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Concerned, Spiderkisser recently had this to say, "It has been said that you/the crew of the whole Spider-Man 2 production, will be working on the picture up to only two small weeks before the release. Now, my question is this. How can you have time to do just that? I mean, two weeks, isn't it cutting it a little close? Isn't there a risk involved? How can you have time to make finished products of the movie, and then send them out to the world, and at the same time be sure that they'll get it in time for the release? Wouldn't it be a total disaster if something went wrong? Can you answer this for me, because I can't seem to understand it."
I'm pleased to announce that as of Sunday, June 6th at roughly 12:45 PM, Spiderkisser's fears were put to rest as Spider-Man 2 was officially completed. That morning, Sam, editor Bob Murawski, 1st assistant editor Sean Valla and I convened to watch the feature at the company responsible for making all the prints of Spider-Man 2. After watching the movie, Sam and Bob passed on some final color tweaks they wanted implemented as the prints were made, officially bringing Spider-Man 2 to a close.
Although crafting a movie is considered an artistic endeavor, making the prints and sending them out is a massive logistical/scientific undertaking. As a result, you use one construct, making the prints and sending them out, to give you the drop dead date of the other, completing work on the film. In one of my initial web logs I discussed the factors 1st assistant director Eric Heffron considers when making the production schedule. Although I don't believe I mentioned it at the time, the 1st date Eric plugs into his formula with executive producer Joe Caracciolo is the date on which the film will be released. From there, we back into the rest of the dates and the entire production schedule falls into place. Although I am greatly, greatly simplifying this procedure and taking some liberties with the dates, the process goes something like this:
- Making and shipping the prints once the film is made takes approximately 3 1⁄2 weeks giving you the date on which you must complete the film as June 6, 2004.
- Knowing it will take 1 month to do the final mix of the film, you must start mixing on May 3, 2004 and you must conclude no later than June 5, 2004.
- Knowing it will take 1 month to pre-dub the film (organizing all the sounds associated with the film in a manner easily accessible to the mixers), you must start pre-dubbing on April 1, 2004 and conclude no later than May 1, 2004.
- Knowing you must drop your last visual effect shot in on May 29, 2004 and that it will take 10 months to complete all the visual effect shots that have not already been started on by the time you are done filming, you must halt filming by roughly August 29, 2003 to deliver the final visual effect on May 29, 2004.
- Knowing it will take roughly 5 months to film a movie the size and scope of Spider-Man 2, you must start filming on roughly April 1, 2003 to be done by August 29, 2003.
- Knowing it will take roughly 10 months to prep a film the size of Spider-Man 2, you know you must start prepping on roughly June 1, 2002 to make a start date of April 1, 2003.
Making a film is like a wheel consisting of one part art, one part science, one part mathematics and one part hard work. When one cog in this wheel breaks down, the wheel as a whole slows down and is in jeopardy of not reaching its destination. However, if all parts of the film wheel remain healthy, as they did on Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2, the whole will easily make its target, the release date, for you, the consumer, to enjoy (I get asked all the time what a producer does. After the analogy I have just given the easiest answer to that question is that we make sure the wheel is healthy, remains healthy and makes it to its destination on time).
To close out this segment I will say this to Spiderkisser, while it is true that we worked literally up until the last hour that we could on Spider-Man 2, I can assure you that at no time were we ever in danger of not making our release date because, quite simply, that was not an option. Thanks for the concern and the great question Spiderkisser.
Each time I write a web log entry I'm honored to have the opportunity to interact with you guys, but for this one I'm particularly stoked because I get to confirm rumors and talk about a cool feature we've implemented on Spider-Man 2 that wasn't available to us for Spider-Man.
First off, for those of you who have wondered whether or not the rumors about artist extraordinaire Alex Ross doing some work on Spider-Man 2 were genuine, let me say once and for all they are 100% accurate.
For the past 2 1⁄2 months, Alex has been working hand-in-hand with legendary opening title designer Kyle Cooper on our opening credit sequence and the result is stunning. The mixture of Alex's striking paintings and Kyle's artistic genius combine to make a truly memorable and fitting opening to the film.
While I am not at liberty to disclose the subject matter of Alex's 17 original masterpieces, I can promise you that each time Phyllis Weisband, Kyle's producer at Prologue Films, would send us over a copy of Alex's latest illustrations to examine, I was like a kid on Christmas morning awaiting the package. Personally, Alex is one of my favorite comic book artists because he took an established artistic medium, comic book art, and looked at it from outside the stylistic boundaries in which it had operated for many years. This is not to insinuate that the term boundaries should evoke a negative connotation in this instance; indeed the boundaries which encompass comic book art are also those which allow the artist to usher the reader into a fantastical realm. What the term is meant to suggest is that Alex's work is stylistically quite different from most working comic book artist. His stylistic departure doesn't make his interpretation right, nor does it make it wrong as there is no right or wrong as far as a subjective medium is concerned. However, what it does make him is an innovator and I believe it is this attribute that has garnered Ross his multitude of admirers.
For those of you who have not had the pleasure of viewing some of Alex's previous creations and are therefore unfamiliar with Ross' artistic impact, do yourself a favor and track down copies of the "Marvels" series he has done for Marvel Comics or go pick up a copy of "Alex Ross Millennium Edition" published by Wizard. In "Marvels," you will witness the exploits of various Marvel characters including the Avengers, Captain America, the Sub-Mariner, the X-Men, the Fantastic Four and Spider-Man through the eyes of photojournalist Phil Sheldon as he chronicles their super-human feats as Ross envisions them during the 1940's, 50's & '60's. Inside "Alex Ross Millennium Edition," you will find interesting insights into the artist, the manner in which he approaches his craft as well as some of his memorable works of art.
Whereas Alex has been lending his celebrated talents to the opening credits of the film for the last 2 ½ months, Kyle Cooper, one of, if not the leading opening title designer working in Hollywood today and the man responsible for the Spider-Man opening and closing credits, has reprised his role for Spider-Man 2 and has been busily perfecting the opening and closing of the film for the past 7 months.
To kick off our discussions with Kyle, we showed him an early cut of the film and asked him to formulate some ideas and then come back to discuss them. About a week later, he presented about 5 concepts to Sam, producers Laura Ziskin and Avi Arad, Bob Murawski, executive producer Kevin Feige and me after which we discussed tonally which design worked best for the overall film. From there, the opening titles, via a series of animatics that increased in detail and complexity with each meeting, morphed into an extension of his initial presentation resulting in the final product you will see June 30th.
As Kyle has done consistently throughout his career (to see a list of Kyle's past work, go to www.imdb.com and type in his name), for Spider-Man 2 he has once again created a sequence that solidifies him as one of the true visionaries in a field that is often times taken for granted. Opening title sequences are the first part of the film an audience is exposed to as part of the movie-going experience. They set the tone of the story and usher the audience toward a desired frame of mind. If done incorrectly, the audience can be out of balance with the overall emotional flow of the picture and it is possible you never quite get in sync again. Conversely, an opening sequence can expose an audience to certain elements of the film and sustain them until that element appears later in the movie. For example, for Spider-Man, we were aware the fans were paying to see Spidey in all his glory after waiting 40 years. However, we knew the first 30 minutes of the film was the origin story in which Spider-Man is non-existent. Therefore, we asked Kyle to show elements of our hero that would subsequently satisfy the audience until Spider-Man appeared. As a result, movie goers got a taste of part of what they came for and were then able to enjoy the narrative experience.
As I discussed in a previous web log, one of the beauties of Spider-Man 2 is that Peter Parker is Spider-Man from the get go. Therefore, we did not have the same needs for the opening title sequence for 2 as we did for 1. What we did ask Kyle to do was to establish a tone of familiarity with our characters and the result is, as I am confident you will agree, truly a work of art.
Just as Kyle stepped up and delivered an amazing product after thoroughly impressing us on Spider-Man, EFILM, a Hollywood-based company who worked with us on the inaugural film, went above and beyond the call of duty on the sequel and as a result I am pleased to announce that they have made Hollywood history with their efforts on Spider-Man 2.
Many films being made today, and certainly almost all visual effects laden movies such as Spider-Man 2, utilize a tool known as a digital intermediate. This is where EFILM comes in. They specialize in making, manipulating and outputting the digital intermediate.
This whole process of the digital intermediate and its advantages is a little confusing, so let me draw the following analogy. If your friend took a picture of you and your Aunt Sue, and after looking at the negative you realized that if only the sky was a crystal blue and not the drab gray it was on that day that you would have the most amazing picture the two of you had ever seen, you would have one of two options to remedy the situation. Option one, you could retreat to your darkroom and concoct a formula in the photo bath so as to try to add some color to the sky. By taking this option you are surrendering yourself to the fact that as you change the color of the sky you will also be changing the color inherent in the entire picture. However, there is a second option you could take. You could take the negative and put it on a scanner and scan the photo into your computer. Once in your computer you could drop it into Photoshop and make that sky, and only the sky, the crystal blue you always envisioned. Additionally, if upon further review you decided that the trees in the background needed to be a richer brown and the leaves a more vibrant green you could do that work in Photoshop as well.
Option 2 is essentially what EFILM specializes in for feature films and television shows. They operate as the scanner, Photoshop (once again, purely an analogy; the program they use is proprietary software far more complex than Photoshop) and the output device. Before I go on, let me say this. EFILM is one of the most cutting-edge companies working in the film business today. They are, without a doubt, an essential component in the future of filmmaking and the quality of the product they produce, their workmanship, their dedication to their craft and to the film as a whole is without peer. Long story short, I do not want to minimize their significant contribution as a company with my overly simplistic description of the value they add to a project. Likewise, the range of services they offer the film community go far beyond what I will discuss in this web log.
For Spider-Man EFILM scanned our film in at 2K, the equivalent of approximately 3.5 million pixels per frame, and likewise scanned it out at 2K. In our discussions with them on Spider-Man 2, they informed us that with advances in technology it was possible to scan Spider-Man 2 in and out at 4K, the equivalent of approximately 12 million pixels per frame. However, they also made it clear that due to the cost and the amount of time it takes to scan a project in at 4K, roughly 4 times as long as the 2K process, that no feature film had ever been scanned in at 4K and outputted at 4K. If this was an option we wanted to move forward with, we would be making Hollywood history (small piece of trivia - the storage space need to house a movie scanned at 2K is 5-7 terabytes. For a 4K show it is 35 terabytes).
To help us make the 2K vs. 4K decision, we turned over 3, 30 second sequences from our movie and EFILM scanned them in and out at 2K and 4K, after which we projected the sequences back to back for Sam, Bob Murawski and director of photography Bill Pope. After the screening, the desire to go with the 4K was unanimous. While the 2K image produced a truly striking visual, the picture from the 4K scan presented us with a truer picture, crisper blacks and more vibrant colors.
Although the desire was there to go with the 4K, there was still a lot of work to be done to see if we could make this a reality. For starters, we had to ascertain whether or not we had room in the schedule to absorb the extra time it would take to scan at 4K. To determine this, we turned to trusted first assistant editor Sean Valla and EFILM's producer on the project Josh Haynie to map out a game plan (Quick note - every film should be so lucky as to have Sean and Josh working on it. Their dedication toward making this history-making process a reality was truly remarkable.) They came back to us with an aggressive schedule that we immediately implemented after receiving the financial backing from Sony (While I am handing out accolades, I will also say this - there are a lot of factors that made Spider-Man a success which will likewise make Spider-Man 2 remarkable. But, one aspect that does not garner as much attention as it should is the devotion/commitment the executives at Sony have for/to this project. Believe me, if you like this franchise, you should thank your lucky stars that Sony ended up with the rights to Spider-Man).
With Sean and Josh's schedule in place, we started turning over reels to EFILM to scan (Reels refer to approximately 20 minute sections of the movie. It is not feasible for shipping purposes and other factors to put an entire feature-length film on one reel. The result would be one massive, unwieldy, incredibly heavy film reel the size of, if not larger than, a wagon wheel. Therefore, during the editing process, a film is sectioned into a series of separate reels which eventually become the film reels that are sent to your local multiplex. After receiving the reels, the projectionist splices them together, places them on a giant platter and projects them onto the silver screen. If you have ever wondered what the circular-esque mark seen occasionally in the upper right-hand corner during a movie is, it is an indicator letting the projectionist know the next reel is about to switch over). After a particular reel was scanned, Sam, Bob, Bill, Sean and visual effects editor Jody Fedele would meet over at EFILM in screening room #1 to make notes about the color of the film. This is the process I likened earlier to Photoshop. Basically, the movie is projected on a screen but there are a lot of icons surrounding the image similar to the presentation you see when watching a movie on your computer. As they watched the reel, Sam, Bill or Bob would ask colorist Steve Bowen to stop and make changes to the image. As the colorist was working on his monitor, you would see his changes projected onto the screen similar to if he was working in Photoshop. He would section out the sky and brighten, darken or add different color to it, or he would draw a circle around an object and infuse color in or take color away from said object.
The other feature that is advantageous to scanning in the movie is that in doing so it creates a digital negative from which the release prints are made. Traditionally, you have your negative, from which an interpositive is created, from which an internegative is produced from which the release prints are made. By scanning our negative we are able to skip two generations and make our release prints directly off the digital negative. I know this all sounds a little confusing so look at it like this. Traditionally, making prints of your film require you to make a copy, of a copy to make your copy and just as if you were duplicating a document on a Xerox machine, each time you make a copy of a copy there is some degeneration to the image. However, with EFILM, our copies are made directly from the digital negative thus negating this degeneration in picture quality.
Part and parcel with the digital intermediate is the fact that Spider-Man 2 is a non-cut negative show, meaning we never cut the negative to conform the picture from which the digital intermediate was scanned. All shots were scanned in and cut together digitally making seamless transitions from shot to shot. As a result, there are no splice bumps (nearly imperceptible jumps in the film from shot to shot) as the negative was never spliced together by human hands.
Long story short, by going to EFILM we put another tool in the hands of Sam, Bill and Bob to make the final picture look as vibrant and exciting as possible. Additionally it gave us a flexibility that is simply not possible with the traditional methods of color timing. Furthermore, by going to EFILM and executing this flexibility via a 4K scan, we are going to give you, the audience, an encounter that has never before been experienced in the history of film. Admittedly, certain scenes in other films have been scanned in and out in 4K and placed within an overall 2K scan. Additionally, in the spirit of full disclosure, when we started working on Spider-Man 2, working in a 4K environment was not an option. Therefore, all of our visual effect shots were scanned in at 4K, down-converted to 2K and since up-rezed to 4K. Technical mumbo jumbo aside, never before has an audience had the pleasure of viewing an entire motion picture scanned in and out at 4K and the proof will be in the quality of the print you will view on June 30th. |
