CGSociety :: Production Focus
18 February 2010, by Renee Dunlop

Terry Gilliam's imagination is leaking again, in a display of imagery from his brain to your eyes. From landscapes of giant high heels to airborne jellyfish, he takes the viewer on a journey that is nothing less than a spectacle of inventiveness. The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus utilizes Gilliam's wide range of talents in his unique way, this time incorporating digital FX into the soup.

DESIGN

Parnassus Original Designer and Art Director David Warren, whose wry sense of humor is entertainment in its own right said, "there are a few jobs in the film industry apart from directing which Terry would like to do and can do. He's very interested in how VFX works," proven by his co-founding of the Peerless Camera Company, "and visual FX is running through his blood. But, bloody hell, you have to go fast to keep up with him, because he does push out the ideas!" Gilliam himself did the storyboards for all the major Imaginarium sequences, scanning and placing them in a library file and "hell have no fury if you don't look at them."

While tackling the issue of funding, Gilliam and his concept artists assembled a book of roughly 20 Photoshop renderings consisting of "the stuff that is in the darkest recesses of Terry's mind," Warren laughed.

"Some of it's been in there for twenty years, and it all came out. I don't know where the transvestite police came from, do you? I wouldn't know where to start but I think, in working with him, you very, very quickly get to know that almost anything is acceptable as an idea as long as it fits in with the taste of the piece."

The practical shoot was as economical as possible, based around Parnassus's traveling theater. Everything else was shot against partial sets and bluescreen. According to John Paul Docherty, Co-VFX Supervisor from Peerless Camera Company, "we started off with about 250 shots, went up to about 850, and between 650 and 700 stayed in the movie. We had eight weeks to shoot all the bluescreen."

With a budget of around $20-$30 million, it was one of those movies where everything could only be done once, and the required complexity and number of FX was very difficult to achieve. For example, the exploding derby tavern was a miniature, and a scene they had to get right because there was no money to build a backup. "Fortunately, it looked cool. Had it not, it would have been, 'Terry! Rewrite!!' and I don't think he would have been too thrilled."

Every practical effect was heavily augmented with CG, particle systems, Houdini fluid motion, etc, using the miniature work as a core, "partially because we wanted the look, and because to do some of that stuff digitally just cost too much. To build the temple digitally would have probably bankrupted us in one sequence. Also, Terry has a huge miniature experience and understands them inside and out. The trick for us was putting it together with all the digital bits."

As mentioned, the temple was a digitally enhanced practical model, but why? "Terry didn't want to do the film completely digitally, but by the end of the day a balance had to be struck, and CG wins on many arguments. With the monastery, even I was thinking it could have been a matte painting.

"But when we actually built the thing and Terry saw it, he wanted to get the camera close to it, inside, around it. I think the fact it was physically there gave him an extra impetuous to redesign the shot."

For example, when Jude Law is marching around on stilts, Gilliam was very conscious that if they simply made him hang on to two sticks standing on the ground, the weight and motion would have been completely wrong. Instead, they did intensive previs of walking on stilts to get the gait they liked, then used a physical motorized rig that Law held on to with movements based on the CG previs.

I asked David Warren if any ideas that started out as practical wound up as digital. "That's a really good question, very difficult. I've got to think now," Warren quipped. "There were more ideas initially where they, from my experience, would have worked better as miniatures because they needed that kind of depth and texture and lighting, but it just wasn't worthwhile. The only way to allow the film to expand as Terry shot it was to do the amount we did digitally, especially all the landscapes."

"Terry ran with it, he wanted to shoot and shoot. Also, when a miniature model is done, that's it. When you are doing something digitally, it's always under construction until its final. A director can say, lets chuck another 50 feet on either side of it, and add more rockets, and lights, and bits and pieces. I think the fact that some things were miniature it was good, since it meant they were done."

Of course, they did chuck far more than 50 feet on either side. It was still enhanced digitally with matte extensions on sides and top, fires and smoke were added, and the canyon where it sat was extended proving what all digital artists know: It's never really done until the Directors Cut DVD is released.