Author: Xinran Li

Production Manager

The primary duty of the Production Manager is to support the Producer in successfully running a project, by maintaining a broad overview of all project departments. A Production Manager will be responsible for managing artists, schedules, and daily tasks. You will work in conjunction with VFX Producers and VFX Supervisors.

For the responsibilities that a Production Manager will take, for example, you will be responsible for resource management across all project departments. Includes internal resources, performance reviews, schedule updates, absence/holiday tracking and negotiating/issuing contracts for outsourced artists. Creating and maintaining overview/department schedules and delivery oversight for all project departments, including the setting of department/project priorities and defining milestones. Serving as the main point of coordination and contact between the day-to-day production team and the project’s senior/management staff, etc.

VFX Editor

The VFX Editor incorporates and updates all required versions of visual effects shots into the current cuts of the VFX / live action sequences. They will have the ability to create a functioning environment where the Visual Effects Supervisor can evaluate any version of any shot in the current sequences, for aesthetic and technical direction. This position works closely with producers to manage all incoming media and outgoing deliverables.

Key responsibilities a VFX Editor may take are as follows. You may communicate with client editorial and track all stages of the client cuts, internal cuts, and iterations. Maintain the production database with line up and count sheet information and verify correct plates and frame ranges are being used by the artists as well as provide information and clarification when needed. Update sequences with any changes to the cut and communicate changes and references to the VFX team.

Most of the companies may require years of editing experience within the film and television industry. In addition, an eye for detail and thorough understanding of techniques, file formats, colour-space, software and technology relating to the live action visual effects. Ability to convert between key numbers, time-codes and frames, excellent communication and multitasking skills and so on.

The following video talks about the actuality of VFX Editor, including the jobs they need to do, responsibilities they take, qualities they should have, etc.

VFX Editor | LAPPG – YouTube

Data input/output (I/O) technician

Data input/output (I/O) technicians are responsible for organizing, transferring and storing the computer files and data for a VFX production company. They make logs of all of the files that they receive and perform quality control checks on these files to see if there are problems or if the files are corrupted. They use file transfer programs in order to perform their role.

Duties they may take are as follows. They may be responsible for monitoring disk servers, performing backups/restores, and handling incoming/outgoing data transfers. Maintaining data and asset tracking, preparing incoming/outgoing data transfers, collecting files from clients and vendors and prepare deliveries back to them. What’s more, monitoring servers and studio queue system; escalateing issues as needed and troubleshooting and correcting failing tasks. Requirements companies may ask:

Concept Artist

A concept artist is a designer who visualizes & creates art for characters, creatures, vehicles, environments, and other creative assets. Concept art is used to visualize ideas so that modelers, animators, and VFX teams can make these ideas ready for production.

It’s really important for concept artists to build a strong visual library which acts like a database of ideas, shapes, fabrics, textures, and other similar concepts to draw from. A concept artist has to create new ideas frequently based on certain creative briefs, and the work has to be done fast.

Concept art is a very competitive career but it’s also incredibly unique. Being able to envision ideas, create full designs, and see them come to life is truly a magical career that can’t be replaced by much else.

In the following article, it explains what a Concept Aritst is:

What is a Concept Artist? (conceptartempire.com)

Examples of concept art:

Previs Artist (Previsualisation artist)

A Previs Artist is a technician, who usually works in 3D. His role is to enable the production team (including the producer and the director of a film, an advertisement or a television show) to realistically organize or visualize the scenes in a technically consistent manner.

Animation, compositing and editing skills are all required of a Previs Animator. They are expected to turn around drafts quickly, working from storyboards to assist in the direction of the scene. A previs is used to plan out shots, determine scale, define shot types, work out lighting and camera angles.

A Previs Animator or Artist may work on feature films, short films, advertisements, video games, cartoons, or television series. They work closely with the director and cinematographer to plan out the scenes at a conceptual stage. 

The software and other tools that previs artist may use include Maya, 3D Studio, Max, Java, Adobe Photoshop, illustrator, nuke, etc.

This vidoe talks about what a Previs Artist do in the film production:

Previsualization Artist Hamilton Lewis on “Kung Fu Panda 3” – YouTube

Rigging TD (rigging technical director)

Rigging Technical Directors are responsible for designing, creating and maintaining highly accurate and efficient rigs for high end visual effects films. Riggers work closely with Modelers and Animators to develop and refine rigs that meet the specific requirements of a VFX pipeline.

Their responsibilities include identify the production’s specific rigging needs with the CG Supervisor, Rigging, Animation, and Modeling Leads, design efficient rigs appropriate to the production’s needs, advise modeling teams on the suitability of models for rigging and propose any changes needed, etc.

The essential skills a Rigging TD may need are as follows,

This is a demo reel of a Rigging TD:

Rigging / TD Demo Reel 2018. – YouTube

Creature TD (creature technical director)

Creature TDs are integral to the development of animation and simulation rigs for creatures, digital doubles, vehicles, props and the subsequent simulations. You will find technical and creative solutions to develop high quality rigs and simulations according to the needs of the production.

As a Creature TD, you may responsible for building and designing new workflows in and out of Maya and in-house tools for advanced creatures. This may include workflows in motion capture, virtual production, and other software. Testing and troubleshooting animation controls and making adjustments as necessary throughout the production cycle. Runing simulations for shot production, troubleshooting and providing revision based on the feedback from supervisor or client and so on.

For companies, they may require Creature TD to have these desirable skills:

creature animation technical director demo reel – YouTube

Creature TD Demo Reel 2012 – YouTube

VFX Producer

The Visual Effects Producer is at the heart of a production alongside the Visual Effects Supervisor. You are required to manage all aspects of a show, typically involving: planning and scheduling of resources, client management, keeping track of scope/budget changes and ensuring the project comes in on time and in budget, whilst maintaining the highest quality of work. You will work in conjunction with VFX Supervisors and SPIN’s Executive Producer/President.

You may be responsible for acting as the main contact for client relations. Providing early ‘ballpark’ estimate bids, and working with the VFX Supervisor to provide more in depth shot breakdown quotations to clients. Scheduling production objectives, tasks and milestones between all involved, including supervisors, artists. Scheduling client review sessions and screenings, etc.

Required skills and experience:

An interview with a VFX Producer:

Production Manager

The primary duty of the Production Manager is to support the Producer in successfully running a project, by maintaining a broad overview of all project departments. A Production Manager will be responsible for managing artists, schedules, and daily tasks. You will work in conjunction with VFX Producers and VFX Supervisors.

For the responsibilities that a Production Manager will take, for example, you will be responsible for resource management across all project departments. Includes internal resources, performance reviews, schedule updates, absence/holiday tracking and negotiating/issuing contracts for outsourced artists. Creating and maintaining overview/department schedules and delivery oversight for all project departments, including the setting of department/project priorities and defining milestones. Serving as the main point of coordination and contact between the day-to-day production team and the project’s senior/management staff, etc.

The Localized Development of Science Fiction Film in China – Taking The Wandering Earth as an Example

Xinran Li

Introduction

There was hardly a good science fiction film in China in history until The Wandering Earth appeared. The attempt of this film opened a new era of science fiction film in China. With a very charming narrative style and realistic visual effects, the film produces the cruel scene of mankind’s fantasy of doomsday, shows mankind’s spirit of survival in the harsh natural environment.

The Wandering Earth has inspired the innovation of Chinese sci-fi film. Compared with previous sci-fi films in China, the reason for its success is that the film involves advantages in foreign sci-fi films and combines with Chinese concept, instead of simply imitating, which formed the Chinese-style of sci-fi.

This report is going to explore how this film promoted the development of Chinese sci-fi film from aspects of imitation and innovation, discuss the future of Chinese sci-fic film.

Critical Review & Appraisal

“As a global disaster film, The Wandering Earth feels both familiar and unfamiliar,” by Petrus Liu (MCLC Resource Center, 2020). The Wandering Earth borrows film-making techniques and skills from Hollywood to some extent, it is a simulation and learning of American sci-fi films.

However, apart from the reference from American sci-fi films, culturally, it spreads completely different values from American Hollywood films. “It translates familiar Hollywood tropes—seen in works such as Armageddon, The Day After Tomorrow, Interstellar, and Sunshine—into a visually dynamic, emotionally engaging, and decidedly apolitical work of escapist entertainment,” Petrus said (MCLC Resource Center, 2020). “Politicians, bureaucrats, and army brass are nowhere to be seen. There’s barely a Chinese flag in sight, nor any chest-beating about Chinese ingenuity and leadership.” Instead, what’s presented is a traditional tale of nations and people pulling together to save the planet, which made the film much more accessible for international audiences.

Although the film is lack of nationalism and propaganda, we still can find Chinses unique spiritual core through the film. In the following section, this report will compare what aspects of The Wandering Earth learns from Hollywood films, how the film combines Chinese spirit and concept with sci-fi film, and how the film realizes Chinese style of sci-fi.

Investigation

The Wandering Earth mainly learns from American Hollywood sci-fi films and disaster films from two aspects.

Multiple Narrative

Take Interstellar as an example, in this film, Cooper left his daughter Murphy and was sent out to the universe on a mission of saving mankind. From then on, the film began multiple narrative. Cooper was on mission in space, while Murphy was also working hard for human survival on earth. At the end of the film, their mission became one, and Cooper chose to sacrifice himself to find the final answer for human survival.

Similarly, in The Wandering Earth, the father was also on mission in space, while the son on earth experienced leaving home—saving home—returning home—defending home, inheriting his father’s sense of mission and responsibility, growing from a little man to a human hero and becoming a hero like his father. The film uses multiple narrative, compares the earth and the space station as a father and son, adopts the parallel editing and ends the film with the father and son working together, combining their two stories into one.

Visual expression of the plot

In The Wandering Earth, the aging of the sun, doomsday, and the frozen city buildings are referenced from Hollywood films with apocalyptic backgrounds such as The Day After Tomorrow, 2012.

The Day After Womorrow(2004)

2012(2009)

In 2012, there is a scene of a pilot flying a plane escaping from the volcanic ash. Behind the plane are constantly erupting volcanic ash and flying rocks. Just when the plane was about to be engulfed by the ash, it rushed out of the smoke. In this clip, the camera quickly switches between the characters and the plane, with fast-paced music, finally, the plane rushed out of the ash from an overhead perspective.

2012(2009)

The Wandering Earth(2019)

For the shots which include characters, the film mainly adopts medium close-up and medium shot, combined with the wide shot of the plane.

In The Wandering Earth, there is a clip that a truck drives quickly through a road where the rocks fall. Similar shooting techniques were used in this clip. The clip ends up with the truck rushing out of the dust when it was about to be engulfed.

So, how The Wandering Earth innovate and realize the Chinese style of sci-fi? This report is going to introduce two main reasons.

The concept of “Home”

In Interstellar, human leave the Earth behind and move to the stars aboard spaceships, with DNA maps and digital libraries of all human civilizations. However, in The Wandering Earth, they did not abandon the Earth, but flee with it. They treat the Earth as the spaceship, push it away from the Sun.

The Wandering Earth(2019)

The narrow underground city and the frozen Earth are not places to be abandoned, but the place where to build a new home. This is not only related to the agricultural culture, which contains the adherence of to home and motherland, but also closely related to the history of modern China.

For Westerners, people tend to view home in terms of relationships, such as family and friend for most of times. “The Chinese notion of home emphasizes a return to a geographical homeland, regardless of what—or who—is left there.” Said by Gwo, the director of The Wandering Earth. Gwo explains that this difference is rooted in the fact that the West, historically, has been a maritime civilization, continuously expanding by oceanic voyages, while “for thousands of years, the Chinese people have faced the Earth,” and have tended to associate “home” with the land itself (Chen, 2019).

Visual style based on Chinese Aesthetics

Any kind of visual style grows in a specific cultural environment, and they have their own historical and cultural context. If people just copy the western style to a Chinese film, it will not make sense. That is why some of the previous sci-if blockbusters in China cannot be accepted by the audience.

In the film, there are huge trucks with sharp edges and corners, covered by frost. Rough and powerful mechanical transmission. In addition, Chinese-style urban architecture, natural scenery, frozen Shanghai, Beijing and other landmark buildings which are familiar to Chinese people are presented.

The Wandering Earth(2019)

Director Gwo talked about this kind of style, “Our starting point was actually based on the visual style of Soviet heavy industry, because the Chinese have a certain feeling for that, including feelings for Soviet buildings. There are still many bell towers of this kind on Changan Street in Beijing.”

On top of that, the underground city shows more Chinese characteristics. Even if it is cold outside, the underground city still retains the temperature of the Chinese people’s life. The film uses warms colors and highly saturated lights to present the messy but warm feeling of the underground city.

Conclusion

The Wandering Earth combines the advantages of excellent Hollywood sci-fi films and incorporates Chinese unique spiritual core. It is a successful attempt and breakthrough in the field of sci-fi films in China. This film creates a unique Chinese-style of sci-if, integrates Chinese aesthetics and native land emotion into sci-if films, which can easily resonate with Chinese audiences.

The Wandering Earth establishes a new system and a new style, which pointed out the direction for the future development of Chinese sci-if films. We should be positive towards the plight of the development of sci-f films in China, strive to break the deadlock and create

Chinese-style sci-fi films. Under the background of Chinese increasingly completed industrialization, large number of costumers and huge capital chain provide effective help for Chinese sci-if films, it is the best time to develop Chinese sci-if films right now.

Discussion

Although The Wandering Earth still has received a lot of praise, there are still many shortcomings to be improved. For example, one of the most obvious shortcomings is that the film lacks rigorous scientific logic. Additionally, the actors’ lines in the film are kind of simple, the rhythm of the story is slightly chaotic, and the shaping of the characters are not well completed.

On to of that, in terms of the box-office, The Wandering Earth has achieved great success. However, “Of The Wandering Earth’s formidable profits, some 99 per cent came from its local market of China,” by Dave(2020). How to make Chinese sci-if films accepted by the world will be the direction that Chinese teams need to work hard in the future. But all in all,

The Wandering Earth has shown great sincerity to produce a good Chinese-style sci-if film to the audiences.

Reference

1. Berry, C. (2020). No Father-and-Son Reunion: Chinese Sci-Fi in The Wandering Earth and Nova. Film Quarterly, 74(1), pp. 40–44.
2. Crewe, D. (2020). Cinema Science: Planetary Propulsion in The Wandering Earth. Screen Education, (97), pp. 24-31.
3. Fang, S.L. (2021). Skills in the use of Visual Effects for Film and Television in the Film The Wandering Earth. Literature Education, (10), pp. 40-41.
4. Huang, Y. (2020). Discussion on the Development Path of Chinese Science Fiction Films: Taking The Wandering Earth as an Example. West China Broadcasting TV, (12), pp. 92-93.
5. Luo, X.M. (2019). Unlocking the future: characterizing “hope” in contemporary Chinese science fiction. Cultural Studies, 34(2), pp.235–256.
6. MCLC Resource Center. (2020). The Wandering Earth: Gender, Sexuality, and Geopolitics. [online] Available at: https://u.osu.edu/mclc/online-series/the-wandering-earth/?cv=1 [Accessed 12 Jan. 2022].
7. Rojas, C. (2021). At Home in the World: Wandering Earth, Environmentalism, and Reimagined Homelands. Journal of Chinese Film Studies, 0(0).
8. Xie, Y. (2021). Ideology Manipulation of the Chinese-English Subtitled “Main Melody” Films: A Case Study of Wolf Warrior II and The Wandering Earth. International Journal of Applied Linguistics and English Literature, 10(2), p.43.
9. Yi, P. (2019). The Wandering Earth: The Sinicization of High Concept Science Fiction Films. Voice & Screen World, (07), pp. 47-48.

Comparative analysis of The Terminator(1984) & The Avengers 4: Endgame(2019)

This week we are going to analyze two films using genre. These two films belong to the same genre, which is science fiction film. I want to compare them from two aspects, which are the use of visual effects and characters.

The Terminator(1984)

This film talks about a Terminator, a cyborg assassin sent back in time from 2029 to 1984 to kill Sarah Connor, whose unborn son will one day save mankind from extinction by a hostile artificial intelligence in a post-apocalyptic future.

From the pictures we can see, the visual effects used in this film has been a few years. There is not much visual effects in this film, and most of the visual effects are used on the cyborg assassin’s body, like mechanical body.

The characters in The Terminator is kind of simple. Sarah kept escaping from the cyborg assassin and fell in love with a man. They had a baby in the end, who will one day save mankind in the future. Apart from that, almost the whole film is full of chasing and fighting.

The Avengers 4: Endgame(2019)

As for The Avengers 4: Endgame, it won’t be an exaggeration to say that, the film is full of visual effects. People love watching those effects nowadays, especially for the exciting fighting, extraterrestrial scenes, etc. Unlike The Terminator, which tells a story between a cyborg assassin and a woman, there are lots of super heroes in The Avengers. People may applaud for their victory, cry for their death, those heroes have become the audiences’ friends and people are becoming crazy for them.

By comparing these two films, we can see the development of science fiction films through the years. Companies are getting more and more familiar with visual effects. Additionally, visual effects have brought super heroes alive, created huger and grander virtual universes.

This week we learned to clean up the areas of the video. First, we use a node called RotoPaint. We can press shift to make the brush bigger or smaller, or pick color from the shot by clicking the small color pick button. Clone is another very useful function in RotoPaint. By pressing ctrl, we can select the area that we want to copy.

After getting familiar with RotoPaint, we began to clean up the scene.

Before start, we learned a new node called Denoised, it can reduce the noise of the area.

Then, we used RotoPaint to clean up the area, then create a roto of it. Use Framehold to make sure the whole video shares the same effect. Last but not least, remember to add grain to the cleaned-up area. We can either use Grain or F_ReGrain. We can add grain manually by using Grain Node, or copy the grain from one area to another by using F_ReGrain.

Gonzalo also shown us different ways to clean up, like track the area first, than use RotoPaint and MatchMove.

All in all, there are so many ways to edit with the video, I prefer use faster and simpler ways to achieve the effect, because it can not only save my time, but also reduce the work of the machine. Also, try to make the Nodes aligned and arrange them into groups, which can make the surface cleaner and better for checking.

This week we firstly learned different file formats in Nuke, like EXR, DPX, TGA, TIFF, etc. Then we went through the history of compositing, talked about digital compositor roles. For example, Roto Artist, VFX Supervisor, Junior Compositor and so on.

After that, we began to learn things in Nuke software. We learned basic tools in Nuke, got touched with color channels, alpha channel, colorwheel, and other short cuts of using Nuke.

Nuke is very new to me, but it seems interesting. I spent quite a while to get familiar with those tools and simple nodes in Nuke.

This week we learned planar tracking. At first, we learned how to order these different nodes rightly, because even there are just simple nodes but in wrong order, the effects may be different, and we saw several examples of it.

Then we go through shuffle node, by using this node, we can adjust the color channels, on to of that, we can switch channels, for instance, to connect the red channel with the green channel.

Then, we began to practice using the planar tracker. Firstly, we need to use roto and select the area that we want to replace and track it. Then, use display_planar_surface and display_grid_lines to adjust the area we selected, we can see the perspective how the shot is being shoot.

Use CornerPin and select a picture you want to replace with it.

At last, we practiced using the ZDefocus, which is really interesting. By moving the focal_point, we can control the blur area. Apart from that, we can also change the output channel, to see the blur area more clearly, which is really useful.

The impact of emergent technologies on the game and film industry – motion capture

In filmmaking and video game development, motion capture refers to recording actions of human actors, and using that information to animate digital character models in 2D or 3D computer animation. It can be also referred to as performance capture when it includes face and fingers or captures subtle expressions.

The emergence of motion capture technology has brought a lot of characters to life, like Koba in Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Avatar, Hulk in Robert Bruce Banner, Gollum in The Lord of The Rings and so on.

Motion capture allows the animators so much more movements to work with, these movements are more realistic than before, and save animators a lot of time. It liberates a lot of productivity from animation to detail production and product creativity, so as to realize the double leap of product quality and quantity. Therefore, motion capture is of great significance for the company to improve the overall productivity.

When it comes to the game industry, characters can have closer shots to present the actions of game characters more realistically. Non real action can easily reveal flaws, especially when the camera is very close.

It blurs the boundary between reality and game. Today’s players pursue the sense of reality in the game, and motion capture greatly improves the quality of characters in the game, and can even achieve the effect of confusing the virtual one with the real. It can be said that it brings reality into the game world.

In addition, as shown in the video, it allows people in different industries to work together. The joint work of excellent motion capture actors, technical engineers and animators can greatly increase the performance of game characters. Only with excellent equipment and better talents can we complete higher quality physical expression and apply the data to the game.

Reference videos: