When
you're looking for a VFX team to bring an essential
burnish of authenticity to a crypto-zoological documentary
about fire-breathing reptiles, who you gonna call?
Framestore CFC are delighted that The Last Dragon
(UK title - Dragons: A Fantasy Made Real
in the US) was nominated for its outstanding visual
effects by the Visual Effects Society in its third
annual Awards short-list. The 100-minute programme
first aired in Germany in November 2004, and will
be broadcast on Channel 4 at 7.00pm on Saturday
5th March 2005. It will also be screened in the
US on Animal Planet, a network of Discovery Communications
Inc. in March. The Last Dragon was created
by Charlie Foley, directed by Justin Hardy, and
produced by Ceri Barnes for Darlow Smithson Productions
(Touching the Void).
A thrilling 'investigation' into these legendary
beasts, The Last Dragon uses a docu-drama
approach to bring plausibility to its subject. The
programmes premise is that dragons existed from
prehistoric times, co-existing with both the dinosaurs
and then later with mankind, becoming extinct only
relatively recently, thanks to man's ruthless hunting.
A
35-strong team from Framestore CFC delivered 167
shots - some 35 minutes of CG - in 25 weeks for
The Last Dragon, making it one of the fastest
turnarounds the company has ever delivered. "We
were helped enormously by the experience we've gained
with the Walking With Dinosaurs series
and specials over the last few years," says CGI
Supervisor Alec Knox, "From the dragons' walk/run/flight
cycles, to tricks that give the impression that
there's a physical camera move where it's actually
done electronically, there were a hundred little
techniques we'd developed on the dinosaur projects
to get great results at speed."
The
Last Dragon consists of two threads. The first
is the dramatised story of Dr. Tanner (Paul Hilton),
a rogue palaeontologist whose belief in the existence
of dragons is triumphantly vindicated when he is
air-lifted in to perform an autopsy upon some mysterious
animal and human remains which have been discovered
in a remote Romanian ice-cave. The second thread
takes the form of a series of 'documentary' flashbacks,
interwoven with Dr Tanner's adventure. These take
us back to several illustrative moments during the
prehistory and history of the dragon, showing the
creature evolving into several different iterations
- Prehistoric, Marine, Forest and Mountain. These
scenes, which feature hunting, fighting, mating
and nesting dragons, are authoritatively narrated
by Ian Holm.
Shooting
took place in three separate week-long segments
between March and May 2004. These were in La Palma,
in the Canary Islands, for the 'prehistoric' footage,
Chamonix, in the French Alps for the mountain sequences,
and at Anduzes, near Nimes, where a small bamboo
forest provided the necessary 'Chinese' forest location.
Senior
Compositing Artist Sirio Quintavalle supervised
the shoot for Framestore CFC. "The ice-cave sequences
were interesting," he recalls, "We were shooting
in these extraordinary ice-clad environments, using
flame throwers - a unique experience." The crew
also braved the headaches and sickness that attend
working at high altitudes, and Quintavalle also
found himself donning a wet suit to create the necessary
water interactions during the Marine dragon shoot.
With a mere six-strong crew, everyone mucks in…
The
Last Dragon bolsters its narrative with some
ingenious 'scientific' explanations for various
aspects of dragon physiology, including their ability
to fly and to breath fire. Fire performs multiple
functions for the dragons, as a weapon, a signal,
a triumphant post-coital roar, a barbecuing aid,
and sometimes to warm and form their eggs, which
are kept in dragon-built 'kilns'. "We shot flames
on location where appropriate," says Quintavalle,
"And supplemented them with a flame-thrower effects
shoot for the flying sequences and the kiln shots
where we needed the flames to have a more magical
quality. We built a model of the kiln in the studio,
matched up the camera angles and flame direction
to Lead Animator Neil Glasbey's rough animation
and shot at 75fps. We also added magnesium powder
for a bit of extra sparkle." The task of compositing
the shots was later carried out by Quintavalle and
others, working – appropriately enough - in
Flame and Inferno.
Leading
the animation team, Neil Glasbey found that the
shoot provided him with more than enough raw material.
"The difficulty was deciding what to discard," he
says, "The effects sequences were broken down into
8 different 'acts', and we suggested that they could
have 15 or 16 key shots per act, and if we could
throw in any extra we would. So the key shots were
very important." Glasbey's team had to create a
number of variant forms of the dragon, each with
its own rigging set-up for articulation and animation.
The dragon types to be seen in The Last Dragon
are:
Prehistoric – bipedal with
wings – one adult female, one old stallion,
one juvenile male (also T.Rex and Pteranodons
for this segment)
Marine – quadruped with
fluke on tail – one adult male
Forest – land-based variant
on Aquatic dragon – one adult male
Mountain – quadruped with
wings – one adult female, two adult males,
one juvenile
Working
from maquettes supplied by the production, Knox
and Glasbey found that some tweaking of the models
was necessary in order to make them work. Recalls
Knox, "One of the things we hadn't done before –
mainly because there ain't no such creature –
is a four legged creature with wings. It was tricky
because the musculature around the front shoulders
had to cope with working legs and wings,
and that's just not really on, in evolutionary and
bio-mechanical terms. But we managed to adjust the
proportions to the point where it would work as
an articulated creature."
Freed from the constraints of a strictly documentary
programme, the Framestore CFC team were able to
bring a greater degree of dramatic license to the
material than is possible in the Walking With…
series. As we follow these mythical beasts through
their battles, their courtship, their parenthood,
and their ultimate struggle for survival, you may
even find yourself shedding a tear or two at man's
eradication of yet another species – even
if it's one that never existed in the first place.
The
Last Dragon
Directed by Justin Hardy
Produced by Ceri Barnes
Created by Charlie Foley
Executive Producers John Smithson,
David McNab, Alice Keens-Soper
Computer
Animation Framestore CFC
Director of Computer Animation
Mike Milne
CGI Supervisor Alec Knox
CGI Modellers/Riggers Adam Lucas,
Jakob Schmidt, Romain Segurado,
Sarah Tosh, Jon Veal
Animators Lead – Neil Glasbey,
Laurent Benhamo, Brendan Body, Stuart Ellis,
Stephen Enticott, Catherine Mullan, Darren Rodriguez
Technical Directors Jason Baker,
Frederic Cervini, Robert Deas, Dave Fish, Dan Lavender,
Alfie Olivier
Camera Tracking Joe Leverson
Digital Paint Artists Daren Horley,
Elsa Santos
CGI Scanning Sean Varney, Guy Hauldren
Visual Effects Team Supervisor
Sirio Quintavalle
Digital Effects Artists Tim Greenwood,
Christian Manz, Darran Nicholson, George Roper,
Pedro Sabrosa, Nick Seal
Editor Tom Parker
Co-ordinator Sarah Micallef
Line Producer Michael Davis
Producer Joanna Nodwell
PRODUCED
BY DARLOW SMITHSON PRODUCTIONS FOR ANIMAL PLANET
IN ASSOCIATION WITH TANDEM COMMUNICATIONS AND SAT.1
SATELLITENFERNSEHEN
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