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Edge of the Universe | National Geographic


or it’s basically a two-hour special
that goes from a beach on earth right
out to the beginning of time complete
vacuum it does it in one single caliber
that means no cards no dissolves nothing
when you make an animated film it’s a
completely different process from normal
factual documentary where you go out and
film sequences and bring them back and
you edit them and you have control over
how you edit a program that with an
animation film you have to basically
edit the film before you film it for
instance if we were to be able to go and
film Mars in reality we would go out
there we film as much as we wanted to
film covering all our angles of all our
bases but with a enemies them you can’t
do that every time the virtual camera
turns around it has to create the the
image so you have to be much more
disciplined about what you’re going to
actually see in the final program the
whole process of making this film starts
with basically mapping out a storyboard
making sketches so that’s done with
myself Nigel henbest is the advisor
consultant who make sure everything’s
correct factually and Jonathan Gibson
who’s the visual effects designer
director and we go from the script and
John just starts making sketches and
drawing an eye to eye react to those
drawings so we’re creating a kind of a
rising spiral of stuff which is kind of
going up in a in a sort of helix yeah
and we agree on the camera angles and
the kind of shots were going to have and
he then maps it out for us on
storyboards little pencil drawings
Jonathan really is like the director of
photography on traditional shoot he’s
he’s like my cameraman he tells me
what’s possible and what we can achieve
and shows me and draws the images and
says this is what we can do with the
camera we can turn it around here this
is how we’re going to light it so it’s
very much as though we’re on location
talking together about how we’re going
to cover a sequence except of course
it’s a virtual sequence and not a real
sequence the danger with making a film
like this it’s because it’s all
animation
you could actually make up any images
you lie but that’s not what we’re doing
with this this is trying to be as
rigorous and as accurate as possible so
with the help of Nigel we have created
as best we know the most accurate
picture all these images we’re seeing of
course we’re taking references from the
Hubble Space Telescope from from NASA
from all their fabulous imagery of say
Mars the next thing we do is actually
put those images onto our editing
machine and create a timed finished film
with arrows to point where the cameras
going to move it is quite liberating
because although you’re constrained and
you know that you can animate certain
things those things you can animate
unlike the real camera you can go
wherever you want with the virtual
camera you can go round through inside
out the sky’s the limit I suppose for me
one of my favorite scenes a trip to
Venus we make is in reality if anybody
dared to go there there’d be frazzled
burned crush squashed they wouldn’t
survive so the fact that we can go there
with the virtual camera and take the
audience on what is a roller coaster
right I think is a great secret in fact
as we track across penis there’s that
veneer approach was a Soviet that went
down to the surface of Venus and sent
back great imagery which I gave you in
being able to extrapolate the
information from the base our animation
on this was certainly a challenge to
take on it’s a landmark film movies
attempting to
this sort of film for the chance to
actually take on something like that was
something I agree couldn’t earn
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