THE THIRD FLOOR’s London team contributed previs, techvis and postvis to help create high-caliber visuals for The Kid Who Would Be King (Twentieth Century Fox).  Jason Wen led THE THIRD FLOOR’s visualization work, collaborating with Director Joe Cornish, Visual Effects Supervisor Frazer Churchill and Visual Effects Producer Mara Bryan to depict key action sequences for the movie, which sees a modern-day boy discovering the mythical Sword in the Stone.

Artists worked from storyboards to visualize sequences such as the Horse Chase, Chicken Shop, Building Site and Frozen Street.  Previs and techvis work also aided the production in mapping out the Final Battle.

“We provided Frazer with 2D techvis diagrams to help him plot out layouts for multiple shots,” Wen said.  “The Final Battle presented some of the most challenging work to orchestrate, as a CG character interacts with a large number of live actors shot on a set.  Before beginning previs, Frazer provided us with a top-down, Lego-vis stop motion animation, approved by Joe, of the entire sequence.  The animation, along with the boards, clearly gave us a map for previsualizing this complicated sequence.  After the visualization was approved, we were able to rapidly output techvis Quicktimes, with requested measurements, to assist the crew in planning the filming of the shots.”

Following the shoot, the production leveraged postvis, with THE THIRD FLOOR providing CG elements for the production to use in temp composites for the Tree Attack sequence, and creating full postvis shots for the Horse Chase by tracking, animating and compositing digital elements into the filmed plates.