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updated 3:00 a.m. 18.Feb.99.PST
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From a Small Screen to the Small
Screen
bbyy MMiikkee TTaannnneerr
12:01pm 15.Jul.97.PDT As desktop computers
become more powerful, consumer-grade
computer graphics software becomes
increasingly sophisticated, and professional
CGI programs become available for the PC,
it was only a matter of time before a full-length
film was produced entirely on the
desktop.
It was matter of circumstance, more than
planning, says Planetary Traveler producer
Jan Nickman, that his movie happened to be
the first one. A 40-minute galactic travelog
set to the music of Tangerine Dream's Paul
Haslinger, the film is due out on VHS and
DVD in September.
"If it wasn't us, it was going to be someone
else," demurs Nickman. "We were just
foolish enough to do it first." And the fact
that he decided to work at the desktop
level at all was due mainly to the fact that
he was enamored of the look of
MetaCreations' Bryce, a graphics program
that was available only for the Mac. "Bryce
is this quirky little piece of software that
creates these beautiful landscapes with an
otherworldly look."
Unfortunately for a man creating a motion
picture, Bryce had no animation capabilities
at the time. MetaCreations, however, was
working on an animation version, and the
company agreed to give Nickman what he
calls "definitely pre-alpha" releases as they
became available. The result of all this R&D
is Bryce 3.0, available at the end of the
year.
The company also directed Nickman to a
community of Bryce artists on AOL, from
which he auditioned and recruited seven
artists online to create landscapes for the
seven planets to be featured on the film.
The artists, located in five different states,
proceeded to collaborate on the Net,
holding production meetings in AOL chat
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holding production meetings in AOL chat
rooms and exchanging still images via email
as attached files. Once completed, the
various artists' graphic worlds were sent to
Nickman's animation staff to be put into
motion.
Despite some logistical problems
coordinating such a far-flung crew, Nickman
says the chat meetings - with their
emphasis on concise typing - were
surprisingly quick and efficient. He also says
AOL was the perfect network for their
needs. "It's a clean, elegant system that's
also secure," he says. Of course, all this was
before the ISP went flat-rate and the rash
of reliability problems set in. "We made it
just under the wire," he says with relief.
Planetary Traveler is not exactly a basement
operation, with a six-figure budget, a close
association with several software
companies, and a "render farm" consisting
of 10 120- to 180-MHz Apple Power
Macintoshes and Mac clones. The machines
are able to render animation at an average
of 30 to 40 minutes a frame, or about the
speed of a Silicon Graphics system of
several years ago. And Nickman himself is
an established producer, having sold
500,000 units of his last video, The Mind's
Eye.
Nevertheless, the fact that so much of the
work was done on desktop computers
coordinated over the Net "allowed the
collaboration of artists in their own
garrets," says Nickman. "That's a significant
factor in the kind of work they produced." It
also allowed the team to produce a movie
that Nickman says would have cost several
million dollars to produce via a more
standard route.
Bart Cheever, whose D.FILM festival
champions the use of desktop technologies
to create small-budget films, is excited that
Bryce techniques are being used at this
level. "Obviously it's not a matter of this
happening sometime in the future
anymore," he says. "It's happening now."
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