About World Trade Center

Oliver Stone tells in "World Trade Center" the true story of the heroic survival and rescue of two Port Authority policemen, John McLoughlin and Will Jimeno, who were trapped in the rubble of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, after they went in to help people escape. The film also follows their families as they try to find out what happened to them, as well as the rescuers who found them in the debris field and pulled them out.

About Double Negative

Double Negative is located in the heart of London's Soho. It was set up in 1998 with a team of 30 staff. Since then the company has grown to 280+ staff. The company recently completed over 700 shots for United 93, 180+ shots for Da Vinci Code, 300 shots for Batman Begins, 200+ shots for Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and 700+ shots Flyboys delivering in November this year.

Ryan Cook

Ryan has been in the industry for over 8 years. Ryan graduated from a Computer Science Degree at McGill University in Canada. He started his career with ILM where he stayed for 5 years. He started out as a Technical Assistant, then moved to Technical Director. He then made his way overseas to London to work as a CG Supervisor at Double Negative. In his time, Ryan has worked on some of the all time greats including Pearl Harbour, The Mummy, Sahara, Alien Vs Predator, Star Wars Episode I & II, Jurassic Park 3 and Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire amongst many others. Ryan enjoys both computing and arts and in any spare time he can find, enjoys drawing, graphic design, painting and photography.

Andy Taylor

Andy is also an industry master having gained years of experience. He graduated a BA Hons degree in Design Media Production at Staffordshire University in 2000. He started his working career as a Production Assistant, then progressed to VFX Co-ordinator and now onto a VFX Producer at Double Negative. He has been credited for T.V mini series, Band of Brothers and a whole host of feature films including Alexander, The Chronicles of Riddick, The Jacket, Swept Away and Pride and Prejudice to name but a few. Andy very much enjoys to travel and so far his work has taken him all over the world with highlights in South Africa, Malta and the United States of America. 

The pair together formed part of the formidable team that worked on World Trade Centre.

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Can you please tell us a little about yourselves?

AT: Okay, I'll start. My name is Andy Taylor and I am a Visual Effects Producer at Double Negative and I have been here for 3 years.

RC: I'm Ryan Cook and I have been here since 2003 and I am a CG Supervisor. I was co-CG Supervisor with Peter Bebb on World Trade Center.

Could you tell us about your work history and projects that you have been involved in previously to “World Trade Center?”

AT: I spent a few years working at another VFX facility in London and following that I worked on Alexander, which was Oliver Stone's last film before World Trade Center. On Alexander, I worked alongside John Scheele who was the production’s VFX Supervisor on World Trade Center. On Alexander I also worked for the production and when it finished I joined Double Negative. I started working on The Chronicles of Riddick, then The Jacket, a small but really cool movie, Pride and Prejudice, which came out last year and Stranger than Fiction, which is due out in November and is going to be great also. Then I started work on World Trade Center.

RC: I have been here for 3 and half years and before that I was at Industrial Light and Magic where I worked for 5 years. I started as a technical assistant, I was basically a tape robot! I put in my time for a year or so then the first show that I ran shots on was The Mummy, then Perfect Storm, Jurassic Park 3, Pearl Harbour, and Signs plus a whole lot more... The last film that I worked on at ILM was Dreamcatcher and by the time I left I was a R&D Technical Director, half way between production and research... and now here I am!

Can you tell us a little about Double Negatives work on, “World Trade Center?”

RC: There were two main parts, really. One side of it was that we couldn’t shoot lower than Canal Street in New York so quite a bit of the work done was in creating set extensions. We had to shoot out of a set in Los Angeles and make it look convincingly like it was in New York. Peter Bebb, our other CG Supervisor, headed up that group and they had a team out in New York that took over a half a million photographs, which made them able to recreate anything in that area. Then the other half of it was the destruction, the smoke, the fluttering paper and basically the dynamics of it. So they were the two biggest challenges, being able to recreate totally realistic set extensions and the iconic smoke that we have all seen.

What software did you use to create your scenes?

RC: Off the shelf software, at Double Negative we primarily use Maya. On this project we used entirely Maya and then Shake was the 2D software, we used Renderman to render, but we've used quite a bit of proprietary software as well! We further developed our own voxel renderer, DNB, for the smoke. We also used a piece of software we own, called Dynamite that creates rigid body simulations for the smoke and debris... we didn't buy any off the shelf plug-ins but we certainly wrote a few!!

What was the hardest part of your work on the project and why?

AT: I think that the hardest part was to make it look as similar and as true to the events that happened on September 11th as possible and to do it justice. That was the brief... it has to look like September 11th and that's what we had to do.

RC: I've certainly never worked on a project where you want so much for it to look as good as it possibly can, to do it justice. But from the very beginning it was obviously a hugely sensitive subject I don't think I have ever been on a project before where it was necessary to achieve that high of a bar before.

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AT: The good thing about it, from the point of view of creating the effects, is of course that everybody knows about it and there is so much reference to it, but that is also a big problem because you have to get it all to match and look like it really was and our guys did a great job. Have you seen the film yet?

No, it's not out for a while over here yet, but I believe that I have seen some of your work in the trailers and it looks fantastic.

AT: Yeah, a lot of our work is in the American trailers

RC: Everything we had learnt to that point, went into that shot and it was an incredible amount of work. I don't think any of us believed that at that point we could turn it around as quickly as we did.

AT: It was one of those shots that you sometimes get, that just kind of came together. The filming got postponed because of bad weather and we were like, please let the weather be good. On the morning of the shoot it rained again and we only had one day to shoot. We were hoping for a dry patch because with water on the buildings you would see water at the finish, there was no getting around it. In the end it only cleared for an hour, but it was just enough for the buildings to dry and we were able to get everything we needed from that footage.

RC: We all wanted that shot from the beginning it is just such an epic eye line shot and it turned out to be as near to perfect as it could be.

How close is the final piece to what you imagined it would be?

AT: There was a shot that we call The Tower POV's and we never imagined that we could get as close as we did. As we were going through we realised that we could actually push them a lot closer. We added an extra shot that got a very tight close up of the tower and smoke. We were actually almost exactly on with the previs.

How many shots did you complete?

AT: 81.

How long were you working on the project?

AT: We started bidding last June and the bidding process went on till the end of August. So in September we ramped everything up and got the team ready to go out to New York. So September through to June.

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Did you run into any problems, how did you overcome them?

AT: There was originally a shot that was supposed to be of John McLoughlin and Wil Jimeno trapped underground and pulling up to 8 storeys.

RC: Yeah, basically, they wanted to do a shot of the two guys trapped below Ground Zero, it was supposed to be a very straight...what they call it the power of two shot. They eventually wanted to change the shot and have the camera at an angle that came out of the set and up in to the air, so mid way through that became quite a bit more difficult. it's actually the one that is in the trailer.

AT: It was all because of the way the live action was shot in the rubble, they couldn't rig the camera up the right way apparently, that was the way they had to shoot it and that was what we had to work with. You just have to get it done. It was an interesting moment though wasn't it?

RC: Well yeah, at the end of the day, they are on set and you want to give them as much freedom as you possibly can. It's the good and the bad thing about the industry. We thought we had about 4 and a half months to do it...

AT: But they decided they wanted it ready for the trailer...

RC: So we had about 6 weeks.

AT: So that was an interesting time as I am sure you can all imagine, but you just have to break it down and make it happen.

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What was different about working on this film?

RC: Just the subject matter for me...I think we all felt the same way about it.

RC: For me it was better after reading the script and realising what it was and that it is a rescue story. There's a debate going on even now about whether or not it is too early and whether they want to see it, but also you know you find yourself wondering, do I want to spend the next 8 months of my life looking at this reference? It was a very personal thing.

AT: It was important to spend time going through it and researching it. I still remember being up in the towers a few years before September 11th, looking down on all the tiny buildings and it's nice to rememberthat day, but researching it you realise that there is hope and that good things did come out of it. There's a line at the end of the film that tells you only 19 people came out alive and a lot of people don't actually realise how many people died that day.

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How did you feel when the project was finished?

RC: For me the project didn't really finish, we were lucky enough to go to the premiere and two thirds of the audience were families of the fire fighters and police involved, so it wasn't like we did the last shot and it was over because I was worrying about how it would be received. But it was really well received by the people it mattered to most and I am really pleased about it now. I am definitely thrilled with some of the work that our guys did... People like Graham Jack, Eugenie Von Tunzelmann, Will Elsdale, Jeff Clifford to name but a few.

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AT: It's a proud moment, to complete something that means so much to many people. I felt sad at the end of it, everyone kind of drifts off and as a producer you never get the same team twice. Like Ryan for instance, we both took time off and the first time we caught up was at the premiere and there are some people who still haven't come back from their holidays yet, so in a way it's all a little bit sad.

What would you have done differently if you had your time over again?

RC: I would have made Pete make more Tea, (he laughs,) I'm not sure I would have done anything differently, I just would have loved to have had more time, there's always one shot that you would like to do a few more things with, to put more into and I would have loved to have done that, but that's the same with every film.

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Is there anything that you would like to add?

RC: There was very specific reference and I think the vision was so clear, John Scheele and Mike Ellis, Double Negative overall VFX Supervisor knew clearly what they wanted and how they wanted it done and that just made things easier.

AT: What's interesting is that we were based in London and the rest of the production was out in L.A, so we able to work almost 24 hours, because we would be able to work our day here and then John's day would start over there. We would do our work and John would then be able to present it to Oliver Stone, the director, and give us feedback in time for our next working day. So the time zones work for you which is a great advantage for US based clients working with London based facilities and possibly that’s one of the reasons why London is getting so much work. John was very passionate and very easy to work with, we could call him whatever time and he would be wide awake and ready to go. He was very supportive.

RC: I have experience in both markets and I think when I moved here, London was seen as far more ‘boutique’ and since films like Harry Potter have come through, people have started to see that London based companies can take on the bigger projects. We here at Double Negative have noticed the change and have adapted our level of staffing and technology. More of the bigger shows are coming to London now.
 

Can you offer some words of advice to CG community?

AT & RC: Work hard and never shirk Tea making duties.

Thank you so much guys from all our members.