"A Lonely Place For Dying" VFX Breakdowns

Hey guys. Last year I worked on the film "A Lonely Place For Dying". I was visual effects supervisor. I wrote up a blog entry containing some breakdowns from the film. Take a look if you are interested...

http://danielbroadway.blogspot.com/2010/02/lonely-place-for-dying-vfx-breakdowns.html

EDIT: For some reason, two of the breakdowns didn't appear in the entry as they should have. It's the two high altitude bombing shots. They have now been added.

 

Any reason you didn't kill the huge over-exposed section of the phone booth?

 

Because it's a specular highlight which matches to the angle of light in the background plate. I was going for realism, not pretty perfection. If you shot this scene for real, the sun would create a specular hit like that, so I saw no need to remove it.

 

I kinda like it. It adds atmosphere to the shot.
The bus looks a little CG, but I bet some people will think that's the only part of the shot that's been altered.

 

Eh. Not sure I agree, and even if I did, it only reveals it's perfect prop-ness. There should be something breaking up that highlight, at least.

That I'm bringing this up only speaks to the nothing-to-nitpickness of the rest.

 

For some reason, two of the breakdowns didn't appear in the entry as they should have. It's the two high altitude bombing shots. They have now been added.

 

Oh, more to nitpick!

Those planes are moving awful goddamn slow compared to the clouds. Was that a notes thing, or do you just not understand Bernoulli's princple?

[image=http://whatsonyourshelf.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/statler-waldorf.jpg]

Ohhhh ho ho ho ho!


EDIT: This is meant in jest. I feel that this is about to become a thing with me.

 

Actually, the clouds are not moving at all. The camera is flying over the terrain with the planes, and the parallax of the clouds against the ground may look like they are moving, but I assure you they are stationary. Also, I was given an animatic by another artist and told to closely time and match that, so that's what I did.

 

Right, but they should be whizzing by the camera, shouldn't they?

 

If the camera were stationary, perhaps. However, the camera is flying almost as fast as the planes across the ground, like being shot from a witness plane. So with relative frame of reference, the planes can appear to be going slow. Much like when you pass a car on the interstate, you might only be going 5mph faster, and so you pass the car slowly instead of whizzing by relative to your frame of reference.

 

The clouds, Pixel. The clouds should be whizzing by the camera.

 

Perhaps. I set the scene up in 3D space, and rendered it. The clouds in the shot are pretty far away, so they don't whiz by. Maybe I should have had some closer to give a better sense of motion. As far as the second shot, the camera is not moving relative to the ground, so the planes may appear to be going too slow. However, I did try them faster, and it just didn't "feel" right. Physics are a nice guideline to start with in effects, but if it looks wrong, you gotta do something else.

Either way, this is how the director wanted it, so that's what I did.

 

You kids are cute.
It sounds like we should watch that scene in The Aviator, where they were trying to shoot planes in front of clouds, for comparison.


I dunno, Fig. As an observant non-CG guy, the relative motion looks okay to me.

 

Um, if the camera isn't moving relative to the ground in the second shot, your planes are going 40 mph tops. They should fall out of the sky.

 

I think the high altitude one really needs those clouds close by. Perspective and movement is very hard to feel, especially when you have things only in the middleground and background (planes and ground). If you're moving with the planes, because the ground is so far away, the planes will always appear to be moving slower than they actually are. You almost absolutely NEED something in the foreground to not only give a sense of depth, but a sense of movement. I never set up a movement shot without something in the foreground, without something indicating that the camera is moving in space so people aren't questioning the movement of the subject (unless that question never arises... depending on the situation and shot).

Very good nonetheless. How is working with the director? He was giving a lot of detailed in depth tips and tricks over at the DVXuser forum, until he got some bad criticism and he just completely deleted everything and left. Heard he never took crit well.

 

Working with Justin was great. He always stayed cool under pressure all through post. He was fair, and really understood the VFX process better than most directors. Not only that, but he and his team are really good with communication, which helped keep me on track, even though I live a thousand miles away. No complaints really.

As to the incident over at DVXuser, I cannot comment on that, as I was not aware of it, nor do I know the reason he left.

 

I'm a pilot and an airplane nut and noticed no problem with the speed of the planes. Perhaps it was too realistic for some people, I don't know. But when you view a plane at a far distance, it doesn't move particularly fast. It takes half an hour for an airliner to cross the sky when flying at 30,000 feet. Now this is much closer, but regardless, it looked fine to me. Very nice breakdown. Thanks for doing it. Excited to see the movie.

 

A B52 is roughly 160 ft long. In that clip it takes them about 3 seconds to move the length of their own body. 160/3 = 53.3 ft/s = 36.4 mph.

 

I'm not saying your wrong, and after looking again at the second clip it does look a little off if you know that the camera is stationary. But my mind just assumed, like the first one, that the camera was on a chase plane and was moving along with them.

 

If it was on a chase plane, the clouds would be whizzing by. We're going in circles here - the shot looks wrong to me, for what turn out to be at least two good reasons. Bam.

 

Why would the clouds be whizzing by? They're not moving at all relative to the ground. The camera is way up high compared to them and looks like it's on a relatively long lens, which flattens the perspective. If it were closer to the clouds that would be one thing. But it isn't.

Both shots look fine to me.

 

I'm referring to the bottom of the two videos, the top one doesn't bother me.

It looks to me as if the camera is in the clouds, just above the planes, based on the parallax we see as we move up; we seem to be slowly ascending through the wisps of clouds we're seeing. You can clearly see layering effects in the clouds to simulate that upwards-parallax as we go. Shot with a long lens, we wouldn't be getting that. That kind of motion would only happen with a short lens, on a similar plane (measurable field, not aircraft) as the clouds themselves.

For that reason - while the actual plane elements are rendered in a way that appears to long-lensed and flat - they're moving in the shot as if they're only a quarter of a mile below us. And the rate they're moving across the screen at is very slow.

Either the planes are moving very very slowly (you say they're not), or the camera is moving with them at almost full speed, and trying to keep up with them. If it's not the first, that's fine - but if it's the latter, the camera, which is in the clouds, should be seeing clouds whizzing by at near-plane speed.