John Gaeta's latest Revolution: this audio aims to create feature length animated films for less than the norm … a lot less - Special FX - Cover Story

Post,  Nov, 2003  by Daniel Restuccio

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ALAMEDA, CA -- John Gaeta, visual effects supervisor for The Matrix: Revolutions is a happy man. Eon, The Matrix's Alameda-based production company, just delivered the last negative of the over 800 visual effects created for the latest installment of this popular film trilogy. So after creating some of the most epic, mind-bending shots ever, Gaeta can get back to domestic chores, like picking up the kids, corralling his dog and taking a short vacation.

"It's nice to be getting back to something of a real life," he says from his home.

Normal life however does nothing to dilute his enthusiasm for his Matrix experience. Over the past six years, Gaeta and his team have enlisted the talents of nearly a thousand artists in support of the vision of The Matrix authors Larry and Andy Wachowski, who own Eon.

These brothers invented a sci-fi fable about a reluctant hero called Neo who is called to free the world from enslavement by intelligent machines who have trapped mankind in a mental prison called The Matrix.

The movie, created from that premise, is a compelling amalgam of comic book aesthetics, martial arts action flicks and post modern metaphysics, The Matrix and the sequel The Matrix Reloaded became a seminal piece of pop culture that also redefined the standards for visual effects moviemaking.

So I ask Gaeta the big question: How in The Matrix Revolutions did he and his team top the work they did The Matrix Reloaded?

Gaeta laughs and then explains that Reloaded and Revolutions are really one film that got split in two parts. There is no delay in time between the two films, he says. The final scene of Reloaded could be seamlessly merged into Revolutions. So, if you think of Reloaded and Revolutions as one movie there are over two thousand effects shots in the combined film.

"Both films were done in parallel," Gaeta says, "they weren't stacked one after the other." And even though there are fewer effects in Revolutions they are bigger effects in terms of layers and complexity than Reloaded.

In a nutshell the technology that was pioneered in Reloaded is used in more depth for Revolutions. Places that are referred to or seen briefly in The Matrix and The Matrix Reloaded are finally seen in their full glory. The climatic battle between the sentinels and human-operated APUs (Armored Personnel Units) in The Matrix Revolutions contains some of the biggest, most complex shots Gaeta has ever worked on.

PIONEERING TECHNOLOGY

For The Matrix Reloaded, Gaeta and his team invented the Universal Capture system, a technique that captures three dimensional, live action performances and translates them into a virtual CG world. "That accomplishment was a personal holy grail for me and my collaborators," says Gaeta proudly.

That pioneering technology allowed the live-action sequences in the massive burly-man brawl to blend invisibly with fully computer rendered shots with virtual performers. "There are things that we could do, like really fine articulate speech in close-up, that we were never called upon to do in The Matrix Reloaded."

"In Revolutions we created the closest shot we have ever done with a virtual human," says Gaeta. The scene occurs in the climatic fight between Neo and Agent Smith. The shot, he says, got dubbed the "super punch" because Larry and Andy Wachowski were inspired by a unique right cross called the Susie Q used by boxing champion Rocky Marciano.

"We wanted to do this shot in super slow motion," continues Gaeta, "following the fist all the way up to the face and watching the whole dynamic reaction to that. We used references of people's faces being pulverized to build it. And then we were biting our nails off wondering if we would ever be able to get the camera that close. But we did and the results are mind blowing."

THE CITY

Revolutions continues the plotlines of Reloaded along two parallel stories: one group (Neo and Trinity) travels to the machine city where the humans are housed as human batteries. Another team (Morpheus and Niobe) defends Zion against the sentinels.

"One aspect of the machines was seen briefly in The Matrix," describes Gaeta, "when we saw how babies were grown and harvested for power." In Revolutions we get to see the machine's home base--the source of the war against the remaining free humans.

Working closely with the Wachowski brothers, concept artist Jeff Darrow designed the look of the city, and with the production art team created a bible of over a thousand drawings. "Jeff Darrow's art is in credibly dense and detailed," Gaeta says. "It's as complex and visually stimulating as H.R. Giger's, [Giger did the concept art for Alien.] His drawings have these elaborate machinery parts and biomechanical things."

He reports that the Wachowski brothers' script called for a city that looked like living coral. "The structures in the machine city are huge, and yet the motions are really subtle. It's like living architecture."

The production used the concept that the fractal, an algorithm that describes a geometric shape with symmetry of scale, is the origin of life--the first single celled organism--for the machines. "In a given scene in the machine world, you may see something like hundreds of thousands of pieces of architecture that look like giant mechanical beasts," describes Gaeta. "They have moving parts, which are themselves many segmented moving parts that are also comprised of more segmented moving parts."