Car Insurance

Everybody already knows, or should know, the ONE tip that all special effects houses have for getting the most brilliant work possible: call them early. This is such a universal thought that all those interviewed for this article said it without hesitation. However, this truism is but the tip of the iceberg. There’s more to it than that, and the following scenarios give examples of how each special effects house solved particular challenges when creating effects for recent spot, music video or television series work And, as always, Post catalogs what tools the artists are currently working with, as well as what they will be looking for at next month’s NAB show.

CHALLENGE AND SOLUTION: Two days before shooting the music video, the client called from Atlanta. Could The Orphanage visual effects artists re-create a Jeep spot effect that showed a vehicle shaking off mud like a dog? The video producers wanted a 4×4 to splatter mud on a record executive. The Orphanage had less than 10 days to turn it around.

A quick conference call explained what the client needed to do on set technically Director Chris Robinson was given explicit instructions so he could deliver the proper plates. In-house, CG artist Kevin Baillie modeled the truck, painted it, texture mapped it, animated it and then comped it into the shot that was about :04 long. He used Alias/Wavefront Maya V.x4 on a Power Mac G4 dual 800 MHz with 1 GB RAM and a nVidia GeForce 2MX dual 1.7 GHz Pentium 3 Xeon with 2 GB RAM and an nVidia Fire GL4.

“We actually overdelivered,” explains executive producer John Benson. “We were so concerned with such a short turnaround, the only part we thought we’d be able to complete was the car shaking and having the mud fly off, and not actually have it settle in and be completely clean. But Kevin decided to take it beyond what we had promised, so he delivered the full shot of the car starting to shake, the mud flying off of it until it was completely clean and settled in to a still car. The cut used it all… They were very happy that they got more than what they were actually anticipating.”

The Orphanage was founded in 1999 by three former ILM visual effects artists, part of that ICM’s Rebel Mac group that discarded its SGIs in favor of Macs. That philosophy still holds at The Orphanage, which offers production, post and proprietary technology called Magic Bullet. The Orphanage is beta testing to get Maya fully up and running on Mac. Its visual effects work — everything but character animation — is used in features, television, spots and music videos.

TIP: The Orphanage sticks to the Rebel Mac philosophy of “one artist, one shot.” “All of our artist are generalists,” says Benson. “We have some who are a little bit stronger in one thing than another, but it’s very important for us to have artists who can take a shot, bring it online, model it, animate it, comp it in and handle all the traditional TD lighting,” says Benson. “From a client perspective ‘one artist/one shot’ actually saves time, which translates into saving money. Because one of the biggest constraints in commercials and music videos is time, it’s very important we’re able to do as much as we can given whatever the constraints are.”

TRUISM: “Whenever possible, the greatest outcome is going to happen when we’re brought in at as early a stage as possible,” says Benson. “If clients wait very long they get stuck at a position where they might not have the same options available to them if they would have approached the visual effects company earlier on in the process. If they bring someone who technically knows what’s available and what could happen, then I think they’re going to squeeze more out for their budget. With agencies and commercials we love to get on board even before they’ve selected a director.”

NAB SHOPPING LIST: The tech team will be looking at I) the status of new rendering solutions, specifically those with support for Maya and Global Illumination .

2) the progress of realtime solutions for editing, compositing and color correction; Quantel’s iQ, da Vinci, Piranha and Discreet among others.

3) Electric Image Universe with new rendering support for Global Illumination and Mac OSX;

4) updates to 24p HD and SD cameras by Sony, Panasonic and others.

5) the progress of Adobe’s support for Mac OSX.

CHALLENGE SOLUTION: The agency challenged the directors to capture the car moving in a visually unique way. The result was a car as viewed by a camera on a bungee cord. The challenge for the A52 team, headed by visual effects supervisor and Discreet Inferno artist Simon Brewster, was to do the impossible: find some way to use a virtually unusable shot of very violent movement, clean it up and track it with the car.

Good fundamentals will make your mis-hits more like your good shots–the secret to lower scores

It seems like every student who comes to me for a lesson wants to be “more consistent.” A noble aim. But what is consistency in golf terms? Years ago, Ben Hogan used to say that on a good day he would be happy with the way he hit maybe only three or four shots. That means he hit 10 times that many less than perfectly. On the face of it, that isn’t very consistent. Yet, as we know, Hogan was one of the greatest ball-strikers of all time. In fact, players paired with Hogan would swear he never missed a single shot! Is consistency, then, in the eye of the beholder? Perhaps.

Hogan’s mis-hits were so close to his perfect shots that only he knew when it was a miss. And that’s the main point: Consistency is all about getting the quality of your mis-hits as close as possible to the quality of your good shots.

The key to that kind of consistency is in your fundamentals. You have to improve them to be able to hit enough good shots and to improve your mis-hits so you achieve a higher degree of consistency. The five most important fundamentals that lead to consistency are: (1) your grip, (2) your ball position, (3) your alignment, (4) your tension level and (5) your balance from address to the end of the follow-through. To understand them better, turn the page.

1. Have a consistent GRIP

You have to hold the club so you can cock your wrists properly, maintain a square clubface and keep the club from flying out of your fingers–but not so firmly that any tension goes past your elbows.

That said, you are far better with your lead hand in a stronger position than a weaker one. That’s why I like to see the back of the top hand angled at roughly 45 degrees to where you want the ball to go. A pencil stuck in the back of your glove, as shown here, will tell you if your hand is in the right position.

To prove my point, try the exercise shown on the next page. Put the back of your left hand flat against, say, the side of a golf cart. Now push.

Try it again with your left hand turned into a stronger position. Push again. Big difference. The stronger grip allows you to generate a lot more power. And the more power you have, the less you have to use, so any tension in your grip can safely be reduced.

2. Find consistent ball position

High-handicap golfers don’t always understand that you have to hit down on the ball to get it up in the air. I see them trying to scoop or lift it up. They then place the ball forward in their stances to facilitate that scooping motion. But the ball shouldn’t be played that far forward.

Good players hit down on the ball with the shaft leaning toward the target approaching impact (above), so they trap the ball between club and ground and trust that the ball will spin up into the air. Practice on the range to find the ball position that allows you to do this.

When you have developed confidence in that position on the range, the problem of ball position still isn’t over. You still have to contend with uneven lies on the course. The solution, however, is simple. All you have to do is make a practice swing (right), find the bottom of your clubhead arc, then stand so the ball is there when you actually come to hit it.

3. Aim and ALIGN consistently

When it comes to aim and alignment, most people don’t even know what to aim! They aim their body at the target, then align the clubhead to the body. That’s backward. You should aim the clubface, then position your body to the clubface.

Try this: Take your right forefinger (the clubface) and aim it straight at your target. Then take your left forefinger (your body) and aim it parallel to your right finger (above). See how far left of the target your body should aim? Imagine if your left finger (body) were pointed at the target. Your right finger (clubface) would be pointed way to the right of where you want the ball to go. That problem, of course, leads to another: If you are aligned to the right, your instincts to make the ball go where you want it to will override your desire to make a correct swing. You’ll end up trying to pull the ball back to the left–a recipe for pulls, slices and a variety of other problems.

4. Maintain consistenT TENSION

Physical tension is not necessarily bad. For example, you want to have a sense of lively tension in your feet and legs at address. But–and here is the key–you don’t want that tension spreading into your hips. You also want some tension in your arms and fingers. But, again, you don’t want that tension to get past your elbows. And that’s the problem: Too many golfers have tension in their necks, chest and shoulders. They can’t turn. They can’t swing their arms.

It is important to get your tension level correct at address. Too much at the start will cause it to “evaporate” during your swing. Too little and you’ll seize up at some point in the swing. What you want is an even flow to your tension. You want it to be relatively constant from beginning to end.