American Cinematographer - June 2001 - 112

Follow
yellow, magenta and cyan," Lamaire
explains. "The challenge with these
kinds of techniques is to separate the
colors that are very close to each other.
That's why, with one kilovector, we first
grabbed the hue of the color, then the
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luminance of the color, and then the satu¬
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replaced it with a different
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of the shots, however, the
too close to the color

were

being changed, or items didn't have
enough color in them to be switched in
telecine. Those shots

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were

done instead

by Cerulean Digital Color and Animation,
a company that also colorizes older
footage, such as vintage TV series or
archival material. According to Tracy
Pearce, the company's director of produc¬
tion, Cerulean does its colorization using
a proprietary software that allows
animators to draw self-matting polygons
on the footage frame by frame. Each
polygon applies a transparent color
according to the luminance value of the
image, and also blocks out the colors
applied below it. For this reason, the
polygons are applied in layers, from the
back of the image to the front.
In
3000

one scene

in "B.O.B.," Andre

chased by a
crowd of kids. Cerulean colored the
runs

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a street,

then had to matte each
using polygons
him or her from
shot to shot so that the green layer
below wouldn't show through. "We had
to animate that, even though they were
their original color," says Pearce. The
work on those shots was done by anima¬
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person running along,
that moved along with

tors

in Patma, India, who work for

Cerulean's parent company,
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Dynacs Inc.
"B.O.B.," as
with many music videos, was to shoot
the project in the short time allotted, yet
still attempt something innovative.
Gopinath says a cinematographer needs
to develop a balance: "You have to think
technically ancf artistically."
■
American Cinematographer - June 2001

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