Producer Grant Curtis, in a new official blog update, tells wallcrawler fans about action sequences and the use of miniature building models instead of CGIs for wrecked-up scenes in Spider-Man 3! Here's some of the update:
"On the movie front, Sam and Bob are editing on a daily basis and we continue to meet with visual effects supervisor Scott Stokdyk and his team from Sony Pictures Imageworks to go over the latest visual effects shots. Additionally, a couple weeks ago Scott was quite busy overseeing a miniature shoot we did with Ian Hunter and David Sanger of New Deal Studios. Ian, David and their talented team built a portion of a skyscraper at 1/16 scale and then proceeded to rip portions of it apart per the action taking place in Sam's storyboards and animatic.
As amazing as our CGI buildings are, Scott wanted to build a miniature for two main reasons. For starters, by utilizing a miniature, you have the luxury of the resulting debris reacting in the "real world," just as it would if this really happened. There is no guess work or interpretation as to how beams would fall and floors would break away. Additionally, any time there is a practical way to film a shot, just as long as it looks as good as its CGI counterpart, Scott is in favor of the real world option. The work that Imageworks is doing on "Spider-Man 3" is groundbreaking. Literally, the computer programs required to make our characters perform as they need to for the movie did not exist when we started working on "Spider-Man 3." Imageworks has written a whole new set of computer programs for this picture and the results are mind blowing. Therefore, needless to say, if there is ever an opportunity to shoot something practically and take it off the CGI plate, Scott goes for it so that he and his team can focus on those shots which can only be executed via the computer."
Curtis also answers some trivia questions for fans and talks about writing his new book, where he includes behind-the-scenes stuff from S3! The book will feature facts and photos on production design, costume design, visual effects, casting, script chapters ...even a day-to-day personal journal Curtis kept while filming!
Read the whole update!