Fxguide has a nice rundown of some of our local VFX work for Grimm, featuring Hive-FX and Bent Image Lab. Much of the Bent breakdowns you see in the article were the basis of Fred Ruff’s VFX/PDX presentation last year, which also made the rounds both internationally and at Siggraph. Check out the fxguide article here.
Definitely worth a look – this is the sort of bread & butter work that’s keeping the Portland VFX machine humming! Be sure to check out the respective Grimm reels for both Bent and Hive-FX, and the Oregon film intern promo piece that featured both companies.
Looking towards the future, it will be interesting to see what the Portland studios are able to do with the creature pipelines refined through this constant flow of Grimm work. There are already rumblings of some indy films and other projects in the works, no doubt in part being leveraged against the flashy Grimm CG.
Speaking of some leveraging – it was sad to hear the last episode of Leverage Season 5 is indeed the series finale and there will be no 6th season in the works. But cheers to Dean Devlin and crew on that all-important 5th season and syndication! Hopefully Devlin can roll the momentum into possibly finding Leverage a new network home for a 6th season in the future (before being fully immersed in Roland Emmerich’s Independence Day 2 and other pilot projects). There are certainly enough rabid fans out there chomping at the bit for more. Petitions, even!
Either way, Leverage had a good run and is definitely a source of Portland pride! Next time, in addition to our fantastic production crews – hopefully future Leverage work can employ some of our top tier VFX talent as well. Best of luck to them as they rally behind the battle cry: “Let’s go steal a season 6!“
The “I Am VFX/PDX” series launches with Randy Wakerlin, a long time Portlander who’s as talented as they come. And many talents at that – Director, Animator, Compositor, Supervisor, Teacher, and let’s not skip Dad and avid Biker. I’m very excited to be catching up with Randy… and make no mistake, he is hard to catch!
VFX/PDX:Where to start — how about “the beginning?” Some of us get bitten early, you know, maybe in high school there was some equipment to play with – or maybe before that? Maybe a certain toy under the Xmas tree? The Etch-a-sketch Animator? The Fisher Price Pixelvision? The Little Orphan Annie Jr stop motion kit? Ha ha – you’ll animate your eye out, kid!
For me it was a tablet and an Atari 800XL (64k RAM!) cartridge called “Atari Artist” that got it going. I think I was 9. How did you get bitten by the film & video bug? And more specifically, the experimental video/animation bug?
Portrait of the artist as a young filmmaker/astronaut
Randy: Back in middle school I played around with my dad’s video camera shooting silly skits with friends. He also had a Super-8 camera that I coveted because it had an intervalometer and it could shoot single frame. When I was about 12 I started playing around with object and clay animation with an obsessive fervor that has yet to mellow.
I can remember the first time a piece of experimental animation really grabbed me. It was my first year at Hampshire College and we watched “Allegretto” by Oskar Fischinger (click to view). It was a beautiful film with colorful geometric shapes moving to fast paced jazz music. That film was a huge inspiration to me. His films reminded me of daydreams I had as a child while listening to music, I used to see colors and patterns choreographed to the music when I closed my eyes. The connection between music and experimental film has a long and rich history, and Fischinger turned me on to all forms of experimental film after that.
VFX/PDX: Ok, and knowing you’re a serious academic, I have to get this one out of the way. Talking all time here – who is your favorite visual artist?
Norman McLaren is my all time favorite. His films are a perfect balance of technical and poetic. I love how “Begone Dull Care” links jazz music and his direct animation techniques, simultaneously loose and precise, so amazing.
VFX/PDX:Wow, now I see where Kyle Cooper was inspired to scratch the titles directly into the film “Se7en!” With these types of interests, the Portland animation scene seems like such a perfect match. When did you arrive here, and what attracted you to Portland?
In 2002 I was on summer break from CalArts. I knew that I wanted to get out of LA for the summer and had an old college friend living up in Portland with a little room to rent for $200/month but you had to walk through a bathroom to get to it. Animation was in a lull in Portland and I didn’t think I could find a short term animation job anyway so I ended up waiting tables at Nicholas’ Restaurant serving Lebanese food to make some money. I met this cute girl at a dive bar called The Gypsy on NW 21st and we fell in love. For my 2 remaining years at CalArts I found myself working through the summers up in Portland and visiting whenever I could, mostly because of the girl (who I eventually married) but partially because Portland was the first city that really resonated with me. The art, culture, cycling, public transportation, proximity to nature, and overall vibe was really attractive, and I knew that stop-motion animation was happening up here, I just had to find it. (continued on next page)
Another Halloween come and gone, and this year we had an unexpected little treat knock on our door and demand candy. Portland Compositor & Motion Graphics Animator (Composimator?) Adam Sager and his daughter Maggie popped out this incredibly cute little tribute to everyone’s favorite recent scene from the show Grimm, where Monroe explains to Hank how the creature transformation (“woge”) works using a “visual aide.”
When working on the shots, I was told the first Monroe morph (the one where Hank can’t “see” him yet) was the longest morph in the show’s brief history. Well, ya know… as in, instead of a handful of frames it was 45 or 50. But that’s an eternity in morph-time! It was Bent Image Lab VFX Supervisor Fred Ruff’s idea to do this one a little differently and really stretch it. Let it linger as long as we could possibly get away with (a little “creative interpretation”) and to bring the morph on front to back… wrapping it up with a quick couple of frames that pop that wild creature hair on quickly at the tail end. It’s so different by design, you have to pop that on quick like a band aid rip! All to coincide with the rippling sound effect.
Speaking of sound effects, Adam said that the audio work was the hardest part about the “retelling,” as he had to digitally slice out Monroe’s dialogue and swap for Maggie’s. To sell it he had to leave the bed of music that was in the original scene, and anyone who’s done any audio surgery knows this is no easy task!
Careful Maggie, you don’t want to stick like that!
Aside from the fact that Maggie is cute as a bugs ear, let’s talk real talent for a second. (insert tongue firmly into cheek…) Just like when daddy works on the real show, the Maggie morph was executed flawlessly. Her facial style clearly draws from such classics as Jim Carey in The Mask and Maculay Culkin in Home Alone; I’m already talking to Andy Serkis and the team from King Kong & Gollum about her limitless potential. I wonder if she has actor Silas Weir Mitchell (Monroe) scratching his head, wondering why he never thought of that? It’s not like Grimm is a Timbers soccer match, buddy… there are no rules here; let’s get some hands up in this piece, Sager style! Maggie clearly has a bright future in creature acting, if she doesn’t decide to keep after these more dramatic buddy flick/cop show roles that no doubt will flood her way. They’re probably already trying to pair her up with Will Ferrell’s daughter (warning, language!):
And you know Jaden Smith wants in on this action. Maybe he’ll karate kick his way through this door as Huggy Bear? The ladies could use some muscle!
In all seriousness, the “retelling” was shot last Sunday at friend Rory’s house, with some helpful gear borrowed from Fashionbuddha. A fun little romp for the Sagers that’ll be a cute little snapshot to look back on years later.
Clear some space on that mantle, Maggie, because in honor of this stellar performance, you take home VFX/PDX’s highest honor that we can bestow on the little actors playing along with Mommy or Daddy’s crazy ideas. The Oscar. We could do this right and fire up a ceremony complete with Kyle McLaughlin singing the City of Portland Anthem from the Olympics episode of Portlandia, but this post is getting too long already… (me? long winded? nahhhhhh)
Constantly reminded of how sometimes work and life overlap in funny ways. A friend of mine, years ago now, shot a little short with his 2 year old as Superman leaping tall buildings (or were they cardboard boxes…) in a single bound. Who needs tights when you have Superman PJ’s? Doing what we do, he had frickin’ laser beam vision in there, the whole 9 yards. Now fast forward 2 or 3 years down the line, we’re both working on the real Man of Steel. Ha, I’ll track his “tribute” down, it’s prolly up on the Youtube – and I’m sure little Layne loved the scene where he’s spewing lasers from his eyes and cheered when he first saw it. His imagination came to life! And I mean, it’s a given that the little ones love seeing themselves on TV, and that it’s guaranteed laughs… but c’mon, flexing a little “Mommy/Daddy works on TV shows & movies!” muscle does a lot to help make up for the long hours and stress.
That vivid imagination might have a bright future in VFX by the way. How many of us got roped into this stuff watching Christopher Reeves dart into a phone booth? Han Solo pull out that blaster?
Not to mention the obvious: that once they are computer literate, you can funnel that boundless energy and put your kids to work as roto artists! Bwa ha ha… isn’t that why farmers used to have like 10 kids? Instant VFX army! Just kidding, but c’mon, have fun with it… filming your kids is cool. You know what – I’m pretty sure if our parents had digital cameras and Youtube, they’d have done it too!
Catch the Halloween episode of Grimm on Hulu now. Again, Bent Image Lab and Monroe come up big with some well timed comic relief and the “trick or treat” scene is the winner in this one. That scene was shot in St. Johns up by Pier Park, don’t ya know? The neighborhood was buzzing as they used my friend’s house for some of the exteriors and to store gear as they continued shooting up the street. Grimm does it’s part to keep Portland weird, and I think I speak for everyone when I say I’m looking forward to future Grimmful Halloweens. Own it, guys!
So, Adam, now that I’ve linked your cute little vid… let’s talk gummy worms? Hook me up! Ha ha… 🙂
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