Special effects house Digital Domain, having just spawned co-founder James Cameron's massive f/x entity known as "Titanic," has realized a pair of byproducts from the association: a new f/x house -- Station X -- and new relationships with a wide array of subcontractors it used during the arduous birth of the $200 million production.
Station X, based in Santa Monica and headed by former Digital Domain staffer (and Emmy winner) Grant Boucher, mostly comprises former staffers at Amblin Imaging, which did the f/x work on such high-ticket TV fare as "seaQuest DSV" and "Star Trek: Voyager."
But Boucher said the time to strike out on their own wasn't after the 1995 shutdown of Amblin Imaging, but "after showing what could be done in digitized people, boats, and so on in 'Titanic.' There is now a market for the kind of high-end digital work we do, both in features and in commercials."
Although Boucher has nothing but praise for his former employers, he and fellow ex-Digital Domain exec Allen Crawford felt that, having established their digital photorealism chops with "Titanic," where they did about 10% of the 600 digital shots in the film, they might be asked to do that level of work over and over, rather than establishing new benchmarks for the technology.
Cutting edge
"We want to keep swinging for the fences," he said. "As refinements and advancements come along, we want to be able to incorporate them immediately into our work. In a bigger house, that's not always so easy to do."
The new house has already finished work on its maiden film, Miramax/Dimension's "Phantoms." Boucher said the next three projects are already lined up, but didn't name them.
Benevolent plank,
Meanwhile, the numerous outside houses Venice-based Domain used on "Titanic," most of which specialized on a specific area of the massive f/x undertaking, all have a successful springboard now that the great ship was successfully launched. None more so than House of Moves, which, as key motion-capture subcontractor on the project, is now getting as much work as it can handle -- a quantity that prexy Tom Tolles couldn't really appreciate until he got the house involved in "Titanic."
Realistic backgrounds
"Although performance capture has seen limited use in other feature films," Tolles said, "Digital Domain gave us the opportunity to create hundreds of realistic background images for 'Titanic,' all done digitally."
In all, Tolles said, some 25 minutes' worth of motion-capture footage was delivered to Digital Domain for "Titanic," a huge amount by F/X standards.
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