Cinesite brings Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time to life
May 20 2010 – Cinesite, one of the leading film visual effects houses, has completed over 280 shots on the new Walt Disney Pictures/Jerry Bruckheimer Films film, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, which opens in cinemas tomorrow.
Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time is based on the Ubisoft video game and is set in the mystical lands of Persia. The film follows the story of rogue Prince Dastan, played by Jake Gyllenhaal, and a mysterious princess, played by Gemma Arterton, and their race against dark forces to safeguard an ancient dagger capable of releasing the Sands of Time – a gift from the gods that can reverse time and allow its possessor to rule the world.
Directed by Mike Newell, Cinesite’s visual effects supervisor Sue Rowe and her team of 60 artists completed a variety of challenging and creative shots on the film which ranged from digital face replacements and set extensions through to CGI weapons and matte paintings. Spending six weeks on location in Morocco enabled Rowe to pre-plan how Cinesite would work with the limitations of the shoot, which included – small sets, varied skies and limited props. She was then able to feedback to her team who could begin previsualising the effects.
One scene which proved to be a creative challenge for Cinesite was the ‘youthening’ of the King, played by Ben Kingsley, by 30 years. Cinesite’s solution was to draw upon their in-house proprietary software Motion Analyser™, which enables the faces of live action actors to be manipulated to allow for corrections such as fine lines and wrinkles, blotches, dark patches and hairs to be removed in order to enhance the look of youthfulness.
Another sequence required Cinesite to create a full CGI lioness. Using Autodesk Maya, the lioness was generated to reflect a creature that looked starved and malnourished. “We really wanted to present a lioness who was bordering on emaciated to emphasise her need to hunt,” said Rowe. “To achieve this look we graded the lioness to have washed-out coloured fur and deeply emphasised her bone structure around the rib cage and hips.” As the hunt scene progresses the lioness is speared through the mouth by a CGI spear, which was also created using Maya.
Cinesite were additionally tasked with creating a variety of the weapons featured in the film, these included generating the Hassassins 3D whips, which had claws and blades at the end of them, and matching them with the stunt props that were used on set. “This was a tricky effect to pull off,” commented Rowe. “It’s a fast action sequence so we had to ensure the CG whips were tracked and timed perfectly to match up with the live action footage.” The team also created a CG city, which is the backdrop for Prince Dastan’s Avrat chase sequence. The final composite on all the shots was completed using Nuke and Shake.
Antony Hunt, managing director at Cinesite, said: “This has been an exciting film for us to work on, particularly as we’ve been able to use a piece of our proprietary software and showcase what it can achieve.”
About Cinesite
With one of the largest and most comprehensive facilities in Europe, Cinesite’s visual effects team has the capacity and creativity to produce all manner of effects, both digital and physical, for feature films and broadcast projects of all scales. Their award-winning team of highly talented visual effects artists take filmmakers’ ideas and turn them into spectacular cinematic reality.
Cinesite is currently working on Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows: Part 1 (Warner Bros.), Marmaduke (Fox), The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (Fox/Walden), John Carter of Mars (Disney/Pixar) and Battle: Los Angeles (Sony/Columbia).
Motion Analyser™ is a registered trademark of Cinesite (Europe) Ltd.
