The Teleport Effect

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Dual Role

For X-Men 2, teleporting the Nightcrawler character requireddevelopment of a dynamic smoke effect (above). Composer John Ottmanalso served as the film’s picture editor (below).

Cinesite Hollywood's decision earlier this year to drop its visualeffects division to concentrate exclusively on digital film masteringmakes X-Men 2 the company's effects swan song. (At press time,Cinesite was finishing effects on one final movie — FreddyVersus Jason —but X-Men 2 represents its biggest jobas a primary effects vendor on any feature film.) According to StephenRosenbaum, visual effects supervisor for Cinesite, the movie posed ahost of challenges, given its ensemble story about a group ofsuper-powered mutants — characters that control fire, ice, andlaser beams, among other comic-book effects.

One new effect, in particular, posed several challenges. That effectinvolves the special power of the character Nightcrawler — ademonic mutant with the ability to teleport. Nightcrawler's teleports— referred to as the “bamf” effect, based on thesound his teleports made in the original X-Men comic book— are central to the opening sequence.

“The character teleports about 40 times in the openingsequence,” says Rosenbaum. “In the comics, he appears anddisappears in a big blue cloud of smoke. We wanted something moresophisticated, though, in which his image is almost drawn inward,folding in at points across his body, as if drawn in by a giant vacuum,surrounded by expelling fluid and residual, blue smoke.”

Greg Anderson, CG supervisor for the “bamf” effect, saysCinesite developed dynamic smoke for the effect. “The dynamicsmoke is based on fluid dynamic algorithms, coming from code written by[former Cinesite engineer] Dr. Jerry Tessendorf for renderingwater,” he says. “We took these fluid dynamic algorithmsinto Houdini to let the smoke emulate a water effect — making itfluid as it travels through air, wrapping around Nightcrawler. Jerryalso wrote a proprietary particle renderer for us, which let us rendermillions of particles without using very much RAM or taking very longto render. This let us render millions of particles quickly, and thenlayer them to get tens of millions of particles to represent the smoke.We composited the whole thing in Cineon. Some shots were more difficultthan others because they were shot with a handheld camera and we had toroto Nightcrawler in and out of the plates. Key shots in the openingsequence, though, were shot motion-control and were easier tocomposite.”

One of the repeat effects that Cinesite expanded for this filmrevolved around the mutant-tracking device known as“Cerebro”-essentially a computer that the telepathicProfessor X mentally interfaces with as he scans the world looking formutants. In the first film, Cerebro was seen briefly, scanning a singlelocation. This time, the device plays a key role and is usedrepeatedly, scanning the globe-therefore calling for a whole, new,expandable approach.

“Cerebro accounts for nearly 100 shots in this movie,”says Rosenbaum. “We came up with more of an abstract,supernatural look to the effect this time-an ethereal view of peoplearound the world, coming off the surface of a strange map of the world.What we had to illustrate was Xavier’s mental search of theworld’s consciousness. That became a very abstractvisual.”

Serge Sretschinsky, Cinesite’s digital effects supervisor forthe Cerebro shots, says the company used the same proprietary,volumetric, “vaporous” software tool used for the“bamf” effect on Cerebro shots.

“For Cerebro, this software let us create pyramid-shapedvolume elements we called ‘tetrads,’ which could becomeelongated, into long rays of imagery,” says Sretschinsky.“We placed those rays inside a sphere, with map images, featuringdistorted film images of people we filmed in Vancouver, along withso-called ‘map beams,’ in which beams of light hug thesurface of the map and then suddenly lift out of it. We filmed over10,000 feet of film of extras in Vancouver, and that film was placedinto these 3D environments, creating a multi-layer texture map thatresembled a glowing nebula in space. That part of the effect was based,in part, on work we did to produce light beams last year onSolaris. We also generated ambient occlusion maps in Lightwaveand added them to our Maya animation to create defined, subtledarkening shadows, rather than hard shadows, which gave the whole thingan extra level of realism.”

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Dual Role

It wasn't like John Ottman was yearning to edit an effects-heavyfeature. He wasn't particularly wanting to edit at all when X-Men2 came along. Ottman considers himself primarily a film composerwho happened to win critical acclaim for editing The UsualSuspects a few years ago for his friend, director Brian Singer.Since that time, Ottman has worked as both a composer and an editor forSinger, although he was unable to help him with the first X-Menfilm due to a prior commitment. This time around, however, Singer“semi blackmailed me” into editing the sequel, Ottmansays.

“I was just supposed to score this movie, but Brian told me Icouldn't write the score unless I also edited the movie. I felt hewould embrace my music more if I didn't put up a fight, so I agreed.But I've never done any kind of an editing job with this level ofvisual effects before. And scoring the film on top of that — it'sbeen crazy.”

Ottman's dual role also extended slightly into another area.“I did do some sound design on the Avid as I cut the film,”he explains. “Being a composer, I decided not to attempt anymusic until I had finished editing these sequences. But, at the sametime, I had to sell my cuts to Brian, so I added some sound design tomake those cuts succeed on their own, before the score was added. Someof that design work stayed in the film.”

Ottman adds that his double duty did help him as a composer.“I know the film far better than a typical composer would,”he says. On the other hand, he concedes, “It can burn you out.Basically, you have no life whatsoever.”