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Reader SurveyMonstrous Task
Jan 1, 2008 12:00 PM, By Ellen Wolff
The choreographed chaos of Cloverfield.
Filmed on the Paramount studios backlot in Los Angeles, the “Bodega” sequence of Cloverfield opens with a bang as the Statue of Liberty’s head is hurled down the street by an unseen force. Clouds of dust and debris, both digital and practical, hang in the air and create an apocalyptic atmosphere.
Photos: Courtesy of Paramount Pictures © 2008 Paramount Pictures. All Rights Reserved.
The poster for Paramount Pictures' Cloverfield depicts the Statue of Liberty standing headless, following a monster's attack on New York City. The image echoes the graphic of the severed head of Miss Liberty that adorned the movie poster for 1981's Escape From New York — an image that made a lasting impression on Cloverfield producer J. J. Abrams. But Abrams vowed that in his movie — which follows a group of friends trying to escape Manhattan's destruction — Lady Liberty's head would roll.
This signature moment was one of 160 shots created by the London-based effects house Double Negative (DNeg). “Any time you see destruction, that's our work,” says CG Supervisor David Vickery.
“We had to build a very, very high-resolution 3D model because it's visible in full frame for several seconds during the movie,” Vickery says of the sequence where the statue's head physically rolls down the street.
DNeg's 2D Sequence Supervisor Ben Taylor did such a convincing job that Cloverfield execs later asked to borrow the actual statue model for the film's premiere. “It was a nice compliment,” Vickery says, “because there never was a model on set. It was only done in CG.”
While California-based Tippett Studio handled the monster animation(see sidebar), Double Negative's assignment, which Michael Ellis supervised, required building whole sections of Manhattan in 3D CGI — and then destroying them.
A prime challenge for DNeg was integrating the visual effects with the shaky-cam cinematography used in Cloverfield. While Director Matt Reeves and DP Michael Bonvillain shot the live action with professional Thomson Viper HD cameras, the point of view is supposed to be from one character's handheld digicam. “The camera was zooming throughout the film, and we had to work out that zoom in the computer,” Vickery says.
Although the rooftop scene was filmed on a stage at Downey Studios in Los Angeles, it was London-based Double Negative that digitally extended the practical set and added the second tower of the canted building. The addition of gaping holes, falling debris, and sparking power cables served to make the rooftop feel more dangerous.
DNeg used a range of software to track the constant camera movement. “We used PFTrack [by The Pixel Farm], [2d3] boujou, and [Science.D.Visions] 3D Equalizer — though at least half of it was done by hand in [Autodesk] Maya. We had a very good match move lead, Sam Schwier, but this took a few years off his life.
“We'd have five or six takes of continuous actions, which they'd cut up into sections,” Vickery says. “We'd get the first half of take one and little bits of take two, and then another little bit of take one. We'd have to blend it together to create seamless camerawork. Our experience in Children of Men came in very handy in taking different plates and make them feel like they're a single shot.”
The atmospheric cityscapes DNeg previously created for Batman Begins and World Trade Center also prepared the team to handle the simulated explosions, dust clouds, and virtual buildings that Cloverfield required. DNeg employed proprietary fluid-simulation software called Squirt and a volumetric renderer called DNB to create environmental effects, as well as a tool called Windowbox to create scores of Manhattan skyscrapers. “It's a clever method for putting the insides of buildings back together,” Vickery says. “We have simple polygonal geometry, and we just plane our polygonal faces for the windows, but it looks like there's a true three-dimensional room inside those windows.”
Gathering the necessary survey data to model a virtual Manhattan was one of DNeg's biggest tasks. “[The method] was similar to Lidar but more specific,” Vickery says. “A Lidar system would spray a million points in a scene — more than our software could necessarily handle. We'd go out and measure in 3D space very specific sets of points off buildings and street corners and signage. We'd fire maybe 400 to 500 points in a scene, and at the same time, we'd photograph the area using tiled photography. That allowed us to line our photography up to the three-dimensional points that we've gotten, and then we'd rebuild the sets using photogrammetry.”
Fortuitously, Tippett's crew chose a similar approach, and the studios shared survey data. “We'd upload our photos to almost a common server. It felt like we were on the same team — just on different sides of the Atlantic,” Vickery says.
DNeg's biggest action sequences — one in which the monster wipes out the Brooklyn Bridge, and another where the main characters attempt to evacuate Manhattan in Huey helicopters — required complex 360-degree green-screen effects. “The bridge was visible, full frame, for at least 3 minutes,” Vickery says. “The production built a 200ft. section on a stage, but we had to put in the rest.”
And because there was no chance of filming a helicopter evacuation in Manhattan, an intricate composite was necessary. “We had to recreate the entire corner of 40th and Park. The helicopter was shot at an L.A. airfield. As it took off and turned around, we had to add a huge tanker truck flying through the air and smashing into a building,” Vickery says.
Ironically, when the Cloverfield crew was finally allowed to film the actors running through the actual intersection, it was under construction following a steam-pipe explosion. “So we had to paint out that real destruction and then blow it all up again in 3D CG.”
“Things that are supposed to look gritty and real are the most challenging work,” Vickery says. “You have to be prepared to do iteration after iteration, and it's not always easy to tell why something doesn't look real. But there is a right answer that you have to get.”
