Spirit Press: VFX World
Monday, December 29, 2008 at 1:44PM 
Over a year ago I wrote The Film Industry is Broken, about how the increasing importance of both visual effects and digital color grading means that some of a film's most important visual decisions are being made blindly. I proposed that tools were needed to communicate complex color corrections between DI (Digital Intermediate) houses and visual effects facilities, and that the best-case scenario would be to integrate visual effects and DI so that the two processes could collaborate and evolve apace, throughout not only a film's post-production but also its production and pre-production.
I wrote that about a week before embarking on the adventure of The Spirit, a film on which I would get to put every one of those ideas to the test. We created, within The Orphanage's San Francisco offices, a secure mission-control for all the visual effects work on The Spirit. Based around a Nucoda Film Master grading station, The Bunker, as it came to be called, was where we performed the DI over the course of six months of visual effects shot production divided among ten facilities spanning the globe, integrating visual effects shot review and color correction into one seamless process. At all times, all participants had accurate and up-to-date color information about every one of their shots.
You can read a detailed article about this at VFX World. Here's an excerpt:
"As we were reviewing the shots, we were viewing them in the context of the ever-evolving cut of the movie. We'd get EDLs passed up from creative editorial in L.A. and we would stay in sync with the current cut. Every submission from every vendor would get dropped into a full 2K timeline that was being color-graded on the fly. In that sense, we merged the DI process and the visual effects shot review process into one, as opposed to the traditional, and painful way of doing it, which is that you final all your visual effects shots and then you go into the DI. This was the ultimate win/win of post. We not only achieved a huge amount of efficiently, which enabled us to do 1,900 shots on a budget in six months but it was the right thing to do creatively for the film. The look of the film is so significant, and we weren't making decisions blind. The Bunker's technology backbone is such that we can pre-color correct a shot and compact that correction into a look-up table (LUT) which we can share with the vendor. The vendor can bake that color correction into their QuickTime dailies that we review using cineSync software, but then they can deliver the shot to us uncorrected and we can reapply that correction in the DI so we have the ultimate flexibility to change it if we want to. But we also have a trust relationship with the vendor and they know that the way we have been looking at the shot the whole time is a faithful representation of what it's going to be."
Read the whole article here. It's mighty good—and yet there's more to it that I hope to blog on soon. See, the process of tying visual effects review and DI together turned out so much better than I'd dreamed it could, and it taught me some very important things about what matters in effects work. Stay tuned!
Reader Comments (9)
Stu, I'm very excited about the workflow the Orphanage has developed for The Spirit, and I hope other companies pick up on it. I want to see its results up on the screen, I really, really do, but... well, it just doesn't sound like a very good movie. I'm saying this as a guy whose copy of The Dark Knight Returns was worn threadbare a decade ago. A guy who looks at his 1st edition copies of RONIN like they're bottles of fine scotch whiskey. A guy who's read the DV Rebel Guide, and wonders if there's a difference between storytelling for comics and directing human actors.
Oh, it looks awesome! And I can handle watching something that just looks awesome. But not for anything longer than a music video. And it's not the reviews I've read and heard that is keeping me from putting down the ten bucks plus popcorn (gotta have popcorn). It's the reaction to the Spirit's screening at the San Diego Comic-Con. If a room full of fanboys and fangirls can't get amped up about it, then I might was well just watch Sin City again. Or better yet, READ it.
Oh no you di'int!
I cant wait to get out and see your work on the big screen, Stu. (I mean 2nd Unit Directing and stuff. I know I've seen plenty of your other work.)
I wish I didn't have so much darn work to do. I hope I don't miss Spirit OR Button.
Stu
Watched the movie. If anyone but you were involved I would have walked out. The technical aspects of the movie that you talk about are great but these things will never be able to compensate for a poorly constructed story.
Bilk, whatever story flaws this film has (or any other film, for that matter), that's not the worry of a VFX / DI supervisor.
The article discussed only the merits of VFX / DI / grading integration throughout the making of this movie.
i was half expecting to see some glib remarks about colour correcting a film with no colour....but instead i was treated to comments about the narrative...
100% agree with the vfx and color collaboration. I work on a DaVinci 2K here at Spy Post in San Francisco. The rest of our artists are Discrete artists, and we've been doing this for the past 4 years on commercials. The technical execution and artistic freedom that a project receives is akin to "The Allegory of the Cave." Once you se the light you ain't going back...
i'm the complete opposite of other posters re the spirit. I LOVED the spirit and had completely forgotten you were involved.
I was laughing in the the first few minutes, how can anyone not see how wonderful it was. if anything its the first true translation of comics to film. OK it's not as good as The dark knight, but its definitely up with hellboy 2.
i will be buying the DVD as soon as it's released!!!!
having said what i said in the last post, can i say thankyou for talking me through the technical aspects of the vfx production process, it remains ever fascinating and now means I can watch a movie several times not just for initial enjoyment but also in time to understand how hard everybody worked to deliver a product.
with games the underlying structure is often much more self evident, given time you can wonder around and see how things are being created, but with movies it requires one to be on ones toes all the time to not get sucked into the performance
I'm looking forward to buying your next and subsequent books and your future films
best wishes
kate
I wait your work on the big screen, Stu.
realy nice.
gl in your job