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Creating Previsuals… How far is useful ?

Bob Bonniol September 4th, 2008

Today we’re going full bore at the studio creating scenic previsuals for a PBS special I’m working on. It’s a concert with mutliple projection surfaces, plus sort of all over background projection rasters. The director has asked us to create a complete show previsual so she can see how all the media layers work, and most importantly for her, how transitions will function and feel.

It’s really common around here for us to do previsuals to sell a show or show concept. Also for our internal design process, previzzing helps us to really drill down on spatial relationships.

But this is the first time we’re doing a full show viz for the purposes of the director blocking and integrating her larger process.

The idea is utterly reasonable; maybe even compelling (especially for the directors and choreographers). My suspicion is that we’re going to do this a lot more, and it has me thinking about how we adjust the studio pipeline and process to accommodate it. It’s not an insubstantial effort. 2 days of compositing to create the viz, then render time. Then another day to edit those together in to a finished show. All of this predicated on being done in a larger sense with content of course.

I have a sense of caution about this… It has to do with managing expectations a bit. I’ve found that when I make storyboards, I will often dirty them up, make them look more sketched, so that some of the intended end result is left to the imagination. When I’ve made to photo realistic previsuals before, I find that collaborators will sometimes fixate on a detail that they like or don’t like, that is really something that will only be seen in the visualization. It won’t then be a factor in reality, or if it’s intentional sometimes visualizations defy laws of physics and such. The interplay of light and media is really hard to represent realistically and be able to stand by as “what it will really look like”… So when I get asked to viz a whole show, I get nervous about these attachments. I think a whole show viz demands a cognizant commitment from observers that it’s still concept and not reality.

Nevertheless I think that we’re entering a stage where previsualizing is going to expand beyond it’s status of a tool of the lighting designer or production designer, and become more of a generally accessible asset to directors and (shudder) producers as well.

We’re having a Production Summit at MODE after LDI… Effectively and efficiently adding full show previsuals to shows as a fundamental design stage, not as an extra, or as a time savings…

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2 Comments to “Creating Previsuals… How far is useful ?”

Clinton Bradley Says:

September 8th, 2008 at 8:06 pm

Can you please give a run down of your previz process and what software you use. 2 days seems like an awfully short time to do an entire show previz so to what level are you taking it? Can you post some image examples please? Any and all expansion of the topic would be much appreciated.
Jason Baeri Says:

September 8th, 2008 at 9:58 pm

It’ll be interesting to see where previs goes in the next few years. I remember hearing Ming Cho Lee talk about this very issue some 7 years ago at this point at one of the earlier BLMC’s; he was referring to how his scenic renderings (which, in themselves, are picasso-esque works of art to begin with) remain watercolor representations because, much like you’ve stated, when you put that idea in the directors head, he/she sees it and expects that image at the end of the day.

From a control perspective, it will also be cool to see if any other industries pick up alternative methods of control. At present, the majority of the entertainment specific previs software is based on DMX control. When our brethren in the design community begin to use these methods of previs, will it still require the aid of a programmer of skilled dmx-mix meister? And will it become a hindrance for them do much so that they don’t wind up using it and create their own?

I know it is possible to create plenty of previs elements with non-entertainment specific software, but the idea is to get the maximum output for the least amount of input (not referring to effort, but rather to the ever shrinking amount of time that rehearsals provide us) which most of the dmx previs software provides for us, as well as keeping us all on the same thing software wise; wouldn’t it be nice to be able to send a rendering of a flying, tracking screen to the rigging automators and (with some measurable degree of safety of course) make the move happen flawlessly and on cue without having to retool anything save touch ups on site?

who knows, but it’ll still be a wild ride none the less.