Following on from our recent story in the latest issue of Smoke & Mirrors about The Laundry Warrior, which is currently in post-production in New Zealand, we talk to Dale Duguid, the creative director for Photon, about the effects created for the movie.
The Laundry Warrior tells the tale of Yang (Dong-Gun), the world’s greatest swordsman, who betrays his clan to save his last enemy, before escaping to the West.
Living in hiding as a laundryman in a dying gold rush town, he befriends a band of unemployed carnival players, the fiery young Lynne (Kate Bosworth) and Ron (Geoffrey Rush), the town drunk with a buried past.
Yang attempts to put his violent past behind him, but is forced to unsheath his sword to defend Lynne from a vicious gang led by Colonel (Danny Huston), leading to an epic final battle in which Yang’s love for Lynne and loyalty to his new friends are tested as his past and present collide.
SM: How did Photon first get involved with this movie?
DD: When I became alerted that the production was considering shooting in New Zealand, I discussed the possibility of working on it with my colleague, Murray Francis. Murray and I had just both shared a producing credit on an animated production completed through Photon Animation – a subsidiary of Photon NZFX. As it turned out, Murray eventually became the line producer for The Laundry Warrior, but at the time, this had not been formalised yet.
I called Jason Piccioni, the film’s visual effects supervisor, and agreed to meet him in Wellington. Once I read the screenplay, my commercially-driven curiosity for more work for Photon morphed into great creative enthusiasm for the production itself. I observed the same feeling in the crew. It truly is a masterful and very innovative screenplay, matched by the ambitious 300 style production process as envisioned by Jason.
There were a lot of technology considerations to take into account for this type of effects-heavy production, so I took Photon’s head of IT, NIcky Ladas, with me to that meeting, where we also met some of the key players, including the director and DOP.
The meeting must have gone well because soon after, we were embroiled in the process of bidding for vast numbers of shots that Jason and VFX Producer Arnon Manor had broken down from the script and director briefings.
Since it was a New Zealand based production, it made sense to create a sizeable chunk of the visual effects in New Zealand. All of the live action components and studio work were also done there too, and it was the base for Barrie Osborne – the Executive Producer.
A couple of overseas vendors are also involved but it was great to see the significant effects load being handled by Photon in NZ. Had we used our Australian facility to do the work I feel it would have added just another dimension of complexity to the already-multinational VFX process. Ultimately, that kind of decision falls to the producers. It was certainly the producer’s preference that Photon work should be handled by its Auckland facility rather than our Australian studio.
SM: Were you involved closely with pre-production and was Photon involved much on set?
DD: As a vendor, we were largely at arms length from the day to day of the film’s preproduction and production. This was handled more by the films VFX supervisor and VFX producer. Our involvement in pre was mainly limited to a series of visual effects cost estimations for the work that Photon would do.
During production, our own VFX on-set supervisor, Ben Ambrose, embarked on some tests and attended all filming that related to the work Photon would be involved with. Ben worked alongside Jason’s supervisor to draw attention and log issues that were of interest to Photon.
Having firsthand insight into the nature of the material is invaluable of course. Ben’s role, which has continued on into post production, provides a continuity of insight into the raw material as well as the working relationship with Jason.
Laundry Warrior represented by far the largest body of feature film visual effects work handled by our Auckland facility and so we wasted no time during pre in customising and bedding down our 2K pipeline. The NZ technical leads, headed by Oyvind Nostdal, and the IT department supplemented the existing pipeline with some quite esoteric softwares and capabilities – particularly in the Maya 3D pipe – to build on the existing efficiencies and automations.
Once production of visual effects-proper commenced shortly into the post production period of the film, our VFX producer Shereena van de Berkt, who had handled a much larger scope of effects work for Photon on Superman Returns, took over the total team management and introduced further refinements into the management systems and pipeline.
Most of the changes wrought by Shereena were evolutionary and drawed on proven, robust systems she had evolved and used in Australia. In the past, there has been a healthy rivalry between our two IT locations, but at the end of the day, our NZ IT team, headed by Nicky, has met Shereena’s objective of evolving an admin. and production pipeline combo that draws on the best of both Photons.
SM: How challenging was it creating the effects throughout the film?
DD: The overall look of the film constantly evolved throughout production. As far as I can tell, the director adjusted his vision for the film’s finished look in response to emerging material, and so robustness (effects wise) needed to be built into the filmed material so that some latitude remained to deliver the director the optimum final look during post. Planning that complex and evolving acquisition process fell to Jason and Arnon.
SM: Did you have any direct contact with the director?
DD: As is often the case on a multi-vendor effects solution, operational protocol decreed that our primary contact was with the films VFXS and VFXP (Jason & Arnon) who intercepted and filtered all inbound and outbound directorial dialogue. There are advantages in this protocol of course: The director does not get ‘pecked to death’ by hyperactive vendors and a single, unifying approach to all effects in the movie can be maintained by the productions key VFX crew. Our questions were always addressed by Jason and Arnon on a timely basis, which is astonishing given the huge demands placed on their time.