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Released by :
Warner Bros
Warner Bros
Release date :
04/05/2001
04/05/2001
Director :
Renny Harlin
Renny Harlin
VFX producer :
Traver Lalonde
Traver Lalonde
VFX supervisor :
Brian Jennings
Brian Jennings
Senior MoCo operator :
Marc Côté
Marc Côté
Onset camera motion capture :
Nicolas Landry
Nicolas Landry
Produced by :
Renny Harlin, Sylvestor Stallone, Elie Omoha
Renny Harlin, Sylvestor Stallone, Elie Omoha
Starring :
Sylvester Stallone, Burt Reynolds, Kip Pardue, Til Schweiger, Estella Warren.
Sylvester Stallone, Burt Reynolds, Kip Pardue, Til Schweiger, Estella Warren.
Shooting locations :
Mels Cite du Cinema, Montreal; PMG Race track, Blainville; Circuit Gilles Villneuve, Noter Dame Island, Montreal.
Mels Cite du Cinema, Montreal; PMG Race track, Blainville; Circuit Gilles Villneuve, Noter Dame Island, Montreal.
Related links :
Driven
It's a simple concept. Instead of incorporating the audience as a spectator, why not allow audience members to actually feel as if they are in the cockpit of a machine that speeds in excess of 300km/h and could at any split second, at any wrong maneuver of the wheel, crash into a fiery plume of wreckage and obliterate anyone unfortunate enough to be in or around this contraption of high speed? And do all this at the regular admission price of a movie ticket?
Welcome to Driven. A fast paced and adrenaline inducing film about Formula One racing and a look behind the scenes at the sultans who manipulate these machines of madness in pursuit of a championship title or, at least, the babe to boot. Directed by veteran action director Renny Harlin, the concept of Driven was to capture both the excitement and fury of F1 racing only achieved by cinematic technical expertise and have the same formal look of the sport as if the movie were actually a real time sporting event taking place before actual spectators. Fusing both the worlds of Hollywood make belief and TSN showmanship required an array of visual effects techniques, and a personable balance between the camera and the actors. To create such a consistent scenario which would transcend both the sport and the highly demanding visual spectacles, required filming techniques that leave the ordinary nuances of cinema in the dust. This production needed the magic of motion control.
Enter Marc Cote, our chief motion control operator who, as we've all known, has been burning on the inside to make such a project possible. When Traver Lalonde, VFX producer, approached Camera e-Motion to conduct two days of shooting with our resident MILO motion control robot in a studio with two F1 cars, Camera e-Motion brought some very exciting possibilities to the table. Offering not only the most capable motion control unit on the Eastern seaboard (8 axis's and counting...), Camera e-Motion also offered program solutions to the visual effects team which were fully compatible with their previsualization and post production needs. Most notably ActiveMotion, a software application designed by CEM's own Nicolas Landry which is the only Win32-based real time motion control system for motion capture, and is only offered by the professionals of Camera e-Motion.
So, to say the least the production teams and the director were more than enthusiastic with the solutions offered by CEM and what was originally to be two days of motion control work conducted in a studio turned out to be a much larger role in this truly wonderful production.
When our F1 hero's are flying at 300 km/h down the throughway's curves and stretches, dodging one another in a dangerous game of high speed pursuit, quite often these shots are either two expensive or just too blatantly dangerous to be done in actual fact. So, many of the most nail-biting sequences in the film were actually just race cars composited to a series background plates and CG backgrounds. To achieve this it is imperative that motion control be used to shoot the subject, or in this matter a race car, so it can be properly coordinated and inserted to its background.
This took form in MILO being set up in a studio to take programmed passes of F1 cars placed on specially designed rigs which simulate all the bumps and vibrations normally experienced at 300km/h. With provided PreViz from the Driven visual effects department, several different angles and passes were required, most of which had been preprogrammed the previous day. This however still left an enormous amount of leeway for Marc and his crew to really show the folks at Driven what MILO can do. Cooking up some very impressive shots and pans, Marc was able to bring out an extraordinary sense of intensity between the camera and the cars, and of course later to the screen, in an array of closeups and zoom shots which some times barely shaved the edges and panels of the F1 cars.
The second phase of motion control work was conducted at the PMG track west of Montreal, in Blainville, and took approximately 20 days to complete. It was here that Camera e-Motion was assaulted with an array of different challenging shots to capture which would be featured throughout the entire film. Camera e-Motion utilized its own custom motion capture system which had been been specially developed two year previous for Universal's The Bone Collector. The MoCap system called for the use of standard cinematography equipment such as the Fisher10 dolly and standard PanaHead which were all upgraded with specially custom fitted parts featuring sensors and encoders. The encoders would track all motion variations of all the dolly's and heads degrees of freedom – track, lift, pan and tilt – and transmit the data over an electronic interface to a capture board and computer to be digitally stored.
All shots were conceptualized by Marc and his team and later given the 'okay' by director Renny Harlin. The main purpose of this shoot was too establish enticing visuals of the race cars and actors, such as Sylvester Stallone and Estella Warren, which would be later encoded for 3D set extension. Among the backplates to be inserted would be CG crowds , hectic racing teams and of course various elements of CG camera shake and motion blur.
The beauty of such a motion capture system is its compatibility with standard cinematic equipment. This gives Camera e-Motion's specially designed technology a hugely competitive edge as it flawlessly integrates itself with the equipment of standard camera crews. Camera e-Motion also used its own ActiveMotion program to record and play back the motion control movements. During the shoot, a camera assistant would hold a 'bloop box' in front of the lens prior to each take. When queued by AciveMotion, the bloop quickly flashes for the approximate duration of a single frame thus synchronizing the motion data recording with the actual live footage. This greatly simplifies compositing in post production when additional live layers or 3D effects layers are added to the base footage.
When production moved back to Montreal to the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve F1 track to shoot further race scenes, Marc and his team were able to stress test the abilities of their motion capture system in extremely harsh weather conditions. Giant rain rigs were set up to simulate the raw elements of nature which our race car drivers would have to cope against. These shots proved to be the most challenging, as some sequences lasted as long a ten minutes .
Quite often on film sets, especially when dealing with heavy weight celebrities, timeliness and tact are two essential elements in performance. While it is imperative that the job get done with the highest of standards and care, it is as equally important that the pursuit of perfection doesn't take up everyone else's day. A finely crafted balance is required.
The next shoot called for just that fine balance as both Kip Pardue and Sylvester Stallone were to be seated in their cars as MILO would run preprogrammed passes of the actors. The images captured by MILO would later be composited to CG backgrounds of roaring crowds and hectic support crews. Like a fresh pint of Guinness on tap after a long hard day, the shoot went smoother than silk. With CEM operators in full swing (Thirty set-ups in two days!), and the actors on and off set in record time, production crews barely even noticed the presence of motion control on set, which to say the least is a good thing. Even Driven director of photography Mauro Fiore was over heard saying “Wow, these guy's really know their stuff,” Which to say the least is even better.
These final shots proved to be some of the most successful yet, as the when the day of the shoot came to a close Camera e-Motion crews had successfully shot over 15 different scenes and a total of 112 takes of motion control footage. With the production completed, all motion data was exported from Flair and ActiveMotion in various 3D formats to be used in post houses in Toronto and L.A..
Driven was a great project for the crews of Camera e-Motion as it gave us a great deal of on set experience and reaffirmed to us that the systems and software which we have spent so much time and energy in creating are valuable and well appreciated by even the most veteran of film makers. While not the most challenging project to date, Driven serves as a testament to the compatibility of our equipment and capabilities of our crews alike. And like the speed machines the the film centers around, we like to think that we've centered our abilities to cater to such an extraordinary production and we're an essential element of bringing all the ferocity of F1 racing to life on the big screen. Bullseye!
Welcome to Driven. A fast paced and adrenaline inducing film about Formula One racing and a look behind the scenes at the sultans who manipulate these machines of madness in pursuit of a championship title or, at least, the babe to boot. Directed by veteran action director Renny Harlin, the concept of Driven was to capture both the excitement and fury of F1 racing only achieved by cinematic technical expertise and have the same formal look of the sport as if the movie were actually a real time sporting event taking place before actual spectators. Fusing both the worlds of Hollywood make belief and TSN showmanship required an array of visual effects techniques, and a personable balance between the camera and the actors. To create such a consistent scenario which would transcend both the sport and the highly demanding visual spectacles, required filming techniques that leave the ordinary nuances of cinema in the dust. This production needed the magic of motion control.
Enter Marc Cote, our chief motion control operator who, as we've all known, has been burning on the inside to make such a project possible. When Traver Lalonde, VFX producer, approached Camera e-Motion to conduct two days of shooting with our resident MILO motion control robot in a studio with two F1 cars, Camera e-Motion brought some very exciting possibilities to the table. Offering not only the most capable motion control unit on the Eastern seaboard (8 axis's and counting...), Camera e-Motion also offered program solutions to the visual effects team which were fully compatible with their previsualization and post production needs. Most notably ActiveMotion, a software application designed by CEM's own Nicolas Landry which is the only Win32-based real time motion control system for motion capture, and is only offered by the professionals of Camera e-Motion.
So, to say the least the production teams and the director were more than enthusiastic with the solutions offered by CEM and what was originally to be two days of motion control work conducted in a studio turned out to be a much larger role in this truly wonderful production.
When our F1 hero's are flying at 300 km/h down the throughway's curves and stretches, dodging one another in a dangerous game of high speed pursuit, quite often these shots are either two expensive or just too blatantly dangerous to be done in actual fact. So, many of the most nail-biting sequences in the film were actually just race cars composited to a series background plates and CG backgrounds. To achieve this it is imperative that motion control be used to shoot the subject, or in this matter a race car, so it can be properly coordinated and inserted to its background.
This took form in MILO being set up in a studio to take programmed passes of F1 cars placed on specially designed rigs which simulate all the bumps and vibrations normally experienced at 300km/h. With provided PreViz from the Driven visual effects department, several different angles and passes were required, most of which had been preprogrammed the previous day. This however still left an enormous amount of leeway for Marc and his crew to really show the folks at Driven what MILO can do. Cooking up some very impressive shots and pans, Marc was able to bring out an extraordinary sense of intensity between the camera and the cars, and of course later to the screen, in an array of closeups and zoom shots which some times barely shaved the edges and panels of the F1 cars.
The second phase of motion control work was conducted at the PMG track west of Montreal, in Blainville, and took approximately 20 days to complete. It was here that Camera e-Motion was assaulted with an array of different challenging shots to capture which would be featured throughout the entire film. Camera e-Motion utilized its own custom motion capture system which had been been specially developed two year previous for Universal's The Bone Collector. The MoCap system called for the use of standard cinematography equipment such as the Fisher10 dolly and standard PanaHead which were all upgraded with specially custom fitted parts featuring sensors and encoders. The encoders would track all motion variations of all the dolly's and heads degrees of freedom – track, lift, pan and tilt – and transmit the data over an electronic interface to a capture board and computer to be digitally stored.
All shots were conceptualized by Marc and his team and later given the 'okay' by director Renny Harlin. The main purpose of this shoot was too establish enticing visuals of the race cars and actors, such as Sylvester Stallone and Estella Warren, which would be later encoded for 3D set extension. Among the backplates to be inserted would be CG crowds , hectic racing teams and of course various elements of CG camera shake and motion blur.
The beauty of such a motion capture system is its compatibility with standard cinematic equipment. This gives Camera e-Motion's specially designed technology a hugely competitive edge as it flawlessly integrates itself with the equipment of standard camera crews. Camera e-Motion also used its own ActiveMotion program to record and play back the motion control movements. During the shoot, a camera assistant would hold a 'bloop box' in front of the lens prior to each take. When queued by AciveMotion, the bloop quickly flashes for the approximate duration of a single frame thus synchronizing the motion data recording with the actual live footage. This greatly simplifies compositing in post production when additional live layers or 3D effects layers are added to the base footage.
When production moved back to Montreal to the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve F1 track to shoot further race scenes, Marc and his team were able to stress test the abilities of their motion capture system in extremely harsh weather conditions. Giant rain rigs were set up to simulate the raw elements of nature which our race car drivers would have to cope against. These shots proved to be the most challenging, as some sequences lasted as long a ten minutes .
Quite often on film sets, especially when dealing with heavy weight celebrities, timeliness and tact are two essential elements in performance. While it is imperative that the job get done with the highest of standards and care, it is as equally important that the pursuit of perfection doesn't take up everyone else's day. A finely crafted balance is required.
The next shoot called for just that fine balance as both Kip Pardue and Sylvester Stallone were to be seated in their cars as MILO would run preprogrammed passes of the actors. The images captured by MILO would later be composited to CG backgrounds of roaring crowds and hectic support crews. Like a fresh pint of Guinness on tap after a long hard day, the shoot went smoother than silk. With CEM operators in full swing (Thirty set-ups in two days!), and the actors on and off set in record time, production crews barely even noticed the presence of motion control on set, which to say the least is a good thing. Even Driven director of photography Mauro Fiore was over heard saying “Wow, these guy's really know their stuff,” Which to say the least is even better.
These final shots proved to be some of the most successful yet, as the when the day of the shoot came to a close Camera e-Motion crews had successfully shot over 15 different scenes and a total of 112 takes of motion control footage. With the production completed, all motion data was exported from Flair and ActiveMotion in various 3D formats to be used in post houses in Toronto and L.A..
Driven was a great project for the crews of Camera e-Motion as it gave us a great deal of on set experience and reaffirmed to us that the systems and software which we have spent so much time and energy in creating are valuable and well appreciated by even the most veteran of film makers. While not the most challenging project to date, Driven serves as a testament to the compatibility of our equipment and capabilities of our crews alike. And like the speed machines the the film centers around, we like to think that we've centered our abilities to cater to such an extraordinary production and we're an essential element of bringing all the ferocity of F1 racing to life on the big screen. Bullseye!