Like Proof’s work on World Trade Center, previs is morphing the pre-production stage greatly. © Paramount Pictures Corp.

The technology committees of the Art Directors Guild and the American Society of Cinematographers have created a joint working committee to deal with the digital technologies that affect production designers, art directors and cinematographers, not to mention vfx supervisors and others involved in film production. The committee’s objectives include sharing information and creating and promoting a nonlinear workflow that allows for both efficient decision-making and consistency all along the production pipeline.

The ADG’s technology committee has been focused, in part, on promoting this new nonlinear workflow paradigm, in which creative decision-making is centered in the art department. The 3D previs serves as a digital hub of information, aiding not only the production designer, but also other departments in making effective and efficient decisions during preproduction.

Alex McDowell, a production designer who heads up the ADG’s technology committee, says the art department now has access to cost-effective 3D design tools such as Maya and XSI. “We were able to take back some of the design work that had gone to the VFX supervisors when workstations were $10,000 to $100,000,” he says. “A lot of design was happening after the designer was done.”

On the 2002 film Minority Report, which involved a futuristic design, McDowell and his team set up a previs using 3D modeling tools and a workflow that was digitally based, networked and digitally archived. “We created, by default, a fully digital art department that worked in a completely different way,” explains McDowell, who has subsequently worked on Cat in the Hat, The Terminal, Corpse Bride, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Bee Movie.

Other art directors and production designers have adopted the same techniques over the last few years. “The art department is central to preproduction and is becoming the digital hub of information,” adds McDowell. “It’s digital, free-flowing, and nonlinear.” Storyboard information, camera positions, avatar actors, sets, sequences and vfx can be integrated into the same previs, allowing problems and issues to arise and be solved months before shooting. “We create a virtual production space that represents the physical production space,” explains McDowell, adding that the digital data can then be output and used in subsequent phases of production.

Part of the ADG’s goal is to disseminate information about these tools, making it available to its 1,500 members and encouraging them to take advantage of the technology. McDowell points out that not all members are using 3D modeling tools during preproduction yet, but they could be. “I use the same tools on a $15 million movie as on a $100 million movie,” he emphasizes.

Meanwhile, the ASC’s technology committee has been involved lately with the issues arising from the move to digital from film, affecting everything from image capture through digital interface and, ultimately, digital projection. In particular, cinematographers are concerned with color management, data management and digital standards that would allow them to maintain image integrity and consistency over the entire pipeline.

Curtis Clark, a cinematographer and chairman of the ASC technology committee, notes that digital image capture is starting to occur on films as diverse as Superman Returns and Prairie Home Companion. With digital acquisition, there is no intrinsic color space as there is with film. “We need to figure out how to integrate image and look management into the workflow,” Clark says. “We need consistency to be maintained at least through the digital mastering stage. And there will be a point in a little more distant future where there will be more deployment of 2K or 4K digital projection.” In the mean time, there are already digital distribution platforms, including DVD, HD-DVD, Blu-ray and digital TV. So the industry is working toward an end-to-end digital system, which opens up many technical issues for cinematographers.