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Working in 3D
Bursting with Olympian deities, sweeping battles and breathtaking vistas, Immortals demanded a larger-than-life production style. From its inception, the film's creators knew that to bring the dynamic story fully to life, it would have to be a 3-D movie--and not just an ordinary 3D movie. "We wanted to make the best 3-D movie possible," says Ken Halsbend, executive in charge of production for Relativity Media. "What's new and unique about this particular picture is that we succeeded in creating an artistic looking 3-D movie. Everything from sets to costumes was designed for the ultimate 3-D experience. We used the technology better this time, more painstakingly and artistically than it has been used before."
For Tarsem Singh, the technology proved an organic extension of the unique visual style he has developed over an award-winning career as a commercial and feature film director. "The story could have been told in many different ways," says Singh. "But my aesthetic really lends itself to 3-D. My shots tend toward tableaux and I normally shoot longer masters, both of which are very effective in 3-D. I don't do a lot of fast cutting or extreme close ups, which don't work well in this format. So in the end, I didn't have to adapt my vision for 3-D; it was a perfect fit."
Shooting the film using conventional 2-D cameras and creating the 3-D effects in postproduction gave Singh more control of the depth and dynamic range than would have been possible shooting in 3-D. Singh worked with senior stereographer David Stump of 3DCG to develop a detailed depth budget and depth script that helped ensured the look of the picture conformed to the director's vision. "Tarsem's input was the basis for everything we did," Stump says. "He asked us to give characters a sense of volume and form. The key word was sculpture. We wanted the characters to look like they were really right there in front of you as opposed to on a screen."
Although the 3-D effects were added after shooting wrapped, the look of the final product informed choices throughout the production process. "We tailored the way we shot the movie to maximize the effects," says Tucker Tooley of Relativity Media. "We designed our foreground and background elements in a way that optimizes the dimensionalization process."
"There are lots of things you can do to help the 3-D process when you're shooting in 2D," adds Stump. "There are certain kinds of shots in the filmmaking lexicon that just don't do well in 3-D. Very fast pans tend to collapse or change depth depending on which direction you pan. Because of the planning that went into the editing and action on screen, I think we succeeded in making a very fast-paced 3-D movie."
The dimensionalization process can be slow and arduous, Stump acknowledges, but it brings big payoffs in the final product. "It took months and months of work. But creating stereoscopic 3D content in postproduction gave us more control. We could place anything anywhere we wanted. In fact, we not only could, we had to, because nothing lands in the right place accidentally."
The finished film has depth and volume never before seen on screen, according to Halsbend. "Up until now, most 3-D has been very shallow. We get to a whole different level. The volume around the characters is unprecedented. In earlier films, the characters often look like cardboard cutouts. Our lead characters really maintained their beauty. Tarsem's work is all about beautiful shots, tableaux and composition. He wanted to make sure that he would get that kind of detail."
The movie's groundbreaking look was executed by Prime Focus, the FX house that had previously dimensionalized such 3-D blockbusters as Star Wars: Episode One - The Phantom Menace and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2. "Tarsem looked at every kind of 3-D process out there," says Halsbend. "We reviewed lots of different tests to determine how we could get the kind of volume in the characters' faces. Prime Focus had the best results for what we were looking for. They had the manpower, they'd done a lot of shows and they had a huge team in India to address all the shots and work on all the material. They could take 3-D to the next level."
With 4,000 artists and technicians spread across three continents, Prime Focus could dedicate significant resources to realizing Singh's ambitious vision. "The great challenge in every movie is really adapting an entire team of artists to meet the needs of that director," says Prime Focus marketing executive Bobby Jaffee. "What George Lucas or Michael Bay want for their movies has nothing to do with what Tarsem Singh wants."
But as Singh anticipated, 3-D ultimately suited his inspired visuals perfectly. "It was a quite a benchmark we had to reach," says Merzin Tavaria, co-founder and chief creative director of Prime Focus. "Some of the detailing of the sequences, particularly the Titan sequences, was very challenging. In the end, we were very happy with the product and that we were able help Tarsem achieve his vision.
"At every interval we would send shots to him and confer on how he would like to shape it in 3-D," Tavaria explains. "We worked with the depth of each image, foreground to background, and how it could be positioned in 3-D. That enabled us to push quality to an extremely high level."
Recent advances in technology, including Prime Focus' proprietary View-D software, allowed Singh the flexibility to create visuals unlike any that have been seen before. "You can see the difference immediately," says the director. "We took the time and put in the planning to do it properly. Some people are calling this a game-changer."
"Tarsem has created an entirely new world," says Tooley. "With an environment that the audience hasn't seen, the more encompassing you make it, the more you integrate the audience into the experience, the better it is. The 3D technology gave us an amazing opportunity to do that."
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Speed
Singh's immortal heroes, the gods and goddesses of Mount Olympus, are a world apart from their human counterparts in beauty, strength and speed. The director envisioned them as idealized, larger-than-life creatures. "In the end, the gods have very little wardrobe," says Singh. "They had to be fit. That had to be a factor in casting."
Some of their seemingly super-human abilities are the result of Singh's innovative use of the camera. "I wanted to take them to another level," says Singh. "So during the battle scenes, the gods move much faster than the humans, which adds to the action. All our fights are quite different. There are humans against humans, which take place in real time. And when gods go up against gods, their speed is relative to each other, so it still appears to be real time. But when gods go up against humans, humans are like putty. They're frozen."
And at times, all three types of battle are taking place simultaneously. "There are a couple of sections where all the fighting sequences are differently done," Singh says. "I think it's pretty magical."
Making the director's brainstorm into reality took patience and persistence. "We shot the whole thing from the gods' perspective," he says. "Then we then shot the whole thing again from the human point of view. We shot something like four days of plates to make it right for each perspective. The humans practically freeze, while the gods are like lightning. It's not a fair fight."
Galvin explains that the magic was created by changing the camera speed. "Five hundred frames is starting to really slow things down and if you up that to a thousand, sometimes even in simple movements people make can look static," says Galvin. "It's an unreal speed, you're entering a different dimension in your head when you're going into those speeds because you see things. Most people are familiar with high speed from sports events. When you slow things down, it's quite different."
Canton finds the "god speed" effect an excellent example of the way the special effects have been woven throughout the film to become part of the story and storytelling. "Seeing the gods moving at hyperspeed and the humans are moving in slow motion is more than just an effect," he says. "No one's ever attempted to manipulate time for two different characters in the same movie. It's not a movie; it's an experience. It's a life-changing event, like Star Wars was when we all saw it for the first time when we were six years old."
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The Stunts
Pulling off the scope, quantity and sheer daredevilry of the ambitious battles of Immortals required an army of fight choreographers, trainers and stunt people trained in everything from swordsmanship to karate. Choreography began six months in advance of shooting to make it as gritty, explosive and dangerous looking as possible.
At the outset, Singh decided he wanted the fight scenes to have a more realistic, less stylized feel than is typical of many contemporary films. "I wanted actual physical fighting with the weapons that they have. Some of it was done with wires, but there's just no substitute for physical combat. You can feel the impact."
The filmmakers brought in Artie Malesci, who worked on Miami Vice, some of the Transporter films and television's "Burn Notice," as stunt coordinator. A core group of 13 fighters from Montreal trained and rehearsed for three months so when the filmmakers got on the set, all the stunts were ready to go.
The result is non-stop, beginning-to-end action, says Malesci. "We taped everything we did in advance for Tarsem to view. He'd say yes or no, and tweak it his way. All the time we were choreographing, we were also training the cast to get them prepared. The stunt people trained all day, five days a week. They really worked hard. If their bodies weren't right, they didn't have a job."
For Henry Cavill, intense physical training started six months prior to shooting. "When I met Henry, he was fit," says Singh. "But as I told him, it can't be a six-pack. You've got to come with an eight-pack. There has to be no body fat, because I don't have too many clothes for you to wear. He put himself through an incredible regime. I took one look at him and I knew that he had embraced the role."
Cavill was given what he calls "certain briefs for training" and asked to supply photographic evidence of his progress. "When we got our final brief of what they wanted me to look like, we just trained and trained and trained. It was eight hours a day in the gym, five days a week."
All that training paid off, according to Pinto. "Tarsem told me that the actors were undergoing this transformation, that their bodies were going to be really ripped," says Pinto. "But until I met Henry for the first time, I had no idea that that this was what he meant. He looked god-like."
"I have never seen anybody in such a great shape," agrees Nunnari. "He dedicated months to sculpting his body."
The training also gave Cavill an array of skills to use in combat. "Every day was something new, so in the end, we had a big tool box to work with," he notes. "If anything was thrown at me on the day, which it was, I could go into my tool box and pick out the right stuff."
Still, he is mindful to say that the battle scenes could not have been accomplished without the expert stunt team. "They were mind-blowingly good. Some of the fight choreography was so complex and so difficult, and I had to get it exactly right every time because a lot of it was done in one continuous shot and if anyone messed up anything, we would have had to do it again. But we never did."
Theseus's final faceoff with King Hyperion was his most difficult scene, says Cavill, because it is so realistic. "The fight is brutal and messy. These are two exhausted, desperate men who want to tear each other's throats out. It's a non-stylized, painful experience in a very small space and they're throwing each other against the walls and hitting each other with anything they can get their hands on. It's the human representation of the conflict between the gods and the Titans. There's some jujitsu, some Greco-Roman grappling, but mostly it's two guys kicking the crap out of each other."
Singh says he intentionally shot this climactic scene in a confined area. "If we had people fighting outside in the open, that would have been very difficult for me," explains the director. "I like tighter places, so I created what I would call a bottleneck. We have this tunnel, and outside of it is the bigger army. Inside the tunnel, it becomes a personal fight."
The tunnel fight sequence is spectacular, according to Cavill. "So much hard work went into it by all the departments. The choreography was pretty complicated, but it looks fantastic, which made it all very rewarding at the end of the day. I was broken and exhausted at the end of day two. I just had to go home and collapse."
Singh posed himself an additional challenge to filming the film's denouement by creating three separate skirmishes within the larger battle. "I've got three fights happening simultaneously in the tunnel," explains Singh. "Theseus and Hyperion are fighting 'mano-a-mano,' humans are trying to stop the not-humans from coming through, and the gods are trying to contain the Titans. We have three different schools of fighting--one's got all the emotion, one's got all the wow factor, and the third one's got the scale."
The array of fighting styles posed additional challenges for the stuntmen. "When gods fight with humans, it's a completely different school. Then when gods fight with gods or Titans, which have the same power, how do we define that so they're completely different schools of fighting?" the director asks. "For stunt guys, it's been quite difficult. They crack one scene, but the next scene does not have the same rules at all."
But, say the producers, Singh never challenged anyone more than he did himself. "Tarsem was the first on the set and the last to leave," says producer Mark Canton. "He didn't sit and he didn't use a trailer. He painted his masterpiece and that's what he came to do. We're just happy that we brought the brushes for him.
"All of our movies are special," he adds. "But this one has something I can't put into words. It's an epic ride and that's something that only a visionary could have put together."
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