In the previous installment detailing Comics2Film's visit to the set of 'Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer', we had the pleasure of speaking with Tim Story, monitored by Ralph Winter, just in case Story got too excited and leaked anything. Winter didn't have to say too much, but there were a lot of glances back and forth. And next, we got to meet with Scott Squires, the Visual Effects Supervisor.
At this point, the room was pretty giddy with excitement as the feeling was that, here in late November, we were going to get a glimpse of the Silver Surfer. Unfortunately, that would not be the case as the studio didn't feel ready. But it is now May, and everyone has seen how great the Surfer looks. However, Squires did show us a couple of scenes, including the wedding, and a fun action sequence with a crashing helicopter, which was merely done up as an animatic at this point.
We also got to see the Stan Lee cameo, in which Stan "The Man" can't even get into the wedding of Reed and Sue.
There were a few sound problems as it seemed they weren't sure what we would be seeing until that afternoon, but all of the problems were resolved pretty quickly, and the footage still looked good. After showing us these select scenes, the floor was open for questions.
QUESTION: What has been, for you, the challenge with this one? What's different to the first one visually?
SCOTT SQUIRES: I guess you guys have seen some of the artwork and so forth, so from the first one we're taking all of their powers to the next level. We see Reed doing many more things. We see Sue having more control of her powers making them more like in the comic book where she can solidify walls and other types of things. We see a lot more character interaction between the characters in this and, of course, we have the Silver Surfer involved and we essentially see places all over the world, so we have quite a few, as I say, big action-packed scenes, and so we're trying to accomplish that in a fairly small amount of time but make them visually spectacular and take it to the next level. I mean there's, you know, with all of these characters, because they all have their superpowers, even in a normal sequence we'll see those added into it in some cases, so there's quite a large number of shots in this particular movie, so just the sheer complexity and variation in the effects is one of the most involved processes on this project, because we're using a lot of new technology and we're also taking advantage of things that we have and trying to do quite a variety of different effects, and so forth. This kind of scratches the surface, but there's a lot more around the actual storyboards and things.
Q: What are some of the examples of the new technology?
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SS: Well, with Surfer -- we can't go into that too much -- but we're doing kind of an advanced form of motion capture and so forth for the character, so that he can interact with the other characters. We are trying some new tracking techniques, just each place that we go to, we're really pushing the limits to what we can in the film.
Q: Would you say what you're doing is a step above what they're doing on Pirates [of the Caribbean] II, or is it the same kind of idea?
SS: It's kind of a different approach to some of that type of stuff, you know, just in terms of how we deal with the data and getting his motions and things tied in, you know, you're always trying to look to see how to make it as efficient and as life-like as possible, so that's been the combination of a lot of testing and so forth.
Q: What are you using as a reference point for the wake of the board?
SS: Well, that's been an ongoing design test in just getting different looks, looking at different references and, of course, when you're dealing with these types of characters, we have the comic books to reference to. The studio has ideas. Tim has lots of ideas and so forth, so it's just trying to come up with something that works in context of all of those things, and that works in concert with the actual film itself.
Q: Is the look of the Human Torch any different in this film?
SS: We're starting with the look of the characters from the first one and then trying to take it to another level. The Human Torch will be fairly similar on most of the sequences to the first one. There are some other things that come into play as well, which once again I can't speak about but it raises the complexity and the number of characters involved quite a bit.
Q: And Sue Storm as an invisible person? How do you treat that in this film as opposed to the previous film?
SS: Well, we're going to, once again, start with what you could do in the first one, but in this one she may be making other things invisible. She may be seeing through things. Her forcefields are going to be more controlled in doing specific types of actions.
Q: But when she's invisible, is it the same treatment as before?
SS: It's a similar treatment, yeah. What we didn't want to do since we had so much R&D on the new characters and the new scenes and so forth is we didn't want to spend a lot of time reinventing what they had on the first one, so we wanted to use that as our starting point, and then if, depending upon the scenes, if it called for something more complex then we would apply it there, but we didn't want to end up with a totally different look from the first movie as well.
Q: And do you need to enhance the look of The Thing's skin in this film with CGI at any point?
SS: Well there have been big improvements with all the costumes for this one. So we will be doing some work on him, but hopefully that will be minimal. We'd like to focus our energies on creating our new image and less on the enhancements or those types of things.
Q: So is there any particular sequence that forced technology into existence, with certain technologies?
SS: Well, we'll see how that plays out. Like I say, we have an incredibly short post-production time of approximately four months for doing what would normally be done in a year's worth of time, so it's going to be an interesting process.
Q: Tim mentioned he's a fan of getting as much in the camera as possible, has that proved a challenge for you to try and come up with new ways to get stuff in camera?
SS: Well you're trying to make it as simple on the live-action as possible. The other thing is, as I say with these characters, Tim or Ioan or somebody will come up with an idea, 'Hey this would be cool if this happened.' So we're on the day, we don't have storyboards, we don't have a plan for that, so now we've gotta figure out, 'Ok, how can we shoot that, make that work in context both creatively and technically?'
Q: For example?
SS: I can't without giving away too many things, but like I say the characters interact and, of course, the actors know those characters very well now, so they go, 'Oh, well what if I did this?' And then we'll go ahead and shoot that. So it certainly keeps us on our toes.
Q: Is digital good for movies?
SS: Well I guess the way I look at it is it's a tool. It's just like any other tool, whether its steadycam or something else, it now allows the filmmakers, the writers, the directors to create anything that they want. So they are no longer limited by the technology so much as by their imaginations. In some movies, they rely heavily on the effects, you know, only and don't have much of a story or much character development, but that's strictly up to the filmmakers. As an effects artist, if they can do something live I'd just as soon they do it live. You can't get any better than that but in order to achieve some of the visuals and some of the spectacular things that people or, at least, the filmmakers and a large part of the audience is interested in seeing, especially coming from a comic book type of background, we have to have some visual or other things, we will have some miniature usage on the show, whatever is best to tell that particular shot and the story.
Q: How has WETA's work been integrated into the process?
SS: Well they have a, I'm the overall Effects Supervisor, but each of the houses -- the visual effects houses -- has their own supervisor here as well, to make sure that the shot looks the way that they want it to, so when it has their shots and they're focusing primarily on the Silver Surfer sequences, we have like hydraulics and stuff focused on the non-Surfer shots and so as we shoot them, you know, the different supervisors work with me on stage and we figure out, we try to block it out but as I say Tim will come up with ideas on the spur of the moment, work it out, shoot it and then as editorial goes through and edits a sequence once that's locked and we turn over all those shots to WETA and then they go ahead and start roughing and every day we're getting Quicktimes and other prints from them as well as down in L.A. they are getting film to see it projected and make adjustments as we go along.
Q: Can you tell us about some of the challenges posed by the sort of scale of some of the sequences, such as the oceans or the pyramids or outer space?
SS: Yeah, in some sequences, there's just such a variety of things like the pyramids may actually be a fairly small sequence, but we have to create all of that and depending upon how complex they want to make that sequence, and each one of those has different looks and different techniques, I mean we've got ... and we're shooting all over the world, but in some cases we won't be able to shoot. Those particular types of shots are just, technically you can't shoot them or there may be certain other types of restrictions, so as I say, we're R&Ding quite a few different things and getting along with it. With a lot of films you can work out the basic look or technique and you're creating one or two key things as it were, but with this, you've got such a wide variety of things that means that we don't have the help at doing a body of work on that particular type of technique, so if that worked for this, and the fact that we have to create this whole other environment and I have to generate that in a totally different manner, so that becomes the big challenge, to try and make all of that look good in the time provided and in the variety of looks.
Q: I assume we see Dr. Doom in his semi-metallic form in this picture. Is he being presented in an enhanced way or an unusual way in this film?
SS: Let's just say he plays an important role in the filmmaking.
Q: We're told he has a new outfit or a new look and we're wondering about that.
SS: Some of the things are still in development, which is the other thing. We'll be shooting things and in post we'll be enhancing it even more than in the past, but exactly the details are still being resolved, so in some cases I don't even know yet.
Thanks, Scott for your time.
As I said, this was late November, and by now much of the look of the film has been revealed in terms of the Surfer, but there's still a bit of mystery surrounding Doom's look and plotline. Good thing we only have to wait about 6 more weeks.
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