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Thanks for all of the updates, icarus. They do give a good idea of the scope and scale of work being done on VDT. I hope some of these end up as featurettes somewhere: the DVD would be nice.

Have you been able to uncover if Weta has ANY ties to Dawn Treader this time around, Icarus?

Narnia_Fan12 wrote:Have you been able to uncover if Weta has ANY ties to Dawn Treader this time around, Icarus?

I noticed you already spotted the information I posted over in the other thread, but yeah - "Minor Work" "Limited Involvement" and "Mostly Props" seem to be the official word on Weta's involvement with VDT.

I did just find out today that John Cox's Creature Workshop had some involvement in VDT (you may recall their name cropped up once before, whereby a group of children who won a short film competition were offered a trip to the VDT set and a trip to the John Cox Creature Workshop as their prize. but at the time there was no information to suggest the two were in any way related).

Anyway, this letter/resume/document states that they had some involvement in VDT:

http://www.arts.gov.au/__data/assets/pd ... rkshop.pdf

#11: Practical FX Companies

By my reckoning, the following companies/people have been involved in the practical effects for VDT

Chris Martin - Senior Props Builder (Ref.)
Ian Kath - Props/Model Maker (Ref.)
Ron Mendell - Model Maker
Applied Model Making Services / Adam Grace - Props and Models (Ref.)
Skite Vikingr / Tamara Rewse - Costume Props
FX Industries - Model Making (Ref.)
Cassini Design - Props and Models
Creative Works Australia - Unknown
Porter Models - Props and Set Components
Mattes and Miniatures UK - Models / Miniatures (Ref.)
Savvy Designs - Sewing - Props/Set Decoration
Talerwin Forge - Blacksmiths - Swords/Armor etc
John Cox's Creature Workshop - Unknown (Ref.)
KNB EFX Group - Prosthetics/Creatures/etc
Weta Workshop - Minor Work on Props
ADDED:
JMB FX Studio - Special Make-Up

And doubtless many more, plus of course all the people who are listed on IMDB, but i won't list them all for now, since they may work for one of the above companies anyway I might update that list if i find out any more though.

Gymfan15 wrote:Just wanted to make the random observation that I would almost want to say that VdT will have far more VFX shots than PC did simply because they're going to have to add in much of the ocean landscape to nearly every outdoors ship scene. Everything in the tank = VFX.

Maybe I'm confusing VFX with another term for what the digital addition of landscapes would be, but that's just my initial reaction.

That's a good observation that I didn't think about, but I doubt it will make much of a difference. Digital landscapes are a very easy effect, since much of the footage shot in the tank was up against a giant blue screen and it is only a matter of placing the image in the right location and having it move in sync with the camera. The difficult, time-consuming effects are the digital elements that interact with the characters on screen, or the half-CGI characters which require a hero plate to be brushed in to fill the missing gaps of a shot frame-by-frame.

Found a few bits and pieces relating to some of the VFX work seen in the trailer:



#13: "Sea of Lilies" VFX by MPC

Mayec Rancel, who is an Effects Technical Director at MPC, reveals on his website that he worked on the Sea of Lilies shot that appears towards the end of the trailer:

This is one of the movies I am working on lately. I worked on the Sea of Lilies, which appears in a couple of shots at the end of the trailer.

http://blog.mayec.eu/2010/06/trailer-na ... eader.html

Also, as an added bonus, MPC 'tweeted' about the VDT trailer release and their associated work on Reepicheep on their Twitter feed

Narnia's trailer here; http://www.narnia.com/ Reepicheep is looking good!

http://twitter.com/MPC_VFX/status/16374054225

#14: Digital Filming on Voyage of the Dawn Treader

Some updates on some of the companies and processes involved with Digital filming. It's hardly the most spectacuarly interesting stuff, but it all counts right?

Also, whilst not necessarily directly related to VFX, this was probably the only real place to put all this stuff, plus the first one does have a significant quote with regards to the potential number of VFX shots in the movie...

14.1 - Digital Negative Management by Sohonet

First up, a brief article on Sohonet's "Vessel" service for managing Digital Negatives, and how it's being used in post-production on Voyage of the Dawn Treader:

http://www.sohonet.co.uk/downloads/newsletter_feb_2010.pdf

Second of all, a video interview with Jon Ferguy of Sohonet and Jonas Thaler of Walden Media where they talk about some of the digital workflow processes used on Voyage of the Dawn Treader. They both appear in the second half of the show, and whilst the host introduces their interviews as being about Prince Caspian, she is very definitely mistaken. Firstly as PC wasn't shot digitally, secondly as Sohonet werent involved in PC, and thirdly as Jonas Thaler references VDT by name numerous times in the interview

http://media.fxguide.com/fxguidetv/fxguidetv-ep084.mov

Jon Ferguy wrote:On the Walden feature we are currently working on, there's about 1200, 1300 visual effects in that

Surely he would have to be mistaken about that? Or surely i would have to be mistaken about what he said, as there can't possibly be less VFX shots in this movie than both PC (1600-1800 VFX shots) and LWW (1500-1600 VFX shots) can there?

14.2 - On-Set Digital Video Assistance by AJA Solutions

I'd have to admit that i barely understand a word in this following article (i think i just about understood enough to write that summary title, but even then i'm not sure i got it right) but it does seem to be specifically about Voyage of the Dawn Treader and its pretty lengthy, so if you are into that sort of thing read away!

http://www.aja.com/news/user-stories_article.php?id=40

Plus another shorter, but equally complicated article about AJA solutions and their role in VDT:

http://area.autodesk.com/userdata/static/nab/2010/aja_ki_pro_in_action_web.pdf

14.3 - Post Production Digital Workflow Management by Sixteen19

A much more user-friendly and fun to read article here about the entire digital post-production process, with some specific references to working on Voyage of the Dawn Treader, which was apparently the "largest all file-based Post workflow in history". Sounds impressive to me!

http://postfilm.wordpress.com/2010/04/0 ... evolution/

14.4 - Digital Filming using the Sony F23

In case you don't recall, or missed it at the time, this was the interview with VDT cinematographer Dante Spinotti that first alerted us to the fact that they were going to shoot VDT with digital cameras:

http://www.studiodaily.com/filmandvideo ... 11045.html

Here also are a couple of further interesting bits and pieces related to to the use of the Sony F23. Firstly a forum posting on the website of cinematographer Roger Deakins. Although there is no way of verifying the posts as being authentic, i would guess from the screenname and mention of working in the electrics department, that it was Josh Calder who was a Rigging Electrican on the production. Though that's just a guess.

J0shie wrote:I was just wondering what everyone thought of the F23 and the films that Dante Spinotti has been shooting? I'm currently working on the new Narnia film being shot in Australia (electrics department) and I just don't understand why Dante loves the camera so much. Personally i just think it forms a rough/raw looking picture that's extremely ugly and hard to look at. I'm a big fan of Dante's work (Heat's one of my favourite films) and I'm just dumbfounded about his choices.

http://www.deakinsonline.com/forum2/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1072

Having seen the trailer, i would be very tempted to agree with his verdict on the picture quality Anyway, along with that there is also another forum posting on another site which talks about the fact that they couldn't shoot the aerial shots for VDT using the Sony F23 for some technical reason or another, and instead used a Cineflex 1500 for the aerial shots.

http://www.rogueelementfilms.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=252.0

Also on the website for Peter Marsden (a Film and Digital Camera Assistant) it seems to suggest that they used a Sony F900R as well as the Sony F23 during post-production shooting in London. VFX and Miniatures filming perhaps?

http://www.rewound.com.au/

14.5 - On-Set Colour Correction by Digital Vision

Finally for the sake of completion, an interview that was published as a news story on NarniaWeb a while ago, but just in case you missed it, here is Digital Vision talking about their work doing colour correction on the set of Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

http://www.resource411.com/411Update/Issue/Articles/Story.cfm?StoryID=1088

Wow, Icarus, that is totally over my head, but really excellent material!
Thanks!!

#15: Music and Sound Recording Post-Production

At the risk of dragging this topic ever so slightly off topic, here are a few tiny pieces of information about some of the various Sound Recording related work being done at the moment. As well as being fairly interesting information on its own, it also gives us a few clues as to the current overall state of post-production work, which kind of ties back into the whole VFX thing, so i thought was perhaps worth mentioning in here:

15.1 - Sound Editing and Sound Mixing

In the article linked below it mentions that Acadmey Award winning sound mixer Michael Hedges is heading to London in 2 weeks time to start work on Voyage of the Dawn Treader (which would be around about August 3rd). Using my very limited knowledge of post-production workflows (i.e. what i just read on Wikipedia a few minutes ago) so obviously feel free to correct me if im wrong about this, but that means that in order for them to be proceeding onto Sound Editing and Sound Mixing in 2 weeks time, they must have finished editing the movie and had the final cut of the film approved. Although they will obviously still be working on the VFX right up till the last minute, it does mean that the final edit of the movie is, or will be in 2 weeks time, "locked".

http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/lo ... Oscar-home

Interestingly, the Sound Editor for the movie is Paul Apted, who i believe is one of Michael Apted's two children (the other being James Apted, who was First Assistant "a" Camera on the movie).

Also fairly interestingly, the Sound Designer for the movie is James Boyle who is co-partner in a company called MJM Sound Limited who are based out of Twickenham Studios in London, which is the same place that the Senate VFX are based.

15.2 - ADR: Automated Dialogue Replacement / Additional Dialogue Recording

You seemingly get a different definition of the acronym depending on who you ask, but i don't think it really makes too much of a difference. Anyway, according to IMDB, the ADR voice casting was done by Louis Elman and Abigail Barber who both work for Louis Elman Associates. A story i posted in the Extras Casting indicated that an actor from the UK had been cast to do ADR work for Dufflepud #1 (presumably cast via this company) around about the end of June/beginning of July. Though that is despite an earlier report that the original actor (Greg Poppleton) had already done the ADR work for Dufflepud #1 in Australia back in December.

IMDB also states that the ADR Mixing was done by Nick Kray who works for a company called De Lane Lea in Soho, London.

15.3 - MIDI mock-ups and Demo Orchestrations

This i thought was very interesting, since i didn't know they even did this sort of thing. But anyway, to explain - I found out a bit earlier that a guy called Stu Kennedy who is a Music Composer and Producer would be working on the soundtrack to Voyage of the Dawn Treader. This confused me a fair bit since surely the roles of Composer / Music Producer are already covered by David Arnold and Michael Hedges / Paul Apted etc. But anyway, i did a quick googling on Stu Kennedy and it turns out that he has just finished producing MIDI mockups and demo orchestrations for David Arnold's last film (Morning Glory) and is set to do the same for Voyage of the Dawn Treader. To put it in simple terms, it seems he effectively does "pre-viz" for the score! I thought that was pretty neat!

http://www.screenedmusic.co.uk/profile. ... istID=1098

Also, a guy called Michael Higham is apparently the "Preview Music Editor" for this movie, so i guess that relates to this. He apparently works for a company called QuantumNoise.

I don't know if this is any help/information, but VFX Framestore has a new animation head [promotion]: Kevin Spruce.

http://www.animationmagazine.net/article/11802

#16: 3D Conversion

One of the big issues for VDT. Discussion for which can be found here. I originally posted this on that thread, but i moved it here because i thought it would just get lost in the debate over there, and i thought it would be useful to make a place on this thread for gathering together some of the technical information on the 3D conversion work being done on the movie.

**UPDATED**
16.1 - Movie 3D Conversion by Prime Focus

According to the resume of a 3D compositor by the name of George Douglas, the 3D conversion work on this movie was done by Prime Focus World based in London.

Work Experience, View-D Compositor, Prime Focus World, London

Productions:
– The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader 3D (2010)
– Resident Evil: Afterlife 3D (2010)
– Shrek: The Third 3D (2010)
– Gucci Man, Gucci Woman 3D (2010)

Key Tasks:
Converting 2D footage into 3D. Generating image Z-Depth. Stereoscopic and 2D
compositing. Integrading CG elements in live action footage. Tracking/Matchmove.
Keying. Replacing backgrounds. Clean plating/Painting/Rotoscoping, etc.

http://george-douglas.com/GeorgeDouglas_CV_2010.pdf

Prime Focus were the company who did the now notorious 3D conversion work on "Clash of the Titans".

IMDB are also now listing a company called 3D CG as the 3D Stereo Consulting Company for the movie.

Also, Ed Marsh seems to be the Unit Sterographer for the movie - Pinewood Studios and the Production Guild held a "3D Day" back in June, and Ed Marsh was listed as one the key speakers on 2D-3D conversion, and was referred to with the aforementioned credit. (Jessie Thiele Schroeder, the post-production supervisor on PC and VDT also made a presentation at that event about 3D Post Production) - I would presume it to be the same Ed Marsh who worked on other 3D Walden Media films such as "Journey to the Centre of the Earth" and the Walden Media/James Cameron 3D documentaries "Aliens of the Deep" and "Ghosts of the Abyss".

16.2 - Teaser Trailer 3D Conversion by StereoPictures

This probably shouldn't be of great surprise to most people if you really thought about it - but I found confirmation that the 3D conversion for the first Voyage of the Dawn Treader teaser trailer was carried out separately to the 3D conversion work being done on the movie and from the sounds of it, by a completely different company (since it seems to me that if you are a senior coordinator and production manager at a 3D conversion company, then you would probably be involved in the movie conversion as well if that was going on at your company, and not just the trailer conversion)

Anyway, this is from the website of Byungho Jeong who works for a 3D conversion company called StereoPictures

Notable Projects
The Chronicles of Narnia 3 “The Voyage of the Dawn Treader” Trailer 3D Stereoscopic conversion – Production Manager at STEREOPICTURES

Experience
2010-Current; Production Manager / Senior Coordinator, STEREOPICTURES, Chunahn, KOREA

Roled in major Communication between Walden Media and STEREOPICTURES And Managed conversion artists to finish 3D digital conversion for 2minutes trailer, All shots confirmed by Walden Media and FOX.

Website: http://greatbyung.com/

Resume: http://greatbyung.com/documents/Byung%20resume.doc

A further minor piece of information on MPC's contribution to the VFX on Dawn Treader...

#17: Leg Replacement by MPC

This comes from the online resume of Blaine Toderian, a 3D Character Animator with MPC in Vancouver. As well as another mention of working on Reepicheep, he mentions he was involved with leg replacement and animation for background characters. Essentially i would believe that involved replacing the blue-screened legs of the satyr and fauns with creature legs (not the minotaurs though - in this movie they are fully costumed characters from hoof to horn)

Animator; MPC Vancouver (2010)
Responsible for animating the mouse character, Reepicheep, and leg replacement / animation for background actors. [Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader]

http://docs.google.com/viewer?url=anima ... me_DRB.pdf

Following on from #15, here is some more sound and music related rumors:

#18: Soundtrack Music Songs

Whilst looking for information on artists who may or may not be contributing songs to the Voyage of the Dawn Treader soundtrack (if indeed they are even having original songs on the soundtrack like they have before), i observed an interesting recent Twitter posting by US-based record producer Adrian Bradford

Working on Narnia song.. post last night's power-session with Walter A, Chris Mann, Michelle Lewis and Jorgen Elofsson
August 18th, 2010

http://twitter.com/adrianbradford/statuses/21509153059

Obviously he could of been using the term "Narnia" in many different contexts which are entirely unrelated to the movie, and there is nothing to say that the first part of his post is directly connected to the second part, they could of just been two entirely unrelated anecdotes, but anyway i decided to investigate it a bit further...

The first name, according to Adrian Bradford's website, is "legendary writer/producer Walter Afanasieff". If you look at his Wikipedia Page he certainaly does seem to warrant the "legendary" tag, as he has worked with some of the biggest music acts of the modern era. Equally, the last name he lists, Jorgen Elofsson, is a songwriter and producer who has also written and produced songs for a string of famous music stars.

The two other names he mentioned were, Michelle Lewis, a singer/songwriter who seems to mostly writes songs for other artists, and Chris Mann who is a singer/songwriter and has apparently contributed vocals (though ultimately uncredited vocals perhaps) to films such as Avatar and Percy Jackson, as well as being a principle voice on the TV show "Glee".

I was reasonably intrigued by the numerous recent movie references (and several notable Fox movies at that) in his biography, and so went to have a look at his Twitter page too to see if there was any further information to be found. As well as tweeting about the same David Beckham related incident as Adrian Bradley did, he also mentioned about singing on a presumable new Walt Disney movie song:

Singing for# mickeymouse again today. Really great new flick.
August 28th, 2010

http://twitter.com/IamChrisMann/status/22312516312

Perhaps its just me clutching at straws due to the chronic lack of recent news, but perhaps like many people he was unaware of the recent changeover from Disney to Fox, and was actually referring to VDT? I can't think of any upcoming Disney flicks for which he could be conceivably working on (for various reasons i don't think it could be Tron), plus it was tweeted not long after his producer had mentioned working on a "Narnia song".

Either way, its probably a whole lot of nothing, but i felt it was just about worth reporting on in case something maybe ever came of it....

This article says Kevin Campbell - new 3D head for Rising Sun Pictures - worked on VDT with Cinesite. He also worked for Mill Films and Framestore. But I don't know the nature or level of Campbell's involvement. Ridiculous, isn't it?

http://blog.digitalcontentproducer.com/ ... g-3d-team/

No longer a rumor. Found this when I was ensuring all my links on the maps worked.

Work on VDT in 2009 listed in the company's credits.

"Special Makeup Artist C/O KNB EFX Howard Berger"

http://www.jmbfxstudio.com.au/index.html

Same for John Cox's Creature Workshop filmography.

http://www.johncox.net/index.php

I added some information about the 3D Conversion on the movie to the post just a few above this one:

viewtopic.php?f=5&t=1159&p=90343#p90343

Turns out the conversion for the movie was done by Prime Focus World of "Clash of the Titans" conversion fame (compared with the trailer which was converted by a company called Stereo Pictures)

What do you know about Greg Spalenka?

http://journal.illuminatedperfume.com/2 ... arnia.html

The new Narnia film "Voyage of the Dawn Treader" hits the theaters this December. Greg contributed significant amounts of artwork to the visual development of the film, working intimately with director Michael Apted. ... This evening, just as we have arrived from a whirlwind trip to SF we will be attending a special preview on the lot in Century City. In the meantime from what we can see of the trailer much of Greg's work was used. Unlike The Golden Compass film where his work was cut when the producers decided to shift the ending to a second film the new Narnia film is rich with his vision.