Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/6179
January 2010 32 Moreover, the footage had to be full-body, to make it appear as if Frank himself was mak- ing the guest appearance. Otherwise, it would appear as a floating head or partial body, which was obviously undesirable. Godfrey spent nearly three weeks just tracking down footage that would work for the hologram after digital magic was applied. "We couldn't find any footage of Frank sing- ing 'Happy Birthday.' I suggested that the cli- ent think about having Marilyn Monroe, but Frank Sinatra is Simon Cowell's idol, and it had to be Frank Sinatra," she says. However, the available public archive footage of Sinatra singing was filmed in close-up (head-and- shoulders shots) for films. e best possible footage was eventually found—albeit from Sinatra's own private collection that had never been in the public domain. "at is why it was shot with a single cam- era and not edited. It was for his own use," Godfrey says. Godfrey spent weeks negotiating with Sina- tra's estate, and eventually received permission to use the footage for this project; there would be no encore. And, the estate gave SquareZero two choices: footage that used a single-camera feed of the crooner singing Pennies from Heav- en or Learning the Blues. SquareZero chose the former, though it still had limitations: Sinatra walks toward the camera and then back, show- ing him, at most, from his knees upward. His lower body is missing. The Project Gets Legs To make the footage work, the crew at SquareZero had to give Sinatra legs and a low- er torso, onto which they planned to fuse the rotoscoped upper body from the original foot- age. e needed body parts would come from a body double. When SquareZero revealed its plan to the client, Banana Split decided to ditch the project, thinking it required too much work. en, just two weeks before the party, the client changed its mind, asking SquareZero to resume the project. At this point, Godfrey and her group closely examined the footage again only to realize that the original plan of com- positing the stand-in's footage from the knees down would not work. "After reviewing the footage from Pennies from Heaven, we realized that we had to cut Frank out at the neck level, not the knees," says Godfrey. "If you are trying to connect [the images] at the knees, you have to be in perfect sync. It's really difficult. But with the head, as long as you have the same movement with the body double, you can get away with a little more." So, suddenly after getting the green light on a ursday and the contract on Friday, and revamping its strategy, SquareZero found itself fighting the clock. e group located a body double, a Frank Sinatra tribute perform- er who was the same height as the star. at was important, explains Godfrey, because the head had to have the same proportions as the comp'd body. On the following Monday, the team filmed the body double at the studio. To ensure that the double's movement was perfectly in sync with Sinatra's, a low-resolution version of the film footage was projected onto a screen, pro- ducing a mirror image for the performer to follow while he practiced, concentrating on the body position and motion. Yet, getting the necessary high-resolution footage, from which Sinatra's head would be rotoscoped, proved difficult again, this time on another level. "ere were gigs, and gigs, and gigs of it, and it all had to be sent via FTP from Los Angeles," says Godfrey, noting that the file took at least 24 hours to upload. en came the download. "We would start down- loading the file, and it would crash. And then we would have to start again. And again. is process started on Friday, and we didn't get the high-res footage until the following ursday. It took nearly a week!" Creating the Man, the Myth While the crew struggled with the files, a DOP filmed the body double, who was dressed in a suit from the late '50s/early '60s, to coincide with the period when the archive footage of the younger Frank was made. Key to the shoot was the lighting: It had to be just right so that the performer's dark suit would still show up Continuous single-camera footage of the entire singer was needed for the project. When that could not be located, digital techniques were required to achieve a head-to-toe image. All told, 24,000 frames of Sinatra's head were roto'd from film footage within Apple's Shake, and comp'd onto newly acquired footage of a stand-in using The Foundry's Nuke and Shake. n n n n Holography