All photos courtesy of Tippett Studio
You might call Phil Tippett the granddaddy of special effects for cinema. A longtime advocate for claymation, stop-motion, and other analog techniques, the Oscar-winning visual effects producer is the brilliant mind behind illusions like the holo-chess scene in Star Wars, AT-AT walkers in The Empire Strikes Back, and the animated sequences in Robocop. Heâs also internet-famous for his role as âDinosaur Supervisorâ in Jurassic Park, and though his involvement in Spielbergâs 1994 dino flick spawned an enduring meme, it also marked Tippett's first exposure to realistic CGI.âSilent film to sound, black-and-white to color, TV coming in and changing everythingâfrom the beginning, technology has changed and will always change. But what was really cool about working with George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, and Paul Verhoeven was that it was a much more open kind of creative situation," Tippett tells The Creators Project. "I prefer working on stuff where no one knows what the hell's going on and you're really free. Thatâs what drew me to working with VR: it was the Wild West.âMad God, a one-minute VR film produced in partnership with WeVR, is both the next technological jump in Tippettâs career, as well as a continuation of the dark, dystopian sci-fi short film series he's been working on since the early 90s. Mad God was initially nothing more than a few scenes shot on 35mm, depicting a handmade world filled with monsters, mad scientists, and âshit menââsinewy humanoids made of metal skeletons and hair from Tippettâs cat.âAbout six years ago, I saw some old footage from Mad God and asked Phil, âWhy is this not happening? Can we try to shoot it using digital cameras?ââ VFX Supervisor Chris Morley says. âPhil gave us the go-ahead, so we built a staircase set and shot going down it. You could tell that it sparked something in Phil, because he started helping. We've been working on the first episodes of Mad God, and now this VR reboot, ever since.âMike Breymann of Kaleidoscope VR was the first to suggest converting Mad God to VR. With Tippett on board, they partnered with WeVR, a Venice, CA-based production company founded by Anthony Batt, Scott Yara, and Neville Spiteri, to bring it to life. WeVR creates story-driven VR experiences, pairing original creative voices, like Reggie Watts, Janicza Bravo, Jon Favreau, and the Gregory Brothers, with advances in VR technology. Their process focuses on âgetting the first draft of an idea down, then shaping it into a VR story worth telling,â according to Batt.âOnce we start to ask, Why would I want to be in that specific scene?, we try to capture the original idea and feeling,â Batt explains. âIf you look at Janicza Bravo's piece, [Hard World for Small Things], she's an independent filmmaker and creative person, but she didn't fully know how to think about being immersed in a VR story. So the process became having her write the story how she felt comfortable, and then we contemplated the conversations and nuances that she wanted wrapped around you, the viewer.âTo translate Mad God to VR, Tippett and his team similarly dove into ways to condense their story into a one-minute tale. They landed on a claustrophobic, 360-degree view of a hellish landscape, allowing the visitor to stand among the shit men as they answer to a creature called the She-It, before all comes to a crashing end. For Tippett, sound was a key aspect in guiding the viewerâs attention, replacing traditional transitions and cuts.âI conceived of the action simultaneously as sound and picture and drew up a series of storyboards that marked out cardinal directionsâNorth, South, Southwest, and so forth,â Tippett says. âFor each quadrant, I then did a set of boards that timed out exactly to what happens in every second of the choreography. That's pretty much how we laid out the whole thing.âAs Tippett, Morley, and a team of animatorsâincluding Tom Gibbons and Chuck Dukeâworked on realizing this dark, fantastical world, they honed in on a key challenge. âThe initial idea was to have a 360-degree set with trap doors all around and have each frame be animated. That would've been 1,800 frames of animation. You know, Phil did that when he was like 30 years old on the AT-AT walkers in Star Wars, but us nowâweâre not gonna be able to handle that anymore,â Batt says.âTo get around that problem, we shot 1,500 frames of the shit men on green screen sound stages, based on action cues that Phil described,â he continues. âThen, we used compositing software to lay them into a separately-shot world. It was a hybrid approach, but we're not âpureâ in any sense of the word. We do whatever we have to, to make the best image, but it was so cool to use old-fashioned techniques with new technology.âThe team also shrunk the distance between the left and right eye of the VR camera in post, sizing down from a humanâs distance to that of the shit men, attaining the scale needed to sell the filmâs reality. Itâs just one subtle example of the newly-possible immersion afforded by VR, and based on the success of Tippettâs collaboration, Batt envisions more and more traditional filmmakers dabbling in the new technology, changing their cinematic vocabulary as the medium becomes increasingly interactive.I think that, in the case of filmmakers whoâve developed certain techniques that are âtheir thing,â theyâll learn that in VR, there are all sorts of subtleties that can be used instead to create a moment,â Batt says. âSo if youâve got your Kubricks and Hitchcocks starting today, they wonât be using any âlong takes.â Theyâll want to take you into a room and let you get real uncomfortable, until you realize that the environment is responding to you when you move, just like real life.âTo experience Mad God in VR, visit the WeVR website and download the Transport app. For more information on Tippett Studio, visit their website.Related:This Guy Just Spent 48 Hour in Virtual RealityScared of Heights? This VR Experience Is Definitely Not For YouCan Virtual Reality Help Us Better Understand Dying?
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