SHORT CUTS
New Yorkbased Click 3X recently showed off its skills in stop-motion animation and compositing, producing a promo for the new MTV series, Pimp My Ride. The show, which airs Thursday nights, is directed by MTV’s Antonio Tronic McDonald, for MTV On-Air Promotions. The promo uses dolls and toy cars to communicate the concept of the new show, which transforms beat-up old cars into fully loaded rides. In the promo, a toy mechanic moves at hyper-speed to turn a dinged up, rusted out compact into a gleaming road machine, buffed and decaled, and adorned with sparkling chrome wheels and a dashboard video screen. A dilapidated minivan undergoes a similar transformation at an even greater speed. In order to meet the tight deadline, Click 3X assembled a production team headed by Click 3X partner/technical director Peter Corbett, and including veteran animation director Peter Wallach and art director Zachary Kinney. The team spent two days creating the spot’s quirky urban setting, two more days shooting the stop motion and three days in postproduction. To speed the process, the production team produced high-resolution QuickTime movies of select scenes so that the postproduction team could immediately set to work on the compositing. Model-makers created the promo’s cast of characters by using makeup and costuming to give preexisting models individualized character and personality. The lead character, the young urban owner of the beat up car, was modeled after Click 3X sales associate, Connor Swegle. Other characters included his hip and sassy girlfriend and the cool MTV mechanic. Similar artistry was used to create the before and after versions of the car. Click 3X started with three identical models that were customized. Later the wheels, chrome, glass in the windows and decals on the door were added. A rusted out car was beat up and painted, and a third car was painted black with rigged headlights to capture an accurate light element. After an initial establishing shot of the dilapidated vehicle, the promo proceeds with a time-lapse sequence of the mechanic working his magic. The scene was accomplished by shooting the mechanic doll and his tools against green screen. Visual effects artists used those elements to pull mattes and comp the action with the background image of the car. In the end, the scene included more than 40 composited elements with high-speed movement suggested through the using of motion blur and quick cut editing. In order to make the dolls talk, Click 3X shot digital video footage of the mouths of actors reading the dialogue. Additional credits for Click 3X go to Iain Greenway, creative director; Abbe Daniel, executive producer; Mark Szumski, lead visual effects artist, Bryce Barros, visual effects artist; Rob Campbell, editor; Mike Sullivan, model maker; and Peter Sluszka, animator.
Bicoastal Hornet Inc. created the main title for the new ABC sitcom The Big House. The half-hour comedy stars standup comedian Kevin Hart, who plays a spoiled rich kid from Malibu who has it all until his dad is arrested for embezzling millions of dollars. He is forced to move into the home of his aunt, uncle and three cousins. The Hornet team was challenged with introducing the show’s six characters, as well as tell the story of Kevin’s move from the sunny beaches of Malibu to a family house in Philadelphia in :15. The open begins with Kevin lounging on the beach outside his house in Malibu, when an ominous shadow starts to loom. He looks up to see a house dropping out of the sky. As it lands on his lounge chair, the camera zooms through the front door of the house to see Kevin pop up in surprise as his new family members close in on him. After taking in their stares, he immediately tries to escape through the front door, but two sets of metal bars slam shut, locking him in the house. The shot eventually pulls out of the house for the title reveal. Hornet’s crew designed the entire look of the house from scratch, animating and compositing it realistically into the scene. Such details as a puff of sand when the house lands, blowing curtains and swinging gates and doors were also animated to accomplish a more realistic effect. Also created was an environment that had to fit well with the actors while allowing for the home to drop cartoon-style on the main character. The actors were shot on a stage in front of a green screen with an HD camera at 24p, the interior shots were hi-res digital stills, and the Malibu scene and exterior house were built inside the computer at 1920×1280. All these elements were composited to create the open. Hornet utilized Maya, After Effects, Illustrator, Photoshop, Final Cut Pro, a Sony Digital Camera and a Sony HD Camera to complete the project. For Hornet, Tim Brown was creative director; Andrew Isaacson was senior producer; Julie Peng was associate producer; Alisen Nihill was executive producer; Brian Koons was storyboard artist/live-action art director; Kate Hopp was designer/compositor; Richie Sandow and Steve Fine were designers; Satoshi Harada and Ken Fukuda were 3-D animators; Daric Loo was lead editor; Jeremy Lusk was assistant editor; Mark Priola was the live-action producer; and Bruce Finn was DP.
Commercial and feature film visual effects/animation house Frantic Films created the Tar Monster for Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed, directed by Raja Gosnell. Frantic brought the villain to life using its own proprietary software, Flood, to build the larger-than-life adversary. Working closely with Gosnell and visual effects supervisor Peter Crosman, the Frantic team created extensive illustrations, temp shots and more than 60 visual effects shots for the feature film. Frantic Films has also created effects for such features as The Core, Paycheck, Swordfish, The Italian Job and X2. The company has offices in Los Angeles, Vancouver, B.C., and Winnipeg. Its commercial client roster includes The Disney Channel, Procter & Gamble, Investors Group, Assante Management, CanWest Global and the Royal Winnipeg Ballet.
IN GEAR
Coral Springs, Fla.-headquartered da Vinci Systems announced that Point.360, a provider of video and film asset management services for entertainment and advertising content producers, used the da Vinci 2K Plus to perform color enhancements on footage for Mark Burnett Productions’ The Apprentice and The Restaurant, as well as the upcoming series, The Contender. Point.360 senior colorist Bob Sackter—who works out of the company’s Los Angeles facility—uses da Vinci’s 2K Plus to give footage from reality-TV episodics a consistent look so that film shot under a broad variety of conditions can be edited seamlessly into a uniform broadcast product. For example, Sackter utilizes the 2K Plus’ toolset to ensure visual continuity by color balancing footage from the many cameras that capture the trials and tribulations of Donald Trump’s would-be executives in The Apprentice. In this show and others, the key voting or "moment of truth" shots present Sackter with the complex task of producing a scene that appears identical from week to week, regardless of shooting conditions. Point.360 has additional facilities in New York, Chicago, Dallas and San Francisco. Da Vinci Systems, an Acterna Corporation company, provides SDTV, HDTV, data and digital film color enhancement technology and film restoration products to the worldwide postproduction marketplace. The company has additional offices in Los Angeles, New York, London, Paris, Germany and Singapore.
STOCK SHOTS
Artbeats, Myrtle Creek, Ore., has released several new aerial collections, all of which are available in both standard and high definition. The new volumes include: "New York City Aerials," "Big Island Aerials" and "Canadian City Aerials." Shot with the Gyron Eagle camera system, this footage can be used for a variety of applications, including film, video and multimedia productions. Artbeats has been offering aerial footage since 1999, and the latest additions bring the aerial library to 22 SD and 12 HD collections.
