American Cinematographer - February 2016 - 82
*|*
Exploring All Possibilities
W
hile Roger Guyett supervised
the overall visual-effects work
for The Force Awakens, Pat Tubach, a
visual-effects supervisor for ILM,
helped lead the company's San
Francisco, Vancouver and Singapore
facilities. His effects credits include
Star Trek Into Darkness, Star Wars:
Episode II - Attack of the Clones, Episode
III - Revenge of the Sith, and all four
live-action Transformers features.
Tubach chatted with AC about his
experiences working on the seventh
installment of the Star Wars saga, both
as a filmmaker and a longtime fan.
American Cinematographer:
How is the work divided between
different ILM facilities?
Pat Tubach: We tried to split it
up as smartly as we could, and that was
mostly [by individual] sequences. We
tried to focus each different facility on
a specific part or specialty. For
instance, London led the character
work for Maz Kanata and Supreme
Leader Snoke. ILM San Francisco did
a huge breadth of work across the
entire film. ILM Vancouver focused a
lot on the Takodana castle battle
sequence and some of the third-act
sections that I can't talk about now.
Singapore did a lot of work on the
TIE-fighter hangar-escape sequence,
which occurs early in the movie.
How are assets shared?
Tubach: We've done work
globally for a while at ILM. This
movie is in so many different facilities,
all using a similar pipeline. Vancouver
is on the same network and time zone
as San Francisco, so geographically
that works well. London and
Singapore have to be on their own
separate networks.
We are designing models that
will become iconic Star Wars assets
well beyond this one film. And knowing that Lucasfilm and Disney as a
whole will be using these assets for
other purposes and additional films,
we set up an airtight process called the
82
February 2016
'universal asset pipeline' for building the
assets and sharing those across facilities.
Describe the development of
Starkiller Base's ultimate weapon.
Tubach: That was an interesting
sequence - it started out with J.J. wanting it to look like a major rally to show
the power of the First Order. We
wanted everything to feel like you could
physically build it and feel the practical
rather than computer effect, and create a
crowd scene at believable scale. We
knew we had a big challenge on our
hands. We did a lot of motion-capture
and movement cycles of the
stormtroopers, and we had some practical guys shot on the parade ground for
the foreground. We did a mix of practical and CG up front, CG troopers in the
back, and created the view from various
plates we'd shot in Iceland. There are
also some gigantic flags hanging behind
General Hux [Domhnall Gleeson],
which all had to be simulated.
Was there a conscious effort to
visually reference the original trilogy?
Tubach: We have access to the
Lucasfilm archives, so we went up to
American Cinematographer
*|*
Skywalker Ranch with the modeling
guys and spent multiple days going
through and photographing all the old
ships. We used actual scanned pieces of
them in new designs and new ships, so it
all feels like it comes from the same
rooted place. For example, visual-effects
art director Yanick Dusseault took a
model of an old Super Star Destroyer
and put it on its side and embedded it
into a mountain, and portions would
poke out from the landscape. You've got
that DNA to immediately feel like part
of what's come before. All of that is really
driving the look of this film, going back
to old ideas with a fresh take.
Were there any special improvements in ILM software made for The
Force Awakens?
Tubach: There's a lot of complex
destruction at the end of the movie with
a mix of materials like snow, rock, ice and
water. One of the limitations of simulations is the mix of a variety of materials
colliding against each other. R&D engineer Rick Hankins rewrote our Zeno
simulation engine to accommodate that.
All of that stuff can now interact directly,
rather than be simulated separately and
composited later.
Was there a particularly challenging shot or sequence?
Tubach: There wasn't one shot
that required extra attention or revisions;
it was all of the shots all the time! There
was no such thing as a 'one and done.'
We needed to explore all of the possibilities, and everyone understood that. It
resulted in the best possible version of
this film. We never allowed ourselves to
be easily satisfied until we'd really got it.
Were any old-school techniques
used in favor of new technology?
Tubach: I think BB-8 is a really
great example of that. A lot has been said
about how awesome the practical version
was, and we did a lot of CG BB-8 as
well. So the question comes up - why
not just do CG BB-8 all the time
because you can do whatever you want?
It was really key having that droid be a
real character that everybody on set
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - February 2016
Contents
American Cinematographer - February 2016 - Intro
American Cinematographer - February 2016 - Cover1
American Cinematographer - February 2016 - Cover2
American Cinematographer - February 2016 - 1
American Cinematographer - February 2016 - 2
American Cinematographer - February 2016 - Contents
American Cinematographer - February 2016 - 4
American Cinematographer - February 2016 - 5
American Cinematographer - February 2016 - 6
American Cinematographer - February 2016 - 7
American Cinematographer - February 2016 - 8
American Cinematographer - February 2016 - 9
American Cinematographer - February 2016 - 10
American Cinematographer - February 2016 - 11
American Cinematographer - February 2016 - 12
American Cinematographer - February 2016 - 13
American Cinematographer - February 2016 - 14
American Cinematographer - February 2016 - 15
American Cinematographer - February 2016 - 16
American Cinematographer - February 2016 - 17
American Cinematographer - February 2016 - 18
American Cinematographer - February 2016 - 19
American Cinematographer - February 2016 - 20
American Cinematographer - February 2016 - 21
American Cinematographer - February 2016 - 22
American Cinematographer - February 2016 - 23
American Cinematographer - February 2016 - 24
American Cinematographer - February 2016 - 25
American Cinematographer - February 2016 - 26
American Cinematographer - February 2016 - 27
American Cinematographer - February 2016 - 28
American Cinematographer - February 2016 - 29
American Cinematographer - February 2016 - 30
American Cinematographer - February 2016 - 31
American Cinematographer - February 2016 - 32
American Cinematographer - February 2016 - 33
American Cinematographer - February 2016 - 34
American Cinematographer - February 2016 - 35
American Cinematographer - February 2016 - 36
American Cinematographer - February 2016 - 37
American Cinematographer - February 2016 - 38
American Cinematographer - February 2016 - 39
American Cinematographer - February 2016 - 40
American Cinematographer - February 2016 - 41
American Cinematographer - February 2016 - 42
American Cinematographer - February 2016 - 43
American Cinematographer - February 2016 - 44
American Cinematographer - February 2016 - 45
American Cinematographer - February 2016 - 46
American Cinematographer - February 2016 - 47
American Cinematographer - February 2016 - 48
American Cinematographer - February 2016 - 49
American Cinematographer - February 2016 - 50
American Cinematographer - February 2016 - 51
American Cinematographer - February 2016 - 52
American Cinematographer - February 2016 - 53
American Cinematographer - February 2016 - 54
American Cinematographer - February 2016 - 55
American Cinematographer - February 2016 - 56
American Cinematographer - February 2016 - 57
American Cinematographer - February 2016 - 58
American Cinematographer - February 2016 - 59
American Cinematographer - February 2016 - 60
American Cinematographer - February 2016 - 61
American Cinematographer - February 2016 - 62
American Cinematographer - February 2016 - 63
American Cinematographer - February 2016 - 64
American Cinematographer - February 2016 - 65
American Cinematographer - February 2016 - 66
American Cinematographer - February 2016 - 67
American Cinematographer - February 2016 - 68
American Cinematographer - February 2016 - 69
American Cinematographer - February 2016 - 70
American Cinematographer - February 2016 - 71
American Cinematographer - February 2016 - 72
American Cinematographer - February 2016 - 73
American Cinematographer - February 2016 - 74
American Cinematographer - February 2016 - 75
American Cinematographer - February 2016 - 76
American Cinematographer - February 2016 - 77
American Cinematographer - February 2016 - 78
American Cinematographer - February 2016 - 79
American Cinematographer - February 2016 - 80
American Cinematographer - February 2016 - 81
American Cinematographer - February 2016 - 82
American Cinematographer - February 2016 - 83
American Cinematographer - February 2016 - 84
American Cinematographer - February 2016 - 85
American Cinematographer - February 2016 - 86
American Cinematographer - February 2016 - 87
American Cinematographer - February 2016 - 88
American Cinematographer - February 2016 - 89
American Cinematographer - February 2016 - 90
American Cinematographer - February 2016 - 91
American Cinematographer - February 2016 - 92
American Cinematographer - February 2016 - 93
American Cinematographer - February 2016 - 94
American Cinematographer - February 2016 - 95
American Cinematographer - February 2016 - 96
American Cinematographer - February 2016 - Cover3
American Cinematographer - February 2016 - Cover4
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