Trevor Hogg chats with visual effects supervisors Hal Couzens and Scott Davids about creating 'photonatural' effects for The Bourne Legacy...
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“I had finished a show called Paul [2011] for Working Title and Universal, a little alien film, and I wanted to continue a relationship with them; they offered me the job of Bourne and I jumped at the chance,” explains Visual Effects Supervisor Hal Couzens as to how became involved with The Bourne Legacy (2012) which sees Matt Damon (The Talented Mr. Ripley) replaced by Jeremy Renner (The Hurt Locker) in the fourth instalment of the gritty spy franchise. “Tony Gilroy [Michael Clayton] is the writer and director of the show; he wrote the previous three so he had a good understanding of the overall story. The biggest creative tie-in that we had was religiously sticking to it being autumn/winter 2007 to the point that monitors weren’t generally 16:9, they were 4:3 or 5:4, cars were all related to 2007 and we were striping leaves from trees to make it more wintery because where the third film ends this film has already started.” Not a lot of previs was used during the course of the project. “Tony Gilroy, and John Gilroy [Pacific Rim], his editor brother, would go through some film which has been shot beforehand with a stand-in. It’s just minor. People standing or walking through an open door and they edited that together to give you a rough layout of what the scene is going to be. They favoured that over storyboarding.”
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“The way Tony and John Gilroy worked early on that method of pre-editing scenes helped us edit things fast,” states Hal Couzens. “We would look at the rough assembly and go there are 30 shots. These three or four shots are the most useful in telling us what the effect is going to be so we could create a pipeline. When the scene was edited and all of the final choices were in the exact places we had already done three or four shots and the other 25 were doable by multiple people simultaneously. We had created a template for it.” The visual effects had to be seamlessly integrated into the setting of the movie. “Photonatural is about creating work or effects that can be on this planet today. You need the story to be told with it. What is quite unusual is throwing the effect away sometimes. It’s a drone crashing in the background. It’s a major effect of a guy jumping across a building. You never make the effect of the shot the important thing. You always make the story the important thing. Photorealism makes that it looks real but doesn’t mean that it’s possible.”
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A key example of achieving photonatural realism is the scene when Jeremy Renner is hunted by a pack of wolves. “Most CG wolves are recognizable instantly because they do things that real wolves don’t do,” states Hal Couzens. “They’ve been anamorphized or oversized. There all of these things that give it away. It’s rare to have a wolf in film just being a wolf. One thing we had a situation with was our wolves weren’t as attracted by birds and animals. Wolves generally are incredibly skittish and cautious animals. Even when they are trapped they don’t loose their skittishness. If you want them to come in front of the camera they will but in exchange for a piece of a chicken neck or some piece of meat. We found that we were going to struggle with the trained wolves which were very cautious. We did a lot CG wolf shots in the show but you would think that didn’t need to be a CG wolf. It looks like a normal wolf. It’s being cautious and slow before it gets to being aggressive. What’s going on? They’re stalking him not like some Twilight wolf or werewolf. In the natural state it’s trying not to over animate a wolf by putting in too much movement. It’s always one of those myths is to try to show off what you can do through animation. You have to bring it back. How we did that was to look at a lot of documentary footage of river wolves in the wild, and shooting some hybrid wolf dogs. We did a multiple witness camera shoot with the wolf dogs and used a series of actions and cues which were the basis for animating what our wolf model would be; Stephen Enticott at Dneg was in charge of the project.”
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“We had a close relationship with the special effects guys,” states Hal Couzens. “They were great. If SFX could do it they did it. One obvious point is the cabin explosion which uses a lot of visual effects in the scene but the cabin itself was a SFX explosion. It was 80 per cent of the shot. Around that amazing explosion we were able to build all the scientific things right outside the cabin. We added those things to be blown away because it was too difficult to coordinate. It couldn’t be done as a set explosion as it would have required too much force. To do them as separate would have required timing two explosions and that more than quadruples your chances of one of them not going off at the same time and ruining your whole shot. We only had one cabin to blow up. We only had one shot at that. We added the missile, trail and drone and combined the effects with one of the actor and of the explosion. As a visual effect we needed SFX for that shot and the result is so good because you have this genuine set action with the explosion, snow and the trees around it.”
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“We went into the show thinking that there were going to be 350 to 400 shots,” remarks Hal Couzens. “My particular background is a supervising producer so you do need a strong facility side supervisor to help out with a lot of the visual effects. We wanted one vendor to come on board initially. We pitched to six different vendors from around the world, and picked one that would fit the right budget with the right sensibility creatively. Double Negative won this reward from a strong track record for invisible effects. Another thing was that the visual effects had to go across several skill sets in the film and there are a big company with a multiple skill set. They gave an excellent presentation and were a competitive bid. As the show grew bigger during the production we needed additional vendors to come on board. It became a really tight production schedule so it became too much for one vendor supervise themselves in that time frame. Chris Cram from Universal recommended Level 256 to me and we took them on board for a lot of the monitor replacements and wire removal work. They did a fantastic job. We added a scene quite late of Jeremy Renner jumping across a chasm in the mountain and for that one we needed a large strong company with a proven track record. We had to go up for another shoot in Canada and were only six weeks out of delivery for the whole film. We needed a strong supervisor to oversee that shoot and Rhythm & Hues had good people available so we sent them up.” Other VFX vendors involved in the production were Phosphene, Somnyo Films, Legacy Effects, and Lola VFX.
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“We do a lot of work for Universal Pictures and so early on in pre-production we were introduced to Hal as a potential vendor,” states Level 256 VFX Visual Effects Supervisor Scott Davids. “Hal was great at giving direction and notes. When shots were awarded we always had a very thorough discussion about each shot via cineSync – sometimes purely philosophical allowing us to have creative freedom but giving us ‘rules’ to think about during that creative process. Then later as we were working Hal was always immediately accessible whenever we had questions or needed input. The key to a good project is communication.” The spirit of the previous instalments needed to be maintained. “The thing about the Bourne movie franchise that defines its genre is its organic and natural style. It's a superhero movie that grounds itself in reality and while there are fantastic and superhuman things that take place in the story, everything technically COULD be real. While we work on the VFX and create unique shots, the idea is to ground everything in reality. This is where the ‘photonatural concept’ comes from. The idea is to make the shots possible on every level; allow things to be dirty, blown out, don't draw attention to the VFX, there are no impossible camera moves. Reality is not perfect. When things are hyper real it subliminally affects the viewer and makes them feel fake, and in a Bourne movie that goes against the effectiveness of the characters and the story.”
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“I would say that the only challenge we had was that every shot had its own unique issues and problems,” remarks Scott Davids. “One of the things that I love about VFX is that there really isn't a ‘right’ way to do anything; it’s about finding the most efficient way to do the best work. So when we'd kick off our shots we would often as a team rough out each shot to collectively brainstorm the issues and prioritize the workload and our artist to ensure that we never got bogged down.” Level 256 VFX handled the rooftop rescue, 2 and 2.5D monitor inserts, wire and rig removals, and some face replacements. “We had a broad spectrum of work on the film but probably the most cumulatively challenging were the rig and wire removals. Some of the shots just had so much missing that we ended up having to fully rebuild the scenes in 2.5D. Just as much work went into some of the rig removals as fully building and replacing an environment or doing a complex hard surface set extension.” Davids notes, “About half of our workload was complex rig and wire removals. Those become quasi background replacements, because although we weren't designing or fabricating the backgrounds, in many cases we ended up having to use what was shot practically to create matte paintings of buildings and skies, and then re-projected them in 2.5D.”
“For us, it’s all about management, communication, and open internal reviews,” states Scott Davids. “We have little bureaucracy at our company so that allows us to work quickly, but it also allows for freedom of communication. We make sure that no one is in the dark, everyone's opinion matters, and hold open internal reviews where we advocate discussion. This environment allows us to monitor our capacity, encourage our artists to take pride in their work, and allows myself and my production team to be realistic about our schedule and workload.” A particular sequence stands out to Davids. The Marta's house stuff was amazing. Double Negative is so good at hard surface and environment work that it’s seamless, their integration is top notch. Of the sequences that we did, there were two shots where we had to fix practical makeup on an actor's face riding a motorcycle by doing a partial face replacement. It was really the 11th hour and with only two days to get an approved concept, we were able to nail it our first try. It was an important victory because it strengthened our bond with Hal as problem solvers and members of the team.”
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Some head replacement shots were required especially during the motorcycle chase sequence. “There are two ways to do this,” explains Hal Couzens. “One way is to shoot the actors performing something similar against the green screen and essentially do a 2D composite of their head onto the body. That’s normally doable if it’s not a super complicated camera move or marker changes or for that matter your focus is on that actor delivering a subtle or long performance. Head replacements like The Social Network (2010) are a completely different ballgame than a head replacement during a motorbike chase. Jeremy Renner and Louis Ozawa Changchien [Predators] did a lot of their own stunts; some of them they weren’t going to do because they were too dangerous plus during those motorcycle chases they’re deliberately not wearing helmets so the audience can see the characters cast on those motorbikes. In some cases we had to get some face replacements for that. We also had to some face replacements around the actors’ availability. At some point we had some overruns and Rachel Weisz [The Constant Gardener] needed to go on to another show. We were able to do some face replacement work on her. To do these well you need to record with multiple cameras the actions of the actor. They still need to give you a performance and that performance is translated onto a 3D face and then is composited in. It is very complex.”
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The cabin is not the only building to be blown up as so does the home of Marta (Rachel Weisz). “There are quite a few different aspects to it,” states Hal Couzens as he describes the destruction of Marta’s (Rachel Weisz) house. “All of the interior shots are on a green screen stage. As for the destruction it was partially practical and digital. We built a 40 foot by 12 foot high extension of the house. It was done as a resettable burning porch. A digital house and fire were added. Anytime you see the house in full-frame its digital.” Couzens observes, “The benefit of having a practical fire is that it gives you a lot of things in regards to what the lighting would be. You create a lot of feedback because now you have to create digital fire as good as that fire. If you can use practical elements in your scene they will enhance your digital effects because you’re giving yourself a level of reality to match to. If you don’t have that vantage point it’s like coming it up from scratch whereas we were able to build on top of. The top and side levels of the house were burning in different ways than the practical porch element but they still needed to match. For that we were referring to a lot to documentary footage as well.”
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We did look at a lot of documentary footage but the Art Department made us a full-sized drone which was scanned and used as texturing,” states Couzens. “We had that in the scenes when it lands on the ground or takes off. For that interaction we had a practical drone. As it started to move it became a digital drone. We had a real drone in that scene so we knew how to light the digital drone. We kept on looking at it. ‘Did it look like that one?’ That’s how you get to that photonatural state. By looking at the drone footage it gave us the view of how slow they move because they’re quite slow. We previs based on that, shot aerial plates which matched the previs and found what were the most beautiful plates. The drone can’t be too close to the camera. It can’t be flying directly at the camera. It needs to be created in a way we could have shot it. There is nothing about those drone shots that we couldn’t have actually filmed. We had a drone in a snowstorm.”
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“A lot of the stuff benefits from the fact that people don’t expect you to do CG traffic,” notes Hal Couzens. “It is also helped by the fact that they are normal real world cars driving or stuck in a traffic jam. It’s about lighting and taking a lot of texture photographs of real cars and having good lighting references and not getting them to do something extra dramatic. In our case they just needed to be driving with the other cars around them or moving faster or slower. That’s when you start seeing that animation is not good is when it doesn’t act as real car would act.” Emulating Mother Nature was not easy. “Snow is difficult. You need to draw a balance between allowing for some unexpected movement and not showing off the unexpected movement. It doesn’t all go in one direction. A few bits go up now and then and a few bits go down. There has to be some randomness to it but only three shots might have something quirky as you will. It’s about lighting it right, getting it’s pacing and scale right.”
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“I think the wolf sequence is extraordinary,” states Couzens reflecting on the visual effects work accomplished for The Bourne Legacy. “We combined so many techniques. A lot of thought went into which piece to use when and the viewer is kept in the story the whole time even when we cutaway to drone command. It was a part of the story which had to happen. He [Jeremy Renner] had to get this tracking beacon on this wolf as there were people chasing after him and how did he do that? We’ll show you how it happened. The whole handling of Marta’s house where we had an interior house set with a green screen, we had a partial exterior which was climbing the side of the real house into the set, there’s a burning house from a different location, and all of those were combined so that viewer could watch what happened at Marta’s house. I’m proud of both of those scenes.”
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Production stills © 2012 Universal Studios. All Rights Reserved.
VFX images © 2012 Universal Studios. All rights reserved. Images courtesy of fxguide.com.
Many thanks to Hal Couzens and Scott Davids for taking the time to be interviewed.
Make sure to visit the official websites for The Bourne Legacy, Hal Couzens, Level 256 VFX and Double Negative.
Trevor Hogg is a freelance video editor and writer who currently resides in Canada.
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| Hal Couzens |
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| Tony Gilroy |
“We do a lot of work for Universal Pictures and so early on in pre-production we were introduced to Hal as a potential vendor,” states Level 256 VFX Visual Effects Supervisor Scott Davids. “Hal was great at giving direction and notes. When shots were awarded we always had a very thorough discussion about each shot via cineSync – sometimes purely philosophical allowing us to have creative freedom but giving us ‘rules’ to think about during that creative process. Then later as we were working Hal was always immediately accessible whenever we had questions or needed input. The key to a good project is communication.” The spirit of the previous instalments needed to be maintained. “The thing about the Bourne movie franchise that defines its genre is its organic and natural style. It's a superhero movie that grounds itself in reality and while there are fantastic and superhuman things that take place in the story, everything technically COULD be real. While we work on the VFX and create unique shots, the idea is to ground everything in reality. This is where the ‘photonatural concept’ comes from. The idea is to make the shots possible on every level; allow things to be dirty, blown out, don't draw attention to the VFX, there are no impossible camera moves. Reality is not perfect. When things are hyper real it subliminally affects the viewer and makes them feel fake, and in a Bourne movie that goes against the effectiveness of the characters and the story.”
“I would say that the only challenge we had was that every shot had its own unique issues and problems,” remarks Scott Davids. “One of the things that I love about VFX is that there really isn't a ‘right’ way to do anything; it’s about finding the most efficient way to do the best work. So when we'd kick off our shots we would often as a team rough out each shot to collectively brainstorm the issues and prioritize the workload and our artist to ensure that we never got bogged down.” Level 256 VFX handled the rooftop rescue, 2 and 2.5D monitor inserts, wire and rig removals, and some face replacements. “We had a broad spectrum of work on the film but probably the most cumulatively challenging were the rig and wire removals. Some of the shots just had so much missing that we ended up having to fully rebuild the scenes in 2.5D. Just as much work went into some of the rig removals as fully building and replacing an environment or doing a complex hard surface set extension.” Davids notes, “About half of our workload was complex rig and wire removals. Those become quasi background replacements, because although we weren't designing or fabricating the backgrounds, in many cases we ended up having to use what was shot practically to create matte paintings of buildings and skies, and then re-projected them in 2.5D.”
“For us, it’s all about management, communication, and open internal reviews,” states Scott Davids. “We have little bureaucracy at our company so that allows us to work quickly, but it also allows for freedom of communication. We make sure that no one is in the dark, everyone's opinion matters, and hold open internal reviews where we advocate discussion. This environment allows us to monitor our capacity, encourage our artists to take pride in their work, and allows myself and my production team to be realistic about our schedule and workload.” A particular sequence stands out to Davids. The Marta's house stuff was amazing. Double Negative is so good at hard surface and environment work that it’s seamless, their integration is top notch. Of the sequences that we did, there were two shots where we had to fix practical makeup on an actor's face riding a motorcycle by doing a partial face replacement. It was really the 11th hour and with only two days to get an approved concept, we were able to nail it our first try. It was an important victory because it strengthened our bond with Hal as problem solvers and members of the team.”
Production stills © 2012 Universal Studios. All Rights Reserved.
VFX images © 2012 Universal Studios. All rights reserved. Images courtesy of fxguide.com.
Many thanks to Hal Couzens and Scott Davids for taking the time to be interviewed.
Make sure to visit the official websites for The Bourne Legacy, Hal Couzens, Level 256 VFX and Double Negative.
Trevor Hogg is a freelance video editor and writer who currently resides in Canada.