Jesh Krishna Murthy, visual effects supervisor at Vancouver’s Command Post/TOYBOX West, is no stranger to big jobs. In his time at the post-production house, Murthy has worked on F/X for features including The Cell, Fight Club, Lost in Space and the forthcoming Jason X. He says it was still a nice surprise to learn TOYBOX West had been appointed lead effects house on Universal Pictures’ Josie and the Pussycats, due for an April release.

"We were bidding against a lot of big companies," says Murthy. "I think what clinched it for us was first being in Vancouver, because it was shot here, and second the fact we did a lot of tests with warping and morphing that the directors really liked."

Codirected by Harry Elfont and Deborah Kaplan, Josie is based on the fictional female rock band first seen in the Archie comic book series. TOYBOX is responsible for about 40 F/X shots in the film, many of which appear in a video montage documenting the band’s meteoric rise to the top of the charts. The production supplied TOYBOX with footage mostly shot against large white cycs the crew had built, and it was then up to Murthy and his team to bring the sequence to life.

"We went in and added the text [mostly showing the group’s position on the charts] and a bunch of different effects," says Murthy. "We shot pulling out of a door, and as the camera settles it shoots up a building and goes up and over to the roof – and the roof is actually the pop music chart. We used a lot of clever transitions to show their progress as they [ascend the Top 100]."

Murthy says TOYBOX has dedicated one of its Discreet Inferno F/X systems to Josie for the past two months. Additionally, seven high-end 3D workstations have also been utilized, running Alias|Wavefront Maya, Side Effects Software Houdini, Softimage Elastic Reality and Adobe After Effects.

Murthy says the filmmakers were also very trusting of TOYBOX on the set.

"With visual effects, we know exactly how we’d like things to be shot, so we had a lot of prepro meetings with the directors and the visual people hired for the film," he says. "We told them how we would prefer to have it shot and they went with it for the most part. They did trust us a lot, so there was a lot of responsibility on our shoulders."

According to Murthy, one of the hardest shots from an F/X standpoint was a sequence outside of the montage which Murthy directed himself. It is a continuous shot of Josie (Rachael Leigh Cook) listening to a Discman, starting at her head and ending right in the CD. The process began by shooting Cook against a green screen, wearing headphones and her Discman, but minus the wire connecting the two.

"We first push into her face, and then the camera turns around to her ears and we go right in tight on the headphones," says Murthy. "We travel down the wire [digitally added later] all the way down her body into the headphone jack on the CD player in her hand. From there we fly through the CD player, past the laser and toward the CD."

Murthy says 20mm and 12mm lenses were used in the shot, the former for the head shot and the latter to follow the CG wire down Josie’s body. The inside of the CD was done with CGI and the shots were then morphed together using Elastic Reality and the Inferno.

"It was quite a jump, going from a 20mm lens to a 12mm lens and then adding the wire," says Murthy. "It actually worked out beautifully and the morph looked very convincing. You don’t even notice it."

TOYBOX is also working on the first image audiences see in the film, involving two studio logos.

"We are doing two separate effects," Murthy says. "The first is the MGM logo with the lion (for the European release). It roars and as it does it morphs into a screaming fan. The second is the Universal logo where the earth actually morphs into the tongue ring of the same fan." *

-www.compt.com/toyboxwest