T H E! N E S T
P R E - P R O D U C T I O N! P A G E! 1
Introduction
Filmmaking can be an arduous and time-consuming business at the best of times so it is vitally important that artistic and budgetry problems are worked out and solved in advance of the production stage. This process is generally called pre-production. All of the work presented on these pages was produced by Owen Fitzpatrick/Rocket Animation and Dublin-based Digital Animation Facility, Lightstream CGI.
Particular thanks to Lightsteam's Les Quinn, Creative Director, and Eamonn Elliott, Technical Director, for their work on The Nest.
Storyboard
The Nest went into pre-production in late 1999. The ten-minute script for The Nest was storyboarded over a four week period. Storyboarding involves taking the written words of the script and translating them into drawn pictures - each drawn picture or panel representing a key shot or moment in the film. It is important that the storyboard is clear and concise since its purpose is to communicate the story visually to the various artists/personnel who will be working on the film - animators, special effects artists, layout and background artists, actors, the editor, the musical composer and other post-production artists/personnel.
A scene from The Nest storyboard. Comparing this panel to a still from the film (see below) indicates how much design evolution there can be between concept and execution. Storyboards are almost always produced before any major design work has been started. The important thing, though, is that the essence of the shot remains.
This still from the finished film looks simple enough - however, it is made up of many subtle elements, some of them moving or 'animating'. Keeping track of all of the various elements in any given scene, and how they relate to other scenes, requires clear and concise storyboarding. A complex wall chart supplemented the storyboard, keeping track of all the required picture elements for The Nest's ninety-four scenes.
A storyboard close-up of the baby. Animator Andrew Kavanagh spent many weeks working purely on the baby movement. All of the key baby poses were worked out in advance in the storyboard - however, Andrew was given plenty of leeway to bring personality and life to one of the film's key characters.
Following completion of the storyboard, the next stage of pre-production went into operation - the design of all of the film's various elements. In the image above you can see a rough cut-out colour sketch of the baby placed over a colour rough of the baby buggy.
All of the finalized design elements in 'The Nest' were hand drawn and coloured using Pantone/Tria design markers. They were then scanned into a computer system for final colour grading before being positioned over a complex series of invisible, two-dimensional 'flats'. The baby elements were positioned precisely over an invisible, customised digital armature.
Much work went into finalizing the composition and colour 'look' of the production's day, sunset and night sequences. Here is an early colour test for one of the three daytime, wide-shot set-ups of the baby buggy on the beach. At this stage of the production a variety of art techniques, many of which were later dropped, were in use.
The image above utilises coloured card, marker and coloured pencil. This image was then placed beneath a rostrum video camera sytem (PVR) to see how the image looked on a high resolution television reference monitor. This process was repeated for all of the major scene setups - a long but necessary procedure!
The baby animation began as soon as the basic baby elements had been designed, drawn and applied to Lightstream CGI's invisible body armature. Animator Andrew Kavanagh had the unenviable task of dealing with over 60 'baby scenes', each of which averaged four to six seconds in duration (the live-action approach of producing 'covering footage' was employed). Since the baby shots were of very similar composition, it was Andrew's job to bring something a little different to each shot and not blindly follow the storyboard - not as easy a task as it might seem since the baby design was deliberately kept as simple as possible. However, Andrew created wonderful character personality for the baby through the application of movement.
The image above is from an avi animation test, many of which were completed for each baby scene. These tests were rendered at a fairly low resoloution so that they could be generated quickly as 'animation rushes'. Once the animation was approved, Andrew would move on to the next sequence of baby scenes.
Even after the baby animation had been completed, many additional details were added to the baby design - one of the advantages of digital animation. You will note also that the avi test above shows no background elements. These were composited into the scenes months later by Lightstream CGI.
A significant amount of time was spent working through various baby buggy designs. On one level The Nest is about diferent forms of travel - from the physical to the spiritual. While the baby and the radio characters are physically static on the beach, they are, however, 'travelling' through the day.
After visiting many department stores and stuffing untold quantities of buggy brochures into his backpack, director Owen Fitzpatrick finally decided on the Maclaren 'Free Spirit' model. This was then rendered with markers/pencils and Letraset dots onto Lyndhurst 135 gsm cartridge paper (see above). The resulting 40cm tall drawing was then composited into the buggy scenes by Lightstream's Dermot Elliott.
Note the perspective vanishing point/horizon line betwen the buggy wheels - this was used to register the buggy drawing with the beach backgrounds so that the perspectives matched perfectly. Also, the three buggy windows, absent from the illustration above, were digitally modelled and positioned by Lighstream CGI.
