Blade II

 

Working for the Computer Film Company, now known as Framestore CFC.

Being an After Effects user, and not considered a 'proper' compositor by the main facility houses, I was immediately assigned to the paint department and given a pile of wire removal and rotoscoping to do.

After a while the VFX producers at CFC got fed up with me completeing shots faster than they could do the paper work, so they started giving me harder shots to do.

There were a bunch of shots with Blade running across rafters in which a supporting wire rig had to be removed. Instead of painting out individual frames, which is what most 'paint artists' would do, I built up a large cleanplate of the ceiling, tracked it into place and rotoscoped back the foreground and Blade.

Another interesting problem working on Blade was creating light effects which were not, and for the most part not be, achieved during the shooting process. As Blade despatches the Vampires they 'self combust' with glowing embers and ash. The light from the CG animated demise had to somehow illuminate Blade. With his black clothes and dark skin, there was very little information in the film image to create any kind of adjustment mask. The only way left was good old animation.
Key frames were used to create painted interactive light mattes which were animated and warped to match the live action.

Another interesting shot regarding the Vampire deaths was one where a female falls down some stairs as her body turns to ash and bones. This shot required a cleanplate of somekind to reveal the background as the girl's body disintergrates. A rough cleanplate of the scene was filmed "best guess" matching the handheld camera move, but with no lighting effects, which change dramatically over the length of the shot, and no pyrotechnics.
With the girl rotoscoped out of the shot a big hole was left in the scene which I eventually filled with a complicated composite of tracked in stills of the empty scene with various light effects, and 2D generated smoke, pyros and particles.

When shown the final cleanplate, many people ask... "So what did you do in this shot?". Shame they spoiled it by sticking an incinerating vampire over the top of it.

Later on in the scene Blade confronts his nemesis, Nomak - the vampire's vampire. He shoots Nomak in the head which leaves a nasty hole in his skull. Unaffected by the wound, which I added in for the couple of shots we initially see it, Nomak runs off. Blade catches up with him where, before Blade's eyes, the wound heals up. Originaly a task marked for the heavily burdened 3D team at CFC, I voluntered to do it in 2D and was handed the shot by a sceptical VFX supervisor.

Refering to this very shot the CFC website states, "An elegant 2D solution to this ostensibly 3D problem was found using the software tool After Effects."

I bet you didn't know I come as a plugin for After Effects!