Part of III’s CGI setup, with notorious Foonley F1 computer on left
TRON: Serious Hardware
CGI work on Tron starts in July of 1981, with each of the companies doing the CGI work having a different system for generating the images, all corralled by Richard Taylor. MAGI, the largest contributor of CGI to Tron, uses a system called Synthavision, which produces graphics objects by combining different 3D geometric shapes like spheres, cubes and cones, called ‘primitives’, coming up with a finished product by adding or subtracting these elements. Creating relatively simple objects that can move quickly around the screen with fluidity, the MAGI system is used for dynamically active sequences such as the lightcycle and tank chases. The various shapes are manipulated via FORTRAN using a Perkin Elmer System 3240 computer for the calculations, operating with two megabytes of memory and two 80 meg disk drives for storage. This heavy metal is necessary, as each second of CGI screen-time in Tron equals about 100 million bits of data, or 12.5 megabytes. Vectors for the graphics are plotted by programmers on graph paper and then transcribed on a 46×60 inch Taylos tablet. Using “director’s language”, these objects are then displayed and manipulated on a Chromatics CGC 7900 terminal, and a light source and camera position is factored in.
If the end result survives perusal via a low-resolution 300 line wireframe “pencil test”, the output is sent to Disney’s Burbank studios for analysis by the filmmakers via a 1200 baud modem link-up between them and Larry Elin at Elmsford; it takes an hour to transfer about four seconds of animation. Still, this is better than the four days it took to ship results back and forth before the computer link-up. After tweaks and corrections are made, the calculations are fed into a Celco DFR 4000 computer to generate high-resolution 1200 line images on a monitor for review , and if they past muster are recorded on film from a 4000x 6000-line display.
Tron concept art used by MAGi to create the CGI tanks of Tron: Design by Syd Mead, colouring by Peter Lloyd
Playlist of 70’s 7up TV commercials directed by Richard Taylor for Robert Abel and Associates
Triple-I uses a system called ASAS (Actor/Scriptor Animation System), a vector graphics method which utilizes polygons to create complex 3D shapes like the face of the MCP as it gives its commands to Sark. This system uses a vector plotter to trace drawn images into a Foonly F1 computer, a cheaper variant of Digital Equipment Corporation’s PDP-10. These are then generated on an FR80 film recorder manufactured by the company. Rendering time to produce imagery varies, from about 10 minutes to 6 hours to generate a frame of film. Robert Abel and Associates rely on their Evans & Sutherland Picture II Graphics System for their CGI effects, using vector lines to create their fantastic world of cyberspace streets and buildings based on the famous nighttime view of the Hawthorne-Torrance area of L.A.
Torrance California night cityscape view
Tron cyberscape view, by Robert Abel & Associates
The needs of the film-makers dictate a lot of technical innovation, such as “depth glowing” where an algorithm is applied to make the computer dim and fuzz out shapes in the distance, instead of making everything crystal clear no matter how far away they are from the “camera”. While these sequences may have been pain-staking to plot and render on the computer, the real benefit is the ability to roughly render a scene, and then easily make changes and corrections relatively quickly. As for the effect of the bright circuit lines and other lighting effects on the costumes and sets, this involves a team of 80 artists and craftsmen working under 10 different scene coordinators, making multiple exposures of 70,000 individual frames of black and white film, each blown up to into somewhere between 200,000 to 500,000 16×20 Kodalith cels, and then filmed with animation cameras and put onto 65mm film, with coloured light shone through the clear lines for the bright neon effects.
A film frame from Tron, enlarged into a Kodalith cell through which colour will be applied on an animation stand
Tron special effects, Tron in his tank cockpit in colour processed scene
The process is effectively taking the majority of a live-action feature film and animating it. Including the CGI creations and all the other visual treats in the film, there are 1100 special-effects shots in Tron, the most in any film up to that point. To give a bit of perspective, there were 365 effects shots in the original Star Wars, and 600 for its 1980 sequel The Empire Strikes Back.
All this special effects spectacle has the producers worried. Might the sustained light intensity coming from the backlighting work produced on the animation stands cause audiences to be overwhelmed? To mitigate this, an exposure system is created by programmer and member of the SFX team Peter Blinn. A sinusoidal wave is computed to control the cameras and automatically create appropriate hills and valleys of brightness and exposure. All this to ensure that the eyeballs watching do not get burned out or otherwise disengaged while watching Tron.
From Tron to Toy Story
While work on the CGI for Tron is going on, a young animator by the name of John Lasseter is toiling away on yet another attempt by Disney at recapturing their glory days, the short animated film Mickey’s Christmas Carol. Sending iconic character Jiminy Cricket sailing over London rooftops is a dream job for a young talent just out of the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts), but Lasseter can smell the stagnation all around him, the sound of Disney spinning its wheels loud in his ears. One day, friends Jerry Rees and Bill Kroyer bring him over to a Chromatics graphics terminal tied via phone line to MAGI in Elmsford, NY. Rees and Kroyer are looking over early CGI renders of a light cycle sequence for Tron, and Lasseter is blown away by what he sees. Inside this cramped trailer on the Burbank lot, he is glimpsing the future of animation, frame by frame on a computer monitor.
Test made after TRON by John Lasseter to marry CGI backgrounds with cel animation, 1983
Lasseter later spends a year trying to maintain the momentum of Tron by directing a 30-second test film marrying hand-drawn characters to computer created sets, assisted by Glen Keane, a veteran Disney character animator and son of Bil Keane of The Family Circus fame. The test is based on the first couple of pages of Maurice Sendak’s famous children’s book Where the Wild Things Are and features CGI by MAGI and their Synthavision system. The project is seen as a proof-of-concept for applying Lasseter’s process to a feature-length film production of Thomas Disch’s 1980 short story The Brave Little Toaster, with the additional hope of making it also the first full-length animation film to be made in 3D. Having recently optioned the Disch story, Studio brass at Disney are only interested in CGI as a cost-cutting measure, and with computer graphics not offering any significant budgetary savings at that point, the movie version of Toaster, initially scheduled for summer release in 1985, is put into turnaround. Soon after demonstrating the results of the 30-second test, Lasseter is let go by Disney. He then moves to Lucasfilm’s computer graphics research facility, headed up by Ed Catmull and at the time mostly concerned with research and development related to computer imagery on film, but not without practical experience. For an example of such synergy, research at the Lucasfilm Computer Division into creating computerized landscapes using fractal graphics by Loren Carpenter ends up on the movie screen in the spectacular “Genesis Effect” terraforming sequence from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. This fractal graphics technology would also be modified and utilized in Lucasfilm computer games Rescue on Fractalus!, Koronis Rift and The Eidolon.
Sequence from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, featuring Lucasfilm’s fractal CGI “Genesis Effect”
While at Lucasfilm, Lasseter works on groundbreaking CGI shorts like The Adventures of André and Wally B. When this division of Lucasfilm is eventually spun off and purchased by Steve Jobs, Lasseter helps the Apple co-founder create a new, independent computer animation studio. For the name of this new entity, while at Lucasfilm the computer hardware team had developed a digital film printer, and they had adopted the label of the machine for their name within Lucasfilm: The Pixar Group. Thus is the new company branded Pixar. Among other groundbreaking achievements and accolades, it is at Pixar that Lasseter makes cinematic history directing the first ever full-length computer animated feature, Toy Story, released to incredible success in 1995. “Without Tron, there would be no Toy Story“, Lasseter would later remark.
Vol Libre, a short film utilizing fractal graphics routine later used in Wrath of Khan, Loren Carpenter 1980
TRON Electronica
A perfect match for an innovative film about the world of computers is the innovative soundtrack composed by Wendy Carlos, utilizing her famed Moog synthesizer, as well as the London Philharmonic Orchestra. Lisberger has brought Animalympics music editor Michael Fremer over to Tron as sound and music supervisor, tasked with creating the movie’s soundtrack, and as a fan of Carlos’ work Fremer sees her as a natural for creating the music for the computer portion of the film. Wendy Carlos is a pioneer of the synthesizer, having been an early customer of its inventor, Robert Moog, in 1966. Switched on Bach, setting the famed German composer’s music to synthesizer, became the first platinum-selling classical music album, released in 1968 when she was still known as Walter Carlos; she undergoes sexual reassignment surgery in 1972, a year after her first collaboration with filmmaker Stanley Kubrick on A Clockwork Orange. Bach also earns Classical Album Of The Year at the 1969 Grammy awards. Fremer contacts Carlos about Tron in June of 1981 and forwards the script to her. Carlos is not impressed, considering it “sophomoric and comic-bookish”, but is intrigued by the premise. To her, it seems the best approach is to do the computer part with a combination of regular orchestra and synthesizer, and the live-action pieces with only the orchestra. This way, Carlos not only gets to dabble in something she has never done, write music for orchestra, she also appreciates how the approach matches the way the movie combines computer effects with live actors.
A demo tape sent to Lisberger features samples from Carlos, including cues from her second collaboration with Kubrick, his adaptation of Stephen King’s book The Shining (1980). Based on this, Fremer convinces Lisberger to hire Carlos to do the entire score, with a deal closing at the end of summer, 1981. However, the finished reels of film for Carlos to start scoring to don’t start arriving until early February of 1982, leaving only 5 weeks until the booked sessions with the London Philharmonic, at the Royal Albert Hall. Carlos and her team work tirelessly to plan and create the orchestration in that time, with Jorge Calendrelli arranging, Jeffry Gussman as music editor, Annemarie Franklin as coordinator of the effort, and Carlos writing the music. During the sessions in London, 40 minutes of music, as well as 15 minutes of brief musical textures, are recorded, although Carlos is not entirely happy with the result, mostly stemming from altercations she has with the recording engineer John Moseley. Choral arrangements are recorded later, by the UCLA chorus.
The Sound Effects of TRON
Computers are also enlisted in creating the sound effects for Tron, with Frank Serafine and his LA-based Serafine FX Music/Sound Design (SFX) Studios in charge. Serafine had been designing and performing laser light shows for the Fiske Planetarium in Boulder, CO. in 1976, when he was discovered by Disney and hired to design and perform live presentations over the summer season for the opening of the Space Mountain Pavilion at Disneyland in 1977. Working on Tron over the span of a year and three months, Serafine keeps the huge collection of used sounds in a list program, cataloged and cross-referenced on an Atari 800 computer running Synapse Software’s FileManager+ database program. The catalog of sounds extends into the thousands, as some of the audio heard throughout the movie, such as the drone of the light cycles and they zip rapidly around the gaming grid, are comprised of 50 different sounds, layered together in a process Serafine dubs Electronic Sound Assembly. A variety of sources are digitized, plugged into a Fairlight CMI (Computer Musical Instrument) as samples, and then displayed on a CRT. There the waveforms can be manipulated via the system’s GUI, either by keyboard or the attached light pen.
Frank Serafine, sound effects designer on Tron, programming his Emulator digital synthesizer while working on ABC TV movie The Day After, released in 1983
Sources used for the sounds of the unique creations in the film include the Goodyear blimp in flight for Sark’s Carrier and the Recognizers, the inside of Serafine’s frost-free fridge as the Solar Sailer, and even a group of screaming monkeys from the San Diego Zoo for the flight of the thrown data discs. Along with cataloging Serafine’s 60-some reels of sound effects tapes and actually creating sounds for use on film, the Atari 800 also controls audio and video recorders, providing quick and precise effects editing. Serafine gets some help on the programming side, including from Battlezone designer Ed Rotberg, along with SFX employee Laurent Basset, a 17 year-old whiz-kid on the Atari computer.
Mike Minkler does the sound mix of all these elements, becoming another bone of contention for Carlos; other duties keep her from the mixing sessions, and the sound effects are heavily favoured over the musical score in the final mix.