This page has information regarding previs and how to create good previs, it’s a work in progress with some tips and examples of previs work both in film, short film, TVC and student work.
Offsite Resourses
Temple of the Seven Golden Camels has great previs tips including this page
Temple of the Seven Golden Camels
Matthew Scott disecting Prisoners
Matthew Scott Cinematography Blog
Floobynooby disecting Pixars The Incredibles
Cinematography of The Incredibles Part 1
Cinematography of The Incredibles Part 2
Evanerichards.com is a great site with big collections of image sequences showing the framing of movies in image sequences.
Here’s a link to The Incredibles this time in images…
Here’s the list of movies
Here we go through some of the previs I did on Happy Feet. The first section simply shows before and afters later in the video.
The second section I go through the previs on the leopard seal chase in some detail talking through some of the concepts to some students at AIE Sydney I was mentoring.
Happy Feet Leopard Seal Chase
Leopard Seal Chase Previs Versions and Krill Scene.
Breakdown of the Leopard Seal Chase (clip from a review session)
Here we’ll look at a short film in the making, here with Dave and my short film called Cane-Toad
Cane-Toad
Personal projects previs is just as important as on the big movies. Here’s the aniamtic Vs previs vs final of the Cane-Toad short film.
Cane-Toad Animatic
Cane-Toad Previs
Cane-Toad Final
Here’s the previs for the NRL’s opener on Foxtel created at Fin Design.
Fox Sports NRL
Here’s a Sports Opener with Previs vs the final version. As the only previs artist on this job I inherited almost the role of the director, along with a motion graphics designer we designed this job to suit what the client had in mind.
Fox Sports Previs
Fox Sports Final
In this section we can see the WIP of the progress of previs in Boris Fomin’s short Dying Light.
It’s particularly good to see the progress of this film and how the previs improves vastly from version 1 to the last version 5.
Once you have your animation nailed with good previs it makes the rest of the process including animation and lighting and modelling much easier since we know exactly what needs to be modelled at a high resolution and what needs to happen, how shoul dthe character pose and even little things such as what facial excpressions are needed.
Evolution and Turning of Previs
I see a lot of students improve their previs quite dramatically from the original idea. Boris’s “Dying Light” is a great example where you can feel the difference that a lot of hard work can do to improve framing composition and timing with rough aniamntion.
Previs should evolve, it’s a discipline in it’s own right and can be improved vastly like any other medium. It should be taken extremely seriously in regards to making 3d films.
In this example we can clearly see the difference between version 1 and version 5. There’s a lot of craft involved which I hope to document at some stage.
Boris now knows exactly what he has to model and at what resolution. He’s solved a lot of the problems early and the final stages will fall together much more easily. And he’s confident he’s got something interesting especially since it will be turned further and improved in animation and lighting. The import part here is that the shot structure works and creates a great blueprint for his film.
