Blueberry: Searching for Your Inner Soul
Deep CG Exploration
When the initial result was judged to be unsatisfactory by Kounen, single effects or parts of a sequence could be abandoned altogether. “Jan wanted to use 3D animation as if it were regular live-action takes,” says Chabrier. “If he didn’t like it, he’d ask for another CG take. Usually, on a project of this magnitude, all the CG shots are locked very early in production. The director can’t change his mind without inflating the budget. On Blueberry, Jan was constantly exploring new ways, reacting on what we would show him. Sometimes, he would get excited about one particular texture or layer — among many others in the frame — and ask us to redesign this part of the sequence around it. This one layer would then form the basis of a new animation. The reason why the budget didn’t spiral out of control with this approach is the way we work at Mac Guff. Most of our (Linux-based) software is proprietary and organized around a nodal architecture. Plus, we have the processing capacity to handle the extra work.”
It’s obvious that, after such a life-changing film experience, getting back to regular commercials and film projects could have been depressing. Fortunately for Chabrier and his crew, Mac Guff is now deep at work on a very ambitious movie by Gaspard Noe while also developing several CG animated feature films, a perspective exciting enough to ensure a smooth post-Blueberry transition. Still, Blueberry will remain a very special film for all involved, not only because of the startling results of their work, but most of all because of the way it was handled. “It’s been a very unusual project in the sense that, for once, we had to work with our feelings, not with our perceptions.”
Alain Bielik is the founder and special effects editor of renowned effects magazine S.F.X, published in France since 1991. He also contributes to various French publications and occasionally to Cinefex.
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I just wanted to thank you for this excellent look behind the scenes.
I guess I'm a little slow but I just recently even heard about this film and I eagerly searched it out and found a copy and watched it just last night. Stunningly beautiful work overall.
I enjoyed the movie but, being honest, the plot was a bit thin, which is made up for by the rendering of the spiritual experience. But I can easily see how people who haven't had some kind of deep, psychedelic experience would be hard pressed to really "get" the film since so much of it is really just hinting at a much deeper, ineffable experience that simply cannot be shown on screen.
As the write-up says, this is 1/10000th the real experience and this is only the superficial visual and auditory components. You cannot put deeply felt emotions, or a true sense of the oneness of everything, or the breaking and formation of your very soul on the screen. Much like love, the filmmakers can only hint at the truth of the underlying experience and the audience has take it from there.
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