Hollywood Veteran Directs Need for Speed Carbon

David Footman has made a career creating movie magic, working behind the scenes of blockbusters like The Day After Tomorrow, X-Men, Fantastic Four and I, Robot. While he still stays busy in Hollywood, the assistant director and motion capture expert has been spending a lot of his time at Electronic Arts over the past few years. After working on The Lord of the Rings™: The Third Age™ and Need for Speed™ Most Wanted, he spent the past year with actress Emmanuelle Vaugier bringing Need for Speed™ Carbon to life.

Here's what the game looks like, now that David's finished with it.

"I was an avid gamer growing up and I was also into Dungeons & Dragons," said Footman. "I was always interested in green screen effects and computer games."

Behind the Scenes
Footman blended both of his loves into a career that has involved everything from directing second units on Hollywood blockbusters to overseeing motion capture units for special effects-laden features. He also spent over six months working at Electronic Arts Vancouver to bring the 20 minutes of in-game live action story to life.

" I have 10 dolls and cars and I place everything on the table
and bring over the actors and cinematographers and explain
where the cars are and what's going to happen in the scene."

"At a post facility, we block out all of the shots," explained Footman. "Last year with Need for Speed Most Wanted, we used a lot of real cars on the set, and we had to green them out. This year we worked with a lot of proxies. We had little green chairs and steering wheels. I had car shapes taped out on set. That kind of thing takes a lot of planning."

Footman said that if an actor stepped out of a car and he was using the wrong geometry, which he did a few times this year, it would look as though they were putting their hand through the car door. If he wasn't careful, a driver might be sitting too low in a car, or the steering wheel would be too high.

Hollywood Magic
Footman spent a lot of time training the actors to recognize the world around them so they play eye lines correctly.

The drivers of these cars are real actors against a green screen.

"I work hard designing things in CG that the actors can play to them, and also designing interactive lighting," said Footman. "It's really great when I can shine a light on somebody as a car drives past them or if they open something. All of that stuff goes a long way in integrating them into the game."

Working on Xbox 360™ opened up new opportunities for Footman, who was able to make a more believable interactive world using high-definition visuals.

"We're still dumbing everything down to make it look inorganic, smoothing out textures on their faces," said Footman. "We designed special clothing for the actors. It takes a lot of interfacing to stiffen out the clothes so it doesn't animate too much and look too real. If you watch movies like Final Fantasy they put a lot of effort into animating clothes and hair, but for us it would look too real. We have a limited color palette that we can use. No blacks and no whites. We honed everything out last year on Most Wanted."

Virtual Storyteller
Although he spends a full 12 weeks in pre-production and another 12 weeks in post-production, the actual time he spends filming with the actors is limited.

Action like this needs a strong director behind it.

"We shoot in a short time frame," said Footman. "We shot everything in four days. One of the things we like to do is keep our lighting very general. We're flying the key around instead of moving the camera. It's very confusing on set. I use a lot of models and toys. I have 10 dolls and cars and I place everything on the table and bring over the actors and cinematographers and explain where the cars are and what's going to happen in the scene. We use that to shoot all of our coverage. After that, it's all just like a film shoot."

A film that takes place in short installments throughout the single-player experience. With each new game comes more technological advances and more experience, which Footman can use to create even deeper interactive stories.

Article by John Gaudiosi