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| | INTERVIEW WITH DOUG REICHERT: TCOR PROMOTIONAL ART | |
Doug Reichert works as a retoucher for Imagic, Inc. in Los Angeles, and has worked on (among others) the art for SPY KIDS 3D, THE BOURNE IDENTITY, and... THE CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK. Doug was nice enough to answer a few questions about the process for PitcherBlacker.com.
What kind of tools do you use, and what kind of background do you need to be able to do this kind of work?
It's mainly Photoshop, of course, but I also use Painter from time to time. Illustrator is used frequently, and for 3d stuff i use Cinema 4d. All on a Mac.
Pretty much any kind of art background would do. Most places will hire someone on a freelance basis and it's sink or swim from there. If you can get the job done then you'll find work. It's a pretty small industry, (entertainment advertising) so if you're good, people will find out.
Could you give a rundown of the process, from concept to retouching to ten different cooks in the kitchen second-guessing everything? Where do you fit in?
First the marking department at the studio decides how they want to pitch the movie. They then hire one or more design agencies to produce comps for the one sheet. This process can take anywhere from a few weeks to many months. Nevertheless, it always has to be done in a big hurry.
Once an idea is approved it gets finished. That's what we do. I work for a company called Imagic, Inc. in Hollywood. (shameless plug). This usually begins by enlarging the comp file and replacing scanned images (normally photo-cd scans) with good drum scans. Then all the retouching and illustrating is done. The goal is, in most cases, to match the comp as closely as possible, while making it look better (this of course is highly subjective), and at a high enough resolution for print. Occasionally things may vary slightly from the comp, but most of the time the mantra is "Match The Comp".
Is the process different depending on what the art will be used for (one-sheet, poster, outdoor art, etc.)?
Since the outdoor is usually based on the one sheet, it's not a case of starting from scratch for outdoor. Sometimes it's simply a matter of extending the art to one side or the other. Most of the time, however, elements have to be moved around, new stuff added, etc. This is where it's really important to have a well-built Photoshop file. If the one sheet file is put together poorly, ie. bad layer order, adjustment layers that aren't restricted to discreet objects, etc., it can be a real nightmare to move the parts around. Art directors building comps don't normally have to worry about these issues, so the files they
provide us can sometimes be challenging to work with. And unfortunately, it's often impossible to match a comp unless you start with the comp file.
Is one company typically responsible for all the various art types, like posters and one-sheets and international stuff?
Depends on the movie. International will sometimes be done by a different agency than the one that did the domestic one sheet. Newspaper ads are almost always done by a shop that specializes in this kind of work, since it's less conceptual, more production oriented.
Are there any parts of the work that are particularly frustrating? How about fulfilling?
Deadlines can be difficult. There's a saying: There's never enough time to do it right, but there's always enough time to do it over. There's nothing quite like having to work on a project all weekend because it absolutely, positively has to be delivered on Monday, only to have it sit on the shelf for 18 months before it actually gets printed. (This is true, it really happened).
On the other hand, getting to pretty much play with crayons all day, and make a living doing it is a pretty good deal.
Got any favorite projects that you are either particularly proud of working on, or at least proud of having survived with your sanity intact? Or does it ever really get that dramatic?
A while back we worked on Spy Kids 3. The director wanted to do a lenticular. (one of those 3d thingys that moves when you walk by.) The one sheet was pretty complicated, consisting of probably around 3 dozen separate pieces composited together, plus the usual retouching. Then for the lenticular we had to create essentially 20 separate one sheets, each with unique foreground elements, all positioned just so, in order to create the illusion of depth. I think we had about a week and a half to finish the job and deliver the files. There were supposed to be several retouchers working on it, but it turned out that we were really busy at the time, so I wound up having to do about 99% of it myself. But that wasn't as bad as having to explain to the client why the army of artists he'd been promised wouldn't be there.
Most of the time it's a really fun job. But the thing that scares me the most is when the client gleefully says, "I really want you to have fun with it!!" That's when I know I'm in trouble.
Thanks to Doug for taking the time to do this interview. You can check out another interview with him and John Courtmanche regarding his work on THE BOURNE IDENTITY poster at Photo Source.
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