Breakdown Document

 

 

Due to the sensitive nature of much of my work, acquiring the before and after images for presentation is not always possible. That said, here are a few representative pieces for breakdown:

 
 

Pirates of The Caribbean, At World's End

    Working in the Inferno, I composited many of the Davy Jones shots in this film. This particular sequence involved matching the chaotic weather in the original plate.

    •  Added and integrated multi-channel CG elements to plate. These included The Davy Jones character, a digital ocean plate and a facial reconstruction applied to the Mercer character.
    • Added interactive deformation in the composite to areas of the Mercer character's real face, cg face element, and body affected by the pressure of Davy's tentacles.
    • Roto (provided and self generated) as needed
    • Blue extraction and camera tracking for BG insertion
    • Reintroduction of environmental and practical lighting fx elements over composite. These include foreground and background rain and atmosphere elements, foreground and background running and dripping water footage, and matching practical lighting effects.
    • Additional flame particle work to fill in gaps in stock or filmed rain elements.

    Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

    I completed a wide variety of shots throughout this film but the river sequence required some extra finesse to get the look the director was after. In this sequence I had to craft my own digital matte paintings in Flame for the wide shots prior to comping in any hero elements. 

    • Stabilized and smoothed camera motion from helicopter shots.
    • Removed all visible tourist walkways (and tourists) 
    • Filled in steppe of falls to allow boat passage in final comp
    • Changed overall shape, width, and number of falls
    • Reintroduced appropriate level of mist and atmosphere for the new falls, including adding a rainbow in the mist of the lower falls
    • Changed the apparent light source direction slightly, adding new specular highlights to water surfaces
    • Extracted greenscreen shot of the practical boat, stabilized and composited into shot and created a visible wake.

    2016 Kia Sorento | Great Game | Built For Football Families

    Typical of most broadcast advertising Flame work, this spot needed several paint fixes, object removals and split-comps before it was done. Here are two example shots:

    • Conformed edit
    • Removed foreground actors on the right side of frame, reconstructed background
    • Stabilized/smoothed camera motion
    • Removed light poles in mid-ground
    • Masked and color-treated car separately from plate
    • Sky replacement
    • Confromed edit
    • Reduced flyaway hair on female talent
    • Replaced any visible exterior in windows
    • Replaced child actor's plate with different take, rectifying the contrasting camera motion to the mother's plate.

    AT&T | Your Network

    Supervised a Los Angeles based shoot for a complex "one-take" spot for AT&T and The Mill NY.

    • Liaison between director and Mill NY 
    • Daily discussion and coordination with Production prior to shooting
    • Reference and HDR light probe photos of each location/set up 
    • Problem-solving on set.
    • Test comps/edits on location
    • Updates and data uploads with the effects team in NY via a secure website
    • Coordination post-shoot with the effects team

    Beyoncé | Formation

    I worked with a team of Flame and Nuke artists at Electric Theater Collective on Beyoncé's recent "Formation" music video. Here are two examples of that work:

    Several of these wide shots combine live footage, matte paintings and other elements that involved sharing setups with the other artists to ensure consistency across shots and through many iterations. Some of the biggest challenges we faced were cleanly extracting the daylight greenscreens and creating convincing and seamless interactions between the matte painting and the waves and reflections in the primary plate.

    One of the more entertaining challenges was coming up with a tailored analog video look that was true to that aesthetic but still held enough detail to satisfy the client's needs for readability. All while also being consistent enough in its look to intercut with another VHS sequence created by actually running the original 2k footage through several passes in a consumer VHS tape deck and back.