Vancouver Island Software Company Makes 2012 Mass Destruction for Disaster Movie | Masters of special effects disaster arrange destruction in 2012
By Michael D. Reid, Times Colonist, November 13, 2009
When director Roland Emmerich was searching for weapons of mass destruction, he didn't have to look any further than a company now based in the Vancouver Island Technology Park.
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It's the new corporate base for Edwin Braun, a guy who knows so much about creating mass destruction he was contracted to give Emmerich the power to take out Los Angeles and Las Vegas in 2012, his disaster epic that opens today.
"We had the tools they needed to destroy a lot of objects," said Braun, CEO of Cebas Visual Technology Inc., a boutique software company that creates tools for computer-generated movie and game effects.
Indeed, there's no shortage of destruction in Emmerich's $200-million doomsday thriller inspired by an ancient Mayan myth forecasting a global catastrophe. In his new orgy of destruction, the German-born filmmaker who demolished the White House in Independence Day and froze the Statue of Liberty in The Day After Tomorrow doesn't just reduce L.A. and Las Vegas to rubble.
In a flick pulsating with tornadoes, typhoons, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and other disasters, Emmerich targets Yellowstone Park, topples the Eiffel Tower and trashes the Vatican.
Even the B.C. legislature isn't spared, if it makes the cut. A crew slipped into town last fall to capture a "plate shot" of exteriors that were to be matched with green screen footage of a rally featuring hundreds of extras.
"This was the biggest project for us," said Braun, whose software has been used in Starship Troopers, Lost in Space, Black Hawk Down, Spider-Man 3, Star Trek: Nemesis and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Its special effects tools have also been used in computer games such as StarCraft and Need for Speed: Pro Street Racing.
Aside from the eradication of Las Vegas and L.A., his company's tools created a plane crash in the Antarctic. "We also did other things, but we're not allowed to talk about them," he noted playfully.
Although Braun shares the same nationality as Emmerich, that wasn't what landed them the gig. "It had no advantage at all. It was our good quality," laughed Braun, whose 20-year-old company was founded in Heidelberg, Germany.
"So many objects were going to be destroyed it was impossible for them to do them by hand. Usually you model objects as a whole, so they are complete. The classic approach is artists have to cut them manually with tools to break them apart. We have a one-button solution to destroy or 'pre-break' objects."
Braun, 43, was referring to VolumeBreaker, a time-saving tool developed specifically to meet Emmerich's needs on 2012.
"They used that on nearly every object," said Braun, who worked in collaboration with Uncharted Territory, the production company headed by Emmy Award-winning visual effects producer Marc Weigert.
"It was huge. There were hundreds of cars, houses, trees, hydrants, picket fences, airplane crashes, roads, buildings -- everything."
The film's computer graphics effects supervisor, Ari Sachter-Zeltzer, said Cebas's involvement in the "image pipeline" allowed artists to handle complex effects that would otherwise have required a larger team.
Emmerich also used ThinkingParticles, Cebas's sophisticated system that gives directors more freedom to change animation.
The firm's other software includes finalFlares, an optical effects engine that gave the planet Romulus its haunting glow in Star Trek Nemesis, and finalToon, which created the illusion of footsteps on Harry Potter's magical Maurauder's Map. FinalRender, its graphics rendering engine, allowed for efficient rendering of finished images of special effects shots.
Braun, who moved to Victoria four months ago, is the first of a nine-person Cebas team settling here.
While it might have been logical to relocate to the U.S., he said he had his reasons for choosing Victoria -- and not just because he'll be closer to film and interactive gaming industry clients in Vancouver, L.A. and San Francisco.
"I prefer Canada. It's a pretty strange concept the U.S.A. has -- their social system and how they treat people in general."
And there was another enticement, said Braun, whose software will next be featured in John Woo's epic Red Cliff.
"On top of everything, B.C. made a good offer. They have good tax breaks."
On the web: To see samples of the company's work and clips from 2012, visit timescolonist.com/entertainment
mreid@tc.canwest.comCebas Visual, the Victoria company:
www.cebasstation.com/Red Cliff, the John Woo film they are working on:
www.apple.com/trailers/magnolia/redcliff/2012 trailers:
www.whowillsurvive2012.comwww.apple.com/trailers/sony_pictures/20122012 destroys Las Vegas:
www.traileraddict.com/trailer/2012/featurette-vegas-in-ruinsCAPSULE REVIEWS OF 2012
Compiled by Canwest News Service
Size matters: a winter popcorn movie and guilty pleasure, this mass entertainment of mass destruction is not one coherent story but a calculated, cliché-ridden, often humorous pastiche of all the disaster movies made in Hollywood.
-- Emanuel Levy, emanuellevy.com
Doomsday is good therapy. What does it matter that billions die if that brings a family together in one big hug?
-- Peter Keough, Boston Phoenix
A deliriously ludicrous, guilty pleasure of a blockbuster in which the end of the world is turned into a two-and-a-half-hour roller-coaster ride.
-- Mike Goodridge, Screen International
The visual effects are pretty sensational, delivering the cutting-edge CGI goods [audiences] want and expect.
-- Todd McCarthy, Variety
This is fun. 2012 delivers what it promises, and since no sentient being will buy a ticket expecting anything else, it will be, for its audiences, one of the most satisfactory films of the year.
-- Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
Computer-generated effects have never before been used as spectacularly.
-- David Stratton, At The Movies
Eye-popping special effects ensure that this movie will be a smash hit, and while it's entertaining for most of its excessive running time, the cheesy script fails to live up to the grandeur of the physical production.
-- Stephen Farber, Hollywood Reporter
The two-hour-and-40-minute 2012 is overstuffed with special effects, but the Curtis clan's mad dash out of town is the closest the movie gets to actually being fun.
-- Robert Wilonsky, Village Voice
There are times when 2012 feels as if it won't end until 2012.
-- Rene Rodriguez, Miami Herald
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