DRAMA | DETECT I VE P I KACHU
Mathieson, as well as the unique look and experience that came with creating CG characters for a movie shot on film. He says: “Rob and John Mathieson’s decision to shoot Pokémon Detective Pikachu on film was brilliant, and a gift to us in the visual effects team. The added cinematic quality and realism truly helped to ground our vibrant and cartoonish characters in the scene, in a way we would have probably struggled with more if we had shot clean, pin-sharp digital plates. “In post-production, we fully embraced all of the qualities and nuances that both film and the anamorphic lenses provided us in the plates, and we went to great lengths to match this digitally. We mapped out all the lenses for lens distortion, chromatic aberration and vignetting. We recreated the exact properties and intensities of the grain for each film stock that was shot, and we created grade corrections to apply to our CGI to match the way the light rolled off in the shadows and highlights.” Dionne concludes: “Though our raw CG renders of the characters and environments were quite clean and beautiful, the end result – once we crushed and stepped all over these renders to create the final integrated composite – left us with a very gritty and cinematic image. Which was exactly what Rob Letterman was after.” POKEMON DETECTIVE PIKACHU IS STILL ON WORLDWIDE GENERAL CINEMA RELEASE
ABOVE Although the Psyduck in this scene is CG, Mathieson was insistent on the backdrop being grounded with real locations, real actors, real surfaces and real inflatables
lot of the guess work when recreating it in CGI,” explains Dionne. “Next, we shot 360° bracketed HDRI stills photography of the scene, with the camera positioned in the location of the CGI character. We used this to measure the position, intensity and colour temperature of the lighting in the scene, which allowed us to accurately reconstruct the exact lighting conditions in CG as they existed on set. It was a fairly involved process, but the team got very quick at executing it after each set-up, and the crew understood this was required to nail the integration between these plates and CGI characters,” he adds. VIRTUAL PRODUCTION Dionne goes on to explain why they moved away from virtual production for Pikachu , despite the growth of this new inclusive technology. “We explored various aspects of virtual production early on, but it became clear that it simply didn’t fit with the shooting style of this film. The main factor was Rob Letterman’s insistence to shoot as little green screen and sound stage material as possible, and to keep the photography rooted in real locations and sets as much as possible. Whether we were shooting on the streets of London or in the forests of the Scottish Highlands, we relied mainly on practical methods of representing the Pokémon in the scene, along with extensive pre-vis and tech-vis when relevant.” Dionne is effusive about his interaction with John
385,000 The number of trees created for the Torterra sequence
$412m Worldwide earnings so far
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