It was important to Malick that the camera seemed to simply be there, that there was no one to pull focus, no operator, as if it has simply appeared at that location and at that time. He wanted plates to be shot where everything was sharp from the front to the back, so Glass would occasionally have to shoot plates where things would fall into minimum focus.
Fink defined how Prime Focus worked with what Glass provided. "Some of the places were so dark, if he focused up close the background focus would be soft, and vice versa. |
Dan couldn't go with a small aperture to get good depth of field, and he couldn't shoot undercranked to get more light because there was movement in the backgrounds. Glass would deliver plates of the same scene that were shot with different levels of focus.
Prime Focus would split the plates apart and put them back together using the foreground from one plate, middle ground from another, background from yet another. "There was a lot of work like that that nobody will ever notice." |
Courtesy of Fox Searchlight Pictures. TM and © 2011 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. All rights reserved. |
While reference from scientific research can be seen through such equipment as electron microscopes, microbes crushed between two slides or on the surface of a Petri dish tend to be flat, and often the subject is inert, or dead. That meant the living microbes for Tree had to be built in CG within the practical elements. Glass selected FX houses One Of Us in London and Method Studios in LA to create several shots for the microbial realm at the cellular or atomic level depicting the origins of life. |
One Of Us supervisors Tom Debenham and Dominic Parker supervised the history of life at a stage where environments were hostile and alien. "We needed a range of backgrounds and ended up shooting a lot of these ourselves," said Parker.
They used large water tanks filled with inks, dyes and organic substances, shot on 35mm film and digitally on Dalsa and Red 4K, , that "allowed us to create a range of swirling, complex, semi-abstract plates which formed the bedding layers for most of our shots.
We also found ways of shooting some more dominant elements, using various viscous and membranous substances. And we took a lot of stills which formed the basis of our texture maps for CG." |
Courtesy of Fox Searchlight Pictures. TM and © 2011 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. All rights reserved. |
Courtesy of Fox Searchlight Pictures. TM and © 2011 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. All rights reserved. |
The CG work consisted of amorphous cellular bodies moving through liquid and depicting several key biological processes. "We began work by sketching an animatic of an extended version, firstly as a mood board of semi-abstract photographic elements set to music, and then with simple 3D animation, which was executed using Houdini and Maya," said Parker. "The cellular bodies had to do a number of things which animators traditionally try to steer clear of - repeatedly dividing, tearing, changing their topology, whilst remaining as distinct entities.
" To represent the process without halving the cell surface texture detail they iteratively swapped out geometry at the point of separation, and then stochastically blended the texture with a fractally richer version of itself. |
"But we needed this to happen randomly to a group of thousands of cells stretching off into the far distance," continued Parker. "And as they split they increased in total volume and jostled one another to make room. We achieved this effect using Houdini's rigid body dynamics engine.
For practical and aesthetic reasons we split the total volume of cells into groups so that we could achieve a sympathetic timing of the various splitting events in different areas of the frame. |
Courtesy of Fox Searchlight Pictures. TM and © 2011 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. All rights reserved. |
Courtesy of Fox Searchlight Pictures. TM and © 2011 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. All rights reserved. |
" The shot began in an enclosed space with the camera moving slowly through a canyon of cells, then opens to reveal long branches of cells repeating the same process off to infinity.
"The most distant cells were a matte painting, and further layers of complexity was added in comp by introducing multiple layers of semi-transparent goop through which we pass."
Rendered surfaces were membranous lipid materials, and needed to be partially transparent, diffusing, and backlit.
"To achieve this we used a standard diffusing fresnel shader with several layers of photographic textures to control the various parameters - opacity, cone angle- which controls the degree of diffusion, refractive index, and others." |
Scattering rays required a high enough sample rate to smooth out any scintillation, a process that is computationally expensive, so "it was important to optimize by tying sample rate to both cone angle and distance from the lens." The CG was rendered at 4K.
"It was an exciting creative process," said Parker "primarily because, as opposed to most film work, we were invited to think beyond the pictures immediately in front of us. We had a sense of being fully engaged collaborators in a complex process under the direction of someone with a huge breadth of understanding. People working in the industry will know that this is a rare and precious feeling."
It was obvious that every person interviewed for this article admired Malick lending praise to the way he works, and his tendency to give everyone an opportunity to contribute. "In some ways," said Glass "that's where it begins.
He's one of those filmmakers who obviously has tremendous respect and reputation. Personally, I was inspired by cinema and ultimately my move to try and work in the film industry by filmmakers like Terry. He was one in particular I remember." |
|
|
