American Cinematographer - November 1998 - 60

Designing the Afterlife
plates and matte paintings to create a
of lens distortion and add

sense
more

life

become
there

the

to

just

were a

a

move, so

it didn't

backdrop. And then

number of elements

-

including hundreds of digital people
that were animated and added
stairs off in the
screen

actor

on

the

distance, plus greenelements, moving

clouds and mists and CGI waterfalls
that

really brought it to life."
Collaborating with director
Vincent Ward to envisage these spell¬
binding vistas was no simple task,
Somers admits, but she says that the
-

Chris cavorts in

the Painted

World,

as

created by
Mass.lllusions.

Explains Ward,
"My concept
for paradise
was

this

stained glassstyle series of
oil paintings,
ranging from
the German
romanticism of

Casper David
Friedrich to the
dark palette of

Monet, with
other late

19th-century
artists and

styles thrown
in

as

well." The

"paint" effects
were

integrated into
location

photography
shot in Glacier

National Park.

including reconstructing a full land¬
scape for the sequence in which
Chris flies through a field of poppies,
and adding a ghostly blur to the
character played by Cuba Gooding
Jr. But their "main-event scene,"

according to Somers, "was the
Autumn Tree,

Chris

connects

izes that

which blows apart as
with Annie and real¬

things are horribly wrong.
as a

model, but actually

organically using a series of
algorithms in what's called an Lsystem. I understand from Kevin
Mack that they actually had 12 pages
of script to define the parameters of
how the tree should grow, based on
grown

Vincent's

art

direction. And that

was

and

supervising matte
painter Rocco Giofffe, envisioned
some of Dreams' most
arresting
images. Particularly eye-popping are
the 23 shots depicting the realm of
Chris's young daughter - Marie's
World. This setting was inspired by a
19th-century Victorian theater with a
golden staircase, populated with
jugglers, jesters and dancers.

"The Autumn Tree wasn't

constructed

On the banks of the indoor

tank

water
sure

Francisco's Trea¬

at San

Island naval base, the

constructed

an

crew

immense "stairway to

Painted World

19

composites, in addi¬
handling the lion's share of
the film's demanding workload. POP
visual effects supervisor Stuart
Robertson,
working alongside
designer/senior matte painter Deak
tion to

to

convincingly

portray paradise and damnation on
celluloid. Better still, their work also

symbiotic synthesis
quite distinct art forms.
"One thing that filmmakers and
painters have in common is that
they're trying to describe the world,"
represents a

between

two

Ward concludes. "I would like

artists to view the

motion control
moves

permitted the
on the huge

orchestrated

over

the

use

of

crane

set.

The

started from scratch,

on

the creative team's

Ward and Serra

incredible realism

the element."

to

determination

heaven," which was all that existed of
Marie's World. In this sole instance,

plan was to digitally expand the envi¬
ronment using 3-D matte paintings
exclusively, but budgetary restric¬
tions pushed POP's artistic imagina¬
tions to finish the breathtaking envi¬

to

testament

think that this film has

just for the form of the tree. The
leaves were added as a particle
system, so we could control their
path dynamically when they blew off
the tree. It was a huge rendering
effort, and it certainly took a facility
like Digital Domain to take that
approach, but I think it really lent an
Pacific Ocean Post took

58 November 1998

Ferrand

enterprise was well worth the effort.
"He's an amazing man, but he's not
the easiest guy to work with," she
says. "You have to love being pushed,
because he just won't accept anything
less. I really do respect him."
The remarkable imagery of
What Dreams May Come is a true

ronment.

"What

a

feat

that

was!"

exclaims Somers. "Deak Ferrand

creating and
designing that environment in one
pass. POP extended the staircase in
3-D, but the surrounding and distant
was
all 2-D matte

environment

painting, because we couldn't afford
any more 3-D paintings or models.
POP added a lot of warpage to the

opened another perceptual

to

actually
way for

world, and

a

completely different range of options
for how to describe it. I hope that
ultimately, artists will choose to work
in live-action film paintings - not
matte paintings - and perhaps we
have initiated that."

■
American Cinematographer - November 1998

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