Digital
effects were just one of the innovations Dark Shadows
enjoyed when it returned in 2004 for a WB television pilot.
Rick Baumgartner was part of the acclaimed
Stargate Digital team that worked on the project, and tells
us about creating Collinsport for the computer age...
Tell
us about your work outside of Dark Shadows.
How did you get into visual effects?
About
five years ago, I was fortunate
enough to meet Loni Peristere, the visual effects supervisor
for the US television shows Buffy the Vampire Slayer
and Angel, who was just starting up a new VFX company.
The two shows were getting really big in terms of visual
effects and they needed a VFX producer – someone who
assists the VFX supervisor with schedules, budgets, production
planning, and so on. So I produced the VFX for the last
three seasons of Buffy, seasons two and three of
Angel, and 13 episodes of a great show called Miracles
which unfortunately did not get picked up for a full season.
The team that created the season finale for Buffy –
including myself – were honoured with an Emmy Award
nomination for their work. After joining Stargate Digital
in 2003, I became the VFX producer for the hit television
show Las Vegas. Stargate is owned by Sam Nicholson,
a legend in the business and his company one of its few
survivors.
Sam
fell in love with the Dark Shadows project
and became its visual effects supervisor, along with co-supervisor
Curt Miller. Based on my experience with vampires on Buffy,
I guess he thought there would be a good match! Seriously,
the schedule and budgets for television visual effects are
incredibly small compared to their blockbuster feature cousins.
I think Sam felt that I knew the Stargate pipeline and knew
my way around a set so that I would be a good match. So
I stepped away from Las Vegas to take on Dark
Shadows.
Bringing
things full-circle, it seems quite a few people on the project
were part of the original generation of Dark Shadows
viewers. Does that include you?
Actually,
my folks did not let me watch the original Dark
Shadows because they thought it would give me nightmares!
But I had a really good friend at the time named Jerry Harrington
who was totally into on the show and he had the action figures
and trading cards and whatnot so I knew about Barnabas Collins.
What
did your role to the Dark Shadows production
entail?
A
visual effects producer does a lot of things, but he or
she is most responsible for making sure that budgets do
not get out of hand, helping artists meet their production
targets, and keep people informed about the project. Usually
everyone on a pilot is very excited and wants the show to
go so they are all giving 110%. I had to make sure that
in our desire to please the client – the show’s
producers – that we did not take on work we could
not do. Sam Nicholson, an accomplished cinematographer as
well as a veteran VFX supervisor, spent many hours on location
and in meetings helping the production team create the world
they needed to tell the stories. I spent my time wherever
I was most valuable to the project. Sometimes it meant going
on location or on set, other times it meant staying late
at the office to make sure shots got through the facility
pipeline.
Director
P.J. Hogan seemed to bring some very ambitious concepts
to the pilot’s visuals…
Yes,
P.J. was great to work with! He wanted to make the ‘new’
Collinsport real without getting into too much gothic cliché,
almost as if the town were another character in the show.
P.J. also knew from his Peter Pan feature how to
use visual effects to set a mood or convey a story point,
so Sam and Curt could engage him on a high creative level.
He wanted our best work and I believe he got it.
So
how were your contributions assigned? Were there specific
requests for visual effects, or did you offer approaches
based on the script?
We typically work from a combination of both requests from
the client and various solutions for getting the visual
‘bang’ while saving the production from spending
too many bucks! We are actually a department and are listed
by name on the daily call sheets.
CGI
doesn’t immediately seem like an obvious match for
Dark Shadows, yet it ended up being used a great
deal on the pilot, didn’t it?
I like the kind of work we did in Dark Shadows because
it was mostly ‘environmental’ work that helped
set the look and tone of the show. This included things
like an amazing opening in which we matched aerial location
footage to a computer generated train and then pushed into
a train window as our heroine Victoria Winters makes her
way up the coast. Definitely one of the favourite shots
that I have worked on.
Yes,
that opening shot of the train looked fantastic onscreen!
How was that done?
A camera was supposed to follow the
train speeding along a moonlit, stormy coastline, pause
outside the window then move seamlessly into the moving
train car. We tracked aerial footage with a computer generated
train. Then we tracked and composited the live action footage
of Marley Shelton in the train interior on stage into the
CG train window. We replaced the sky, added a computer-generated
moon and its reflections on the water, and made lots of
other tweaks. That was quite an amazing shot for television,
in my opinion, and a testament to the great work of the
Stargate team on this show.
I
thought that the CGI Old House exterior was remarkable too.
What was your contribution to the visuals for the Collinwood
estate?
The
Old House exterior was completely virtual, with the exception
of an area of set right around the main doorway. The design
for the Old House was based on reference photos of several
French chateaux which the Stargate matte painting team made
into a truly forbidding structure The Collinwood exterior
shots were based on photos of the actual location where
the interiors were filmed – at the Greystone mansion
in Beverly Hills! Most of the Collinwood exterior shots
that we did alter were to make the structure visible at
night against a virtual night sky.
I
assume there were some more mundane digital tweaks made
as well?
Visual effects are great for creating creatures, crowds
and objects, but the ‘bread-and-butter’ effects
in television are green-screen composites – for example,
huge set pieces like Barnabas’ mansion do not have
to be built. We also did sky replacements – making
a ‘happy’ sky shot on a clear evening ominous.
There were matte painted set extensions, wire and rig removal
– for example, when Barnabas pulls a character up
from the ground and through the trees – and fixing
other not-so-sexy shots. Hopefully most of this work is
invisible to the audience. Effective use of CGI really depends
on your budget and schedule but most importantly, for the
story the production team wants to tell.
The
disappointment of the pilot’s fate notwithstanding,
do you have any regrets about the project?
My only regret is that I did not get to see our work in
context so I could not really tell how the visual effects
stood up to the rest of the show. Perhaps I will get to
see the final edit someday!
Looking
back, how would you sum up the Dark Shadows experience?
The
Dark Shadows pilot was a fantastic opportunity
for our team to use both traditional and digital visual
effects methods to tell this story. It also helped me understand
the unique dynamics involved with creating effects for a
television pilot. Many talented people in both VFX and production
put their hearts into the show. There was great talent up
and down the line. And it was a pleasure working with P.J.
Hogan. Unfortunately, like so much else in Hollywood, it
didn’t go.
Visit
Rick's official website at www.vfxproducer.com
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