ANIMATIC!

       Finally the animatic for "The Favourite: Prologue" is finished. It's been a long and hard work, and we decided to talk to our film director Dan Reut and chief CG specialist Eugene Rodygin. Here you can see the animatic and read the complete interview.

Animatic "The Favorite: Prologue" from levitationstudio on Vimeo.

            -     Well, guys, another important stage – animatic for “The Favourite: Prologue” – is accomplished. It took you much time and power, so I’d like to learn more details. Dan, remind us please, what is the point of this animatic and why Levitation Studio paid such attention to it?
           Dan: Yes, this animatic is very important for us, mostly because it helps to avoid many problems on set. It is especially helpful for beginners in movie industry. When you start shooting, without enough experience, you may get at a loss. You don’t know what to start with. And at this point animatic helps us to understand what we might need during the filming process and to what aspects we should pay special attention.

-       So, what are those aspects?

Dan: As you can see from the animatic, we have many action scenes in the Prologue. Now we can already decide what equipment they will require and how many shooting days it’ll take. We haven’t started filming yet, but our audio men and composers can already work on the sound effects and soundtrack. As a result the final montage and post-production will take less time.

-       Eugene, tell us about the process itself, what technologies did you use?

Eugene: If you have seen animatics to other movies then you know that usually animatics is a set of static pictures replacing one another according to the timing of the future film. We have picked a more difficult but a more efficient method. This animatic must be as realistic and detailed as possible, that’s why it was made with the use of 3D animation graphics. All objects, characters, animation and effects were made in Blender. In many scenes you can see motion-blur effect. It slows down the processing but makes the picture more realistic. As for the leading characters, we used IK-rig to add skeleton to their limbs. Effects of smoke and explosion were added as a compromise between the picture quality and the rendering time.

-       What difficulties did you encounter during this work?

Eugene: I guess that the most difficulty is that Blender displays two key renderers: Cycles and Internal. Each has its own advantages and disadvantages. For example, you cannot make realistic explosions with Cycles, but the quality of the final picture is significantly higher. As a result we had to find a compromise for every scene. The second problem was the big amount of animation. As you can see, we had to simplify some movements, because showing them in the animatic would be a waste of time. An actor would perform much better.

-       As I can see from the animatic there will be many special effects in “The Favourite: Prologue”. What are they?

Eugene: Sure. You will witness a whole squadron of alien spaceships floating across the sky, see buildings destroyed to the ground, also many explosions, blasts and other exciting spectacles. And of course you will see alien intruders walking down Moscow streets and bringing along chaos and destruction. Anyway, we have a lot of work to do, but with the experience we have I think we will be able to realize all what is planned and make a high quality video which could rival the best samples of the Western cinema. And maybe even work out something new.

Dan: Putting visual effects aside, I would like to say that our intention was not to pick a popular sci-fi plot, add some computer graphics and make a blockbuster. In our story we put the tragedy of people in the foreground. We want to show what difficulties and obstacles they have to overcome in these darkest times, their internal conflict, the fear, the drama of every single human. I think it’s going to be a great movie, at least we’ve got everything for that.

-       Sounds great! Well, now that one of the most important stages is finished, what are your plans?

Dan: Hah, first of all – to get some sleep. We’ve been working like an Olimpic team recently. Working and studying. Our next move is casting and preparations for the filming process. You see, we have war, and blasts and love in here, so much work to do.