American Cinematographer - February 2008 - (Page 64) Forward Thinker could transfer video back to film without aliasing. We then did the entire sequence of 26 or so shots that way, completing it in just over two weeks. In one shot, we composited our video element of Swayze kissing a Styrofoam silhouette of Demi’s profile with a VistaVision element of Demi that we’d transferred to video, then filmed it out. It worked fantastically.” Ghost was a huge hit, as was Die Hard (AC Dec. ’88), another Boss Film project, but the times were changing. “Alien3 [AC Dec. ’92] was the last photochemically composited show we did, but the alien’s shadow was created digitally, and the film includes our first all-digital shot, done by Jim Rygiel — it’s the alien whose head cracks in close-up during the climax. On Species [AC Dec. ’95], we created one of the first digital humanoids; we built a 1⁄3-scale electronic puppet of Sil that was manipulated by four animators in real time. It enabled us to create lowres animation on our cyber-set that we could composite with background plates in real time. With this process, [director] Roger Donaldson could direct multiple takes, as though the puppet were an actor, while watching video of Sil’s action jumping around on the walls.” For the comedy Multiplicity (AC July ’96), which stars Michael Keaton as a man who has three clones, Edlund worked with director of photography Laszlo Kovacs, ASC and production designer Jackson De Govia to create many seamless splitscreen effects involving complex body contact and interaction across the splits. “The idea was to treat the show as a comedy starring four different actors who were interacting,” says Edlund. “We didn’t want those overly designed, ‘look at me’ kinds of visual-effects shots.” At a screening of Captured in his office not too long ago, Edlund has a Shakespearean moment with the skull he used for the famous meltingface shot during the climax of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Swayze to video frame-for-frame, and meanwhile, Gary Waller shot gossamer elements on a motioncontrol animation stand with an endoscope going through Christmas tinsel. I took it all over to Steve Price, the lead compositer at the Post Group, and we knocked out a shot. “By returning the test shot on film, I convinced [director] Jerry Zucker, [producer] Howard Koch and [editor] Walter Murch I 64 http://www.theasc.com http://www.theasc.com
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