Alien Territory: The Making of Prometheus

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| August 6, 2012 | 10:10 pm or 10:10 pm GMT

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from the Flickering Myth article:

Trevor Hogg chats with visual effects supervisors Richard Stammers, Charley Henley, Martin Hill, and Paul Butterworth; visual effects producers Michelle Eisenreich, and Unjoo Byars; executive producer Jason Bath, creative director Ahmet Ahmet, 3D cg supervisor Lee Nelson, 3D design lead Dong Ho Lee and Territory Founder / Director David Sheldon-Hicks...

“I worked with Ridley [Scott] on Robin Hood [2010] and he was impressed with the work we did at MPC,” recalls Visual Effects Supervisor Richard Stammers who took a leave of absence from the London-based VFX facility. “Ridley asked me to come back to be the overall supervisor on Prometheus [2012] which was a pleasant surprise.” Working with Scott on the medieval tale was a different experience than the science fiction thriller. “We had great plates and it was about augmenting stuff that was already there; the visual effects in Robin Hood were supporting what he had shot as a film and what we added to it was more straightforward.” A whole new world needed to be brought to life for the second collaboration between the British filmmaker and Stammers. “There was an extensive design process, much of which was heavily unified through the work that Ridley’s Art Department did under Production Designer Arthur Max [Se7en].” The concept art and final cinematic image did not always mirror each other. “There are some things you could look at the concept art and go, ‘Wow! That is like what we ended up shooting.’ But as a general overview you could look at the concept and say, ‘That’s definitely reminiscent of what was shot and the sets that were built.’” The initial designs influenced “the way the set decorating was done, the colour schemes, the cool clinical crispness of the interior of the ship, and the degraded exteriors of the planet’s surface.”

“All the way through pre-production we had this detailed art book which was all of the concept art relating to every individual set and location,” says Richard Stammers. “For any of the unknown details there was some form of artwork.” However, more design elements were required for the visual effects. “There were a number of things that weren’t conceptualized which had to be created by our visual effects vendors; some of that work related to the holographic effects.” In regards to the signature manner in which Ridley Scott expresses his ideas, Stammers remarks, “The ‘ridleygram’ is an excellent way of fast communication. Ridley would never just tell you something; he would draw and tell you it.” The sophistication of the sketch changed during the course of the production. “The detail of those would vary immensely depending on how much time he had and what it was relating to. While we were shooting it tended to be quite simple and basic, when we got into post-production we were able to go further with that and he would have enough time to do more complex drawings. Sometimes we would give him printouts of frames that were in the edit; Ridley would draw over those to fill in all of the visual effects elements that he wanted to see in that shot and would give us an indication of what sort of scale, size and position of those things he wanted. Ridley would always relate to the plate which was an excellent way of briefing our vendors so they could say, ‘Okay, that’s that frame.’”

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Categories:

• Visual Effects

Tags:

• ahmet ahmet
• charley henley
• charlize theron
• dariusz wolski
• david sheldon-hicks
• fuel vfx
• guy pearce
• halon entertainment
• jamie dixon
• lola vfx
• luma pictures
• martin hill
• michael fassbender
• noomi rapace
• paul butterworth
• prometheus
• richard stammers
• ridley scott
• rising sun pictures
• steven messing
• vincent cirelli
• weta digital