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MillimeterCompositing Choreography
Apr 1, 2005 12:00 PM, By Michael Goldman
When Steele Inc., Santa Monica, Calif., took the job of filling a Mexican soccer stadium with 40,000 screaming fans for a Spanish-language :30 spot promoting the merger of Cingular and AT&T Wireless, the company choreographed a basic methodology for acquiring dozens of plates, compositing them together, and then color correcting the entire commercial after the compositing process. The spot posed “a challenge,” according to visual effects supervisor Brian Adler, because the production had to move 500 extras around Estadio Corregidora, outside of Mexico City, filming them in different locations to create plates. That process took an entire day, with light and shadows changing throughout.
(From left to right) 500 extras filmed against a greenscreen, the back plate shot, and the final composite.
Jerry Steele, visual effects compositor, and Adler were deeply involved in the selection of the location, coordinating a methodology of “shooting in patches” at the stadium using a Milo Motion Control rig, according to Steele, and in taking over the spot's color correction requirements, using Steele's Quantel eQ system.
“The sky was the biggest concern, and we knew the sky and light wouldn't look the same all day, since it would take hours to shoot at the stadium,” says Steele. “We suggested shooting in patches according to the location of the sun.”
Crucial to a seamless composite was Steele's insistence that he perform final color correction with eQ's color module once they finished the compositing phase.
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