CASINO was the first project I did for ROMEOETFILS. It was mostly very simple cleanup. The only difference was that I needed to work from pre-graded footage and had to do it all in less than 12 hours, in one single night (I received the shots at 4 pm and had an online session with the client at 9 am next day). Since I received an RGB DNXHR 444 XQ, I had enough latitude even if I couldn’t have access to the uncrushed blacks.

FIXING THE CAR

Fixing the car was straightforward. I had to remove the logo and a part of the rig that was distracting. The technique HAD to be simple and done very fast because of time constraints. I chose three moments (first, middle and last frame) where I used the rotopaint node in Nuke to clone the surroundings and hide the elements. Then I animated the multiple merge nodes to change according to the correct moment for the transition to become seamless. I just used a standard 2D planar track and applied it to the three frameholds to make them match the movement perfectly.

The car door was made the same way, only I had to track different parts of it because of the parallax and only used one keyframe. I had to keep the reflexions to make it look good and I achieved this by using a luma key and playing with the transparency of a single frame that I also painted out.

FIXING THE HAIRS

The colorist @SimonBoix actually made my job a lot easier on this one. I had enough latitude in data to take the blacks and crush them after using a luma matte to add the body back in the foreground. The hardest one was the beard since I really had to make sure not to remove any part of his face.

Oh and if you are wondering, yes I did spend part of my night looking at Jimmy from occupation double…