Plan of Attack

In the new Marvel Entertainment motion picture Captain America: The Winter Soldier, the stakes are high as the hero Captain America is called back into service to help save the world from the latest villains, led by the deadly Winter Soldier. For the filmmaker themselves, the stakes were equally as high, as they brought the superhero back to the big screen following a wildly successful debut not long ago.

The action had to be better than before, the stunts more than thrilling, and the visual effects better than ever. There to see these missions accomplished was Proof Inc., one of the film industrys leading visualization houses, which provided extensive previs and postvis services.

The film was released by Walt Disney Studios on April 4 and quickly shot to #1 at the international box office.

This new film was an extremely important project for Proof, said Ron Frankel, Proof's creative director/founder. In fact, this was the biggest previs and postvis assignment in the history of our company.

Frankel pointed out that previs has clearly become a critical element today as a story tool in the planning of action sequences within a 3D environment. To show just how vital is has become, Proof spent 14 months planning the previs for this new Captain America film, and then another eight months during the postvis process.

According to Proof's previs supervisor, Monty Granito, the crew was involved with every major action and VFX scene in Captain America: The Winter Soldier. The artists began animating the previs for the film six month prior to the start of production. Working directly from the script, they created a number of exciting sequences, such as when Captain squares off again the Quinjet, jumping onto it and destroying it, and when the Helicarriers take off and shoot each other and fall into buildings.

We are especially proud of how we helped craft the finale of the film, Frankel added. In fact, they visualized a solid chunk of that finale, which translated into about 35 minutes of animation.

Preplanning/Postplanning

According to Dan DeLeeuw, VFX supervisor on Captain America: The Winter Soldier, there has been a real paradigm shift during the past few years when planning a feature film. We used to rely on storyboards, then on animatics, and now today on previs, he said. Previs has secured a place for itself as an extremely valuable tool in helping to visualize an entire movie before physical production even starts. In the case of this new film, a huge third act fell onto the shoulders of Proof's previs team to help structure. We had to first construct the third act in previs, making our way through all of that data to help determine how the sequences would look. This was the first time I was able to see the entire third act of a movie before a film even began shooting.

DeLeeuw notes that he and the Proof team were involved very early on in the planning of this film. We had to figure out how to fulfill our director's vision to help best tell this story, he said. Previs has become a really great tool these days for everyone to plan, design and ultimately shoot action sequences.

Proof also delivered a good deal of postvis on this movie. In the past, it required a lot of imagination to envision, during screenings, what the movie would actually look like, said DeLeeuw. You'd see greenscreens where future VFX shots would appear, so there would be holes' in the story. Now, by integrating postvis, you can watch the entire film and really get a solid feel for what it will eventually look like, he said.

Gunnar Hansen, postvis supervisor for Captain America: The Winter Solider, said the group worked very closely with the editor, Jeff Ford, and the VFX editor, George McCarthy, for six months to provide postvis temps for over 1,400 shots. We basically created very detailed 3D composites to fill in the pending vendor visual effects shots, as well as precise shots to send to the VFX vendors for timing, animation and design, he explained.

Aside from touching on all the major action scenes, the Proof team and Hansen also created many of the animated screen graphics. For the huge battle finale, several hundred shots were tracked, lit, rendered and composited to a very high level of detail. In the end, these contributions gave VFX, editorial and the studio a seamless, decisive and exciting cut for both final visual effects and for screenings, he added.

Behind the Scenes

Marvel had requested black and white previs imagery, so the team experimented with various techniques to find a good solution for the black and white mandate. The artists ended up using Proof's proprietary real-time CGFX toon shader that had been developed in-house by Anna Lee.

The tool had been used on numerous projects before, but not to the extent it was used in the film. The toon shader allowed the team to work quickly, focusing efforts on blocking, composition and action, rather than getting bogged down by color, texture and lighting.

The crew relied heavily on Proof's technical support structure, including camera rigs, a proprietary character builder and a few render tools. Shots were crafted in Autodesk's Maya, and the sequences were edited together in Adobe Premiere. Some of the artists also used 3D Connexions SpacePilot 3D mouse to navigate the virtual cameras more easily.

We would usually get a couple of concept drawings, a storyboard or two and a mandate. We were embedded with Dan DeLeeuw and Jen Underdahl in the VFX department. We would shape the sequence until it was ready for the directors. I would edit the shots in Premiere and put a temp soundtrack to the sequence, says Granito.

According to Granito, the group met with the directors at the very least once a week. When creating sequences from scratch like this, I think it's important

LINK:	http://www.cgw.com/Press-Center/In-Focus/2014/Plan-of-Attack.aspx...
	See more stories from cwg

Most recent headlines