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MillimeterStep by Step:
Casanova
Mar 1, 2006 12:15 PM, By Ellen Wolff
Stitching up a Stunt
Director Lasse Hallström isn't usually associated with visual effects filmmaking, but his Buena Vista release Casanova required some key scenes stitched from digital whole cloth. Notable among them is the dramatic sequence in which Casanova (Heath Ledger) escapes execution on the gallows in Venice's famed Piazza San Marco. Casanova swings from a rope and lands upon a running horse — part of a team of coach horses being guided by Casanova's beloved, Francesca Bruni (Sienna Miller). They make their getaway while crowds of onlookers watch in amazement.
Although Casanova was filmed in Venice, this stunt never could never have happened on location. Vehicles — including quaint horse-drawn coaches — are forbidden in the present-day Piazza San Marco. It also was challenging to assemble crowds of period-clad extras, given the popularity of the Piazza with modern tourists. Only small slices of time were available for filming.
Therefore, digital improvisation was in order, and it came courtesy of Illusion Arts, the studio in Van Nuys, Calif., run by Syd Dutton and Bill Taylor for more than two decades. Taylor, who served as visual effects supervisor in Venice, explains the process of stitching together the elements that comprised Casanova's gallows escape.
“We shot groups of eight to 10 extras against greenscreen in a parking lot outside of Venice. These were the people we would composite in the background. The parking lot was facing south, so there was good light for the greenscreen. And the pavement was painted to match the Piazza San Marco's brickwork.”
Next came the greenscreen stunt move by Ledger as he leapt off the gallows. Taylor recalls, “He swung out on the rope, let go, and fell 8ft. or 10ft. onto a stunt pad. Then we took out the stunt pad, covered the gallows with greenscreen, and drove the coach and the horses through the shot with Sienna Miller on the outboard horse. We shot that as a separate greenscreen element. Then editorial synchronized those elements so that the horseback on which Heath was supposed to land was under him at the moment that he descended. Heath came down to a seated position on the horse with the appropriate rebound, pantomiming his fall. The result is a very convincing illusion of him landing on a traveling team of horses. And it's Heath all the way — not a stunt double.”
Shooting greenscreens outdoors can be problematic, of course, and in this case Taylor had to cope with rainstorms that soaked the screens. “They were a bit of a mess,” he confesses, “but we had to shoot, since time was running out. Fortunately, I knew my friends at Ultimatte [in Chatsworth, Calif.] would write custom software to help us get around the unevenly lit screens, which they did.”
Taylor also knew that when he returned to Illusion Arts, Dutton would face the challenge of fabricating the background architecture of the Piazza San Marco. Since no background plate existed for the scene, Dutton would have to paint a convincing replica based on still images Taylor shot on location.
“I scouted the Piazza knowing that's what we would have to do in order to cut this shot in with the rest of the sequence,” explains Taylor. “[Second Unit Director] Kimble Rendall and I marched around shooting shots from every angle we could imagine. But even so, there were plenty of shots that didn't have the exact matching angle. So Syd had to concoct that angle out of stills that actually bore little relation to what was actually there.” Dutton laughs when he recalls, “One of the things that we heard a lot of was, ‘What the hell is supposed to be back there?’”
It required some heavy retouching with Adobe Photoshop for Dutton to paint out all modern windows and signs of contemporary Venice that were apparent in Taylor's photography. But the main challenge was to simulate camera angles and lighting that matched the foreground action in the shot. “We tried to get the right perspective on the buildings using Bill's photographs. When Bill photographed this architecture, he didn't know what lenses would be used [for the motion picture photography]. With a lot of the camerawork, there was no clear indication where the vanishing points were. So I took my cues from the little bit of information I had, and then it was trial and error.”
After Dutton completed a painting, Illusion Arts compositor Dave Williams would set about integrating it with the foreground stunt elements and the layers of extras. Dutton says, “We'd put the people back there, and, if they didn't look right, Dave would shrink them and move them around to make the shot look correct.”
“There were at least four or five layers of people,” Taylor says. “What saved us was that the camera didn't have to pass over the crowd's heads. If it had, it would have been very obvious that they were just paper dolls!”
Mark Henniston completed the shot by rotoscoping with Avid's Commotion software. Taylor explains, “We had to clean up the rope on which Casanova swings, and the entrance of the coach and horses had to be cleaned up on the edge of the frame.”
The final touch was Williams' addition of a little camera movement during compositing. Dutton says, “It seemed like an appropriate thing to do, because if a camera operator was actually shooting this, he would follow the actor's movement. We try to do anything to make an effects shot look like it was shot by a DP.”
For all their persistence, there came a point when Dutton and Taylor had to let the shot be and trust that audiences wouldn't spot the seams. Dutton notes that he and Taylor were trained by effects legend Al Whitlock. “We had one thing drummed into us by Al,” he says. “If it looks right, it is right!”
Credit Roll
| Director - | Lasse Hallström |
| Director of Photography - | Oliver Stapleton |
| Second Unit Director - | Kimble Rendall |
| Second Unit Cameraman - | John Clothier |
| For Illusion Arts: | |
| Visual Effects Supervisor - | Bill Taylor |
| Matte Painting - | Syd Dutton |
| Rotoscoping - | Mark Henniston |
| Compositing - | David Williams |
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