CINESTASIK

STORMHOUSE - Feature film - RED 2K (2240 x 960)

Full format still

I have cropped the clip around the critical area of the shot. This still shows the full size of the project´s format. Below, a series of snapshots and technical descriptions illustrate the main phases of the work done.

Final script overview

Rotoscoping by parts

I used a color lookup node to push a luma matte on her upper body, given than she´s against a bright sky. To that, I added rotoscoped shapes for every part of the body in the usual way. I rotoscoped them in an stabilised environment, in fact using specific trackers for each part. Every part is then unstabilised and aggregated to the main matte on the left. I had to track the head manually, given that it wasn´t possible to get a consistent track automatically, and the importance of avoiding the usual wobbles and hard flares on the edges that usually occur with hair.

Main comp

I obtained the final refined matte painting on it, to get rid of the occasional bad edge and such. The main comp integrated the background still plate, corrected in perspective, color, and with grain added. These latter effects where grouped in a backdrop to switch them on and off easily -given that especially grain slows down dramatically the ideal workflow speed. For the background, a hard roto matte was combined with a luma push matte, which worked just fine except in a few areas where I specifically adjusted the edges. The final result here was a basic main comp with a hard edge in the sky and the actress properly matted.

Comps on top and outputs section

Over the main comp, I first fixed the hard edge on the sky, taking care that no irregularity could arise, given that the dpx sequence was log and the sky has actually detail on it. To this end, definitely the viewer exposure and gamma sliders are indeed very useful. Then, a series of comps on top (mainly the edges of the bushes and trees behind the building) give as a result a final comp. Even they´re not in the focus area of the shot, having some live footage trees copied from the main plate -which are speeded up to get a more lively feeling, gives the final comp the ice on the cake. From there we go down to the output section where, besides the main cineon dpx sequence I had time-coded quicktime previews, one of them cropped around the critical area for the sake of speed and detail.

WWW - Feature film - 720p

FINAL SHOT

RAW SHOT

Even though there´s movement, I prefer to use masks to obtain a matte for a screen -even when there´s a character blocking part of the screen, in which case I usually combine a mask with a keyer. In this case, given that I had plenty of tracking information, the final mattes only needed some fine keyframing here and there. I used the 3D tracker and its subsequent output to get one of the screens in place, corner-pinning for the other one. Nuke´s curves panel is indeed comfortable to work with, in these cases when you need to extrapolate a curve´s values accurately, constantly zooming in and out, grabbing and moving keys around. I did then some fine adjustments in the transformations to better emulate the perspective changes. Then I dealt with the green spill on his glasess and his eye. Both interface designs and animation are also part of my work in the film.

IRELAND RSA - Educational - 720p DVCHDPro

FINAL SHOT

RAW SHOT

This one comes from a batch of shots from an educational video for the Road Safety Authority in Ireland. The lights above had to be off. I first comped an off lights still and then, before this comp, the job required intensive frame by frame painting work to get rid of the flares and reflections of these lights. Even though I managed to comp over some other patches here and there, the mission still did require a lot of delicate frame by frame painting, and a wacom tablet made it possible. I used several differently retimed inputs into the rotopaint node to easily feed the clone tool with the most convenient source. The onion skin switch is a blessing.