There are two types of visual effects: the in-your-face explosions and monsters and aliens for some muscle-bound actor to blast, and the low-key, the subtle, the kind you can’t pick out at all.
This summer, someone at the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences saw something in the second category—something that most viewers don’t usually see—in the HBO series John Adams. What followed was an Emmy nomination for CafeFX and visual effects supervisor Jeff Goldman, as well as other visual effects supervisors and producers with the company, Digital Bucket, and HBO.
Goldman’s job is to make sure his work doesn’t get noticed, so it’s sort of bittersweet that it did. He likes being a behind-the-scenes guy.
“I like the little things you don’t really know took place,” he said. “I guess, deep in the back of my mind, it’s like, ‘Heh, heh, you don’t know what we did.’”
John Adams required a crew of about 50 or 60 people working for about nine months. Two other companies also worked on visual effects for the project. Together, they added ships in the background of scenes, extended buildings, and multiplied crowds. The end result is a production that’s closer to the director’s vision than what was originally shot.
“Audience members aren’t supposed to go, ‘Oooh, that’s a neat special effect,’” Goldman said. “So a lot of what we do is try to be is transparent.”
Adapted from the Pulitzer Prize-winning book by David McCullough, the seven-part miniseries that aired in March recounts Adams’ role in the Continental Congress, his life as an ambassador in Paris and London, and his influence over the early American Republic.
CafeFX created virtual set extensions and used matte paintings and 3-D visual effects to give the movie an historic feel. The team was careful to balance artistic vision, visual effects capability, and historical accuracy while working on the project.
“This show was fun because it’s a lot of what our guys do really well,” Goldman said.
The project was also a departure because CafeFX usually focuses on feature films, he said.
Goldman and his team used old maps, paintings, and a Paul Revere etching of the Boston Massacre to recreate historic architecture in depicting Boston of the 1770s and scenes of a blockade of British ships across Boston Harbor. Because of budget constraints, most of the sets only consisted of the first level of buildings. CafeFX digitally recreated everything above the second story, and even added some computer-generated buildings.
The team also had to conduct some of its own historical research. Goldman said that reference material was often scarce. For one scene, Goldman, a Boston native, used old maps of pre-landfill Boston detailing all of the tiny islands in Boston Harbor to accurately portray the fleet of British ships that closed the port.
In addition to historical accuracy, visual effects were sometimes needed because the filming wasn’t fulfilling the filmmaker’s vision of a scene. CafeFX added a fleet of ships in Boston Harbor, though historically there were only about a dozen or so.
“Sometimes historical accuracy gives way to drama, but we try to remain as accurate as possible,” Goldman said.
Other times, convenience or budget constraints dictate visual effects.
In one scene, because filming couldn’t happen in England, they decided to shoot green screens in Budapest. Goldman’s team had to recreate the inside of St. James Palace. During the shoot, the entire room was green screened—with the exception of a flight of stairs. The final, enhanced version shows the same actors climbing the same staircase in a richly decorated room, befitting a palace.
Visual effects are often more cost effective than conventional filming methods, not to mention less effort for filmmakers.
“It really allows filmmakers to take advantage of locations they wouldn’t otherwise have access to,” Goldman said.
And sometimes, visual effects are used for what Goldman called “fix-it” work.
For instance, filming happened in Grosvenor Square in London in the spring, but the scene called for a winter look, so CafeFX made the square cold and frosty.
Watching the before and after shots of John Adams is a little like discovering the secret behind a magic trick. You really want to know how the illusion works, but once you do, the magic is gone.
Goldman obviously isn’t jaded by this. A seemingly practical guy, dressed in a plain gray T-shirt, he sits in the CafeFX conference room, enthusiastically flipping through a demo CD of his team’s work on John Adams. He highlights the enhanced scenes, pointing out where a crowd was digitally doubled, where a nonexistent rooftop appeared, or where a camera was removed. No nuance was sacred, no detail off limits.
Many of the effects are so seamless, they are unnoticeable without the before and after. That’s Goldman’s goal, and, since he achieved it, he opened his bag of tricks and began to explain not only what was done but how it was done.
“A lot of what we do is creative problem solving,” he said.
Visual effects artists will use techniques such as matte painting to enhance scenes, and rotoscoping and element shots to accomplish the vision. Rotoscoping allows the visual effects artists to add something to the background when a green screen wasn’t used. It’s essentially tracing an element cutting it out, adding the desired image, and then pasting the original image back into the scene. It’s a process that allows visual effects personnel to create more intricate detail, but it also takes more time and costs more.
If a fleet of ships is added to a scene, there are logically going to be people on those ships working on the deck. Element shots consist of generic shots of people doing things—like picking up a rope or simply walking—which are fitted into the scene.
The challenge lies in matching the lighting in the existing element shot with the lighting in the film or digitally created shot.
By using a 3-D character rather than someone filmed and then placed in the scene, CafeFX can match any type of lighting.
“We use every trick in the book,” Goldman said.
So how much of visual effects work is creativity and how much is straightforward production work?
“There are artists and production people. Artists only have to answer to themselves, and production people are told what to do,” Goldman explained.
He said that his job falls somewhere in the middle: “We have to use our creativity to interpret and fulfill someone else’s vision. For instance, if someone says the water has to be stormy, well, what’s stormy?”
While everyone may not agree on the answer to that question, Goldman has his own ideas. In fact, reality comes into play in most of the visual effects he works on—though most people don’t realize it.
“Sometimes when things are created digitally, people question the integrity of all of it,” Goldman said.
In order to make a visual effect believable, it needs to have as many aspects of reality as possible.
“All visual effects artists have to kind of know what’s reality,” Goldman said. “Someone can look out the window and say, ‘Oh, it’s sunny,’ but we know exactly how the sun glints off of something and we have that in the back of our mind.”
Right now, the other thing in the back of Goldman’s mind is the Emmys, which take place on Sept. 21. Though the award ceremony is only a few days away, Goldman is busy wrapping up another project, and has little time to fret over a possible win—though, he admits, “HBO usually cleans up on Emmy nominations.”
But even during his time to shine, Goldman hopes to remain invisible, because this is one of the few instances when it’s a bigger compliment for people not to notice the work being honored.
“Hopefully, if we did our jobs well, the audience won’t know what we did,” Goldman said.
Arts Editor Shelly Cone can be reached at scone@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Sep 11-18, 2008.