Another year goes by. Time to make a new demo reel. Edited by my dear friend Hernando Noreña.

Brandfighters.com (a company who organizes competitions for student film makers) started a competition for the brand TUC (famous from it’s cookies). The assignment was: TUC is looking for a brilliant viral video which connects to the current TUC commercial on television.

The rules were explained in the briefing from Brandfighters. After reading it carefully we started working on our assignment.

Randy and I worked 4 weeks almost full-time on this commercial. The more visual effects you put in it the more points you score. Unfortunnately our entry got rejected becouse we used guns in our video wich was nog listed in the “Not allowed in the video” rules. This was a big dissapointment for us. But we still want to show our video to you all. So we made this blog with the video and the making of. Starting from scratch to the end product. Let us know what you think of it!

Original title:        Double O Tuc
New title:             Double O Cut
Duration:             0:56 sec
Camera:             Canon HF S100
Software:            3dsmax, FumeFx, MentalRay, Photoshop, After Effects
Production time:   4 weeks

Camera Tracking:

For the Camera Tracking we used Syntheyes.



Before and After shots:

The Building shot
We had to find a way to let the actor (Ronald Huijskens) hang on a building. This would ofcourse
be way to dangerous so we used a greenscreen for this.

The Alley shot
We first wanted to have the actor being chased by rockets but we saw the garbage cans on the background and improvised by that. And add an impact from a clusterbomb/napalm kind a thing.

The Car shot
This is a very short shot in the video. But a very important element to tell the story.

The Gun shots
Added muscle flashes to this shot, some debris and impacts on the wall.
To give it a more realistic look we added reflections on the sun glasses of the actor.

Matte painting
The matte painting is created by Randy van der Weide. We replaced the flat background with an industrial one.

Pictures on set:

The pictures we made during the shooting days can be seen here

http://www.flickr.com/photos/45340281@N04/

Menu sequence for Hollyoaks where Zoe loses the plot in prison and has visions of Lydia on the walls.

A bit of fairly straightforward video comping and green screen to produce a nice sequence directed by Peter Fearon.

VFX Breakdowns, Compositing, Rotoscoping, Color Grading, Motion Graphics, Animation, Broadcast Design

Ok, ich mag keine Rap-Musik, aber dennoch möchte ich auf eine interessante Produktion in 3D hinweisen, die mir vor kurzem begegnet ist. FVM productions aus Salach, einem Kaff in Baden Württemberg, produziert für Danny Fresh das Musikvideo „Zahl nix dafür“. Das Video ist gut gemacht und auf Francesco Faranna mit seinem Team bei FVM productions sollte man achten.

Das 3D-animierte Musikvideo wurde im FVM productions Studio vor Green Screen aufgenommen und danach in deren Multimedia-Werkstatt digital erstellt. Derzeit läuft das Video auf MTV. Der Mannheimer Rapper vertraut auf die Video- und Animationskompetenz des FVM Teams um Francesco Faranna. Damit setzt Faranna seinen Weg vor. Hat er sich doch durch Video-Produktionen und 3D-Animationen für das Musik-Label Nuclear Blast und Arbeiten für viele andere Musiker einen Namen gemacht. Wie gesagt, ich mag die Musik nicht, aber die Arbeit von FVM productions schätze ich sehr.

Danny Fresh wurde zunächst vor Green Screen abgefilmt und dann im Rechner nachbearbeitet. Dort wurde die gesamte Umgebung, in der der Rapper sich bewegt digital erstellt, mit Hintergründen, Formen und visuellen Effekten versehen und anschließend mit der Musik synchronisiert. Das gesamte Compositing wurde von FVM productions durchgeführt. Mit einer frisch aufgerüsteten Serverfarm verfügt FVM productions über alle technischen Voraussetzungen, solche komplexen Kombinationen aus realem Film und digitaler Produktion zu realisieren.

Der Mannheimer Rapper will absichtlich mit seiner Forderung: „Zahl nix dafür“ provozieren. Danny Fresh ist Popakademie-Dozent aus dem Umfeld der Söhne Mannheims und ruft ironisch zum illegalen Download von Musikstücken auf. Er votiert für mehr Qualität im Deutschen Rap und HipHop und distanziert sich von dümmlichen Produktionen in diesem Genre. Das Video ist eine Visualisierung des Liedes. Wie auch der Song bewegt es sich immerzu und bietet einen großen Fundus an Anspielungen. FVM productions unterstrich mittels fein abgestimmter Symbolik die gewünschte Aussage des Künstlers, blieb dabei jedoch immer subtil und auf hohem Niveau. So gibt es auch außerhalb des roten Fadens eine Menge zu entdecken.

Présentation du Tour de France 2010.

Le parcours est entièrement réalisé en 3D à partir d’images satellites haute définition. Il a été projeté la premiere fois cet automne au Palais des Congrès devant toute la presse sportive internationale.

Je suis intervenu pour encadrer l’équipe d’infographistes 3D et réaliser le compositing et l’étalonnage final du film.

Client : ASO / Réalisation et production executive : TRIMARAN / Musique : Francois Elie-Roulin

Finally I finished writing the Nuke course I’ve been working on. It’s a hefty book running about 140 pages. I designed it to be similar in nature to the Shake course Marco Paolini wrote which I taught for the last 8 years, and I hope it will live up to those standards. Marco taught me Shake personally and he has a way to explain things that works. Fingers crossed.

The first run of the course appears to be happening in Tel-Aviv, rather then London, surprisingly. But a London date will soon be set with Soho Editors (looks like the beginning of January). If you are interested, please email me.

Wish me luck!

R

Film réalisé en 2007 pour présenter l’actuel Musée Magritte Museum, qui a ouvert ses portes le 2 juin 2009 à Bruxelles au sein du Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique.

Le film comprend de longues séquences entièrement réalisées en images de synthèse 3D pour donner à voir ce qui n’existait alors, pas encore !

Cette version avec musique ne comprend pas le commentaire. Elle permet d’apprécier d’autant plus les images.

Le budget, faible pour un film de ce type, nous a contraint à fonctionner en équipe réduite : 1 cadreur pour les prises de vue sur site,  1 infographiste 3D junior pour les séquences virtuelles et 1 assistant-monteur. J’ai assuré le reste des taches tout en assumant la conception et réalisation : écriture du commentaire, scénarisation, animations graphiques, effets spéciaux et intégration 2D/3D, montage.

Client : Musée Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique-GDF SUEZ / Production : TRIMARAN / Réalisation : Eric Desneux / Musique : François Elie-Roulin

Bande Demo “ANIMATIONS GRAPHIQUES”, Motion Design.

Une sélection de mes travaux (réalisés < 2004) qui donnent à voir mes talents de monteur-truquiste : animations graphiques,  intégration 2D/3D et habillage.

Tous ces travaux de commande ont été réalisés dans des studios de post-production parisiens sur station after-effects, à partir d’un débrief avec le producteur et/ou le réalisateur.

En revanche, l’intro et l’outro sont entièrement de ma composition. Ils donnent à voir un peu de mon univers “personnel” très marqué par l’art-vidéo.

Clients :  CENDRANE FILMS/ Claude Ponti – Chabouté, TRIMARAN/ Le Monde 2, UMT / Givenchy, BLUE MOTION / Mangas, TRIMARAN / ASO Tour de France, PASSERELLES / Mairie d’Ivry, MARABU /La Plaine Saint-Denis,…

Compositing project at efe-x , comercials for colombia, directed by Pablo Flener from Akira Films. Compositing by me, digital fx direction by my boss, Juan Manuel Pardo. This little making of was edited by my good friend Hernando Noreña.

This project was beautifully planned and ended up with a very nice finish. really loved to do it.

Digital Juice’s Compositor’s Toolkit 2 was just announced today. It ships on November 19th. With a list price of $499.95 (and an actual price of probably $249 considering their constant specials) this collection is way beyond a steal. And this time around, if you pre-order your copy you can reap the rewards for just $199.95.

For those who don’t know, the Compositor’s Toolkit 2 is a set of 275 royalty-free clips shot in ultra high resolution 2K (that’s bigger than full HD) shot in slow motion giving you full control of the speed for endless possibilities. And the content and quality are beyond superb. These pre-keyed clips have a dual purpose to serve both the visual effects compositor and the motion graphics artist featuring organic elements in a variety of categories. No computer simulations; this is the real deal. And it’s ‘real’ good!

After watching all the sample clips (yes, i watched pretty much all 275 clips) I saw the potential for this collection is astounding. Well, I didn’t want to keep it to myself so I’m going to go through most of the new categories and tell you where the mograph people will be looking and what’s gonna tickle the visual effects guys and also describe how some of these clips can be repurposed for even more uses.

Explosion
Twenty-four fiery clips. There is a lot of repetition in this category; many clips seem almost identical to others yet unique in their little ways. Well, I think that’s grand. I think I mentioned this before on the Digital Juice forums that this kind of similarity is good. Each clip varies just enough to give it its own unique character and personality. You may not be so picky, but I’d rather have a lot to choose from to find just the right fireball that fits my comp.

CTK2’s Explosion clips do a fantastic job of staying inside the frame so that you can simulate distant explosions. Too many stock fire clips whoop up and fill your screen, touch the sides and leave you able to create only close-up explosions. Thank God someone finally got it right! About half of the clips feature explosions that are well rounded like they’re off to the side (on the side of a building), in the air, below you on the ground and, of course, in space. The other half are grounded and shoot upward into the air. Nice.

Clip 024_Explosion is a great wall of fire probably more suited for titles.

Fire
Again, a lot of repetition. And, again, I think that’s good. The Fire category probably would have been better named Flicks and Flames as this fire doesn’t quite have the mass to be considered full out fire. This leaves them more suited to motion graphics title sequences and it’s here the similarities among the clips are useful. You’ll probably be using this footage to set titles on fire and you’ll easily find a clip to match (or burn) all words in your sequence.

I had suggested on the Digital Juice forums that fire for torches and such should be included and it looks like they had a go at that as there are several. The slow motion doesn’t come in handy here if you’re going to composite torches, but they flicker so often that if you loop them at normal speed they’ll look just fine. There are a couple unique clips that go their own way and could come in handy for visual effects: one has flames spreading from the side which you could easily use to composite over a window, and another features flames sprawling across a dark floor. I’m sure you see the potential for vfx here.

However you choose to utilize these clips, you’ll probably need to beef ‘em up with levels as they’re a little on the weak side as far as power. But that’s good, this gives you detail. It’s up to you how you make them shine.

Water
Not much to say here. It’s water. And it’s mostly abstract. These clips are more backdrop footage (albeit nice backdrop footage) and I don’t see very many compositing opportunities here, though it is always fascinating to see water in slow motion. These clips are great for editing projects and motion graphic backgrounds.

Bubbles
Pretty good selection and lots of compositing and vfx possibilities. Most of the clips seem to be on a small (or close-up) scale. I’m talking on a home aquarium level here. But there are also enough clips that have a grand scale feel to them; many would work well for underwater explosions. Over all, fantastic stuff. And again, fascinating to see in slow motion.

Shatter
Careful where you step, the Shatter Category is a fantastic selection of both fine and coarse glass shatterings perfect for visual effects applications as well as motion graphics. In addition to the full out shatters there are a nice selection of falling glass and glass “dust”, some of them directional.  I wish there more.  Priceless.

Ink Drops
They held the camera below glass and dropped blue ink from above making some crazy flower-like designs. I can see a lot of mograph potential here. But visual effects compositors working with horror or even action projects should take note: the blue ink has just the right shading in it that just a spin of the hue wheel will give you some nasty looking blood — and I mean nasty in a good way. These clips would look so convincing as blood that had they used red ink they might have gotten an R rating. (Wise of them not to teeter on offending some customers.)

Sparks
At first glance this sets seems to be a twenty-four clips of the same thing. There is a lot of repetition and though I’ve been going on about how that’s a good thing, in this case I think it just left no more room for more possibilities. Most of the clips seem small scale/up close good, again, for both vfx and mograph work. There’s a great selection of raining embers and a lot of burning fuse type sparks which you could easily animate to lead up to one of those big, black, round bombs. (Do they still do that?) I was very pleased to see that at least one of the clips was shot from directly above. This set could have used a little more of that. All in all as sparks go, these are great.

Paint
White paint on rollers up against glass ready to be colored any way you like. These would definitely be of interest to mostly motion graphics folk. The slow motion comes in handy here as you can remap the time to suit the pace of your project. But aside from the paint rollers, there’s also a good selection of paint getting whopped onto glass (wait, did I just make up a word to suit me?) complete with drips as well as gushes of spray. Again, mapping a dark red onto these splats and sprays will give the horror vfx guys a lot of good compositing blood. Picture a zombie in a car getting shot in the head. The blood (paint) splats outward onto the inside of the window. The slow motion helps here as you can speed it up just right to see the splat form. Good stuff!

Electricity
This is a brief collection of blue, Frankenstein style electricity, maybe good for a Halloween commercial or two. I don’t see a lot of opportunity here to map these bolts from point a to point b so you’re probably better off using After Effects‘ built-in filters or Sapphire’s Zap To effect. Although… these are real.

Debris
Good stuff if you need it. Clips range from the chunky building collapsing type debris to finer clouds of falling dust. Good for visual effects work.

Lighting
At first I was disappointed with this category which I made numerous suggestions for on the Digital Juice forum. However when I took a closer look and examined each clip I realized the team at Digital Juice really know what they’re doing. The Lighting category is a collection of light beams with just the right amount of atmosphere which you can use to make 20th Century Fox style… well, light beams. The beams in this collection don’t just sit there. Each clip has it’s own choreography so you’re sure to find a dance that fits your motion graphics project or your visual effects requirement. Now, should you want to choreograph the beam yourself in After Effects you don’t need to worry about the beams not sitting still.  You’ll need to capture only a frame, move the anchor point to the light source and animate the rotation of the layer to taste. (At first I thought they’d make clips that just sit there so we could animate them and then realized that’s just a waste of video.) Again, Digital Juice did a very nice job of not letting the beams “touch the sides”. You’ll still have to do a little masking but that’s to be expected. Some clips are shot vertically so that you get even more resolution (after all, you’re probably going to mask and transform these anyway.)

Variety abounds! There are beams going up, going down, off to the side, etc. perfect for making ground lights, helicopters, prison wall search lights and more. I was very pleased to see clip 006_lighting had a moving texture in the beam (perhaps done with a rotating gobo?) that looks PERFECT for an underwater light beam. Just perform a little color adjustment, get some bubbles from the Bubbles category or get clip 0006_snow from the original Compositor’s Toolkit (see the value of collecting them all?), turn it upside-down and choke the alpha channel a touch for some up-drifting fine particles (already in slo-mo for realistic underwater movement) and then throw in some fish-eye-view Trapcode Psunami to finish it off and you’re under the sea. (I’d demonstrate with video but the product isn’t out yet.)

Some of the light beam movements were probably arranged with some of these potential uses in mind. Have a scene with a helicopter or UFO searching the ground? Clip 017_lighting is perfect. There are many clips with just motion graphics in mind and some with just vfx. There’s a good selection of stadium type lamp clusters which you could use for, well, stadium lighting. Or, you could scale them down and line up multiple copies for very organic and very real looking UFO lights. The lamps juice up from blackness and then run a few frames; you’ll need to freeze the clips after that.

Well that’s a wrap. I don’t know about you but I’m just itchin’ to try some of the ideas I mentioned. Goto Digital Juice and reserve your copy right now. And if you like what you see don’t forget there’s a Compositor’s Toolkit 1. Like I said before, this deal’s a steal. And if you had to buy all of these clips from, say, ArtBeats you’d have to sell your car first!

Tamotion had started working on a set of music videos for Michoel Schnitzler’s first album. The album – and consequently the video DVD – is entitled “Di Neshuma Flam”.

The album is all in Yiddish and tells stories of Tzaddikim in past. Most of the stories are set in old towns and villages not of this century. We found a beautiful small village, a national park, Millbrook Village, NJ. This historical location has beautiful scenery and houses. We did a full day of filming over there.

The DVD is scheduled for release later this winter. Until then we will keep posting updates and take you behind the scenes of this production. See you soon.

– La Nobildonna e il Duca – 2001 – ♥♥♥♥ -

di

Eric Rhomer

Dopo un periodo di retrospettiva rhomeriana, giungo finalmente alla visione de La nobildonna e il duca (L’inglese e il duca) e mi accorgo di essere davanti a un film assolutamente senza precedenti. Rhomer, che in tutta la sua filmografia precedente a questo è sempre stato pur diversamente dagli altri comunque appartenente alla scuola di cinema della nouvelle vague ossia della rappresentazione di situazioni e ambienti naturali, sovverte i suoi abituali schemi di regia e compone una opera d’arte difficile e complessa, in cui a brillare e a rimanere nel cuore dello spettatore certamente non sono le scene in interni in cui la realmente esistita scozzese e ‘realista’ Grace Elliott, in trasferta francese, entra nel vivo della vibrante Rivoluzione Francese. A rimanere impresse sono le numerose tavole prospettiche dipinte da Jean Baptiste Marot che ritraggono la Parigi del 700 e che al suo interno, grazie al digitale e alla computer grafica, finalmente Rhomer è riuscito ad integrare con azione e attori creando un piccolo kolossal politico francese che ha avuto in mente per una decina di anni. Il risultato è un ibrido di tecnica in cui si uniscono la moderna arte del compositing e l’arte sublime del fondale appartenente al cinema classico – ma ad appartenere a questo sono anche le inquadrature ravvicinate degli attori e la loro stessa recitazione. Il risultato è un film che si dilunga in chiacchiere indiscutibilmente tendenti all’annoiare il pubblico medio, come tutto il cinema Rhomer, ma trattasi di chiacchiere solo in apparenza futili poiché in tutta l’opera di questo regista fuori dalle righe i suoi personaggi sono esseri pensanti che per forza di cose devono scontrarsi con la dura realtà sociale a cui appartengono pur non sentendovisi integrati. Un errore che si commette spesso davanti ai suoi film è proprio quello di osservarne oggettivamente i protagonisti e reputarli incapaci e bloccati dalla ragione, insomma considerarli pazzi. Rhomer, come il più grande entomologo, riesce invece a creare delle psicologie, cosa assai rara nel cinema odierno, e diventa inevitabile per il godimento e la comprensione del film immedesimarsi nella vicenda, anche se può risultare difficile in quanto viene stavolta narrata dal punto di vista di chi la Rivoluzione la critica. Il finale, in cui pullulano vari attori del cinema rhomeriano in alcuni gustosi cameo, è appagante come tutta l’estetica del film, disconosciuto aimè dalla patria di Rhomer, ma fortunatamente lodato a Venezia. Certo, non è Barry Lyndon, ma comunque nell’ambito del cinema in costume si offre una ricostruzione dell’epoca narrata stranamente più veritiera di quando si ricostruisce in fiction nei teatri di posa Hollywoodiani o di Cinecittà.

( La presa della Bastiglia... da molto lontano)

(Grace finisce in prigione)

Even if you don’t normally like this kind of thing – I think there will be a few bits here that will make you smile. ‘Special Effects’ have a come a long way since my childhood, and The Mill are the best. I used to be impressed by Space 1999 and ‘The Six Million Dollar Man’, but this blows my mind.

Worth watching if you’re a fan of Michel Gondry.

Love Light Sabers.
Even tried compositing some my self, check here and tell me what you think, be gentle I did this years ago:

I made that after watching the Ryan vs Dorkman 2 DVD, well worth the small investment.
But here’s  a great tutorial by Apple Shake Guru.

Also there are some fantastic pointers in the Encyclopedia of Visual Effects – one of my favorite books.

Business and nature

Of course it’s a composite! Today’s featured photograph is part of a long series of photos I shot last January. It was actually one of my first organized shoots where I paid an actor to model for a specific role. Of course like everyone starting in stock, I selected the businessman. So we went on location in an office and shot for 3 or 4 hours. I came back with hundreds of shot and selected about 35-40 to send to agencies. I did this in two waves, in February and May. I like to spread things out with long series so that the new shots revive attraction to the older ones. It also helps me identify what expressions clients will buy off a specific model. With this shoot, for example, the best selling pictures at all the agencies where revolving around panic and anger. Next time I hire this model, I’ll conceptualize scenes revolving around these emotions. I went back last Friday and did another small wave of new shots off of that old shoot (I won’t quit until I make back the money I’ve invested, which should be in a few weeks) and decided to do composites and make the location more meaningful. I was amused by the model’s expression here, and thought it would play well against this background, which was shot last September at the botanical gardens and wasn’t very interesting by itself. Bringing the two shots together made both photos more interesting in my opinion.

You have to be ultra careful when sending composites to some agencies, especially Istock, which tends to pixel hunt and reject the shot at the most minute visible nick in your work. In this case, some regular brush masking was done (mostly around the suit), in short strokes at 100% opacity far-off and repeated %40 strokes near the suits to let the fabric’s fine hair show. The head and hair was done by copying the blue channel, augmenting contrast and burning/dodging until a had a clear-cut black and white silhouette to select. The light was then adjusted (a mixture of masked gradients in Soft light blending mode) to match and the colors were adjusted using the local color filter in key areas. Hair was drawn in manually around the rough isolation edges on a new layer with a 0.3 pixel gaussian blur added afterward. For a final touch, I added some very soft noise (16% opacity on a medium gray layer set to soft light blending mode with a 0.4 pixel gaussian blur) which unifies the two shots into one.

Also from our first meeting – working with masks and mattes in FCP. We’ll get Aaron to post his tutorial up here, but for now check out some of these related techniques that allow you to integrate and composite within FCP pretty quickly:

• Ken Stone on Masks (old but great)
• Nice tutorials using image masks

Here’s also a nice set on how to use travel masks (luma) for subtle lower thirds…

Link: Travel Mattes on YT

As per my post on figure.fm about what I should photoshop next, I took the suggestions, of Amrita and did Moka in a cemetery. Perfect for Halloween!

Here’s the original photo I took. My wife had taken my DSLR to work today, so I was left with my POS Lumix FX-9 camera. Now, normally I wouldn’t complain, since this was the camera I used for most of my early photoshop images. But having gone to DSLR, going back to using this was terrible. The post processing done to this thing by the camera really really sucks. The ISO rating is so terrible, with an incredibly crappy shutter speed.

Ugh! Just look at the terrible grain! And this is at forced ISO 80! And not to mention the slight blurring from my unsteady hand!

Here’s the background image I used. I grabbed it from here. A site with free photos for anyone to use. This was perfect for what I was looking for.

And the final image. Click on it for a bigger pic. It’s a bit bluer than what I was hoping for, but with how badly the lighting matched, there wasn’t anything else I could do to correct it.

Of course, here’s a youtube video of it being done:

Have a happy and safe Halloween everyone!

Edit: Corrected some things as per Pyauki’s suggestions.

IES [Idee e Soluzioni] ha prodotto in tempi record questo video per l’agenzia milanese M&CM.

Cliente DNV ( Det Norske Veritas Italia )

Il video è stato utilizzato durante il World Business Forum 2009

Mario Addis: direzione artistica e regia
Movimenti: animazione e compositing
IES: Post produzione

Zurück nach kurzer Abwesenheit. Wir verbrachten 5 schöne Tage auf Mallorca und waren auf der Hochzeit von Christof  “Stoffl” Ötzbrugger, Snowboardlegende und Besitzer der Snowboardklinik, eingeladen. Schöne Grüsse noch einmal nach Montuiri… Jetzt bisch verkauft! ;o)

Hier zu unserem Theme Fotonachbearbeitung, ein Vorher Nachher Beispiel für eine Compositing und Retuschearbeit. Man sieht dass in Zeiten der digitalen Fotonachbearbeitung fast keine Grenzen mehr gibt…

I post this link particularly for RMSP students who took my compositing classes this summer.  Enjoy!

Guardare per credere.

Obiettivo era raccontare ed illustrare le problematiche legate alla gestione dei documenti, ed i vantaggi derivanti dall’adozione della fattura elettronica.

Idee e Soluzioni ha adottato questo mix fresco e dinamico di animazione 2D e fotografie dal vero

Un plauso ai due protagonisti: Giorgio Casanova (Direttore Commerciale) e Sergio Bevilacqua (Account) che oltre ai volti hanno anche fornito le loro voci originali.

Regia Mario Addis