People, Pixels and Production

We Own the Night

Great interview at studiodaily.com with James Gray, writer and director of the film We Own the Night. It’s about how he worked with Digital Domain to add pouring rain in a complex car chase shot *entirely on a sunny day*.

The best tidbit:

What was your relationship with the guys at Digital Domain?

Basically, what you do — I don’t know how familiar you are with this crap — they bring you in there, and you have a little bell and you ding it when the shot is done. You go ding!. And everyone applauds. There were 103 shots in the sequence. The first attempt I see, I go, “That’s terrible.” And I was really depressed. You give them notes. “Go back and do this, this, and this to it.” Sometimes you don’t know why it doesn’t look right. You just know it looks phony. So they do another version. They keep adding elements, subtracting elements, doing this and doing that. Finally they hit it — version 36 is the one you go with, and you go ding! and everyone claps. That’s the process. And you have to do this with every shot in the sequence.

…I said, “That’s the look of the rain that I want.” And you saw all of them go, “[Long pause] … OK.” Because they knew the technical challenge would be huge. It wasn’t just rain they had to add. They had to add an intermittent blurring effect that would mimic the effect of the wipers. They were not happy with me about that. Apparently it drove them quite crazy.

You can read the rest at www.studiodaily.com.