I hope this is the right forum to post up this question!
I’m an independent Film Producer currently working on a bunch of different projects. I’m particularly interested in one project as a potential feature film. It’s based on a book which I now have the option for. I envision it as an animated film so I’m developing it with that in mind.
As you know, funding is always the tricky part with films (especially as an independent). I recently though of doing a pre-viz of the entire film, however, as a possible way to install faith in investors and give the whole thing a lift when it comes to finding distribution and financing.
I’ve come on here to ask a bit of advice and for some thoughts on the idea. What do you guys reckon the feasability of pre-visualizing a whole film are? I’m sort of looking for something along this level, give or take:
So I’m ideally wanting to use custom some character models and some custom animations because I want the pre-viz to feel cinematic and have some weight behind it (and not just be a technical marking system), but similarly I wouldn’t want to waste time on advanced textures or animating/modelling an entire crowd if it was unnecessary. It has to be watchable, but similarly it’s not supposed to imitate the real thing, so finding the balance between detail and lack of it from shot to shot is important.
The screenplay is in development but assume it’s going to be between 85-100 minutes, with about 90 being the ideal length. It is a fantasy film of sorts but it’s not quite on the level of Narnia or LOTR, certainly not full of mythical creatures or anything (most of the fantasy design would be focused on the landscape and sets). I can’t really give much more information without having a script but hopefully you get the ideas.
So, yes, as people familiar with Blender (which I’d like to use) and 3D in general I wanted to get your opinions. Would it take a massive amount of time and teams of animators, or is it something that might only take a few months with a small team or people? Naturally everything would be storyboarded and conceptualised before 3D work began. Any thoughts, ideas or comments would be appreciated, and thanks in advance for your time!
Um, yeah, for an indie film, your probably hoping for too much I think,
but that doesn’t mean its not doable.
Still, really, even on narnia, they made ‘animatics’ - comics/2d cartoon slide show like pre-viz first.
And I believe that as an indie project just sticking to animatics should be enough.
Going for crapymatics might be a rather useless/dangerous effort.
Off course this depends much on how much time you have for finishing the project
& how good your financial status for the project is.
There is some potential development money for the project, it’s not something I’m looking to do for free or without financial aid. What I mean by that is that I’m not asking for it to be done on an amateur level. There may well be enough money to put 2-4 animators in a room for a few months to work off drawn storyboards and the script.
When I say money we’re probably talking a pretty slim amount by professional animation standards; let’s say realistically enough for around 3 people to work 4-5 months at a decent wage (perhaps not a typical animators wage, but at least an ‘average’ full time wage). So, thinking of it like that, does it seem more realistic? I’m more concerned about the viability of it in terms of timeframes/amount of people needed, so that’s the information I’m looking for. Ideally a turnaround time of less than 4 months (less than 3 if possible), but I’m really just trying to get a sense of the resources needed.
There is some potential development money for the project, it’s not something I’m looking to do for free or without financial aid. What I mean by that is that I’m not asking for it to be done on an amateur level. There may well be enough money to put 2-4 animators in a room for a few months to work off drawn storyboards and the script.
When I say money we’re probably talking a pretty slim amount by professional animation standards; let’s say realistically enough for around 3 people to work 4-5 months at a decent wage (perhaps not a typical animators wage, but at least an ‘average’ full time wage). So, thinking of it like that, does it seem more realistic? I’m more concerned about the viability of it in terms of timeframes/amount of people needed, so that’s the information I’m looking for. Ideally a turnaround time of less than 4 months (less than 3 if possible), but I’m really just trying to get a sense of the resources needed.
I went to a couple of panels on pre-vis at a design convention last year, and they had some top people there. They showed that clip of that river god scene, and also what really impressed was actually the clips they showed of the pre-vis for “Wanted” (the movie with Angelina Jolie). Unfortunately I can’t seem to find any clips of that on youtube. Some things that I learned there:
They usually don’t pre-vis the whole film. Only complex scenes that would complicated/expensive to shoot. They said there’s no point in doing pre-vis of two-shots in conversation scenes for example.
Rate of animation is pretty important. For wanted, the Russian director hired a Russian animator that was super-fast. If I recall correctly, he could do about 4 minutes per day in Maya. I think he also had a team of 3-4 people as assistants. I could see if I could find my notes. I also think that Wanted specifically was an exception in that they did pre-vis the whole film.
If I can think of anything else I’ll let you know. I think that Blender could do fine for this. I believe it has actually been used for pre-vis on major movies before.
Felix is probably right that you’d be better off using storyboards and animatics for a lot of it though.
Do you have people with a lot of experience in 3D working for/with you who could
handle this task? It would probably not be feasible to do this as your first 3D work.
To put people in the frame a little, my intention with creating the feature pre-viz was more as a working model for the film to investors and distributors.
Naturally a lot of the worry for investors and distributors in investing in a project is the fear of its quality as a piece of work. A good screenplay can still be turned into an average film. By pre-vizzing the whole film my intention was effectively to create a complete working mode for the film, so that investors could get a real sense of what they were investing in.
I was going to use voiceover, sound effects and music to bring the film to life and tell the story along with the very basic but functional visuals. It was effectively a chance to give these people an entire prototype of the film. From a business perspective this would be an incredibly handy tool to have. Even if investors didn’t want to see the whole film the fact it was there and viewable would be a big comfort to them, as they’d know it was a working project they could approve at any time.
The pre-viz would naturally still be quite rough visually, but I think it’s going to be a model that’s increasingly popular for indies and new directors in years to come. I needed to gauge the feasability of putting maybe 3-4 people in a room for a few months to work from storyboard and script and do that.
Interestingly it doesn’t sound out of the question, so it’s definitely something I’m going to consider. What do you guys reckon is a feasible amount of time to produce a pre-viz of the quality suggested above? Do you think an average of of maybe 1 minute to 90 seconds sounds plausible?
One bit of warning though. In my experience with business people (even those who work in the entertainment industry), they have a lot of trouble seeing beyond what they see with their eyes. I would say that more than half of the business people who see your film will think that the finished film will look exactly like the pre-vis.
I think your time and money would be better spent putting together 1 minute of final quality animation, and previewing the full story as storyboards.
If you do decide to pre-vis the whole story, at least get quality voice actors. And before each viewing show some before and after examples of pre-vis from real movies.
Thanks for the advice Rob! Definitely good to remember. I was thinking of doing some “final footage”; a sort of trailer to accompany the pre-viz to reassure investors what they were seeing wasn’t our attempt at a finished film!
It’s actually for more distributors than investors. They’re very picky about running times, pacing, content and structure when they choose movies. Investors will usually go where there is a good route to market, but distributors are they key to unlocking that.
Thankfully I have access to some great voice actors, so there shouldn’t be a problem on that side of things. More than anything I just wanted to discuss the logistics of getting something from script to screen in a pre-viz state.
Really good to have this input though, seeing as my knowledge of computer animation is virtually zero!
for previz you need good camera properties and management tools like a switcher. The camera switcher script in blender is quite basic to what you can find for maya.
Motion Builder is good too for previz and the camera switcher is excellent. I hope blender has some better camera properties and tools someday.
I absolutely agree with Rob, and was going to say something similar. I think that showing a feature-length pre-vis-quality animation to investors could backfire in a big way. You would probably lose more investors than gain them. These are probably all going to be busy people, and they will probably run out of the room before watching 90 minutes of pre-vis animation like the youtube clips you included. That stuff is neat to us as 3d animation enthusiasts and filmmakers but it’s probably like rubbing sandpaper on the eyes for business people. At best they just won’t get it.
Rob has the right idea: Use your time and resources to make the best possible short clip you could possibly make, with the highest quality your budget will allow, and also using a very good cinematic scene from the movie. You want to blow people’s minds or at least leave them impressed and wanting to see more. It’s easier for people (especially laymen) to imagine something great that’s 1-5 minutes long multiplied to 90 minutes than something mediocre that’s 90 minutes long raised several levels of magnitude in quality. This will also be good practice for you and your crew to see what effort is required per minute so you can extrapolate to 90 minutes.
I hope you see some of the reasoning behind this. I think it all boils down to this - pre-vis is best left as just that: a visualization tool for the filmmakers and creatives. For investors, you want to have a great short preview/trailer. As far as distributors, I think it’s still applicable. Do you know for sure that they would be willing to look at a “trial run” so to speak, and that you wouldn’t close doors by showing something that’s just a proxy for the finished product?
You know what, I get a bit carried away sometimes when I’m trying to give people advice. Just take what I wrote in my previous post with a grain of salt. It doesn’t even have anything to do with what you asked originally. It was just my opinion, but you know your own situation better than anyone else. You know what they say about advice and opinions anyway. Cheers!
I also agree with the advise of not showing a previs as a selling tool to investors. That is a bad idea. You would be in better position if you prepared a portfolio with nice representations of some of key scenes in your film plus a good quality sequence. If you are not experienced in animation, I would advise against attempt it with animation tools. Instead, take a camera and actors and shoot the sequence.
Making a previs like you pointed to takes a lot of time. Time to create the environments and the characters and minimally texture, rig and light them is non negligible. Assume one week per character especially if you want then good enough to use as sales pitch. For the environments, it is hard to say because I don’t know those environments but the more different environments there are, the more time it takes. Then time to animate. Assume no more than one minute of animation per character per animator per day for an experienced animator for the type of quality you showed. At this rate, you use what you get and don’t count on revising the shots too much. Though it does not seem like you have the budgets to hire a team of well experienced animator so if you use hobby animators, expect much much less throughput than 1 min of animation a day.
