[Oracle]

We thought we would throw in a little suprise for you! One of the most celebrated shots of Summer smash, Superman Returns, was the bullet in the eye shot in the bank robbery scene. We sat down with Kevin Baillie, VFX Supervisor from The Orphanage, to talk about the scene and to ask him your questions. Look out for the Superman Returns Masterclass in a couple of days, but till then you are going to love what Kevin had to say.

[Oracle]

Superman Returns was certainly one of the biggest and most talked about films of 2006. Now you should all have had chance to see it, we got the chance to sit down with Kevin Baillie from The Orphanage to ask some of your very own questions. The Orphanage completed 144 shots on Superman Returns, the most celebrated amongst them being the bullet to the eyeball shot that is getting so much acclaim. They are also responsible for the Bank Job sequence (of which the eye shot was a part), the Gertrude Dock sequence, Metropolis Hospital, Kitty car chase, Superman falling from space, Metropolis city views and the Vanderworth mansion.

The company developed fluid simulation, digital fire, smoke and muzzle flashes. Two of their shots are featured in the trailer, the one of Superman being shot directly in the eye and one of him being shot multiple times from a Gatling gun on the rooftop.


About Superman Returns
Following a mysterious absence of several years, the man of steel comes back to Earth in the epic action-adventure Superman Returns, a soaring new chapter in the saga of one of the world's most beloved superheroes. while an old enemy plots to render him powerless once and for all, Superman faces the heartbreaking realisation that the woman he loves, Lois Lane, has moved on with her life. Or has she?

To see the trailer, click here
http://supermanreturns.warnerbros.com/trailer.html




About The Orphanage
The Orphanage visual effects and animation team of over 150 artists recently completed work on two of Hollywood’s biggest releases of 2006, Gore Verbinski’s Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest (Disney) and Bryan Singer’s Superman Returns (Warner Bros). The Orphanage’s VFX work can be seen in a wide variety of features, including Sin City, The Day After Tomorrow, Hellboy, Sky Captain and The World of Tomorrow, Jeepers Creepers 2, and Hero as well as dozens of commercials for the top agencies worldwide.

Official Site
http://www.theorphanage.com


About Kevin Baillie
Kevin Baillie is certainly no stranger to the industry. He is a Visual Effects/CG Supervisor, lead computer graphics artist and supervisor at the San Francisco office of The Orphanage. Currently, Baillie is the VFX Supervisor on the upcoming 20th Century Fox Christmas release, Night at the Museum which he began shortly after his work as Associate VFX Supervisor on two Warner Brother’s box office hits Superman Returns and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

His other recent credits include VFX Supervisor on Dimension’s Pulse and Cursed, CG Supervisor on Revolution’s Hellboy and MGM/UA’s Jeepers Creepers 2, while also providing supervising roles on Sin City, The Day After Tomorrow, Anger Management, Spy Kids 3-D, and Charlie’s Angels 2: Full Throttle. He has also worked as a digital artist on several projects including Seabiscuit, Hero, and Mission to Mars. Prior to becoming one of the original employees at The Orphanage he, at the age of 18, joined Lucasfilm Ltd.’s exclusive JAK Films division as a previsualization artist. While there he helped to design 400+ shots on Lucasfilm’s Star Wars Episode I, and also worked as a compositor on final film work towards the end of his tenure there. Shortly thereafter, Baillie served as a sequence supervisor for one of the most challenging sequences for on Fox Animation Studio’s animated film, Titan A.E.
Outside of work, Kevin spends much of his time pursuing his second passion, that of a race-car driver, in SCCA and NASA Spec Miata race series.

Well let's see what he had to say...

Could you please start off by introducing yourself and giving us a little background information pertaining to your current job/role, and your background in the industry?

KB: My name is Kevin Baillie and I’m a VFX Supervisor at The Orphanage. I’ve had the pleasure of working with the company since its inception about 6 years ago and have learned a huge amount in the process! Before coming to The Orphanage, I was part of the Star Wars Art Department at Lucasfilm, working with the previsualization team for Star Wars Episode I. While previs was a blast, I’m absolutely in love with the work that we do here. The opportunity to take work like what we did for Superman, on which I was the Associate VFX Supervisor, to completion is extremely satisfying!

Did you enjoy working on the film?

KB: Absolutely! Mark Stetson, the production’s overall VFX Supervisor, Bryan Singer, the Director, and Jonathan Rothbart, The Orphanage’s VFX Supervisor, all have such inspired creative vision that it couldn’t be anything less than a blast! Not to say that it wasn’t incredibly difficult at times, but honestly the work wouldn’t be fun without challenges.

How many artists did you lead and did you get a pick of the sequences or are they assigned based on your strengths?

KB: Jonathan and I led a total of about 90 artists over the course of the show, which was comprised of around 140 shots. Mark Stetson and the Superman production team certainly awarded us sequences based on our strengths. We did also request several sequences, particularly the Bank Job one. Those Gatling gun fire shots were right up our alley, and allowed us to further develop a part of our pipeline that we were really excited about! We’re glad we went after it aggressively, since shots like the “bullet in the eye” shot ended up being real crowd favourite!

When did you decide to start in the visual effects field? After high school, college, or earlier?

KB: During high school, actually! My friend Ryan Tudhope and I were blown away by the work ILM did on the first Jurassic Park and decided that we needed to learn how to do that!!! We worked on learning 3D Studio R2/3/4 for DOS, making videos for assemblies and the like, doing our best to entertain the audience with story and visuals. Through that, we landed a job with Microsoft in Redmond, WA in our Junior year. That, in turn, attracted enough attention for us to be chosen as subjects of a documentary funded by the George Lucas Educational Foundation. As a result of that, we were invited by Rick McCallum to meet George and the Star Wars Art Dept. Rick and the others there agreed to give us a chance after we finished high school, and the rest is history! Ryan is VFX Supervising here at The Orphanage too! A lot of being in the right place at the right time, combined with very hard work, (some call that combination luck made our dream of working in the vfx industry come true.

What sort of freedom were you given in creating the looks for the sequences you were in charge of?

KB: We were given a large amount of freedom right off the bat. We used that freedom to present a lot of options, in the form of concept art, to Mark [Stetson] and Bryan [Singer]. Our main goal is always to help bring the vision of the director to life, and providing many options is usually the best way to figure out exactly what that vision is. Once we’ve nailed down a direction, working with the crew to bring that to life is every bit as creative of a process as the concept art is, just on a more granular level. That’s one of the best parts of working in film – being able to fine tune the minutiae!

How long did it take to complete all of the visual effects you were assigned?

KB: From beginning to end, we were on Superman Returns for over a year. Several of us rotated out doing on-set duty in Sydney, Australia on and off from April until September. Even before shooting was done, we were going full bore in San Francisco developing methods to complete the work!

How many shots did you complete? How long did they take to render?

KB: In the end, we had around 140 shots to complete. Render times varied greatly depending on the tasks at hand, but the most complicated work we did (the muzzle flash simulations we did for the Bank Job shots) took less than 2 hours per frame to render for each element.

Are you happy with the actual results that you produced?

KB: Happy is an understatement! The whole crew was very proud coming out of the theatre after watching the movie. We were happy not only with our visual and technical achievements, but also with the contributions we helped to make on the storytelling and entertainment value levels!

How much did you stick to the prevised shots? Did you have your guys involved in the production before the previs'?

KB: We weren’t involved with the previs process on any substantial level. The previs did, however, give us a great starting point for wrapping our brains around the work. As impressive as the previs footage was, Bryan always came up with new, bigger, better ideas on-set when shooting, which certainly kept us all on our toes. Our artists ate up the challenge, coming up with solutions to unforeseen situations on short order and producing visually stunning results.

Were there any wire or rig removal shots, and did you use any plugins to remove them?

KB: We had a large number of wire removal shots, particularly in the Kitty Car sequence. After Superman rescues Kitty from sure death due to brake “failure,” he’s on wires the entire time – even when he’s simply standing there talking. We didn’t use any specific plug-ins aside from the normal grain tools, but relied more on the expert hands and eyes of our roto/paint artists. We continually find that they can work more magic in a shorter period of time than any plug-in could dream of.

Can you please provide a list of software used in this movie and how you customized them?

KB: We use a very broad variety of software here at The Orphanage, and always try to work toward the goal of being able to use the right tool for the task at hand. On the 3D side, we employed Maya for modelling and character animation, 3ds Max for look dev, fluid sims and most of the rendering (done with Brazil r/s), and Houdini for the real-speed muzzle flash and tracer work in the Bank Job sequence. Compositing-wise, we relied on Adobe’s After Effects and for matte painting work it was all about Photoshop. Each one of those tools needed customization and augmentation not only to bolster their individual capabilities, but we’ve also done a lot of work to smooth out how they talk to one another. When using so many apps, it’s important that data can flow reliably from one to the other.

I would really like to know more about the bullet in the eye shot, it is possibly the most celebrated shot in the film! What exactly did it involve on your part?

KB: That’s a shot that we’re certainly very proud of, although it took a lot of hard work and determination to get it looking the way that it did! From day one, the shot presented a ton of challenges. The plate had to be split into 3 different sections to accommodate an aggressive blow-up and a complex retime/stabilization. After that, it was all about figuring out how to make the muzzle flash sing. We started off looking for slow motion muzzle flash reference that was dramatic enough for the shot, but just couldn’t find anything suitable. So instead, we started trying all different kinds of methods and looks: geometry-based approaches, particle-driven simulations, fluid dynamics sims, and more. The fluid dynamics approach, which yielded a very intricate, swirling fireball, looked the most promising so we went ahead with that. The sim was done in 3ds Max using a plug-in called Fume, which is being developed by a company in Croatia. While it was still in its early alpha development phase, it was incredibly fast (both the simulation and the rendering) and turned out to be flexible enough to get what we were looking for in terms of both the smoke and fire effects. In addition to the muzzle flash, the slide/barrel of the gun, the bullet, the gunpowder particles, the background and even the interactive light on Superman’s face had to be created from scratch. The warping of his eyelid, something people ask me a lot about, was done in comp using simple warping tools. In the end, not a single element in the shot went untouched! A big pat on the back is deserved by the key artists on the shot – Woei (compositor), Rif (fluid sim) and Ron (3D elements)!!!

How many matte paintings were used during production and how many were made but not used in the movie?

KB: There were quite a few matte paintings in the film, since we were responsible for most of the street level city extensions. We modelled a collection of about 20 buildings, look dev’ed them to an 85% complete state, and then rendered those from the shot camera. The matte painters, under guidance from our Matte Painting Supervisor Emmanuel Shiu, would use that render as a starting point for their work and add the final artistic touches to the shots. While we had to start one or two paintings over from scratch due to changes in city layout, all of the paintings we did ended up in the final movie.

Was the internal render of Houdini used in the movie?

KB: Yes, Mantra was used to render all of the Houdini-based effects. The muzzle flashes from the Gatling gun, the ejected shells (which were simulated using Houdini 8’s DOPs), the tracers and debris from the ricochets were all rendered in Mantra. It proved to be very quick and flexible for what we were doing, and we’re continuing to expand our use of it on current shows.

In films like Superman where there is a cult following, I would imagine the temptation is to try and do impossible things, previously unreachable things. Was there anything that you tried to do, but just couldn’t quite manage?

KB: Honestly, there wasn’t anything that we didn’t manage to achieve. It’s very important for us to stay focused on the job at hand and not get carried away, especially on a show like Superman. Everyone here is absolutely fanatical about the franchise, but used that energy to fulfill the vision of Bryan Singer rather than getting themselves into hot water.

What resolution were you working at?

KB: The film was shot on the Genesis camera which, while it involved adapting to a new color space, allowed us to work at regular ol’ HD (1920x1080) resolution.

If you could do it again would you change anything?

KB: As with any project, you learn a ton along the way. We obviously would have made our technology choices earlier in the process if we didn’t have to go through that discovery process. As they say, hindsight is 20/20!

Which FX shot did you feel ended up looking better than you had ever anticipated, and why?

KB: The Bullet in the Eye shot honestly was the shot we were the most afraid of, but came out being one of the best shots of the lot! I feel like a lot of the digital city work, such as the 1,000+ frame “Superman is Gone” shot pulling out of the hospital window, came out great as well, but we’ve had a lot of practice doing shots like that and were pretty confident that they would turn out great. For me, it’s the shots that you have to break new ground to complete that end up being the most fun and fulfilling!

Do you have any words of advice for people who are trying to get where you are now?

KB: The best advice I can give is to stay focused and work your butt off! All of the people who succeed in this industry are extremely committed to their art form and never allow small setbacks to get in their way. Don’t let any opportunity to learn new things pass you by, and strive to create opportunities for yourself where none previously existed. Don’t go into the biz to be a supervisor, but do it because you love the work. The best supervisors I know didn’t even really want to be supervisors, since they knew it meant that they couldn’t do as much hands-on work. Let your achievements be what drives your progress, not your desire for progress alone. Sound foofy? Maybe it is, but as best I can tell it’s not too far off the point!

Thank you Kevin from all the VFXTalkers, it has been great interviewing you.

Written by VFXTalk

[alive]

I was awe-struck at the bullet-eye shot and it is def. the best shot of the movie. Nice to hear what went behind it.

I remember Kevin from one of the"Maya on the Mac" Videos i got in 03, where he was talking abt a particle emitter he made for a Bubba Sparxxx Music Video. Is def. one of those guys i admire a lot. Nice to know more about him and his work

Keep more of these interviews coming in. Thanks

[boomji]

thanks for the interview guys.

Question:how does the orphanage do projections in afx...custom plugin to import meshes ???.This would be a pain if you have to build proxy geometry with imageplanes.Or is this done in max/maya and then comped.

Kevin...have the guys at lola FX done something with you
youngest soup i've seen


b

[skinnie buddah]

The bullet shot is without doubt the best shot in the entire movie. The Orphanage rocks and it is really great to hear from Kevin. Kevin man, if you're reading...your work is incredible.

Take it easy
Skinnie B

[hiphopcr]

Great article, The Orphanage seems like such a cool place!

[Opteroner]

Wow, Kevin. You cool, man.
I wish i can meet you, i want you to teach me

cheer,
Opteroner