[MUSIC PLAYING]
GUY NORRIS: Hi.
I'm Guy Norris.
HARRISON NORRIS: And I'm Harrison Norris.
We're co-founders of PROXi Virtual Production.
GUY NORRIS: And today, we'd love to take you
through action design in Unreal.
[DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING]
HARRISON NORRIS: So PROXi was born from,
I suppose, a lifetime growing up on set
and just an early childhood love of Machinema.
And now it's a marriage of these two business models you don't typically
see under one roof.
And that's world-class action design and bespoke virtual production
systems.
[DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING]
Really a melding of worlds.
It's cutting-edge technical processes that
are all shaped by years of experience coordinating massive sequences
on set, and adapting that to different directors'
creative sensibilities and approaches in a practical sense.
[EXPLOSIONS]
[DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING]
The process itself is so rapidly iterative and so closely integrated
with the production itself from day one,
it allows for a much more hands-on and creatively fluid
experience than typical previews.
[DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING]
GUY NORRIS: Essentially, a whole function at PROXi
is to facilitate a shared sandbox, not
only for the director and the cinematographer,
but every other head of department can
be involved in the whole creative process of the film
whenever they want to.
HARRISON NORRIS: Yeah, it's really a communication
and creative exploration tool that allows you to experiment in ways
that you never could outside of such a hands-on virtual space.
We can change costumes on the fly, make dramatic changes to blocking,
lighting, the environment itself all on the fly.
And Unreal is really the backbone of our whole suite.
[DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING]
GUY NORRIS: What Harrison is talking about is something
that would absolutely be impossible just a few years ago,
let alone 40 years ago when I first started
doing stunt coordinating and action design.
Really to show anything to a director, I was down to sets
made out of cardboard boxes and we're doing stuff on a handycam.
We couldn't change the shots.
We couldn't really show them what the environment was.
It all had to be imagined.
With the technology that we have now, we
can take the director into their world, be it on Mars,
be it in the desert, be it anywhere, all by using the system in Unreal.
This is an absolute game-changer.
Going forward, I wouldn't want to do a film in any other way.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Working with the celebrated writer, director,
and producer of The Suicide Squad James Gunn,
let us take you through PROXi's creative process in the aquarium
sequence.
Here we are with James in our stunt rehearsal capture space.
Taking the first designs of the aquarium set from the art
department, we have created a one-to-one space
of the proposed set.
As you can also see, our system is running through Unreal Live.
This allows James to fully explore the possibilities
and physical movement of the King Shark character
here with stunt double Harlem.
The great thing about this is that he gets
to confirm his ideas and direction before getting on set with King
Shark actor, Steve Agee.
[DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING]
Here in the night cam sequence, James was
able to continue his exploration of the King Shark's physical movement.
At the same time, this allowed the stunt and rigging department
to perfect their rigging systems prior to the shoot.
Just how accurate is the capture data?
Well here's our director James Gunn himself.
James was so particular about blocking,
that he was able to put on a capture suit
himself and act out every precise movement in Savant's prison
introduction exactly as he wanted to see
with future camera coverage in mind.
Bounce, bounce, bounce, catch.
[TIRES SQUEALING]
One of the really fun things for me was visualizing the prison van
sequence.
James wrote and designed a very elaborate story-driven car
chase with a fine line between humor and peril,
that importantly was experienced with the eyes of our main characters.
This was fun to do.
James' precise boards allowed us a great opportunity
to combine Unreal's latest advancements with our own custom
vehicle physics SIMS.
This involves tuning our virtual vehicle
to have the exact same weight distribution, wheelbase, suspension
travel, acceleration and more as the real-world stunt
vehicle used on shoot day.
Now this system serves two purposes.
The first is a virtual stunt rehearsal
and the second is to provide a completely accurate capture of how
the vehicle will behave on the day in the hands of the exact same stunt
driver.
Look around, and we're going to blah, blah, blah.
No, what are you talking about?
Boom.
[DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING]
One of the most important things in any previsualization system
is real-world accountability.
This is one of the cornerstones of the PROXi system.
Everything that is in the PROXi world is bound
to constraints of the real world.
Once a sequence is storyboarded, captured, drafted, lensed, edited,
and signed off by the director, we can then create a full tech vis
delivery for relevant departments.
From the physical dimension of the camera
and the available lens kits, the maximum speed
and reach of the camera cranes, dollies and helicopters,
our system provided the ultimate combination
of real-world creative exploration and production tech support.
So how does it happen?
First, we have our capture, which most often
happens during an existing stunt rehearsal
or a session with the director.
We then take that data into processing,
clean up and take stitching before moving it into Unreal.
Once the capture is in Unreal, it exists
as a sequence-length, singular piece of action,
out in 3D space, independent of cameras.
From there, separate Unreal passes for environment, costume, lighting,
camera and more can be worked on completely independently
of each other and folded into the continually updating shared sandbox.
A wonderful advantage of using the PROXi capture system and our Xsens
suits, is that unlike a traditional optical system
there are no restrictions on our capture space or size.
From an open football field to a moving vehicle on the ground,
we can do it all.
The versatility of the Xsens inertia suits
also allows for high-impact, large-scale stunt sequences
with up to 12 people being motion captured live at the same time,
a complexity of capture pioneered and exclusively performed
by the PROXi team.
This efficiency of running the motion capture alongside the stunt
and rigging rehearsals is a large time and money
saver for any production.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Filmmaking is the ultimate collaborative experience.
Seeing the combination of Unreal and the PROXi system
in the hands of esteemed directors like James Gunn tangibly
shaping the final film, it's a genuine paradigm shift.
And we can't wait to see how the new processing power of Unreal 5
further evolves the creative process as we've always known it.
[MUSIC PLAYING]