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MillimeterInside Firefly
Oct 1, 2002 12:00 PM, by Loni Peristere
Sidebars
"Whedon on Firefly"
Creating a Television Effects Pipeline
 Hero ship Serenity in flight from the show’s pilot. |
Since Joss Whedon and I had worked together for six years on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and three years on its spinoff, Angel, it wasn't surprising that he asked me to serve as visual effects supervisor on his new sci-fi show, Firefly. During our time together on Buffy and Angel, we encountered, explored, and implemented all types of effects — from the simplicity of a 2D eye glow to the complexity of hundreds of photo-realistic, ray-traced creatures, created with sub-division surfaces strung together in theoretical Artificial Intelligence-based flocking systems.
It has always been Joss' philosophy to produce the story as written, with the tools and ideas at hand, within our schedule and budget. We were comfortable collaborating with Joss and all production and postproduction departments in this manner. Still, about a year ago, when Joss and I sat down to discuss his concept for Firefly, it became clear that we were in for a lot of new things. This show would require an elaborate pipeline, massive rendering power, and most important, strong team leaders to quickly produce the challenging work.
Luckily for us, the birth of Firefly coincided with a time of great opportunity in visual effects. The flurry of major effects films in the last year helped develop new talent for our industry, and it bound established artists together in a digital consortium. The arrival of so much talent directly aided our ability to produce increasingly realistic effects in a flexible manner for this show.
In fact, I relied on my own membership in this “secret society” for this production, as the job led a bunch of us to create a new company called Zoic, based in Culver City, Calif. Zoic merges the philosophies of a group of artists and producers who had earned their chops over the years at major visual effects studios — Foundation Imaging, Vision Art, Digital Magic, POP, Riot, and Radium.
Getting Started
The outline for the pilot arrived on my desk in late November 2001. Inspired by the Reconstructionist era following the Civil War, it follows the exploits of starship captain Malcolm Reynolds, his crew, and a few passengers he's picked up along the way. Mal, like the lost Confederate captains upon whom he is based, is forced to live life on the frontier, after his army — the “Independent” army — lost to the “Alliance” in a galactic war.
 The same ship "cooling down" over a planet. |
Together, he and the crew of his ship, Serenity, take work where they can find it, legal or otherwise, as long as nobody innocent gets hurt. Serenity is designed to be a weaponless transport ship, pieced together along the way.
It immediately became obvious that, for the pilot and the series, we would have to build a library of new digital spaceships, planets, and effects — all of which Joss had specific ideas about. Overall, he wanted the show, visually, to reflect the notion of living on a frontier, albeit one in outer space. Serenity and other aspects of the world, consist of old, worn-out bits and pieces — materials from Earth, found, salvaged, and pieced together, or owned and passed on for generations.
 A pre-rendered version of the Serenity computer model, created in LightWave. |
Production designer Carey Meyer created the visual bible for the show. Carey's initial drawings included the design for Serenity, the Alliance's Dortmunder carrier, and the Reaver attack vessel.
By this time it was January 2002, and we were scheduled to begin shooting in March. Senior compositor Chris Jones, CG supervisor Andrew Orloff — who were both at Radium (Santa Monica, Calif.) with me when this project started, and are now colleagues at Zoic — and I were aware of the show's needs, and we understood that the pipeline we were building during the pilot would also have to serve the entire first season of the series — 11 episodes — and, hopefully, beyond.
Building a Pipeline
We looked for veteran supervisors experienced in using multiple software packages and hardware platforms with strong production references. For the supervisor job, we teamed Rocco Passionino and Emile Edwin Smith. As a digital effects supervisor, Rocco had taken the lead for Digital Domain, Vision Art, and Centropolis on The Fifth Element, Godzilla, Spy Kids, and Swordfish. Emile Edwin Smith had been a CG supervisor and animation director for Foundation Imaging on Star Trek: Voyager and Roughnecks: Starship Troopers Chronicles. Both supervisors were accustomed to working on television series with large numbers of effects shots for each episode, as well as working across multiple platforms on tight schedules while managing detailed budgets.
 A rear view of the ship. |
We asked Rocco to lead the internal production pipeline and run the shots, overseeing every aspect of the plate manipulation. Be it 2D or 3D, all effects shots must be approved by him. Emile supervises the 3D team and directs the extensive animation. We also brought on veteran effects producer Kristen Brennan to manage the elaborate schedule and budget.
Immediately, Rocco and Emile began running tests and soliciting technical options for the show. We chose a combination of 3D packages, including Maya 4.0, Houdini 5.0, and Lightwave 7.5. Our intention was to pre-viz and animate in Maya, model and render in Lightwave, and use Houdini for particle systems and procedural work. But in the end, we decided to use Lightwave for most of the CG work (Houdini was also used in certain instances), while compositing in After Effects 5.5 and Inferno 4.6, and doing our tracking work using Boujou 2.5. Rocco worked to set up this pipeline, while Emile hired the remainder of the animation team with Kristen's help.
Effects Preproduction
 A pre-rendered version of the pilot’s "hover train," created in LightWave. |
On the creative front, Joss finished the script for the pilot. We broke it down over several meetings with producer Gareth Davies, production designer Carey Meyer, and director of photography David Boyd.
It was at this point that Joss fully defined the look of the show. He insisted on a documentary, handheld style of camera work, with extraordinary depth of field, and zooms to where the action was focused. Camera movement would be purposeful and quick.
David Boyd chose to shoot the show on fast Kodak film stocks of the grainier sort, using 5293 200 Tungsten for effects only: the grittier, the better, according to Joss' mandate. The sets and props were designed to be asymmetrical and full of juxtaposed shapes and colors, creating the sense of larger and differently defined spaces.
 Final version of a shuttle craft. |
Rocco and I met with storyboard artist Charles Ratteray and boarded out all of the scenes with extensive effects. These boards were labeled and coded for their composite parts. The labels were translated into color keys, which were rendered into CG animatics and used during production for shooting guidelines and in animated scenes for notes on layer identification and the level of required detail. The animatics were also included in the online shot tracker — an online database developed by Rocco to store every detail needed to track the entire production process of each visual effects shot.
Emile and his team then finished the animatics and began to R&D the major effects in the series, including the “Firefly effect.” That effect is our version of the old NASA Daedalus project, which was a concept designed to propel spaceships by detonating nuclear bombs behind the ships, sending them off at sub-light speed. (Our version permits Serenity to use a variety of elements to propel itself, not just nukes.) Other major effects developed by this team include various planets seen in the series, and the aged and weathered shading of the ships, among other things.
It was during this period that all ship work and volume renders switched to a full Lightwave production pipeline. The realistic look of the volumetric smoke and the amazing speed and look of the hard surfaces on the ships began to streamline and sharpen our R&D work. We realized that, for our needs, the Lightwave renderer was performing better than Renderman in many ways and was allowing for frequent retests and further development, due to the speed of the result.
When the development work was completed, it was approved by Joss prior to shooting. Joss and I reviewed all the finished animatics at the preproduction meeting in early March of this year.
Documentary Style
As a result of the extensive effects-preproduction phase, we went into the shoot in late March fully prepared.
This allowed us to acquire plates that eerily mirrored our animatics. For the pilot, every plate in production was shot according to our preproduction layout, including the aerials for the final chase scene between the Serenity and the pursuing Reaver. We took notes and inputted them into Rocco's shot tracker.
 Actors (from left) Morena Baccarin, Adam Baldwin, and Nathan Fillon in Serenity’s cargo hold. |
While production moved along, Rocco and Emile continued to produce the all-digital sequences. These sequences would become the signature work for the show, as they, like photography in dailies, were rendered in a documentary style — subjective, with camera operator apparent. They include purposefully sloppy camera work, as well as out-of-focus and rack-focused objects, and elaborate zooms. This approach was a departure for our artists from their previous work, and should be a unique viewing experience. The intentional inaccuracy of the CG camera brings a sense of unparalleled realism to the scenes.
To get the handheld, docu-style look, Emile used the Lightwave camera just as you would if you were filming the shot as a practical plate. In Lightwave, it's easy to translate real-world shooting skills into the program, so you are able to utilize the program as a film tool, not just an animation tool.
For instance, we would fly Serenity along first, as if it were really in the environment, not thinking of the camera. Emile would then decide how to shoot it. He could throw the camera all over the place to get the look we wanted. If there were a lot of fast, multiple-action items going on in a shot, we would have the camera come off the scene and find the action, maybe overshooting the action a little bit, then coming back and landing on it, and tracking along with the action. Emile would never leave the camera standing still — it always had to be in motion or the shots would look manipulated or staged.
When production concluded, Rocco and company had already finished a majority of the all-CG scenes, and they were ready to do the substantial plate work. These shots were tracked, stabilized, rotoscoped, and then brought into animation. Once the 3D was integrated, it went into final compositing, performed by Chris Jones, where it was graded, diffused, and grained. Chris spent a good deal of time in the daylight scenes introducing lightwrap and camera flares over the CG models, completing the realistic integration.
During the course of the first season, we will continue to use digital sets, digital doubles, photo-gammetry, integrated digital lighting, and intermediary digital cameras.
There has not been a single scene or shot written into the scripts that we have not been able to produce or even enhance. As the show's visual-effects supervisor, I'm not at all concerned about such an eventuality. We can and will fail at times, but we will always continue to try. We are fortunate to be among a growing group of talented and excited artists who push themselves to understand failures, to solve them, and offer solutions for creative flexibility.
Loni Peristere is visual effects supervisor on the new Fox television series, Firefly, and previously served in a similar capacity for Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel. Peristere is creative director at Zoic, after previously serving at Radium, POP, and Digital Magic, where he worked on both episodic television programs and major commercial campaigns.
Sidebar
Whedon on Firefly
 Firefly creator Joss Whedon on the set of his new show. |
Joss Whedon — Firefly's creator, executive producer, and director of the pilot — freely admits he leans heavily on the show's effects team, led by supervisor Loni Peristere, to bring his vision of handheld-style effects to reality. “I don't know a whole lot about the specific tools they use for visual effects,” says Whedon. “I just tell them what I want, and they tell me yes or no, but rarely no.”
Whedon, creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and its spinoff, Angel, does know enough about effects technology to understand how far it has advanced since he first brought Buffy to television in 1997. Whedon insists that those advances, a larger budget, and his insistence on retaining the core of the effects team he has collaborated with for five years on two shows are the reasons that Firefly can take a new approach to sci-fi effects.
“I've worked with Loni and many of the other guys since the beginning of Buffy,” says Whedon. “My comfort level with them was huge when I came up with this concept. The difference is that here, we get to create entire worlds, not just creatures and effects at a smaller level. We have more money to work with, of course, and better tools than when I started out on Buffy, and that makes a big difference. When I started on Buffy, we couldn't afford too many complicated effects. We were kind of off the radar because the network was spending so little on the show. Ironically, that was one of the main reasons that show was allowed to grow and succeed. On this show, we're flying above the radar, and that's more pressure. But we also have more money, and the chance to bring whole worlds, spaceships, cities — all that stuff — to life. But the goal is to make the effects look different than typical TV sci-fi shows.”
By different, Whedon refers to his edict insisting that Firefly's visual effects match the show's live-action camera approach, resulting in a handheld, documentary style. “I told them, give me a documentary look, with occasional bad zooms, moving past the action and back to it — the type of things that would make shots seem grittier,” Whedon explains.
This approach came out of Whedon's take on the show's major influences, which were not sci-fi oriented, though he does admire “those cool Millennium Falcon scenes” in the original Star Wars. “The look is more from '70s Westerns — that's why we shoot with a zoom lens, something I never did on Buffy or Angel,” he adds. “I wanted things dirty and gritty in this future, which takes place after a great war. We wanted to give the impression the hero ship [Serenity] has a toilet on it, and that they built it out of different pieces of junk. That's why we asked Loni and his team to take this different approach, and I think it's visually striking.”
Continue the discussion on “Crosstalk” the Millimeter Forum.
