Website Animation World Network recently got to sit down with Christopher Batty, to talk about his innovative work on Transformers One’s stunning cinematography. You can check out the full and complete interview on their website here, or read some excerpts from it below.
From the innovative use of mocap for fast prototyping with virtual story reels to choosing the right cameras to ensure a proper sense of scale on massive sets and environments, the cinematographer discusses how he handled layout and composition on Josh Cooley and Paramount’s 3DCG origin story of how two best friends became the sworn enemies Optimus Prime and Megatron.
Dan Sarto: With animated films, some of the productions refer to DPs, some refer to cinematographers, some have different people as the DP of this and the DP of that. From your perspective, what is the role of a cinematographer on an animated film and how does that compare to your role on a live-action show?
Christopher Batty: That's a great question. I think it's pretty varied, as you were saying. I can define it as we do at Paramount because we seem to be consistent there, though I think it's different studio to studio. For Paramount, you're basically in charge of camera. You're the head of layout, head of cinematography, and so you're guiding the placement, composition, and camera language of the show through the whole process.
Where it differs mostly from live-action is that lighting is still in the realm of the production designer. I worked with [production designer] Jason Scheier on Transformers, and he would do all the keys as we're developing a sequence, which would then that would get passed down to our vendor, ILM, to do the lighting. That’s not to say... I could definitely give my two cents. We would have discussions and there were certain sequences in compositions that were dependent on lighting, and so we would work back and forth.
But for the main part, you're just in charge of the cameras and compositions all the way through. So, after animation is done, I supervise the final camera as well as overseeing the stereo. There's a stereo supervisor, but I'm just there to make sure the original intention of the camera language carries all the way through.
DS: Got it. Now, you have a significant amount of live-action experience. How did that translate for you when you moved into animation? You supervised a lot of visualization… how did that prepare you?
CB: I was mainly supervising previs on live-action shoots. So, at the end of the day, they would have their DP come in and actually shoot all the shots that we had prevised. But one thing that I always take to heart, and a lot of my crew of layout artists came from live-action and VFX too, we all really understand what a real camera can do and how it feels, and we tried to infuse that into Transformers.
My philosophy has always been that if the action in the shots is crazy and really kinetic, then the camera should probably be toned down so that we can understand what’s going on. And if you want a more expressive camera, then the action should be a little bit more toned down. It's all about clarity, making it feel relatable. There's 100 plus years of cinema history, and even if people aren't familiar with how cameras work technically, we've all been programmed and understand from watching all those movies how shots should look.
DS: At what point did your layout and camera work kind of get locked?
CB: That's a great question. So, it's sequence by sequence. Once a sequence goes in, it goes from story to us. We usually start with a story reel, and it'll give us the idea of what the shot should be, and then we start placing all the cameras. And then once we have it pretty locked, the cameras I would say are pretty well-defined. I tend not to do too much work in final camera, so we have a very good idea of what the shots should be. Then that gets turned over to ILM. They replace all the assets with the final assets, and then they start animating. And then after animation is finaled, we do another camera pass, and that's all the little tweaks and stuff, just to make sure the pans are correct with the latest animation, or everything is framed exactly like we've envisioned it.
And then after the final camera is locked, that's kind of it for me. We'll look at lighting effects just to double check and make sure, because sometimes when the effects are added, that may change composition a little bit if something has been added late in the game. We're just spot-checking lighting and effects and comp, and then of course stereo, once that gets translated into stereo.
DS: Coming from visualization, which on a live-action project, is basically animated filmmaking, this role seems like a real natural step for you because in essence, creating previs, you're prototyping the movie.
CB: Yeah, that's exactly right. The basic skill set is exactly the same. What I always say, it's like you're prevising the movie and then you just keep going. Usually, you create the previs, and then they'll go and shoot it. Somebody else takes over from there. With layout, nobody takes over. You just keep going. You go another a few rounds in order to get that camera really well-defined for the animators. So, the skill set is really the same. It's the finishing and the polishing.
And the other fact is on an animated movie, you're responsible for every shot in the film. Usually on live-action you're only prevising what needs to be prevised, like the visual effects sequences and the expensive stuff, or the hard stunts, or the talking scenes, which to be honest, are usually the hardest.
DS: Because you have to make it make sense?
CB: You have to make it make sense, be interesting, and feel natural. If you have four people at a table with the eye lines and the overs and all that stuff, it can get pretty complicated, to be honest. It's probably harder to do than a car chase.
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