This project was a blast! I had the chance to be part of the team both on set and post production. All the VFX were done using NUKE to help color management and follow our standard of image quality.

The Mirror shot

This shot was the most complicated to pull of. Since the team did not have time allocated to rig anything but lighting on location, I had to deal with a clean plate that did not contain any green screen. Therefore, I had to be clever in post production and had to use a combination of luma matte, color matte and masking in NUKE to hide the camera in the mirror. The TV was also closed while recording. I asked that it remained closed since it would help avoid any light leaks or color shift, making it easier to pull future roto.

I also asked for the actors to get out of frame at the end so I could use the full background in the paint out/cleanup. We also taped the camera with blue tape to help me pull a very rough key on the object and replace it with the background. We did not have a remote follow focus on set, so I also had to remove the focus whip while it was moving. Hopefully, the shot was static and I only had to match the focus changes of the camera and did not have to track the camera motion.

Window replacement and actor tracking

When I saw the dailies, someone mentioned to the director the shadows in the windows did not look realistic in the setting of the house. Even if we did it with practical effects and followed the rules of realism, most agreed that this was true. I then had the chance to talk to the director and offered to replace the window’s content with a plate we could shoot in a studio. The actors were nice enough to offer their time once again and we shot that on a RED camera that we had access to with this studio.

We shot the whole movie on an ALEXA XT but since I only used the RED footage to create shadows, we didn’t mind switching camera for the plate. I only had to match the ALEXA ISO noise according to the information I received from the camera metadata.

The actor was a very easy to move since the framing already separated the window and the actor. It was as easy as creating a mask around the windows and to a time shift on the actor’s side. I encountered a little hiccup doing so since the camera frame did move a little bit. This created a shift in position that I solved by tracking the brick wall and created a camera projection from the tracking. I then only had to stick the window replacement to the camera projection and bring back the window frame with a luma matte.