From the innovative use of mocap for fast prototyping with virtual story reels to choosing the right cameras to ensure a proper sense of scale on massive sets and environments, the cinematographer discusses how he handled layout and composition on Josh Cooley and Paramount’s 3DCG origin story of how two best friends became the sworn enemies Optimus Prime and Megatron.
Released in theaters this past September, and coming to Paramount+ on November 15, Transformers One tells the long-awaited origin story of how the most iconic characters in the Transformers universe, Orion Pax and D-16, went from brothers-in-arms and best of friends to becoming sworn enemies, Optimus Prime and Megatron.
Josh Cooley directs the 3DCG film, which comes from Paramount Animation and Hasbro. The animation was handled by ILM, with Rob Coleman serving as animation supervisor and Frazier Churchill as VFX supervisor. This makes the second fully animated film ILM has produced recently, alongside Netflix’s Ultraman: Rising that was released this past June. Do we see a trend here?
Working alongside Cooley and ILM was cinematographer Christopher Batty, who has worked in VFX for over 20 years, including serving as a previs supervisor on films like A Wrinkle in Time, Star Trek Beyond, and Jurassic World, and postvis supervisor on films like Aquaman and Creed II. After joining Paramount Animation in 2016, he served as cinematographer on The Tiger’s Apprentice before moving onto Transformers One.
We recently had a chance to speak to Batty about his work on the film, which included innovative use of mocap in early testing to create “virtual story reels” for fast “prototyping” of scene blocking, as well as helping choose the right “type” of camera shot to ensure a proper sense of scale on the film’s massive sets and environments.
First, enjoy the film’s final trailer before reading more about Batty’s work on the film.
Dan Sarto: With animated films, some of the productions refer to DPs, some refer to cinematographers, some have different people as the DP of this and the DP of that. From your perspective, what is the role of a cinematographer on an animated film and how does that compare to your role on a live-action show?
Christopher Batty: That's a great question. I think it's pretty varied, as you were saying. I can define it as we do at Paramount because we seem to be consistent there, though I think it's different studio to studio. For Paramount, you're basically in charge of camera. You're the head of layout, head of cinematography, and so you're guiding the placement, composition, and camera language of the show through the whole process.
Where it differs mostly from live-action is that lighting is still in the realm of the production designer. I worked with [production designer] Jason Scheier on Transformers, and he would do all the keys as we're developing a sequence, which would then that would get passed down to our vendor, ILM, to do the lighting. That’s not to say... I could definitely give my two cents. We would have discussions and there were certain sequences in compositions that were dependent on lighting, and so we would work back and forth.
But for the main part, you're just in charge of the cameras and compositions all the way through. So, after animation is done, I supervise the final camera as well as overseeing the stereo. There's a stereo supervisor, but I'm just there to make sure the original intention of the camera language carries all the way through.
DS: Got it. Now, you have a significant amount of live-action experience. How did that translate for you when you moved into animation? You supervised a lot of visualization… how did that prepare you?
CB: I was mainly supervising previs on live-action shoots. So, at the end of the day, they would have their DP come in and actually shoot all the shots that we had prevised. But one thing that I always take to heart, and a lot of my crew of layout artists came from live-action and VFX too, we all really understand what a real camera can do and how it feels, and we tried to infuse that into Transformers.
My philosophy has always been that if the action in the shots is crazy and really kinetic, then the camera should probably be toned down so that we can understand what’s going on. And if you want a more expressive camera, then the action should be a little bit more toned down. It's all about clarity, making it feel relatable. There's 100 plus years of cinema history, and even if people aren't familiar with how cameras work technically, we've all been programmed and understand from watching all those movies how shots should look.
And another thing…. with the notion of scale, a lot of the sets and environments on Transformers were just massive, quite huge, and the scope was really large. So, understanding what a real camera can do, knowing how far a camera could go, whether it was a drone shot, a crane shot, or a helicopter shot, just made it more relatable to the real world. A camera can only travel so much distance over so much time, right? So, as you're doing these big establishing shots, it kind of grounds them to what we're used to seeing. Rather than having a big giant sweeping CG shot, you might actually miniaturize the whole field of the shot, making it look too small if the camera's traveling too fast. So those are kind of the philosophies that we put into the show.
DS: I've also heard folks in your position say that they try to make every shot a shot that someone could make if they were behind the camera. Was that true for you?
CB: I would say the vast majority of the shots we did were like that. We used a lot of motion capture to get a lot of the expository scenes, and that also sort of informed our camera language. I was on a set with the motion capture artists and [director] Josh Cooley was there, and we were all kind of blocking those scenes, and it gave everything a little bit more of a relatable view. I had a virtual camera, which is basically an iPad with a tracker. And that kind of grounded it too, because physically there with an object following the action. Then, we could go in later, take that data and either nuance it, clean it up, or what have you. But that base reality base was there.
DS: How early did you come on the film? And I imagine coming from previs, you were quite comfortable with a lot of these virtual tools to explore whatever the initial 3D sets were to start laying out your shots.
CB: I came on early, after they had done one or two screenings internally. The script was great, the screenings were already great, but they were kind of noodling the beginning of the story and the relationship between Orion and D-16 just to make sure that was right.
We flew up to ILM to do some tests because we were very curious about implementing what Aaron Dem, the producer, would call the virtual story reel [VSR], which is this motion capture, straight to layout, straight to anim blocking… that’s really what it is. That really started to inform the camera language.
As an aside, we discussed, and I was trying to develop, this language bridge throughout the film… since we have two different kinds of caste systems - there's Orion and D and B [B-127] in the miner or lower caste, and then the Transformers and the Primes are held aloft - so I wanted to develop this language where when we shoot the miners at the beginning of the film, it's a little bit more casual language. It's more handheld. The compositions aren't quite as refined, and we shoot on their eye line or looking down on them to diminish them a little bit. And then when we go into the Primes’ world, it's much more formal, controlled, symmetrical.
Working on stage with that language got us immediately into that more casual feel because the easiest thing is to go handheld on that stage. It's kind of the quickest route to get something up. So, we ran with that, did a lot of experiments from the start, trying to get that feel without going too handheld and looking like a reality show.
That started to inform a lot of the blocking as well, working with real motion capture artists and allowing them to play around in the space and be a little bit more free form. Sometimes when you're developing an animated film and it's just an expository scene with people talking, it's a lot of work to make it not feel rigid because you're moving everything one piece at a time. But when you have actors working off each other and being a little spontaneous, you get a lot of interesting reactions. Then I have something to react to too with the camera that's a little bit unexpected. It just becomes a little bit more organic. So, we found a lot of great power in doing that.
Those virtual story reel tests showed us a great way to work. It was much faster. We could do a sequence in a day or two as opposed to spending weeks on it, so we could see where we were going much quicker. And it gave Josh Cooley a chance to work with Lynn Hobson and the editor and kind of get things all up on blocks really quickly. And then if changes were needed, we would go back up to ILM and either tweak the sequence or drop some and bring on new sequences. It gave us fast prototyping, basically, of the sequences.
One of the things that requires though is an art department that's pretty 3D savvy. It was great working with Jason Scheier and his art department team as they were designing and prototyping all the sets and environments in Maya anyways, which could be put into ILM's system. So, as we're blocking out the characters, we're seeing it on the set as he's designing it or has already designed it, so the accuracy of our blocking was basically spot on. Some of the sequences we could pass right through to ILM and the anim blocking was almost right there. They had something to start with immediately, which is a little bit faster than the traditional layout process.
So, the more expository scenes, where people were talking in groups, that was great for the VSR and the motion capture stage. But all the action stuff we did hand keyed with more traditional 3D layout because we wanted to keep it fantastical, punching people across the room and all that stuff. It just wasn't practical to mocap that stuff.
DS: At what point did your layout and camera work kind of get locked?
CB: That's a great question. So, it's sequence by sequence. Once a sequence goes in, it goes from story to us. We usually start with a story reel, and it'll give us the idea of what the shot should be, and then we start placing all the cameras. And then once we have it pretty locked, the cameras I would say are pretty well-defined. I tend not to do too much work in final camera, so we have a very good idea of what the shots should be. Then that gets turned over to ILM. They replace all the assets with the final assets, and then they start animating. And then after animation is finaled, we do another camera pass, and that's all the little tweaks and stuff, just to make sure the pans are correct with the latest animation, or everything is framed exactly like we've envisioned it.
And then after the final camera is locked, that's kind of it for me. We'll look at lighting effects just to double check and make sure, because sometimes when the effects are added, that may change composition a little bit if something has been added late in the game. We're just spot-checking lighting and effects and comp, and then of course stereo, once that gets translated into stereo.
DS: Coming from visualization, which on a live-action project, is basically animated filmmaking, this role seems like a real natural step for you because in essence, creating previs, you're prototyping the movie.
CB: Yeah, that's exactly right. The basic skill set is exactly the same. What I always say, it's like you're prevising the movie and then you just keep going. Usually, you create the previs, and then they'll go and shoot it. Somebody else takes over from there. With layout, nobody takes over. You just keep going. You go another a few rounds in order to get that camera really well-defined for the animators. So, the skill set is really the same. It's the finishing and the polishing.
And the other fact is on an animated movie, you're responsible for every shot in the film. Usually on live-action you're only prevising what needs to be prevised, like the visual effects sequences and the expensive stuff, or the hard stunts, or the talking scenes, which to be honest, are usually the hardest.
DS: Because you have to make it make sense?
CB: You have to make it make sense, be interesting, and feel natural. If you have four people at a table with the eye lines and the overs and all that stuff, it can get pretty complicated, to be honest. It's probably harder to do than a car chase.
Dan Sarto is Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Animation World Network.
