MDi Exclusive

Drawing Inspiration

Rise of the Planet of the Apes storyboard

artist Warren Drummond breaks down a

pivotal sequence using his original sketches

By CRAIGH BARBOZA
Posted: December 17, 2011

Not many can make a scene like Warren Drummond. Nearly 20 years ago he quit his job in New York as a Bloomingdale’s stock-person to work on movies and never looked back. Today, he is a sought after storyboard artist whose digital sketches, skillfully rendered in black and white, help shape big Hollywood films such as Abduction, A Beautiful Mind and next summer’s The Amazing Spider-Man.

His latest project, released earlier this week on Blu-ray and DVD, is the blockbuster prequel Rise of the Planet of the Apes, starring James Franco and Andy Serkis, in a performance-capture suit as Caesar. “When I first read the script, I was like, ‘This is smart,’ ” says Drummond, 49, a fan of the original series. “I also caught all the in-jokes.” Here, he discusses his work on the sci-fi flick that had audiences going bananas this summer.

STORYBOARDS WARREN’S COMMENTARY

When Drummond and director Rupert Wyatt met to work on the “Rocket Attacks Caesar” scene, they talked about what would happen inside the prison-like setting. Wyatt gave Drummond the parameters, and let him take a pass at it.

“To start, we wanted to establish the size of atrium and what’s going on,” Drummond says. “So in frame No. 2 you see other chimps in an artificial version of their environment. There’s a tree-like structure in the center for them to swing on.

“Then we bring in Caesar, who scopes out the place.”

When Caesar enters, the other apes stare at him, like who’s that guy? Caesar looks more intelligent. There’s something about him. He stands up a bit more than the others even though he’s also on all fours.

“The camera is low to the ground, and then in frame No. 5 we look up to show his antagonist, Rocket. He’s the head chimpanzee there,” Drummond says. “Rocket rules everything.”

“Storyboard artists need basic drawing skills. You have to draw people fairly well and objects, animals too. I used to keep reference files,” Drummond says, “books on cars and city scenes… Now with the Internet, you can look up everything, boom.

He adds: “One of most important things is perspective. You have to show what things look like from different vantage points. Even if it’s on paper, everything has to look three-dimensional. The D.P. I worked with on Above the Rim, Tom Priestly Jr., taught me the value of drawing frames with a foreground, middle ground and background. That stuck in my head for 18 years.”

On Rise, Wyatt didn’t have a shot list. Instead, he and Drummond talked about the story beats within the sequence and camera placement.

He’d tell Drummond, “When Caesar comes in I want to pull with him. Then I want to have him play with a chimpanzee over here and establish Rocket as the alpha male.”

You can see Caesar wants to make friends with the other chimps.

Like any animal, or person even, if Caesar is pushed he can be dangerous, as we know from an earlier scene, which is why he lands here, in the San Bruno Primate Sanctuary. But, really, Caesar is gentle soul.

Rocket, on the other hand, is a bully. Drummond says, “I have a shot, frame No. 17A, in which the other chimps see Rocket and are scared.

“Rupert told me they would look like real chimps, gorillas and orangutans. Caesar, though, would be a bit different. He was played by actor Andy Serkis,” whose performance capture work in The Lord of the Rings, King Kong, and the upcoming The Adventures of Tintin has earned high him praise.

“Animals don’t look at things the way people do. So you cheat a little. That’s why you have the chimp in 17A looking like ‘uh-oh’ before we show Rocket’s POV as he’s coming down in frame No. 18.”

Frame No. 19 shows the other chimps’ POV as Rocket drops down. “The shots have to flow perfectly,” he says.

Rather than make a scene as complicated as possible and then take away elements, it’s always better, Drummond says, to think in simple terms and build on top of that foundation.

“You want coherent storytelling. If you’re on your game, you should be able to show the boards to someone without any descriptions and he or she can still follow what’s going on.”

His Tools: A few years ago, Drummond put down his pencil and paper and started drawing digitally. He uses a Cintiq, an LCD screen that you can draw on with a stylus.

“Instead of a drawing table, I have a graphics monitor slanted on an angle. Everything’s saved onto the computer. I use a program called Storyboard Pro; it’s Final Draft for storyboards. It gives me a selection of aspect ratios. If I’m working on a film, it could be 1:78, 1:85 or 2:35, which is what Rise of the Planet of the Apes was shot in.

“When I’m done drawing, I’ll upload the frames to Photoshop and add detail and write in the descriptions.”

Not all frames are treated equally. “When I do a tight frame, like No. 27, I’ll put more fur on the face, and details” Drummond says.

“With wide frames you don’t want to overdo it because the frame will be cluttered. Whatever is the focus of your eye, that’s the thing we’re concerned with.”

“At the bottom, Rupert wanted to have Rocket get ahead of Caesar so we have him swing overhead and cut him off.”

Here, Caesar tries to walk away from Rocket, but like any testosterone-filled scene Rocket’s not going to let it happen. “Frames 29 and 29A are the same shot. The arrow lets people know how Rocket got there. Arrows are great for identifying movement within the frame; other times, arrows signal camera movement.

“In frame No. 30, I wanted it to be a low angle shot. This is the classic barroom scene from a western, where the hero wants to leave and the other guy’s like, No, you gotta have a gun fight. I drew it that way. I wasn’t thinking chimpanzees per se.”

Like screenwriters or directors, certain storyboard artists are recognized for doing a particular thing well. Drummond loves working on comedic gags. He’s also strong with action.

“Growing up, I learned a lot from Spielberg films,” says Drummond, who earlier this year filled in for his friend Josh Shepherd on one of the director’s upcoming projects, Robopocalypse. “For a week, I worked with the art department, who showed me a pre-vis sequence from Robopocalypse and it was amazing — better than a lot of filmed sequences in action movies.”

Spielberg works with several different storyboard artists, Drummond says. “There’s a brother from England, Colin Grant, who worked on A.I. Another friend, David Lowery, did boards for Spielberg: David’s one of the best dudes in the business, period.

“Peter Ramsey’s another. He kicks ass. He’s who’s worked with Ron Howard and did John Singleton’s early films, including Boyz N the Hood. When I did Shaft,” Drummond says, “John gave me Peter’s Rosewood book, which is like a phone book (8 months of storyboards) and he said, ‘This is what I want.’ Peter’s the guy I looked at and went, ‘Oh, that’s how you do it.’ ”

Every job teaches Drummond something new, and every director works differently. He thinks Rise’s Rupert Wyatt, whose only other recognizable credit is the 2008 crime flick The Escapist, has a bright future in Hollywood.

“He knew what he wanted on a scene and it always seemed intelligent,” says Drummond of Wyatt. “With him, it was always about storytelling. I would do some frames and he’d say, ‘this is nice but change this. It doesn’t work.’ And when you look at it later and see why, you’re going to learn something. Rupert kept me on my toes and I wanted to do good work.”

At this point in the scene, Caesar is doing his best not to get killed. Rocket chases after him. Wyatt directed Drummond to always move the camera through the bars.

“Here’s where we get into the Tarzan/Spider-man thing with Caesar swinging away and his antagonist coming after him,” Drummond says.

During the chase, it was important to move the camera but Wyatt never did anything just to do it.

“When Caesar’s trying to escape in frame No. 43C, Wyatt wanted us to pull Caesar along but then establish where Caesar couldn’t go any further. The camera zooms back so you can see he’s trapped.”

It’s no surprise that many storyboard artists are comic book heads. For some, like Drummond, their passion for the world of superheroes and mortal danger clearly influences their work.

“I’ll take things from comics and put them in storyboards,” he says. “For instance, if a character sees something shocking, I may put little energy lines around their head to show, like, ‘Wow!’ without saying it. I’ve also taken stuff from anime, including speed lines, which you can see in frame No. 46.”

Drummond was the second of five storyboard artists hired on Rise. “When I started, the movie hadn’t even been greenlit,” he says. “Rupert was dealing with the studio. He had to do a presentation with conceptual art, some storyboards and maybe animatics to show Fox that, hey, this is a movie you’re going to spend $90 million on and be happy about it.”

Drummond says if you are indicating camera movement in your storyboards, you always should have a piece of something that’s from the previous frame in the next one.

In the original script, the powerful serum that enhances the apes’ intelligence is passed through blood. That’s why Rocket bites Caesar in frame No. 58.

“When you storyboard, you don’t fully render everything,” Drummond says. “You want to lightly sketch it then have the director give you feedback before you go back and add detail. You don’t want to spend all this time doing a storyboard, only to find out the director doesn’t like the way you staged it. That’s a rookie mistake.

“Directors sometimes come up with something new, even after they’ve liked what you’ve done. They’ll change things because they have an idea they think works better.”

Drummond worked on a total of three scenes from the movie. Each took him about a week and half to layout. “You should know how much work to put into the art,” he says.

“We’re not like illustrators, who would like to hang our drawings in an art museum, or even have them printed in a magazine. We have to be fast and we have to tell the story, make it exciting, and listen to the director.”

And after hundreds of hours of work, drawing line after digital line on his Cintiq, what does Drummond think of the finished product?

“Rupert did a bang-up job,” he says. “It not only looks great but there’s all this emotion that he was able to capture in the sequence.”