Home » Community » Interviews » Rainmaker's Mark Breakspear and Mathew Krentz

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Why do you think Rainmaker was chosen to work on The Da Vinci Code?

Mark Breakspear - "We nearly missed out on the opportunity to work on the Da Vinci Code several times! There were some great companies already working on The Da Vinci Code, MPC, Double Negative and The Senate. To add another company (ourselves) to that already great mix was a great testament to the fantastic test that we put together for Visual Effects Supervisor, Angus Bickerton. Previously we had perfected a technique on another movie with Angus Bickerton called Firewall that uses projected textures to create photorealistic 3D spaces. By using this approach on a test for The Da Vinci Code, we showed that we were more than capable of competing at the level that Ron Howard wanted, and at the same time we also offered a very production friendly approach that solved a great deal of the problems, namely shooting in a church you couldn't shoot in!"

When it came time to recreate the church what programs did you use in conjunction with Fusion?

Mark Breakspear - "If we're talking about the 2D world, Fusion was the pivotal point for our compositors. We also used Photoshop CS 2 to import and adjust our RAW files from the actual church in Paris. In the 3D universe we built the entire church in Lightwave." Mathew Krentz - "There were also a number of shots that needed to be tracked in Boujou that we imported into both Lightwave and Fusion 5 for integrating film elements with a proper track."

How was Fusion a benefit in this regard?

Mark Breakspear - "As with most projects, the ability to adjust shots right up to the last moment is a crucial consideration, and we had plenty of that on Da Vinci Code! I've trusted Fusion since I first used it in 1998 at Digital Muse. It just made sense at a time when everyone else was over engineering their tools. Eyeon had made a piece of software that could be injected into the heart of any facility whether large or small without damaging any existing balance that was already there with other systems. You have to like that! Ever since then, I've trusted the software on many of the projects I've worked on, including The Da Vinci Code. It doesn't let you down. Apart from that one time it let me down, and that was because I had meant to open Word instead. Fusion is a lousy word processor." Mathew Krentz - "Candles, flames and smoke had been filmed to integrate in certain shots, a couple of those shots had major camera moves and we needed proper parallax added to the elements. With Fusion's new 3d camera, it was simple to import the Boujou track and apply the camera move to the elements."

What was the outline of the specific project? (Who was the client, what were the requirements?

Mark Breakspear - "Our first objective was to create the Church of Saint Sulpice in Paris, so that our villain Silas could accurately search for the hiding place of the Holy Grail. The client was Angus Bickerton, Sony Pictures and Ron Howard's Imagine Entertainment. The kicker was that we couldn't film in the actual Church or really go in there and do all the things you would want to do if you were doing an effects sequence like this. We had about 3 months to turn around nearly 40 shots. It doesn't sound like a massive number in today's world of 2,000 shot effect's movies, but these shots were nearly all unique 3D matte paintings. "

Who were the artists working on the shot?

Mark Breakspear - "Now every supervisor says that their team was great, that they worked hard etc, but Da Vinci required a special blend of talents, and the more I supervise, the more I realise how essential it is to build your team with these specific characteristics. Our lead compositor, Mathew Krentz has built a solid reputation for himself in the Fusion community as a dedicated artist with a keen eye for colour-correction and keying, the two most important compositing challenges in Da Vinci. I relied on Mathew heavily throughout the show, his knowledge of Fusion second to none. Jordan Benwick, Rafal Kaniewski and Enrico Perei made up the team and with those for guys I had an elite squad of compositors perfectly suited to DVC's challenges. "

What particular features were essential in getting their work done?

Mark Breakspear - "Ask Mathew, he's got all the answers on this one!" Mathew Krentz - Rafal and Jordan were tired of the repetitiveness of creating slates and Quicktimes for daily reviews, so they wrote a command line script to automate the process. I've learned to embrace anything that will reduce the frequent admin tasks that artists spend time on, when they could be creating. "

Why did you choose Fusion to accomplish the shot? (If possible, can you go through portions of the project step by step with screen grabs and explanations of how Fusion was used to accomplish the final shot?

Mark Breakspear - "Why Fusion? The sales answer would talk about the great toolset blah blah blah, but anyone reading this wants to know the truth. The truth is that as a supervisor, you want to know that you won't suddenly find yourself in a place where the software controls you. If you've got great artists, which I do, you need to arm those folks with the best tools. I always feel bad for those who constantly debate one software package over another, they've missed the point. Try taking any software package, opening the box and inserting the DVD in your computer, then sit back while and watch as it creates the movie for you. If you try this, you will just as quickly realise that it's just not that way things work. Once you truly embrace this fact, you look for a partnership between artist and machine. It's a battle that is never won. You're constantly tweaking the relationship, looking for better ways to get things done. Believing this, Fusion paired up brilliantly with our Da Vinci team. Mathew will take you through some specific points." Mathew Krentz - "We used photogrammetry on the 3d side of the project. As all of the reference pictures were taken during the day, all of the renders of the church that the compositing team received were lit for daytime. For this reason we had to treat each individual shot as a matte painting. Neutralizing the sunlit renders would be the first priority for the team. We would then decide which direction the moon would be coming from to create the beams going through the windows. For most of the shots, we created the moonbeams in 2d, which would be combined with smoke elements to create a hazy atmospheric look. We also hand tracked in many elements including flames, candle smoke, candle holders and added our own lighting flicker. To tie in with the flickering candles we would matte in shadows. The most important part though was to keep the actors skin tones warm from the flickering candles and at the same time keeping an albino monk from looking like death. When colour correcting days into nights artists tend to go towards a de-saturated blue colour, but you really do see a remarkable amount of warmth in the actors' skin tones even in a darkly lit church."

What specific tools were used and why? How did Fusion fit into the overall production pipeline?

Mark Breakspear - "I think we use pretty much all the box has to offer on ever project! Our pipeline on DVC was very Fusion centric; it had to be due to the nature of the work. Mathew Krentz - I agree, Fusion has a great toolset and we used pretty much everything available to us."

How deadline driven was this project and how did Fusion comply and assist in this?

Mathew Krentz - "In Soho, everyday is a deadline. All of the studios are so close together that at any moment during the day we had to be prepared to show Angus where we were on a shot, as he could walk over at any time. All of the artists worked closely with Mark and Angus and even though a basic fusion station doesn't have the same interactivity as an Inferno, our entire team was easily able to make any changes on the fly and render it out. I really enjoy working with a supervisor or client at your station, as it's always a test to see how optimized you can keep flows. Fusion has the ability to keep comps clean and identifiable for artists to easily work with each other and swap compositions and techniques."

What can we expect from Rainmaker in the future?

Mark Breakspear - "We're heavy into our next project, "Blades of Glory" which is our first fully Fusion 5 feature. I can't tell you too much but it's a comedy about two ice skaters. I have high hopes for some pretty stunning visual effects sequences from our team here. We're working on Night at the Museum and another EA Games project. It's busy times at Rainmaker! Is anyone looking for a job?"

What was the most rewarding effect for you that Rainmaker pulled off?

Mark Breakspear - "Effects blah… the true reward comes from working with the team we have here at Rainmaker, it makes the job so much fun. My producer Ashley Clark and co-ordinators Marta Knapik and Tara Conley are who keep me sane in this building. They put up with my need to turn everything into a joke, and I put up with their need to make me do work. In a way every shot has its important challenges, you have to approach it that way, or things get missed. I keep reminding myself that at the end of the day, this is such a crazy way to spend you life. Making movies is one of those jobs that evolution doesn't need, and I don't subscribe too the notion that cave paintings are movies distant ancestor. It's a total human luxury. Deep down, I really wish I could make fire from two pieces of wood. In fact, that's going to be something I'm going to teach the team next week between bouts of previs. That would be rewarding!" Mathew Krentz - "The most rewarding effect for me is the effect of the audience not being able to see the effect. Some of the shots that I've worked on in the past that I'm most proud of are the ones that are seamlessly integrated with the story and won't take the audience out of their movie going experience. For our work on DVC, all of our shots had to be photo real and what's great about it is that you really can't tell it was all shot on green screen."

What is your favourite tool in Fusion and do you experiment with it. What have you done that you have not seen done before, something you may want to brag about?

Mark Breakspear - "Mathew has been scripting a bunch of new tools for us for Blades of Glory. We've also invented a few cool techniques for our overall pipeline. I even managed to work out a use for the plasma tool…" Mathew Krentz - "Most compositing packages have similar tool sets, but what I'm most excited about with Fusion 5 are some of the new 3d tools available. Unfortunately I haven't had a lot of time to experiment yet, but specifically I'm looking forward to working with 3d particles as I feel they have great potential to compete with other 3d packages." "I've also started writing tools in Fusion for our teams to optimize our pipelines. The goal is to try to reduce the repetitiveness out of daily tasks, by automating them through eyeon script (or Lua). This was inspired by our first steps on DVC and I want to take it to another level, not just for our compositors, but to have everyone able to take advantage of the tools. I didn't really know much about scripting when I started, but it's pretty easy to pick up when going through the manual and experimenting with ideas."

Will Rainmaker be moving over to London permanently in the Future?

Mark Breakspear - "We're already there! We set up a permanent base before Da Vinci, and we're already deep into our new project, Butterfly on the Wheel. Expect great things from the London office." Mathew Krentz - "I had an amazing opportunity to go to London and help the team get started. I'm looking forward to seeing more great work come of out Rainmaker UK and yes, they're over there for good. "

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