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Cheating the Eye: The Honest Work of 32TEN Studios by Doniphan Blair
The 32TEN team fires a 33 ft long 'practical' bridge in its backlot in San Rafael. photo: courtesy 32TEN
REMEMBER THE BRIDGE SCENE IN THE
"Wild Bunch" (Peckinpah, 1969)? When it blows all to hell and a half-a-dozen horses and riders go into the drink? It looked so real because it was real—well, a real, to-scale model.
“I knew, as we set out to design the narrative, that the story of ‘The Lone Ranger’ was going to be epic," noted director Gore Verbinski, who took Oscars for his second "Pirates of the Caribbean" (2006) and "Rango" (2011), a masterful mix of Hollywood, animation and art film—both starring Johnny Depp.
"It was therefore critically essential to ground the film in as much reality as possible; I wanted the audience to taste the dust."
"When it came time to scale the larger-than-life effects, 32TEN Studios were in stride," continued Verbinski, who had worked with Geoff Heron, 32TEN Studio’s Practical FX Supervisor, on his “Pirates” films. "They knew how important it was to get this exactly right: To make things feel raw, dynamic and gravitationally correct."
"When you go back and look at the old CG, some of it looks really dated," explained Greg Maloney, one of the managing partners of 32TEN. "But with old practicals, some of it looks funky but most of it stands up really well."
A Disney/Jerry Bruckheimer Films production, "The Lone Ranger" also stars Depp, as Tonto, and the little known Armie Hammer (mostly voices on "American Dad" and "The Simpsons") as the eponymous hero. Although it got a decent review in the New Yorker, it didn't bang the box office like Verbinski's previous pieces.
What 32TEN's bridge looked like in the actual movie. photo: courtesy G. Verbinski
"There is concern the big blockbusters didn't live up to their hype this year," ruminated Maloney. "I have speculated for years what they are going to do down there [in Hollywood] but I never know."
Nevertheless, “The Lone Ranger”, along with “Pacific Rim” and “Elysium” which also had practicals done at San Rafael’s 32TEN Studios, have generated almost $300 million to date at national and international box offices, suggesting the mastery of the practical—which often means building models and then blowing them up—is alive and well in the Bay Area.
"It is almost a lost art, and I am so happy to have a team like 32Ten around," Verbinski effused. "[They know] all the tricks of the trade and are constantly advancing it to the next level. They make cheating the eye, honest work.”
"Working with the amazing talent at 32TEN is like coming home for me," said Disney’s Shari Hanson, the Associate Producer/VFX Producer on “The Lone Ranger”. "Over the years, I've worked with this team on hundreds of miniatures and practical effects."
The primary practical was a train trestle bridge blowing up, replete with the ten-car train pin wheeling off. Directed by Verbinski himself, the shots were meticulously choreographed by Alex Cannon in previs (previsualization) before being handed over to 32TEN to be shot using rather large one-fifth scale miniatures.
"The scale is chosen for what the model has to do. You can't scale water, so going smaller then one-fifth would not work," noted Tim Partridge, 32TEN's other partner, previously of Dolby.
"On the 'Lone Ranger', the bridge had been featured in the movie way before our shot, so there was a lot of effort to match the bridge they had already built on the set and rendered in CG. They actually sent us pieces of the full-sized bridge to match the color, the wood grain and even a stick of dynamite."
(Lf-rt) Geoff Heron, Ben Nichols and Bryan Dewe of 32TEN working on the bridge for the 'Lone Ranger'. photo: courtesy 32TEN
By the way, previs has long left cartoon-like storyboarding. Now sketches are put together as rough animation in programs like Motion Builder or Maya and show entire scenes and camera and actor movements. A huge boon to directors, previs can save on overshooting and flawed composition.
Ben Nichols, 32TEN's Model Supervisor, and a team of 22 model makers built the 1/5th scale bridge in three separate sections at the studio on Kerner Boulevard in San Rafael. To get it perfect, they were supervised by Crash McCreery, one of the movie's Production Designers.
"Working with the artists and technicians at 32TEN reminded me of why I got into this business in the first place," said McCreery. "With CG taking over so much of the visual effects needs of films these days, it was fantastic to actually watch a practical model, built by hand, blow up for real—to feel the heat and concussion of the explosion."
The largest model was a whopping 33 feet long and 25 feet tall and the three sections were lowered by crane into a 50 x 50 water tank in 32TEN's backlot against an 80 x 32 foot green screen.
"We were given a previs by the director and we had to match that exactly," said Maloney. "It's a pretty tricky thing to do when you're talking about explosions that you can't control. [But] we have this brilliant supervisor, Geoff Heron, who has been doing this stuff for years and years."
"First you have the pyrotechnics; then you hook up the hydraulics, to pull things apart in the exact way the director want. With a lot of pulleys, cranes, cables and hydraulics, you couldn't come closer."
As the pyrotechnicians detonated the structure and 32TEN's DP Pat Sweeney shot it at high speed, using Vistavision, a high-rez version of 35mm film, Verbinski watched—undoubtedly with glee—via a live video feed from LA.
Monster from 'Pacific Rim' which destroyed an office building in a practical by 32TEN. photo: courtesy G. del Toro
“Pacific Rim,” directed by the legendary fantasy filmmaker from Mexico, Guillermo del Toro ("Pan's Labyrinth" 2006, " The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey" 2012), was an entirely different project. "Guillermo is very excited about practical effects and he was here," Maloney said.
This time the primary practical was an office interior, filled with cubicles and built at one-quarter scale, to be destroyed by a “Jaeger” robot's fist. Since the film was converted to 3D, 32TEN shot with a pair of Red Epic cameras. As the fist plowed through the offices, atomizing everything in its path, it was covered by two Epics on pneumatically-controlled rigs.
While on the "Lone Ranger", "The whole construction of the bridge was designed to be able to collapse exactly the way the director intended and then brought back into its original position and then done again," Partridge said, on "Pacific Rim", those offices were annihilated, one take is all you get.
On the other hand, the "Lone Ranger" practical was shot outdoors, meaning they had to meticulously match the light, which obliged starting to set up at 5 am in order to be ready to shoot at 11 am, in their 45 minute window.
Another "Pacific Rim" shot involved several rows of soccer stadium seats mashed to bits as a “Jaeger” lands in the stadium. For this 32TEN used air cannons to blow apart the one-quarter scale seats. They also provided various practical "elements."
"We just finished a big element shoot for a movie coming out next year," Partridge remarked, "Although, as usual, we can't say which one."
Element shoots provide the compositors—which Greg Maloney used to be—high quality imagery to serve as image building blocks. 32TEN can do them much quicker—not to mention realer—on their stage than an artist on a computer.
A model of a space craft which 32TEN crashed for a scene in 'Elysium'. photo: courtesy N. Blomkamp
"Sometimes when I am watching a movie I am going: That smoke is ours, that falling piece of rubble is ours," Partridge enthused. "For 'The Lone Ranger' we did horses hooves and bullet hits; for 'Pacific Rim', falling glass and dust clouds coming down a street."
"Geoff [Heron] and his team have come with formulations of Fuller's Earth and crushed walnut shells that they put into an air cannon. Then we put up 'mandril' versions of the street, in the right dimensions, so the cloud interacts correctly with the buildings as it moves down the street. And we shoot it at high speed."
A "mandril," in the practical world, is a stand-in that resembles the final and can be easily tarted up in CG. In the "Pacific Rim" office demolition scene, it was a piece of metal in the shape of the Jaeger's fist. For the billowing smoke, it was a trough eight feet wide and 30 feet long.
"The key to successful effects work is to use the right tool for each job," noted ILM's Lindy DeQuattro, who was helping supervise the "Pacific Rim" shoot. In other words CG here, practical there, the two matted together in a third sequence—probably the vast majority.
"We love to use practical effects whenever it makes sense because the inherent serendipity," she continued. "It gives us a level of realism that can be difficult to achieve in CG. The team at 32TEN Studios built beautiful models for us and then utterly destroyed them—the results were spectacular."
The added realism certainly helped make the film into what RottenTomatoes.com characterized as "More style than substance, but... bolstered by fantastical imagery and an irresistible sense of fun."
The massive set and crew all set for the one-time only space craft crash, in a practical for 'Elysium'. photo: courtesy 32TEN
For “Elysium,” the last of the triad, starring the inimitable Matt Damon and released on August 9 by TriStar pictures, 32TEN began their work in 2011. At that time, they were working for the (once) famous Kerner Optical, which still existed at that time.
They built a 50 x 50 foot outdoor model of part of "Elysium", a space station orbiting earth, at 1/12 scale, and featuring buildings and landscaping. A "Raven" shuttle craft model was then mounted on a travelling rig and crashed into the set, all captured by seven cameras, from flying Red Epics to cameras hidden within the vegetation.
The crash was done before principal photography even began, obliging the ensuing wreck to be created precisely on another set for the actor's scenes. Later, they came back to 32TEN for practical elements, notably explosions in space.
Mimicking how explosions appear in zero gravity is a 32TEN specialty. It was honed to a fine art by a team full of ILM veterans who created practicals for the “Star Wars” movies and other space-based epics.
“Elysium” writer-director Neill Blomkamp also jumped at the chance to attend his 32TEN miniature shot and was duly impressed with the realism of the chaos it created.
"Elysium" has done reasonably well, including a good review by the New Yorker's Anthony Lane, and stands to easily recoup its modest—for a summer blockbuster—pricetag of $115 million.
Now that the films have been release, 32TEN is able to both talk about and screen them in their lovely 32TEN Theater which is equipped with a super-bright Barco 2K projector and Dolby 3D system.
"It is always fun when the big climactic shot that they all worked on hits the screen," Partridge said of his team at their inhouse screenings. "They invariably break out into applause."
With these feathers in its cap, 32TEN Studios, launched in early 2012 by Partridge and Maloney, can certainly look forward to plenty more work and work of increasing variety.
Fabrication master Sean House moves effortlessly from bullet wounds to opera masks, as indicated here. photo: Michael Macor, The SF Chronicle
Indeed, they recently did 150 masks for San Francisco's Opera recent Opening Night of "Mephistopheles Unmasked" no less. Spearheaded by longtime fabricator Sean House, they had to race into production when the Opera's wardrobe master suddenly realized their old masks were dilapidated.
"So now we are waiting for the phone to ring," Partridge remarked as we concluded our discussion. "Because this is the time of year when the next summer's blockbusters are shot."
Even as almost all filmmaking goes digital, some effects will remain practical—and a few even shot on film— simply because they look better and imbue an extra feeling of realism. And when the best practicals are called for, 32TEN will undoubtedly be there.
Doniphan Blair is a writer, filmmaker, graphic designer and fine artist living in Oakland and he can be reached .