If previs and visual effects were around in Howard Hughes’ day, three people wouldn’t have lost their lives filming this sequence in Hell’s Angels, which Martin Scorsese recreated for The Aviator. All images The Aviator images courtesy of Oliver Hotz. © 2004 Miramax Films.

Originally used as a crude general design tool or an animatic translator of storyboards, previs has become so comprehensive that it can lay out the precise motions of the actors and the camera moves — down to the details of lenses and lighting. But previs has gone way beyond just a few key scenes, and now figures prominently in the look of the entire film. Small wonder that it has had a major impact on the movie industry, enabling major directors to both plunge into risky scenes and still stay within shooting schedules. Experienced previs supervisors remain in short supply, given the required mix of technical and artistic talent, and the need to mix it up with the other teams involved in a feature film is not a job for the reticent.

When it Works, It’s Really Great…
“Previs works best if it’s well integrated with production,” notes Sean Cushing, the exec producer of Pixel Liberation Front, which is on the forefront of the craft. “If the previs team is standalone, it won’t be very productive — you’ll be spending the money, but not getting the creative results. The relationship with the director, production designer and art department is critical. The trend right now is that the relationship with the art department is both growing and getting more seamless, as they create detailed digital blueprints in tools such as Rhino for us to use.”

Pixel Liberation Front, or PLF, was founded in Venice, California, in 1995, and pioneered much of the early work with previs, in films and music videos. Its credits include many of the most effects-laden features ever made, including The Matrix franchise, Van Helsing>, Pirates of the Caribbean, The Last Samurai, Minority Report, Elf, Godzilla, 2 Fast 2 Furious, Blade II and I, Robot. PLF recently worked on Zathura and The Brothers Grimm, and is currently prevising Superman Returns and Logan’s Run for director Bryan Singer.

Obviously some films are more challenging than others. “Matrix Reloaded and Matrix Revolutions involved the most comprehensive technical planning I’d ever seen,” recalls Cushing. “It worked because we had a lot of access to all the different department heads. There was lots of information sharing going on constantly. The previs work was very complicated, but it saved time, and the directors had to compromise less. It was a great tool to enable the storytelling — by doing the sequences in previs first, the director was able to hone in on the exact shot he wanted.”

Cushing uses SOFTIMAGE|XSI for his previs, and is a strong believer in using the hottest NVIDIA graphics cards available on his processors for precise rendering. He adds that he is creating previs for ever-larger segments of a film. “Previs has evolved from a rudimentary short form for helping overall design to creating mini 3D movies, complete with storytelling,” Cushing explains. Having gone through much of the film in previs with the director adds greatly to the cooperation and trust factor. “In Van Helsing, Stephen Sommers was really open to creative ideas from us, and trusted us with implementing them, even during production. We would never have been able to try new approaches and stay on schedule if we hadn’t walked through them in previs first, before the scene started shooting.”

There is a lot of agreement on the part of previs experts on how important a close relationship is with all the different teams working on the set. In fact, visual effects supervisor Kim Libreri (The Matrix franchise) cautions that if the previs team and camera crew are not in synch, it can later lead to frustration and disappointment on the set, when they realize that the shots they’ve prevised are impractical or worse, resulting in added vfx work in post. Thus, Ron Frankel (The Terminal, Minority Report, Panic Room), one of the real experts in this industry, refers to the previs supervisor as the “nexus” of the production, where all the many teams (from production designers on through to the post-production groups) get to interchange and integrate their input into a cohesive visual design.