The Most Unlikely Places

I never thought I'd hear the DV Rebel spirit represented on the director's commentary of I, Robot (a $120M film), and yet there it is, during the scene where Will Smith runs from the giant demolition bot through the crumbling mansion (I'm paraphrasing a bit):

We just dumped a whole bunch of stuff from the roof to fall in Will's path, and used long lenses... Often the best sort of film illusion is one that you can achieve on the set quickly...

CG takes many months to get right, and it's a very analytical process, a very sort of scientific process of getting shots and analyzing them and fixing them and constantly improving them.

It's a hell of a lot more fun to sort of wobble the camera around and run around like crazy with a few strobing lights and get something really exciting happening right in front of you.

Director Alex Proyas also describes perfectly why the DV Rebel approach of working backward, not forward is so important and can save you time and money (on DVD chapters 12–13), and how the Hollywood filmmaking machine unwittingly conspires against this wisdom.

Comments

[Adam]

interesting...I'm sure there were takes that used practical stuff, but I know a few compers whose eyes are still bleeding from comping those shots together... lots of green screen/cg debris in that sequence.

[Stu]

Yes, the /sentiment/ is DV Rebel, if not the execution. There's some great breakdowns on disk 2 of the http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0007PALSE?ie=UTF8&tag=prolost-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B0007PALSE">DVD that show Rainmaker's excellent work on that sequence. Nice combo of miniatures, practical effects, and CG. And some string evidence that black is usually better than green.

Throughout the supplemental material, one gets the strong sense that Proyas is a bit flummoxed by the scale of his own production. In an interview he rants about the shipping container set, asking why on earth they needed to bring a hundred shipping containers to some dirt field out in the middle of nowhere rather than bringing a bit of dirt to some shipping containers!

[Anthony]

This is book related q... I really dig it. Curious on your feelings about the announced Premiere Pro 2 for Apple. If AE is the finishing destination, it seems best to work in Premiere Pro 2. Premiere 5 and 6 were buggy on my set up, whereas FCP was tolerable. Any foreseeable problems or hang ups cutting in Pro 2? Also- was it for legal purposes that you didn't mention the free automatic duck-created "aaf" sequence export from FCP 4.5 HD to AE 7? Too bad FCP disabled the plug in on v5.
Keep up the blog and I hope the book goes to 2nd printing fast! And post re: premiere 2, please- Anthony Torres

[Stu]

Hi Anthony,

I did blog about Premiere on the mac, http://prolost.blogspot.com/2007/01/premiere-pro-back-to-mac.html">right here. As you can see, I'm excited about the possibilities.

There was a http://rebelsguide.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=37">discussion on the http://rebelsguide.com/forum/index.php">Rebel Café about the Auto Duck freebie, but it had already stopped working when I wrote the onlining chapter. Sad, because Apple made such a big deal about the XML features, yet never did much to promote or exemplify its use.

I've cut a few short things in PPro and enjoyed the experience. It's not as mature a tool as FCP, but it's close. Dave at Filmmaking Central reported some big problems with his feature that he cut in PPro though, so it sounds like there may still be some kinks to work through!

[Eric Peacock]

I like Proyas, mostly for Dark City - good commentary by Roger Ebert on that DVD. I, Robot wasn't so great for me but I liked the visual work plenty.

I hate to keep the digression on Premiere Pro going, but I'm glad to see competition in the NLE market since it should keep Apple and Adobe moving forward.

However I'm really pretty happy with FCP nowadays. It is a bit surprising to see the comments swaying towards dropping FCP when PP comes out for OS X since I thought that Final Cut Studio was great bang for the buck, especially if you know when and how the LiveType titler and Motion can be beneficial, even over AFX. I didn't realize folks were that keen on switching (other than Avid).

I haven't used Premiere since 6.5 on OS X (ugh). FCP was light years ahead then and I suppose could still be now in some areas.

I do realize that AFX integration with FCP is a pain, so I guess that alone would make Adobe the best pick. Apple did boost the metadata and XML features a bit with the last FCP update so maybe there will be some improvements that will also play out with Automatic Duck. FCP does still need some re-writes when it comes to media management, some of which could roll into the exporting abilities.

[DannyM]

Hey Stu,
I loved the book. I have also told everyone about that I know so they would run out and buy it. I was wondering though. In the section where you talk about deriving your cameras AOV. I was wondering if maybe someone could put together a database on the various models. that way people could have a quick reference for their model of cameras.

Just a thought.

-

[Stu]

Hi DannyM,

That's a cool idea—you could start a thread on the http://rebelsguide.com/forum/">Rebel Café if you like, where people could post their hAOV measurements for their various cameras.

Thanks for the kind words about the book!