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Post by sunshinedna on Jan 12, 2007 5:16:44 GMT -5
I've been in touch with Tom Wood Sunshine's VFX supervisor to find out if he'd be into answering your questions about Sunshine's Visual Effects and VFX in general. He just emailed me to say that he's up for it and that he's just about to start on the next Narnia film so we are catching him at the right time. Phil, Damien and I shared an office with Tom and his VFX team during filming so were privvy to loads of sneak peeks. Tom is the one who explained the difference between green screen and blue screen and can be seen in the VFX Video talking about the effects... So, ask away...
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Post by Amanda on Jan 12, 2007 14:08:39 GMT -5
I've got one!
Were you intimidated at all by the size of this film and how many effects you knew were going to have to go into it?
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Post by sunshinedna on Jan 12, 2007 17:33:21 GMT -5
Cool question! It certainly is a HUGE film for the effects dept.
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Post by dino on Jan 12, 2007 19:08:27 GMT -5
how did you design effects shots?
how long did it take to make the effects?
what is your favourite shot in the film?
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Post by chero on Jan 12, 2007 19:58:09 GMT -5
What was the most difficult shot in the film beyond scale?
What initially attracted you to work on Sunshine? Did anything unexpected come along to further support this decision?
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Post by paradox9 on Jan 14, 2007 21:15:21 GMT -5
What type of planning goes into designing some of these effects?
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Post by sunshinedna on Feb 5, 2007 6:47:40 GMT -5
Here are Tom's answers to your questions! I'm going to put these up later on SunshineDNA...
Were you intimidated at all by the size of this film and how many effects you knew were going to have to go into it? --Amanda
Tom Wood: Initially the film was going to have no more than 320 shots and so was not considered to be a major problem and we could concentrate on the quality. As it turned out, we did more than 700 shots, but these extras appeared slowly and steadily throughout the year we were in post production so it was never an overwhelming experience.
How did you design effects shots?--Dino
Tom Wood: Shots were designed in a number of ways. Throughout the preproduction and production periods we were producing previs shots and sequences to Danny's direction. These were cut into the main film to stand in for effects shots during the edit. During production, the shoot, it became clear how Danny and Alvin Kuchler (DP) were shooting the drama and I took much of their shooting style into account when adapting previs shots into main effects shots.
We also had to create shots previously unaccounted for. These we handled in a somewhat different way. Specifically the descent into the sun was designed mostly around 18th and 19th century classical apocalyptic painting. The whole sequence had a natural action movie feel with shaky cameras, whip pans, obscure angles etc, but the layout of light and dark we took from the more classical references we had sourced.
How long did it take to make the effects?--Dino
Tom Wood: We took 16 months in post production, 4-5 months of this overlapped with the shoot.
What is your favourite shot in the film?--Dino
Tom Wood: That's tough one and I'm not sure I could make that choice. It definitely wouldn't be an effects shot though. It's so hard to let go of that creative process and be satisfied with where you've got to.
What was the most difficult shot in the film beyond scale?--Chero
Tom Wood: The shots in the inner bomb when the sun breaks through were the toughest to create. We spent months creating and then trashing designs for the sun surface. There were huge compromises being made with respect to light and heat that, when closely scrutinised, were difficult to approve. It's a huge leap of exposure to have a man standing within arm's reach of a surface that is too bright to film and too hot to be within a couple of million miles of.
What initially attracted you to work on Sunshine? Did anything unexpected come along to further support this decision?--Chero
Tom Wood: I had wanted to work with Danny Boyle, an actor's director, to see that process at close quarters. I really wanted to get hold of that whole emotional input that Danny brings and see how I could adapt that visually. The whole movie for us was about light and dark, the intensity and insanity of the sun and the shady calm and safety behind the ship's shield. And it was a similar relationship that I believe Danny was working with within the drama.
What type of planning goes into designing some of these effects? -- Paradox9
Tom Wood: Obviously huge amounts. We researched the visual references of the sun, for instance, throughout the pre and production period. There is an enormous quantity of material that is both familiar and unfamiliar to us in a hugely wide range of wavelengths of light. We ultimately made our sun from much of the recognizable visual references despite these being from extremes of perception. Gamma and xray images of eruptions and storms on the sun's surface mixed with enormously stopped down visible spectrum images are mixed on screen in way that, hopefully, shows a sun that is both familiar and awe inspiring.
How do the effects- both the process and the end result- in Sunshine differ from the effects in other films you've worked on. --Gia
Tom Wood: This movie for me was a new experience in the creative process. In the past, I've been involved in creating some very real effects that always have a foothold in the plate or their surrounding shots in the cut. While the ship had to be believable and very real, the sun and its effects could be as extreme as we liked. So we were both tied down and released within any one shot or sequence. It had the potential of going off in the wrong direction always, but I hope we managed to tame it all without it becoming too house trained....
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Post by Amanda on Feb 5, 2007 14:20:45 GMT -5
f**king brilliant. I can't even wrap my head around how huge of a task this would've been... Just seeing it onscreen and appreciating is going to be a gigantic responsibility. I just can't quite grasp the enormity. --hah, like the sun, I suppose. Which I reckon is the point. Unghh.
I would love to meet every single person who worked on or with this film--except I wouldn't even be able to say anything because I'm way too impressed. Just--gah. I'm not articulate anyway, and now I really have nothing to say.
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Post by chero on Feb 5, 2007 22:17:24 GMT -5
First off, each of these threads you've made, Gia, have been so unreal. After actually reading Tom Wood's response to our questions, I am pinching myself. I need to sit down. Did my question sound intelligent enough? Are my words a proper reflection of my enthusiasm for this film? I can't begin to express myself rightly on this forum anymore. It's too much... I feel extremely ignorant now. I looked up Wood's filmography after reading his responses and I just realized that he has worked on *drumroll please* Lost in Space!! That was my first sci-fi favorite EVER!! Tom Wood, you are a genius!! Aha! He has also worked on another film called Sunshine in 2005. Does this mean he has worked on two "Sunshine" projects back to back? ;D I should have mentioned it jokingly. Darn.
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Post by dino on Feb 10, 2007 7:20:59 GMT -5
thanks for the replies, very interesting.
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Danmasta
Communicator
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Posts: 98
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Post by Danmasta on Aug 12, 2007 4:40:10 GMT -5
Sweet!! I like this one I've always been so interested in VFX
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