Animation Artist

Jude Law and Haley Joel Osment in A.I. Artificial Intelligence.

“The whole goal of the exercise was to expose aesthetic choices or opportunities to Stephen Spielberg. So it was a director’s tool not a postproduction tool. We weren’t particularly concerned about using that data later for motion control or for match moving in CG,” said Rosenthal.

But he added that “while the system really was not a postproduction process or tool, it was a way to push postproduction decision making back into production where it belongs.”

Rosenthal reported that ILM is very interested in using the technique again on other films and perhaps expanding on the idea. “We see it as the first of a whole family of analogous tools or techniques. In this case, it was used primarily as a composition tool so that the director could frame the action against various specific parts of the skyline or against particular parts of buildings. And he was able to direct very specific performances and camera moves. But it seems that there may be a related tool in there that would be more of a DP’s tool to make decisions about how CG lighting in the post effect is going to match the lighting that he is setting up during production.”

Muren added that, “it was sort of a big breakthrough for us and it was helpful for Spielberg since he didn’t have to rely so much on his mind’s eye to be able to come up with what it was going to look like, or try to figure it out later. He could actually see what the background was going to look like, there on the set. And the actors could look at it also. We had large screen monitors around so everybody was able to see it.”

But even before Spielberg confronted the massive bluescreen, he had a pretty good idea what his set was going to look like thanks to a novel approach to storyboarding. The same artist that put together the rough composites for the virtual set, also generated a version of the Rouge City world for the 3D virtual reality video game “Unreal Tournament.”

“It’s a just a regular shoot-em-up game, but the nice thing about it is it gives you the engine to make your own mapping so you can make your own world,” explained Muren. “The resolution on this stuff is great. It looks gamey, but the idea that the resolution doesn’t hold up and it doesn’t refresh fast enough, that’s not true anymore. It’s really great what you can do just on a laptop. We had it working on a Powebook and on a Compaq laptop. It takes it out of your mind’s eye and puts it down there where you can actually look at it, which is really the way that artist should be able to work.”

ILM also added the ability to pick camera lenses to the “Unreal Tournament” engine “We had all the lenses that we were used to. And we were able to record the moves so Stephen actually sat there on the set before we were shooting and fiddled around with his Powerbook on his lap.”

Haley Joel Osment (left) and Jude Law in Warner Bros. Pictures’ and DreamWorks Pictures’ A.I. Artificial Intelligence.

“In your head you start understanding, ‘oh yeah, two miles over there I see that building and a quarter of a mile over here I see that building and it’s a lot taller than I thought it was going to be. He became familiar with the relationship between everything, so that a week later, when [he was] on the real set, he already was comfortable. He had already done his walkthrough and now he was walking onto his real bluescreen set,” said Muren adding that Spielberg “very quickly picked up on how to move the camera around based on all the ‘Unreal Tournament’ keyboard strokes… it’s obvious he played the game a lot. He just got right into it.”

ILM was also called upon to create a futuristic New York city submerged under 100 feet of water as well as CG vehicles called Amphibicopters (kind of a cross between helicopters and submarines), which take the audience on a aerial/underwater tour of Manhattan and Coney Island.

To create a convincing New York, ILM built scale models in a water tank combined with CG buildings.

“Background plates were done with large models that we had built. This was a huge model… probably about an inch to a foot or so, so some of the buildings are four or five feet high,” said Muren. “We did it that way because we could just get a lot more interactive control because it’s all real. We have some great model makers who just know how to make this stuff look like it’s been underwater for 200 years, which is pretty important to the story.”

ILM also composited in debris in the underwater scenes to make the water look realistic.

Part of the challenge for Muren was trying to match the unique style of cinematography that Kaminski used on the film.

“We put a lot of effort into getting a strong aesthetic on the film. Janusz Kaminski came up with a really great look for the movie and we incorporated that into all of our effects work which was pretty difficult because it’s not a standard way of shooting. It’s very contemporary,” said Muren. “And then carrying that through in the precise computer graphic world was difficult because computers do everything perfect and if you don’t tell it exactly how screwed up you want it to be, it won’t do it. And a lot of this kind of screws around with the image to make it much more compelling. It was really hard analyzing it and trying to figure out what we needed to do to get to the computer image to look the same way.”

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