PrintWhen the South Korean-made mega-disaster movie Haeundae opened recently, the $18 million film--the country's most expensive to date--became an overnight sensation. The CJ Entertainment feature, about a tsunami that threatens to wipe out a popular beach resort, was directedby Je-Kyoun Youn of JK Film and is loaded with complex visual effects, courtesy of Polygon Entertainment, based in San Rafael, California.
Polygon may have recently cemented its status in South Korea's film industry, but its roots are distinctly Hollywood. Headquartered in the former Industrial Light & Magic building, the company was foundedin 2007 by former ILM CG supervisor Hans Uhlig, who is no stranger to the disaster film genre. His credits include The Day After Tomorrowand The Perfect Storm, among others.
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Boasting soundstages, construction and model shops, special and visual effects production, and camera, story, and art departments, Polygon is well equipped to take on feature film work of any magnitude--even that of a quake which, in turn, spawns a tsunami. Just before filming began on Haeundae, Polygon wrapped production on another South Korean feature shot in Northern California, Chaw, which opened across Asia on July 16 to great box-office success.
It was Uhlig's expertise in designing complex and beautiful water sequences for Hollywood movies using a combination of practical and digital effects that attracted director Yoon Jekyun to bring the Polygon team on board for Haeundae. Says Youn, who is also head of JK Film, "We wanted to inject the same caliber of film production within Haeundae and set a new film standard by having Hollywood-level production values and special effects in a Korean studio film release. PolygonEntertainment helped us achieve that goal."
Haeundae is about a tsunami set to strike the tranquil beaches of Haeundae, Busan, and chronicles the happenings that surround the event. The bulk of the movie was shot in Busan, where Uhlig was overseeing the VFX as the film's visual effects supervisor. However, six action sequences involving heavy visual and special effects--including onein which hotel rooms are flooded with water-weren't possible to shoot in Korea.
Under the supervision of producer David Dranitzke, Polygon constructed the multiple sets needed for those shots (for instance, a deluxebeachside hotel room, hotel corridor, bathroom, helicopter, hell tank rescue, boat rescue) and brought the principal actors to the US from Korea for second-unit shooting over a four-week period.
Over the course of eight months, a team of artists at Polygon worked on the feature film, including veteran visual effects producer Jeff Olson, who joined Polygon after wrapping the hit movie Star Trek atILM, where he has worked for 23 years. While at ILM, Olson also had the opportunity to work on another film featuring extensive water effects: Poseidon.
Utilizing their expertise in smart, economical sequence production, Uhlig and his team collaborated closely with the filmmakers and talent to produce the action sequences, including the movie's 10-minute opening scene of a large fishing boat being tossed around on violent seas during a storm. This scene was shot using two HD Sony F23 cameras on the studio's backlot in San Rafael inside a 60-foot tank that Polygon designed.
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Prior to building the practical boat section that finally made it into the movie, Polygon created a digital model within Autodesk's Maya for approval as well as efficient design planning. The boat model was then brought into Autodesk's AutoCAD, and passed on to the construction team.
The crew then constructed the center part of the ship-a perfect match with the CG version--to work on an underwater gimbal. Back in thecomputer, the live-action shots integrated seamlessly into the CG scene. Polygon shot extensive storm sequences in the tank, as well as multiple greenscreen scenes that included combining practical and CG water.
A custom water pipeline was developed by Polygon CG supervisor JayShin, lead software engineer Erik Krumrey, and shader developer/ sequence supervisor Ken Wesley. The group did extensive water R&D and wrote custom scripts that were plug-ins to Maya. Pre-comping was done in the US with a team of artists using The Foundry's Nuke.
While most of the matchmoving and rotoscope work was done by a Korean vendor, Polygon did some matchmoving using The Pixel Farm's PFTrack and select roto paint work using Silhouette FX's Silhouette. Both programs are accessible off-the-shelf tools, but in the hands of experienced artists, they proved capable of achieving the desired shot outcome.
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"People we've spoken to are always shocked when they see the film and hear how we completed such sophisticated sequence and effects work, considering we were working with what was essentially an indie film budget compared to Hollywood standards," says Uhlig. "We accomplished this by staffing small teams of highly capable artists who possesswide-ranging skill sets spanning traditional and digital filmmaking."
According to Dranitzke, Polygon Entertainment works closely with its clients to devise the most creative and cost-effective shots possible, "because sometimes it doesn't make sense to allocate three months to R&D when the director's vision can be accomplished through a combination of practical effects [combined] with CG."
