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Bits & Pieces Look Effects helps Muppets join the real world L While Look Effects didn't create any CG Muppets, they did help put them in different environments. OS ANGELES — Look Effects (www.lookfx.com) pro- vided 340 visual effects for Disney's The Muppets movie, which hit movie theaters just before Thanksgiv- ing. The studio, which has delivered visual effects for dramatic films like Limitless and Black Swan, had fun providing some comic relief with the Muppets. Look Effects' primary job was to support the traditional Muppet approach. The studio did all the heavy lifting in the visual effects arena by handling a lot of bluescreen and greenscreen compositing work, intensive CG sequences, rod and puppeteer removal, rotoscoping and tracking. According to Pam Hogarth, Look Effects' marketing director, "Working with Kermit and friends was a delightful change from the explosions and blood that visual effects so often involve." Look Effects helped give the puppeteers the freedom to Post Magazine (09,28,2011).pdf 1 9/28/2011 10:54:06 AM perform in ways previously unavailable to them. "We understood that the puppeteers were thrilled with the expansion of their boundaries. They found it freeing. We found it challenging, but fun," adds visual effects supervisor, Max Ivins "For us, The Muppets was a straight-forward effects movie with puppeteers who needed to be removed. But there are no CG Muppets, and it was a terrific project to be part of." As well as traditional visual effects work, such as driving composites, building environments that don't exist or were impossible to get to, Look Effects also produced crowd duplication, some particle effects and image manipulation. These effects-intense sequences included the telethon opening for which Look Effects created the environment before comping in 46 Muppets and then dropping in the titles. The movie's grand finale is set on Hollywood Boulevard and includes multiple sequences that feature a helicopter fly-over, crowd duplication, set extensions and compositing multiple elements and characters. Look Effects called on The Foundry's Nuke, Adobe After Effects, Autodesk's Maya, Flame and Flare, Shotgun, Frame Thrower, and GenArts and Imagineer plug-ins running on Windows machines with Nvidia Quadro cards, Linux OSX and Isilon storage. Mark Driscoll, president/founder of Look Effects adds, "We've done several films with Disney over the years, but The Muppets was special in many ways. I mean it's the Mup- pets! We were very excited about this project. Ironically, with the puppeteer and rod removal, driving comps and compos- iting, it turned out to be a fairly straight-forward effects movie, only with puppets!" Color-Critical LCD Monitor XVM-245W 24" 1920x1080 LCD Full 10-bit 1.07 Billion Color Support RGB LED Matrix Backlight Advanced 12-bit Signal Processing Precise, Automated Calibration Third-Party 3D LUT Import/Export 3G/Dual-Link Standard and More... 910 W. Alamada Ave. Burbank, CA 91506 sales@tvlogicusa.com www.tvlogicusa.com