Francis’ Weblog

Great week compositing! each morning we have been looking at and movie history and how certain films pushed digital compositing up a noch. This morning we saw the great train robbery from 1905 which has one of the first composits, really dodgy but amazing to see. It was basically the inside of a station office with a window with a composited view of a train coming into the platform, for a 1905 silent black and white film it looked quite good! filming then went to simple colour correction a few years later with ‘Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves’, having each frame coloured in by hand.

Anyway I finished the the first animation piece today but forgot to upload it, so heres the one from end of play thursday, i’ve retimed the camera shake, got rid of the pulsing sun and added a cloud, shadow and a bit of colour correction

Ok its getting a little more complicated now, were looking at issues when artifacts or errors start appearing within the composition due to maths functions being put in the wrong way around or mattes not working correctly. I’ve improved the vanilla animation too today, getting rid of the throbing sun (it really didnt look right), adding a shadow under the girl and gun, I added a cloud which comes in when she gets mad and did some colour correction and bluring/motion bluring on a couple of artifacts. I Should have it finished tommorow so i’ll upload the new one then.

Well here it is … the first compostion… its a bit dodgy as i’ve only had half a day on it. The sun jiggles around a bit too much and the camera jerk is at the wrong time but hey! getting there This composition was made up of 6 elements: Vanilla (the girl), the tree and grass, the smoke, the background hill, the sky and finally the sun. Also if you notice there are a couple of blades of grass infront of her, these were originally on the background plate (the tree and grass) but I brought them to the front so that she walked behing them.

I started my digital compositing course today. Its great! the instructor really knows what he is talking about, and seems to know everyone in the industry. The first day was really a get to know you day and also talking about the industry and how it works. We also went through some show reels from previous students and went through “The mills” show reel. Its going to be a full on course by the looks of things, we were put through the real basics today… “What is a pixel?”, “What is bit depth?” but he’s taking it easy this week.

It also looks like there is still a huge demand for Digital Compositors in the market at the moment (which is good), anyway more tommorow…

Well I had a great week snowboarding. Myself and my family were in Les Houches a small resort near chamonix. Its the first time my parents have actually seen me snowboard… ever! We were at a family friends chalet which was about 100yards from the main life (so it was tough in the morning to get up go :)). The resort isn’t 100% snowboarding “compatible” there are quite a few flat bits and not impossible. I hired a guide for the day to hunt out the off-piste and there happened to be quite a bit of snow hidden around, but by the end of the week some of the pistes were rock hard … oh and a couple of button lifts from hell too no wonder it wasn’t in my World Snowboarding guide My mum had a couple of lessons skiing but unfortunatly had a bit of a crash and crushed one of her vertibra so it now out of action for a couple of months.