Previs On ‘Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes’
Posted on Jul 22, 2014 by Alex Fice
The remit of the MPC crew included lens choices, shot framing and depth of field.
Ignoring the post work on Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes, the previs story has a twin team of MPC artists at their facility in Santa Monica and on location in New Orleans.
The remit of the MPC crew included lens choices, shot framing and depth of field. In all over 850 shots went through the pre-vis pipeline between the two locations. Assets – environments, props, characters and animation cycles – were regularly updated and shared from either location.
MPC’s most ambitious sequences were the Colony Attack (150 previs shots; 30 postvis shots and approximately 500 apes), Entering the Dam (30 previs/techvis shots), and Village Chaos (80 previs shots; 35 postvis shots and nearly 300 apes). Each of these sequences was shot on location and required detailed, reality-based pre-vis.
By the Spring of 2013 the New Orleans team increased to 16 artists and the Santa Monica team to 12.By the Spring of 2013 the New Orleans team increased to 16 artists and the Santa Monica team to 12 mainly to begin work on the Colony attack sequence – one of the film’s most complex VFX sequences. This work involved several hundred apes and continued through prep right until days before the shoot began and included several trips to the set in downtown New Orleans.
By mid-summer 2013, MPC transitioned from previs into postvis. As the plates came in and the turnover and screening schedule became more aggressive, more artists were added and embedded with editorial on the Fox lot following a strategy used on the first film. An additional advantage this time round was the availability of MPC’s Bangalore facility for roto and match-move. It allowed the postvis team at Fox to focus solely on story, animation and compositing.
