Caine and Todd's game of 'crawler chicken' is played out on graphics displays created and burned-in by BFTR.
©1998 Warner Bros.
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A series of other burn-ins included some viewscreens for Caine (played by a buffed-up, bald and one-eyed Jason Scott Lee). A single background plate was
provided by the production of a chrome console with a backlit green screen area, to which we added our graphic, a film-resolution readout of the crawler's targeting and navigation system. For shots where the crawler was in motion, appropriate camera shake was added to the static shot, to match shots before and after.
For three cockpit shots, we not only tracked our graphics onto dashboard
monitors but also created and composited the images outside the large windshield. Each of the shots contained a wild, non-motion-control camera move, often starting off the window and screens, for which each of the four greenscreens (three monitors and the windshield) had to be matchmoved and rotoscoped.
The backgrounds consisted of matte painting elements of other effects shots in the film (provided by Matte World Digital), various 3D elements created in ElectricImage, a starfield provided by the production, and several layers of dust and smoke elements to simulate the planet's atmosphere, as well as the dust kicked up by the spaceship itself. We also added both digital camera shakes and interactive lighting/reflections to help sell the shot, especially one involving the fiery background of Todd's ship narrowly escaping the planet's explosion.
 
For three complicated cockpit shots, we were charged with not only creating and compositing the montitor screens, but with creating what was outside the soldiers' ship. Main elements to this shot included the greenscreen pull on the four screens, painted reflections, and computer generated garbage heaps and atmosphere. Look at the various elements of this shot in motion--download the large, hirez Quicktime (3.3MB) or the small, low-rez Quicktime (1.7MB).
©1998 Warner Bros.
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This 'before and after' illustrates the amount of dust and debris BFTR added to this exciting shot.
©1998 Warner Bros.
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Early in the film, Todd is scoping out the villagers from atop a hewn-rock stairway, when a sudden dust storm appears, blowing him off the pile. The slow-motion shot, although containing a small amount of debris and dust, didn't nearly match the intensity of the digitally-created dust storms that appear elsewhere in the film--a dense, thick burst of smoke and debris.
Todd Vaziri rotoscoped and isolated Kurt Russell's flying body in the shot, while Van and artist Gunther Schatz teamed up to create particle-system dust and debris in After Effects (using Final Effects Particle World) and Alias Particle, respectively. Van then composited the elements together, layering the dust so that it rolled off surfaces and wrapped around the falling character.
continued...
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General Information: info@bftr.com
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