`Janus, Prajurit Terakhir': A pioneer feature-length 3D animation
`Janus, Prajurit Terakhir': A pioneer feature-length 3D animation
Fitri Wulandari, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Dozens of Bina Nusantara students became the lucky few to have
the opportunity to take a peek at the movie Janus, Prajurit
Terakhir (Janus, The Last Warrior).
Although the movie thriller lasted less than a minute, it drew
a cheering welcome from the students who participated in a
seminar on animation held at the university where the thriller
was shown.
Hands were raised as students scrambled to ask questions to
Janus director Chandra Endroputro.
"How did you put the live action and the third animation
together? What software did you use?" asked one female student.
Janus, Prajurit Terakhir is a family movie produced by PT
Spektra Film. Combining live action and computerized 3D
animation, it tells of the friendship between a 34th-century
cyborg-like warrior, Janus, and 21st-century, 12-year-old-boy
Mayo.
It is scheduled to be released in theaters in June.
There is nothing really special about the movie, especially
when compared with the hundreds of similar movies from Hollywood
that are screened here. What caused the buzz was that Janus will
be the first locally made, feature-length, 3D, computerized-
animation movie screened commercially in local theaters.
Do not expect advanced animation, as in Lord of The Rings: The
Two Towers, though. However, watching the thriller, hopes are
high that such locally made movie will no longer be wishful
thinking.
While animation has been used in locally made TV commercials
and video clips, no filmmakers or producers have shown a
willingness to utilize it in feature-length movies for commercial
release. The reasons are partly due to the high production costs
of computerized 3D animation and a higher risk of flunking in the
market.
So far, only advertising companies are willing to take the
risk of producing high-cost, animated TV commercials. It is
therefore appropriate to say that animation in the country is
developing at the heels of the advertising industry.
"One would have to be crazy to make a feature-length, animated
movie in Indonesia," Chandra chuckled.
But it is the "craziness" for 3D animation that drove Chandra
and his friends to put fantasy Janus into a live, animated
character.
The idea of producing the movie arose three years ago, when
Chandra finished writing the story and script. However, financial
and technological constraints forced Chandra to put the story
back in the drawer.
It was not until June 2002 that Chandra and his friends put
Janus into production after he met producer Reza Yusuf Enoch, who
produced the successful ghostbusting teen-flick Jelangkung.
"I could not find (another) producer who shared a similar view
and who could help financially because there was concern that
once the movie was finished, it could not be sold," Chandra said.
Technology was a major headache in producing the movie, which
drew a lot of inspiration from futuristic movies such as Stanley
Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey and Steven Spielberg's E.T..
"The trend in movie effects now is that when an audience
cannot distinguish between computerized animation and live
action, then it is a success. Not many are able to put live
action and 3D animation together," the 38-year-old director
explained.
To make Janus, whose name is taken from the god who guards the
past and the future in Greek mythology, Chandra gave the task to
an experienced animation team.
"Basically, the production of 3D animation for feature-length
and short TV commercials is similar," said head of the animation
team Dodo.
Nonetheless, technological limitations forced the animators to
do some of the work manually, such as in motion-capture, for
instance. Motion-capture is about capturing the movements of a
real model -- usually movements of living creatures such as
animals or humans -- in order to animate a character.
To do this, a motion-capture set equipped with sensors is
required. The sensors are placed on the model's body and attached
to the computer. They will send data to the computer on the
model's movements.
Chandra said there was only one motion-capture set with 12
sensors in Indonesia, while a full set was available only in
Thailand.
"We needed a motion-capture set with a minimum of 30 sensors.
But it would have been way too expensive to rent a complete set,"
he said.
To circumvent the problem, the team did the work manually.
"We had to shoot the model and then manually tracked the
movements on the computer," Dodo explained.
Combining the real shots and 3D animation is probably the
greatest challenge. In order to get a good result, the team
combined computerized animation with animatronics and digital
video.
The live action was shot using a digital video camera while
the futuristic scenes were produced by computerized animation.
Combination of the two involved the use of Softimage software and
AVID Symphony for editing.
Chandra said they preferred digital video to shoot the real
action, rather than a conventional camera, as the resolution
quality of the animated scenes had yet to match that of a
conventional camera shoot.
The limited number of animators was also another constraint.
Janus involved a handful animators who worked on four animated
characters. In contrast, animated movies like Toy Story or Shrek
involved dozens of animators. According to Chandra, at least four
or five animators were needed to work on one character.
"The number of animators used and the number of animated
characters to be produced would determine the rate of progress of
the whole process," said Chandra, who has directed TV commercials
and video clips for years.
To solve the problem, the number of animated characters was
limited to four.
As a consequence, the story was kept simple.
"So, the challenge was to make a movie that was quite simple,
yet still interesting to watch," he remarked.
It took only 20 days to shoot the live action. Meanwhile, the
animated scenes--starting with modelling and animating--has been
ongoing since December, 2002 and scheduled to finish in April.
Chandra chose former MTV VJ Jamie Aditya as the model on which
to base Janus.
"I don't know why, but once I'd written the story, I had only
Jamie in mind as Janus," Chandra laughed.
Another celebrity in the movie is 12-year-old Derby Romero, as
Mayo. Derby successfully played a school bully in the 2000
children's hit movie Petualangan Sherina (Sherina's Adventure).
Asked if the movie would be a success in local theaters,
Chandra said he would let audiences be the judge of that.
"Whatever the results are, we believe that it will open the
doors to other locally made, animated movies," he said.
"Five or six years ago, this kind of development was just
wishful thinking. We are fortunate to have been the first to make
it happen," Chandra remarked.