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3D: The Final Frontier?

Posted by Leslie Morgan in I Design Your Eyes on August 24, 2010

“I make 3D movies for NASA.” It isn’t every day someone says that to you. Last week I had the opportunity to speak to Michael Starobin. Starobin is the Founder and Creative Director of 1AU Global Media who works for NASA and makes 3D movies for them. I was connected to Starobin through the EP of Commercials at Zoic Studios, Erik Press. Press and Starobin have known each other for a lifetime. The two have been friends for thirty-nine years, knowing each other since pre-school. The two took different paths, yet both ended up working in a creative field. When Press told me Starobin has been working on 3D movies for NASA, I wanted to share a different perspective on 3D for the I Design Your Eyes community.

Based in Washington D.C. Starobin has seen his fair share of production, but more on the industrial and corporate side. When Starobin was in Los Angeles two weeks ago, he was excited to get a tour of the Zoic Studios’ facilities. “It was a thrill to come out to the nerve center and get to see what Zoic is doing.” Starobin considers himself a film geek, and he loves being creative. However, he does feel there are differences when you work outside of Los Angeles and for a government agency like NASA. “There is a different philosophy and attitude because we don’t have the Los Angeles infrastructure with infinite crew and technical support. There are a smaller number of people to draw on and production cycles tend to be slower. There is an independent way of thinking of high end post-production and production. It isn’t just indie filmmaking by running out with a camera and you try to make your movie. You can think about it on a really high level for short pieces and interstitials.”

Starobin is the Senior Producer at NASA and is in charge of high profile special projects including Congressional events, exotic platforms, which could be 3D and spherical projection. In fact, a good portion of the work Starobin has been doing is for the 3D sphere. The sphere is a screen that hangs in space; four projectors illuminate it, shining in from the corners of the room at 90 degrees. The sphere’s technology is technically called Science On a Sphere, which was invented by NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), NOAA. Starobin began working with NOAA in late 2005 and expanded on the uses of the original technology, “When I got a hold of it they (NOAA) were essentially doing round PowerPoint presentations. They were showing pictures of spherical objects like planets. If it wasn’t round they couldn’t do anything. They couldn’t move, cut or do anything with filmmaking. My assignment was to write a speech and use it as a round slideshow.”

After his first assignment, Starobin essentially took it upon himself to find ways to film for a round sphere object. “If you have a ball hanging in space that is six feet in diameter, where do you put your camera? There is no left or right end of the frame and how do you dolly in or zoom out, all of the basic things you know about filmmaking falls apart and so you have to start over like a blank sheet of paper.” NOAA has largely distributed these screens around the country. “These round screens are really cool. They aren’t for everything. I wouldn’t want to tell the next season of Desperate Housewives on one, but I do think you could do more than planets. You don’t have to show just spheres. It’s like on a regular movie screen you don’t have to show just rectangles.” Starobin just produced a film about renewable energy that played in Copenhagen and screened on the sphere, “You could also treat it as an elegant information device. If you were to place a sphere in LAX in one of the main terminals you could essentially have news go around the screen, but as people are walking by they could get a sense of news events in a different format that is conducive to a circulating crowd. You can simply make it a beautiful piece of art too. It’s an interesting element for a large stadium to place corporate signage.”

Everything Starobin does for NASA is free and in public domain. “You can download things from various web sites or if it’s theatrical, it’s free to the public.” Starobin has made four films that were for the spherical projection that have played all over the world in about forty five theaters and a variety of different languages. “Our first film, Footprints, was named best invention of the year in Time Magazine.” Currently, Starobin is focusing on low cost, high quality 3D solutions for NASA. “NASA has done some work in 3D in partnership with movie studios, specifically Warner Brothers with Hubble 3D and a number of IMAX films.”

Starobin was an anthropology and medical ethics major and was a science reporter for many years, but always had a very keen interest in the arts. “I had the science interest and the arts interest and then an opportunity came up and I was able to build a position and it’s grown. I think, possibly like Zoic, it grows because you discover there is a new idea and you do the research and suddenly you enter a bold new area.”

As for the 3D space, Starobin began doing a great deal of research internally with his colleague Victoria Weeks, Chief Technologist and Senior Editor at NASA. Weeks and her husband made a small seven minute, 3D film to showcase the importance of the 3D technology. For Starobin, he thinks the interest in 3D didn’t really spark until Avatar was released and became a worldwide hit. “I wrote a paper for NASA saying 3D is coming, a year and a half before Avatar came out saying we need to start doing research internally. Then Avatar hit and they said let’s give them some seed money… NASA is interested, but they are a government agency. They don’t make money and they don’t have shareholders so they are nervous to get in. At a federal agency there aren’t commercial budgets.”

Even though Satrobin believes in the opportunities of 3D, he has some hesitancy about it. For one Starobin hopes that people don’t forget about story when utilizing the 3D technology. Like with fictional narrative films, the non fiction films of NASA also rely heavily on story. “By being immersive, 3D says, ‘come be in this world.’ I think there is excellent non fiction 3D out there. I am interested in it and doing it, but we just don’t want the technology leading the story.”

Does Starobin have an interest in taking more of a Hollywood approach? “Yes I have interest. To be honest, it would help facilitate story telling. One of the things that Vicky, myself and our colleagues at NASA appreciate, is how we are freed a little bit from the extraordinary clock pressures that I think Hollywood can impose on creatives. On the other hand, we don’t have the budgets. It’s a trade. We would love to continue to build our relationships to the west coast community without giving up some eastern aesthetics if you will. In an era of high speed Internet and inexpensive plane travel, that’s a very exciting proposition. I think it is possible to benefit from the best of both worlds. I do insist on creative meetings that we get together face to face if we can. The ability to talk via phone or Internet is not the same; I think evolution has trained you over two million years to read people’s faces, bodies and tone of voice. Isn’t it incredible when people are actually together? So we try getting together in person as often as we can, though we all have a SKYPE account.”

So does Starobin know what is coming next? The short answer is no. There will always be something new when it comes to technology. “Now in the digital era of storytelling there is no new next big thing. The skies are pretty much the limit. Now it’s about invention and storytelling. Do what you want, choose whatever color brush you want. That to me is exciting.”

So I Design Your Eyes readers what do you think? Is 3D the future of all filmmaking? Do you have ideas of what the next big idea in filmmaking is? Would love if you shared your thoughts in the comment section below.

Starobin will be launching a new website in a week so check it out at:

http://www.1auglobalmedia.com

and follow Michael’s work on the sphere on twitter @SphereNASA

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3D, Avatar, Inception, NASA

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Zoic’s Syd Dutton on Mentoring in the Visual Effects Industry

Posted by Erik Even in I Design Your Eyes on March 25, 2010

It’s easy for today’s young filmmakers to forget that the art of the cinema goes back 132 years; television 83 years; and interactive media 23 years. Today’s students might think the latest high tech tools are all they need to succeed in the rapidly-changing visual effects industry; and they’ll be sorely disappointed when their ignorance of time-tested filmmaking technique puts them in the dole queue.

That’s why mentoring is so important to the future success of young VFX professionals. I recently sat down with Zoic Studios’ Syd Dutton to discuss the importance of industry pros passing along their knowledge to the next generation.

Dutton has been a leading matte painter for film and television for over three decades. His credits include Dune, Total Recall, the Addams Family films, Star Trek: First Contact and Nemesis, U-571, The Fast and the Furious, The Bourne Identity, and Serenity. The Emmy-Award winner co-founded Illusion Arts in 1985, which created thousands of shots and matte paintings for over 200 feature films over 26 years.

As we spoke, Dutton’s longtime collaborator and Zoic compositing supervisor Fumi Mashimo listened in, and occasionally interjected. Mashimo’s credits include From Hell, Van Helsing and Public Enemies.

The things I learned gave me the foundation I needed for this business… I try to pass it along as much as I can…

The first assistant I had was Rob Stromberg, a well-accomplished matte painter. I would have hired him immediately, but he was driving a Porsche, lived in Malibu, and had a cell phone at a time when cell phones were still a luxury. So I said this guy’s pretty talented, but I can’t afford him. Then I found out later it was all a façade, and he was poor as a church mouse. But he had tons of talent.

So I hired him, and he just really excelled when we switched to computers, which just terrified me — but he really embraced it. It was all Macs at the time, because you could get more bang for the buck from multiple Mac stations rather than from just one SGI machine. Our first creature was a bird that Fumi [Mashimo] generated in a traditional painting, I think the same year Jurassic Park (1993) came out – and our big accomplishment was doing this bird!

Rob was great; and he really wanted to direct, so after a number of years he left. He later went back into matte painting and formed his own company, called Digital Backlot. Then he became a digital art director on Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003), which was nominated for an Oscar for Best Visual Effects. Apparently Rob had learned all the lessons I had learned from [legendary visual effects supervisor and matte painter] Albert Whitlock, that I passed along, like how to compose a shot using light and dark.

Most recently he became a production designer — which is really a jump for a visual effects person — first working for Jim Cameron on Avatar, for which he won an Academy Award [Best Achievement in Art Direction]; and this year he was productions designer on Alice in Wonderland, which is pretty amazing.

Mike Wassel was another one. His background was in design – he went to the Art Center in Pasadena — but he also knew car design, which was fortuitous for him. I got a call from Universal around 2000 saying we have this little movie we want to do on a budget, and we have about 20 shots or so, do you want to do it, it’s for Rob Cohen? I had worked for Rob for years, starting with The Wiz (1978) when he was the producer on the show for Motown.

My partner Bill Taylor and I both realized that Mike was the guy to supervise this. I didn’t know much about cars, but Mike was a complete car fanatic. He knew how cars would bank and all that stuff. Fumi did a wonderful test of a car, and I showed it to Rob Cohen. He said “why are you showing me this?” I said “What do you think it is?” “It’s a sports car turning a corner.” And I said “that’s CG.” We got the job. [laughter]

Bill and I talked Rob Cohen into hiring Mike Wassell as the visual effects supervisor. Now Mike’s working on the fifth edition of Fast & Furious. He was nominated for a VES award on Hellboy II: The Golden Army. So Mike’s having a pretty good career since he left too.

There have been several others; their careers are just beginning. I don’t know if it was so much my mentoring directly. I certainly try to pass on what I learned from Al Whitlock, who taught me everything I know about painting, even though I went to college and I had degrees and stuff like that. But the things I learned from Al gave me the foundation I needed for this business. I try to pass it along as much as I can.

But it was also the environment of Illusion Arts — not just me mentoring, but everyone would help bring up the next person. Do you think that’s fair to say, Fumi?

A good eye is a good eye, whether it’s looking through a whole bunch of glass and a projector, or at a computer monitor…

Fumi: It was a really nice environment.

There’s a couple more people, but I really don’t want to mention them until they achieve something. [laughter]

Fumi’s probably the most unsung person; now he’s compositing, but Fumi can do anything. Fumi did CG birds on The Bourne Identity (2002)…

Fumi: Oh God.

They were great. Hundreds of birds. I don’t think you will watch The Bourne Identity and notice any of our work in it. And we did dozens and dozens of shots. We always, especially in a contemporary movie, try to be as invisible as possible – I guess that’s what everybody tries to do. In science fiction it’s impossible. In historical dramas, sometimes you can get away with it, if people don’t think too hard. But most of the time in contemporary films, invisibility is what you want.

Erik: Fumi, do you have anything to say about Syd as a mentor?

Fumi: Oh, I mean, I learned everything from him. I didn’t know much about filmmaking when I was hired by him. I can respect him as a boss and also I can respect him as a person. That’s why I have been working with him for the past 23 years.

We found Fumi when he came from Canada with Randy Cook, who’s an Academy award-winning animator (for The Lord of the Rings trilogy). At that time Randy was working on a film called The Gate (1987), and Fumi was working as his assistant for no money, because he wanted the experience; and Fumi didn’t speak very good English either. [Fumi scoffs] But we could tell from his work ethic that he would fit in. So when Randy’s film finished, we asked if he could stay on. He learned English and all sorts of things, and when the computer came along he learned that too.

The old-fashioned optical printer guys, once they learned the computer, they became at that time the very best compositors; because a good eye is a good eye, whether it’s looking through a whole bunch of glass and a projector, or at a monitor. A good eye is what it takes.

Erik: Can you talk about mentoring, as far as personal relationships?

I think mentoring is a pretty intense relationship. You try to give that person all you know and hope they will take it to another level.

Erik: Based on my own chequered experience in this industry, it might be different on the creative side, but I’ve run into a lot of “I’m not going to teach anyone anything, because they might compete against me in the future.”

That’s exactly what happens – but that doesn’t help anybody. There’s always going to be somebody competing against you. If you own a business and don’t teach your people how to do good work, then your company doesn’t do good work. There are a lot of people who won’t give away their quote-unquote “secrets,” and that just isn’t me. I like working with young people. If it’s the right person, I like mentoring.

Fumi: There are a lot of young people CG artists, they don’t want to hear it. We have so many of them passing through.

Yeah, if they didn’t work out, they didn’t stay. I wasn’t cruel about it, I didn’t fire people and embarrass them, but if they didn’t work out, they just didn’t stay. It really was a family, and if a person didn’t fit in that family, it really didn’t matter. It was just a dysfunctional family.

Fumi: It was really nice, though.

If you own a business and don’t teach your people how to do good work, then your company doesn’t do good work…

I’m proud, especially with Rob and Mike, that they have done so well. It reflects well on me [laughter], and it passes on something important. When I first started working with Al, I had artistic experience and I had degrees, but I didn’t know how to apply it to movies. Al was very patient with me, and taught me all his tricks, and all of [legendary special effects creator and matte painter] Peter Ellenshaw’s tricks, because he worked with Ellenshaw.

Al made me aware of how people like W. Percy Day worked, who was a production designer in England in the 30s. I was introduced to all sorts of production designers; most of them are long gone. It was wonderful. It connected me all the way back to the 1920s and 30s. I felt I really learned a lot on how to do things, how to be economical with your vision.

Erik: It sounds like a lot of what you learned translates into the new technology.

Oh, it all translates. People just don’t necessarily know about it. If you hadn’t been exposed to it, and talked to people who worked on these movies that were classics — it’s not in books, it has to be learned firsthand.

Erik: Do you get people who think that knowledge from before the digital revolution can’t translate?

Yeah, sure. They can’t believe it would work. Some simple — what we used to call “gags” – these tricks that are effective, they say couldn’t possibly translate into the digital age, and they can.

Erik: What about the environment at Zoic, as far as mentoring and education?

I think the training program here is really very good. It’s a wonderful way to find out who’s going to work out, and it’s certainly wonderful for young people to be around this environment.

It’s never going to be the same as the world I came up in. I was exposed to this whole backlot world, and the old movie stars and everything. In this environment you aren’t exposed to sets, and all those things I found really interesting working for a big studio.

When I had my own business at Illusion Arts, we did go to the sets. We went on locations, too. What we did on glass was something very few people could do. But as times changed and everything became computer-oriented, this became the type of environment that people would have to learn to work in. And of all the places I’ve seen, Zoic by far has the best environment. It’s the friendliest, it’s the most open.

I told one of my client producers, you’d be hard put to know who to kill to take over the company, because there’s no obvious boss walking around smoking a cigar or something. Everybody seems to know their jobs, and they just collaborate with one another. I’ve never seen people yelling at each other – maybe I haven’t stayed around long enough to see that. [laughter]

It’s a good environment, and it’s actually one of the reasons I came here. It didn’t seem to have a whole bunch of pressure – there’s time pressure, but there didn’t seem to be a lot of alpha dogs going around screaming at each other!

More info: Syd Dutton, Fumi Mashimo, Robert Stromberg and Mike Wassel on IMDb; see also “Syd Dutton: Matte Painting from Traditional to Digital.”