 | | | For example, modelers built ZBrush maquettes to proof characters’ proportions. To frame shots, Verbinski worked with a virtual camera on ILM’s motion capture stage and layout artists tweaked the final camera moves on the same stage. The crew didn’t bother with color scripts, which lighting directors on most animated films rely on. Instead, they lit scenes as they do for visual effects – for realism. “And, we created the assets as if we were creating characters,” Alexander says. “They could be lit and rendered on the fly by the technical directors.” To speed the process, TDs [technical directors] could work on multiple shots as if they were one shot. And, Alexander assigned two CG supervisors, Kevin Sprout and Pat Myer to the new job of ‘render triage.’ “If anyone spent more than an hour on a shot, we told them to call their supervisor or send the shots to render triage,” Alexander says. “We had shots with 30 characters that have hair, feather and cloth simulations. We knew we had to help the TDs. It was a strategy game.” It’s fitting, then, that one of Alexander’s hobbies is collecting and playing games, and not just video games. His collection of board games now totals around 800. “Not Ameritrash,” he laughs. “Mostly games out of Europe.” Games like Settlers of Catan, Twilight Struggle, Lords of Vegas, among others. “We usually have three or four players,” he says. “Twilight Struggle is set during the cold war, and based on history. In Lords of Vegas, the players build casinos and can take chances. I play Settlers of Catan for the strategy. I like them for the interaction with people and for the game mechanics.”
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|  | | Some of Tim Alexander’s research shots in the deserts. |
| | So, it should come as no surprise to learn that Alexander studied engineering in school, receiving a masters’ degree in electrical engineering from Cornell University. The surprise is that he minored in theater. The two courses of study seem far apart until he explains that electrical engineering included image processing, and that his minor was in theater lighting design. “I was in theater in high school,” he say, “and performed in the Hawaii community theater in Honolulu, and in opera. But I realized that to be an actor, I had to be really, really good, or I’d end up in a tree house like some people I knew. And, I knew I was more talented in math.” So, with a little stage fright helping him along, he moved backstage when he was a junior to concentrate on lighting design. Then, he took both his talents, math and lighting design to college.
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|  | | Rango. © ILM and Paramount Pictures |
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|  | | Rango. © ILM and Paramount Pictures |
|  | | Rango. © ILM and Paramount Pictures |
|  | | Rango. © ILM and Paramount Pictures |
| |  | | Rango. © ILM and Paramount Pictures |
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| Alexander’s fascination with theater came, perhaps, from his parents. Although, they weren’t involved with theater or art, every Sunday was family movie night. “We’d sit in our hot tub for a while and look at Diamond Head,” he says. “And then we’d go inside and watch movies Dad rented. And not just first-run movies. We watched Lawrence of Arabia and films like that.” At Cornell, all these disparate interests, math, movies, and theater lighting design, clicked into place when Don Greenberg, the legendary computer graphics pioneer, and a professor at Cornell then and now, brought George Joblove from ILM to campus to talk about ‘Terminator 2.’ Alexander realized that his major and his minor both made sense in the world of visual effects. So, he sent his resume to every studio he could find.
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|  | | Rango. © ILM and Paramount Pictures |
| | The combination of EE and theater lighting design caught the eye of a Disney recruiter, and he landed an internship with Buena Vista visual effects for the summer of 1992, again the following summer, and when he graduated, they hired him. His job was primarily as a compositor for several films, including, most notably, ‘James and the Giant Peach.’ For that film, Disney moved him into a studio created in San Francisco specifically for director Henry Sellick. When work on the film ended in 1997, Alexander decided he wanted to stay in the area, and applied at ILM. At ILM, Alexander’s first show was ‘Star Trek First Contact,’ for which John Knoll was a visual effects supervisor. “I comp’d a lot of photon torpedoes,” he says. His second was ‘The Lost World: Jurassic Park,’ and for that, he worked with visual effects supervisor Dennis Muren. And, the first show on which he received credit as an associate visual effects supervisor came along soon after, ‘The Perfect Storm,’ which released in 2000. He started on the film as a compositing supervisor, but under Stefen Fangmeier’s tutelage and encouragement, he became something more. “I followed Stefen around,” Alexander says modestly, noting that Fangmeier hadn’t needed to mentor him, but he chose to, even flying him to LA to meet with the client.
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|  | | Star Wars |
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|  | | Star Wars |
| |  | | Jurassic Park: Lost World |
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| After ‘The Perfect Storm,’ Alexander sailed solo as visual effects supervisor on two small films, and then again joined with Fangmeier, this time as a co-visual effects supervisor on ‘Dreamcatcher,’ which released in 2003. He stepped out on his own the following year with ‘Hildago,’ a major release, and has been a visual effects supervisor since. It was on ‘Dreamcatcher’ that he began experimenting with photography, using digital cameras for photomodeling, that is, to create CG objects from photographs. Today, photography is a hobby. Taking photos. Not necessarily printing them. Just for the moment of taking them.
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|  | | The Perfect Storm |
| | Making his own films, that is, the films for which he’s a visual effects supervisor, look good has always been part of his job, but ‘Rango’ was a special case. On this film, the crew was creating all the light, not matching live action plates. “We’d discuss the key lighting with Gore and sometimes go to [cinematographer] Roger Deakins,” Alexander says. “We used RenderMan and did a lot of indirect illumination – basically bounce light. But we needed some extra control from key lights. We tried to slash light on the characters faces to embrace their nastiness.” “On each sequence,” he continues. “We’d consider the color, the contrast. What’s the point of the shot? What’s the feeling? Do we use haze and dust? Should we put background characters under the roof? Where is the sun? On ‘Hildago,’ they would shoot only when the sun was three-quarters of the way down. On ‘Rango,’ we put the sun overhead to express the heat. If Rango was bright, we’d put something dark behind him. I learned so much about lighting and composition. I really want to do another feature.” His excitement about his work on the film is palpable and illustrates a big difference between working on visual effects and animation. “I’ve never before had the opportunity to help set the look,” Alexander says. “It has helped me better understand live action films.” Alexander hasn’t signed on to his next project yet, so there’s no way to know if his chameleon skills will take him back into visual effects or onto another animated feature. But, given ‘Rango’s’ success and Alexander’s talent, he could easily get another shot at feature animation. And, we’d belly up to the bar again in a dirty saloon for that. Even if it meant sitting next to a filthy rodent. Related links:
Rango
Industrial Light & Magic
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|  | | Rango. © ILM and Paramount Pictures | | |  | | Rango. © ILM and Paramount Pictures |
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