VFXTalk.com - DOUBLE NEGATIVE CREATES MIND BLOWING VFX SEQUENCES FOR THE JACKET

Not since Donnie Darko has a film so adamantly refused categorisation as Warner Independent Pictures' forthcoming motion picture, The Jacket. Since its first screening at the Sundance Film Festival, The Jacket has been labelled psychological horror, psychedelic time travel journey, and existentialist art house film - and it still it defies pigeon-holing. The film owes much of its enigmatic nature to The Jacket Sequences - a series of visual effects shots created in a year-long project by leading London VFX house, Double Negative.

In The Jacket, Jack Starks, played by Oscar winner Adrien Brody, leaves the Gulf War with a serious head injury, a bronze star, a one-way ticket to Vermont, and a total loss of memory and identity. In this vulnerable condition he finds himself accused of murdering a police officer and incarcerated for life in a mental institution. While in the institution, he is subjected to a series of brutal, unorthodox, confinement treatments, including being left in a morgue drawer for hours at a time. During these harrowing treatments, designed to 'reduce his aggression', Starks is convinced he is time travelling, witnesses his own death and meets a mysterious lover. Together they try and piece together the mystery of Jack Starks' past and avert his impending murder.

Experimental film and video director, John Maybury, directed the Warner Independent Pictures motion picture and selected Double Negative to develop the previously undefined VFX shots. In The Jacket Sequences, Double Negative represented Jack Starks' vivid hallucinations as he undergoes complete mental breakdown and travels through his fragmented memories and, subsequently, time itself. Double Negative bring this experience to the screen using new VFX techniques, and convey Starks' disorientation, and terror as his mind transcends space and time. Frazer Churchill, VFX Supervisor, Double Negative, commented, "Our brief was to communicate a desperate sense of claustrophobia, that causes the mind to look inwards at itself."

The Jacket Sequences:

To provide a design outline for what would become known as 'The Jacket Sequences', Frazer Churchill, collated a sequence of various stills of Gulf war footage, clips researched from other movies and material generated at Double Negative. During the production, which took place in Glasgow and Montreal, Frazer was constantly taking stills and video on, and off-set of strange, interesting and disturbing images that could later be of use in the creation of the sequences.

Frazer and the creative team had experimented with numerous ideas before the final sequence gradually took shape. Jack Starks' experiences in the mortuary drawer comprise his memories and his 'inner landscape' - essentially a journey that ends in a transition to a point in Jack's future. Frazer Churchill added: "From the outset, we recognised Jack's eye as the entry point into his inner world. However, instead of just going 'through the eye', we thought it would be interesting to play out Jack's experiences 'on the eye'. In this way Jack's iris remains visible, reacting to the images as they play out, creating a heightened sense of claustrophobia." To create a feeling of movement and disorientation as the camera travels through the void, Frazer decided to fill this space with thousands of tiny spheres, some of which are eyes, some irises and some resembling rivulets of blood.

Photographing the necessary extreme close-ups of Adrien Brody's iris to serve as the canvas for The Jacket sequences was virtually impossible, which necessitated the creation of a photoreal CG Iris. The sequences all begin in the same way: the camera pushes in to Adrien Brody's tortured face and eyes, before continuing 'impossibly' into the CG iris until it fills the frame and dilates as images from his mind's eye appear.

It was paramount that the VFX sequences supported both the narrative, and Starks' emotional state in the film - rather than being 'whiz bang' eye candy. Thus, the Double Negative design team took a montage of footage from 35mm, super 8mm, digital video and stills and integrated them into the CG Iris while creating various looks and treatments for each piece of footage, depending on what was happening in the story at that point. There are sequences where Jack is disoriented and disturbed, sequences where Jack is at peace enjoying childhood memories, sequences where he is thinking about his lover - all with an entirely different feel. Much of the imagery is warped to create seamless transitions that ultimately take us to the next scene. The Jacket effect is a great fusion of editing, CGI and traditional methods - the final effect being that you can't tell where one ends and the other begins.

The trailer for the film can be seen here: http://wwws.warnerbros.co.uk/thejack...lnl_0325042005