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Rainmaker is a world class operation serving an international clientele. Offering complete services ranging from laboratory, telecine, digital post, HDTV, visual
effects and new media, Rainmaker has propelled itself to the forefront of the industry. Rainmaker employs a staff of over a hundred and fifty people in a fully-integrated, state of the art facility in the heart
of Vancouver; North America's third largest production centre and one of the planet's most beautiful and livable cities. Despite two decades of growth
and technological change, the heart and soul of Rainmaker remains the same - a team of talented hands-on professionals dedicated to the art
and craft of motion picture post production.
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Mark Breakspear- Visual Effects Supervisor
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I didn't start off as a VFX Supervisor. I started by making tea. I think if you make lots of tea for directors and producers and you don't screw
up, you'll get promoted to broom-boy. After a few months, they started paying me. Awesome. Spurred on by a sub-minimal wage, I armed myself with a
design degree from a pompous London art college and headed off to LA in search of something real. I found Starbucks. I also found Digital Muse and
worked my way up the compositing ranks, finally leaving with my new family to Vancouver. I found Starbucks again and all was well. Several more
years of compositing and ever-increasing months on set led me to the conclusion that I'd somehow moved from the dude on the box to the dude in
the client chair. Luckily, I still had Starbucks, but now I was a visual effects supervisor.
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The series featured in this case study is called The Collector. The show features a character who is commissioned by the devil to 'collect'
the souls of individuals who have made wayward deals in the past. His collection of each soul is the ultimate payment for each deal. Morgan,
the main character, has a chance to redeem each person. As the story unfolds, we find out thrilling details about those who have suffered for
the sudden good fortune provided by the devil. If the individuals fail to redeem themselves, their souls are ripped from their bodies and tossed into hell. Nice.
I have a broad background including feature film compositing, commercial and now the supervision of Episodic effects for The Collector. Episodic
effects are very different to the types of effects you find in commercials and features. Typically, the budget is your constant enemy, but the
design concepts always start with… “You know, like in the Matrix…” If only the budget was 'like in the Matrix!' The way you budget the whole
show is different and the execution of the effects differs from non-episodic television.
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When you first read a script for a TV show, it's good to put all of the calculators in a drawer and try to read through, as if you really do have
an unlimited budget. Too often, the “they won't have enough money to do that…” will stop you from exploring all of the creative possibilities.
There are 10 ways to do bullet time. One involves 10 million dollars and a crew of 250, the other involves two students and a miniDV camera. If
you declare the 10 million dollar effect to your producer, the effect is likely to be hurled into oblivion.
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So after reading the script for the first and tenth time, you should have a pretty good idea about what should be effects, and what should be
practical. You should also have an idea about the best way to put these effects together. That is where you need to communicate with
production. At first, you'll all sit through the concept meetings, where everyone will have a good long say about each moment of the show and
how it affects your department. Scripts are often partly rewritten as a result of this meeting. As a VFX Supervisor, you will bring the others
up to speed on where and when the vfx will take place and also a broad stroke description of what would be required, and also how it could be
shot. You will also bring a rough budget to this meeting that details your initial script breakdown. Often enough, shots will die a nasty
death in this meeting and sometimes others will expand dramatically. All this leads to the vfx meeting, which is normally held quickly
after the concept meeting. This is where you discuss the finer details about the vfx for the show, costs, shot requirements and also
how the director wants the shot to work. From this meeting you will have a pretty good idea of what is in the budget and what has been
dropped. It is also the moment where as a visual effects supervisor you can think by the seat of your pants and come up with new ideas
to save an expensive shot by making it cheaper, or bigger, than originally designed. This is a great deal of fun, but sometimes you can
say something amazingly stupid that leaves the whole room looking everywhere but at you. I don't love those moments. If in doubt, don't
blurt it out.
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So after about 60 more hours on the cell phone, as each department secretly talks with each other and works out what will be needed to do the
show, we all meet for the production meeting.
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We read through the script again and finalize any remaining details, concentrating on the bigger picture and submitting final budgets, etc…
Shortly after this meeting, we're shooting… so you had better be ready!
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As a VFX Supervisor, our tools are very important during the conception stage of the show's look. When I made the jump to Supervisor, I brought
my tool set with me; both my knowledge of production and Fusion. Fusion, as with all the other systems, acts as the toolbox by which
we build our worlds. You need to know the tools, all of them, what they can do, how much they cost, who is best skilled to use them. But if
you read a script with that in mind, it will kill the creativity. What you need to do is invent and, if you only think within the toolbox,
you're screwed. Fusion, however, is kind of a toolbox maker, rather than a set of tools. I don't want to bore anyone to death, but when I
designed the look for 'death time' in The Collector, I was thinking about how we could use Fusion's macro tool to build custom tools to solve
the problem. I didn't think about glows or warps or keys, but what would happen when I combined those into a new tool. Imagine going to Home
Depot to buy a hammer and a flashlight. Join the two together and now you can build in the dark. That's why I love Fusion.
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Empathy is a big skill to have on set. Knowing all of the tools are essential, I think, if you want to supervise visual effects. When you are first
reading the script, your brain is saying things to you like, "Massive wave hits city, no, meteor hits ocean making wave hit city, no, alien fires
cg dinosaur at meteor which hits ocean and creates a massive wave that hits cg city with cg people, lock off." Then something kicks in that starts
telling you what you would need to make the shot. That's where knowing what a tool can do comes in very useful. Rainmaker has all of the gadgets and
gizmos and they all start making little pinging noises as you think how each one will play its part in each effect.
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I think the creative process does rely on knowledge of the various machines out there, but creativity can be crippled by thinking that something
isn't possible on a piece of software, so therefore it isn't possible. Big Mistake. Know the software, know what it can do, and always ask it to
do more.
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Title Sequence
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Early on in the production of The Collector we knew that we were going to have to design and build a title sequence for the show. We had 38
seconds to play with and a set number of credits to get through. I had designed many title sequences before but this was going to be the first
one fully on Fusion. Our initial concept was to write up a description of hell. That was great fun typing up the physics of hell, how you get
there, what you do when you're there etc… Once we ran this by the producers and writers, we were ready to start designing. The overall sequence
is a montage of shots from the show, but we start off close in on one lost soul. From there we pull back and reveal the whole of hell, showing
images from the show and finally pulling back through the portal into our world.
The world became known as Hellsville and the effects team spent many a long night watching things take shape 'down' there. Sometimes it felt as
though the difference between Hellsville and Effectsville was not too much!
The next stage for the titles was the typographical treatment. DF artist, Mathew Krentz designed and built a flow that would allow the type to burn off as needed
from each scene. The great thing from a supervisor's point of view was that the words could be just typed in, set and then burnt off. It was very
cool interactively adjusting the amount of sparks and flames in the particle tools as they rendered in real time on the screen. That was one
of those moments where you sit back and can't believe it's this easy… you almost want to do the whole thing for free… well, nearly.
As with any title sequence, you need to adjust the setting as the shot develops, and adjust the particle dynamics based on the scene.
Having a tool such as DF to design looks with was fantastic. The interactivity that was in each session only seemed slow when you compared it to
the render
speed. I'm not sure how many procs were 'behind the curtain' but when a flow was sent to the farm, it didn't stay long before being ready to
watch. You can't beat that when you need to see something look great, and you need it now!
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Death Time
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Death Time was a tricky monster. We had to create an effect that could be used over and over again on varying shots, from different angles, that…
didn't cost too much. Various looks were suggested, like the scene in Lord of the Rings where Frodo puts on the ring and suddenly we're in
the ring's world. Again, remember the cost part? But, aiming high we managed to create an effect that suited our needs. Essentially, when
the Devil appears, the world freezes and the hero, Morgan, finds himself in this pseudo Hell world. We were able to give the director all of
the freedom onset to move the camera as he wanted and to block the scene as he saw fit. In post, we would simply matte out the characters
and add in the effect around them. The effect was one of several we presented to the producer and director.
Fusion rocked because it solved the problem really well. We wanted to do this effect many, many times, so it couldn't use the whole budget
each time or there would be nothing left for other effects. From a supervision point of view I was able to sit in a concept meeting and
give the go ahead for an effect that would last two minutes and know that Fusion would see it through within the budget we had.
The original plate required some initial clean up before we could roto the people in Fusion. The great thing we found about DF roto was the
ability to have motion blur created between the frames to match the plate photography. It was also very useful when we needed to adjust
the matte in the final session, just opening up the flow and tweaking the matte as needed.
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Portal
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When people lose their souls, a gigantic portal opens up behind them. The portal is a gateway to Hell, and at the end of the gateway there is an
iris that opens in order to extract the soul. Tendrils made of fire shoot out and hit the victims, pull out their souls and drag the victims, kicking
and screaming back to Hell. Nasty. This was always going to be the biggest set of effects in the show, and had to live up to the drama of that
moment. As a one-off effect, you could go nuts and blow the budget in one go… but this had to repeat in each episode. Ummm… tricky. We ended
up using Maya to create the portals and Fusion to create the other elements and combine it all together. Mathew Krentz did all of the
compositing and cg work on the show and managed to pull off stunning effects sequences every time.
The portal was originally designed in Maya and then rendered into elements based on the required angle for each shot. Fusion then took the raw
elements and made them sing. Toward the end of the shoot we started using our growing confidence to show the portal from inside Hell as well
as outside. Even though this increased the challenges, Mathew Krentz managed to pull it off with his usual flair and copious cups of tea.
Krentz comments, “When originally creating the look of the portal, it was largely going to be done in 3d and in Maya. We initially created
tests using interactive 3d models of sets that would physically break apart, revealing the portal in the ground. We soon realized that the
portal would be located in no particular area. Whether it was on the side of a wall, in a corner of a room or on the ceiling, it wasn't very
practical to have to build 3d sets for each portal sequence. Using a combination of mostly warping filters within Fusion and the 3d model of
the portal, we came up with a way to open and close the portal in any location. The first time that we wanted to have a soul extracted from
someone and pulled into the portal was a little tricky. We used a basic model in Maya and match moved it to the actor in the scene, until
the point when we wanted the soul to come out. To create the effect of the soul getting extracted from the actor, I would pull an animated
luma key off of the actor to reveal the soul coming out.”
Breakspear adds, “Extracting the soul looks awesome, don't tell Mathew but I was blown away by how a simple technique works so well. You really
get a feeling that the soul is being ripped from the body as each texture reacts differently.”
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Eye Glow
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When you hear the words eye glow, you shudder. How could this be anything more than just a red glowy thing on the eyes? How is this effect
going to look any good? The eye glow is the means by which we know the person is the Devil. It had to work from all angles, in all lighting
conditions and… not cost too much. We ended up combining two effects into one. We used the portal effect within the eye itself, as if the glow
were a quick glimpse into Hell. On some shots, we're so far away, you can't see the details, but where we had the chance and it made sense in
the blocking, we got in really tight and showed the fires of hell inside the eye.
As lead compositor, Mathew Krentz comments: “The eye glow was quite difficult at first to get the right look to it. I did a lot of research and
reference into films and TV shows that had similar effects, but we needed to come up with something that was new, that no one had seen before.
Once that problem was solved, I created an example flow in Fusion that I could easily import into new scenes that needed the effect, with just
having to work on the basics of the shot. The basics would be as easy as to track the eyes, create mattes for each eye and then hook that up
into the example flow. With some minor tweaking, the shot would be ready to go. We did run into some problems with the eye glow effect. Normally,
to start and stop the devil's eye effect, the actor or actress would blink and I'd just reveal the eye with a matte and the effect would be on.
However, we'd often get shots when the actors wouldn't blink and the effect would somehow have to start. On those shots, I would start everything
off by adding in a fire element explosion that would turn it on and use a fast noise to break it up when turning it off.”
Overall, Fusion was able to succeed at both ends of the visual effects pipeline. I worked onset with DF and did quick comps for the director
to see. I started calling this Now-viz, as it was kinda like pre-viz, only now. Once we were back at Rainmaker, we would load the shots into
Fusion and create! We had extremely tight deadlines and I wasn't always available to sit with the artists and work shots through with them.
But again, that's why I love Fusion. It is so quick and efficient that Mathew was able to make changes amazingly fast. It was during a
final delivery of effects for an episode that a change was requested to one of the shots. I called Mathew during the meeting and he managed
to make the change, render the clip, output a Quicktime, and email it over before the end of the meeting. As a supervisor it gives you the
ultimate buzz to show your finals, have a few changes, and then show the fixes straight away in the same meeting!
Mark Breakspear was nominated for three Leo awards for his recent work; two for the effects of 'The Collector' and one for his compositing work on the
TV series 'Dead Like Me'.
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For more information on Rainmaker, make sure to visit their website at
www.rainmaker.com 
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For more unique Visual FX Supervisor perspectives and a lot of great interviews, visit Mark Breakspear's new VFX Supervisor web resource,
www.vfxsoup.com
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