Martin Bell on Prazinburk Ridge

By Jim Read (Community and Content Manager)

Prazinburk Ridge is the latest installment in Martin Bell’s rich filmography (he’s also an amazing pre-visualisation supervisor whose worked on titles such as JURASSIC WORLD, NO TIME TO DIE, THE WHEEL OF TIME and DC's upcoming BATGIRL) . Based on a true story, the film follows Duggy, a former rugby player drafted into WW1, exploring themes of camaraderie, resilience in the face of adversity and bravery.

With a unique cel-shading style of poly animation, Prazinburk Bridge feels reminiscent of games such as Borderlands in how it takes an otherwise bleak, dreary landscape and transforms it into a familiar, yet somehow vibrant piece to watch.

It’s hard to reveal more without spoiling the film for you - and you should definitely watch it yourself, which you can do at www.duggyclark.com

As a member of Future of Film Incubator’s 2022 cohort - we got the chance to meet and chat with Martin about all things Prazinburk Ridge.

So Martin, what inspired you to make Prazinburk Ridge?

Funnily enough it was one of FoF’s collaborators, HaZ Dulull! In June 2020 I stumbled across an article about how he’d made his short, Battlesuit, in UE4, and his process was very similar to how I create previs sequences for films. I wanted to try it myself, but knew I needed a setting that would yield plenty of off-the-shelf marketplace assets I could use. I thought a war film would be suitable - a common game scenario, so there should be plenty of assets. And that’s when I remembered about Duggy!

Your brother, Steven Bell, has written a biography of Duggy’s life - did it help you at all to have him so close to you to reference ideas for the film?

Absolutely. My brother had already done a lot of the hard work - the research! The character was already there, fully-fleshed out in the biography. Steve and I are very close and speak every day anyway, and talk would often turn to Duggy. Although I’d proof-read the book for him I didn’t have the grasp of all the facts that he had, so often I’d have to ask, “where’s that bit in the book again where such-and-such happens?”

That said, the fantasy element of the film, where Duggy imagines himself back on the rugby pitch, all came from my own imagination when I was writing the script. And of course, I did do some of my own research, mostly about the visuals of World War One, of which I knew very little when I started. I got a bit obsessive about it (as I tend to do) and even went to Ypres with two of my brothers-in-law and visited a lot of the war memorials there. I managed to sleuth my way to the very spot where the events of the film took place! (It’s actually at Frezenberg, not Prazinburk - the Brits got the name wrong and Duggy had recorded it as such in his own diary, but since it was Duggy’s story and he knew it as Prazinburk I left it as that!)

If I’m correct, you worked on 1917 as postvis supervisor for a bit, would you say this assisted you in your process of directing/animating a war film?

1917 was sort of my gateway drug to this, for sure. I’m very proud to be associated with that film, it’s really excellent - one of the best films I’ve worked on, if not the best - and it helped inform my visuals and tone very early on. In fact originally the film was going to be set in the daytime, with cloudy skies and muted lights, reminiscent of Sam’s film. But I experimented with trying to find a more unique look that matched the colour palette of Steve’s book cover and logo (which in turn were the colours Duggy played in at Huddersfield - claret and gold).

The film was created all in Unreal Engine, can you tell me a bit about your process?

Sure! I either record ‘raw’ mocap myself and then throw that onto the characters in UE, or use some mocap clips from a library like Mixamo and blend them together. Then I block out my action and throw in cameras. I’ll set up a rough edit in the Sequencer, and figure out what shots I need on the fly. This can take just a few minutes, it’s very very fast and extremely fun. When I’ve got a sequence that’s working, I’ll render out each shot to a video file and rebuild the rough edit from UE in Adobe Premiere. If I make further tweaks, I iterate the shot and update the edit. That’s previs.

When I’m happy enough, I’ll show the previs to a range of people and gauge what they think - even when working solo, film-making involves collaboration! Fresh eyes see things yours can’t. If these people have questions, if there’s somewhere they get lost or can’t fully follow, it’s back to the drawing board with previs. But when the story is working, and I’m confident it’s crystal-clear, then I’ll refine the edit and make it as tight as it can be. Finally the edit is locked - and I mean locked! - and I’ll actually do some animation.

I pass the characters and cameras for each shot into Maya for motion editing, adding facial animation and hands and whatnot. The fixed-up animation is passed back to UE and the shot is given a new version number, re-rendered and put in the edit. From there it’s polishing, adding effects and tweaking the lights and whatnot.

It’s a bold move to animate a piece all by yourself, how did you find this process compared to working in various high-end large-scale teams before?

Well when I’m running a previs team I’ve always got people I can distribute work to, so if there’s anything I don’t like doing - rigging and weight-painting in Maya spring to mind - I don’t tend to have to! When I’m alone I just have to suck it up and get on with it.

But it has its bonuses, too. In film, previs is still generally done in Maya, so you lose the extremely quick blocking process that working in real-time gives you (but you have a team working together to offset that). And I don’t have to be particularly neat and tidy in my process when there’s only ever going to be me looking at the project files!

And of course, as a previs supervisor I don’t tend to do that much animation any more. I have animators on my team to do it. So it was nice to dust off some of those old skills - I was a professional animator before starting in previs.

What advice would you give to anyone considering creating a film in Unreal as a small team or completely alone?

Pick a setting for your film that is going to give you plenty of options on the marketplace! I picked “war” but actually, World War One has a very specific look and there wasn’t as much on the marketplace for it as I expected.

Visit the marketplace every month and grab every “Free for the month” asset! You never know when you might need an Abandoned Pub or some such thing, so grab them while they’re free.

Get a mocap suit, if you can afford one. I’m still using an original-generation Noitom Perception Neuron 32 from their Kickstarter in 2015! There are some good cheap options available now. If you can’t animate, get a higher-end one, with gloves. If you can, go cheaper.

To make an animated film completely alone, even using a mocap suit and all that, you still do need to understand animation to a degree. Facial capture in particular needs an animator’s touch, I find. If you have an animator friend you can buddy up with, you’ll be in great shape. But of course it’s possible to use actors, filmed in front of green screens, and reduce the animation requirement that way.

If you’ve not used UE before, I learned the basics by doing two of Epic’s tutorials - “Your first hour in Unreal” and “Your first hour in Sequencer.” Of course, I had lots more learning to do and I had to look things up when I hit a stumbling block, but after those two I was able to make a level/environment and make a shot. And that’s the bread and butter of real-time filmmaking.

But all that’s the technical stuff. More importantly, you must have a story you want to tell, a story that needs telling. Unreal is just the conduit between the idea in your head and your film, and just because it can look really pretty out of the box is no substitute for a good story, well told.

And always remember film-making is collaborative, even when working solo. Get feedback from a range of people, so your work is as good as can be!

Find Martin on socials: @yescommissioner on Twitter and Instagram

Read Yes Commissioner? Blog on the creative process - www.yescommissioner.com

Watch Prazinburk Ridge at: www.duggyclark.com