The greatest problem facing the Speed Racer team was asset management, especially since the previs was created in both Berlin and California.

PLF's Robinson, a veteran of The Matrix franchise, was brought in to supervise mere days before the production left for Berlin because Vegh was unable to stay for the duration abroad. With Perez and Lee back in California, Robinson traveled to Germany with a handful of new artists. As it turned out, Robinson was responsible for coordinating the team of artists on two different continents.

"The greatest problem facing our team was asset management. During the course of the project, the cars for the movie went through continuous changes, including livery adjustments, team affiliation, race assignment and race position placement. Lead Modeler Mike Meyers and his team were responsible for making these changes. The only way to keep up with these changes, which came daily during some periods, was to use reference models. Without this technique my team would still be swapping out animation today. This made it simple to share assets with all the artists thus facilitating the ability to update shots with the latest car designs. I could simply have the latest models packed up and shipped out for the artists working back in the states and not worry about them having issues of reconstructing the animation in their scenes.

"Our second problem was the time difference. A third of our team was working nine hours behind our day in Berlin and was operating without interaction with us over the course of their workday. It was crucial to keep them in the loop with the decisions of the day, to review their work with our supervisors, Dan Glass and John Gaeta, and to assign them new marching orders. We designated meeting times at the end of our day to coincide with their mornings to keep them up to date. With this diligence, we were able to keep on top of the rigorous pace needed to produce the work for the film."

Robinson echos that working with the Wachowskis on Speed Racer differed from The Matrix in that it was far more experimental. "On Speed Racer, the brothers knew where they wanted to go but allowed us to present different methodologies on how to get there. By working with Dan and John, we were able to strike a chord with what the brothers liked and were able to create the dynamic car sequences that they were looking for."

There was plenty of action to Indiana Jones' previs, including the opening encounter with the Soviet villains in the warehouse. All Indiana Jones images ™ & © 2008 Lucasfilm Ltd.

Meanwhile, working with Steven Spielberg on previs provides its own unique experience, according to Daniel Gregoire, Halon owner and previs supervisor on Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. But then, like pal George Lucas and a handful of other directors, Spielberg truly understands the importance of previs: "I get to make the movie before I get to make the movie," Spielberg told VFXWorld backstage at the VES Awards. "The only bad thing about that is it takes about 25% of the spontaneity out of making on set discoveries because you fall in love with the previs. You don't give your imagination the chance to fly so much when you're in the practical 3D reality model of the set. So I had to fight that early, specifically by throwing out a lot of previs."

"On [Crystal Skull], we were brought on the production first, actually," Gregoire recalls. "We were second week of January, before production design, before anybody else was involved with the project -- we were in a room, working with Spielberg to start building environments that he had envisioned in the script years prior. That's an unusual situation. Steven gets on set and foundationally uses a lot of what we did as a base and then is able to completely riff off of what he is inspired by."

"But once [the art department] got going, we did receive a lot of digital model builds from them as well as building 3D models ourselves from art dept foam core models such as the Akator pyramid. They gave us things like the fancy inner chamber door, the spiral staircase, the temple top, the gear room, rocket sled room. This saved us a ton of time and got our stuff right on track with what was being built practically. We were also helping Dan Suddick with a heads up on SFX needs: Water, sand and weight issues. We did our best to make sure that the anamorphic lenses that were going to be used were faithful in our work. Things such as minimum focus distances of 3.5 feet (or something like that). Our Indiana Jones model was graciously given to us by the guys at LucasArts.

There was plenty of action to previs, including the opening encounter with the Soviet villains in the warehouse and the ensuing rocket sled ride, the Area 51 blast, the speeding jeep/swordfight sequence in the jungle, the waterfalls, the final journey inside the caves and the pyramid and final supernatural reveal.