Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/78511
vfx FOR FILMS pire manages to flee amidst a large herd of stampeding horses. The two characters fight, both on the ground and via horseback, exchanging blows and ax swings while trying to keep their balance and avoid being tram- pled by the herd. Martin Hill was VFX supervisor for Weta and says the studio treat- ed the scene very much like a full- CG sequence. "There was very little photography in there," he notes. "About 50 percent of the shots have plates of the actors, which were shot on two different days." The shoot took place in a field in Abraham Lincoln: Dust, digital doubles and 3,000 stampeding horses — all thanks to the visual effects team at Weta Digital. — along with Digital Domain — to the scaf- folding construction. Hydraulx worked on shots where a character reveals alien characteristics beneath their skin. Port credits Digital Domain colleague David Niednagel with handling so much of the tracking and post visualization, both on- set in Atlanta and then back at Fox in LA. "He was instrumental in single-handedly tracking all the shots and doing all the post- vis, and working with [director] Akiva [Schaf- fer] and the editor, Dean Zimmerman," says Port. "I can't even imagine how we would have been able to do this show efficiently without that post-vis process." ABRAHAM LINCOLN: VAMPIRE HUNTER New Zealand's Weta Digital (www.wetafx. PostAd-2a-rev_Post Ad 5/23/12 12:31 PM Page 1 Music Zero Fee 30 co.nz) handled work on one of the main visual effects sequences featured in Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. Directed by Tim Burton, the film is based on the concept that vampires exist during the Civil War and that Lincoln has been aware of them since his youth, when his mother became one of their victims. The studio's work appears in the stam- pede sequence, when Lincoln — looking to exact his revenge — tracks down a suspect- ed vampire. A struggle ensues and the vam- MEANS For Details CALL or CLICK www.ZeroFeeMusic.com 800-468-6874 Post • August 2012 www.postmagazine.com Louisiana. The scene called for a dusty, dry look, but the location was very lush from recent rain. "The whole sequence was shot at magic hour," Hill adds. "They only had a small window to get the correct lighting. The rest of the day, they shot with a big scrim over the actors. We had to digitally replace the lighting and shadows." The sequence was shot using a Phantom camera at 96fps. "That allows us to use slow-mo at any point," Hill explains. "We received the plates at 96fps and had to re-time them back to 24fps, which caused a few problems. As with all re-times, you tend to get fuzzy edges. We wanted to add post moves as well. We were generally pushing in and applying sec- ondary moves. We put them onto cards in our 3D scenes and treated them as digital ele- ments. " The sequence consists of around 100 shots, and features 3,000 stampeding horses — each with its own unique look. "The only real elements were the charac- NO Cost to YOU ters," says Hill, referring to Lincoln and the vampire. The studio did considerable research when creating the horses. "We discovered a lot of things about horses and their color markings," he notes. "If a white face goes over an eye, the eye turns blue. So all of the horses with completely white faces also have blue eyes." The Weta team visited a uni- for Your TV Show or Feature Film Music NO Master Use, Sync or DVD fees versity with an equine program to expand their existing horse library. They were able to use an infrared motion capture system to record movements of a horse on a treadmill, running at differ- ent paces. Studying muscle, tissue and skeletal components allowed them to create physically accu- rate models for the film. ROCK OF AGES The busy Digital Domain spent 10 months working on visual effects for the film Rock of Ages. The Warner Bros. film stars Julianne Hough, Alec Baldwin and Catherine Zeta Jones, along with Tom Cruise, who portrays burnt-out rocker Stacee Jaxx. The film is set in the late 1980s, when hair bands were the rage, and politicians, along with their wives, were trying to stomp out heavy metal while furthering their careers. For Digital Domain, the challenges came from recreating the landmarks found on the Sunset Strip during that time period. Further- ing the challenge was the fact that the film was actually shot in Florida, just outside of Miami. Jay Barton served as VFX supervisor for Digital Domain, and says that in addition to the logistical problems of trying shoot in Hol- lywood, shutting down Sunset would have been incredibly expensive, making it simply cost prohibitive to shoot the film there. Instead, production took place outside of Rock of Ages: Digital Domain had to recreate the Sunset Strip circa the late 1980s. Models were created and animated in Maya. The Foundry's Mari was used for paint, and Nuke served as the compositing program. Weta also relied on their own proprietary compositing tools "to help get a lot of the shadows and volumes working," notes Hill. The horses were animated to run at approximately 35 kilometers per hour. And the sequence covers a distance of approxi- mately one kilometer. The horses weren't the only challenge in creating the stampede. The actors also had to appear to be riding them, and even stand- ing on their backs at different points. In some cases, the actors were shot standing on a gimbal that had been adjusted to mimic the motion of the horses galloping. In other cases, the actors were either partial or complete digital doubles. Weta worked with Stereo D on the sequence, receiving pre-conversions of plates, which the studio then added motion to. Abra- ham Lincoln was just one of several films being worked on at the studio at the time. Weta was also involved in visual effects for The Avengers, Prometheus, Superman and The Hobbit.