MARK ANDREWS: Hi, my name is Mark Andrews,
and I'm the director of Super Giant Robot Brothers.
The world is under attack, and stopping it on our side
are these two super giant robot brothers, Shiny and Thunder,
made by our teenage genius, Alex Rose.
And they have to fight kaiju and save the world in every episode.
The story is really about this family that
have sibling rivalries all the time.
That comedy action element was super, super attractive to me
as a storyteller, and filmmaker.
I've been in animation my entire life, and I was directing on Brave.
PAUL RUDD: And the Oscar goes to Brave, Mark Andrews
and Brenda Chapman.
MARK ANDREWS: We got an Academy Award and it turned out great.
But the process of not being in context in animation,
I had this epiphany.
There's got to be a way to get that real-time flavor of making
the movie for in live action and the control that I have in animation
and put them together.
JARED MASS: At Reel FX, we had actually
been talking about working in a virtual production
pipeline for a while.
And we were already playing in the Unreal Engine.
So when Mark approached us and said he
wanted to make this in a virtual production pipeline,
we got extremely excited.
We all did a test together.
We shared that test with Netflix.
Netflix got really excited.
And they were really on board immediately,
and we were off and running.
MARK ANDREWS: They both dove in.
I haven't seen this kind of support from studios at this level
before trying something totally new.
PAUL FLESCHNER: This process supports story in a visual context in a way
that I've never seen before.
This filmmaking team can live inside the story.
TOMMY BLACHA: Traditionally it's like,
write a script, radio play, animate, done, in simple terms.
MARK ANDREWS: This is much different.
Not only are we writing in the script, you make the assets,
and then we get on to the stage.
And there is a chance to see it in action again and rewrite
on the stage.
TOMMY BLACHA: Then we would have a meeting afterward
and we would change the script for the VO
based on what happened on the stage.
And then we'd move forward that way.
MARK ANDREWS: There's really interactivity between us,
interactivity between our mocap actors.
And it really transforms scenes.
ADAM MAIER: It just got running so smoothly,
and I ended up loving it so much.
You can see how quickly you can shoot cameras and do layout.
So there's a lot of hard work up front, but the winds are incredible.
CONSTANCE LEVESQUE: The main takeaway from this process
is really the liberty that it gives the director
in creating a show very early on that they can then
be shared to the artists that will be creating that vision.
KATY WU: It's a lot faster moving when
it comes to collaboration between art and the previous kind of layout
department.
I think it's a great tool to work with because it
lets you get into 3D much faster and also play with lighting and camera
angles.
MARK ANDREWS: And to have my DP, Enrico Targetti with me
on stage with the camera, a virtual camera, in his hand
we can do coverage and cover different sides,
feel the scene in different ways so I don't have to settle yet.
ENRICO TARGETTI: My background is in live action cinematography.
But this is really different from any of the things
that I did before and any of the things that any of us
did before, honestly.
If I had an idea, I would just do it.
With just my thumbs, I could do two miles of techno crane movement.
PAUL FLESCHNER: That's what's mind blowing.
You're filming inside of a game.
ENRICO TARGETTI: He had an idea for a shot?
Grab a camera and just do your thing, reacting to whatever
was happening on the stage.
It really brought all of that immediacy of live action
into a CG show.
REY JARRELL: The biggest thing the virtual production allows us to do
is to be really playful.
You have this freedom to allow the director and the actors
to just play and to see what's available to them.
MARK ANDREWS: In UE, you can do anything.
So she was helping me out with lighting,
with timing, with moving props around,
with bringing in stuff that wasn't there, changing sizes.
REY JARRELL: You do have control of the entire world.
That's what's so beautiful about this.
Mark one day just picked up these props and was like,
can you put one of the characters on this?
I'm going to fly them around.
Mark or Enrico or whoever's operating B-Cams will be like, Rey,
could you move the sun?
And I'm like, yes.
[LAUGHING] It really is like, once the tools and the processes by which
you need to set things up are no longer a barrier,
it gives you so much more freedom to play.
And I think that the engine itself is what
allowed us to pass that barrier, to have a piece of technology that
can work as fast as he does and enable
me to work as fast as he does.
Unreal was, in a lot of ways, like a team member
as well because if it can run as fast as you can,
then nothing can stop you, you know?
ENRICO TARGETTI: Being able to have lighting on stage is--
I can't stress enough how important it is.
The mood changes completely.
And in a show that is so stylized like this one,
that is very important.
There is a wonderful episode of where the power goes out
and everybody just scrambling around with flashlights.
And on with the actors, we just gave them little props
that we parented to a light.
And at the same time, the actors can see themselves on the screen.
Being able to see on the screen what it will look like,
I think it just makes for a better performance too.
PAUL FLESCHNER: It's a synthesis that creates something that's different.
And that's what's been amazing for me, that kind of amalgamation.
It's a new art form, in a sense.
ENRICO TARGETTI: What we're doing is blues.
It's music.
It's just like we're just jamming.
We come out with 12 hours of recordings,
and our editors will find a symphony in there.
MARK ANDREWS: Then we can get into editorial.
Now we can make our decisions based off of all what we shot.
You don't usually have that in your traditional process.
PAUL FLESCHNER: The way that the live action piece can transform animation
is an editorial.
You see things that the editors are finding.
It's just-- wow.
And this process puts that into animation.
You see coverage.
You see Mark working with an editor and finding
moments that have been captured in an animation context
with the live action sensibility.
CHRIS COLLINS: Usually in animation, editors only
get to deal with storyboards and drawings.
That leaves a lot open to interpretation.
But with the Unreal Engine and this virtual pipeline,
all the stuff I get back from the stage is just like footage.
So I get wides, mediums, close-ups. I get
all the things an editor needs to do creative editorial
and have fun and play.
Then Mark and I can go, oh, it would be great to have a close-up here
or oh, we need to cut to a wide for that punch line.
With this process, we're cutting the show together super early
and then animation, lighting, and effects,
and all that is just icing on the cake.
MARK ANDREWS: I get all the context of camera moves,
of editing language, and that's all solved
before it goes off into your traditional animator process.
EMMANUEL LAURENT: In a way, when you are doing B-Cam,
you are doing live action.
You are not doing 3D.
What you are shooting is actually preparing
the work for the animators.
ADAM MAIER: We're able to give them a lot of context very quickly,
give them really fun and interesting cameras to work with.
And then they're still given freedom to go and do their thing
and to animate.
And as an artist, that's always what you want,
is being able to put a little bit of yourself in there.
MARK ANDREWS: So to have that base already kick off,
they can now get to what are those choices of those characters.
What is that entertainment value, right.
How do they find even more funny?
CORINNE GIBEAULT: We actually get to make decisions and choices.
And people are really bringing their A-game to that
and really having a good time.
And the mocap is there to help.
And if you do want to use it or you're like,
oh, I'm not sure what to do for this shot, you go,
oh, OK, well I have all this information.
And it saves so much time and effort.
TOMMY BLACHA: You got to realize when you're animating stuff,
you construct all that fake stuff, every hand gesture, every head
movement, all this incredible, tedious stuff.
And this solves a lot of that.
People are like, yeah you can do all this great stuff.
Like, yeah I know, but look at that head glance.
MARK ANDREWS: A huge boon for this production was Epic's involvement.
PAUL FLESCHNER: Epic has been a tremendous collaborator.
It's more than working through troubleshooting.
It's like they're invested in the excitement
around trying something new.
MARK ANDREWS: Not only from a technical side, but just an insight
to the game engine and making it do things
that they hadn't designed it to do.
We couldn't do this without having a partner like Epic
backing us up on this because nobody's done this before.
Nobody's done it at this scale before,
a full animated series all in-engine.
PAUL FLESCHNER: And so for me, what's been really special
about this process is around this revolutionary visionary
director, young people and people from different places that
have dabbled in the game engine deeply
or from theater kind of building this team of misfits that
has come together in an amazing way.
CHRIS COLLINS: Everyone on this team is such a nerd
in a sense that I can just--
we just get each other.
REY JARRELL: And the people that you meet there
are also people who share that sort of dual mindedness.
And so you're immediately just best friends with everyone
because you're like, oh my god, I thought I was alone,
and there's so many of us.
CHRIS COLLINS: As gamers in a game engine
making a cool story that's also still kind of nerdy about robots fighting
kaiju-- and it's just like, this whole thing is just a blast.
PAUL FLESCHNER: I love that.
That's new.
What's that going to look like?
What's that going to feel like?
How is the audience going to react to an animated series that
has this live action vibe and energy and momentum to it?
MARK ANDREWS: So you guys are going to get
to see before anybody else some sneak footage of Super Giant Robot
Brothers.
Check it out.
- Hot, hot, hot, hot.
- (RADIO) That's our fighter.
Why is he falling?
Given his falling speed, he--
- Ugh.
Ugh.
Oof.
[GROANING] That stunk.
Man, a billion stars in the universe and I
happen to land on a planet that looks just like Earth.
[ROCKET FIRING]
Whoa!
Not just like Earth.
Halt, uh, big guy.
I mean, gigantic cool-looking space alien.
- State the purpose of your presence or prepare to be destroyed.
- Ha!
Enough chatter.
Let's fight!
[BEAMS FIRING]
- Robot, stand down!
I repeat, stand down!
I said, stop!
Shiny!
- Alex?
- Shiny, where have you been?
- So I am on Earth.
[THEME MUSIC]