The Fu King Productions

Met the crazy, innovative and somehow mad filmmakers "The Fu King Productions" here on the Bremer Stadtmusikanten set. Watched their short "Glint" yesterday on their website. Cool made guys!

More on "www.fu-king.com"

Content-Preserving Warps for 3D Video Stabilization

Nice to see new technologies coming up. Have a look at this really cool piece of software research by the University of Wisconsin-Madison. They refined 3D image stabilization techniques to nearly get dolly like camera movements out of handheld video. Of course there are several questions like what's about a heavy depth of field, very usual for production shot on film. Or what's about focus pulling.

Beside that technical aspect I really liked the unperfect effekt the deshaker produced on the harbour shot in their video. It was on the left side in the ocean, like a subtile warp in the water. But it was based on the camera movement, so it doesn't looked digitally for me. Imagine this imperfection as stylistic device. A new vertigo, born in the 2000s?

On Set: Die Bremer Stadtmusikanten

GeoTagged, [N52.57739, W10.14876]

Actually on set for "Die Bremer Stadtmusikanten", produced by Bremedia. For director Dirk Regel and me it's our third project after making two twins movies before. And it's really awesome to work with DOP Philipp Timme again on our second project.

Tim Burtons Alice in Wonderland

Comingsoon.net published the first images and artwork from Tim Burtons newest project "Alice in Wonderland". What for a cool style. Love it!

More here.

Kameramann

I nearly missed it, but the very popular German magazine "Der Kameramann" printed an article by me about digital weather effects using our "Aurora" workflow. Grab your copy at your local newspaper kiosk or read the article as an PDF here.

Thoughts on future film workflow

I can just agree with some thoughts of mikes at fhpd about future film workflow. For me film ist still an excellent material for acquiring images and I won't miss the over 100 years of experience with it. On the other hand I just got a 1TB harddisk in an electronic market nearby for 65 Euros. For me this means, in one or two years everyone can have his own digital lab storage for his movie. So, it's true, why don't change the lab workflow to simply scan the film stock on 16-Bit OpenEXR and create Quicktime or DNxHD proxies for editing? You don't need to handle the film stock anymore. You'll always have full access to your material shot and tune your movie until the last moments before the release. With future improvements in data bandwith, labs would turn into on-demand infrastructure providers, where you can simply dock in your projects.



Read mikes thoughts here.

Interview with Mark Breakspear about effects work on "Illuminati"

Got this interesting interview with Mark Brealspear about the environment effects work on "Illuminati". Impressive how the movie played in cities and known places, where they never went shooting.

Hold your breath: the making of Carousel (Philips 21:9 webspot)

It's out. Stink Digital made it and it's amazing, that they did it so straight forward. Sounds like the VFX classics: ropes, wires a precise motion control, some cgi extras and a very rock solid preproduction before. But what I still doesn't got is how they made them so perfectly breathless. Must have been tons of painting (perhaps with lots of 3D camera projections?).

Anyway, amazing work and amazing to see, how straight forward that was.

PS: The only thing, that didn't sound film production like for me was "3 days of shooting"... ;)

by Kui

Amazing architectural work

Have a look at these fantastic renderings by Alessandro Prodan at CGSociety. It's all CGI. No photographic material. Amazing how far you can get by using off the shelf tools, in this case Maya paint effects for all the plants and Mental Ray for the rendering. The shader were based on the standard MIA material delivered with Mental Ray.

Interesting if I'm thinking about movie workflow for this: he used a standard quadcore intel (Q9550) with 4GB of RAM, which isn't that amazing anymore. The rendering took 2-3 hours per image at 1.4K image resulution. So looking forward in probably five years we will be able to get this picture quality in 10 minutes. On the other hand you'll need a talented artist like Alessandro of course. That's a thing, that'll never change! So, thumbs up and to say it clear and again: Great work Alessandro :D

Here's some more inspiration btw:
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=132&t=737188

by Zap

"Realtime" Landscape Rendering

The director's vision dictates the way you work. Following this credo, Norman and me did aerial plate shooting over Brandenburg Germany to acquire landscape and cloud structures for "Doctor's Diary" (Polyphon). It was one of these days, when you're happy to be in film and doing visual effects. We felt a bit like Howard Hughes waiting for the perfect clouds. And we were so lucky to really get awesome images, when the rain clouds of the last days were just disappearing to let the sun come out. I'll post some images as soon as I've finished my private move. Many props to Tyler Kehl here for organising this and Jerry C. Gordon our "Cessna" Operator ;)

Philips 21:9 - Carousel

How cool is that:
http://www.cinema.philips.com/?ls=en_en

Amazing work, amazing cinematic design and still no update, how and who did it. I bet the clowns are puppets and a lot of waxworks were made. CG extensions for the frozen movement parts. Perhaps a few wires for weapons freezing in the air. But perhaps that's only the way I would plan it. So whoever did this - give us a signal!

PS: Reminds me of that really cool piece:

http://www.trapcode.com/gallery/suddenly_h264.mov

Youthenizing Effects

Somehow youthenizing effects (German "Verjüngungs Effekt") seems to be a hot thing in the industry actually. Today I just had a little side conversation with director Holger Haase about it. A month ago I discussed it with Novafilm for an upcoming project and last fall Matthias Glasner asked me about it for his upcoming movie "This is love".

Basically it's so simple. It's best done in the direction of youthenizing people. You need to roto parts of the face very rough and softly. Take it and blur these parts softly. Keep main details of the face like eyes, mouth, nose. Check it in motion and perhaps you're done. I know, rotoscoping sounds hard for filmmakers (especially for a producer, who needs to pay the artists doing it), but what I am speaking about is really, really rough, soft and fast roto.

We did a bunch of shots for Marcus O. Rosenmüller in "Das Geheimnis des Königssees". The book had a part 30 years ago, where our cast had to be much much younger. We did it exactly as described before (without trapping into the technical issues written down here ;). Unfortunately I can't show pictures or videos here, because we have signed a clear NDA with RTL. So if you're really interested in that work, feel free to contact me or visit us at the fx.center inside the Studio Babelsberg.

Funnily even LolaFX - specialized in digital makeup and doing amazing work for "Benjamin Button" - does it this way, as I read it on Zap's Mental Ray Blog:

"What was truly interesting about the Lola de-aging process is how manual it is. Its as far from "push a button and the computer does the work" that it can possibly be. Quite the opposite, it's nearly a matter of pulling every pixel manually from one place to another, the computer just helps with doing it over multiple frames, but even that requires TLC to look nice. I applaud the work here."

So what do filmmakers need to concern about? First as said before youthenizing is easier than aging (this can be done with a physical mask far more faster and cheaper in my opinion). On the technical side it's simply a degrain of parts of the image. But in this case you adjust it more harder, so the even the wrinkles will be "degrained" (we even use standard degrain filters to achieve the effect). So, technically the whole trick will be unleashed by the grain. Before we go on, have a view on this picture:
It's a 400% Zoom and Gamma lift to 2.0 of the picture of Kate Blanchett I've used above as cover for this story. It's an original Warner Brothers picture provide on their German Benjamin Button Website. Notice: a gamma 2 very brightens the picture and at normal gamma you probably don't notice anything wrong with the picture on the big screen in cinema. So this is just for this discussion. Here's the picture with "pixel pusher eyes"... ;)So... THIS was the thing, which disturbed me so much in cinema.. ;) just kidding guys, great work on it - really! :D .

For own comparison, here's a full face version at 500% zoom and gamma of 2.0. Click on the picture to open it in full resolution.
Grain matching will be tricky for a while, especially for pictures shot digitally (e.g. Sony F35 or RED One). Because film grain is an analog phenomena. It's even "between" the pixels. So, to make it more easy: film knows no pixels or raster. Film grain doesn't care about pixels.

Digital noise is different. Digital film cameras are working with checker raster like patterns (even if it's HD, 2K, 4K, bayer pattern or not - it remains a pixel raster). Lifting the gain produces noise. This is basically happens, if you drive the sensitivity of your chip up. The difference is, it hits exactly each pixel, without "swapping" to the surrounding ones.

So why is it important for filmmakers? Going digital means a new characteristic for the grain / noise. In postproduction there are no presets for it yet (no one I know). This makes digital noise matching a tricky task, simply because it's new and there are no standard tools or presets. But it should be no big deal with a proven grain extraction workflow. We are using a very simple but effective and production proven one at exozet actually. We basically use standard grey cards as a reference. So if you're not sure, having shot grey cards are always a welcome at postproduction.

Doctor's Diary Previz

Just had a preproduction meeting Holger Haase and Michael Schreitel for a greenscreen parachute jump. We will reuse the panorama technique, we've used before for "Eine gute Mutter", directed by Matthias Glasner with Sonja Rom behind the camera.

Our part of the storyline will be the "new start" in the life of our hero actress. To underline her personal rebirth, she drops herself out of a plane with a parachute, not knowing how to control or steer it. It will be the season opener "Doctor's Diary". A comedy series produced by Polyphon for RTL.

The basic idea behind that VFX shot is to put her into a greenscreen studio with heavy wind machines (Michael Bouterweck will provide them). The background will be replaced with our CGI images, got from photos and rendered through our pano pipeline. So it's basically very simple. Some 3D tracking and keying challenges, but nothing special on the technical side.

The more challenging task will be shooting the correct camera movements. As we noticed before you can do the best key, the best track, but it won't work, cause your camera movement is simply not part of the shot. Have a look at the opening sequence of "License to kill" to get an idea what I'm talking about (don't get me wrong, loved that movie, nice effect work these days, but the sequence in the plane over the ground simply looks like rear projection today).



So, we got it into previz and what you see here above is my very new favourite tool, just finished programming it yesterday. What we did, was to connect a standard VJ deck (thank you so much Falk from the Prototypen Crew for that short favour) with Softimage and prepared all the data we got for the shooting. With this setup Martin could directly move his Panther Foxycrane trough the greenscreen studio in correct measurements. Interactive and in realtime! Best is, we could even switch between studio setup and CGI environment (what you actually see in the video) and capture recorded moves (no keyframing, simply realtime animations) out to Final Cut Pro. Within two hours we could see, which angles will work, which optics we will need (don't need that whole set anymore), how big the screen must be and what the rig needs to be able to do, to get our actress into the right position. In the back Holger could do a first edit of the sequence and determine exactly, what he does need more and which shots won't work at the end. So previz alone is already very cool, but doing it interactively and realtime with the DOP and the director is a true benefit (both in terms of creative work and budget). We simply loved it and are looking forward for tomorrow (when I'll collect all the data and make floor plans out of it). Shooting will be by the end of this week.

"Nur ein Sommer" Premiere

Went to the premiere of "Nur ein Sommer", which was shoot back in 2006 in the wonderful landscape of the swiss alps. It was directed by Tamara Staudt. Michael Hammon was behind the camera. So for me it's two and a half years back now and the edit changed a lot after vfx was finished. And in the end I really enjoyed that movie and loved the smart dialogues with all the little Swiss-German stereotypes. I really laughed as she decrypted the handwritten telegram in the night. Nice idea Tamara!

The VFX part was pretty invisible (so it was good). Did a lot of small matte paintings, greenscreen composites (as they used the elevator up to the mountain). It was also one of the first uses of our "Aurora" weather extension workflow, we developed over the years and projects. I will never forget the discussion with Michael Hammon about how a nearby lightning hit looks like. Funnily enough they we're shooting in 2000 metres height, as a real lightning went down just 200 metres beside them. So after that real life experience we exactly knew, how it looks like. You can see the result in your repertory cinema next door.

"Whisky with Wodka" - Team Premiere

The hard core from left to right: Julia Smola, Me, Thomas "Lauti" Lautenbach and Guo Feng Tang - did an awesome job on 26 VFX shots for "Whisky with Wodka" (see "The Learnings";). Still missing Thomas "TK" Kaufmann, Robert Zeltsch, René Jakob, Juliane Schaloske and of course Olaf Skrzcipzyk. Had a long night at the movies, the restaurant and the bars nor got family, so it's ok ;)

Yesterday me and a part of my "WMW" team went to the team premiere of Andreas Dresen's newest movie "Whisky with Wodka", which will be released September this year. It's one of the few movies you enjoy when reading the book and being simply blown away when you see it finally in theatre. When you see all the power and love it got from the actors, the DOP and other filmmakers. It's rare that a movie feels like a big one piece at the end and gets much much bigger than in the book. So need to say it again: Congratulations Andi, Höfi, Peter and Wolfgang (we didn't met yet, just read your books ;) for this really fantastic movie.

PS: Nearly forgot it - a special congratulation for Henry Hübchen. It was a brilliant cast, but what Henry did with the bottle is outstanding. I bet it will be my favourite scene for 2009! So Henry, I didn't got to you on the premiere. I loved that scene. I saw it at least 20 times while doing post for it and I still roar with laughter, as I saw it on the big screen.

"Whisky with Wodka" - The Learnings / mask channels for grading... kill the key

Every project has its own learnings. For "Whisky with Wodka" we delivered mask channels for the further DI and grading workflow at ARRI Schwarzfilm in Berlin. In theory it's a brilliant idea. We just pipe out the mask channels we created for our comps (matte painting, sky / sea extraction, etc. - we have to create them anyway) and provide it for the DI guys. You can deliver up to four channels within one TGA file (simply written into red, green, blue and alpha channel). Lustre can easily read them (as far as they aren't compressed). After that you got exact masks for all CG elements - a wonderful idea.

In practice it meant more work on the delivery side of us (simply because of logistic). You need to check five times more data (RGB + four mask channels), before go out with it. I must admit that we had some shots in return because at the very beginning we simply didn't understood, what it means for our quality control. On the other hand there is a huge limitation of that idea, which we hardly noticed. So if you want to use mask channels for your grading session take care of the following aspect:

Mask channels are fine for detailed, hard seperation of things. Just one example: seperate the sky from the sea. Seperate the matte painting from the original image. This just works fine. You deliver hard edged alpha mattes. Perhaps the colourist blurs them a bit. Everything will be fine. BUT don't load in greenscreen key mattes for grading. We got into a trap there. The movie isn't released yet so I can't provide in production examples. But just try to get this: we prepared a window with greenscreen to replace it with a view over the Baltic Sea (so funny, cause they got money from Saxony so the exterior shots we're shot in Binz, while the interior shots we're shot in Saxony). Markus Hering crosses it with his fine scrubby hairs. The DOP wanted us to make the Baltic Sea (exterior) darker than we would deliver it in a final comp, so he can bring it as close as possible to overexposure in his grading session. By using mask channels it should be no problem. But what we all didn't got is that a key isn't simply a black and white mask channel. You often blend parts of the background into the edges, to bring it more together. Moreover in this case you got very fine shades of transparency in the alpha because of the fine hairs. Now if you take this alpha from the keyer into grading and boost the brightness a big bunch up the composite simply breaks apart. The keyer blends the dark (wrong) exterior into the fine hairs. Let's say tranparency is 10% at this point. Now you lift brightness up by using the alpha channel. Make it simple and say it'll be 10 units up. The Baltic Sea is 100% visible so the alpha is white. The brightness shift will be 10 units as wished. But the hair is only 10% visible. So it will be only lifted 1 unit. In result you will see, that his (well keyed) hairs are simply far too dark and the whole composite blows apart.

I'll try to add some pictures if the movie is released. But this learning costed me and Thomas Kaufmann one night of our lives (an me as a lead a bunch of nerves too). So just remember: mask channels can be useful but are tricky. Keep in mind that your VFX vendor will need a lot more time for quality check. They won't work for complex keys and composites and should never be used for bringing the parts of the composite together in grading. The adjustment has to be done in compositing. Your range in grading is 10%. If you exceed it you run the risk of breaking your composite into pieces.

Manifxto - Emerging Cinema Needs New Rules

A bit outdated for VFX artists, but I think still important (and true) for all cinematographers out there. Kevin Tod Haug has written a manifest for the new VFX industry I can just fully endorse. Read it here or download the PDF version here.

Prologue

A good novel outlines the whole story within the first page. The journey is compressed into a single event at the beginning. In life there are events, so small you won't notice them, when they happen. Later you will see, that these pieces brought you there, where you are.

I saw Jurassic Parc at the age of 13. It was in the refurbished cinema one of the Zoo Palast in Berlin - an original place to watch movies. With 16 years I was ready for a train to western Germany, to pick up nine floppy discs with the first version of Softimage|3D for NT. It was a sunny friday. Unfortunately I've noticed, I'll need a graphics card, which costs 20.000 DM (that's 10K Euros today) for running it. So, no 20K, no train, no discs.

Cut

Today. I hate CGI. I hate it, because if I notice them, it blows me away from the story. The acting, emotions - all gone. Pfsssssst... gone. Unrecoverable. But I don't mean visually bad or not accurate VFX work. Cause there are so many really, really good VFX, which are plain and simply visible. Everybody sees them, even the worst noob. But they serve the story. And that's what's all about.

Good bye mouse clicking, welcome to film making. Some examples: I love "Amelie" (haha, everybody loves that movie, but read on). Did you see the CG work there? Of course! All the small pieces. The clouds, the lamp character and so on. That's the characters world. But did you notice, that all graffitis were removed from the movie? There is no tag or poststicker in whole paris. So important for the movie, but impossible to shot. Or let me get another one: "Panic Room". The never ending camera moves (driven to the cutting edge at "War of the Worlds - the Spielberg one). Fantastic! That's what I love about CG. When it comes a part of story telling. A tool to serve the directors vision.

Computography. CGI contains "Imagery". That's not rendering or comping layers. It's creating pictures. Pictures have statements, express feelings. If you take 24 of them in a second they can be part of a story. That's what I call "Computography". Can you feel the grain on that idea? I do. But cinematographers and computographers don't speak the same language yet. Visions are getting lost, cause of a lack of knowlodge. Stories become unsharp and part of a "can't do it this way" chain. That needs to be changed. Visions need more power - again. That's what this will be all about.