back to page 1

Process:  The foreground and background elements are captured entirely separately, then put together into one image in the final stages of the film.

1. Capture Foregrounds

The foregrounds, that is, the actors and any props, were shot on a High-Definition (HD) digital movie camera, the Panavision/Sony CineAlta f-900. This camera can capture images at 6 times the resolution of standard video, and in fact we used the same cameras George Lucas used to shoot Episode II.

The actors performed in a large room with two huge green walls, connected with a rounded cove - allowing a seamless image. This is the Kurosawa Stage at the Robert Zemeckis Center at USC. We covered the floor with a cloth version of the same color, provided by Composite Components, which the actors stand on when they need to be separated from the floor.

All of the action of the film is shot this way, even elements that have only a small area needing removal - such as the wagon, where we can only see out the window. This means the actors must be able to imagine all of the scenery and yet still perform in a realistic manner. We found that theatre-trained actors were superb in this capacity.

We also shot our swan in front of the green screen, operated by puppeteers led by Beth Petersen. Created by David Covarrubias and Chris Hansen, it is one of the highlights of the production. Capable of simulating flight, walking, sitting or even swimming, we were able to use the one animatronic puppet to fill in for all seven depicted in the film. We only needed to remove the rods and add eye motion in post-production to make it complete.

2. Edit

We edited the entire film on two Pinnacle Cinewaves, which are Final Cut Pro editing systems capable of editing uncompressed HD. The Cinewave is a board that drops inside a Macintosh that, along with a RAID system, can cut the actual footage in real-time HD. Two Power Mac G4s, later replaced with Power Mac G5s, were donated by Apple along with an Apple 2.5 terabyte XServe RAID.

We began by editing the entire film in downconverted Standard Definition (SD) video, which allowed us to store the entire 50 hours of footage in a relatively small space. We cut the story together using the raw greenscreen footage - thereby focusing entirely on the actors performances.

3. Capture Backgrounds

We shot the backgrounds on a Kodak DCS Pro 645 system donated by Eastman Kodak. This camera shoots images at 16 megapixels (4,000 x 4,000), the largest image of any SLR camera, 8 times the resolution of HD. The backgrounds were all shot near Cazenovia, in the Finger Lakes region of central New York State and historic locations in Ireland. On most effects films, the backgrounds are shot first, forcing the film into predetermined directions. By shooting the backgrounds afterwards, we were able to be very flexible and adapted to changes as the story solidified in editorial.

4. Finish Editing

We then put temporary backgrounds into the edit we had completed. Once we saw what we had, we returned to editing and spent a great deal of time refocusing the film on the story. Since we already knew we had the best performances, now we changed the length and order of the shots to incorporate the entire film - foreground and background.

5. Effects (and Sound)

Once we had a nearly locked-down edit, we could spend our time doing the specific backgrounds for each shot. We began by keying a shot, which means to remove the green thereby giving us the actor in any space we wish. We did this primarily with Ultimatte's AdvantEdge, the most powerful keying software available (donated by Ultimatte). We then began the artistic process - creating the collages of stills that gave us the backgrounds. This meant pulling out elements from as many as 15 different still photos to create one single background. We used Adobe's After Effects for this (donated by Adobe), which is a remarkable program for working with 2-dimensional images over time.

Meanwhile, our sound designers were creating our amazing soundtrack. Check out the sound section to learn more about that.

6. Finish

The final film was completed and mastered to HD, in HDCam SR, HDCam, D5, and DVCPro-100 formats, allowing for the maximum flexibility in projection. We are planning to output to film, if we can find a donor. We have also created Standard Definition DVDs for home theater viewing.