Los Angeles (May 21, 2003)--Following the overwhelming success of the 1999 action sci-fi thriller, The Matrix, Warner Bros. quickly began production of The Matrix: Reloaded, released last Thursday and breaking several box-office records; and The Matrix: Revolutions, scheduled for a November 5 release. The audio and visual effects in the films have the fingerprints of The Works' partners, Clark Graff and John Karpowich, all over them, as they performed many levels of motion capture and audio syncing, which they would only do with the stability, reliability and clarity of PreSonus audio equipment.
A unique aspect of visual effects, in this case motion capture, is the need to sync audio for playback and review. One of the big challenges that Karpowich, Graff's audio engineer and good friend for almost 15 years, faced was recording in a large, reverberating airplane hangar.
"We were in this huge naval hangar, big enough to spin around an F-14 inside," explains Karpowich, a three-time Grammy Award-winning engineer who stocked his rack with PreSonus' M80, ACP88 and Digimax. "The environment sounded awful! We were doing fight scenes, and we had people hanging upside down and banging into things and other people walking around talking and it's really difficult. We needed to have a lot of control over our audio, and that's why we had to have the PreSonus mic pres. You can get them to sound really good really quickly, and there isn't a lot of coloration in it, so I don't have to compensate with the EQ."
Graff, winner of a 2001 Videographer Award for Excellence, has a similar take on the situation: "On my end, the PreSonus units are extremely dependable, and they don't take up a lot of rack space. On the set, I have to compromise for size and reliability. The assistant director doesn't want to have to hold up an entire shoot, because the audio guys can't get their gear to work. When they are spending their money, they don't want to wait."
And while, with the help of PreSonus, you will hear the duo's work, you certainly won't ever see it, "as opposed to special effects, which you can physically see," Graff states. "Our job as visual-effects artists is to create the computer-generated aspects that you won't see."
One of Graff's main tasks was to create a rig capable of holding 32 motion capture cameras operating in unison, and provide for up to 17 stunt lines to go down through the middle of the rig without interfering with the motion capture. They were able to accomplish some amazing effects with this setup.
"Well, there's a point where Keanu [Reeves] has a staff in his hand. and he's knocking over all the Agent Smiths," Graff relates. "That was all us, none of that was real. There is another scene on the freeway where a guy jumps onto the front of the car and over it. We did that, the car is real; the guy is not. And whenever you see Keanu take off into the air, that's us."
It would be enough if all of The Works' (an amalgam of Edit Works, Motion Works and Sound Works born from Graff Network Services) efforts were only contributing to the two new movies in the trilogy. But not only were they working on the films, but the companion video game, Enter the Matrix, as well. The new game, by Shiny Entertainment, which utilizes PreSonus processing on all of the vocals, is available on Sony Playstation 2, Xbox, PC and Nintendo GameCube.
The Works
www.motionworks.net
PreSonus
www.presonus.com
