SquareZero were commissioned to create a top secret, 3d hologram of Simon Cowells’ idol ‘Frank Sinatra’ for his 50th birthday celebrations on Saturday the 3rd of October.
The party organizers wanted the hologram to look 100% real, as if Sinatra himself had stepped on to the X Factor stage for a private performance. In order for this to be achieved, the organizers turned to Squarezero.
Squarezero use the Musion hologram system and this requires a full body, full color, static HD camera shot of Sinatra on a solid black background to start with.
This proved to be problematic-as the archive only had footage of Sinatra singing without a body (all done in close up, for a variety of films).The best possible archive footage of Frank was eventually found – a performance of ‘Pennies from Heaven’, which had already been cut out (rotoscoped) and put onto a black background. Unfortunately the footage was in close up and didn’t include Frank’s legs and lower half.
So SquareZero set about finding Sinatra some new legs, and lower torso to attach to the archive footage of Sinatra’s head.
To get a full body clip of Frank they used a body double – a Frank Sinatra tribute performer called Paul Holgate. With a screen set up showing Franks performance in mirror image, Paul rehearsed the song many times to get the most identical performance as possible – concentrating on the body position and movements. Very careful lighting was set up, to light up the dark suit he was wearing to make sure it would show up on the black background.
Head of animation Olly Tyler and compositor Gabriel Sitjas, then dedicated four full days to rotoscoping 24,000 frames of Frank footage. They needed not only to cut out his head, but also to separate his eyes, neck, mouth, hat and hat brim. With these areas separated they colourised each part from the original black and white footage after de-graining and restoring the film damage within it.
The original camera movements from the footage had to be counteracted by lead compositor Jonson Jewell, so Frank’s head remained in the same size and position. They then removed the impersonators head, from the footage filmed of the body double performance.
Jonson Jewell then worked around the clock to convincingly attach the cut out Frank Sinatra head footage, with the filmed and headless body double. The task was very difficult – the slightest mismatch of head and body showed up badly around the neck area.
A very accurate tracking of the body double’s neck area had to be applied to the head, and then minor readjustments made every half second throughout the song. Many additional animated shapes had to be made to patch up areas around the neck and collar, some of them to create artificial shadows and lighting which gave the head correct looking volume and depth.
At one point in the sequence where the body movement and the head just would not match up ,they created a short morph sequence using a different section of Frank’s head footage, which fitted the body better.
The Sinatra estate stipulated, that his image be allowed to be shown for one night..and one night only.
The end result? A very surprised Simon Cowell being sung to, from one of the original members of the Rat Pack…priceless! X Factor contestants may just have a happier judge to contend with this week.
