Interview with the CG Supervisor for Serenity

POSTED BY: Gambit3
UPDATED: Monday, December 26, 2005 04:59
VIEWED: 5531
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GAMBIT3

Thursday, December 22, 2005 10:34 PM

Computer Graphics World, in its December issue, has a two page interview with Emile Edwin Smith of Zoic Studos, the CG supervisor for Serenity.
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Serenity Now

Zoic helps Firefly’s Serenity blast off for its big-screen debut

Interview by executive editor, Karen Moltenbrey

Through an ongoing collaboration, director Joss Whedon and VFX supervisor Loni Peristere have continued to raise the bar for visual effects on television. Working with Whedon, Peristere and his effects facility, Zoic Studios, received an Emmy in 2003 for Best VFX in a TV Series for the work in Firefly (the group received a nomination in the same category for Buffy the Vampire Slayer, another Whedon project.) That same year, Peristere and Zoic took top honors for Firefly at the Visual Effects Society Awards. Despite Firefly’s accolades, the series, which aired on the FOX Network, was cancelled after only 11 episodes. However, backed by strong DVD sales of the complete Firefly series, Whedon persuaded Universal Pictures to produce a film based on the property. Titled Serenity, after the crew’s spaceship, the movie debuted to high ratings following its release on September 30. At a preview screening for the film, Whedon indicated that he would consider reviving the series if a network purchased the broadcast rights from FOX Television.

Does Serenity differ from Firefly in its story line and overall look?

The story line and background of Serenity are basically the same as Firefly: Humans have abandoned Earth because its resources were used up, so they found a new [planetary] system and moved there. However, the movie plot focuses on the character River Tam and why she behaves like she does. Aesthetically, the look of the film is much the same as the series, only upgraded. Everything is based around the same designs as the TV show, but elaborated on-Serenity is much more detailed, as are the sets.

Were you able to reuse any assets from the TV series?

We rebuilt everything because of the detail needed for the 2k playback. The TV show was done in standard definition, not even high def, and was built to those specs. So, everything needed a major overhaul. I think the only ship we reused untouched was the Reaver ship from the TV pilot as a background ship in the movie.

How were you able to balance the continuity of the property while going from broadcast to film?

The story Joss [Whedon] wrote for the film picked up on the crew several months after the TV show ended. He wrote the exposition and designed the film so that even if someone had never seen Firefly, that person easily would be able to jump into the movie and know what was going on.

Did the overall process of creating the visual effects differ?

We had a similar pipeline for the show, but it was heavily modified after our work on the Battlestar Galactica miniseries. We rebuilt everything from the TV show, and added a lot of detail to the models. We followed the notion that if we broke every single render into its bare components-the raw RGB channel, diffuse, specular, fill, self-lighting, etc.-we would have more flexibility in compositing the final images, and that was essential for this movie.

As a result, did you have to revamp your pipeline?

We had to deal with huge amounts of data storage and the way in which we tracked the data. Also, we started implementing a new pipeline to seamlessly support the mixture of [Alias’s] Maya and [NewTek’s] LightWave imagery, but that was not ready until the show had wrapped.

What types of effects did Zoic create for the film?

We did everything from space battles to 3D matte paintings and hovercraft. A lot of the work we did in the mule/skiff chase involved terrain replacement, which we did in Maya and [Mental Images’] Mental Ray, as well as smoke creation, which we did with the fluid dynamics in Maya. In the large space battles, we did the majority of the work in LightWave, and created everything from explosions to smoke to engine ex

GAMBIT3

Thursday, December 22, 2005 11:54 PM

self-bump

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GAMBIT3

Friday, December 23, 2005 4:06 PM

wow... no comments... :(

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BWARE42

Friday, December 23, 2005 4:19 PM

Good interview. Although I'm not much for the technical aspects of filmmaking, as an amateur photographer just learning his digital 35mm, I thought it was interesting.

Bring the Big Damn Heroes back!

CAPTAINCOLON

Friday, December 23, 2005 6:09 PM

Pretty interesting read...I was very impressed with how they managed to get the "there's a person shooting this" feel in a lot of the CGI sequences.

SIGGGY

Monday, December 26, 2005 1:22 AM

I loved it, thanks for posting it.

J6NGO1977

Monday, December 26, 2005 1:25 AM

Nice post. I love stuff like this :)

FLORALBUNNY

Monday, December 26, 2005 4:59 AM

Gambit3, Thank you for posting this. The how-to, whether it's costumes, latex, writing, blue sreens or "etc." is always as interesting as the finished production, and enriches the experience rather than spoiling it.

bun
-- Bastards singed my turtle --