Aliens Trash San Francisco, Courtesy of the Latest Technology
When Jeffrey Katzenberg came to San Francisco earlier this month to screen clips from his forthcoming film, he issued a warning: "What you are about to see may be disturbing to watch."Disturbing, that is, to people who love the City by the Bay. The company he leads, DreamWorks Animation, unleashes some pretty dramatic destruction on San Francisco in "Monsters vs. Aliens." A wild chase through the city’s streets in the animated 3-D movie culminates with an extended fight between a giant monster and a giant alien at the Golden Gate Bridge, which does not survive the encounter.
San Francisco is a familiar movie location. In fact, computer-generated effects were used to destroy the bridge in "X-Men: The Last Stand," released in 2006. But the DreamWorks designers faced special challenges. For one thing, they planned to assemble, and disassemble, much more of the city. And they needed to do it in three dimensions.
"We were first really scared," says Mahesh Ramasubramanian, a DreamWorks visual effects supervisor, on hearing of the San Francisco scenes.
