Preparing for post: having a visual effects producer on set saves time, money and headaches

Post, Oct, 2003 by Ann Fisher

"We make a lot of money on mistakes that happen on set," say Matt Silverman, director of effect and design for Phoenix Editorial Effects & Design in San Francisco. "It's something that we try to convince our client to do, and a lot of the time they think they are saving money by not doing it. In reality, if I'm not there on set, things will inevitable go wrong and they end up spending more money on the back end."

Moving along swiftly and not having to fix production mistakes in post are only the most obvious benefits of having that visual effects producer or artist on the production set. These professionals provide the technical expertise to gather the necessary elements and often an artistic eye to help clients visualize the end results. When snap decisions are being made on set, a visual effects producer can often make directors very happy by saving time and, in the long run, money.

"I personally would rather be there," explains Silverman. "If I'm on set, the end product is going to be better than it would be if I wasn't. It's guaranteed that if I'm there. I'm going to spot things that [non-post] people aren't. Also, they might stress out over something that, in reality, is a non-issue. As much as the director might complain that the effects guy is getting in the way, reality is it's taking the heat off them and it's allowing them to relax and get what they need." Alex Catchpoole, a visual effects artist at Guava in New York, explains "One of the things we spend our time doing is seeing on set want isn't there or trying to visualize [it]. On set you've got people from all these different departments--makeup and lighting and camera--they're all looking at what's happening on the day. And we're trying to directors and DPs are often just ensuring that what they're doing is going to fit with things away from what's happening in front of the camera to make it better."

Not all directors are yet convinced of the necessity of having the visual effects producer on set. And, even if [we are on set], there is an unspoken pecking order. But more on that later, first, let's see how several visual effects companies recently proved their worth during live action shoots.

ANTICIPATING PROBLEMS

"We recently completed a job where there was over $75,000 in overages because of mistakes made on set and not listening to us," says Silverman of Phoenix (www.phoenixeditorial.com), a studio that specialized in effects for commercials. Signs needed to be composited. Phoenix told them to use tracking marks. The client said it had no money for post so practical props with type were used, which the client later wanted to change. Phoenix had to "very painfully" manually retrack those signs.

Phoenix's Silverman has become adept at anticipating problems. For last summer's Yahoo-sponsored spots of FIFA World Cup, that had miniature soccer players scrimmaging on a kitchen floor, Silverman used a Canon 10D camera to take digital stills of the kitchen set background. Originally, the real soccer players had been shot on a giant floor in front of greenscreens, which were to be replaced with kitchen cabinets. But time ran out on the shooting schedule before there were enough background plates shot. However, Silverman used his stills of those cabinets, graining them to look like 35mm film, and no one was the wiser.

His stills came in handy on a recent spot for a large packaged goods company when some tabletop shots were overexposed, "We had a big-time DP working on the spot, and even a guy like that makes mistakes," he says. "I always bring a digital camera on set, just in case plates on film don't come in."

That :30 spot, currently on air, was posted using Adobe After Effects, Pinnacle Commotion and Alias Maya on a Mac G4. The main tool was Discreet Flint due to heavy tracking and compositing. The tabletop shots were assembled with After Effects.

Silverman shares one more tip: "I try to get the video assists to use Digital 8 for their tape recording format because the Digital 8 have a FireWire output so I can plug the Digital 8 into my Apple PowerBook on set and I can do pre-comps. The Apple PowerBook allows us to capture into Apple Final Cut Pro fight from the video assists. We can then do test composites, we can do keying tests, and make sure everything is lining up right before we commit to the shot," Silverman adds.

COMPOSITION ON SET

Edgeworx's visual effects supervisor, John Bair, also uses his tools to compose shots on set. He brings his HP laptop with FireWire running Discreet 3DS Max (though sometimes After Effects and Photoshop). NYC's Edgeworx (www.edgeworx.com) specializes in visual effects for documentaries and films, though it does do commercial work too.

"On [a recent] project it was very helpful to be there and help them compose the shot. Traditionally, you think of it as a very technical type of exercise to be there and make sure things are done right but there's also a lot of artistic input that's happening at that time, a lot of decisions are being made," he says, noting that he also does most of the art directing. "To help these directors really see what's going to be happening, I usually bring animatics and previsualized shots for everything so we can have that on the laptop." This way they can see it and preview it in realtime.