Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/78511
vfx FOR FILMS Digital Domain destroyed a Costco to save a town from aliens in The Watch. known for creating invisible effects for envi- ronments, but this film saw less of that expertise. Instead, the studio was responsible for a number of monitor burn-ins, surveil- lance footage and even creating wounds and bullet hits during violent sequences. They also worked on numerous montages that Oliver Stone is so fond of. According to Paul Graff, most of the video conference footage was shot by their team using Canon 5D and 7D cameras. A fish-eye lens, attached to the 5D, helped achieve the look they were going for, and some of the foot- age that was initially captured for monitor burn- in purposes only, actually appears as full-frame imagery in select scenes, like when Blake Lively's Ophelia character gets hit in the face. Crazy Horse Effects uses Nuke and After Adobe Effects for compositing, along with 'Lincoln' in Louisiana NEW ORLEANS — Factory VFX (www.factoryvfx.com) digitally aged a main character in the 20th Century Fox feature film Abraham Lin- coln: Vampire Hunter, which was filmed throughout New Orleans and Covington, Louisiana. The work allowed Fox to take advantage of the state's tax incentives while also helping the local economy. "It was a rewarding expe- rience leading the New Orleans local crew along with some of the team we brought in from California," says Juan Melgoza (pictured), supervisor for Factory VFX. "Working with Fox's post team was fantastic." Production wanted the female actress to look older than she was. Enhancements were made to the jawline area, forehead, smile lines, lips and nose. In addition, bags were added under her eyes, and crows feet were also added. With today's unstable economy, every job that stays in the US is a bonus, adds Factory VFX CEO Eric Christensen. The studio also completed over 140 visual effects shots for Paramount Pictures' comedy, The Dictator. The studio's California and Louisiana locations completed composites, plate reconstructions and sky replacements for the Sacha Baron Cohen film. 28 Post • August 2012 Photoshop, Maxon Cinema 4D, and 3D Equalizer and SynthEyes for tracking. CHE enhanced many of the gruesome effects shown in the film, such as the dead bodies featured in the opening sequence. For the torture scene, the team helped with the shoot, adding GoPro cameras to cattle prods, gaining closer access to a character, who has been set on fire. They also staged a shoot on the Graffs' front lawn, working with the make-up artist Bill Corso, and special effects supervisor Mark Byers to create visuals for a scene in which a head explodes. The scene was shot using a Red Epic camera. "On a movie like this, you really have two jobs," says Paul Graff. "One is to avoid using visual effects that are unnecessary. Once you introduce a greenscreen, it has to be a visual effect shot." The other, he says, is when stu- dios use VFX to help save the day. THE WATCH Digital Domain's Kelly Port was visual effects supervisor on 20th Century Fox's new comedy, The Watch. The studio (www.digital- domain.com) handled 300 of the film's 400 effects shots — most from its Vancouver location — and Port also oversaw the work of Piranha and Hydraulx, which handled the remaining sequences. In addition, Fox had an in-house team that performed some of the simpler tasks, such as wire removal and screen burn-ins. The film stars Ben Stiller and Vince Vaughn as members of an overly eager neighbor- hood watch program that accidentally dis- covers that the town is overrun with aliens. According to Port, Legacy Effects created an alien costume component for the film, which worked well for shots featuring physical interaction between characters. But in scenes requiring as many as 70 aliens, a costume just wasn't practical. In addition, while the costumes were extremely detailed, they still left the impres- sion of a human in a costume, so the VFX team had to augment the look and even recreate the entire character for certain sequences. In fact, in scenes featuring the alien, www.postmagazine.com the production crew would shoot clean plates without the character in case a deci- sion was made to go with a digital creature later on. This would help maintain accurate lighting throughout. According to Port, mocap techniques were used to mix up the aliens' movements too, drawing from gorilla, cheetah and human motions, while never using any singular motion for too long. The mocap sessions were performed at Digital Domain in LA. This film marked one of the first to rely heavily Digital Domain's Vancouver location, using as many as 85 artists at times. While the Vancouver studio provided shots for Tron and Thor in the past, it was in more of a shared role. In addition to the alien scenes, Digital Domain also created the ray gun/weapon, which Port says was a challenge simply in differentiating it from other rays audiences have already seen. "It's always a challenge. This is where the guys discover this weapon and accidentally blow up a cow. They realize it's crazy, but who wouldn't want to blow stuff up?" One of the biggest sequences for the studio involved the destruction of a Costco store, where the aliens were based. "There's a large ending scene where Costco is destroyed," Port explains. "That's where the aliens are located — in the base- ment. We modeled the exterior and partial interior of the full Costco building. The explosion itself was a series of smaller explosions, and using an RBD system, [we] mapped out the timing of these multiple explosions so it work in continuity across shots. Once we got the timing approval, we sent that over to the pyro guys for digital pyro techniques and figured out the scale and size of the fireballs and debris." Maya was used for modeling and anima- tion, and Nuke served as the compositing application. Digital Domain also used The Foundry's Katana look development tool. Piranha worked on shots of the aliens' underground transmitter, enhancing the look from production and adding energy effects