Watching today’s DNeg’s layoffs it reminded me if what a different world it is to even 8 years ago. If was a sad day when the producer pulled you into his office to discuss the future. When you find out that you aren’t part of it. Good times are shared in the rooms of visual effects.

My first Shake job was turning night into day. It was a low budget feature that someone agreed to do the post and visual effects for. There was no budget. The job post was on the shake list and I responded. I interviewed with David Troy. He agreed to pay me a weekly rate for rotoscoping. I was not called a roto artist but that’s what I was. The scene need to take place in the day but the shots where shot as the sun was going down. If you have ever worked in production you know how many times this happens. Its not called tragic hour for nothing. The idea was I would roto talent and we would then place a daytime background in place of the fading to night one that was shot. Lets just say I got very good at roto really fast. How the body moves. Lower arm, upper arm. Even single bones of fingers if need be. There was also simi- transparent clothing. Which was very dark. If I had the experience to know that was going to be such a problem I would have run. As I remember it I had 3 weeks.

After I had completed the roto for all the shots the supervisor sent me plates that were to be place outside to make it seem like daytime. All of a sudden I was a compositor. This was exciting. This was what I had in mind. All the that hard work payed off. This was fun. I can do this.

The other artist was Jim. He was a compositor newly back from a trip around the world. Finding his way back on to the grid. Jim was a seasoned compositor by this time. Working on Paintbox and the inferno at places like Charlex in New York and Editel in Los Angeles. He was tasked with the other 20 or so shots in the this movie. He used all he basic tools. Clean plates, 2d tracking and most of all his brain.

After that job ended. Jim found himself at Pacific Title and Art Studio.

This shot took 2 compositors and a team of 3d artists to complate. I headed up the rotoscoping part of the project. There was a ton.[Rotoscoping explained at vfxwiki.org]

First the shot.

The simple way to discribe this shot is a really complex wire removal. The cliff face had to be replaced. The climber had to be painted frame by frame and then place on top of the clean rock that was built in maya. That also meant the climber had to be rotoscoped threw out the whole shot.

I stopped the roto there so you can see how it kinda works. 10 days for this shot. A lot of work.

Always think about the shot before you shoot and commit to it. Once it is in the can it can be hard not to use it without a fix.

It might save you a ton of money. Nice work Maureen, Lee and Josh.