Trevor Hogg gets the inside track on how Peggy Holmes and Skydance Animation created Luck

Echoing the misfortunes experienced by protagonist Sam Greenfield in Luck was also the movie’s production, until the hiring of John Lasseter as head of Skydance Animation and the arrival of director Peggy Holmes. “The movie had been in production for two years and it wasn’t working, so we basically did a reboot and were writing the story while we were building assets,” reveals production designer Fred Warter. “It was challenging to stay ahead of story with design and keep the production moving. Time was the biggest issue. COVID-19 happening at the beginning of the project didn’t help.”

The work was divided amongst studios situated in Los Angeles, Connecticut and Madrid. “You’re across three different time zones,” states Peggy Holmes. “You have production pipelines that don’t necessarily talk to each other so easily. It was a matter of everyone putting a huge effort toward the final goal, uncovering problems that we didn’t know we had and finding solutions. It was an awesome team-building experience.”

Modifications were made to the pipeline to accommodate studio notes that could occur at any time during the production process. “We are still working in Maya mostly and with Arnold as our renderer, but we programmed Maya to be using some of the procedural workflows that the other departments have, like working in Solaris or Katana so we could be working faster reviewing sequences in context,” explains visual effects supervisor Javier Romero. “We also wanted to review the input from every department at the same time, whatever the sequence. We were able to review big chunks of shots, bringing in the latest images and effects so we were making more informed decisions. Maybe we’ll get a note about something in the background, but since we reviewed in context with the lighting and depth of field we could say, ‘You’re right, but we don’t need to change it.’ That helped to expedite most of the work and focus on what really mattered.”