Jan 30, 2024

Bring on the Night A closer look at DreamWork's stunning lighting and VFX work on Orion and the Darkness

For timid middle schooler Orion (voiced by Jacob Tremblay), Netflix's "Orion and the Darkest Night" arrives this Friday, February 2.

Adapted from Emma Yarrett's 2014 children's book by writer Charlie Kaufman and director Sean Charmatz, the DreamWorks Animation production is a witty, fantastical adventure about a leopard-phobic young man on the eve of a field trip, Dark (Paul A mischievous shadow named Walter Hauser takes him out to meet the petulant Night Entities (including appearances by Angela Bassett and Natasha Demetriou) and their sunny nemesis Light (Ike Barinholtz).

To turn Yartlett's watercolors into a feature-length animation, Charmatz, production designer Tim Lam, and art director Christine Biane turned to visual effects supervisor M. Scott McKee. [My role as visual effects supervisor] is to work with the production designer, art director, and director to find the visual language," says McKee.

"I leaned toward an illustrative design, as opposed to the hyper-realistic, oversaturated, and contrast-heavy CG that is required these days.

Visual references in early scenes of Orion's school and home in 1990s Philadelphia include early Wes Anderson films and the Midwestern suburbs of Jason Reitman's Juno. McKee comments, "I wanted to go back to a cinematic era before digital became widespread and technology made great advances in both film and computer graphics." [In the mid-1990s, cinema had a style where what was shot was processed in the lab. The film's opening references that era, keeping the tone subdued." I placed an old Apple computer in the corner of Orion's bedroom. I also referenced Emma Yartlett's charming watercolors. To mimic the style of that illustration and early 2D animation, we used irregular linework to break up the solid objects. In compositing, we broke up edges and used transparency to soften the edges of the characters."

DreamWorks Animation worked with Micros Animation in India to set the look of the production design and handled the bulk of the film at its studio in Bangalore. Jungler in Paris assisted with animation on several key sequences.

The character of Dirk, who brings the night, was born from a line in the script that described the specter as a "spooky cape." Says McKee, "Dirk is a scary character, but he had to be likable." 'Dirk is a scary character, but he had to be likable. When affected by light, he becomes more transparent, and we split his edges to make him an 'inky' character."

Dirk's hulking silhouette, combined with the inky nature of the physical elements, allowed for expressive character poses punctuated by teeth and eyes that glow in the dark, giving the character an Alice in Wonderland-like Cheshire Cat whimsy.

"They had this idea before I came on board and I ran with it," McKee recalls. We spent countless hours documenting the ink drips on paper." We used a [Sony] a7R camera, shot downward, and used a variety of macro lenses. We would put a drop of ink on the paper and record it. It was tricky because each drop moved differently. It's amazing how the ink swells, disappears, and flows on the paper, but it can take up to five seconds. I also used footage as a reference and used fragments of footage in the composite. We also created 2D templates and procedural effects that we could control. We projected many textures, but we started with real ink."

In the scene where Dirk takes off with Orion, the effects artists used volumetric effects to create ink trails in space and plummet through the forest. McKee adds, "The jet-black fore-edge was always projected in some way." In Dirk's first flight scene, "I wanted it to feel like he was beginning his journey, like a painter beginning to paint with his brush. The effect was a bit more two-dimensional and illustrative. We felt that our audience was sophisticated enough to understand the mix of different styles, including 2D animation and Orion's diary sketches interspersed throughout the film."

In the film, Orion encounters five night beings. Luminous Dreams (Bassett), Blurred Sleep (Demetriou), Rustling Insomnia (Nat Faxon), Fluffy Silence (Aparna Nancelia), and the Unexplained Noises of a Grumpy Robot (Golda Rochevell). The characters were inspired by objects in the bedroom of sassy girl Hypatia (Mia-Akemi Brown).

"Dreams are like lamps reflecting colored stars," McKee explains.

"Sleep is like a much-loved stuffed animal; Unexplained Noises is like a 1980's Sony Walkman, my favorite sportsman. Insomnia is a frenzy; his job is to keep people awake. Each night entity emits a characteristic particle trail. Insomnia emits numbers like an alarm clock. Insomnia emits numbers like an alarm clock; sleep emits "Z "s, pops, drifts, and disappears. All night entities glow and have a shimmering, sand-like texture floating about. These effects were generated in [Side Effects] Houdini.

One of the biggest challenges for the visual effects was portraying the scene flying over the city as the division between day and night spread across the world. Taking inspiration from Emma Yarrett's book, McKee formed a matte-painting team at DreamWorks to handle the spectacular aerial shots, focusing on the transitions between the fluid ink effects of the dark and the golden lighting of the lights.

The transition from darkness to light is most poignantly dramatized in the scene where the bringer of night is disheartened and allows the morning sun to consume him. The filmmakers used volumetric lighting to transition from night to sunrise, creating a blinding brightness as Dirk's rival, Light, floods the world with radiance.

"Light is at first beautiful, happy, punchy, and saturated," says McKee. After the darks melt away, things get very apocalyptic and smoggy." That was one of the most difficult sequences. We wanted the lights to be overexposed and oppressive, but still give the viewer a sense of their surroundings. We treated the lights like incandescent bulbs, making them glow in the chest. And we used that color to separate him from the extreme white."

Orion travels through the dream environment, including a realm of suspended pink liquid where Hypatia attempts to rescue the boy from a paralyzing dream. In the production, the dormant Orion was painted in a less saturated color scheme, while Hypatia was saturated in pastel tones. The oozing pink environment was inspired by the oil-based fluid dynamics of a vintage Hasbro Arts & Crafts tie-dye kit.

The film's finale, in which the characters wrestle with a swirling vortex, is another homage to Steven Spielberg's work. The first thing I thought of for that scene was 'Poltergeist,'" McKee said. We brought in footage from 'Poltergeist' and 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind' to show how light reacts and backlight (the characters). For the scene where (Orion and Dirk) are in the forest, we referenced footage from 'E.T.'. Spielberg's influence was huge."

Creating tactile and relatable magical effects was important to express the theme of the boy's acceptance of fear. McKee concludes, "It was probably the most important thing throughout the whole project. It was more of a 2D illustration style than a hyper-realistic fuzzy style." It all comes down to Tim and Christine's design. Miklos provided final images that were very close to the key art. It was a great international team."

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