Matrix Triology

The 'Matrix' Invented: A World of Special Effects 


 The 2,500-acre Alameda Naval Air Station, home to four aircraft carriers in World War II, was abandoned by the Pentagon in 1997. Yet military adventures continue to be planned on these desolate, weed-infested grounds overlooking San Francisco Bay.

 Tucked away among the buildings and monumental empty hangars, hundreds of scientists, engineers and graphic artists map out computer-generated battles by Neo and Morpheus, characters played by Keanu Reeves and Laurence Fishburne in ''The Matrix Reloaded.''

 The work is being done by ESC Entertainment, a special effects house created specifically to develop the complex virtual humans, plus the chase and battle scenes for the hit film, as well as for the third in the trilogy, ''The Matrix: Revolutions,'' scheduled for release in November. (The effects for the first film were done by Manex Visual Effects, of Los Angeles.)

 In its two years of existence, ESC has come to rival Industrial Light and Magic, also in the San Francisco Bay Area, and Sony Pictures Imageworks in its size and technological abilities. To create the films' fight scenes, company officials say, ESC developed software programs and other technologies never before used in movies.

 Special effects is a difficult business, with slim profit margins and a limited pool of well-paying projects to keep a company in the black. To stay competitive, the special effects houses try to reduce their costs as sharply as they can but are often saddled with high overhead -- in the form of salaries paid to talented personnel even when there is no work, to make sure that they do not defect.

 ESC, named for a computer keyboard's ''escape'' key, seems for the moment to be immune from such problems. Owned by AOL Time Warner and operated by Warner Brothers Studios, its day-to-day costs are part of the two films' budgets.

 At least half of ESC's employees are computer scientists, physicists or mathematicians, skilled in a range of disciplines including fluid dynamics and lighting theory. ''We're in Alameda because computer graphics professionals tend to live in the Bay Area,'' said Kim Libreri, ESC's visual effects supervisor. ''The team we needed wouldn't move to Los Angeles.''

 While they were developing the special effects, Mr. Libreri and his colleagues had to create the support systems for an advanced operation virtually overnight. ''People were moving out old mattresses while we were moving in computers that we bought at CompUSA,'' said Mr. Libreri, a computer scientist with a degree from Manchester University in England. ''The two most difficult things we did were to build an infrastructure from nothing at the same time that we were creating simulated humans.''

 From 10 employees and a handful of computers in March 2001, when special effects work began, ESC today employs 250 and will be adding 50 artists and scientists in the next few weeks. Small work areas throughout the two-story building are equipped with hundreds of Dell computers and file servers. All work is backed up every few seconds, and copies of all material are stored off site each evening.

 Unlike other special effects houses, Mr. Libreri said, ESC is not saddled with expensive equipment. ''Three years ago you would have paid five times as much for the same machines,'' he said. ''But even with falling prices, you can't do this type of sophisticated work without deep pockets.''

 That is because even short digital effects sequences often require highly advanced technical knowledge and months of work. In ''The Matrix Reloaded,'' for example, Neo is chased through a room by a wall of flames. The computer-generated fire ''required a detailed knowledge of fluid dynamics, volumetric modeling and lighting techniques,'' Mr. Libreri said. While only nine seconds long, the sequence took five months to create, and was ready only five weeks before the film was finished.

 In a much-talked-about sequence, a fight scene between Neo and hundreds of clones of Agent Smith -- who is played by Hugo Weaving -- the goal was ''to create a ballet that could never be staged in real life,'' said John Gaeta, the film's special effects supervisor. ''The directors, Larry and Andy Wachowski, wanted to emulate the stylization found in Japanese animation,'' he said, adding, ''When we created weather, fire and smoke, we wanted it to move not realistically but impressionistically.''

 Various techniques were used to portray Neo and the multiplying Agent Smiths. In the more realistic one-on-one fight sequences, the two actors -- Mr. Reeves and Mr. Weaving -- portrayed themselves. When several Smith clones attacked at once, Mr. Weaving was photographed many times at different locations, with each shot then layered into the scene.

 When the action became dangerous, stunt doubles were used. If the stuntman was far from the camera, he was simply dressed like Agent Smith; if the action was closer, the stuntman's head was digitally replaced by that of a virtual Smith. When the action became unrealistic, as in the sequence in which Neo swings around a pole at warp speed to attack the advancing Smith clones, the entire scene -- actors, sets, camera movement and lighting -- was created on the computer. 

To develop realistic-seeming virtual humans, ESC researchers analyzed not just facial movement and composition but also hair, body and clothing. To simulate the human face, the crew filmed the actors, using five high-definition video cameras and capturing a range of expressions from different angles. The stored facial expressions were then added to a computer-created torso.

 ESC researchers developed a system to simulate hair movement; clumps of hair were made to move according to complex algorithms and to cast appropriate shadows as they waved back and forth.

 To create virtual clothing, ESC's technical supervisor, George Borshukov, chose a scanning device from Surface Optics of San Diego that the Air Force used to measure the paint reflection from Stealth bombers. When used to capture the pits and shadows of cloth, it generated virtual material indistinguishable from the real thing.

 ESC also developed a way of analyzing light and the myriad shadows that fall across any scene or individual. After a live-action scene was filmed, Mr. Libreri and his team photographed a reflection of the set as seen against a chrome ball. The resulting fish-eye view was then analyzed by computer to calculate the angle of every shadow throughout the scene. If virtual objects -- people or cars -- had to be added, they could then be lighted realistically based on the accumulated lighting data.

 More than 1,000 special effects shots were created for ''The Matrix Reloaded,'' nearly three times as many as in the first film. ESC was the coordinating shop; other effects were farmed out to Animal Logic, an Australian company; Giant Killer Robots, of San Francisco; Buf Compagnie, in Paris; and Centropolis Effects, in Los Angeles. The assignment could not save Centropolis, which closed midway through production; its projects were reassigned to Sony Pictures Imageworks.

 The entire movie was edited at EON Entertainment, the Wachowski brothers' production installation in a former gondola storage barn in Venice, Calif. When an effect was completed, it was transmitted to EON, where the films' editor, Zack Staenberg, added each to the proper sequence.

 ''The Matrix: Revolutions'' is to include even more elaborate effects. ''In 'Matrix Reloaded,' '' Mr. Gaeta, the special effects supervisor, said, ''We've foreshadowed what will be immense in the final film,'' adding that a subterranean city of Zion would be developed -- ''this dystopian megastructure under the earth.''

 ''We will have very large-scale battle scenes between humans and the machine creatures,'' he added.

 For Mr. Staenberg, who won an Oscar for his work on the first ''Matrix,'' editing the final film has become a much more complex process. While he needs the special effects shots to judge the flow of the film, he has learned that because of their complexity, he cannot always know when they will arrive. ''Unfortunately, the schedule for special effects delivery is slightly less accurate than the weather report,'' he said.

 Once the third film is completed in October, ESC's multimillion-dollar installation loses its raison d'être. A Warner Studios spokeswoman said, ''We have every intention of continuing our relationship'' with ESC. But if ESC becomes a special effects house for hire, it will be subject to the same marketplace vagaries that have brought down many others.

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