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Article by Jody
Duncan
Who would have
predicted that a documentary about quantum physics, featuring
a series of talking-head Phds, made for $5 million, and
initially released in only one theater, would become the
word-of-mouth cult hit of the early fall movie season? That is
the backstory of What the #$*! Do We Know -- the new
'Rocky Balboa' of independent films.
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Directed by
William Arntz, Mark Vicente and Betsy Chasse, What
the #$*! Do We Know is made up of three distinct
elements: documentary footage, live-action story
elements, and animation effects. Both the 3D animation
and other effects sequences, which totaled 300 effects
shots, were overseen by visual effects supervisor Evan
Jacobs, and executed by Mr. X in Toronto, Lost Boys
Studios in Vancouver, and Atomic Visual Effects in Cape
Town, South Africa.
The most
daunting effects challenge was just developing the
stylized look of the animated sequences, in particular,
all of which had to entertain while also illustrating
complex scientific concepts. "If you were to just read
the script," Jacobs said, "you would think, 'Okay, this
is like Discovery Channel or the Science Channel.' But
Will Arntz was very clear that he wanted it to be bold
and stylized. He didn't want boring science documentary
stuff. He wanted it to be part of the story."
One of the
animated sequences, created by Atomic Visual Effects,
represents a camera traveling through the interior of
the brain. "We took a lot of liberties to make the
environment look more cool than the real interior of the
brain would look," said Jacobs. "We took all the matter
away, except for the nerve cells, creating a forest of
electrically charged nerve cells." Though the look was
more stylized than anatomically correct, the modeled
nerve cells were taken from photographs of real nerve
cells. "We went with a shader approach to create
glowing, self-illuminated nerves -- which meant we
didn't have to add a lighting element to this fairly
heavy nerve geometry. Those were the kinds of cheats we
did to make it more economical." |
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Another animation
sequence has lead character Amanda (Marlee Matlin) perceiving
the 'human cells of emotion' running amok at a wedding
reception. "Those emotion cells had to look somewhat
cartoon-y," said Jacobs, "but each of them had to represent a
different emotion. There are anger cells, control cells, a shy
cell, a lust cell. But they are just these gummy things --
almost like little flubber characters. So we had to figure out
some way to get personalities into these blobby shapes." The
filmmakers awarded the 3D animation work to Mr. X. "They had
all this crazy, Saturday morning cartoon animation stuff on
their reel, so I knew they would nail it. It was a really
iterative process, doing it over and over again, to get it
just right; but those guys did a fantastic job." Mr. X
produced 45 emotion cell shots for the sequence.
Lost Boys created
a 'quantum basketball' sequence, in which quantum mechanics
theory is illustrated in an impromptu game of one-on-one
between Amanda and a city youth. "As Amanda steps onto the
basketball court," said Jacobs, "you see a ripple, indicating
that she is stepping into a different world. And then we had
to go into the sub-atomic world and show what is really going
on in there. There was all this heavy science we had to
illustrate, but we wanted to make it interesting and cool. It
took a long time to develop the look for this sub-atomic
matrix -- the world of the atom. That transitions into what we
called the 'blue grid of infinite possibilities' -- and,
again, who knew what that was going to be? The concept was
that it was like 3D graph paper that the world is painted on.
We started off with these rudimentary grids, moving through
them, moving light down them -- until this very elaborate look
finally evolved."
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Motion
control was used for a live-action sequence in which
Amanda comes face to face with other versions of herself
inside the lobby of a movie theater and on a sidewalk
outside. "It wasn't a new trick," Jacobs said, "but on a
low-budget, and with the tight locations we chose, it
was a challenge. We had to put her in five different
outfits, and make sure she wasn't intersecting herself
in this big long shot. We covered 500-600 feet in the
shot -- and it was overcranked, too, which added
complexity. Again, it's not that this hasn't been done
before; but to do it at this level of production was a
feat." All of the motion control material was shot over
two nights, by General Lift.
In a dream
sequence, Amanda finds herself on a fantasy island.
"This sequence illustrates a story about when Columbus
and his ships arrived in the West Indies," Jacobs
explained. "Because the Indians had never seen clipper
ships before, they literally couldn't see them on the
horizon. But then the shaman looks out to sea and sees
the ripples made by the ships -- and, eventually, he
sees the ships themselves. He's the only one with an
open enough mind to see them." In the film, the shaman
approaches Amanda on the beach, then points out to sea,
where the clipper ships suddenly appear. "When I read
the script, I thought, 'Okay, we'll go to a beach
somewhere for this.' But, due to Marlee's schedule, we
couldn't get her after the shoot in Portland. So we shot
her on greenscreen, and just put in background plates.
It doesn't seem as if that would be too hard, but it was
amazingly difficult to find good stock backgrounds. So
we had to shoot the backgrounds. We wound up shooting
the backgrounds in South Africa -- since we were already
there, doing some post work."
At the time
the greenscreen of Matlin was shot, the backgrounds were
still undetermined -- which meant the ultimate lighting
scenario was unknown. "Fortunately, the gods were
smiling on us that day," said Jacobs. "It was a little
overcast, so we had flat lighting and we had some
latitude when we put the backgrounds in. Basically, we
were in a parking lot in Portland, shooting this thing
-- but it works in the movie." Atomic composited the
dream and theater sequences. |
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"One thing you
can say about this movie," Jacobs concluded, "nothing about it
was conventional. The effects work wasn't a technical
masterpiece. The story of this film was just getting this
amount of effects work on the screen, for a budget that was
only 10% of the total production budget." The ability to do
300 effects shots on that very low budget was due to ever more
accessible and inexpensive digital effects hardware and
software. "There is no question that this film couldn't have
been made this way five years ago."
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