Rebuilding the past for J. Edgar

[flow=390]../videos/articles/JEdgar_method_studios.mp4Method Studios' VFX supervisors Geoffrey Hancock and Ollie Rankin talks about J. Edgar.

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| December 19, 2011

Clint Eastwood

How it was to work with Clint Eastwood?

Geoffrey Hancock: It's always a huge pleasure to work with Clint Eastwood and his team. His long time team of colleagues works at a very efficient pace and with a lot of trust for each department. One of the great things for us about working on Malpaso's films is that we know Michael Owens has a great understanding and rapport with Clint Eastwood which lets us work confidently knowing we are on the right track. We always enjoy knowing that our hard work is going to benefit the story wherever possible.

Ollie Rankin: As Geoff says, the fact that Michael has Clint’s complete trust makes working with Clint just like an extension of working with Michael. And the fact that we have these previous Clint Eastwood films as shared work history also often gives us a frame of reference to discuss new shots and sequences in terms of similar shots or sequences from previous projects.

What was the most challenging thing in this project?

OR: As I mentioned earlier, one of the big challenges on this project was that every sequence took place if not in a completely different location, then in a different time period than any other. So there wasn’t much scope to reuse assets or methodologies between different sections of the film. Many of the challenges we faced on this project were not typical vfx problems; neither technical, nor creative obstacles, but rather logistics. One example of this was for a montage towards the end of the film. We had to track down, catalog and restore the highest resolution, least degraded footage available across the various American film and television archives. And, a number of these were some of the most iconic moments in US social history that were contemporaneous to Hoover’s late career.

How was the approach in the burning of Chicago?

OR: While initially we had envisaged having a number of shots which conveyed the chaos of the Chicago race riots, in the end we had to tell it all in one shot. So with Michael’s guidance and with the input of a small team of concept artists and matte painters, we set about composing a vista of Chicago circa 1919 that would serve as the setting. We relied heavily on period photos and brought this all to life by adding real footage of explosions, fire and smoke and a slow camera move to allow the audience to take in the magnitude of the whole scene.

For the environment extensions did you use complex geometry or simple geometry and just projected a matte painting?

GH: In most cases we relied on a library of buildings that were created in Maya early on which we could then re-purpose and layout in different configurations for each shot and time period. There were also specific iconic buildings created for some locations and time periods. These models where then rendered in Maya or Houdini depending on the shot's needs.

Lidar scanning of Orpheum Theater Broadway © 2011 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. All rights reserved. Images courtesy Method Studios Vancouver.

OR: I’d actually say the majority of environment extension sequences required custom buildings to be built and that the library of buildings we had originally created only served to flesh out the background in most cases. A number of monumental DC buildings were built from photos and Lidar scans for specific shots and generally in quite high detail. We often used a multi-step process of creating a 3D building, lighting and rendering it, then adding a matte painting over the top of that to introduce more detail in the areas that needed it.

To add a little detail to Geoff’s comments about the choices of renderer: in certain sequences it was necessary to render buildings, cars and crowds in the same render scene -- for example in the presidential parades where people and buildings needed to be reflected in the windows of the cars, and similarly where the cars and the people needed to be in reflections in the windows of the buildings.

Lidar scanning of Orpheum Theater Broadway © 2011 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. All rights reserved. Images courtesy Method Studios Vancouver.

GH: Lidar scanning of practical locations was used pervasively throughout the film. Most all of the locations that required set extensions where scanned by SkyBucket 3D, who we worked closely with during the building modeling stage. Using a custom plugin we where able to define boundaries within the lidar point cloud and dynamically control point resolution used as reference within Maya. Having access to a structured 3d point clouds sped up the match move and modeling processes. Being able to match realistically undulating roadways also led to believably integrated dynamics from the traffic animation system.

Lidar scanning of Orpheum Theater Broadway© 2011 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. All rights reserved. Images courtesy Method Studios Vancouver.

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• clint eastwood
• geoffrey hancock
• j. edgar
• method studios
• michael owens
• ollie rankin