Computer Graphics World

April 2009 14 Filmworkers Club also added the circus tents. e artists started with stock footage as the base structure, and then used Smoke to paint in the tent. Later, they relit the tent and Ferris wheel elements in the opening scenes. e group also crafted flags that would rustle in the wind, and built a matte painting of the barn door for when the Clydesdale decides to leave the barn. e group relit the barn exterior as the horse runs out and the establishing shot of the barn, as well, using CG sun and sunbeams and adding CG insects fluttering around for good measure. "Jen [Paine] repainted all the foreground trees but left room [for viewers] to see the Ferris wheel, which she put in the back- ground," says Churchill. "All of that work makes it say 'circus.' " e crew also replaced many of the back- grounds. e inside of the circus tent was shot greenscreen, and ompson compos- ited the clowns and other circus perform- ers, with a new inside-the-tent background composed of stock footage that was digi- tally enhanced and manipulated. In the scene where the silhouetted Clydesdale is running toward the circus in the distance, Filmworkers Club used a shot of the horse inside the barn running toward the exit, stripped him out of that scene, and put him in this scene. en, they added a nighttime CG/matte painting/live-action exterior. e compositors even replaced the skies. "e idea was to have the spot start in the morning, go through the day, and end at night," ompson says. "You couldn't plan to shoot at all the right times of day, which is why we had to replace the skies through- out." e sole use of Autodesk's Maya was to put digital bridles on the horses in the beginning sequence when they're nuzzling over the fence. "is is the most exciting time in the year- ly cycle," contends Churchill. "e agencies are giving it their all, and so are we." Avatar Coca-Cola Director: Smith & Foulkes Agency: Wieden + Kennedy, Portland, OR Production company: Nexus Productions, London CG company: Nexus Productions Coca-Cola can always be counted upon to create a playful commercial for the Super Bowl, and 2009 was no exception. (Re- the characters were in the 3D space and where the conver- gence would be. Some of our phone calls probably sounded like we were speaking Greek." Shooting live action and compositing CG characters is al- ready difficult, notes DreamWorks' global stereoscopic super- visor Phil "Captain 3D" McNally. "To add the third dimension, we had to coordinate our stereo settings—the z axis—as much as we could in advance. We all sat around a table and agreed between us what the ballpark was we'd be working in, so 3ality could set up its cameras and we and Digital Domain could set up our virtual cameras and coordinate." 3ality's camera rig provided metadata with camera settings, zoom information, and the interocular distance (between the left and right eyes) and point of convergence. "For all intents and purposes, it's a motion-control rig," describes Barton. "They provided us with that metadata, and we used it to set up our ini- tial 3D cameras in Track, our in-house tracking system. Based on that initial data, we fine-tuned the two cameras to lock to the plate. Then we transferred that data onto a rig that was used by us and DreamWorks to render out [Autodesk] Maya scene files of our characters and CG environment." The first step was to do the scene registration and obtain the camera data for the shots that DreamWorks would work "Lizard Lake," featuring the SoBe lizards, NFL players, and charac- ters from Monsters vs. Aliens, was the second stereo event during the Super Bowl, following the 3D trailer of Monsters vs. Aliens. The following evening, an episode of Chuck was shown in stereo, as well. CG avatars share the scene with live actors in this ad from Coca-Cola. n n n n Broadcast•Stereo

• Cover