MPC’s team of animators used Autodesk Maya to create the baby skaters’ bodies. To ensure the babies appear fully realistic, it was important to carefully match movements, paying special attention to interaction between the shoulders, neck and head. To help achieve this, full CG babies were created and their heads were replaced later by the live action versions from the shoot by MPC’s compositing team led by Ludo Fealy. Creating the babies in full made sure the newly positioned heads would follow the shoulder movement naturally. This also helped during the lighting stage, as shadows of the heads could be easily projected. Another challenge was to create realistic skin texture and match the different skin colours. To achieve this, the 2D team composited together multiple layers and carried out general clean-up of the plates.

Many elements were shot on RED with the MPC Data Lab handling digital development and processing of the media. For dailies, the lab trans-coded the footage directly to native AVID media files and project bins so editor Ben Harrex at Final Cut could start cutting immediately with no additional transcoding or importing. For the high quality media, the lab was able to process large amounts of 2K data on the render farm very quickly. The lab’s client area meant that during the heat of the final delivery stages Michael Gracey was able to make additional footage selections which could then be rendered out and delivered straight to the VFX suites within minutes.

Paul Harrison and Jean Clement Soret added the master grade, carefully balancing the back plates, live action heads and CG bodies.

More Information at www.moving-picture.com. Image and Video Courtesy of MPC. Video Montage and Transcoding: 3Dup.com