Imaginary Forces Brings Ancient Enemies To Life in Blade: Trinity
written by Jim May
Vampires have long haunted the horror movie genre, from classics such as Bram Stoker's Dracula to more recent chillers like Salem's Lot and The Lost Boys. Starting in the late 1980's and continuing to this day, vampires have evolved into their own horror subgenre, rivaled only by zombie movies.
Imaginary Forces designed the opening title sequence of all three Blade movies.
But if we're up to our, uh, necks in vampires, someone will have to come to our aid. Thus was born the Vampire Slayer class of comic book hero, to which Hollywood was famously introduced by Joss Whedon via his 1992 script for Buffy: The Vampire Slayer and his subsequent TV series of the same name.
Vampire slayers, however, have been crawling the dark alleys of the comic book world since before Buffy broke her first nail. Blade, created by writer Marv Wolfman and designer Gene Colan, was introduced in issue 10 of Marvel's Tomb of Dracula in 1973, wearing a bandolier which, instead of bullets, held wooden stakes for pounding into the chests of his enemies. After his debut, Blade continued appearing in Marvel Comics, including in his own short-lived series in 1994.
In 1998, Blade was brought to the big screen by producer Peter Frankfurt in conjunction with Marvel Comics and New Line Cinema. His Los Angeles-based entertainment/design firm, Imaginary Forces, is the production company behind all three movies. In addition to production, Imaginary Forces also designed and implemented the main and end-title sequences for the Blade series.
Imaginary Forces is not a one-trick pony; unlike many highly specialized production houses in Hollywood, IF has a diverse portfolio, establishing itself as a multipurpose art and design house. In addition to the Blade movies, their work includes an architectural design submission for the redevelopment of the former World Trade Center site in New York City, environmental design and animation work for the recently revamped Fremont Street Experience in Las Vegas, and commercial campaigns for many A-list clients. For the third Blade film, Frankfurt assigned the development of the “Drake” character exposition sequence to a team led by Imaginary Forces art director Ahmet Ahmet.
“We cross over on quite a few jobs, taking a multidisciplinary approach” says Ahmet, who took the reins of both art direction and on-set direction for this sequence, storyboarding the sequence and working with Peter Frankfurt to develop the desired look and feel, and then later directing the actual shoot in Vancouver with actor Dominic Purcell.
In the third film, Blade faces down an enemy that is new to him and the audience, but is in fact his most ancient of enemies: Dracula himself, the original progenitor of the vampire race. In the Blade universe, he is known simply as Drake. The sequence gives Blade and the audience their first look at this menacing new character, and Ahmet was keen to take advantage of the creative freedom afforded him by the producers.
“The Patriarch of Hominis Nocturna” -- Drake, Blade's arch-nemesis.
“It was great to have this kind of blank canvas to work with” says Ahmet. “In terms of the Drake sequence, Drake is the arch-nemesis of Blade; this sequence had to create this menacing presence, implying that it was the alpha, the ultimate evil and root of evil. Within the context of the whole movie we couldn't really give away too much; we had to imply and hint rather than openly describe him. Those were essentially the only parameters within which we worked.”
With that as his starting point, he then storyboarded his initial concepts for the sequence, working with director David S. Goyer to determine the length and chosen story details. At first, their ideas took a chronological tack, encapsulating Drake's long history through a series of images intended to convey not only Drake's long life, but also his involvement in famous, often bloody events in human history.
“Our initial intention was to create a non-linear, chronological back-story...one idea that David Goyer had was that Drake was there when they crucified Christ. We would trace him back to Ancient Sumeria, and then work our way forward through the Assyrians, the Romans and so on. So that was how we laid it out initially; we wanted to tell the story of Drake interacting with key confrontations and moments in history.”
In the end, however, the sequence as it was took on too much of the historical quality, at the expense of the evil nature of Drake himself. The chronological approach was abandoned in favor of a more abstract design with the history as simply the backdrop for this most ancient evil.
“Forget the books, forget the movies, there's no happy ending with this guy!” Blood droplets were added using CINEMA 4D's volumetrics engine.
“We wanted to create a scary sequence that would paint a picture of Drake as being a very old vampire, the original vampire” says Charles Khoury, CG artist for the sequence. “[But] we also wanted to show his vampirical nature, slashing a trail of blood through history, and show him reveling in blood, bathing in it or soaking his hands in it.”
Principal footage was shot in Vancouver; in his directorial role, Ahmet had to make maximum use of actor Dominic Purcell wherever possible. “[Principal photography] took three days, but we only had Dominic for a few hours. On top of that, we had a splinter crew as well; [director] David had the first unit for the Sumerian scene within the tomb, so Dominic had to come to and fro, it was like “We need him on first unit!” so we'd say OK and have to pick up afterwards. One of the things we did with him was this: We built a twelve-foot tank of blood, and it had to be heated up for him to get into, and the fake blood has to work at a specific temperature. So Dominic was out on Vancouver rooftops until one in the morning shooting with David, and then we asked him to do this! So he was rather beat, but we talked him into it... he was great to work with. That was the last thing we shot.”
With the footage shot and developed, Ahmet and Charles began the work of assembling the sequence. With the change in concept from chronological to abstract, there was a fair bit of reworking, but enough footage was shot to minimize the need to fill in gaps. Footage of artifacts intended to be used in the historical approach was adapted to the newer approach, and then 3D animator Charles Khoury came in to add the stylized CINEMA 4D-created CGI elements that would help put the sequence over the top.
The ancient Roman mosaic of Drake, with more CINEMA 4D blood droplets.
The first scene to receive his attention was the mosaic shot. Originally filmed in Photosonics, it was decided that the droplets of blood splattering on the stones should be clearly seen. These were added using CINEMA 4D's fluid rendering engine, as were the droplets of blood flying off Drake's arm as he dispatched yet another victim.
His next task was to add the stylized fire elements that pulled it all together. But this wasn't just something burning – this fire had to do tricks.
“Because we wanted the fire to look dynamic in a specific manner, we didn't shoot fire or use any fire elements mapped onto the geometry -- it was done entirely in CINEMA 4D. We found that this created a more stylized look for the fire rather than being strictly realistic, and this suited a comic-book character like Drake.”
Flame On! Stylized CINEMA 4D flames coursing over Drake's armor and forming his symbol.
“We created the stylized flames that follow specific paths, in particular the drawing of Drake's hieroglyph in fire, using volumetric deformers on geometry; we modeled the overall path of the fire and then added volumetric deformers to crumple it up and create natural ripples and waves in its shape. We used a C4D plug-in by REMOTION called DiTools, which is a suite of plug-ins including a volumetric deformer.
Some of the fire we see are simple elements, but anywhere we wanted the fire to move a specific way or take on a specific shape, we used C4D.”
CINEMA 4D screen shot showing the geometry used to create the flames dancing over Drake's armor and finally forming the ancient vampire's glyph.
“The costume was shot in two stages; the first was a low-detail shot on the actor himself with rough armor that we used to control the direction and flow of the fire elements that we see coursing over the final elements. In the second stage we shot the final, detailed armor with the final lighting.
We resized this film footage to video resolution that was later brought into CINEMA 4D and mapped to the background. Then, I made a simple track by keyframing a null object over the duration of the sequence. Once I had this done, I linked the camera to the null object and as a result had my camera matching the motion of the shot. This facilitated matching the form of the fire to the armor.”
With CINEMA 4D supplying this additional footage, the team found itself able to realize its goal without expensive reshoots. “Not too much hackery was needed, because we overshot a lot of the material, what we shot was a lot of the artifacts we thought we'd use for key points in the chronological approach, timeline elements. We didn't use them that way, what we did was recompose the sequence in the Flame editor, layering effects from the abstracted shots we took of Drake as the beast, and then we used CINEMA 4D to build a lot of the extra elements we needed.”
Even with the change of direction midstream, the entire sequence was completed in about five weeks of work. “Our first presentation was about four weeks after we got our materials back, but with the process of editing the movie and the sequence, and the change of approach, we ended up taking almost two months to complete the shot.”
To view the Drake sequences and title sequences for Blade Trinity:
http://www.imaginaryforces.com/html/index.html?s=projects&q=5&id=238
Jim May is a Canadian freelance writer and CGI artist, who lives and works in the Los Angeles area.
