C-TRL Labs: Tiny Visual Experiments
Near and Far Views
To make “Microvert #5306A,” C-TRL started by hand-drawing illustrations and storyboards. These were scanned into Illustrator and Photoshop, then imported into Final Cut Pro, where Offenbac laid out the stills for preliminary timing. The partners then did a greenscreen shoot with the model. Tracking dots on her head, neck, and shoulders provided reference points for the positions of the body during post.
In Final Cut Pro Simunovich and Offenbac edited their selects and created rough composites. “We use Final Cut Pro to see if an idea works,” notes Simunovich. “Doing the composites in Final Cut Pro is a much faster way to block out the shots. If the idea works, we slide things around to adjust the timing. Then we go back to the compositing and refit the timing based on what we came up with.
“We gain a lot of flexibility by mocking up the sequences quickly,” adds Simunovich. “We can take a half-finished shot or a still frame into Final Cut Pro and block out the timing for whole piece really fast using the timeline. In other software, you can’t build a timeline or edit for pacing. You don’t have the fluidity to make snap decisions if, for instance, you’re a couple of frames longer than you should be. In Final Cut Pro you can just say, ‘This looks cool, let’s switch these two shots’ — and do it.”
Final Cut Pro affords the partners all-important perspective. “We spend so much energy compositing individual images,” explains Simunovich. “We tend to focus on the details. But Final Cut Pro allows us to not lose sight of the entire piece. We’re always editing: whether storyboards, still images from the shoot, or composites that are halfway done. So by the time we get to the final stages we’ve had lots of time with the edit and the pacing. Final Cut Pro lets us think — at the same time — in terms of both the overall time frame and the depth of each image.”
Motorcycles and Mandibles
After designing his shots in 2D using Photoshop and Illustrator, Simunovich and Offenbac animated them in After Effects and Maya, then brought the footage into Shake for final spit-and-polish. “Shake is the best tool for straight-up compositing and technical operations like key and roto,” Simunovich says. “Shake’s roto tools are superior to other software out there. The keying and color controls are very thorough because it uses floating point versus 16-bit. I use Shake for color correction because it’s more accurate than anything else in its price range.”
Throughout the creative process, Offenbac and Simunovich scavenged like a pair of digital dumpster divers. “We designed a lot of the model’s outfit from found images,” says Offenbac. “First we designed a form in Illustrator. Then we we’d cut these images of mechanical pieces — motorcycles, airplanes, cars, and architecture — into tiny bits and roto them out of photographs.”
For instance, the model’s helmet is made of motorcycle parts; her body includes airplane parts, and even elements from the natural world. “Her hands have parts from plants and insects,” says Offenbac. “There are bug legs, mouths, eyes, mandibles.”
Ideas Over Form
For Offenbac and Simunovich, form always follows concept. “Our approach is about ideas,” says Offenbac. “So whether the output is a feature film, or an installation, or a sound sculpture, we don’t feel bound by that form. Our philosophy is: If we can think of it, we can make it.”
With her training as a sculptor, she easily crosses between the digital and the material worlds. “As filmmakers we’re always working in this box: the aspect ratio,” she says. “But as visual performers and artists, we’re always trying to get out of it. What’s most interesting to us is the use of moving images to create environments and define space.”
She continues, “We look at different ways to create and manipulate mood and convey information, using video of all shapes and sizes and display formats.” For instance, they use multi-channel projection systems, in which a seamless image is displayed across several projectors or across scrims placed in depth or projecting on mylar to create lighting effects.
Offenbac waxes philosophical about the built and the organic. “In our fast, high-tech world,” she muses, “we tend to deal with representations of things more frequently than we deal with the actual thing. So we like to pull that into question.” She laughs, “My own idea of a ‘natural environment’ is a city — like many people, I’m more comfortable on concrete than in the middle of a desert. So this fabricated world has become our natural world. And many of our pieces deal with that.”
