HIGH-TECH MOVIE EFFECTS IN CONNECTICUT

Sonalysts Combines Its Resources in Virtual Set Production

Earlier this year, Sonalysts, Inc., working with visionary innovator and filmmaker Douglas Trumbull and veteran special effects director Barnaby Jackson, has developed what it believes is the first high definition virtual set production capability in the Northeast.

Sonalysts and Trumbull connected 18 months ago when Trumbull, who lives in western Massachusetts, visited Sonalysts' studios and brought with him a vision of making movies using digital cameras and real-time compositing of virtual sets and real actors. Trumbull has been developing real-time compositing techniques for several years and is convinced that the combination of electronic cinematography and real-time compositing can dramatically reduce the cost of production. Said Trumbull, "Virtual sets and digital compositing will affect all phases of a movie production, from the size of the crew to the need for expensive sets and location shots. As a result we can compress the schedule and reduce the overall cost of production.”

Barnaby Jackson, a recent Los Angeles transplant now based on the East coast, is a commercial film director known for his visual effects work. Jackson first worked with Trumbull to develop Trumbull's Academy Award winning, large-format, high-speed "Showscan" camera system. "Doug has been a mentor and teacher to me for twenty years now, and I'm excited to have the opportunity to break new technological ground with him again,” said Jackson. Jackson has worked with Sonalysts over the last three years and has seen the company demonstrate its technological expertise on a number of projects. Said Jackson, "Sonalysts is a rare company that has incredible state-of-the-art production facilities as well as engineers, visual effects artists, animators, game programmers, and a "can-do" attitude gained from working on what we film makers would call real "rocket-science."

In a virtual set production the actors work in a set that is made of both real and digitally created elements. The film crew photographs the action, and the motion and position of the camera is tracked by a computer system that instantaneously renders, or draws the digital virtual set elements around the actors. When the director or cinematographer looks through the eyepiece or at a monitor, they see the complete scene with all the elements composited or combined.

The techniques used to combine digital images and actors are well known to fans of STAR WARS or LORD OF THE RINGS, but the new idea here is the real-time interactivity of the actors, the filmmakers and the digital world. People may be familiar with the meteorologist in front of the weather map or actors combined with cartoon animation. In fact many films use similar virtual set technology to create a specific scene, including some sequences in the MATRIX. The difference here is that Sonalysts, Trumbull and Jackson are integrating the various parts and using high definition images for both the foreground and background elements in real time. This “system integration” is the key to making virtual set technology available to projects that don’t have the resources of a MATRIX or STAR WARS film. The high definition images are of a high enough quality and resolution to be used seamlessly in 35mm feature films and television commercials.

The first full resolution tests are in production right now and the sets are based on digital photographs of real world locations that have been enhanced by computer graphics artists. Real ten-foot concrete walls have been enlarged to 25 feet, daylight scenes are being shot at night, and otherwise dangerous stunts are being shot on a stage in front of a blue screen. Said Trumbull: "We are not re-inventing the wheel here, we are just peeling away the technological road blocks to make these powerful tools work for filmmakers in an interactive way. The goal is feature film quality productions made digitally, within the walls of a studio, and then converted to 35 mm for theatrical release." Working with Trumbull and Jackson, Sonalysts hopes to develop an array of entertainment products including feature films that take advantage of the virtual set technology, as well as offer virtual set capability to a wide range of clients, from television commercials to corporate video, games and the Internet.

Sonalysts' stages and facilities have been used for everything from Speilberg's ARMISTD to Aerosmith’s world tour rehearsal. The employee-owned company of 450 trains the Navy submarine force and tracks the world’s weather for commercial airlines while creating computer games for Electronic Arts and doing top-secret work for the government. Douglas Trumbull is well known for his films BRAINSTORM and SILENT RUNNING, and for Back to the Future the Ride, and his visual effects credits, including 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, STAR TREK, CLOSE ENCOUNTER OF THE THIRD KIND, and BLADE RUNNER. Barnaby Jackson has directed, designed and supervised visual effects on dozens of television commercials and has directed large format projects including Endless Summer: The Ride and the IMAX feature film: THE JOURNEY INDSIDE.

"At Sonalysts, we're pushing the technology in this area by shooting the electronic image in high definition and using our proprietary game engine to do the real-time rendering of the virtual image," said Andy Toriello, Sonalysts president and CEO. "Our game engine is one that Sonalysts developed in connection with the three PC-based computer games we've done for distributor Electronic Arts. At the same time, we're fortunate to have in one place the electronic and software engineers, digital production staff, and facilities to do virtual set productions," added senior vice president Fred Litty. He went on to say that few if any other facilities on the East Coast could bring together such a diversity of expertise from within its ranks.

This diversity is well represented on Stage 5 where racks of computers and tables of monitors staffed by engineers and computer graphics specialists work side by side with the production crew. The space is dominated by a large mobile camera crane and tracks provided by Trumbull. An encoded camera head made by the French company Hybrid MC is bolted to the end of the crane, and to that is mounted the high definition camera. Wires run from the camera and crane to synch generators, scan converters and digital tape recorders, with the signal from the camera and the virtual set finally coming together in a compositing device made by Ultimatte, and from there to an editing workstation on the stage.

Sonalysts, Trumbull and Jackson hope that by demonstrating this capability on Sonalysts' stages, they can attract movie and television productions, as well as commercials and music videos to the new technology, and also utilize the virtual set approach to provide exciting new services to Sonalsyts' existing government and corporate clients.

Sonalysts Studios is home to the largest, newest, and quietest sound stages in the Northeast. There are 5,000 square foot, 7,000 square foot and 15,000 square foot sound stages, complete with 35 to 42 foot ceilings, full overhead catwalk systems, flying grids, and millions of watts of electrical power. Accompanying the stages is 32,000-sq. ft. of production support: dressing rooms, hair and make-up, wardrobe, insert stages, production offices, green rooms, screening rooms. With New England as a back lot, Sonalysts is able to provide a variety of backgrounds for filming-from cities to mountains, beaches to military bases, and now anywhere in the world on a virtual set.

The staff at Sonalysts Studios has expertise in a variety of disciplines. Many of their personnel come from a military background, while others have extensive experience in production, sound, animation, and graphic design. Sonalysts staff works on client assignments throughout the world. Sonalysts corporate headquarters are located in Waterford, CT, USA, with an additional 19 offices located throughout the United States.

For more information contact litty@sonalysts.com or visit www.sonalysts.com.

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