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Visual Effects and Computer Graphics |
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About Our Work
For Warner Bros.' ambitious sci-fi action film SOLDIER, Banned from the Ranch provided 19 key visual effects shots for the film, which also
featured effects from such companies as Rhythm & Hues, Matte World
Digital and Rainmaker. Visual effects supervisor Ed Jones and producer
Mitzi Casida oversaw the work of and data exchanges between the various houses. BFTR's work was overseen by producer Casey Cannon and production managers Kerry Shea and Gail Wise.
SOLDIER, a huge action epic ostensibly set in the same time period as the classic BLADE RUNNER, tells the story of Todd (Kurt Russell), a soldier trained
from birth who is banished to a desolate garbage planet after
being deemed 'obsolete'. On the planet, plagued by massive dust storms,
Todd is befriended by a group of outcasts, who are
made to be target practice for the villainous military that made Todd
obsolete. Todd regains his humanity by defending the inhabitants of the
planet, finally hijacking the soldiers' spaceship and setting a
destination for a new planet to call their home.
Brought onto the film after photography had wrapped, one of the first tasks for the BFTR team was to design and composite
various futuristic computer screens into live-action production
footage. During filming, computer screens had not yet been designed, so
viewscreens and monitors on the sets were backlit green.
At top is a frame of the original footage. Below are frames from the final composite, where we tracked our graphic onto the monitor.
©1998 Warner Bros.
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The screens, which ranged from navigational monitors, targeting screens,
countdown timers and proximity alerts, were designed by visual effects
supervisor Van Ling, and animated by artist Ian Marks. The slick
screens needed to convey very specific information --information that not
only the characters needed to comprehend, but the audience, as well. As usual, we made it a point to create graphics that were a careful balance of key story-point information and visual coolness, with an in-joke or two (or twelve) thrown in for good measure. These film-resolution screens were created in Adobe Photoshop and animated in Adobe After Effects, with some 3D elements created in ElectricImage.
Once the graphics were designed and created, we had to composite our screens into the anamorphic production footage for a dozen shots, which required meticulous, frame-by-frame tracking, rotoscoping and compositing, which were supervised by 2D supervisor Todd Vaziri and executed by artists Martha Soehendra and Josh Saeta using After Effects.
For one particular shot, the camera began with the monitor screen nearly filling the frame; as the shot progressed, the camera dollies back to reveal soldiers Todd and Riley looking at the monitor, which displays a map of the galaxy. Todd taps the screen with his finger to 'select' a destination, opening a screen window with more data. The camera move was not shot motion-control, so the camera was bouncing all over the place. In addition, the screen faces were all oddly-shaped to get away from the traditional rectangular look, which made the tracking even more challenging. With the addition of raster lines, film grain and monitor reflections, we were able to incorporate our graphics seamlessly into the scenes. continued...
Banned From The Ranch Entertainment Home Page
General Information: info@bftr.com
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