Over the last decade, computer animation and visual effects has come to dominate Hollywood blockbusters. The incorporation of CGI in action films has often been derided by a number of critics and even some Hollywood filmmakers.
"Dark Knight" director Christopher Nolan is famous for avoiding computer animation in all of his films unless absolutely necessary.Gore Verbinski reportedly took a similar stance when filming his latest movie "The Lone Ranger."
However, there is one filmmaker who is championing the cause of computer animation simply because he does not see it as a detriment but an art form. That man is Guillermo del Toro.
Speaking with the press at the Industrial Light & Magic headquarters on June 29, del Toro adamantly defended computer animation and its importance to filmmaking. Latinos Post's David Salazar was in attendance.
"When someone says 'That was computer animation,' there is faint implied notion that the computer did something, that the computer animated the film. That is like calling painting brushwork," del Toro said. "When we do animation on computer, we are bringing in a tradition that harkens back to the earliest animation from Winsor McCay, [Max] Fleisher, [Walt] Disney... all of that comes all the way to here."
More importantly, del Toro wanted to emphasize that the process required the collective effort of numerous artists.
"There are people here that are putting their heads together and their artistry together to animate, illuminate, separate in layers, add simulations, etc. and to create a photorealistic rendition of a moment that is impossible to capture in live action."
"What is really important is that everyone one of those choices is discussed back and forth. There is a conception that one shoots the live action part, sends it out to the effects house and they come back with a full shot," del Toro elaborated. "It is very important to know that everyone one of those choices goes through a dialogue and that in each instance there is a person or persons instrumental [to] these steps.... In every case there is a human touch."
Pacific Rim portrays the battle between monstrous Kaijus and human-made robots known as Jaegers. Both creatures tower over land like skyscrapers; their creation is impossible on live action. For the project, the helmer had the benefit of working with ILM, one of the most successful visual effects companies in the entire world. Present during the tour of the ILM headquarters were a number of major participants in the making of "Pacific Rim" including visual effects supervisor John Knoll and digital creature supervisor Paul Giacoppo. Both agreed with del Toro's assertion that computer animation was an artistic endeavor.
"We are all artists," said Giacoppo. "There is no button in the computer that says 'here is how you make a Kaiju.' We basically, just like the clay sculptors sculpted those clay models, we in the computer can rotate the models around and with our pens and stylus and mouse we can carve and scrape and push and pull and smudge the clay that is in the computer [until] it forms the creatures that we want."
"We go through process of modeling, painting and look developing," he added. "We start by sculpting the creature in the computer and all of the features it will need for the movie. Once we do that we can divide the model further into millions of polygons so that we can carve finer details, wrinkles, folds, plates of skin, scales, in order to convey the organic details and the size of the creature."
Knoll took the analogy a step further and even asserted that every member of the visual effects team had a corresponding doppelganger on the traditional film crew.
"The production team that we have here, there are equivalents for almost every position on a live action shoot," Knoll said. "We go through a lot of the same processes. Hal and his team of animators are the actors and Guillermo works with them in much the same way he works with actors. In this case I can act as [Director of Photography] on the lightning and cinematography style."
Del Toro noted that getting the services of the company was a difficult process as budgetary concerns almost kept them apart. However, Knoll proposed a new plan which del Toro explained by comparing it to buying an increasingly expensive vehicle. First he talked about making sure that all of the shots and ideas were agreed upon. Then the artists would design the models of the creatures. Del Toro likened this process to "buying a bicycle" which could easily be disposed off. The next step would include adding animations to the models which was like buying a "Hyundai;" more expensive but not something difficult to get rid of if starting over was necessary.
"When they [start] lighting and the other steps, the beauty pass so to speak, you are buying a Rolls Royce. And if you change your mind about what color your Rolls Royce should be, you can never be too rich. You will never be able to account for that expenditure," del Toro explained.
Knoll elaborated and noted that the plan was to start with "front-end processes" such as building the models, putting them in layout and then animating them. Once those are all sorted out and "locked in", then the team would move on to what Knoll referred to as "back-end process" which includes simulation, lighting, rendering, compositing.
"It doesn't always work out that way but I think we were more efficient," Knoll noted.
Del Toro then elaborated on his process of employing animation in his new films. Prior to "Pacific Rim," computer animation was featured intermittently in del Toro's previous films. 2008's "Hellboy II: The Golden Army" featured a number of visual effects shots, but nowhere near the amount required for "Pacific Rim."
The director noted that he was very cautious about avoiding mistakes he often finds in visual effects-laden movies.
"Normally the first defect I find in a movie with digital animation or digital shots is that there is always a temptation of the super cool shot," he revealed. "The shot that starts with the guy. [Then it moves away from the guy and] you pull back. You go through the window of the building, then out of the building and around the city, into an airplane, through the airplane window into the woman typing and to the computer. And you end up [viewing] the computer. And you go 'Wow. That's not real.'"
Aside from avoiding the "really cool shot," del Toro also sought to make his film feel like it was shot with a real crew and in a real setting.
"We started plaguing the movie with built-in errors that create the sense of an operation and a camera position that is real," he asserted.
For example, during on tracking shot of a Jaeger at sea, the director stated that he placed the camera as if it were on a boat following the giant robot. Since the camera is on a boat, it would naturally rock back and forth to the rhythms of the storm and ocean. Additionally, since the Jaegers are approximately 200 feet tall, they would edge out of frame slightly.
He also explained that he chose to reuse similar camera angles in action sequences to give it a sense of realism. "You get a sense that 'they're going to camera a. now they're going to camera b. so they shot this. It was happening front of them. It was happening for real.'"
"Pacific Rim" hits theaters on Friday, June 12, 2013.
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