Jim went from being a stay-at-home dad, to working on Avatar 2 & 3.
This week Jim Turner shares how he became a previs artist and what it’s like to work with James Cameron. Listen to him share stories from the set of Avatar 2 & 3, the importance of connections, and why indie filmmakers should invest in a previs artist for their projects.
Show Links:
The Visual Story: Creating the Visual Structure of Film, TV, and Digital Media
Key Points:
1:25 – How he got started
6:28 – Transition from animation to previs artist
14:02 – Working on Avatar 2 & 3
22:36 – The importance of connections
24:52 – Why indie filmmakers should invest in previs artist
35:00 – Gear he likes
41:52 – What makes a good previs artist
43:43 – How to get your foot in the door
46:32 – What current project he’s excited about
Full Transcript:
Jim Turner (00:00):
Talk about intense pressure. It’s like, “Hey, we’re going to throw you in with Jim Cameron to film Kate Winslet and Zoe Saldana. Don’t screw this up because if you screw it up, they’re going to have to redo” … It’s like there’s intense pressure.
Tanya Musgrave (00:14):
Welcome to The Practical Filmmaker, an educational podcast brought to you by the Filmmaker Institute and Sunscreen Film Festival, where industry professionals talk nuts and bolts and the steps they took to find their success today. On today’s show, Jim Turner takes us into the world of live-action previs for films such as Logan and Avatar 2 and 3. I’m your host, Tanya Musgrave, and today we have Paramount previs artist, Jim Turner, whose previous work includes Ghostbusters, Logan, the recent Disney series, Monsters at Work, The Sea Beast for Netflix, as well as Avatar 2 and 3. Welcome to the show.
Jim Turner (00:43):
Hey. Great to be here.
Tanya Musgrave (00:45):
This is a pretty cool thing because, usually, I’m in a closet and it’s a Zoom conversation, but since I happen to be in Tennessee, you happen to be in Tennessee, we are in our previous professor’s … Well, was David ever your …
Jim Turner (00:45):
Yeah, he was. Yeah.
Tanya Musgrave (01:00):
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So previous professor’s school-y conversion that he has rigged up to be a mobile studio. This is pretty cool. This is actually the first time that I’ve interviewed somebody face-to-face, and it’s kind of nerve-wracking. I’m not going to lie.
Jim Turner (01:14):
Yeah. We have direct eye contact right now.
Tanya Musgrave (01:18):
I feel so exposed. But let’s start with your journey so far. How did you get here?
Jim Turner (01:24):
I started at Southern Adventist University in 1999, and when I started, I was taking journalism. I was going to be a photographer. Then I quickly found that they had an animation program, and this is before they had the film program. I was like, “Oh, that sounds really cool. I’m going to switch into that.” I did that for … I think it was a year, until the film production got started and I jumped into the film production immediately, which was really exciting because it was just starting. I was in film production for a while, until Hendel Butoy came, and he was a Disney director, Disney animator, and I said, “All right, I have to switch back to animation.” I basically started over again from scratch. Yeah, I was at Southern a long time. So I ended up graduating Southern in 2009, not quite 10 years, but, basically, I see it as 10 years at Southern, like a Van Wilder kind of experience.
Tanya Musgrave (02:24):
I still remember because you were there when I was starting out there, too.
Jim Turner (02:29):
Yep. Yep. So when I graduated, I knew I wanted to do a mixture of film and animation. I knew I was camera-oriented, so I chose my path. The thing that really helped me, and this is very animation-specific, it helped me really focus on what I needed to do to get into the industry, was I went to SIGGRAPH. Basically, it’s the top technical animation conference, and it was out in LA. I went to that. I met some CG supervisors and different people from Disney and other people, and I let them see my work, and they gave me some feedback. They’re like, “Yeah, there’s no reason why we couldn’t have someone with your skills on our team.” At that point, I was working on a short film called Rock in the Road, and I said, “All right, I know what I need to do.” At that time, I knew he was a layout artist because I didn’t even know about previs as an option. So I just put my focus into, “I want to do camera work in animation.”
I made that short film with Aaron Adams and the rest of the team. I think there was a lot of people that touched that short film over the years that it was made. Ultimately, Zach Gray finished it up. So, from that, that was the big piece of my reel, and I took that. My wife is Canadian, so we decided we were going to move to Vancouver as soon as I graduated. So we moved up to Vancouver without a job or job opportunity, and, luckily, there was another local SIGGRAPH event happening the weekend we moved out there. I went to that, met a recruiter, and two weeks later, I was hired-
Tanya Musgrave (04:03):
[crosstalk 00:04:03]-
Jim Turner (04:03):
… at Rainmaker Entertainment.
Tanya Musgrave (04:04):
Oh, okay.
Jim Turner (04:04):
Yeah. Working on the Barbie franchise.
Tanya Musgrave (04:07):
Nice.
Jim Turner (04:08):
Which, at the time, I wasn’t sure what it was going to be like, but, honestly, it was probably one of my best experiences. It was really fantastic people, and it was fun to just … I think because it’s a lower-budget project and really tight, fast deadlines, there wasn’t a lot of pressure to be a perfectionist with it, and I had the freedom to literally do what you wanted. You were given what needed to happen and-
Tanya Musgrave (04:34):
Room to learn.
Jim Turner (04:34):
Yeah, and you just laid out a sequence. So I kind of thrived at it, and I became a lead on my first show, which was fantastic.
Tanya Musgrave (04:41):
So cool.
Jim Turner (04:42):
Right out of college. So I was there. I did five Barbie movies at Rainmaker, and I also got to work on the … My first animated feature was Escape from Planet Earth, which was made at Rainmaker. I only got to work on a short piece. I only did one sequence or actually maybe two. But, yeah, that was my experience there. I kept up connections with Disney, and they contacted me and said, “Hey, would you be interested in coming down,” and I was like, “Yes, this is my chance.” So we moved from Vancouver-
Tanya Musgrave (04:42):
“No, I don’t think so.”
Jim Turner (05:14):
We moved from Vancouver, and I went to work on the Tinker Bell franchise. I think it was just called The Pirate Fairy, the one I worked on there. It was called DisneyToon Studios then, which is actually gone now.
Tanya Musgrave (05:14):
Oh.
Jim Turner (05:31):
Yeah. So while I was at DisneyToon Studios, I worked on Planes and Planes: Fire & Rescue, which was really cool. I got to work with John Lasseter, which was a dream of mine.
Tanya Musgrave (05:40):
Yeah, yeah. I mean, for any animator, I would guess.
Jim Turner (05:43):
Yeah. That basically ended when, I guess, Planes: Fire & Rescue didn’t do as well as they wanted and they decided they were going to shut things down. Actually, this was a little bit before they shut it all down completely. But, anyway, yeah, so I got laid off ultimately, and we actually decided to leave LA at that point, and we moved back to Tennessee. But as soon as we made that decision, then I got hired on by Halon Entertainment, and so it’s weird, but, yeah, Halon Entertainment to do some live-action previs. So the first show I worked on there was Black Hat.
Tanya Musgrave (06:17):
Interesting.
Jim Turner (06:17):
At this time, we were living in Tennessee, and I was going back to LA to just do projects for a few months. So during that time period, I worked on Ghostbusters and then the last one was Logan.
Tanya Musgrave (06:28):
Okay. So tell me about that particular pivot between going from animation to previs. I mean, I guess, are they just relatively close, or is it just a, “Oh, wow, this is [crosstalk 00:06:40]”-
Jim Turner (06:40):
Yes, they’re very, very similar. People that work in previs are going back and forth between animated films and live-action films. We try to keep the principles the same. You want to keep the cameras grounded in reality, so you want to know how heavy that camera should feel so that defines how fast it can move through a scene. If it’s moving too fast-
Tanya Musgrave (07:03):
Interesting.
Jim Turner (07:03):
… it’s going to pull you out, and you’re like, “Oh, how would you do that on set?” So, definitely, when I moved to previs, I had to think about that way more than I did on Barbie or anything. You know?
Tanya Musgrave (07:16):
Interesting. Interesting. I would’ve never guessed. Yeah. Yeah.
Jim Turner (07:17):
Because they had to match it. When they went to shoot it on the day, they had to be able to pull it off. So we had to know what rig we’re going to shoot on on the day, where the lighting was going to be. We had everything planned out, especially on Logan. On Logan was the first previs show that I worked with Unreal engine.
Tanya Musgrave (07:36):
Oh.
Jim Turner (07:40):
It was really awesome, actually, because we knew the days we were going to film and we knew where we were going to film. We would get the location. We could pull up Google Earth and get a basic topography of the location, and we would build our digital set to match exactly where we were going to film on the day. Then we knew the time of day we were going to shoot, so we could put the date in and get the exact lighting, like the sun would be in this exact position at this time of day.
Tanya Musgrave (07:40):
Oh, that’s amazing.
Jim Turner (08:08):
So the director knew exactly what he was going to get the day we filmed. I worked on a lot of stuff on Logan, but the biggest sequence that I got to really explore on my own, I was just given the basic idea, was when they break out of the refinery. Have you seen Logan? No? Okay. I’m going to spoil it a little bit for you.
Tanya Musgrave (08:08):
No, no, no. Do it. Do it.
Jim Turner (08:28):
Okay. There’s one scene. I’ll try not to spoil it too much for the listeners, though. There’s one scene where Logan is being chased by a group of guys and he’s stuck in some kind of refinery place where they’ve been hiding out. So the director said, “Find a way for them to escape, but don’t make it easy.” He’s like, “they have to crash through the fence, but maybe it doesn’t work.” So I-
Tanya Musgrave (08:51):
So he’s giving you this problem?
Jim Turner (08:54):
Yeah. He pitched the whole thing. We didn’t even have a script. “Here’s the idea of what I want it to happen. See what you can make it do.”
Tanya Musgrave (08:54):
Wow. Okay.
Jim Turner (09:01):
To me, that’s the thing I love about previs. You get to be a cinematographer because you do all the camera work. You get to be an animator because you get to pose the characters, put them where you want them, time them out to the timing you want.
Tanya Musgrave (09:14):
Do all the blocking.
Jim Turner (09:15):
We even do our own editing in the beginning. A lot of times, we work with the editor really closely. And you get to basically be the director because you’re choosing the style choices, the cutting, and everything. The directors are going to have the say, and they’re going to give you feedback, and they’re going to say yes to this, no to this, and you do … For Logan, I couldn’t tell you how many times I did that sequence, but you do it 10 times probably in different ways till they find the way that works the best and to find the flow. Ultimately, our whole team has touched every sequence. With Halon, we weren’t … Some places, they like to give the artist the sequence, especially in animation. You get that sequence, and then they let you keep it and follow it through the whole way. At Halon, it’s like I may start a sequence and then another artist may do some fixes on it if they’re free and another artist may-
Tanya Musgrave (10:09):
Okay. How elaborate … Well, first of all, how many artists are there on a thing? I’ll tell you how primitive I thought that it was. I was thinking of just a story-boarding class where you have your panels and you put them up on a bulletin board. How elaborate do these actually get?
Jim Turner (10:28):
I mean, it looks like Hugh Jackman. We had a modeler. She was fantastic. She would model him. In fact, there was a funny story. I wasn’t there, but I think it was the day before I started on Logan because I came on later than some of the other artists. Hugh Jackman was there the day before, and our modeler, when he came in, she was working on sculpting his abs. When he walked in, he’d made a comment. I’m not sure I can remember. But, yeah, it was really funny that she was sculpting his abs. But, no, the characters look like the actor. It’s lit. With Unreal, you’re getting textures, you’re getting effects. We’re trying to make it look as much like the finished product as we can.
Tanya Musgrave (11:08):
Is that something where the director … Because I would imagine the director would be a lot more heavily involved with that.
Jim Turner (11:16):
In the beginning, he wasn’t, honestly. He was very hands-off-
Tanya Musgrave (11:21):
Really?
Jim Turner (11:21):
… where he’s like, “I want to see what you guys can do with it, and just do it.”
Tanya Musgrave (11:23):
Interesting.
Jim Turner (11:25):
Definitely, he will have some very specific notes. I remember one sequence on Logan, I’d animated Logan. It was kind of a POV of Logan’s POV as he’s going through and more or less wiping out a bunch of people. So I had him. You could see his claws in front of the camera as he’s cutting up some people. But I remember Jim Mangold, he’s the director, he saw my animation and he’s like … I’d slowed down the claws so they weren’t just blurs because that was a note that I got from … I don’t remember if it was my supervisor or the art director. Yeah, he had the funniest note for me. He’s like, “It looks like somebody duct-taped some butter knives on the end of a two-by-four and is waving it in front of the camera, and it’s like we got to figure this out.” I don’t know. He had some specific notes. But, ultimately, that scene was cut from the whole movie, but-
Tanya Musgrave (12:22):
Well, that’s really interesting that he … Because I would guess that they would know that it’s not going to be butter knives and a two-by-four on the day of. So I just didn’t-
Jim Turner (12:33):
No, that’s just his sense of humor, honestly. Yeah.
Tanya Musgrave (12:36):
Well, yeah, but I didn’t know just how detailed they would get for the animation part of it, for the previs part.
Jim Turner (12:44):
It’s pretty detailed. In fact-
Tanya Musgrave (12:45):
Really?
Jim Turner (12:45):
And we also use a lot of mocap with it, too. We had our own mocap set-up that we could do in the office, Xsens suits, which were basically a wireless, sorry, cameraless motion capture system.
Tanya Musgrave (12:59):
Oh, okay. Okay.
Jim Turner (13:00):
So we did some of it animated by hand, hand-animated, and some of it, we were able to capture ourselves-
Tanya Musgrave (13:07):
Just capture all of the motion, yeah.
Jim Turner (13:07):
… just right in the office.
Tanya Musgrave (13:08):
Oh, that’s awesome.
Jim Turner (13:09):
That shit was really fun because we were in Jim Mangold’s office, where he would just pop in every now and then and just check in on us and look at stuff.
Tanya Musgrave (13:18):
All right. So all right. You worked for this particular company, but you’re … So you’re not a contract. Are you in a cubicle somewhere and a project will come up and then you create for it, like an in-house graphic designer kind of thing, or is it like, “I am on this particular project?”
Jim Turner (13:34):
It can be both.
Tanya Musgrave (13:36):
Okay.
Jim Turner (13:36):
When I was on Black Hat, we went to the director’s office, so you go where they are and you work with them on their team. Sometimes, they want previs artists on set. They’ll do, “Hey, we need to figure out this sequence because we’re going to shoot this in an hour and we don’t really know what’s happen. Can you throw something together?”
Tanya Musgrave (13:55):
Whoa.
Jim Turner (13:55):
I haven’t had that experience entirely, but I guess, when I was on Avatar, they would do that stuff. But I wasn’t a previs artist on Avatar. I was a virtual stage operator, so-
Tanya Musgrave (14:07):
Go into that.
Jim Turner (14:11):
My experience on Avatar was really incredible and working with Jim Cameron. Literally, he’s a genius. I really believe he’s a genius. He’s got a vision, and he’s dedicated. He gives 110% all the time, and he expects 110% all the time, which is really challenging. So my role as a virtual stage operator was to control the virtual set and scene and be the hub of the shoot when we’re filming and capturing the mocap or capturing cameras. Basically, I worked on the stage as we captured any mocap, which I got to work on the water stage as well. That’s not a secret. There’s going to be some underwater motion capture in the film, which I think is the first … I think it’s the first time that a film’s been shot with-
Tanya Musgrave (15:04):
You said going to be, as in this is for Avatar 2?
Jim Turner (15:08):
This is Avatar 2 and 3. I worked on 2 and 3. Yeah.
Tanya Musgrave (15:11):
Yes. Is it more like green screen, that kind of thing, or is it more like stagecraft?
Jim Turner (15:16):
It depends on what part of the process they’re in. What I was doing was … No, they’re in full motion capture suits on a volume, which is … I can’t remember the number of cameras they had but probably a few hundred cameras and a giant soundstage. In fact, I think we had three or four different soundstages. They have more studios in New Zealand where they would film the live-action end of stuff and what they would call simulcam, which was probably more of the green screen things. Now, they’re using like what they used in The Mandalorian. They’re using a lot of the LED backgrounds to get the lighting. We built up a set on the soundstage that matched the virtual set, and we would do a process called [inaudible 00:16:02], basically moving things into place till it matched. So they want a log here, a virtual log, and the actors are going to interact with it. We would have a big gray tube there, basically, in the exact same spot. It would match up. We would match it up all through … They would have a team of construction guys who would piece together these sets every day and multiple times a day.
Tanya Musgrave (16:28):
That is totally blowing my mind.
Jim Turner (16:29):
Yeah. And they would match up to the virtual environment exactly. So if you want a tree, a vertical tree, here or a log here, they would have to put something in place if there is going to be a contact for it.
Tanya Musgrave (16:40):
Wow.
Jim Turner (16:40):
Which got really cool. When you have vehicles or things that are moving, they would have ways of having the whole set move so you’re getting the proper motion, the exact motion, of what it’s going to be. It could be a really struggle to basically do these different constraint systems to set up the virtual to match and have it connected so you can have animated characters that are being driven by practical set pieces. The tricky part is you want your live-action performance, your motion capture performance, to be driven by the animation. That was the hardest stuff to get right.
So let’s say you have a creature, an animated creature. Let’s say your character’s going to climb on their back and ride around, and so they’re going from the ground. Every sequence, every shot was shot multiple times at multiple different scales and by … You’ll get a stunt pass and your principle actor pass. They shot it so many times, and we had the ability to combine motions. Actually, they could break it down where they want the left arm from the stunt person and the hips and legs of the principle actor. They could piece together body parts of motion-
Tanya Musgrave (18:01):
That is so cool.
Jim Turner (18:02):
… to get the exact take that they wanted. It’s really cool. It was really cool when your live character you’re recording is interacting with an animated character and you see it on the screen. Jim, when he’s filming on the day, he’s not worried about cameras. He’s just worrying about the performance. But he’ll have a camera. He’s watching more or less the final take on the camera as the performance is happening. There, he can kind of see what’s working. So he can see all the animated pieces, the effects, the lighting. It’s all in his viewport as we’re filming it. He’s watching the blue people and not the actors with the dots on them, right? Avatar wasn’t using Unreal engine, but they have their own similar system that they’ve built. It looks incredible. You’re getting reflections. You’re getting effects. I want to say it looks like the first Avatar. Live, when we’re filming, that’s what it looks like. Like, the finished movie, Avatar, the first time, that’s what you could see live as we were shooting.
Tanya Musgrave (19:02):
Stop it.
Jim Turner (19:02):
So it’s really cool. It’s really, really awesome.
Tanya Musgrave (19:05):
Oh, my word. This is insane.
Jim Turner (19:08):
Yeah, and you get ocean waves and things real-time as we’re filming.
Tanya Musgrave (19:14):
Wait, wait, wait. So you said that you were on the water set.
Jim Turner (19:16):
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Tanya Musgrave (19:17):
Tell me about that.
Jim Turner (19:17):
Here’s-
Tanya Musgrave (19:19):
Are you allowed to?
Jim Turner (19:20):
Here’s where I don’t know how much I can say. Honestly, it’s definitely proprietary, all that they’re doing, and I know there’s been some photos released of it. I think I can say it’s basically a big tank of water, which we would call a volume because it’d have multiple camera set-ups. So you were going to have hundreds of cameras all around this giant tank, like we would be on the soundstage. I don’t know-
Tanya Musgrave (19:50):
It’s okay.
Jim Turner (19:54):
I don’t know how much I can say other than that.
Tanya Musgrave (19:54):
It’s okay.
Jim Turner (19:55):
But it was awesome to be there. I remember I could see what Jim can see through his viewport. On one of my monitors, I could see exactly whatever he is seeing through his camera. It was really cool because I get to see all the performances. On Avatar, they would shoot reference cameras. They just had video cameras from 20 different camera guys around the set that would film it from every angle. One guy would be on this character. One guy would be covering this character. Maybe they’d have three different camera guys on each person as they filmed it. So I get to see that as well so I can compare. I guess my point is I remember one time they were filming in the tank, and it was a scene that just, emotionally, I felt it. I almost started crying while filming it. It was incredible. So I have really high hopes for the success of Avatar 2 and 3. I know for a fact that it’s going to blow people away more than the original.
Tanya Musgrave (20:54):
Wow. Yeah, yeah. Oh, man. And, visually, already, that first one was just groundbreaking in so many different ways. So is it-
Jim Turner (21:02):
Yeah. But every day there’s new challenges. We’re doing new things that have never been done, and I’m not going to take any credit for it. I was there to-
Tanya Musgrave (21:08):
Well, like what? What had never been done before?
Jim Turner (21:11):
Underwater mocap has never been done before.
Tanya Musgrave (21:13):
Oh, really?
Jim Turner (21:14):
Just the fact that they’re able to capture motion underwater. There’s a lot of challenges with reflections and other things when you’re in water that they’ve been able to overcome. I can’t speak to how they’ve done it. They have a team of scientists, I think, more or less, working on this stuff, right?
Tanya Musgrave (21:33):
Make sure people don’t get electrocuted or something like that.
Jim Turner (21:35):
Yeah, and that, too. Being a part of Avatar is definitely one of my best experiences. I got to be honest with you. Right before I worked on Avatar, I was a stay-at-home dad. I’d stopped working after Logan. I told Halon I wanted to … Because we were living in Tennessee, and I was going back out for four or five months to work on projects, and I said, “Hey, guys, I think I just need to take some time and be at home with my family.” I had four small kids at the time. So my wife, who’s a nurse, she was working and I was staying home with the kids until I got the call to come work on Avatar. It was really hilarious when I started. People were like, “What were you doing, what were you working on that got you here at Avatar at a very prestigious position,” because I guess I’m working on the stage with Jim everyday. I was like, “Yeah, I was just a stay-at-home dad,” and people were like, “What? No way.”
You know what? I’d really like to speak to that, actually, and this has been throughout my whole career. The only reason I keep getting jobs is because of connections. You never know who’s going to be the guy or girl that recommends you for your next job. Now, I’m at the point where I haven’t been looking for work. I literally have friends recommending me. For the job on Monsters at Work, I had friends that I’d worked with on Planes and Planes: Fire & Rescue that recommended me. On Avatar, it was a friend of mine that I worked with at Logan who was brought on. He’s like, “Here’s what you got to get, this guy, to come to it.” I’d never done stage operating. It was all new to me. We were using MotionBuilder as the base software. I had touched it a little bit while on Logan, but I didn’t know the software. So it took me a couple months to get up to speed. Talk about intense pressure. It’s like, “Hey, we’re going to throw you in with Jim Cameron to film Kate Winslet and Zoe Saldana. Don’t screw this up because if you screw it up, they’re going to have to redo” … It’s like there’s intense pressure to … Yeah.
Tanya Musgrave (23:39):
And how many of you are on set there? Is there just a whole team? Is it kind of like Houston type of thing, you have a whole-
Jim Turner (23:46):
Yes, it definitely is. Where I work was what we call the brain bar, and you’ll have lighting experts, motion experts. You’ll have dialect coaches and just a whole … I mean, yeah, there can be hundreds of people on the set, yeah.
Tanya Musgrave (23:59):
Dang. Okay. Okay. Every single day?
Jim Turner (24:01):
Yeah. It depends on what’s being done, and a lot of times we’re doing more than one soundstage. So, yeah, we’ll have second unit recording on one soundstages and first unit filming on another.
Tanya Musgrave (24:13):
Okay.
Jim Turner (24:14):
On Logan, I think our previs team was five or six people total, so it’s a pretty small team, and that was for, I think, six months. It might’ve extended more than that, but-
Tanya Musgrave (24:24):
And they do the whole entire film? It’s not just certain action sequences or something?
Jim Turner (24:29):
No, for that one, we were doing specific … We didn’t do the whole thing. Animation, we will tend to do the whole film or whole show.
Tanya Musgrave (24:36):
We’re going to go from Avatar to probably more the kind of project that our listeners are part of, which is the indie side of things. So we’re going to try to figure out a way to make this applicable because I am curious, why would an indie filmmaker want to invest in a previs artist?
Jim Turner (24:57):
I think they should. If I was going to make my own film, I’d 100% do previs. I know there’s different levels of software. So, mainly, we use Maya, and we will model and rig and design everything we do. So we’ll model our locations, characters, vehicles, whatever is going to be in it. Sometimes, we can pull textures and whatever we find on the Internet. It can be rough and dirty, but-
Tanya Musgrave (25:20):
How far out from shooting?
Jim Turner (25:22):
That definitely depends on the project. Sometimes, they’re doing previs literally the day they’re filming, like on set. They’ll have a previs artist on set to do an idea that the director had that day, and they’ll just throw something together and they’ll shoot it. Other times, you’re six months out.
Tanya Musgrave (25:39):
Okay, okay. Is this something that would be used for pitch decks or that kind of thing, or is it just-
Jim Turner (25:45):
The thing that’s so important with previs, I think, is it gets you closer to your finished product sooner. Because it’s not the finished product, you don’t have to be so precious with it. You can try things that are risky and without a lot of consequences. You’re not using up the footage. I know there’s an expense if you’re going to pay for previs artists and Maya and all that if you’re going to model everything. But, yeah, I was going to say, there are some systems you can get generic characters and generic sets where you can do your own previs. It may not match exactly what your film’s going to be, but you can get an idea of where your camera’s going to be, where your character’s going to be in relation faster. It gives all your departments a chance to see where things are going to be.
So editorial can make a cut of the film earlier, before they have any footage, real footage. Your art director can see exactly what they’re going to need on the day. They may say, “Oh, you know what? We have to have a round doorway for this, and we only have a square.” They can really make their choices before they get out on the day. Your cinematographer can see the lighting and make their lighting choices. I think it needs to be used more, and I think a lot of filmmakers are using it more now, definitely more than 10 years ago. It’s a standard now.
Tanya Musgrave (27:00):
What would an indie project … What should they budget for? Is it by hour, is it by frame, by project? Is there kind of-
Jim Turner (27:10):
Working with Halon, I know what my rate would be per hour, and the-
Tanya Musgrave (27:14):
So it is per hour then?
Jim Turner (27:16):
Well, I know I get paid per hour, right?
Tanya Musgrave (27:16):
Oh, oh. Oh, yeah. That’s right. That’s right.
Jim Turner (27:21):
But imagine that Halon is going to get their cut on top of it. I don’t know what the total price would be if you hired Halon versus hiring a single artist, you know what I’m saying? Going through a previs company is, I’m sure, going to cost you more than prevising it yourself or … Yeah.
Tanya Musgrave (27:21):
Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, absolutely.
Jim Turner (27:40):
My point is if you’re an indie filmmaker, there are ways of prevising it yourself. If you’re going to storyboard something, which a lot of directors do themselves, I think you could be able to previs something yourself as well.
Tanya Musgrave (27:51):
Yeah. What programs are out there? I have heard of a few where you can just gather … They’re apps that you can just kind of like, “Oh, here’s a car.”
Jim Turner (28:00):
I know they exist, but I can’t remember any names that I can plug offhand because I haven’t really used any.
Tanya Musgrave (28:05):
Well, dude, you’re on another level.
Jim Turner (28:06):
Yeah, I’ve been using Maya, so I don’t know. Maybe I can give you some links that you could post in it. I can do some more research for you. But yeah.
Tanya Musgrave (28:14):
Oh, yeah. No worries. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You’ve been getting, actually, more into cinematography lately. I mean, you had kind of started off … You were big into camera and you’ve been involved with live-action and stuff. Somebody told me, interestingly enough, that there is or may be, I don’t know, that there’s a growing trend of production companies hiring DPs who have a background in animation for their experience in VFX and that kind of thing. Tell me more about that.
Jim Turner (28:40):
I wasn’t aware of that, actually, being a thing, but that’s awesome if it is true. Yeah, that’s great. For me, that’s wonderful, my experience. I think we see ourselves as cinematographers. We’re trying to define what’s the best camera angle to get what we want and that can be to get the emotion, the tone, the flow of the sequence. Do we want it to be cutty? Do we want to shoot everything in one shot, have elaborate blocking, or do we want simple blocking? We get to choose that, ultimately, as a previs artist. We’re the director of our sequence. We’re also the cinematographer for that sequence, and, yes, the actual cinematographer may have a say, ultimately, but-
Tanya Musgrave (29:22):
He might have a say.
Jim Turner (29:24):
Well, often, we don’t work directly with the cinematographer at all on the previs stuff. We’ll get notes from the director.
Tanya Musgrave (29:30):
Gotcha, yeah.
Jim Turner (29:30):
But he’s relying on us to make it all consistent and keep it in his or her visual language, right? So, to me, it made sense that my next step or having that experience with camera, I would want to get that credit as a DP. my only, I guess you’d call it a cinematographer credit, was … On Monsters at Work, I got a cinematographer credit, which we asked for a DP credit, but I guess they didn’t want to give us a director title. I think there might’ve been something with the union. I’m in the animation guild, the 83 … I can’t remember the numbers now. Animation guild. I think it’s 839. So, yeah, I am a member of that with being a previs artist, and that’s only because I’ve worked at Disney, Netflix. There’s a few union houses, but previs itself for live-action is not unionized, and I wish it was.
Just being in the union gives you so many benefits, mainly just your health coverage is consistent. We often go from four or six months from a show to show, and we move around a lot. Sometimes, people are at Halon Entertainment. Sometimes, they’re at Third Floor. There’s a ton of previs companies out there. I just wish that they were unionized so you can keep your healthcare consistent and your pension keeps building. There’s a lot of advantages of being in the union. I don’t know if I’m answering your questions at all. I’m going off-
Tanya Musgrave (30:51):
No. No, no, no. It was more along the lines of giving voice to the debate in your head between animation/previs to going live-action DP, if that was a director that you were wanting to go.
Jim Turner (31:02):
Oh, I see. Yeah. I love cinematography. I love what I’m doing. But I don’t see myself moving to live-action cinematography. It’s simply because my skills are in the virtual world. I don’t have a lot of experience with real cameras at this point. We’re trying to get to the same endpoint, but our tool set is different, right? So I don’t think I would be eligible even for that at this point, right? Just because when they’re like, “Oh, what lens kit do you want,” I wouldn’t know … I would know lens numbers, but I wouldn’t know what brands would be best or what the best bouquet you’re going to get from this versus that, right? I think that’s the knowledge I would have to have in order to move into live-action.
Tanya Musgrave (31:51):
Do you enjoy even just being part of live-action projects more than animation projects, or is it more of a … Like, it’s kind of the same wherever you are?
Jim Turner (32:00):
No. I personally feel like there’s a different energy to a live action project than to an animation. Animation projects are usually longer-term. You’re on that project for a year maybe, whereas your live-action previs experience may be four to six months on it, and it’s longer days usually, faster-paced, faster turnaround. A lot of times, it’s not as much collaboration as you get with animation. So, in animation, we have to create everything you’re going to create. They’re going to design the world, right? Because they’re not going to a certain location to shoot it, they have to design everything. So you’re working really closely with the art director and the editor and everything.
In live-action, they’ve had their scouts go out, and they have a lot of photographs. You get images and things of what things are going to be. They just want you to make it because they know what they’re going to make, in a way. So I think it’s faster that way. It’s just a different energy. I can’t say which one I like more. They’re both fun, but I really do like the collaboration within animation. Going into the animation studio, there’s a good energy usually, and, I don’t know, it’s light-hearted and kind of fun.
Tanya Musgrave (32:00):
I always thought it would be a whole lot more fun.
Jim Turner (33:13):
Yeah, it’s very fun. And live-action is very fun, too, but there can be a little higher intensity.
Tanya Musgrave (33:20):
If you took the intensity of your full-length animation and just concentrated it to what has to happen for production, that kind of thing.
Jim Turner (33:31):
Avatar is a different story, though, because they’ve been filming for years at high intensity.
Tanya Musgrave (33:39):
This is true.
Jim Turner (33:40):
That environment, I don’t think a lot of people can do it, honestly. I’ve seen people break down. I’ve seen crying on set. Because there’s such a high standard and high expectations, there’s a lot of pressure there. 13, 14 hours a day for years. I was there a year and a half on Avatar. A lot of people I know have been there probably five years now. They probably have a few more years to go. So that’s crazy, right?
Tanya Musgrave (34:09):
Yeah, that’s insane because we’re in the middle of production right now and I have no idea how this would go on for years.
Jim Turner (34:16):
And are you guys 13, 14 hour days or-
Tanya Musgrave (34:20):
We’re doing 12s.
Jim Turner (34:22):
Yeah, okay.
Tanya Musgrave (34:23):
Yeah, we’re doing 12s because it’s largely a student crew. Some, I think, maybe a couple of days, have gone to 13s. But, no, we try to keep it at 12s for them.
Jim Turner (34:37):
Being on Avatar, it’s a family. You become a family. You’re with those people more than your family. So it’s very close, and they’re wonderful people. I have a lot of really fantastic friends there. But it takes a certain person to keep doing that for a long time.
Tanya Musgrave (34:54):
Yeah. Well, that’s a lot of time away from your actual family, too, so, I mean … We’re going to ask about the tools of your trade now. I know that this is probably more towards animation, but if there is something applicable to film, something that you thought of, what gear or gadget or software that is a favorite old reliable?
Jim Turner (35:14):
I think I mentioned that we use Maya mainly, and if people don’t know Maya, it’s a computer animation software, and it’s like a blank slate. You can do anything, right? But, basically, the idea is we build virtual puppets of the characters and we manipulate them and we’ll have a virtual camera and we [inaudible 00:35:31]. So those are the tools I use mainly. But, to me, I think the most important tool is your mind and to know … This sounds so cliché. This sounds awful. But just knowing why you’re filming something the way you’re filming it is way more important than the tool you’re doing it because some people are … I know this sounds cliché as well, but some people are shooting their films on their iPhone, right, and I think you can get some great stuff just from that. But if you know the principles in why you’re doing a closeup here or why you’re moving the camera … I think camera movement people really need to be careful with.
But, anyway, so the tool, I think, that helped me with that is Bruce Block’s book, Visual Storytelling, and I was actually lucky enough to take a couple of his courses. You have to have reasons why you’re going to do everything. Basically, if you’re not thinking about it and you’re just doing it, you’re not going to get the results that you’re intending. So if you know what results you want, then you can really be focused on all the aspects. So what he actually has you do is you map out different, basically, line graphs of your intensity charts and emotional charts of characters. Then you can match your camera language or contrast your camera language to what’s happening emotionally.
Tanya Musgrave (36:48):
Oh, yeah. Yeah. That’s [crosstalk 00:36:49]-
Jim Turner (36:49):
But if you know what you want to get out of it, then you can know how to approach it. So that’s the biggest tool, I think, is just knowing what you want to get out of that scene, what do you want to get out of that shot. Everything has a purpose to why you’re doing it. If you’re just moving the camera to make it more interesting, I’ve done that-
Tanya Musgrave (36:49):
Yeah. Yeah. It’s true. It’s true.
Jim Turner (37:08):
… where the director is like, “This is kind of boring. Let’s move the camera.” Yeah, that can work, but it can be stronger if that camera’s motivated for an emotional reason. If it’s humor, if it’s a humorous scene, you might want to shoot it more flat so you can focus on the humor. If it’s a dramatic scene, it might be more dynamic of a camera and camera movement. I don’t know. It’s different ways you’re going to approach it.
Tanya Musgrave (37:30):
That’s so interesting because what immediately comes to mind was once I realized that CSI did this thing where it always had to shoot past glass, all their lab stuff and all the-
Jim Turner (37:30):
And people writing on the glass with their notes?
Tanya Musgrave (37:45):
Well, it wasn’t just the writing on the glass, but it’s beakers or lab equipment. The shot was always muddied somehow. When I realized it, it drove me nuts because there wasn’t really much purpose for it other than just, “Look at all these beakers in the foreground,” and you’re just like, “Get out of my way, I want to see”-
Jim Turner (38:06):
Right. “Get to the story.”
Tanya Musgrave (38:07):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s like they would always open it with that kind of thing and I was … Anyway. But that’s really, really interesting. Now, I’m going to ask you about a favorite new gadget that might have revolutionized the way that you worked. You might’ve actually mentioned it before. But, anyway, continue.
Jim Turner (38:25):
From my experience as a previs artist, my new favorite thing that I’m trying to bring in, or, actually, I’ve used it … On Sea Beast, we were able to use motion capture. Within animation, they’re not humanoid characters. It could be a fish or a car or a monster. But on Sea Beast, we did have human characters that we were able to use some motion capture. It takes a while to animate. Animation takes time. So to get some solid motion really quick, it just helps us get there faster, and that’s what previs is about, getting your story as fast as you can. That’s the challenge with producers. They can see the cost of previs, and they don’t always see the benefits. So I think that’s why previs hasn’t grown a lot yet, but people are starting to catch on. Previs actually saves you money in the long-run because you’re getting a better quality product faster, and that saves you money, always.
Tanya Musgrave (39:23):
All right. So we have a couple listener questions from our Instagram, @practicalfilmmaker. This one comes from a DP. They are interested in how you overlap something technical and something creative when it comes to getting known for something. For instance, DPs, they sell themselves on style in many ways. So how do you become known for something in your particular field? Is it your style, is it your technicality?
Jim Turner (39:50):
For me personally, I have found that I feel like people want to work with me, not even for my technical skill or style, but because they enjoy working with me. I develop those relationships, right?
Tanya Musgrave (40:04):
That’s how it is all the time.
Jim Turner (40:05):
I’m telling you, it’s the most important thing, to develop relationships wherever you are with whoever you’re with. I mean, literally a PA on your project could be the next producer that hires you. So how you treat people is by far the most important thing, and that has helped me get job after job after job. Beyond that, yes, you have to be competent. For me, I can’t have my own personal style because I’m amplifying or I’m trying to know what the style of each director is and what they want to see and what they want to get. Again, on Logan, we were told that Jim Mangold wanted it to feel like an old ’70s film. He wanted to be old-school. He didn’t want it to feel like a slick superhero movie with dynamic flying cameras, CG-looking cameras. He wanted it to be grounded. He wanted it to feel old-school. Solid old-school filmmaking where you wouldn’t know that it was previs is the idea that he wanted.
So, for me, I guess I’m selling myself on versatility more so probably than a specific style. In the field, things change a lot. Like I was saying, now we’re using more motion capture and Unreal engine, and those are things I didn’t learn in school how to use that stuff. So it’s like you got to pick that up as you go. Usually, the best way to pick it up is just to be thrown into it, right? That was my experience on Avatar. You’re thrown in and, “All right, rise to the occasion.”
Tanya Musgrave (41:35):
Like, “I’m here for some reason, so”-
Jim Turner (41:35):
Yeah, they believe in me. I don’t know. I tricked them into something. Every time, every show, it’s like that, right? It’s like, “What am I doing here? How did I get here? Now, I have to make them not regret hiring me.” But yeah.
Tanya Musgrave (41:49):
Well, okay. So I’m going to follow up on the skills and stuff, but what makes a good previs artist? Is it anticipating style, is it the art, the lighting and the camera angles and coming up with your own ideas, or is it really just being able to interpret what the director wants?
Jim Turner (42:12):
Listening is really important, yeah, and taking direction. I’ve seen some people who their director will give them notes and they want to do their own notes in their own style and they aren’t really following the director’s notes. You can’t keep doing that for too long before people catch on and they don’t want that around. So following directions is really important. Watching films, knowing the film language and trying to understand it, I think, is probably one of the most important things. There’s a certain structure that you want to put down, typically, in a scene. Different directors will do it differently, but you want to, let’s say, have an establishing shot then go to maybe a medium and then to your closeups, right? Just knowing the different structure of filmmaking really helps to be a good previs artist.
Other than that, yeah, I guess you have to have some animation skills. But even then, I don’t feel like I have the best animation skills. I mean, I know how to animate, but it’s not going to always look like … There’s some previs artists where you look at it and it looks like finished animation. I guess it depends on the director and the project, but it looks more like storyboards. In the motion of the character, we do what’s called stepped animation, and it’ll pop from one pose to the next pose, and other ones are flowing. I think in live-action previs, most of the time, it’s what we call splined animation. It’s not stepped. It’s not what you’d get in an animatic with storyboards where you’re popping from one panel to the next of a pose.
Tanya Musgrave (43:42):
Where do you get your foot in the door at the level of projects that are VFX heavy? Most EPs cut their teeth on low-budget, but animation-intensive stuff is not low-budget. So where do you start?
Jim Turner (43:58):
You have to have a reel. You have to have something to show. In previs, it all comes down to, “Are you able to do what we need done?” Look, these companies are hiring people all the time. Third Floor and Halon, I know, hire people all the time. Just put in your reel, meet people at conferences. I think that’s the biggest thing. Meeting people takes you the furthest. So you find a way to meet these guys wherever they’re … If they’re talking somewhere, if they’re giving a talk, go and ask questions, go meet them, say, “Hey, how can I get you my stuff to look at?” Create those relationships. That’s the only way I see to get started. There were a lot of people on Avatar that were fresh out of college. They pulled in-
Tanya Musgrave (43:58):
What?
Jim Turner (44:38):
Yes. I mean-
Tanya Musgrave (44:40):
What?
Jim Turner (44:40):
They got people young, young. I suspect some of them haven’t finished college. I want to say there’s 19, 20-year-olds and other ones who are the ref cam. A lot of the reference camera guys, they’re straight out of college, young kids. I’m at the point now where I am more and more driven to do my own projects. It’s hard when you’re working full-time, sometimes you’re 60-plus hours a week, to turn around and go home and put the time in your own stuff. It’s really hard. But I am at this point where, professionally, I think I need that more. I wished I had done that earlier and had those defined habits of continuing. Some people I know, they’re always working on a project themselves, and I think that’s important because as cool as Avatar is, in the end, it’s a job. It’s a job that you’re going to every day. So it can wear you out, it can be stressful and taxing. Knowing why you’re doing it and what you want to get out of it in long-end, that’s important stuff, yeah.
Tanya Musgrave (45:50):
Yeah, yeah. At this particular point in your career, what are you looking to get out of it?
Jim Turner (45:56):
Yeah, I’m still trying to find that. I bounced around the idea of starting my own studio, like animation or previs studio. Ultimately, I know I have a lot of stories I want to tell, so I think I want to move to directing next, writing and directing, which doesn’t really correlate, maybe, with cinematography, but, man, I know if I’m a director, I’m going to previs my stuff. I just think taking that into live-action, if I were to do that, would be an advantage, to really think about every aspect that you’re putting into it. You’re not given anything.
Tanya Musgrave (46:32):
So what current project are you excited about?
Jim Turner (46:34):
I have so many projects that I’m excited about. First, I can tell you Monsters at Work. Probably as this is airing, it’s already come out. But July 7, Monsters at Work has come out, and so I’m really excited to see the reception of that because that’s my first cinematographer credit. The way we did that show, there were a group of four of us that were the cinematographers, and we each got our own episodes, so I have three episodes of the first season that were my episodes that I just can’t wait to see out there.
Tanya Musgrave (47:06):
That’s amazing.
Jim Turner (47:08):
So yeah.
Tanya Musgrave (47:09):
How did-
Jim Turner (47:09):
Avatar, obviously, is another one that I can’t wait.
Tanya Musgrave (47:12):
Oh, yeah. Of course.
Jim Turner (47:13):
Then The Sea Best, I think, is going to be phenomenal. I think people are going to really respond to it.
Tanya Musgrave (47:13):
Nice.
Jim Turner (47:18):
Which I don’t think much has been said about it yet, but-
Tanya Musgrave (47:21):
Yeah, I hadn’t heard anything.
Jim Turner (47:22):
It’s written and directed by Chris Williams, who I think he co-directed Moana, directed Big Hero 6, Bolt. He’s a Disney guy, so he’s really awesome.
Tanya Musgrave (47:35):
Nice.
Jim Turner (47:36):
I think that’s going to get a really good reception, too, so that’s what I’m excited to see.
Tanya Musgrave (47:40):
So how do people find you or follow your work? Shameless plug time.
Jim Turner (47:44):
My personal work or-
Tanya Musgrave (47:46):
Yeah.
Jim Turner (47:47):
Well, I guess I’m on LinkedIn professionally. I don’t have a lot of personal work out, to be honest.
Tanya Musgrave (47:54):
No, no, no, it’s okay. It’s okay.
Jim Turner (47:54):
Yeah. I have some reels on Vimeo. I don’t know. I guess, good luck following me, guys.
Tanya Musgrave (48:04):
We will wait for Avatar. We will wait for The Sea Beast. Oh, man. No, no, no. That’s great, though. The last question that I always ask my guests, what question should I have asked you?
Jim Turner (48:16):
Would you recommend this to other people? Because, honestly, I don’t know. I have four kids, and two of my daughters are big into animation and film and they write their own stuff. Just to be totally upfront, it’s hard. It’s a hard lifestyle, especially for me. Sometimes, I’m moving jobs every six months. I’m changing new jobs. It’s a lot of change, and it can be hard on the family, especially if you’re moving for those jobs. So you got to know what you’re getting into and if it’s right for you.
Tanya Musgrave (48:47):
What have you been telling your girls who are interested in animation?
Jim Turner (48:51):
If they love it, they got to do it. If they have stories to tell, you can’t stop that. I think that’s important. I think that’s the thing, is-
Tanya Musgrave (49:04):
Well, I guess, what have you been warning them about?
Jim Turner (49:05):
Well, I warn them that not everybody makes it. Not everybody makes it into it because it takes so much drive and, honestly, a lot of sacrifice to do this career.
Tanya Musgrave (49:15):
What do you feel like you’ve sacrificed?
Jim Turner (49:17):
Time. Time with my family, definitely. When I started out on the Barbie movies, I would leave at 7:00 in the morning, and this is when my kids were quite little, and a lot of times I’d get home at midnight or 1:00. So you’re leaving before your kids get up and you’re getting home after they are in bed. You’re kind of living weekend to weekend family-wise. That’s really hard. It can be hard. So that’s the hardest thing, I think, about this. You have to know that it’s a sacrifice. I don’t want to get too personal, right?
Tanya Musgrave (49:52):
No. No, no, no.
Jim Turner (49:52):
But I have my family here in Tennessee, right? So my kids’ cousins and their grandparents and everyone’s here in Tennessee. Living in LA, they’ve had to sacrifice their time with their cousins. So my whole family sacrifices for me to follow my dream, and I’ve struggled with that for a little bit, what’s the right thing to do, not only for me and my career but for my kids and their ultimate happiness? Then, whatever careers they choose, how do I set them up? I’m at the age now where I have to deal with those questions and those thoughts. I don’t think everyone’s in that position. If you’re single and you want to do this career, I think go to LA. Go to LA and see what it’s like and get out there because I think it’s really going to be hard if you’re in a small town in Nebraska. I’m not saying it’s not doable, especially if you’re doing your own films.
Tanya Musgrave (50:51):
Well, how has the pandemic changed that because you can kind of work remotely, yeah?
Jim Turner (50:58):
Okay. So both on my last job at Netflix, I actually started it mid-pandemic, that job, so I never worked a day in person with that whole team. I was all remote. So, yeah, that has opened it up within animation. I’m not sure about live-action previs. I know everyone was working from home for a while. But I tend to think, especially with live-action previs, they want you where the director is. For me, in animation, it may continue after this pandemic to be able to work remotely on some stuff. So I’m really curious to see where things go and how things change. In fact-
Tanya Musgrave (51:39):
There’s going to be a lot of it.
Jim Turner (51:40):
I am at the point now where I’m having to decide, “Where do I want to be?” If I have the ability to work remotely, maybe we want to live in Tennessee. Then, literally, these are things I’m having to think about now.
Tanya Musgrave (51:59):
[crosstalk 00:51:59]-
Jim Turner (51:58):
Yeah, right now, at this moment. So I’m like, “These are decisions I haven’t made yet that I’m just considering.” But I think the thing is to just try and understand where things will be a year or two from now. Will it continue to be remote, or is everyone going to expect you to be back in LA to do these things? I want to say that I think there’ll be some remote work continuing. I kind of hope so. I do think, as artists, everyone loves the collaboration and they want to be together, so I think that’s the one thing that makes me keep thinking that, ultimately, if you can work together with people, that’s what people want. They want to be together, right?
Tanya Musgrave (52:38):
Thank you for actually being together right here.
Jim Turner (52:40):
Yeah, this is awesome.
Tanya Musgrave (52:42):
This was awesome. This was a great conversation that we were actually able to have in-person. But thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it.
Jim Turner (52:49):
Yeah, you’re welcome. Thank you.
Tanya Musgrave (52:51):
If you enjoyed this interview, follow us right here and on Instagram and check out more episodes at thepracticalfilmmaker.com. If you have comments or know someone who would be a great guest on our show, send in your suggestions to tanya@thepracticalfilmmaker.com. Be well and God bless. We’ll see you next time on The Practical Filmmaker.