Moving Through Time

Filmmakers have long used wordless images to represent the passageof time. Think of all those shots of calendar pages turning andashtrays filling up with cigarette butts. But for A BeautifulMind, Ron Howard's latest release for Universal, the directorenvisioned a more elegant approach. In one 25-second shot, Howardconveys the many months that the film's protagonist spent writing athesis that would win The Nobel Prize. We watch from outside a windowas actor Russell Crowe works non-stop at his desk, while snow falls andthen melts away, bare trees turn green, and the world outside emergesfrom winter into spring.

To achieve that in a single shot, Howard called upon Digital Domain,the Venice, Calif., effects house that worked with him on TheGrinch and Apollo 13. DD's digital effects supervisorMatthew Butler explains: "When the shot begins, (DP) Roger Deakins hasthe camera fully on Russell Crowe and then starts to pull out. Thecamera keeps moving backwards throughout the whole shot." Of course,about a third of the way through the pull-out, this plate shot revealsthat Crowe is sitting in a set piece comprised of just a window and alittle bit of the wall below it. The rest of the building would have tobe created in CG.

Before anything could be added, however, the plate shot had to bescanned into DD's computers and tracked so that Deakins' camera movecould be duplicated when other elements were incorporated. Integrationsupervisor Swen Gillberg used the studio's proprietary TRACK softwareto extract data on this camera move; that data was then used by CGartist Nikos Kalaitzidis to create a rough previsualization of what thefinished shot should look like.

"We did that to figure out the rough timing of the shot,”notes compositing supervisor Claas Henke. “Nikos used Houdini tocreate some geometry to stand in for the wall and for the tree thatwe'd be adding to the foreground of the shot. It was a little tricky tofigure out because Ron wanted the tree to appear fairly soon in thecamera move but not cover up Russell Crowe in the window."

Once the choreography of the shot was worked out, the next step wasduplicating the camera move on the tree. Rather than create winter andspring trees in CG, Butler says, "We decided to shoot the tree forreal. It's up close in the shot, and very organic." Once again theyused their TRACK data, this time to guide the motion-control camerathat photographed the tree on a bluescreen stage. "We had videoplayback on stage that showed the tree roughly laid over the animaticso we could make sure it was in the right spot," Henke notes.Motion-control shots were done of the tree with the leaves on, and thenthe effects teamed pulled them off and filmed the tree again.

"There was a disadvantage to doing it this way,” Butleracknowledges, “because in doing that, the tree's going to moveslightly. Even though we shot it motion control, we had a discrepancybetween the two shots. Fortunately, the tree appears to be slightlyblowing in the wind, so the move is somewhat forgiving. But Claas didhave to reconcile the two versions."

Meanwhile, the CG team created virtual walls that extended the setpiece, plus “natural” elements like climbing ivy and snow.The ivy, which turns from brown to green, was created with 2D texturemaps applied to simple 3D geometry.

"We used a 3D paint package by Right Hemisphere called DeepPaint,” notes 3D painter Shannan Burkley. “It allowed us toeasily bounce back to (Adobe) Photoshop, so we could do Photoshoptexture mapping. It essentially made Photoshop a 3D package."

To create falling snow, Kalaitzidis used Houdini's particle systemsoftware. "Because we had the geometry of the window, we were able tohave the particles react to it, the same way real snowflakes dissipatewhen they fall on warmer surfaces,” Butler explains. “It'snot a big issue for this shot, but we had developed it for The Grinch,so why not use it?"

These various elements were composited using DD's NUKE software(recipient of a Sci/Tech Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Artsand Sciences this year). Among the layers in the composite were shadowsfrom the tree moving on the building, and even a CG butterfly thatflits through the scene. Throughout the shot, the lighting changes fromcool to warm to reflect the changing seasons.

Making all these elements appear and disappear smoothly was acrucial task, notes Henke. "Ron didn't want to see something morph orchange too drastically. He didn't want to see leaves 'grow' -- hewanted something more like a dissolve." So DD used a “staggereddissolve” approach, whereby something always was changing in theshot. For the winter-to-spring tree, Henke explains, "I did a littletrick to make the leaves appear closer to the branches first, and thensort of wipe on." The snow meanwhile, doesn't actually stop falling.The particles fade out, and the snowdrift on the windowsill dissolvesaway as if it was melting. "The transition takes almost the wholeshot," says Henke, "almost 20 seconds long."

Butler sums up the process as "An articulated transition. It was anorchestration of events, with different things happening at differenttimes. People don't think of this as a visual-effects movie, and wedidn't want to do anything that would say 'Look at this specialeffect.' Our hero character is still in the center of the frame, andultimately he is what this is all about."

Credit Roll -
Director- Ron Howard
DP - Roger Deakins
For Digital Domain:
Visual Effects Supervisor - Kevin Mack
Digital Effects Supervisor - Matthew Butler
Compositing Supervisor - Claas Henke
Compositing - Krista Benson, Claas Henke
3D Tracking - Swen Gillberg
D-CG Lead - Nikos Kalaitzidis
3D Painting - Shannan Burkley