Jamie Caliri - Director

motion09 speaker Jamie Caliri won yet another award: the 2009 Emmy Award for Outstanding Main Title Design. The project? Showtime’s The United States of Tara. Jamie played multiple roles in this production, including Director, Director of Photography, Editor, and Main Digital Compositor.

the show

The United States of Tara follows the life of Tara Gregson, a wife and mother with dissociative identity disorder (DID). After deciding to take a break from her medication to discover the real cause of her disorder, her alternate personalties re-emerge. Tara is supported by her calm and level-headed husband Max, her somewhat troubled teenage daughter Kate and quirky, good-hearted gay son Marshall. Her sister, Charmaine, is not so supportive, often expressing her doubt about the validity of Tara’s disorder. The show is set in Overland Park, Kansas.

the concept

Caliri’s opening titles for The United States of Tara is based on the concept of a pop-up book – a subtle way of illustrating the relationship to Tara’s ‘personalities’ – personalities that could ‘pop-up’ at any given time. The illustrative style and the darker color palette used by Caliri evokes a feeling indicative of a ‘mysterious’ disorder – fitting for this project. Caliri worked with the show’s writers, creative producer David Finkel and also received a few helpful suggestions from executive producer Steven Spielberg on how to represent the character. “This project was a melting pot of ideas,” says Caliri. “I wasn’t given the show and then sat down and storyboarded it. Things are more collaborative in television apparently, which is fine!”

the process

Jamie Caliri - Director

Created in the cut paper stop-motion animation style that Jamie has become known for, this innovative piece is an amazing work of art. Unlike most modern-day pieces, Jamie’s projects are normally created the old-fashioned way – by hand.

When asked why he doesn’t go digital, Caliri replies: “If you’re just going to fold up some paper why do it on the computer? Some things are easier done with less technology. The nice thing was I wasn’t sweating, ‘Does this look like paper? I don’t know, we’d better get some paper plug-ins!’”

But for the stop motion aspect, he does rely on the software technology co-developed by Caliri and his brother Dyami: Dragon Stop Motion.

Jamie was hands-on with this project from the start – from constructing some of the actual pop-ups to shooting the sequence – and his unfaltering attention to detail shows through. Each pop-up illustrates one of Tara’s three personas. Tara’s ‘June Cleaver-like housewife personality’, Alice appears first in the title sequence, as she ties her apron in the kitchen. This humorous sequence shows snippets of a ‘day in the life’ as she arranges flowers, gingerly places a tissue over a cockroach before stepping on it with her ever-so-feminine pumps, and then brings out the vacuum to clean up the aftermath – all while she is baking a fabulous cake. And just what, ‘pops-out’ of this cake? Tara’s male, loud, beer-drinking Vietnam vet personality – Buck. The scene transitions to Buck in the garage, beer in hand working on his Harley. As he zips out of the garage on his bike, the trail of dust he leaves, transitions to the bedroom of Tara’s wild and flirty teenager personality ‘T’.

The scene with Alice was creating using a fully working pop-up – without any extras. The stop motion process consisted of Caliri’s team carefully opening the pop-up books until they got a good take. In the scene depicting Tara’s wild child teen persona T opening her closet, the team – art department lead Morgan Hay, illustrator Alex Juhasz and animator Anthony Scott – created a few add-ons to augment the pop-up book.

“When you see T’s room open, there are a few things in the background that slide into the closet. Those had metal in the bottom and underneath the set were little rare-earth magnets,” explains Caliri. “We could slide things along the line of the magnets while the page held itself up. The great thing was that we didn’t have to have those extra pieces in there when the whole set was crushed.”

So just how long does it take to create one of these amazing pop-ups? On the average, anywhere from one day to two weeks, depending on complexity. To create a complex pop-up page, it takes about a month. Yep – you heard right – a month for one page. Having said that, Caliri’s talented team was able to take the project from conception to completion, with the team shooting the action on two stages – in just two months.

kudos!

motion congratulates Caliri and his team on winning the Emmy award for Outstanding Main Title Design!

speaking at motion09
Jamie Caliri will be one of the ‘rock stars’ at motion09

10.11 – 10.14 2009 | abq | nm
motion | experience inspiration

………………………………..
author: Elaine Montoya
motion.tv
………………………………..
copyright: © 2008 – 09
motion.tv

Fans of film title design are sure to have seen many of the projects Peng has worked on. Recent work includes Warner Bros.’ Watchmen, Disney’s Race to Witch Mountain and DreamWorks’ The Soloist.

Peng is the Art Director for yU+co. Established by Garson Yu in 1998, yU+co. has designed film titles for more than 100 feature films distributed by Hollywood motion picture studios, working with directors such as Ang Lee, Zack Snyder, Steven Spielberg, Tony and Ridley Scott, Oliver Stone and Spike Lee.

Peng has also designed television movie titles and show opens for the major networks such as ABC, HBO, and Showtime. For the fourth year in a row, yU+co. received an Emmy nomination for Main Title Design for HBO’s TV movie, Bernard and Doris. Other nominations include ABC’s Ugly Betty, Syfy Channel’s The Triangle and ABC’s Desperate Housewives.

In 2005, yU+co. formed a Hong Kong office for motion graphics work and launched yU+co.[lab] to focus on multimedia interactive design. Recent projects include an interactive trade show exhibit for China Mobile, a technology demo center for Intel, and work for the upcoming 2010 World’s Fair in Shanghai.

“There’s been a lot of change at yU+co. over the past ten years,” said Peng. “A lot of expansion. We’ve evolved into being a full-service motion graphics and digital media design production company. But we’re not a ‘traditional’ motion graphics studio. We serve as a visual design and effects production company for feature films and video games.”

yU+co.’s venture into the video game arena has quickly taken off, designing and producing projects for 3 of the top 5 game developers. For Capcom’s recently released Resident Evil 5, yU+co. designed and directed over 60 minutes of cinematics for this highly successful game franchise. Other recent gaming work includes trailers for the Ubisoft games Tom Clancy’s EndWar, Tom Clancy’s HAWX and Vivendi’s Spyro.

A graduate of Art Center College of Design, with a BFA in Illustration, Peng went on to get her Masters in Design from CalArts. She is a board member of LACE – Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, and is a member of AIGA, and the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

Most recently, Peng and the team at yU+co. have taken center stage for their work on Lakeshore Entertainment/Lionsgate’s futuristic thriller Gamer, in theaters September 4th. Gamer is a high-concept action thriller set in a near future when gaming and entertainment have evolved into a terrifying new hybrid. yU+co. designed story-driven motion graphics applied as visual effects to create the visual look of the entire film.

motion09 welcomes Synderela Peng to the stage!

speaking at motion09
Synderela Peng will be one of the ‘rock stars’ at motion09

10.11 – 10.14 2009 | abq | nm
motion | experience inspiration

………………………………..
author: Elaine Montoya
motion.tv
………………………………..
copyright: © 2008 – 09
motion.tv

Rod Basham is the VFX supervisor at the Los Angeles offices of Imaginary Forces – an award winning visual effects firm with a reel that includes some of film’s most impressive work including Terminator Salvation, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, The Pink Panther 2, Ray, Definitely Maybe and Charlotte’s Web to name a few.

Rod has worked on numerous feature film main title sequences including Spiderman, My Sister’s Keeper, The Pink Panther 2, In the Bedroom, The Mummy 2 and The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor. His commercial work includes spots for Microsoft, Pontiac, Nike, Lexus, Spike, and Infiniti.

As a lead Flame artist and designer, he’s contributed feature film content for an impressive list of titles, including Terminator Salvation, Blade 3, The Spiderwick Chronicles, Titus, and Steve Spielberg’s Minority Report. He was also the lead flame artist on live theatrical content for the Wynn Hotel and Casino’s Lake of Dreams in Las Vegas and Julie Taymor’s Grendel Opera.

One of Rod’s recent projects was for Terminator Salvation (view motion.tv article). The piece was entitled “Machine Vision”. In this project, their challenge was to conceptualize how the Terminator robots would see the world. Imaginary Forces broke down the visual spectrum to design Machine Vision, developing the language of these special effects sequences. Using new tools for IF, such as depth cameras that breaks down footage into data point 3-D imaging, Machine Vision creates a terrifying new take on these killer robots.

“We had to figure out how to take this depth information and map these interesting point clouds under there and supplement these with the interface graphics. I think Jeremy Cox (lead animator/designer) approached it very cleanly and in a fresh way but drawing upon what was in the other films. The red wash is pretty much a trademark of machine vision type shots, but we took it in a slightly different direction so it wasn’t the expected optical red wash that people have seen. We made it different for different machines too,” said Basham.

Imaginary Forces also created the main titles for Terminator Salvation.

“A lot of the inspiration for the titles came from the machine vision work and from what we were already working on. The titles themselves are big, iconic, heavy pieces that fit into the score that Danny Elfman did. We did our best to work in pixel crawls and glitches to match the other stuff we were doing,” explained Basham.

Rod has also been involved in a number of architectural and experience design projects including Design and the Elastic Mind featured at MOMA . Independently, Rod directed his first music video, which was featured in Resfest in 2004.

Basham will be presenting several sessions this year at motion09, and is one of the selected panelists for The Art of VFX Supervision.

motion09 welcomes Rod Basham to the stage!

speaking at motion09
Rod Basham will be one of the ‘rock stars’ at motion09

10.11 – 10.14 2009 | abq | nm
motion | experience inspiration

………………………………..
author: Elaine Montoya
motion.tv
………………………………..
copyright: © 2008 – 09
motion.tv

motion

From the landmarks of Las Vegas to the screens big and small, audiences around the world have enjoyed Karin’s work. Karin directs and designs for a wide range of projects, spanning the worlds of fashion, entertainment, advertising, live-action direction, art, experience design and environmental installations. Whether directing military soldiers or stop motion claymation figures, Karin’s work carries a unique stamp.

Karin is is one of the founding members of  Imaginary Forces – an award winning visual effects firm with a reel that includes some of film’s most impressive work including Terminator Salvation, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, The Pink Panther 2, Ray, Definitely Maybe and Charlotte’s Web to name a few.

One of their recent projects was for Terminator Salvation (view motion.tv article). The piece was entitled “Machine Vision”.  In this project, their challenge was to conceptualize how the Terminator robots would see the world. Imaginary Forces broke down the visual spectrum to design Machine Vision, developing the language of these special effects sequences. Using new tools for IF, such as a depth cameras that breaks down footage into data point 3-D imaging, Machine Vision creates a terrifying new take on these killer robots.

On the lighter side, Karin directed the title sequence for Sony Picture’s The Pink Panther 2.  Her efforts did not go unnoticed. Legendary film critic Roger Ebert said of the titles: “I was smiling all the way through the opening credits of The Pink Panther 2. They made me miss the golden age of credits.”

Karin’s interest in pushing the boundaries of cinema has resulted in creating film and video installations for a variety of architectural and theatrical sites, including Las Vegas, Lincoln Center, and the Los Angeles Opera. Meanwhile, her expertise in both live action and design ultimately led to directing television commercials for such clients as Target, Honda, Sears, and Herman Miller.

Her work in designing television titles earned her an Emmy Award for Masterpiece Theatre’s American Collection and a nomination for the hit NBC series Chuck.

Karin Fong is a director and designer based in New York City. A native Californian, Karin studied Art at Yale, with a concentration in Graphic Design. After successfully creating an animated alphabet book for her senior project, she began her career as an animator on the WGBH television program Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? From that point forward, Karin was hooked on creating work that combines live action, design, and animation.

Recently named one the Top 100 Most Creative People in Business by Fast Company magazine, Karin has had work in the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum, Artists Space, and The Wexner Center, as well as in numerous publications on film and design. Currently, Karin is on the faculty at the Yale School of Art where she teaches in the MFA program.

motion09 welcomes Karin Fong to the stage!

speaking at motion09
Karin Fong will be one of the ‘rock stars’ at motion09

10.11 – 10.14 2009 | abq | nm
motion | experience inspiration

………………………………..
author: Elaine Montoya
motion.tv
………………………………..
copyright: © 2008 – 09
motion.tv

someone to be proud of

This year, the motion graphics, broadcast design, and vfx industries have someone to be proud of: Karin Fong, of Imaginary Forces. Selected for her diverse portfolio of film titles, commercials, and experience design projects, Karin has garnered numerous accolades for her work, including awards from the D&AD, ADC, One Show, and an Emmy.

on machine vision

One of their recent projects was for Terminator Salvation (shown in the clip above). The piece was entitled “Machine Vision”.  In this project, their challenge was to conceptualize how the Terminator robots would see the world. Imaginary Forces broke down the visual spectrum to design Machine Vision, developing the language of these special effects sequences. Using new tools for IF, such as a depth cameras that breaks down footage into data point 3-D imaging, Machine Vision creates a terrifying new take on these killer robots.

@imaginary forces

Under Karin Fong’s leadership, Imaginary Forces, best known for its innovative movie titles, has expanded into new territory: commercial work for companies such as Microsoft, Pepsi, and Target, and design experiences for architectural spaces like the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the redesigned Lincoln Center. “Our essence is in film-title work,” says Fong. “But it’s through that concentrated effort that we’ve been able to expand our brain trust into multiple mediums.”

Fong is a master of cinematic storytelling in a compact space; her work in The Pink Panther 2 inspired film critic Roger Ebert to recall “the golden age of credits.”

kudos!

motion congratulates Karin Fong for being selected one of Fast Company’s 100 Most Creative People!

speaking at motion09
Karin Fong will be one of the ‘rock stars’ at motion09

10.11 – 10.14 2009 | abq | nm
motion | experience inspiration

………………………………..
author: Elaine Montoya
motion.tv
………………………………..
copyright: © 2008 – 09
motion.tv

The New York Times called it “…the best bit of animation to originate in a DreamWorks film yet.”

Jamie Caliri is a storytelling genius with one goal: to make an emotional connection with his audience and give them something special.

animation is in his blood

“there’s a childlike point of view in a lot of my work”

In 2004, Caliri directed the brilliant end titles for Lemony Snicket’s A Series Of Unfortunate Events. This moody masterpiece combines paper cutouts and a perfect score to transport us to a dizzying world on the edge of looming disaster.

“I never let go of my ultimate goal. I wanted to make an enchanting, inviting piece that not only held true to the sentiment of the Lemony Snicket books, but also paid tribute to the amazing talent listed in the end credits,” said Caliri.

he succeeded

The Boston Globe describes the sequence as the “purest example of visual elegance on the big screen.”

“getting to entertain people is a luxury, and it’s fun”
In 2006 Caliri directed the Annie Award winning commercial Dragon for United Airlines. This :60 spot first shown at the 2006 Super Bowl tells a magical story of a father who after tucking his son into bed, travels to a different world on the back of a giant ‘paper’ bird. There, he meets with the knights of the round table before they head off to defeat a fire-breathing dragon. All to return to his son with a ‘miniature’ dragon in hand.

This masterpiece was shot on miniature sets, one frame at a time using digital stills and Dragon – a stop-motion software application that Jamie and his brother developed.

With absolutely no words, the story unfolds and effectively enters the hearts and minds of viewers purely through animation. Dragon will go down as one of the most elegant animated spots in the history of advertising.

“it’s a dream job for me”

Jamie is currently working on The Sun And The Seed, a personal 4 minute short. Dragon software is being used now by many top stop-motion studios including Cuppa Coffee.

speaking at motion09
Jamie Caliri will be one of the ‘rock stars’ at motion09

10.11 – 10.14 2009 | abq | nm
motion | experience inspiration

………………………………..
author: elaine montoya
motion09 producer
………………………………..
copyright: © 2008 – 09
motion.tv

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how did you get into motion graphics?

TM: I started out as a musician, then got into desktop publishing after working on a music magazine. Working with After Effects was a natural next step because it was kind of a tie-in between music and print—but it was much more interesting than print. This was in the early 1990s, when there was a lot of interest in multimedia and interactive CDs. The Internet wasn’t quite there yet—but obviously something new was happening. And it really fascinated me. Just as desktop publishing had eliminated the need for typesetters, I could see the same thing happening to big post houses with very expensive equipment—because here was this little program that could, in some cases, do more tricks than they could.

CM: When I started working with After Effects—we were using it from version one, and beta testing it when there were just a half-dozen beta testers—I knew it would revolutionize video production. It was an exciting time, because until that point it had been, “we get to do this work because we bought the gear.” Now it was, “we get to do this work because we can afford a computer and we’re creative.”

when you get a project, what’s the first thing you do? what’s your approach to problem-solving?

CM: First, you have to consider what the client is trying to communicate. Is there a mood they’re trying to get across?

TM: Or is it information?

CM: Are there facts or concepts they need to convey?

TM: Or is it just eye candy? A lot of jobs just need to look pretty and animate to the music. While the music should never dictate what the visuals look like, it should dictate how they animate. So it’s very important for the client to pick the music before you start the animation. But as far as the visual look, there’s no hard and fast rule. Every job is different.

CM: It’s very tempting in motion graphics just to focus on the eye candy aspect. But you really need to start with the purpose of the piece.

TM: Exactly. On Web sites, you can do a lot of flashy animations but you really have to stop and ask, who’s the customer? How will they use the site? How will they get in and out of a page? How many words should be on the page? If you’re doing an opening graphic or animation for a crowd that’s moving around, it will be different than one you’d do for a crowd that’s seated. A seated audience is captive; you’ll have their attention for about a minute before the host comes on. You really do have to take everything into account.

CM: It’s not about, “Is it a cool graphic to watch?” The question is, did it serve the client’s purpose? At a trade show, for example, you need to grab someone’s attention while they’re walking down an aisle, you want to drag them into your booth. In a movie title you’re trying to get the viewer in the mood for the film and what they’re about to watch. For that, a subtle distortion, like the effects we did on the title for Cold Mountain, is more appropriate.

TM: When you’re doing a title for a movie, it’s not as creative as people might think. There are a lot of restrictions on what you can and can’t do. For example, the title can’t be bigger than the biggest star’s name. The sequence of names, and whether a name gets its own card is really important. I can’t just shuffle titles around, or put two names on a card.

CM: It’s an interesting contrast between the Web and film. Film is an older industry; there are a lot of set ways of doing things that you have to learn—as opposed to the Web where a lot of it’s like, “we’re making this up, folks. Let’s see what works.”

in your book After Effects Apprentice, you break everything down into simple steps, which helps remove the intimidation factor for a new user.

TM: That’s why we wrote the book. Our big book, Creating Motion Graphics With After Effects, is a little intimidating. It was written for people like us, not video editors or Flash users who just need to know enough about After Effects to get the job done in their world. High schools were using it to teach After Effects, but it’s not really appropriate for that. So we decided to do a book for beginners that covered all the core techniques and used fun examples. It even has some 3-D and advanced material, but it stops short of being overwhelming. People coming from a background in print or video editing can be a little intimidated by working in 3-D. We try to get them over the fear factor and show how, with minimal investment, you can really change the look of what you’ve created. After Effects doesn’t do full-blown 3-D, there’s no modeling. You’re just moving layers in x, y and z, and adding glows and highlights with the camera. The After Effects 3-D world isn’t really full 3-D.

CM: You’re not making dinosaurs, you’re just making information more interesting.

TM: We like to show people that 3-D isn’t all that scary. We teach shortcuts, tips and tricks that let you move around in 3-D space more easily, and make working in 3-D much more enjoyable. But moving into 3-D isn’t something you do in your first week with After Effects. You need to get all the 2-D basics down first. 3-D it really is more for the intermediate user.

TM: First, you find out what it is you need to teach. And then you find some way of explaining it. A lot of it is based on jobs—we try to teach things that you have to do over and over again. We don’t teach things that you did once for a very strange client on a strange job that you never need to do again. We don’t want people to spend time learning something they’re never going to use on a real job. And we really try to break it down. Especially on Apprentice, every exercise is done in three or four pages. There’s no huge, long exercise where, by the time you’re finished, you’re not sure what you learned. The other secret is, don’t try to make a tutorial out of a real job. Real jobs are really messy. Our orientation is to prepare you for a career in using this program and these tools. We believe in keeping the focus on the core techniques you’ll use on a daily basis.

CM: There’s no need to show every single nook and cranny of a program if you’re never going to use it on a real job. We’re really into a user-to-user way of conveying information. I think it’s a difference between treating users as artists rather than programmers.

TM: Exactly. Our approach is, you’re an artist and you want to learn this. We actually joke that our books are for lazy, busy artists. We want the quickest way and the shortest way to do something.

how and when did you decide to write books about After Effects?

CM: Motion graphics people and After Effects users in particular are a community. It’s always been a pretty tight knit community, particularly in the early days. The first few After Effects books were written by people who didn’t use the program. They were authors who saw an opportunity and learned enough to get a book out there, but they weren’t users. In fact, one of those authors emailed us and said, “I see you’ve been writing articles on After Effects. I’m doing a book on After Effects, but I don’t actually know how to use it. Can I just reprint your stuff?”

TM: I turned to Chris and said this is ridiculous. We have to write a book. At that time, between 1998-2000, post houses were starting to take After Effects seriously and hiring people to work with it. We were afraid they were going to have a bad experience with people who just didn’t really know enough

CM: When a user doesn’t know how to use a program, it’s easy for a client to think it’s not a good program.

TM: We didn’t want After Effects to get a bad reputation because people weren’t using it properly. Also, people coming to After Effects from Photoshop or video editing didn’t know anything about the technical side of using After Effects, of outputting to video with non-square pixels and working with frame rates at 29.97. In the early days, some of the video cards only ran at 30 frames a second. If you have the technical stuff down pat, you can be more creative. You’re not worried about whether the frame rate is right or whether you’re adding three-two pulldown.

CM: We tell you enough technical information so that it’s not a mystery, so that users can understand it enough to know what the technical settings should be—then they can go back to being an artist. Showing people stuff that’s tripping them up—that’s been our driving force in doing the classes and books. It’s hey, this causes us trouble, let’s share it with everyone else so it doesn’t cause them trouble too.

speaking at motion09
Chris & Trish Meyer will be two of the ‘rock stars’ at motion09

10.11 – 10.14 2009 | abq | nm
motion | experience inspiration

………………………………..
author: Lilian Dregalla
Working Story Creative
………………………………..
copyright: © 2008 – 09
motion.tv

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