A film by Clayton Spinney
Written by Sean Gates
Based upon the original book by Lyman Frank Baum and William Wallace Denslow
THE VISUAL EFFECTS OF OZ. |
The digital mechanics of a fireball.
To get the lighting right on the Wizard's throne, a digital, three-dimensional shape was created to allow the glow from the fireball to act on it properly.
We did indeed say that the Emerald City is not green; and it is not. But the Wizard goes to great lengths to disguise this, including green glass in windows and lamps, especially in his throne room. |
Director Clayton Spinney is well-versed in the ways of digital effects work. His background in animation will be put to use extensively for this film. Here we'll share a couple of examples of the kind of work Spinney will be doing to bring the Land of Oz to life as you've never seen it before. In the 1939 adaptation, the Wizard was seen as nothing more than a huge floating head, who granted our heroes an audience as a group. In the novel, as well as in our adaptation, each of our four main characters sees the Wizard on their own, and each time he takes a different form; the head, a great, terrible beast, a beautiful woman, and a fireball. "For this specific shot, we have the fireball burning brightly atop the Wizard's throne," Spinney explains. "The fireball itself is a particle simulation. For those unfamiliar, a particle simulation is essentially a series of tiny cards built inside the computer, and are programmed to behave in a certain way. They are each then textured with a diffuse texture for the color and a transparency texture for the shape." In order for the fireball to cast interactive lighting and realistic shadows, the geometry of the throne room and throne itself were roughly constructed and lit, with the resulting shadows composited over the background plate. Since principal photagraphy has not yet begun, a photograph of a lion was then edited and added in to complete the image.
Denslow's illustration as it appeared in the original publication of "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" It's very telling that the Lion's first instinct is to help the Wizard, whom he believes has accidentally caught himself on fire. Cowardly? Not so much. |
Try building that out of clotheshangers and duct tape.
The Plastic Woodman? Nick Chopper is fully realized in three dimensions. But he's lacking something. Hey! Makeup on Nick, somebody. We're burning daylight here!
A ball-and-socket shoulder joint is necessary if the Woodman is to use an axe with any sort of effectiveness. |
The model for the Tin Woodman was one of the first things Spinney created for the film. Gates had a script, half of a Scarecrow puppet and a few photoshopped Lion pictures, but it was Spinney who had the ability to bring the Woodman to life. "He's a filmmaker and he has a lot of specific knowledge that I definitely don't," Gates admits. "Even with my background in art I knew I wouldn't be able to build [the Woodman] practically. I had no way to conceptualize him and then I met Clayton and he had all the pieces I was missing." "We wanted to remain very faithful to the designs in Denslow's original illustrations," Spinney says. "In every case, this meant we needed something a little more creative than a man in a suit. While a puppet is very effective for a light, boneless character like the Scarecrow, it's much less so for a man made out of tin. We opted to construct a CGI model of the Tin Man for this project, giving us much more freedom with both the design and his range of movement." On the subject of range of movemet, Spinney is quick to point out a few modifications to Denslow's design. "If you look at Denslow's Tin Man and ours, you'll note that some changes were made. The drawing was designed to be just that; a drawing, and as such we changed certain aspects of the design to suit a body in motion, such as the ball-and-socket joint in the arms and the placement of the legs. The CGI model also allows us to change his texture from rusted to polished, and to damage the model without breaking the bank."
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