American Cinematographer - April 1991 - 78

'Bridge the 'DigitaC Qap
Dolby Spectral Recording Challenges
DigitaC in the IfieldToday

looked too traditional. Later
Paintbox
hand."

we

on

in

Harry/

put the honeydipper in its

It's obvious that

Noyes' job re¬
quires more than a knowledge of what's hip
with the youngsters. Experience (which
shows up in an ability to ask the right
questions as often as knowing the an¬
swers), and a keen knowledge of the ca¬
pabilities and limitations of the systems
seem

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spot is a segment where one kid holds up a

giant Honeycomb, a la Atlas, and through
the holes of the cereal pop five live action
kids and one animated character. A
daunting number of elements, each with its
own considerations technically, made up
the piece. Manipulating these elements
sounds relatively easy, but each method has
its own pitfalls. If an image needs to be
blown up too much to achieve proper size,
it will appear grainy. Perspective must be
planned and adhered to from the start.
lot that can go wrong.
"We photographed several kids
in different poses, pretending to hold up an
invisible object," begins Noyes. "We went

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a

great pains to make sure that the object

that

they were holding up was approxi¬
mately the right size and shape so that their
hands wouldn't be in the wrong place. An
eight inch model of a honeycomb was cre¬
ated that we used for all the special effects.

We took that model, held it in front of the
camera when we were shooting, and put it
in the screen approximately where we
wanted it, and laid it down on a piece of

tape. Then we played back the tape through
a mixer, did a freeze frame, and located the
kids on the stage so their hands would be

core

marry that with the model of the Honey¬
comb. That composite could then be put into
the shot of the kid holding it up. The ani¬
mated character was just shot as his own

piece of animation against blue, and
composited in with Harry/Paintbox."
As it turns out, peaceful coex¬
istence between live action humans and
animated characters is not an unusual
situation for Noyes. In fact, bringing that
idea to longer forms is a company goal at
Colossal. "I've always been interested in
this combination of live action and anima¬

tion," states Noyes. "I never really was that
interested in

becoming an animator per se
-doing animated stories. Nor was I really
that interested in becoming a standard live
action director. I've always loved graphics
and drawing, and I've always liked the kind
of fantasy world that you get when you take
real people and put them in imaginary en¬
vironments."
The Wizard of Ozcomes to mind,
as well as Song of the South. But Noyes is

with one kid we knew beforehand how

big the honeycomb was going to be, where
in the frame he was going to be, and about
how far he could lift it up before it went off
the screen
which are important con¬
siderations. Otherwise you're operating

allowed to make these kinds of commer¬
cials. Most of them are done for kids, but
of course I would love to see it expand into
adult commercials and feature films, and
television programs."

expensive

permanent modifications to

-

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attach a Century Extender
to the rear of your SLR

blind. How wide should the shot be? How

high quality images

Century Extenders

are
available for video bayonet
mount & Arri 16/35mm cameras.

automatic features.
Select extenders in either 2X

increase

your

or

1,4X

a

these

ing to - casting 116 children, dressing
them, outfitting them with props (everything
from spoons to giant television sets), and
finding them when they're needed. Ap¬
proximately twenty sets were constructed,

things.

funny faces, coming through the Honey¬
comb. We thought that in some cases we

tmlwiy.

precision optics

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Away from the camera, there are

big should the eye be? You have to know all
"Then we knew we needed to fill
the frame with all these other kids making

Original SLR lens maintains all

Ask for

the foam

even

a

70-420mmf6.3.

Jeff
Giordano

we cut

and had the kids stick their
head, arms and shoulders through. Based
on all the material that we shot, we had
enough kids and neat activities so that we
could then give that to the Harry/Paintbox
operator, and she had nice clean mattes to

Century 1 4X Extender becomes

when the kids were on their marks. As
it turns out, we went with the take where
there was only one kid in the frame, but
see

powers to

"Later
some more,

A 50-300mm Nikon f4.5 with the

right place. We then drew on the
monitor with a grease pencil, so we could

lens for

explains.

talking about thoroughly up-to-the-minute
applications for the concept.
"I don't know why, but it's
something that I've been playing with for a
long time, and it has come into vogue in
advertising. And so I've discovered adver¬
tising, and it's discovered me, and I've been

in the

No need to do

might want heads and in other cases we
might want torsos and heads. After con¬
sidering a number of alternatives, we ended
up taking two pieces of foam core, paint¬
ing them blue, and notching them just big
enough so that if you put a kid's head in
there, it acted like a guillotine - nothing
showed except his head and his collar," he

April 1991

a

details that need attend¬

simple brick wall to

a
American Cinematographer - April 1991

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