Part 1:
Making Movies

Part 2:
From Idea to "Birth of the Film"

Part 3:
Planning the Project

Part 4:
The Shot Pipeline

Part 5:
Putting the Pieces Together

So then you have to composite all these pieces back together?

Mike: That’s Rob’s specialty.

Rob: Basically, I like compositing because I’m impatient! Even though my background is in 3D, I‘ve never liked waiting for long 3D renders while testing every little shader & lighting attribute. When I’m compositing I get to blend the elements and get the immediate gratification of seeing it all come together! It’s very exciting to be at the end of the pipe, and be the first to see what a finished shot looks like.

In this phase we use FrameCycler on our Macs. We primarily relied on After Effects for Arrest Assured's compositing, but now we also use Shake. We use the FrameCycler integration script to check our comps right out of Shake. It allows us to easily load and review every element. I especially appreciate the feature where a little red dot on the timeline shows me whenever I get a corrupted frame – the all-to-frequent needle-in-the-haystack of a large multi-layered sequence.

Once I have the final comp I can play back the whole thing because FrameCycler gives me the 30 frames per second I need, even at HD resolution!

So it’s been helpful to have FrameCycler on multiple platforms? 

Mike: It definitely has. We find that each platform has its strengths; as I mentioned we do most of our 3D production with Maya on our PC’s, but for compositing and editing flexibility, it’s hard to beat the Mac-combo of Shake, After Effects, and Final Cut. FrameCycler connects the pieces for us. It's a critical tool on both platforms.

We love to hear that! Once the shots were finished, then it's on to postproduction?

Rob: That's right, the final editing phase. This is the part of the process where we sometimes have to swallow our pride and admit if a shot didn’t quite work.

Mike: Once all the shots for Arrest Assured were finished (to our satisfaction) and edited together, we added the sound. Since we had already determined the timing from our original 3D Animatic early in the project, we were able to complete the sound design fairly early on. We just needed to marry it to the movie and tweak a bit.

Does that include the music?

Rob: No. Music scoring is last thing to do . We had already done a scratch track of music just to give the composer an idea of what type of music we wanted. In fact, as we speak right now (early December 2004) the composer is writing the score for the film. Once that is ready, the film will be really, truly, completely finished!

What will you do you with this film?

Rob: Well, on one level we hope that it will be a great promotional piece for our work here at Pendulum. But then there's the more personal objectives... which can only be realized at the film festivals.

Mike: Exactly... We premiered Arrest Assured at Alias’ 3December event here in San Diego. The audience response was great! Now we're starting to enter it in film festivals around the world and hope that new audiences enjoy it as much.

IRIDAS is delighted to be able to contribute to the Pendulum pipeline and the fine work that Mike, Rob, and their team are producing. No doubt, Arrest Assured is just the beginning of a long line of many beautiful and entertaining stories to come from Pendulum.

The alleyway began has a hand drawn sketch.

This is an early "painted" set used to establish mood, color and basic lighting.

This is the wireframe version used for blocking character movement.

The final shot, detailed and rendered to perfection!

Next: Image Gallery