volumes in same rendered as geometry
For the Rhino suit, 2,000 pieces of
geometry was modelled, most were nuts and bolts.
The model also required 4,195 rigs which was extremely time-consuming.
Mesh Lights
The use of mesh lights helped to create
visual noise for lightning scenes for Electro and at the power plant because it created a smoother render.
For the Times Square shots, the modellers and animators re-created Times Square which when we were shown how they did it, we were stunned.
There were 491 lamposts in the
final environment of Times Squares when the modellers re-built the scene and over 140 electronic
bill-boards in the final environment.
The artists who worked on the building Times Square really had a lot of work because they had to make it look believable but then after building it, had to destroy it for the explosion shot. The company had to look into permission to use certain logos of companies that would appear in the shot.
The artists who worked on the building Times Square really had a lot of work because they had to make it look believable but then after building it, had to destroy it for the explosion shot. The company had to look into permission to use certain logos of companies that would appear in the shot.
There was a lot of work put into the film and this gave me an insight into how the production team did not have much time even though production started in 2012, it took a lot of people's collaboration to make the finished piece on time.
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