American Cinematographer - July 2003 - 66

eye individually.
used to create an

Another macro was
overlay preset, which
enabled the team to see the right- and
left-eye images (from the two bracketed
HD cameras) overlaid. Crystal Eyes soft¬
ware and glasses enabled the filmmak¬
ers to then see the image in full 3-D.
"One of the difficulties in making stereo
movies is that you have to keep the
convergence in front of the screen,"

During the
greenscreen

portion of the
shoot, actors

playing
passengers and
crew members
were filmed on
sets

notes Satin. "If it moves

different areas
of the Titanic.
The Ultimatte

shot 7)/i miles under the ocean's surface
added to the

HD matte¬

the distance between the

the filmmakers

which

were

used to
transform the
actors into

ghostly
apparitions
during post.

the
To

bring footage of the rusting Titanicto
I life for Ghosts of the Abyss, director
I James Cameron and cinematographer
Vince Pace added the "ghosts" of those
who were its passengers and crew.
These were actors shot against a greenscreen at Fox Studios Baja, the stage
complex in Rosarito Beach, Mexico,
Cameron's

where

Titanic had been

filmed. To

heighten authenticity, art direc¬
Laing built a number of greenscreen sets and assembled historically
accurate period props and set pieces,
including lifeboats and launching davits.
Shooting greenscreen imagery
that will composite well with back¬
ground plates is always a challenge, but
tor Martin

Dave Satin at SMA in New York. Satin
had extensive

impor¬
maintaining the perspective in
the post/compositing process. Existing
previsualization systems offered very
limited resolution, and none of them

turn the Ultimatte HD into a 3-D compos¬

allowed

ite

in this case, the filmmakers had the

ite 3-D
70mm
was

having to compos¬
images for eventual output to
film. Adding to the complexity

the fact that the

camera

system

developed by Pace and Cameron
enabled them to focus and

zoom

in

stereo, a feat that underlined the

tance of

previz in three dimensions. "We
ability to preview stereo
composites in 1920x1080 high-defini¬
tion," reports visual-effects supervisor
Chuck Comisky.
Fortunately for the filmmakers,
Ultimatte Technology had just begun
needed the

July 2003

shipping its real-time FID matte¬
compositing system for all digital FID
and digital cinema 24p/psf image stan¬
dards. A third-generation all-digital
compositing system, Ultimatte FID had
already proven to be compatible with
Panavision and other high-definition
cameras. Ghosts took delivery of the first
production model, and with it the film¬
makers created a first: a previz system
that provided a view of a composited
image in three-dimensional space.
To operate the Ultimatte HD on
set, Comisky tapped Ultimatte operator
experience in greenscreen
compositing and, serendipitously, a
background in stereoscopic photography.
For this job, Satin needed to find a way
to enable the Ultimatte HD to previsual¬
ize stereo images. "The Ultimatte is the
Swiss Army knife of tools," he declares.
"It has a huge set of features related to
bluescreen photography, but you can
easily make it do things you might not
ordinarily expect it to do." The produc¬
tion's editor, Ed Marsh, and Satin did just
that, working together to create a way to

additional obstacle of

62

challenge, because the

filmmakers had been unable to

compositing
system allowed
to preview
composites,

around, it's very

fatiguing and causes eye strain." The
fact that the background plates had been

depicting

previz system.
Satin took

advantage of the
allowing the creation of
"macros" for the Ultimatte; creating a
preset for the left eye and right eye, he
could
with the push of a button -

feature

-

show the filmmakers the view of each

objects it captured

measure

camera

-

and

important

information for both the greenscreen
shoots and compositing.
Real-time

interactivity was
advantage of previsualizing the
composites with Ultimatte HD. To turn
the actors into "ghosts," Satin tweaked
parameters in real time to make them
more transparent and dark, working until
another

Cameron

was

satisfied with the look.

Satin then recorded those

settings,

which could be recalled when needed.
"It's

always nice to be able to look at the
composite when you're lighting the fore¬
ground," says Satin. "We saved a lot of
time because of my ability to give them
a high-res preview so they could better
match the foreground with the back¬
ground plate." Comisky agrees, noting
that Pace and Cameron

were

able to

check the greenscreen lighting for possi¬
ble compositing difficulties and make
any necessary corrections.
The ability to previsualize

the
ghosts in high-res 3-D enabled Comisky
and Satin to shoot as many as 30 setups
a day. Comisky notes that the project had
no script, and Cameron wanted to shoot
as many elements as possible. "Not
knowing what shots might be needed to
tell a cohesive story, Jim shot everything
he might need," says Comisky. Because
he could preview the composites,
Cameron

was able to shoot many
elements from which the post team
could craft the film's effects.
-

Debra Kaufman
American Cinematographer - July 2003

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