Inside Rodriguez’s ‘Shorts’

In Shorts, director Robert Rodriguez delivers his trademark colourful imagery to tell the story of a young boy’s wish-granting rock discovery. Working alongside the director were artists at Rodriguez’s own Troublemaker Studios who, with other effects studios, delivered a bevy of fun visual treats, including an impressive booger monster. Troublemaker’s Chris Olivia talks to fxguide about his contribution to the film.

fxg: What’s it like working on a Robert Rodriguez film? How does Troublemaker contribute?

Olivia: On Shorts, Robert actually made a mini-trailer to help sell the idea before anything was ever greenlit. At Troublemaker, we took a camera, Robert got his kids involved, and he shot this little short trailer that we did all the effects for. It’s similar to what we did on Sin City. Robert used this to secure the financing and just show people the look he was going for.

A lot of the designs for the trailer, an effect or a creature, end up staying consistent for the whole movie. Robert sticks with it, especially if he likes something we did in the trailer. We help with designs, and a lot of the designs we come up can become story points too. It’s not necessarily taking something he’s already written and drawing that. It’s more of an evolving process as we expand on his story and the designs.

 

 

fxg: Can you talk about the shots or sequences you personally worked on?

Olivia: I was basically responsible for all of the booger monster sequence. That was the big 3D scene we did, and the first major organic creature sequence we’ve done here at Troublemaker. What helped quite a bit was that it was previs’d out before production. One of my roles was to handle a lot of the animatics and work out how the sequence would play out. I also did this for a bunch of other sequences in the film.

When it went into production, they used the animatics as a starting point to shoot from. It evolved a little bit. Then when we start getting plates back, we’d do post-vis where we take what they shot and do rough animation of the booger monster to see how it’s working and flesh the sequence out.

 

 

Olivia: Robert had this idea to have a big, blobby creature. I started playing around in Mudbox with the design which evolved from the trailer. The arms changed. At first they were hulking and drooping towards the ground. We realised we were going to shoot this in a narrow hallway and needed to take that into consideration. We needed to make it fit into a four foot hallway.

So even though this thing had to be bigger than the kids, it still had to fit in that area. It involved going back and forth between XSI and Mudbox and making it slimy but not too disgusting. Once the design was locked, we had it rigged for animation, plus added the secondary jiggle to give it that weight and a blobby feeling. Once all the plates came back, there were 55 final booger shots. I mostly had to animate the character, and do the lighting and compositing for the sequence myself.

 

 

fxg: What considerations do you need to make when you’re doing effects for a Rodriguez kids film?

Olivia: I think it just naturally organically happens now. I’ve worked with Robert for so long, since the first Spy Kids. We seem to naturally make it suit his exuberant, over the top style. You get a feel for it – it’s not anything specific. You look at it and it’s got to have that playfulness and exciting quality to it.

 

 

fxg: I always feel like you don’t know what kind of creature or effect is going to pop up next on screen.

Olivia: Yeah, it’s almost ADD. Robert is very good at gearing movies specifically towards children – it’s very based on their level. The ultimate sugar rush throughout the entire movie – fast paced and very visual.

 

 

fxg: Were there other contributions you can talk about?

Olivia: One of the main plot points in the film is this rainbow rock the boy finds, which glows whenever he makes a wish. One of my original tasks was to come up with a look for the rainbow rock as they make a wish. It sparkles and glows and flares out. Based on my original designs, the 2D department copied that for the entire film. It evolves depending on the intensity of the wish.

What’s interesting is that every movie we do here is so unique that we get to do something different. We go from kids movies to adult – Spy Kids to Grindhouse – whether it’s studying skin diseases for Planet Terror or what snot looks like for the booger monster.