The First Hero

Take a look at Jody Duncan's article on realizing Roland Emmerich's 12,000-year-old world in 10,000BC in this quarters Cinefex magazine 113.  It details Nvizage's role in guiding the on location filming and how their robust, long-term pipeline played a crucial part in creating such extensive and detailed previz and post-vis with a team of up to 20 artists.

Nvizage and Visual Effects Supervisor Karen Goulekas had thoroughly prevized the terror bird sequence, and had included in that previz a detailed CG environment. Emmerich so liked the previz environment he had elements of it recreated in the practical set. "We had also let the animators go to town coming up with sight gags for the terror bird attack," recalled Goulekas. "They had tree branches snapping and falling on the birds, rocks hitting the characters. It was really a fun sequence to previz...."

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10,000 BC Previs

Creating life is just not as easy as it used to be, especially when you can practically feel its breath on your face from a high def image 80 feet wide. But this was the task for the VFX teams on 10,000 BC with its stampeding mammoths, a saber tooth tiger, vultures, a flock of terrorbirds, and thousands of digital slaves.

Goulekas decided to skip storyboarding and jump directly to previs. To assist with this, she recruited Nvizage’s Nic Hatch and Martin Chamney and requested a team of 14 character animators, four asset builders, modelers, texture painters, character riggers, and a visual effects editor.

Please click here for the full article: CGSociety

Sweeney Todd: There Will Be VFX

If ever there were a musical tailor-made for the twisted, Goth-inclined tastes of director Tim Burton, then surely it would be Stephen Sondheim's equally dark and twisted musical, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. While it's certainly a departure for Burton to adapt a stage-originated musical for the big screen, Sweeney Todd does manage to incorporate some of the director's signature themes such as death, lost love, the exploration of social status, absent parents and the hero as outsider.

TDB: Did you have to previs a lot of your settings?

GB: Yes, there was a small previs team in place from Nvizage throughout pre-production and on into the shoot. On certain shots, it was really instrumental and drove a lot of what was filmed. There was one shot, in particular, where we fly through the city at a real pace, which is essentially a full CG shot, with moco elements for the people. The previs drove this from the start. On others, it may have just allowed Tim to explore some ideas before rocking up on the day. It was rare that the previs was literally shot, as is the norm, but it's a very effective pre-production tool, as it can help raise issues creatively and technically that may have only come up too late when the cameras are about to roll. In that sense, a lot of the work was technical previs to inform the builds of the greenscreen stages.

Please click here for the full article: Animation World Network 

Problem Solving With Previs

The future looks bright for previs and postvis, with houses looking to make it an even more essential part of the filmmaking process as well as adapt it to new technologies like 3D.

Hatch, who recently worked on Roland Emmerich's upcoming 10,000 B.C. and Tim Burton's Sweeney Todd, says tools are getting better and allowing more complex visuals. "People want to see more," he suggests. "It's no longer kind of blocky animation and blocky models. We try to make it, not photoreal, but make it look visually interesting, make it look like what you'd see on the real plate."

Please click here for the full article: VFX World

The Prevalence of Previs

Previs and Postvis Movies are also making use of previs much later during post-production, hence the term postvis. On Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, “there were a few sequences that had been shot, but lacked the vfx needed to aid in the telling of the story,” explains previs supervisor Nic Hatch. “We’d very quickly gather the dailies from editorial, rough-track the plate, if necessary, and insert the visual effect, be it Gloop in the river being sucked up the pipe, or Violet turning into a blueberry. Where this really helps the editor and director, and ultimately everyone else involved, is in the pinning down of what the shot and sequences require to make them work as a piece of narrative...”

Please click here for the full article: VFX World