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Compositing Trends RSP helps create 'Potter' magic ADELAIDE,AUSTRALIA — Rising Sun Pictures (RSP) has produced visual effects for several films in the Harry Potter series, including more than 60 shots for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part II.Among the latter was a battle sequence set in a subterranean vault below Gringotts bank, where Harry, Ron and Hermione use their wands to fend off the bank's goblin staff. The wand battle was presented to RSP (www.rsp.com.au) late in the production schedule and needed to be executed quickly. "The brief was to make the sequence more dynamic by adding wand blasts flying back and forth that the kids then had to duck and dodge," recalls RSP VFX supervisor Sean Mathiesen."Due to the late turnover,we decided to do a first pass layout designed by our 2D supervisor Ed Hawkins. "Using Nuke's tracking and paint tools, Ed made several quick layout revisions to show how we could execute a dynamic battle with simple wand effects (later created in 3D with Houdini), cam- era shake and generic flying debris." RSP presented the Nuke layouts to Tim Burke, the film's VFX supervisor, and director David Yates for comments."We got feedback and buyoff on the idea very quickly and were then able to spend quality time generating high-resolution 3D effects," Mathiesen says."We knew that as long as we followed the layout we would be able to complete the sequence on schedule.Al- though this was one of the last sequences turned over to us, thanks to the use of Nuke as a layout tool, it was one of the first sequences we completed." involving scissors. "They needed more feathers floating in front of the zero plane so the audience could almost reach out and touch them," says Leavitt. "We built them using particle systems in Maya and then re- placed it with 3D models we built and com- posited it together." There was another shot where one of the characters peels out in a Mustang, sending smoke out of the screen toward the audi- ence.The tires then pick up gravel, dirt and debris, and start throwing them at the audi- ence.They also created and composited CG blood spray coming off of scissors and a knife at the screen; replaced Kevin Sorbo's legs in a scene were his feet were being nailed to the floor; and added CG rain to another scene. PFTrack was used for matchmoving. There is no question that preparation is key to a successful stereo job."It depends on the compositing package, but when you are compositing in 3D stereo you have to be conscious of left eye and right eye, where in regular 2D compositing you only have a sin- gle frame to worry about." Shops that don't have their pipeline down could end up doing twice the work, he says. 32 Post • August 2011 www.postmagazine.com "Because whatever you do on the left eye you have to duplicate on the right eye with whatever offset is set up in the camera." Most compositing packages now allow you do the work once and make minor ad- justments for each eye. "With Autodesk Toxik, which they now call Composite, you are able to transfer the footage over and give it a little bit of an offset so it lines up. When you check your work it should drop right into place," explains Leavitt. "With Nuke, when you are doing that you just do your work once in one stream and it tends to just offset itself to the left and the right eye." Leavitt has worked on Nuke, but Ni- trous uses Composite (their main tool for Julia X), After Effects and Shake. Another way to get prepared early is working with production. Nitrous requests camera reports."We'll put that in and get what the zero plane was set at, which is what defines a 3D space," he explains."When we input that into the stereo camera it accounts for the offset, so if you put it in once it knows which is left eye and which is the right eye and there might only be minimal adjustments, if at all.There are times when you have to dial it in because it doesn't look right, and you'll know because your eyes tend to cross." Nitrous is also busy with non-stereo jobs, including regular work as the outsourcing fa- cility for CSI:NY.Anything the show's in-house VFX department can't get to because of overload is handed off to Leavitt and team. For the past two seasons they have averaged about 35-40 shots per episode with a three- to five-day turnaround.The show is set in NYC but shoots in LA, so creating New York City locations is a big part of the job.They use After Effects for compositing since CSI: NY's in-house department uses it, making for easier back and forth in terms of assets. TIPS: "Everybody works differently, and what I tell people is,'Figure out what works best for you and don't let anybody tell you what you are doing is wrong.'We are cre- ative problem solvers and I expect the peo- ple I bring in here to be able to think outside the box. If they have ways of doing some- thing that is different than the way I like to do things but it still gets things done on time and the quality is good, I say go for it." ARC PRODUCTIONS Compositor/lead lighter Paul Stodolny of Toronto's Arc Productions (www.arcproduc- tions.com) has seen a number of composit- ing trends developing recently, including the return of the camera as a character. "For a few years everyone was trying to make pristine, clear beautiful images, but as the existence of the camera has been rein- troduced in the shot, it has definitely been affecting compositing. Now everybody wants lens flares…thank you J.J. Abrams," he laughs."And during explosions, compositors are required to add things like dirt and ex- cessive light bleeding on the lens to create a realistic, documentary style that's now typi- cally done in post." Today's filmmakers are sophisticated and well aware of what kind of tools and abilities compositors have. "They know we can do more than painting out dolly tracks and light stands," explains Stodolny. "The art department and set decora- tors don't even have to be as exact because we can paint any- thing out or anything in for that matter. For example, on our cur- rent production of Robosapien we worked on a basketball se- quence, painting out the trade- marked logos that production didn't have rights to." Arc Productions, which until specialized recently in full- Before & After: Arc is providing VFX for , a series on Starz. length animated feature films (Gnomeo & Juliet, 9), has taken on live-action projects as well, and its first visual effects pro- ject is the aforementioned Ro- bosapien. This feature film, based on the Wow-Wee toy line and co-produced with Arad Productions, was shot live action. Arc created and inte- grated a CG robot that be- Camelot