FEATURE | THE V I SUAL I SERS
THE AGE OF THE VISUALISER YOU ARE A BUILDER OF WORLDS , YOU SIT ASTRIDE MULTI-CINEMATIC DISCIPLINES WITH THE IMAGINATION TO FORESEE COMPLICATED BUT EXTRAORDINARY MOVIE SEQUENCES: YOU ARE A VISUALISER
WORDS JULI AN M ITCHELL / PICTURES THE TH I RD FLOOR , HBO AND ITV
P revisualising, or previs, is hardly new. It was originally a modern way to animate storyboards, which itself was a traditional way of mocking up scenes that needed some extra help to imagine. The shower scene in Hitchcock’s Psycho featured over 100 cuts so had to be carefully pre-planned. In 2002 David Fincher’s Panic Room had beautifully previs’d moves that allowed the camera to navigate from sleeping homeowner upstairs to intruders looking through the kitchen windows downstairs in one sweeping, hypnotic shot from one
“It was the first time that using CG animation allowed director and DOP to really plan what it was they were going to shoot on a particular day, what would be CG and what would be live action. That would allow them to make early decisions thereby saving time, money and resource on set.” The company has grown from that point from its core business of feature films, crossing over to work on projects including television, games, VR and themed attractions. Webster brings us up to date. “About eight years ago Framestore in London was embarking on early development on the film Gravity with Alfonso Cuaron. They were using a creative process, a very technical one which would allow the filmmakers to really define how they were going to make this so-called impossible-to-make movie. “William Sargent, who is the CEO of Framestore, knew that they needed some kind of extra support in that process by bolstering the previs part of the crew. He got hold of Chris at TTF in LA and they deployed a handful of artists to come over to London to work alongside the guys at Framestore in the early pre-production phases. From that, the relationship grew and Third Floor London is now eight years old and is a joint venture between Framestore and The Third Floor LA.
to the other. There are hundreds of other examples but these two stand out in the evolution of the art. THE THIRD FLOOR 15 years ago a new company was formed out of Lucasfilm; it was called The Third Floor (TTF), after where the founders worked in Skywalker Ranch. They were six guys who were working on Star Wars: Episode III and were pioneering the ‘visualisation’ process and pipeline at the same time. Alex Webster, MD of The Third Floor UK, explains the further origins of the company.
54 DEF I N I T ION | JANUARY 2020
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