Brent Yontz, producer and DP of ‘Nanuq,’ speaks with us about his 18-minute live action/stop motion animation film. The stop motion portion of the film was directed by Jill Jones and photographed in Los Angeles at Bix Pix Entertainment Studios. The film is just beginning the festival circuit. Brent gives us a great in-depth technical interview.
How did DSM help in the project?
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- From a cinematographer’s standpoint, Dragon’s digital densitometer was a crucial tool throughout the process of Nanuq. Because so much of the stop motion was photographed in a monotone wash of blue moonlight, the general process of lighting was similar to that of lighting for black and white, placing heavy emphasis on the grayscale values of each shot. I would light primarily by eye and with my Sekonic light meter, then tweak things to fall nicely into the software’s grayscale values to place my highlights, midtones and shadows.
The live action was photographed on 35mm Kodak Vision 3 5219 on a Panavision G with Super Speed lenses, and Super 16mm Kodak Vision 2 7205 on an Aaton XTR Plus in 1.85:1. For the stop motion, we photographed on a Canon Rebel XSi in RAW 4272 x 1788 2.39:1. Shooting in RAW provided extended latitude in the highlight regions of the digital sensor that would otherwise be clipped in JPEGs. This also provided cleaner keys and compositing with the additional information, as well as provided durable archiving capabilities when converting the RAW data to DNG files. Digital matte paintings and compositing were achieved in Adobe After Effects in the native 4272 x 1788 resolution and converted to DPX sequences for a possible 35mm film-out and down converted to 1920 x 804 for HD distribution.
Motion control camera moves were achieved with two rigs, one system built by Dick Kaneshiro that ran on Kuper Controls allowing X,Y,Z-axis and pan and tilt camera movements, and one manual 4′ slider that provided movements on single axis camera moves.
Ashley Arechiga, Nanuq animator, on Dragon Stop Motion features she appreciates:
- Dragon Stop Motion helped us so much through the entire process. It aided us in planning all our shots from camera moves to track reading. The cinematography tool was most helpful in making sure we consistently carried the director’s vision through every frame of animation. We especially enjoyed the toggle and short play features when working with the bigger puppets in creating an illusion of depth…and making them look like they’re dancing. The layout and general accessibility of the program made it especially efficient when we had multiple people working on one shot.
Beautful and dynamic work, team!
Here is a visual effects breakdown video and some production shots:
