VFX Supervisor Jerome Chen on The Amazing Spider-Man

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| July 4, 2012 | 3:28 pm or 3:28 pm GMT

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from the Creative COW article:

The Amazing Spider-Man, directed by Marc Webb, walks a fine web between homage to the Spider-Men who have gone before and a fresh look at the agile super hero and his mythology. The movie is also the first native stereo 3D feature for Sony Pictures Imageworks, which developed a new stereo pipeline for the film.

The Amazing Spider-Man has 1,639 of visual effects, of which SPI did 671. Sony Imageworks Senior VFX Supervisor Jerome Chen, who acted as the feature's overall Visual Effects Supervisor, brought on other facilities to complete the VFX work: Pixomondo, Pixel Playground, Gener8, Nerve, Sony Colorworks, Blur Studios, Arc, iSolve, Legend3D, Method Studios, Flash Film Works, Handmade Digital and Reliance MediaWorks. Between all the VFX and conversion companies, approximately 1,000 people worked on the movie, says Chen.

Jerome Chen is an Academy Award-nominated senior visual effects supervisor at Sony Pictures Imageworks, and served in this role on Beowulf and the Polar Express as well as the two Stuart Little films. Chen joined SPI in its founding year, 1992, and worked his way through the production ranks starting as a digital artist. Other film credits include Godzilla, Contact, James and the Giant Peach, The Ghost and the Darkness and In the Line of Fire.

Jerome Chen speaks to Creative COW about choreography and creation of the VFX on The Amazing Spider-Man.

What's unique about this Spider-Man is that it's shot in native stereo and is designed to be a stereo experience. These tentpoles tend to release in 3D anyway, but what most people don't realize is that most of them are 2D-to-3D conversions. To me, there's a visual difference; the detail and depth is more genuine in something that's shot natively. Movies that are designed from the beginning of the process to be stereo -- from camera choreography to the VFX -- tend to very satisfying stereo experiences. Avatar is a great example of that idea. Shooting a movie natively presents a whole host of issues. When I start a film, I have to evaluate the creative and the technical challenges. In the case of The Amazing Spider-Man, I knew it would be creatively exciting but technically hard. And it turned out to be a lot harder than I imagined. It required a new workflow and new technology, and fortunately I had a partner in Rob Engle, the studios' stereo supervisor and a pioneer in modern stereo production, who supervised both the on-set stereo photography and stereo post production.

A small portion of the movie -- probably 200 shots -- was converted to 3D from 2D, for a variety of reasons. There were certain cases where the stereo rig couldn't fit inside a car, or where we wanted something hand-held. Any Steadicam shot had to be converted. These are due to the size and weight of the stereo cameras (which includes the 3ality Technica rig and the mirror).

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Categories:

• Visual Effects

Tags:

• jerome chen
• marc webb
• sony pictures imageworks
• the amazing spider-man