Digital Compositing
Digital compositing is the process of combining visual elements to produce an image that appears as if it was shot in camera. Commonly used in visual effects to produce impossible shots, fix problems with footage or produce shots that would be too expensive to shoot in reality.
Thrive uses the industry proven 'Shake', that has been used on feature film productions such as the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Using this software we can produce anything from set extensions to insertion of 3D characters.
Along the top of this page are tabs that are labeled as steps, using these you can follow the process of creating a photo real visual effects shot for a feature film step by step. This will allow you to gain an understanding of the level of detail and complexity any one shot can contain.
Stitching The Tower Together
First two still shots of a tower taken on location are stitched together to create a whole tower. (A camera move is added later which requires more of the tower then a single shot would allow for)
Dry For Wet Treatment
Next the tower is treated so that it looks wet, as well as having colour correction applied to make it appear as a complete structure.
Day For Night Shadows
Next soft edged masks are used to define areas of shadow on the tower.This helps to give the impression that the tower is being lit by ambient light at night.
Interactive Lighting
A green screen element is to be added later on in the composite. In the plate photography for this element bursts of light were used to simulate lightening, this needed to be replicated on the tower so that the two elements would match each other.
Sky Replacement
Once the tower has been treated day for night, dry for wet and had it's interactive lighting applied it's time to move on to the next part of the composite. In this case it's a sky replacement. A new stormy night sky is produced and added behind the building. It's also at this point that distant city lights are added to make the tower look like it's deep inside a built up area.
Green Screen Extraction
Now that the background plate is mostly complete we can add the actor shot on green screen to the shot. Using a keyer which gets rid of everything green we can produce a matte that can be used to extract the desired action. This then allows us to add the actor to our shot. Also notice that we have added the actors shadow to the building.
Adding Rain / Finishing Touches
With all other elements added to the shot the last item to add is the rain. Plate photography of rain shot on green screen is used to place layers of rain within the shot. To maintain a sense of depth, layers that are closer to the camera are scaled up. At this point the shot is cropped to it's final aspect ratio allowing us to keyframe in the camera move.
The Final Composite
Once all the separate steps are completed the shot is rendered out ready to be conformed to the final edit of the feature. Below is the final shot with all the work completed, creating a dynamic shot that is the sum of all it's parts.
