"Mass.Illusions then built a CG toolkit of a number of brushstrokes, so they could control the color, separation, thickness and dynamics of the paintstrokes themselves through certain handles. This allowed them to create paint rolling down blades of grass in certain shots. The amazing thing about this process is that we could have a crane on a 30' camera track, moving in every possible axis, and then basically apply brushstrokes to every leaf and every detail in that scene!"
Other effects artists contributed to the Painted World as well. Syd Dutton of Illusion Arts created multiple matte paintings for an elaborate 200' pullback from Robin Williams and the massive gnarled Friedrich Tree (named for artist Casper David Friedrich, whose work inspired this grotesque growth), which reveals the entire environment to be a re-creation of a canvass that Annie (Annabella Sciorra) had painted for Chris. The only element used from the original plate was the helicopter zoom away from Williams (shot with a Primo 11:1 lens) and the hill he is standing on. Everything beyond the hill was reconstructed using photographic elements from five different location plates that were composited into one shot. All of these became references for Dutton's matte painting, which was done on a glass surface with the intent of maintaining the surface texture, style and feel of a painting.
"We re-created this landscape in 3-D based on an initial composite of all of these natural elements into this one perfect location, and then contracted Syd to repaint the surfaces of that landscape into a more perfect composition," Somers explains. "After his 17 different matte paintings were projected onto this 3-D landscape, Mass.Illusions applied its particle brushstroke system on top of that. Then we retracked everything to re-create the original helicopter move that was shot on the foreground element with Robin beside the tree."
Digital Domain visual effects supervisor Kevin Mack breathed life into the Painted World's only indigenous species — the Painted Bird — as a 3-D character animation element that was supplied to Mass.Illusions for compositing. DD handled an additional 54 shots, including reconstructing a full landscape for the sequence in which Chris flies through a field of poppies, and adding a ghostly blur to the character played by Cuba Gooding Jr. But their "main-event scene," according to Somers, "was the Autumn Tree, which blows apart as Chris connects with Annie and realizes that things are horribly wrong.
"The Autumn Tree wasn't constructed as a model, but actually grown organically using a series of algorithms in what's called an L-system. I understand from Kevin Mack that they actually had 12 pages of script to define the parameters of how the tree should grow, based on Vincent's art direction. And that was just for the form of the tree. The leaves were added as a particle system, so we could control their path dynamically when they blew off the tree. It was a huge rendering effort, and it certainly took a facility like Digital Domain to take that approach, but I think it really lent an incredible realism to the element."
Pacific Ocean Post took on 19 Painted World composites, in addition to handling the lion's share of the film's demanding workload. POP visual effects supervisor Stuart Robertson, working alongside designer/senior matte painter Deak Ferrand and supervising matte painter Rocco Gioffre, envisioned some of Dreams' most arresting images. Particularly eye-popping are the 23 shots depicting the realm of Chris's young daughter — Marie's World. This setting was inspired by a 19th-century Victorian theater with a golden staircase, populated with jugglers, jesters and dancers.
On the banks of the indoor water tank at San Francisco's Treasure Island naval base, the crew constructed an immense "stairway to heaven," which was all that existed of Marie's World. In this sole instance, Ward and Serra permitted the use of motion control on the huge crane moves orchestrated over the set. The plan was to digitally expand the environment using 3-D matte paintings exclusively, but budgetary restrictions pushed POP's artistic imaginations to finish the breathtaking environment.
"What a feat that was!" exclaims Somers. "Deak Ferrand started from scratch, creating and designing that environment in one pass. POP extended the staircase in 3-D, but the surrounding and distant environment was all 2-D matte painting, because we couldn't afford any more 3-D paintings or models. POP added a lot of warpage to the plates and matte paintings to create a sense of lens distortion and add more life to the move, so it didn't become just a backdrop. And then there were a number of elements — including hundreds of digital people that were animated and added on the stairs off in the distance, plus greenscreen actor elements, moving clouds and mists and CGI waterfalls — that really brought it to life."
Collaborating with director Vincent Ward to envisage these spellbinding vistas was no simple task, Somers admits, but she says that the enterprise was well worth the effort. "He's an amazing man, but he's not the easiest guy to work with," she says. "You have to love being pushed, because he just won't accept anything less. I really do respect him."
The remarkable imagery of What Dreams May Come is a true testament to the creative team's determination to convincingly portray paradise and damnation on celluloid. Better still, their work also represents a symbiotic synthesis between two quite distinct art forms. "One thing that filmmakers and painters have in common is that they're trying to describe the world," Ward concludes. "I would like to think that this film has actually opened another perceptual way for artists to view the world, and a completely different range of options for how to describe it. I hope that ultimately, artists will choose to work in live-action film paintings — not matte paintings — and perhaps we have initiated that." n
