{"id":5660,"date":"2013-07-21T15:42:20","date_gmt":"2013-07-21T13:42:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jaws-3d.com\/blog\/?p=5660"},"modified":"2013-07-21T15:42:20","modified_gmt":"2013-07-21T13:42:20","slug":"interview-avec-spencer-gill-praxis-filmworks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jaws-3d.com\/blog\/?p=5660","title":{"rendered":"Interview avec Spencer Gill (Praxis Filmworks)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"SGG_bluescreen\"<\/a>Sp\u00e9cialiste des effets sp\u00e9ciaux optiques, Spencer Gill<\/strong> a travaill\u00e9 sur des films aussi vari\u00e9s que le Caveman<\/strong> de Carl Gottlieb<\/strong>, les deux premiers Robocop<\/strong>, Ghostbusters 2<\/strong>, le formidable Robojox<\/strong> de Stuart Gordon<\/strong> (la photo \u00e0 gauche) ou bien encore La mal\u00e9diction des rats<\/em> (Gnaw\/ Food of gods: part 2<\/strong>) et le 5\u00e8me \u00e9pisode des aventures de Freddy Krueger<\/strong>… Autant dire un CV en b\u00e9ton! Mais comme vous pouvez l’imaginer, Spencer a surtout oeuvr\u00e9 sur notre film pr\u00e9f\u00e9r\u00e9 et \u00e0 24 heures du trenti\u00e8me anniversaire de Jaws 3D<\/strong>, il nous d\u00e9voile tout!<\/p>\n

I started working at Robert Blalack’s company Praxis Film Works (ILM occupied the building and when Lucas moved ILM to the San Francisco area Robert Blalack decided to stay in North Hollywood) when he was crewing-up for Jaws<\/span> 3-D<\/span>. The Praxis crew took two weeks to devise a practical method for shooting 3-D (for conventional, motion control miniatures) and Chris Regan in optical outfitted the two printers at Praxis\u00a0 with very precise, electronic micrometers so that we could both adjust convergence (I did mention that most of it was shot in SpaceVision but was converted to Arrivision during post production. Had they stayed with the plan that the folks at Private Stock Effects (the Skotack Brothers specifically) which was a 605 line video system the composites would’ve been loads better.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"vlcsnap-2010-11-30-03h29m36s132\"<\/a>Working with third generation duplicate negatives it was a miracle that it looked as good as it did. I was purely an optical cameraman (I operated an optical printer) and when I made suggestions I was politely ignored so the film was just a paycheck. It was a pleasant enough experience (although Praxis didn’t pay very well) but it was irritating having good advice ignored. The most amazing thing was that the optical supervisor would run the Friday night comps to the lab (if he got ’em there early enough we’d have dailies on Saturday) and in spite of having to drive through Hollywood Bowl traffic (this was in summer during the season for the Bowl) he got the film there. I wonder how that was even physically possible…<\/em><\/p>\n

Convergence is always an issue in 3-D but when you are shooting several layers that must fall into the right place for proper depth it become a problem. Miniature buildings resting on full-sized sections of underwater pylons must be aligned for north\/south and east\/west and<\/span> for depth convergence.<\/em><\/p>\n

Le probl\u00e8me majeur du film est bien \u00e9videmment le changement de derni\u00e8re minute de l’ Electronic Compositing aux effets optiques… En tant qu’ ex-membre de l’\u00e9quipe Praxis, votre point de vu est tr\u00e8s int\u00e9ressant.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The decision to switch over and under formats (from SpaceVision to ArriVision) was done quite late (virtually all footage was shot before the switch. The executives from Universal decided that they liked the look of the photochemical composites based on their tastes and their taste was \u2026 as the expression goes \u2026 in their ass. No one (not even at Praxis) told them that the film composites were superior and we (at Praxis) thought they were crazy. They would also measure the convergence on the projection screen and calculate which version to use. We all (at Praxis’ optical department and management) agreed that their choices induce headaches and eye strain. We would shoot it the executive’s way and then properly and tell editorial which we thought was the correct take. They invariably agreed with us.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"vlcsnap-2989890\"<\/a>Est-ce que l’utilisation de fond vert vous a pos\u00e9 probl\u00e8me?<\/strong><\/p>\n

In film composites greenscreen is a bit of a problem since the green separation has the most detail and when using separations you often don’t use the separation that matches the color for the traveling matte for the foreground pass. In bluescreen that means you use the green separation for a blue pass as well as for the green. If you have some green or yellow in the foreground you’ll either create a synthetic blue (one pass through the green filter to darken the bluescreen area and a second pass with the blue filter to add the grain from the blue layer) or create a color difference matte (the green separation plus the color negative using the blue filter which yields dark areas where there is a difference between the blue and the green) or use both. Since they were paying so little for each shot we just used the red and the blue separations and the shots were very grainy and had bad contrast.<\/em><\/p>\n

The doctored IP system (no seperations and you turned the greenscreen area black on the interpositive) would’ve looked a lot better but they didn’t want to send the original negatives to the non-union optical house (Praxis) which is unbelievably stupid.<\/em><\/p>\n

Trois plans du film ont \u00e9t\u00e9 mont\u00e9 sans que les effets sp\u00e9ciaux ne soient finalis\u00e9s. En r\u00e9sulte des sc\u00e8nes de panique dans les tunnels et un fond vert clairement visible. Selon Mitch Katlin, la firme Praxis avait bien r\u00e9alis\u00e9 des composites et ne s’explique pas sur leur absence \u00e0 l’\u00e9cran? Pouvez-vous confirmer?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Oh yes \u2026 we did do composites but the backgrounds remained stationary which made it look as if the foreground was moving. Since they didn’t want to spend the money for a hand animated pre-optical (an optical done prior to the final composite used as part of the composite) we could not attempt to match the camera move. Those moving shots were done to use the \u00ab\u00a0Harry\u00a0\u00bb (an electronic tool that was newly available at the time) and when they switched to film the executives didn’t realize that it was a problem.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"jaws<\/a>Certains membres de PSE ont soup\u00e7onn\u00e9 le lobby des effets sp\u00e9ciaux optiques, craignant l’ Electronic Compositing, d’avoir donn\u00e9 sciemment de mauvais conseils \u00e0 Alan Landsburg. Que pensez-vous de cette th\u00e9orie? Avez-vous vu le travail de PSE avant de vous attaquer \u00e0 Jaws 3D?<\/strong><\/p>\n

There was no \u00ab\u00a0optical house lobby\u00a0\u00bb \u2026 the executives at Universal made all of those bad decisions on their own. Robbie Blalack wasn’t about to scream \u00ab\u00a0are you insane!?!?!? The electronic composites were clearly superior!!\u00a0\u00bb He just asked which they preferred and came back and told us whatever damned stupid thing they wanted done next.<\/em><\/p>\n

J’ai eu l’opportunit\u00e9 de voir Jaws 3D en 35mm \u00e0 la CINEMATHEQUE DE PARIS en d\u00e9cembre 2009. Tous les effets Pop-up \u00e9taient tr\u00e8s impressionnants. Selon le magazine The American Cinematographer, ces effets auraient \u00e9t\u00e9 reshoot\u00e9 par Praxis… Qu’en est-il?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yeah \u2026 our stage crew reshot a lot of that stuff. If we had converged it the way the executives wanted us to do it would’ve caused major eyestrain. We all got sick to our stomachs (just shy of actally vomiting) at Praxis and Robbie told us to shoot it properly and not give them the option of choosing the bad version.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"jawspraxis\"<\/a>La fameuse s\u00e9quence du requin brisant la vitre de la salle de contr\u00f4le est aussi l’oeuvre de Praxis? Avez-vous particip\u00e9 \u00e0 cette sc\u00e8ne? Quel mod\u00e8le de requin a \u00e9t\u00e9 utilis\u00e9 lors du tournage?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I was only involved in so far as I told the stage crew to darken the bluescreen (it was over exposed). At this late date who knows which miniature was used.<\/em><\/p>\n

Une derni\u00e8re chose… Demain, c’est le trenti\u00e8me anniversaire du film. Votre avis sur le film apr\u00e8s tout ce temps…<\/strong><\/p>\n

At the time we were all upset by the huge number of stupid decisions so we were all rether dismissive of the film. Years later seeing it on TV in pan-and-scan versions it seems a better film \u2026 that looks like crap. The majority of the early 1980s 3-D films were not very good.<\/em><\/p>\n

Merci \u00e0 Spencer Gill<\/strong> pour l’interview et pour son \u00e9norme cadeau: 2 photogrammes under-and-over\u00a0 (issues du workprint) compl\u00e8tement in\u00e9dits. La colorim\u00e9trie et la pr\u00e9cision de la premi\u00e8re (en comparaison du DVD et de la copie 35) est diff\u00e9rente. La seconde est encore plus folle puisqu’il s’agit d’une sc\u00e8ne coup\u00e9e d\u00e9j\u00e0 trait\u00e9e ici <\/a>m\u00eame.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sp\u00e9cialiste des effets sp\u00e9ciaux optiques, Spencer Gill a travaill\u00e9 sur des films aussi vari\u00e9s que le Caveman de Carl Gottlieb, les deux premiers Robocop, Ghostbusters 2, le formidable Robojox de Stuart Gordon (la photo \u00e0 gauche) ou bien encore La mal\u00e9diction des rats (Gnaw\/ Food of gods: part 2) et le 5\u00e8me \u00e9pisode des aventures […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5660","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-infos"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2onKy-1ti","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jaws-3d.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5660","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jaws-3d.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jaws-3d.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jaws-3d.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jaws-3d.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5660"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.jaws-3d.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5660\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5668,"href":"https:\/\/www.jaws-3d.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5660\/revisions\/5668"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jaws-3d.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5660"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jaws-3d.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5660"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jaws-3d.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5660"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}