Twenty One Inc's blog

Showcase: Interview About Previsualization

Here is an interview done by HFF Academy at this year's Insight Out conference (March 2010).  I gave a talk on previs at the conference, but this interview was conducted separately, and gave me more of an opportunity to express my personal point of view and philosphy regarding previsualization and its role in filmmaking.

 

Spotlight On: The Previsualization Society Documentary (Part 1)

Check out this fantastic documentary on previsualization put together by Autodesk and The Previsualization Society.  It represents a variety of insightful perspectives on this beneficial, collaborative, and crucial element of modern-day filmmaking.

Very well said and right on the money...

 

Showcase: Previs for Live-Action Commercial

Here is a recent previsualization we did for a live-action commercial.  Of course, everything you see would be replaced by real elements on location during production.  Everything we've created is to real-world scale so you can analyze the previs for how to achieve the shots in live-action. 

We always shoot our footage a little long, allowing for coverage so that an editor can cut the scene creatively.  Since the edit is where things ultimately come together, it's wonderful to be able to shape the shots and staging in synergy with the cut.  This helps the filmmaker get to the core of what a piece is trying to say and to strengthen the elements that tell the story.  During production, a director can rely on this experience to make strong decisions in context, efficiently and clearly.

In addition to bringing the opportunity to cost-effectively experiment and revise choices to live-action filmmaking, previs also becomes an indispensable communication tool for everyone in production-- for camera, lighting, and set design crews, management, actors, vfx artists, and everyone else!  During preproduction, the director and producer have the chance to work through the vision between themselves and other key stakeholders in an intimate, creative setting designed to support rapid-revision, experimentation, and problem-solving. Then production can be about performance, about doing the best possible job of making a high-quality piece, with everyone on the same page.

Perspective: The Importance of Log Lines

I happen to be teaching at The Animation Workshop in Denmark right now, and among other things, I’ve been working with the students on log lines for their graduation films.  And it’s reminded me yet again how valuable constructing a log line is.  Not just for being able to succinctly pitch your project, but for really digging down into the heart of what the story is.  Not only that, but it proves to be an incredibly valuable tool in honing in on how to best structure the film visually in terms of its cinematic design (the holistic design supporting the story through the unification of production design, editorial shape, staging, and cinematography). 

When I develop a log line, I start with describing who the character is at the core, and to do that, I also examine what the character wants in the story.  Even more importantly, I look at what will happen if s/he fails--what the stakes are.  Because in confronting the main issue in the climax, we discover the most pivotal element for the main character... it should be the opposite quality, the thing that will be most threatened, where the character has the most to lose.  In other words, if the main character confronts betrayal, then loyalty must be important to him; if the main character confronts failure, then perhaps she is a perfectionist.  Of course, the log line also presents what form the antagonistic forces in the story will take, but this sense of opposition between what the character holds most dear and what will be threatened or at stake in the story is vital.  Positioned correctly, this allows for irony in the story (and in the log line) that makes it both compelling and worthy of telling.

This ironic element, this pivotal piece that makes us want to watch or listen to the story to see how it will unfold, is often also the key to a compelling cinematic design.  Once identified, you can explore how to support or contrast line, shape, space, value, colour (hue, saturation, and temperature), movement, and rhythm to deepen the expression of the central issue and the strongest arc in the story. 

This sounds simple, but building a strong log line is difficult, challenging you to drive into the purest form of the narrative.  Once you’ve found that, it becomes a solid base to build upon, both in terms of the story and its visual expression.  It’s also a good reminder that in a visual medium such as film, these two explorations (the story and its visual expression) belong hand-in-hand.

Showcase: Previs for Animated Commercial

Here is an example of previs for an animated commercial.  What I love about working in animation is how much everything can be designed to underscore the story and emotion.  One of the best things about previs, is that it can bring this kind of thinking and control to live action filmmaking as well.

What we really enjoyed about this little piece was the emphasis on lighting as a part of telling the story.  Typically, lighting is difficult to do early in the CG process.  But the way we work at Twenty One Inc, we are able to design and implement lighting right up front at the start of set design.

Our approach also heavily emphasizes a close relationship with the production design process, and we encourage a strong back-and-forth work flow to capture the best of what the design and the cinematography have to offer in terms of telling the story and influencing one another.

Plus, it's so much fun!

Perspective: Visual Structure

When I lecture on cinematic design and visual storytelling (which I've been doing a lot recently),  people often ask me "There are so many possibilities, so many visual devices-- how do I figure out a design for MY story?"  A huge key to this is presented in a great book by Bruce Block (of USC): The Visual Story.  I clearly remember when Block came to lecture to us at Pixar many years ago-- it made a very deep impact on me and my understanding of cinematic craft. 

In his book, Block states a very simple, but exceedingly useful principle: the more contrast (within a frame, between frames, or across a film), the greater the visual (and therefore emotional) intensity; the less contrast, the less the visual intensity.  So in other words, you can plot out the story emotionally in terms of intensity and then select a few key visual devices, such as colour, shape, line, and/or value and determine where you want more contrast and where you want less.  This can become a very powerful tool for architecting your visual structure in a way that supports the story. 

Another thing I hear lots of people say is that they don't like "rules".  There's a big difference between "rules" and design.  A painting with no design and every colour known to man thrown in is hardly communicative, evocative, or good on virtually any scale.  Cinematic design is similar-- it emphasizes consciously selecting an overall style and palette for the film, if you will, but not one restricted just to colour-- rather, considering all the myriad of applicable visual devices: line, colour, shape, space, lens, staging, quantity of light, quality of light, movement, eye fix, editorial pacing, etc.  and determining which will dominate and which will be used specifically to underscore the emotion and story.

Cinematic design is a subtle, powerful, and often-overlooked aspect of filmmaking.  And it's free for the taking-- every shot has to be designed and considered anyway; it costs nothing to do so in a meaningful and story-enhancing way...

Wise Words: Scott Adams

"Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes.  Art is knowing which one to keep."  - Scott Adams

I love this quote-- and live by this philosophy.  To be truly creative, we must risk, and to risk, we must get over fear of failure.  In teaching improvisation, I spend a lot of time addressing fear of failure and changing people's perspective on risk.  I think this is imperative to success in life and art. 

And certainly in filmmaking as well.

One of the things I love most about previsualization is that it encourages creative exploration while mitigating risk.  If you have a crazy idea-- try it!  See where it takes you and allow the process to evolve the material.  That's really hard to do during production, but should be encouraged during preproduction.  We need to strive for better content-- stronger stories, fresher visuals, more meaningful expression.  To find art (and commercial success), we need to try, to risk, to make mistakes.  But we don't need to break the bank to do it...

Spotlight On: HFF's InsightOut 2010

Traveling to Germany at any time is a great treat—going there to participate in the HFF “Konrad Wolf” Film & Television Academy’s InsightOut conference is terrific!  This intimate, hands-on conference is held in the beautiful film school building in Babelsberg, Potsdam, not far from Berlin. 

 

I was invited there as a trainer to speak on the subject of (guess what) previsualization.  The talk was very well received, and hopefully, we have some new converts out there.  ;0)  And I love Europe, so the whole affair was wonderful.

 

The conference format is very interesting—two days of lectures and case studies followed by two days of hands-on workshops and then a final day of lectures and discussions.  The evenings typically are also planned with a variety of events.  At about 70 participants, you have the time and opportunity to get to know a variety of people well over the course of the week.  I found the conversations and various points of view very stimulating—keep an eye on this one: http://www.insightout-training.net/home.html  You can also see some photos from the event on their Facebook Page.

Since I decided to hang out for a couple of days after my lecture, I had the great fortune of taking a stereoscopic stop motion animation workshop from Brian Van’t Hul (LAIKA) and Joe Lewis (General Lift).  Super fun!!  Stop motion animation is a secret love of mine.  Doing it in stereo was cool, but really, just playing around with the stickfa figures was the best.  Here’s a peek at what the setup looked like (quite simple and doable at home, actually):

I was so inspired, I found a stop motion animation app for my iPhone (iMotion) and made little animations on my tray table on the flight back to Vancouver.  Made for a great conversation-starter with my seat-partner!

Previsualization “Sparks” Interest at Vancouver Animation Festival

 

At the SPARK Animation Festival in September 2009, held in Vancouver, BC, previsualization made a bit of a splash.  In the four-day conference covering varied subjects such as character design, the cinematography of Up, and animation studio pipelines, two sessions were dedicated to previs.  Chris Edwards, CEO of The Third Floor, and Jericca Cleland, CEO/CCO of Twenty One Inc, laid a foundation for conference attendees with their joint presentation on the definition, history, and trajectory of previs. 

 
The following day, Justin Denton of Halon and Jason Hopkins of Propaganda Games joined them for a previs panel moderated by EA Chief Visual Officer Henry LaBounta.  Edwards, Denton, and Cleland all spoke about the uses and advantages of previs in film, commercials, and game cinematics.  Hopkins described Propaganda’s use of it to mock up game play and work through game feature and interface design. 

The presentations made a clear and compelling case for adopting the previs process in some form and the audience was interested and highly engaged.  Led by LaBounta in a casual but probing question-and-answer format, attendees peppered the speakers with a broad range of questions from the usual ones about time frames and budgets to the increasingly more dominant one—why isn’t everybody using previs?  And that, say Cleland, Denton, Edwards, and Hopkins, is exactly why they believe that previsualization truly is the shape of things to come.

(Photos courtesy of ACM Vancouver Siggraph.  From left to right: Henry LaBounta, Chris Edwards, Jericca Cleland, Justin Denton, and Jason Hopkins)

Perspective: Fear of Failure

I think a lot about fear of failure and its affect on the creative process and on life in general.  While I have lots to say on the topic, I am inspired by this transcript of J.K. Rowling's commencement address at Harvard last June.  Perhaps you have already seen this, but the entire address is well worth reading.  Here is an excerpt on the benefits of failure that I found most wonderful (text copyright J.K. Rowling June 2009, photo from Harvard Magazine):

Ultimately, we all have to decide for ourselves what constitutes failure, but the world is quite eager to give you a set of criteria if you let it. So I think it fair to say that by any conventional measure, a mere seven years after my graduation day, I had failed on an epic scale. An exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded, and I was jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless. The fears that my parents had had for me, and that I had had for myself, had both come to pass, and by every usual standard, I was the biggest failure I knew.

Now, I am not going to stand here and tell you that failure is fun. That period of my life was a dark one, and I had no idea that there was going to be what the press has since represented as a kind of fairy tale resolution. I had no idea then how far the tunnel extended, and for a long time, any light at the end of it was a hope rather than a reality.

So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had been realised, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default.

Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing examinations. Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other way. I discovered that I had a strong will, and more discipline than I had suspected; I also found out that I had friends whose value was truly above the price of rubies.

The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive. You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity. Such knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more than any qualification I ever earned.
So given a Time Turner, I would tell my 21-year-old self that personal happiness lies in knowing that life is not a check-list of acquisition or achievement. Your qualifications, your CV, are not your life, though you will meet many people of my age and older who confuse the two. Life is difficult, and complicated, and beyond anyone’s total control, and the humility to know that will enable you to survive its vicissitudes."

Well said.