If you have the QuickTime plug-in, you can view a previs clip by simply clicking the image.

Previs images from X-Men 2 show front tilt (top) and rear tilt (bottom) movement of the X-Jet. All X2 images TM & © 2003 Twentieth Century Fox.

Previs has been done since long before the advent of digital image making. In the pre-digital, photo-chemical/practical days, nearly all effects shots with camera movement (with the exceptions of some pan and tilt options) were motion control. Before getting to the motion control stage, we did previs with foam core cut-outs, video (when it got to the level of hand-holdability), paper dolls and action figures. We showed location stills to which we had added hand drawn foreground objects or figures. We showed videos with crew members running through the frame holding airplanes on sticks. We showed videos of motion control moves. We showed previsualizations made from hand drawn storyboard keyframes shot on video or film. As we got closer to shooting the real thing, we showed black-and-white motion control move tests that were processed in-house in minutes and shown to directors on Moviolas and flatbeds for approval. Movies were cut on film, so a black-and-white move test could be cut into the reel and viewed in context right away. Wow!

In the late ‘80s, lipstick video cameras made the presentation of previsualizations of miniature shots and complex live-action shots easier. But, lenses didn’t match real-world lenses, and camera moves were approximate. The idea of rendering scenes in 3D for previs was a concept that many of us wanted to try, but we didn’t have the software or the computing power. Finally, digital previsualization became a reality, with many limitations, in the early ‘90s.

Michael Fink remembers when previs was used in the pre-digital age. He now finds it an indispensable tool when mounting an effects-laden movie.

My own experience with digital previs began in 1978, when I worked at Universal – Hartland, an effects facility started by Universal Studios to support their films. One of the people I worked with was Colin Cantwell. Colin is a brilliant designer known for his fine eye and technical savvy. (He was responsible for the truly great graphics in WarGames three years later.) Colin began experimenting with a small HP computer (I don’t recall the model), and set up views of 3D models of the ships that were in Buck Rogers with some basic real world lens information, and printed out (with a dot-matrix printer) storyboards that were wireframe renders of the shots we were to shoot on the stage. This was the first digital previs I can remember seeing — and it was hugely helpful. Not to mention what an eye opener for the rest of us.

In 1981, on WarGames with Colin, we printed out books of images (dot-matrix, still) representing the screen wall in the NORAD war room, showing the progression of the action through the scenes. Colin produced all the graphics for the film on HP 9845C computers, which also did the previs books. This was a complex task. We had images on 12 screens covering five weeks of shooting, all working in sync with each other. Completion of this without digital technology, and without Colin’s book, would not have been possible.

The first moving digital previs I can remember doing (other than maybe some small bits on D.A.R.Y.L. in 1985), was on Batman Returns. Tim Burton had storyboarded a title sequence that involved miniature shots with water that were complex and potentially very time consuming. We had 11 days to shoot our 10 miniature set-ups, and there was no time for take twos. So, using Richard Hollander’s VIFX facility, we hired Craig Reynolds (inventor/writer of “Boids” flocking algorithm) to come in and work on a Symbolics computer to animate the action and camera moves, again in wireframe. No time for shading in those days. Craig completed the animation and output the individual shots to video, where we cut them together into a full title sequence. Tim approved it, and away we went. From then on, I used digital previs on every show I did.