Main Title Sequence Visual Effects For Fox Searchlight Pictures' A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM, Banned from the Ranch Entertainment took a simple request for a 5-second overlay of the film's logo against a background shot and created a 76-second main title sequence featuring a sunrise, fairies and butterflies. "Since this was the first impression for the film, we felt it was important to have something that set up the style and tone of the film," notes BFTR Visual Effects Supervisor Van Ling. "The challenge was to find some way to convey both a rustic and a magical feel at the same time." Using a series of video animatics created in Adobe After Effects, Ling pitched his ideas to director Michael Hoffman and Fox Post Supervisor Rob Yamamoto, who immediately gave the thumbs-up. We started by taking a 10-second production daytime establishing shot of the Tuscany countryside and digitally removed the anachronistic telephone poles and electrical power lines from the shot. We then created moving holdout mattes for the waving foreground foliage, a midground ridge and castle, the far background hills and the sky. This allowed us not only to create a realistic day-for-night color correction, but to build a subtle transition from dawn to daytime by altering the layers separately. These isolated elements were then seamlessly looped to extend the 10-second segment to the requisite length. Working without the benefit of any of the fairy elements that appear throughout the film, BFTR's artists created fluttering, impressionistic fairies from scratch and designed an animation that would have them swooping playfully around in frame, occasionally illuminating the main title against a night sky. A hero fairy image created in Adobe After Effects was replicated and animated weaving among the letters of the title in Alias PowerAnimator. For the breakup of the main title logo into dozens of butterflies, both 2D and 3D butterflies were created and animated in Maya, and the entire shot was composited using Adobe After Effects. To avoid any additional generational loss in optical, all of the title cards in the sequence were added digitally in the comping stage as well. What started as a simple title over footage became a visually dynamic way of introducing the mystical, magical nature of the film, which is exactly the kind of care and attention we like to bring to the films we work on. ©1999 Twentieth Century Fox Main Title Sequence and Visual Effects by BANNED FROM THE RANCH ENTERTAINMENT Visual Effects Supervisor   VAN LING Visual Effects Producer CASEY CANNON Production Manager   KERRY SHEA Technical Director   TRAVIS LANGLEY Digital Artists   GUNTHER SCHATZ MARTHA SOEHENDRA TODD VAZIRI HITOSHI INOUE JOSH SAETA Technical Supervisor   DERICK TORTORELLA I/O Coordinator   FRED LACAYANGA VFX Editor   DEBRA SANDERSON Banned From The Ranch Entertainment Home Page General Information: info@bftr.com