Smokey unleashed

Finally, we get the scoop on our beloved Smokey

Smoke Monster....

Unleashed!

Visual effects Supervisor Mitch Suskin reveals to The Official Lost Magazine, the challenges of bringing Smokey out to play in series four's episode The Shape of Things to Come.

The Shape of Things to Come really gave the audience its first long look at the smoke monster and what it's truly capable of doing. What were your marching orders in terms of how to portray it?

Well, for this episode the producers were pretty upfront from the beginning that Smokey, as we call it, was going to be in your face and we’d be seeing him. We had the cover of night, which we've never really done before. So we were more concerned, not about how much we were going to see him, but how we were going to make him visible – a blackish, smoke monster in the dark, in the forest, is tricky to see.

How much creative leeway did you have on establishing the details of Smokey's big entrance?

Jack Bender was fairly precise about what he wanted out of this. We scouted locations at several times and we talked about where Smokey might be entering from and what he might be doing. The script was clear on what was supposed to happen in the scene and it was clear that you had to see things. Sometimes we all have rough ideas and it's an evolving process. In this case with the script, what Mr. Bender requested and what he got, we had a strong idea of what to do but how to get there was hard. I mean its just smoke!

What was the most challenging shot?

The one shot that was most subject to interpretation was the shot where Smokey first appeared over the trees. We didn’t know what direction he was going to come from or how much interaction there was going to be, so that evolved over time. It just so happens the way it was shot there was a hole in the trees that made a nice place for him to coil into the shot.

It's a very menacing entrance, so did that evolve or was that clear from the start?

We tried a couple of different ways for him to enter but it wasn't clear if he was supposed to be pouring through or looking around, more cat-like. Then it was very clear from Damon and Carlton that they wanted it to come in like a rollercoaster or a freight train. They wanted it to be forceful and somewhat frightening. We had to spend a lot of time trying to get the smoke to look like something other than smoke in the sense of it moving and how it was lit. A lot of that was just trial and error. That shot, as far as performance, gave us the most to play with and the other shots were a lot of shots of him in the forest.

How were the forest shots different to create?

We were trying to strike a balance between how much we wanted to see him and how much we didn't want to see him and which was going to be scarier. A lot of those shots we were shooting in the forest at night with nothing out there, so there were lots of branches and leaves and we were trying to figure out how to put Smokey in the background. In this case, we didn't use digital trees. We used real trees from the forest. We spent a lot of time trying to come up with ways to separate the leaves and the branches from the background so we didn't have to paint mattes for every single leaf so we could put the shot together. The compositor came up with some mercifully clever techniques that allowed us to put Smokey way in the background. The digital tools we are using are getting better and better and we did do a little bit of rotoscoping [where animators trace over live-action movement frame-by-frame] to separate them, but there was more compositing magic to separate the trees and the branches. It's all about trying to define the foreground and putting Smokey in the background.

Source: sky1.com

When characters die on this show...They aren't REALLY 'LOST'

In the closing moments of the last new ''Lost'' episode in March, it appeared that Rousseau (Mira Furlan) was cut down by an unseen enemy along with her daughter's boyfriend. For fans of the Frenchwoman, a character whose past has barely been explored, it was a disappointing shock. Maybe she was shot with a dart and not a bullet?

''They were shot with bullets,'' confirmed Damon Lindelof, a ''Lost'' executive producer, who refused to divulge the fates of the shooting victims.


''The good thing about 'Lost' is that being dead can lead to more work,'' said executive producer Carlton Cuse. ''It can improve your standing in the cast by getting killed. If, in fact, Rousseau proves to be dead, it doesn't have much bearing in terms of whether you'll see more of her story. We think the backstory of Rousseau and her science team is interesting and we'd love to tell that story at some point.''

After its fourth-season run was interrupted by the writers strike, ABC's mystery-filled hit returns with a run of new episodes starting at 9 tonight on WLS-Channel 7, leading up to its two-hour finale on May 29.

Talking to reporters last week, Cuse and Lindelof were coy about the show's future, refusing to comment on reports that ''Lost'' had been taping in London and that another lead character will be killed off.

''If we tease there will be a death, like when Shannon died, then everyone chases it down and spoils it,'' Cuse said. ''If we say everyone is safe, it would ruin the dramatic impact of the finale. We're excited about what's happening. There are some large and seismic events that will happen to the castaways between now and the end of the season.''

Other tidbits:

• "There are some compelling events involving Claire (Emilie de Ravin) between now and the season finale,'' Cuse said.

• The smoke monster will be featured tonight. "This episode is very dark, and very grim," executive producer J.J. Abrams told the Sun-Times earlier this week.

This year's season finale will be less smoke-and-mirrors than last year's flash-forward head trip, Lindelof said.

''Lost'' will conclude in 2010, and Lindelof said producers have already envisioned the series' closing moments.

''The last scene has been determined,'' he said. ''There would have to be some major shift in both our mindsets to back off of that.''

Source: suntimes.com