Frantic Films VFX Does Previz For Watchmen

Frantic Films VFX, a division of Prime Focus Group, has announced that it has contributed extensive previsualisation (previz) work on the Zack Snyder directed feature film Watchmen from Warner Bros Pictures.
A complex, multi-layered mystery adventure, Watchmen is set in an alternate 1985 America in which costumed superheroes are part of the fabric of everyday society, and the "Doomsday Clock" - which charts the USA's tension with the Soviet Union - moves closer to midnight.
When one of his former colleagues is murdered, the outlawed, but no less determined masked vigilante Rorschach uncovers a wide-ranging and disturbing conspiracy with links to the Watchmen's shared past and catastrophic consequences for the future. Their mission is to watch over humanity... but who is watching the Watchmen?
Frantic's Vancouver office worked closely with VFX supervisor John "DJ" DesJardin and production designer Alex McDowell.
Director Zack Snyder shot the movie entirely in Vancouver, allowing easy access to the Frantic visual effects team. He was adamant about remaining as faithful to the story as possible, so Frantic's previz department found itself digitally storyboarding a hybrid of the graphic novel and Zack's thumbnails, using the original source material as its "bible".
Two scenes in particular required substantial orchestration to achieve. For one pivotal sequence, Dr Manhattan teleports to Mars and builds a glass palace - a massive crystalline structure comprised of interlocking spiked rings that rotate and function like a clock.
Aaron Weldon, Visual Effects Supervisor, Frantic Films VFX, said: "Each of these rings represented a measurement of time, completing one rotation every second, minute, hour, day, year and so on, so one of our biggest challenges was making sure the rings were rotating without intercepting.
"We broke down several ways to set up the glass palace movements, including removing large chunks, so they didn't come crashing into each other, but that took away some of the visual power.
"So, working closely with DJ and Alex, we experimented with subtly shifting the rotating rings apart from each other and then shifting them back to their original axis so they didn't collide. DJ and Alex were very happy with the result, and this was the solution you see in the movie.
"It turned out to be one of the film's most visually arresting scenes."
Interestingly, the most challenging shot for Frantic Films to map out was actually a 10-second clip that appears in the opening title sequence. The haunting titles tell the backstory of the Watchmen from the 1940s to present day and is interspersed with key moments in US history, such as the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
Weldon added: "Because the Zapruder film of Kennedy's assassination is such iconic material and so recognisable, our goal was to make sure we mapped out this entire sequence as closely to the original footage as possible.
"There's a ton of documentation about this footage online and countless conspiracy theories, with everyone breaking it down and analysing it frame-by-frame, so we couldn't get away with anything less than perfect.
"Additionally, the production considered four different set locations before they finally settled on a parking lot on which a partial practical set - a small hill and fence built up on stilts - was constructed to mimic the Dealey Plaza enivronment - the rest was added digitally in post. For each of the possible set locations, our artists had to recalculate the scene to ensure that the exact speed, grade and proper distance was represented in these less-than-ideal shooting locations."
Frantic's software toolkit for the pre-viz work included Autodesk 3ds Max for modelling and animation, eyeon Fusion for compositing, Adobe Photoshop for adding details and textures and Adobe Premiere for editing.
Further information is available at: www.franticfilms.com.
(KMcA/BMcC)