![\"\"](\"http:\/\/stinaandthewolf.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/Drama-Cut4.png\")
<\/a>Stills from the \u201cStina and the Wolf \u201d Mocap Drama Cut<\/p><\/div>\n
<\/a>Concept art from “Stina and the Wolf “<\/p><\/div>\n
<\/a>Concept art from “Stina and the Wolf “<\/p><\/div>\n
The first big question we had to ask ourselves was: Where on earth is Stina’s world? CGI and matte paintings allow for limitless freedom of imagination, but the real world has limits, (and permit requirements!) and initially I wasn’t convinced there was anywhere that could match up to our original concepts, with its combination of lush grass, absurdly high vistas, huge clouds, and often snowy peaks all in the same shot. So our first task was scourer the world for this mythical place. We spent the first few months location scouting and begin the long process of creating a completely new, live-action budget from scratch. The needs of an animated film and a live-action film are very different, and this has been a massive learning curve, as well as a very complex and detail ridden process (Involving\u00a0spreadsheets bigger than I ever thought were humanly possible!)<\/p>\n
A seasoned\u00a0producer I’ve been working with on another live-action feature I’m directing (A US production, temporarily stalled, unfortunately, due to COVID19) has been giving me some invaluable guidance into the complex world of live-action feature planning and budgeting.\u00a0Our plan has been to come up with a number of different\u00a0budget versions for different\u00a0marketplaces and see what looks feasible in\u00a0the current climate (post-lockdown, obviously!) It has also been a useful exercise\u00a0in assessing whether the film we want to make is even possible with the kind of budgets we could realistically achieve. (There is a distinct\u00a0chance that this film may have to wait on entering full production until a few other projects have wrapped, so the director can accrue enough industry cachet to get a budget high enough to do it justice! There is no point in making this\u00a0feature unless it can realise at least some of its potential on the big screen.)<\/p>\n
As well as being a planning and logistics exercise, this process has been really useful for\u00a0drilling down into the detail of the creative decisions you need to make as a live-action filmmaker: on everything\u00a0from the artistic and practical (and cost!) implications of production\u00a0design, to the cinematography potential of locations, right down to the nuts and bolts of day-to-day shooting: “are there any toilets\u00a0nearby?” , “is there an interior shoot we could do that day if it rains on our exterior location?” , “Are you actually allowed to fly drones there anyway? It’s next to an airport!”. It’s all a very different\u00a0world from the one I’d previously inhabited (where most production questions seem to boil down to: “Can we get a bigger render farm?”.) One exciting thing that has happened during this process is that we have really taken the scenes and locations off the page and placed them into the world; as they go from ideas packed with potential to real, tangible places. And boy did we find some amazing places!<\/p>\n
The most expensive part of a live-action film process is the shoot. The more money you have the more locations you can\u00a0have and the more expensive actors you can have etc. etc. One big factor in keeping the cost down is to have as few locations as possible;\u00a0so we had to first nail down our biggest issue:<\/p>\n
Where are we going to shoot? Does the location we want even exist in our world?<\/p>\n
..and if so, how easy is it to get there? And how many days shooting could we really afford? For us, a\u00a0big challenge was to find places that captured the grandeur and beauty of our CGI visualisations, but wouldn’t require the same expensive CGI heavy augmentations of a James Cameron film. This was one of the main problems with the CGI Stina (and the main reason we switched to live-action): there was no real way of it not costing the same as Avatar! Also, how do you location scout with next-to-no pre-production\u00a0budget?\u00a0 This is\u00a0where technology stepped in. We are now at the point in computer\u00a0graphics where you can visit, in virtual reality, almost any place on earth. So that’s what we did. I have a Vive VR headset, and using the amazing Google Earth VR we set about travelling around the world looking at hundreds and hundreds of different locations.<\/p>\n
<\/a>Google Earth VR (Image: Google)<\/p><\/div>\n
<\/a>Rio in Google VR (Image: Google)<\/p><\/div>\n
Good VR can really give you a sense of place and scale. The ability of Google Earth to change the\u00a0time of day even allowed us to make decisions based on our cinematography style; we could check instantly whether\u00a0the sunset would fall over the right mountain, or even if we could\u00a0get the natural\u00a0rim-lighting we are after with mountainous ariel occlusion fading off behind us.<\/p>\n
So, after months of searching through Europe, Asia, America (and of course New Zealand!), we found Stina’s world: the Bernese Alps in Switzerland. There is something about the combination of extreme verticality, not present anywhere else in Europe, and the simultaneous existence of lush green grass and epic snowy peaks that just made it perfect. This is Stina’s world. With a few CGI tweaks (a couple of buildings and a cable car removed and a light grade) we are already in Stina’s original field:<\/p>\n
<\/a>Original image from Google Earth (by Stuart Brown\u00a92020)<\/p><\/div>\n
<\/a>Original image from Google Earth\u00a92020<\/p><\/div>\n
Now that we had the country, the next process was to go through every single scene in the film and match it with a specific location that was feasible to work in, film in and travel to, all from a single (and not too expensive!) central location. We decided on an\u00a0area of about 30 miles in diameter in the middle of the Berneses Alps that had everything we needed and was easily accessible: Lush green meadows, Stina’s aunt’s house (filming permissions pending) snowy mountain\u00a0tops, epic vistas. The locations\u00a0have a sense of both immense beauty and peace, and the sublime\u00a0terror and sense of overwhelming insignificance you get when you put tiny little humans in ridiculously big mountain ranges; it’s a\u00a0place where you could be at total peace one minute and overwhelmed by terror the next.<\/p>\n
I had planned to travel to the location for a few weeks of real scouting in May (as visiting a location is a must for logistical as well as artistic planning) but unfortunately\u00a0Switzerland was one of the first countries to fall prey to COVID 19, so will be visiting\u00a0after the lockdown ends.<\/p>\n
Here are a few of the stunning Berneses Alps locations courtesy of Goole Earth 360\u00b0.\u00a0We scoured every corner of the earth for Stina’s homeworld, and we found it \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n
M\u00e4nnlichen:<\/p>\n
https:\/\/goo.gl\/maps\/TD8QdMELwdxadyTZ9<\/a><\/p>\n https:\/\/goo.gl\/maps\/yfCyno42KthTue2g6<\/a><\/p>\n Jungfraujoch:<\/p>\n https:\/\/goo.gl\/maps\/43pM3md1Asrt1TGv9<\/a><\/p>\n Grindlewald:<\/p>\n https:\/\/goo.gl\/maps\/HyMHTF4uyGdf14Rs8<\/a><\/p>\n