The Industry Interviews
Rich Holleworth is Performance Capture Lead at Deep Silver Dambuster Studios. He was the CTO and Co-Founder of The Imaginarium Studios. He has been involved in capturing performances among others for Star Wars: Force Awakens, Avengers: Age of Ultron and Godzilla as well as being involved in the motion capture animation of the classic game Goldeneye.
Hi Rich we are going to start off by asking you to tell us about a visual shot that sticks with you?
Lex nearly falls - Jurassic Park (1993)
It's starting to show its age, and since I've been in the industry I look at it more critically, but this is one of the defining moments of CGI. Not for the dinosaur, but for the digital replacement of the stunt woman's face (and it's reflection). It's so subtle I bet you didn't notice :)
Could you describe a typical day for you?
Heading an internal MoCap studio for a games company, I have two typical days.
On a shoot at our studio I get on site at about 07h30 and set up and calibrate the MoCap system, other team members start arriving over the next half hour. At 08h00 the actors arrive and some of the team get them into costume and attach the markers. I'll also setup the Motionbuilder realtime system with the environment and props we require for the shoot. From 08h00 the actors are brought in for a ROM, the at 09h00 we turn over to the client - in this case our cinematic director. The director will have rehearsed the scene with the actors the week before, but it takes some refinement, and the realtime helps a lot. If one if the actors is playing a creature (like Gollum, or an Ape) then realtime is essential so they can see how their performance looks. I often act as 1st AD. Which is the communication channel between the director and the technical team. When I see the director and actors are ready to record I will get the team to do final checks and rectify any issues (a marker has fallen off, the actor is holding a prop upside down, realtime has crashed) or communicate them to the director. ADing sometimes requires odd tasks, such as being a door for an actor to barge against, or catching a prop weapon they might drop.
We work through the day's shooting schedule till 18h00 when we get the actors out of costume, sort the markers for the next day, and start a transfer of the data.
We shoot about 50 Days a year on a well funded internal project.
On an "office" day, the team arrives around 9am and we all gather for a "standup" at 09h30 - this is a practice borrowed from software development: All the team members summarize what they did yesterday, what they intend to do today, and any 'blockages' they are aware of that might stop them completing the task. Because we do this as a group, if someone hears a problem they could help with, they can chip in, and you can ask someone with expertise to help you. After this everyone returns to their tasks. At 14h00 the leads gather in a viewing room - think a rather up market home cinema - and animators will come in and present their work and receive feedback and advice. after this tasks are setup and assigned for the next day as needed.
What has been the most challenging project you've worked on?
It would be a close fight between "The Force Awakens", and "Mowgli". While Star Wars is more culturally important, and the original trilogy had a massive effect on modern SFX and VFX... and it could be argued it's a much better film the Mowgli, but what we actually did on Force Awakens wasn't groundbreaking. However on Mowgli, we created some of the largest MoCap volumes in Europe, and shot with MoCap Actors interacting with Live Action Actors. This was the first shoot of it's kind in Europe, and the first Active Marker shoot in Europe. We were absolutely at the pinnacle of our technology, and achieved it on a fraction of the budget WETA and ILM could throw at the problem. Also walking into a real living jungle - with real live trees, ferns, and so on was just amazing.
What are the current standout trends within your area?
Increasing and extensive use of the Unreal Game Engine in VFX Contexts. At Imaginarium we were pioneering the use of Games Engines in our Realtime system, and with Games Clients this was a major Boon, you can really see the stunt performer's puppeteering your game assets in realtime in the engine, as it will look for the player at home. We were doing this in 2012, a year before ILM's project. There's a lot of noise about it now:
https://variety.com/2019/biz/features/video-game-engines-visual-effects-real-time-1203214992/
https://www.cartoonbrew.com/tools/real-time-rendering-changing-vfx-animation-production-153091.html
What would be your number one tip for those starting out in industry?
Specialize. You need to have a broad knowledge to understand where your specialization slots into the whole pipeline, but a specialization is really helpful. It allows you to focus your own efforts and research on one field.
Projects. Do small projects in your own time. Even if you show no one, these keep your talents sharp and build problem solving skills.