Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1500026
47 S U M M E R Q 2 I S S U E T E C H Morph. That would require visual effects to put the hair back in place so that it doesn't just pop off and disappear while you're watching it. These are the fun things I encountered while doing my QC [quality control] process on the show," said Botteron. Using morphing as an invisible visual effect is a relatively new concept for Botteron. "For me on the visual effects vendor side," he added, "this wasn't something that I saw a lot of editors us- ing. But when I went to the studio side, I could see how often this was used to keep the pacing of a scene going or to stay on a shot longer. It's something visual effects vendors are getting used to because edi- tors want the cut to look exactly like what their Avid displayed. So visual effects vendors have to do their best to match that and make it look natural and to clean up the things we talked about. Vendors are going to have to get used to working with this on a regular basis." FluidMorph on a static shot is the easiest application of the effect, but Good got a bit more adventurous with it on "The Last of Us." During one particular shot, the camera was pushing in on the character as they were delivering their lines. It was a great performance but had a small stumble as the camera was moving in. "Since I needed the A side to line up with the B side, I cut out the stumble and then did a little cropping and a little resizing to make them match at the cut point. There was a little change as it's moving forward, so I asked Luke if this was something that we could give to visual effects. It was close but not exactly right so we needed visual effects to figure out a way to do it," said Good. One interesting result of FluidMorph that Good found was that it could be used to create a small change in facial expres- sion. "You can almost microscopically create a smile or a frown — like a micro muscle reaction on an actor's face — just based on the speed of the morph. A six-frame morph sometimes allows you to create a small little reaction. But you have to be very careful about that because you're now adjusting a performance; you're creating something on a physical body that did not exist," said Good. "It's a question of the ethics. You want to make sure that you're still keeping to the spirit of the per- formance even though you're condensing and changing and moving things around. I'm not trying to do these things for ne- farious reasons. I'm finding that it is just a benefit of the tool itself, that it sometimes can create a small microscopic reaction. So if it helps the performance, then it's a lovely side effect." Mendez offered another potentially unconventional use of FluidMorph, which didn't apply to "The Last of Us" but might come in handy for a future horror project. She said, "Sometimes FluidMorph can create very unpredictable and often horrific results. It can do disturbing things to the face if you don't follow the rules. Using FluidMorph on a project that needed some effect like that would definitely be some- thing I would try." Good's one piece of advice on using Flu- idMorph is to not overuse it. "I wouldn't use it all the time. If you start overusing it, you start to think that you have to always use it. I deploy it when required. If I'm taking two seconds out of a performance, that's worth it to me. FluidMorph was part of our regular toolbox on 'The Last of Us' because Craig was very specific about the pace of the story. We were trying to make a universal pace for the season. Different directors will get a different pace in certain scenes and our job as editors is to maintain an overall pace of how the story is told and how all of the characters interact, making sure the season feels cohesive," he said. Mendez agreed: "FluidMorph is a good thing to have in your tool belt. Even on the last episode where we used it a lot, we were generally not using it more than once a scene. And it's not in every scene. It's a use- ful thing to have when you're in a situation where you feel you need it. I used to work on behind-the-scenes content and Fluid- Morph worked really well for interviews, for when people are sitting still. It applies to lots of different types of cutting. It's just a matter of trying it. Even if the results are unexpected, it's really beneficial to see how it works." ■ Emily Mendez. Timothy Good, ACE.