TH: What was most critical for optimizing camera setups and set construction? I animated a master scene with his action in mind so we could place cameras and give the editors coverage options as they put an edit together to pitch. When it came to choreographing the action in the last bit of the film, we spoke with the stunt coordinator about his ideas for what would be most entertaining and attainable. We discussed the director's vision and which details would best be done in postvis or in finals. HF: I worked closely with Phil every day. This allowed viewers screening the film to have a clearer picture of what the director and editor had in mind, and helped ILM get a jump on final effects having cameras and action that had been established in many of the shots. HF: The goal for postvis was to help editorial fill in CG environment elements and Tao Tei creatures according to the director's vision prior to final visual effects creation.
A lot of the previs we did was exploratory, trying different ideas Zhang Yimou wanted to realize through his storytelling. PS: The main goal of the previs our team created was to help inform various departments of the vision the director wanted to achieve on set and through visual effects. TH: What was the goal for creating the previs, postvis and techvis? Describe your workflow. Previs was used to convey the vision for key scenes and especially the film’s three main battles. The Third Floor was embedded with production in Beijing to visualize ideas and action for ‘The Great Wall’ and director Zhang Yimou. He had a style he leaned towards, which made it easier to anticipate the kind of shot he was asking for, so we were able to start in the right ballpark and tweak it from there. At times, he would draw the pattern that he was describing. Heather Flynn: Zhang Yimou was very expressive - even just from his gestures and speech, I could get a good idea of what he was saying before the interpreter relayed the message. We sat together in the previs office and, although we spoke through translators, he described in animated detail what he was looking for in our previs. Patrick Smith: I had the distinct pleasure of working with Zhang Yimou face-to-face in Beijing at the production studio.
Trevor Hogg: How did Zhang Yimou articulate what he was looking for? Overseeing The Third Floor’s previs and postvis teams were previs supervisor Patrick Smith and postvis supervisor Heather Flynn. The need to visualize and plan a number of epic battle sequences between a 12th century army and an invading swarm of ravenous mythical creatures led internationally acclaimed filmmaker Zhang Yimou ( Hero) to hire The Third Floor for previs, postvis and techvis on the world’s first big budget VFX-driven Chinese – U.S. Visualization and artist portrait images courtesy of The Third Floor, Inc. ‘The Great Wall.’ All film and visualization images © Universal Pictures.