American Cinematographer - June 2009 - 70

Assessing by Stephanie Argy and Richard Edlund, ASC revisualization is the process of using computer-generated animation to explore scenes and sequences before they are shot, and it can significantly impact the cinematographer’s job. It can enable the director of photography to become even more involved in shaping a movie’s narrative; conversely, there is a danger he or she will end up merely executing shots that were conceived and detailed by someone else long before the cinematographer joined the production. “I can understand why cinematographers have been reluctant to embrace previs: they’re often excluded from the process,” says Chris Edwards of The Third Floor, a company specializing in previsualization. “But we have found their involvement is really key.” To address some issues related to previsualization, including how best to integrate it into production, the ASC Technology Committee recently joined with the Art Directors Guild and the Visual Effects Society to form the Previsualization Committee, the first joint committee formed by the three organizations. Co-chaired by Ron Frankel, the owner of previs company Proof, and David Morin, a The ASC, the Art Directors Guild and the Visual Effects Society join forces to explore the existing and potential uses of previsualization. Previs consultant with Autodesk, the group began meeting in April 2008. Over the course of 12 meetings, it has brought together some of the leading previs practitioners in the industry, cinematographers, production designers, visual-effects supervisors and other filmmakers to explore previs and the role it should play in the future. “Learning how other people see this process has been very insightful,” says Frankel. “Previs is coming into its own in a very interesting way.” Previsualization has been around in various forms for decades. Before shooting the original Star Wars, George Lucas worked out the timing for space battles by cutting together footage of World War II fighter-plane dogfights. On the third Star Wars film, Return of the Jedi, the speeder-bike sequence in the forest was tested out using action figures that were shot with lipstick cameras. “We could figure out movements and work out a little, dynamic piece of action, then cut it together and see if the shots we’d planned were going to work well,” says Neil Krepela, ASC, a cinematographer and visual-effects supervisor who worked on Jedi. In the definition crafted by the P Previsualization Committee, previs generally comprises computer-generated imagery created in a 3-D modeling-and-animation application and then edited together to demonstrate the potential execution of a scene or sequence. According to the committee’s research, the earliest example of CG previs appears to be The Boy Who Could Fly (1985). During a sequence in that movie, two children fly over a school fair filled with amusement-park rides; the child performers were held aloft on wires suspended from a large crane, and the sequence was covered with a Skycam supported by pylons. James Bissell, the project’s production designer and second-unit director, asked Canadian computergraphics company Omnibus to help him create a digital version of the sequence so he could experiment. The resultant previs enabled him to see where the shadows would be at different times of day so he could position the camera and crane as efficiently as possible. “They said, ‘What a great use for the technology — we never thought of that,’” recalls Bissell. “It allowed us to shoot a pretty elaborate sequence in about three days.” Previs is not visual effects, 70 June 2009
American Cinematographer - June 2009

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - June 2009
