 We spoke
recently with Christine Petrov, Head of 2D, and Allan Lee,
Compositor, at CIS Vancouver about their work on Twilight, the
Summit Entertainment vampire love story starring Kristen
Stewart and Robert Pattinson.
Christine Petrov is a
Fusion artist and has been in the industry for 20 years.
Christine has worked on such films as Tropic Thunder, Vantage
Point, Changeling, Blades of Glory, Night at the Museum, and
I, Robot.
Allan Lee is a Fusion artist and has been in
the industry for five years. Allan has worked on such films as
Tropic Thunder, Vantage Point, Changeling, Blades of Glory,
Dr. Dolittle, and She's the Man. |
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How long were you working on Twilight? What was
the size of your team?
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Christine: We started doing test shots in January 2008
and, once production began, the work was completed in two
months. We had 10 compositors on the project.
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What types of shots were done in
Fusion?
Christine: There were four
types of shots composited in Fusion: sky replacements, matte
paintings, adding digitally created baseballs and the tree
replacement sequence.
What were some of the
biggest challenges you faced on this
project?
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Christine: Our biggest challenge was to get the sky as
dark as it could be – which was an important element in the
storytelling. This was a fairly painstaking process of
tweaking and re-tweaking in Fusion until we got what we
wanted. But, in the end, the skies had the dramatic effect the
clients were looking for.
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| How did Fusion help you? |
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Christine: Fusion is a very reliable application, which is
key for feature film work. It provided all the tools we needed
for these shots in one place, and helped us deliver the
project on time.
How did you find eyeon's
technical support during the
project?
Christine: We did not contact
eyeon's technical team during the work on Twilight but we’ve
always found them to be very helpful when we needed them.
Isaac Guenard is great!
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| What was the most rewarding shot in the
movie? |
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Tree Replacement Shot - Before
Allan: The most rewarding shot for me was the tree
shot. We needed to turn a shot of a golf course into a forest.
We were given a very long aerial shot that had sweeping
circular moves and it proved very challenging to match the
perspective shifts in the shot.
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Tree Replacement Shot - After
Christine: Allan managed to complete that shot in just
over a month while simultaneously handling 11 other
shots. |
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What are some of your favourite tools in Fusion
and how do they help in
production?
Christine: We like the
overall ease-of-use of the Fusion interface. A couple of our
favourite tools include the 3D particle system and the
flexibility within the 3D environment.
Did you
use Linux or Windows?
Christine: We
have tested Fusion on Linux and anticipate moving to an
all-Linux pipeline in the spring in order to expand and be
able to take on larger, more high-end projects.
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How big are the compositions, average layers, and
tools used per composition? What resolution were the
shots?
Allan: On average there were
three compositions, 50-60 layers, and tons of nodes. (About 43
nodes were used.) The effects were all done at 2K. |
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Did you make use of Fusion's 3D environment and,
if so, how?
Allan: We used Fusion's 3D
environment in the tree replacement. We took a boujou track
and imported it into Fusion 3D Camera. We then mapped textures
on geometry – 2D planes – and placed them in the 3D
environment where we needed to replace the forest. Every tree
needed to be rotated individually to match the perspective
shifts as the camera swept by.
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How important is 3D compositing to how you
work?
Christine: This is an essential
part of VFX work these days. We use Fusion’s 3D capabilities
when we need to replace large sections of an image with a
moving camera. It’s the complete package and very
user-friendly. |
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Twilight was an exciting project that involved
many wonderful artists.
Christine and Allan would
like to give special recognition to the following
people:
Richard Kidd, Visual Effects
Supervisor
Geoffrey Hancock, Digital Effects
Supervisor
Jinnie Pak, Visual Effects Producer
Moritz
Eiche, Compositing Supervisor
Make sure to check out
the CIS Vancouver website for more information on
the company and all of the work they have
done.
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Twilight © 2008. Summit Ent All rights reserved.
Images courtesy CIS Vancouver. All rights reserved.
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