ROVIO ANIMATION, Sony Pictures (2016)

Up to this point working on VFX heavy films, I only had the chance to work on action sequence-based previs, always yearning for the day that we could previs an entire movie from start to finish.  This was that chance.

I worked with the in-house previs team at Rovio, which was split between LA and Vancouver, and led by Previs Supervisor Todd Heapy. While Sony Imageworks would handle the production of the film, Rovio Entertainment, and our directors Fergal Reily and Clay Katis, wanted to develop the story in-house and hand over a complete blueprint of the movie to Sony.

While we started production closely following what the story artists had done, by the time we had reached the third act, our heroes being launched all over Pig City, we were largely planning our action beats straight in our 3D world, closely intertwined with the directors and story department.

It challenged myself and the team to think like story artists, and personally shifted my thinking about how I approach cameras and layout in my previs work.