With Captain America Proof Makes the Case for Pre and Post Vis

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Wed, 04/16/2014 - 14:27 -- Nick Dager

With Captain America Proof makes the case for pre and post vis.Visualization house Proof provided extensive pre vis and post vis services to the new Marvel Entertainment motion picture Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Proof’s creative director/founder Ron Frankel made the announcement. The film was released by Walt Disney Studios last month and shows the benefits of using pre and post vis on a major effects-heavy film.

“This new film was an extremely important project for Proof,” Frankel said. “In fact, this was the biggest pre vis and post vis assignment in the history of our company. Pre vis has clearly become a critical element today as a story tool in the planning of action sequences within a 3D environment. We spent 14 months planning the pre vis for this new Captain America film, and then another eight months during the post vis process. We are especially proud of how we helped craft the finale of the film as well.”

Proof’s pre vis supervisor Monty Granito, said “We were thrilled to have had the opportunity to be involved with every major action and VFX scene in Captain America: The Winter Soldier. We began animating the pre vis for the film six month prior to the start of production. Working directly from the script, we created a number of exciting sequences, such as when Cap squares off again the Quinjet, jumping onto it and destroying it, and when the Helicarriers take off and shoot each other and fall into buildings. We also designed the flying sequences for the superhero Falcon. Additionally, we also visualized a solid chunk of the finale, which translated into about 35 minutes of animation.”

Dan DeLeeuw, VFX supervisor on Captain America: The Winter Soldier, said, “There has been a real paradigm shift during the past few years when planning a feature film. We used to rely on storyboards, then on animatics, and now today on pre vis. Pre vis has secured a place for itself as an extremely valuable tool in helping to visualize an entire movie before physical production even starts. In the case of this new film, a huge third act fell onto the shoulders of Proof’s pre vis team to help structure. We had to first construct the third act in pre vis, making our way through all of that data to help determine how the sequences would look. This was the first time I was able to see the entire third act of a movie before a film even began shooting.”

DeKeeuw added, “The Proof team and I were involved very early on in the planning of this film. We had to figure out how to fulfill our director’s vision to help best tell this story. Previs has become a really great tool these days for everyone to plan, design and ultimately shoot action sequences. Proof also delivered a good deal of post vis on this movie. In the past, it required a lot of imagination to envision, during screenings, what the movie would actually look like. You’d see green screens where future VFX shots would appear, so there would be holes in the story. Now, by integrating post vis, you can watch the entire film and really get a solid feel for what it will eventually look like.”

“It was great working with Monty Granito and the Proof team. They are a very collaborative company, and deliver a lot of style when creating shots. Anytime I suggested an idea, they’d show me several variations on that idea in just a mere few hours. They are terrific at delivering fine fantastic images,” DeLeeuw said.  

Gunnar Hansen, post vis supervisor for Captain America: The Winter Solider said, “The Proof team provided very valuable and extremely rapid responses to editorial's workflow. We worked very closely with the editor Jeff Ford and the VFX editor George McCarthy for six months to provide post vis temps for over 1400 shots. We basically created very detailed 3D composites to fill in the pending vendor visual effects shots, as well as precise shots to send to the VFX vendors for timing, animation and design.”

“Aside from touching on all the major action scenes, the Proof team and I also created many of the animated screen graphics.  For the huge battle finale, several hundred shots were tracked, lit, rendered and composited to a very high level of detail. In the end, these contributions gave VFX, editorial and the studio a seamless, decisive and exciting cut for both final visual effects and for screenings,” Hansen said.

Proof Inc. www.proof-inc.com