Vancouver visual effects house Lost Boys Studios believes it is breaking ground with its work on Gene Roddenberry’s Andromeda, the syndicated Tribune Entertainment/Fireworks Entertainment series which started shooting in b.c. this spring.

Andromeda is reportedly the final creation of late Star Trek mastermind Roddenberry, with the first episode slated to air in October. Kevin Sorbo stars as the captain of the starship Andromeda, out to restore order in the war-ravaged Systems Commonwealth. Its makers describe the program as different from Star Treks past, a ‘more swashbuckling, adventure type of show’ that perhaps takes a page from Sorbo’s Hercules past. The producers are aiming to set a new standard in tv science fiction.

‘There are more effects, that’s for sure,’ says Lost Boys president Mark Benard, a 25-year-old wunderkind who became a 3D animator after high school, and three years ago started Lost Boys. ‘The [producers] are looking for things that we just don’t see on tv, so we’ve been pushing some of the shots to the limits.’

As the effects shop specializes in 3D, it was an attractive option to the Andromeda producers.

‘One of the post-producers phoned us back in November,’ recalls Lost Boys producer Roula Lainas. ‘She was giving tours to Tribune and Fireworks, and they went around to all the effects houses in town to get a little introduction. They liked us, and after wheeling and dealing and then going back and forth regarding if they were going to shoot [in Vancouver], they wanted us to officially be lead house.’

Lainas adds that with so much effects work to be done, other local houses are involved, primarily Northwest Imaging & fx. Benard describes Lost Boys’ collaboration with the other shops on board as ‘pretty close,’ and they are likewise in constant communication with Jim Finn, Andromeda’s visual effects supervisor, as well as others from the production end.

‘It’s basically a matter of tapes going back and forth and Jim visiting us once or twice a week, or whenever shots are ready,’ Lainas explains. ‘And once in a while we have the head honchos – Tribune, [head writer and coexecutive producer] Robert Hewitt Wolfe and [director and executive producer] Allan Eastman – coming in to see stuff.’

What makes the project particularly exciting to Lost Boys is that not only is the shop carrying out directives from production, it is also heavily involved on the creative side.

‘The storyboards, for the pilot at least, have been quite limited, just because the production’s been getting set up and they’ve been busy on other things,’ Benard explains. ‘So it’s been kind of cool for us to be able to help on some of the creative and design on this stuff.’

The producers’ number one priority is the design of the Andromeda spacecraft, and they are determined to come up with something distinct from Star Trek’s Starship Enterprise. They supplied Lost Boys with the initial design for the ship, and the studio proceeded to digitally build it from scratch. The effects shop is pleased to know that working on such an integral element of the series means their craftsmanship will be on view in every episode.

So far they have been given four scripts and are currently in production on two, doing involved design on fighter ships, space battles, pods, black holes, and Andromeda’s mode of space travel, an effect quite apart from the Enterprise’s ‘warp factor’.

Much of their work, however, is dependent on what production brings from the set.

‘There are a bunch of effects being integrated with live action that we haven’t started yet, because [the crew] just started the shooting a little while ago,’ Benard says. ‘We’ve yet to see any plates. Right now we’re working on all the pure cgi shots that we don’t need plates for.’

Seeing spots

With the emphasis of Vancouver production on tv material, it is natural that Lost Boys would build its business working on locally shooting series, such as The Outer Limits, Stargate SG-1 and Poltergeist: The Legacy, all from mgm. Only recently has the effects shop made the transition to the commercial market as well, and according to Benard ads already account for 50% of their current workload.

The studio is especially proud of its work on a seven-spot Bacardi campaign produced by Zeta Film out of Mexico City for the Latin market. The concept behind the ads was to give life to the names of certain mixed drinks, such as ‘twister’, in which a tornado emanates from a glass of rum, and ‘frozen’, where an entire bar freezes and an ice woman shatters.

Lost Boys also crafted a cg clown for ‘La Luz’, a 60-second spot for Mexico’s GNP Insurance produced by 4 1/2 Productions through the Teran tbwa agency. The animated ad won an award at fiap, the recent Spanish-language advertising awards in Buenos Aires. This taste of foreign markets has only whetted Benard’s appetite for more.

‘One of the directions we’re taking the company in is trying to take it more international,’ he explains. ‘We’re probably going to move on into Brazil, Argentina and Spain as our next countries to invade. The freedom the Internet is giving us [enables us] to do work without the clients actually having to physically be here.’

Showing work-in-progress is as simple as Lost Boys sending an e-mail and a QuickTime movie, and they also have a new website with a section for clients to enter to verify what’s being done on their projects.

‘Because we focus more on creative, the artists are capable of working without the old hand-holding that [used to be] necessary,’ Benard says. ‘There’s quite a bit of trust we get from our clients to do the right thing for their projects.’

Benard admits to being nonplused about the hype surrounding high-definition television, but he is genuinely excited about the potential of multimedia.

‘There are just so many ways to distribute content that, as far as being a creative company, that’s where we see our freedom coming up toward us, so it’s not run by the moneymakers anymore,’ he says.

Lost Boys is currently experimenting with its own content creation, having been in production on a three-minute in-house animation short for the past year. One artist is completely dedicated to the project, which is based on a children’s book, and when they have time, others from the shop’s 16-member staff contribute. Right now the studio is more focused on the storytelling element of the piece than on what resolution it will ultimately appear, although it is considering film, the Internet, and dvd as means of distribution.

‘We’re trying to get all the legalities fixed up regarding rights to it and eventually distributing it in film festivals and so forth,’ says Lainas.

Adds Benard: ‘We’re using it as an education piece to [indoctrinate] us in the production pipeline for content creation.’

Lost Boys does compositing in its Discreet Inferno, and uses Maya software from Alias|Wavefront for all 3D work, as well as Discreet Flint for other visual effects. The shop is trying out various other compositing systems as it makes the transition from sgi to nt systems. Benard’s interest has been piqued by Discreet’s Combustion as well as Adobe After Effects, and he relates that he has no problem committing to new technologies.

‘It’s a big transition more for the clients than it is for us, just trying to keep [their] confidence up in the home-built systems,’ he says. ‘I take great pride in building our systems from scratch – that’s kind of my hobby.’

As much as Benard loves to be hands-on with computers, the emphasis at Lost Boys is on the human component. In the studio’s non-traditional setup, there is just one big room for all their workstations.

‘We try to push the clients more toward the group effort,’ Benard explains. ‘We design a visual effects team for the project, depending on what strengths are in the crew. It ends up getting a way higher quality in the product.’

Valuing talent above all, Benard has added several 3D artists to his roster in the past couple of months.

‘I like to put more effort into finding the artists than investing in the high-end systems,’ he admits. ‘For a million-dollar [visual effects system], you can get a lot of talented artists working together to create even better product.’

Every few years a motion picture comes along that has a huge impact on visual effects, influencing much of what is subsequently produced. A few years ago it was Terminator 2 with its malleable figures, and recently it has been the stop-action effect of another release.

‘In the commercial industry, the word Matrix comes up a lot,’ Benard says. ‘We’ve done all the Matrix effects. ‘The same but different’ is what they ask for. A lot of people are playing with camera speeds right now.’

Benard expects the next big breakthrough will come with the Lord of the Rings trilogy, the first installment of which will be in theatres in late 2001.

‘They’re doing a lot of interesting things with character animation where they’re taking almost artificial intelligence and putting it into the characters,’ he explains. ‘So say in a battle scene the characters almost animate themselves. They have certain rules [as] to what they do, when they meet each other, and do they do this or that.’

Benard sees these innovations as originating in the burgeoning world of video games.

‘There’s so much money flowing into the gaming industry,’ he observes. ‘They’re branching out and doing movies like Tomb Raider and the Final Fantasy movies. Gaming is starting to really dominate the entertainment industry. I believe we are going to see a lot of change over the next little while because of that.’

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