SINBAD –
Motion-Capture Feature Film





























































As we approach the new millennium, one of the more intriguing aspects of cinema is not only the development of rapidly advancing new technologies, but the way in which companies all around the world are adapting those advents to their needs. Already beginning now, sophisticated machinery and computer software are revolutionizing the process of moviemaking and the locations at which movies can be made. As a result, the 21st century will surely bring new opportunities to artists who both use these new tools and offer innovative methods of integrating them into the world of cinema production.

In the international software and exports company PENTAFOUR, G.V. Babu – the head of products and research & development, based in India - and Sriram Sundar Rajan – the chief of business development, based in Los Angeles, has recently completed SINBAD: Beyond The Veil of Mists, the first feature film to be completed animated using motion-capture technology. The unique process features performers wearing reflective balls on a tightly fitting suit acting out the movements required by the characters in the script. Special cameras track the motion of the performer, and it is interpreted by a computer program as 3-D motion. After all of the human actions have been layered in one frame, digital animators fill in the detailed animation that sells the motion-capture information as real character movement, ensuring that SINBAD will break new ground in cinema animation.

"We are an twenty-year old company, publicly held in India," said Babu. "Our two businesses include software and multi-media. Before SINBAD, we employed 400 people, and now, we have 2000. 1200 are in India, and 800 are distributed around the world, with 450 in LA. In 1998, we created a subsidiary in LA. Sriram takes care of our business end, and he co-produced SINBAD with Usha Ganesharajah."

One of Pentafour’s keys to success has been the establishment of a self-managed pipeline which provides automatic quality control. Included in the pipeline are advanced methods of training and recruiting artists and animators to work on Pentafour projects. "On the pipeline, we created a curriculum to train students coming out of school in the digital process," explained Babu. "We choose the best people depending on what our requirements are and teach them the whole production process start to finish. Some are good at 2-D, key frame animation, or in-betweening, so we then train them to be a specialist in that area."

Pentafour has a 22 acre residential campus in Tamil Nadu, India, where people can work from home, and 70 centers across India including 50 franchises. "At Pentafour, we have 200 Silicon Graphic workstations, 250 Pentium stations and 60-70 Power Mac stations," Babu related. "All of it is on a fiber optic backbone with five terabytes of space. Also, we became a certified Silicone Graphics studio in 1996. We were the first outside the U.S., and one of only 30 in the world."

Prior to SINBAD, Pentafour had created a five-minute promo for a French company based on a project called EXCALIBUR. It won an award against ILM in 1997. "Then we did around 35 minutes of motion-capture work for a television production," Babu described. "That gave us enough experience to pipeline our process. We had more confidence to go forward."

Next, Pentafour chose the property SINBAD for multiple-fold reasons. "One, we felt that it was an adventure story which can lead to games, television
programs, videos and other opportunities," said Babu. "Also, we wanted to use human characters with motion-capture that would make the animation look as real as possible, as opposed to cyber-scanning the actors, which we used for EXCALIBUR."

After a company called Improvision came up with the script, Pentafour engaged the services of a casting director to select the voice-over actors – who included Leonard Nimoy from STAR TREK, Mark Hamill from STAR WARS, and Brendan Fraser from THE MUMMY. Then, a specialized voice-over director worked for one week doing voice-overs with the film’s two directors. Modeling took place in pre-production, with Joe Alves, the production designer (a veteran of films like JAWS) in charge of all of the colors. When the production was up, Alves would review sets on a regular basis using a satellite hook-up to India.

Following the voice-overs, live-action directors Evan Ricks and Alan Jacobs supervised the motion-capture sequences. They were hired to get the best
performances out of the actors, working closely with the storyboards. Also, props were positioned within the capture space itself with markers on them, so that when an actor walked inside the motion capture area, he actually walked inside a set. The actors worked in Los Angeles for seven weeks with
the directors to complete the performances with 8 motion-capture cameras and a crew of 150 people. The motion-capture sessions produced 2500 shots -
almost 300 minutes of motion-capture data – for a 80-minute feature film. The result is the first film where every single shot is motion-capture.

"They sent data to us in India using video resolution with motion-capture references," Babu recalled. "We had created a layout to get a planned view of each shot location, and we got an architectural drawing out of that so that we can scale the motion-capture plate. The movie goes from areas in a very large kingdom, to the sea on a ship, then to a cave and then an underwater world. All of this was shot on a 20,000 square-foot stage of motion-capture volume. The technology was limited - more than two people cannot be inputted at one time, and the capture shots could not be longer than a minute."

After 2 1/2 months of post-production, SINBAD: Beyond the Veil of Mists was completed in May of 1999 and is now being actively marketed all over the world. "We did the whole film in a record of 15 months from start to finish for $20 million as opposed to the $100 million cost it would have had in the U.S.," said Babu. Rajan added that SINBAD is only the beginning of Pentafour’s planned production schedule. "Our goal is to work on 10 films per year," he said, "three animation and six-seven live-action films. We are doing 20 minutes of visual effects in each of the live-action projects we have now."

Babu concluded that the 3-D world in which Pentafour is now working offers new possibilities in the video game industry as well. "Our researchers are working with technology to develop multi-lingual game properties that will automatically translate audio from one language to many others," he said. "Now, we have a pipeline set up to do this work, deal with these elements, and successfully create new projects."