The film "A Viagem" by Christian Boustani and Alain Escalle is about the portuguese trips to Japan and the encounter with Japanese people. "A viagem" was created with High resolution technologies for 35 mm film projection. The film is using a lot of 2D animations made in computers and some specific 3D elements. It's a multi-composite processed images, made with elements such differents as live shooting for actor ( 35mm ), drawings made by hands for traditional animations, video, synthétic textures etc.

1543. A Portuguese ship drops anchor for the first time before Japan, marking the beginning of an expansion into the Far East; new trade routes are opened up and there is an intensive cultural exchange.

This event was captured on a large collection of painted wall panels illustrated by a Japanese artist, which thus create an antique snapshot of the encounter between two worlds on wooden panels embossed with gold-leaf. The pictures reflect their amused, amazed and sometimes confused impres sions of these people from the West, with their odd customs and long noses, bringing strange animals with them and unknown objects like guns.

The Design and Electronic Realization

of the Film "A viagem"

The work "A viagem", generated in film resolution, was commissioned for the Portuguese Pavilion at the Lisbon Expo 98 and was created by the same team that had made Cités antérieures: Bruges in 1995 (Director: Christian Boustani, Images and Special Effects: Alain Escalle).

The technical and visual realization was intended to be done on the basis of a storyboard, which proved to be an elaborate and time-consuming project (nine months post-production!), with tasks ranging from color studies based on color cards before the shooting started (directed by Christian Boustani, lasting for two weeks), directing the spe cial effects during the shooting, to the creation of the graphic elements and directing the post-pro duc tion team comprising about twenty people.

The film uses several different kinds of computer graphic elements: 2D objects (computer generated decorative elements in the tradition of Japanese screens), pure 3D effects and elements from existing film material in both higher and lower resolutions.

The film elements were divided into two groups:

1. The overall views and other settings requiring a high resolution, 42 minutes altogether, which were scanned in with 2K at Cinesite, London, and

2. the settings for which a normal video resolution was sufficient (amounting to five hours of picture material, scanned by After Movies).

The 2D elements were prepared by an assistant and myself over a period of five months. They provided the basis for the graphical unity of the film and were given to the computer graphics artists, who worked on the composition with two Inferno and two Flame computers. These were linked for this project with the post-production company TRIX, which is well known in the field of rides and animation. Alto gether there were six people working day and night for almost four months on the compositing.

Pure 3D elements were inserted at various places in the film. These are essentially simple 3D models animated and textured with Inferno/Flame. These elements include the ship (which was sometimes also derived from a model filmed with motion control), the sea monster (whose decomposition in a wave was created as an animation using Inferno), the breaking vessel (the saffron it contains was made as a particle animation with Inferno and with individual sparks like Sapphire and 5d monters), and the flying deer at the end of the film. They were cre ated within two months by eight people using the programs Explore and Softimage. A typical setting like the one at the beginning is relatively long and very complex - the realization of the first minute consumed about two months of work on a Flame machine. The scene is composed as follows:

1. General view of the Lisbon harbor ... (this was composed entirely of low resolution elements in the middle of the harbor, whereby the harbor itself was represented in high resolution after being first com posed of elements in normal video resolution), ... which fades into:

2. a camera panning over the facade of a building (a virtual camera pan in the machine [Flame] over the facade, which is a retouched photo of a historical building in Lisbon. The roof is a 3D model rendered and textured in Flame. The people were inserted in the picture at the end.)

This is linked with:

3. a pan through the crowd and across the market place. (This is a conventional film camera pan put together from three shots done with motion control for financial reasons, because we did not have enough extras. On the whole, the point was to balance the three shots, multiply the crowd and create a virtual decor with Inferno based on the graphic elements. In turn, this was to be faded into the three-dimensional space of the camera pan [virtual camera of Flame].) This fades into:

4. Crossing the panel screen and a flashback to the ship traveling to Japan (movement and virtual decor created with Flame/Inferno on the basis of graphic elements [sky, clouds and ocean are animations], and the ship, which is a pure 3D element [Explore], is copied in).

Tying into this is:

5. The arrival in the scientist's cabin (created entirely in the virtual space of Inferno/Flame, beginning with photographic elements and a high resolution scan of the person).

The computer graphic work of the film thus uses very different techniques, which are the result of an intensive study of the technological possibilities, although there is something handcrafted about the application, which I prefer, because it conveys more emotion with the work and makes the images look less synthetic.