By Bill Desowitz

Addressing the need to confront the fact that the practice of design is becoming more immersive and convergent in the digital age, production designer Alex McDowell (Watchmen) and Chris Scoates, director of the University Art Museum at California State University Long Beach, spearheaded 5D: The Future of Immersive Design Conference.

Held last Oct. 4-5 at the Carpenter Performing Arts Center at CSULB (co-sponsored by Autodesk), 5D was the start of an invaluable dialogue among design experts in film, TV, animation, interactive entertainment and architecture to figure out where to go next with narrative media and its impact on the profession.

“5D is a conference based on the notion that design practice is changing to a large extent on the rapid change in technology and digital tools,” 5D co-director McDowell explained. “And as designers have adopted the 3D visual design tools more and more, they have actually created commonality between various forms of media, so what 5D does is identify a new approach to design called ‘immersive design,’ which uses digital tools to design in virtual space, creating a collaborative workspace that effectively pre-envisions and visualizes the final product for the immersive experience.”

As MIT pop guru Henry Jenkins stated in his keynote, “Art, science and technology, united by our thought, are our main tools in the search of wisdom. And what we currently call design in its various forms is really this convergence point of art, science and technology. It is art with the distinctive characteristic of having a specific purpose and boundaries…”

5D kicked off with the first of six panels: In “Reality and Hyper Reality: Envisioning New Design Paradigms in CG Animation,” moderator John Tarnoff of DreamWorks Animation led the discussion with director Gore Verbinski; Evan Douglis, chair of undergraduate School of Architecture, Pratt Institute; designer Scott Robertson and technology consultant Lance Williams. Interestingly, performance capture dominated the discussion. Verbinski, who has CG experience with Davey Jones from Pirates of the Caribbean and has begun making Rango, ILM’s first foray into CG animation, was the most outspoken.

“A computer’s a wonderful tool, Verbinski offered, “but yet we often use it to execute a kind of clinical perfection. I personally believe that when the process becomes sterile we must fabricate anomaly. And when it comes to an animated performance, to bringing the design construct to life, I see the actors and animators merging [collaboratively]. I want to retain the accidents and the flaws. I’m eager to explore the digital realm but, you know, I constantly ask myself, ‘Why abandon the techniques that we’ve developed over the years simply because I’m entering a different medium?’ I want to take the best of both of these worlds and to kind of orchestrate the chaos…”

In “Bigger Bang: Colliding Science & Design,” moderator John Underkoffler, scientist and designer of human-machine interfaces (Minority Report), discussed design and world building in terms of using your hands for touch and intimate contact. “The language of cinema itself can be used to describe space, time and narrative,” he suggested in offering an interactive, multimedia, realtime experience. Other panelists included Paola Antonelli, senior curator in the Department of Architecture and Design for the Museum of Modern Art, New York; David Kung, VP, creative director, Walt Disney Parks and Resorts Online; Iron Man production designer Michael Riva; and Jerry Schubel, president and CEO of the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach.

In a workshop titled “Pervasive Previs: How to Achieve More Immersive Visualization” (sponsored by Animation World Network), director Timur Bekmambetov (Wanted) suggested that previs is a valuable collaborative tool, but that wished there were a way of incorporating the actor as well. Cinematographer Eric Adkins (Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow) remarked that previs is extremely helpful in determining basic lighting info and showed some rare motion capture previs from Kerry Conran’s aborted John Carter of Mars feature. However, Adkins, previs supervisor Ron Frankel, digital effects supervisor Peter Nofz and McDowell agreed that while previs allows you “to make the movie before you make it,” it’s still just a starting point and should be treated as such.

Further discussion of the many faces of previs occurred in a follow-up discussion about the ASC/ADG/VES joint previs committee (moderated by chair David Morin).

And, in the workshop, “The Evolution of Expression: An Exploration of the Impact of Technology on the Art and Science of Storytelling,” there was a lively exchange between VFX supervisors Mark Stetson (Superman Returns) and Tim McGovern (Tron), virtual art director Rob Powers (Avatar), Digital Domain technology guru Kim Libreri and Jerry O’Flaherty, who has been tapped to direct a Thundercats animated feature. They discussed where storytelling is headed in the digital age. In particular, will realtime change storytelling? Will everything be photoreal in five years? Does VFX de-prioritize storytelling? And literally against this backdrop, each major point was visualized in black marker on a white banner strung against the back wall.

Finally, production designer Rick Carter (Avatar, The Polar Express) brought the conference full circle during the panel “Design in Flux: Immersive Design and the New Visual Narrative” (moderated by McDowell). “Design is actuality perceived as reality,” he noted. “When you walk away, you know you have something you didn’t have before,” Carter added.

To prove his point, Carter showed the conclusion of Pinocchio as the most sublime example of creating life from nothing. Joined on the panel by architect/art director Tino Schaedler, Sebastian Sylwan, senior industry manager for film, Autodesk Media and Entertainment, and Habib Zargarpour, senior art director, EA, Los Angeles, Carter pleaded to have 5D sprout by concluding, “Story is design and design is the story.”

With attendance exceeding expectations and participants clamoring to continue the dialogue, 5D will return to Long Beach in Fall 2010, as the culmination of several 5D events distributed in time and place, including the Sundance Film Festival, fmx/09, and a special program tied to the exhibition and performance of Brian Eno at CSULB, Fall 2009.

Bill Desowitz is senior editor of AWN (www.awn.com) and VFXWorld (www.vfxworld.com).