Coming Alive, on a Computer...

Simon West had just finished with a combat scene for his Paramount Pictures’

blockbuster Tomb Raider in which Angelina Jolie as Lara Croft is in combat with

a group of intruders at the Croft Manor Control Centre. Lara’s technical guru,

Bryce, is helping her to defeat her foes via a night-vision surveillance device

and a set of monitors. But the shots that West and his team have filmed are just

a part of the final edited scene that one sees in the movie. And check out what

happens during Lara’s training fight with a Droid. Her guru Bryce is playing a

computer game.

These are just some examples of action animation and interactive sequences

that have been created digitally using Adobe After Effects. While in the first

scene, the surveillance shots were achieved by composing the footage into a base

screen, adding animating menus and control panels, the whole design given the

After Effects treatment to replicate a night-vision camera. Similarly, to create

a new game out of recognizable computer characters, the software was used to

merge PacMan and Space Invaders into a single 3D game. The screen shows a sphere

made up shields with a ship at its centre; the Space Invaders are on the outside

of the sphere shooting at the ship as the PacMen eat the shields.

In fact, most critics agree that bringing Lara Croft to life was one of the

awesome tasks any director could have undertaken. But West decided to root the

overall experience of the Tomb Raider technology in reality by using the

services of the London-based Useful Companies. Elaborates Simon Staines,

creative director of Useful Companies, "The technology we created for this

film had to be different, sophisticated but believable from an operational point

of view. Our designs had to be powerful yet subtle as West used very tight

close-ups to pull the audience into Lara’s world."

But it was not just Staines and his team of experts that managed to bring

West’s dream to life. ‘‘Expertise is fine, but then one also needs the

right tools to handle such complexities,’’ Staines explains. According to

him, After Effects was handy in achieving the most complex effects. ‘‘It

competes seriously with high-end effects systems and we like it more for its

flexibility and power," he adds. Going by plain statistics, Staines and his

team used the software to produce 120 animations ranging from 10-second loops to

sixty-second interactive sequences as well as over two minutes of vital visual

effects shots to help Lara Croft and her world come alive on the big screen.

Shubhendu Parth In New Delhi