American Cinematographer - May 2006 - 87

Day follows in
Gene Kelly's
footsteps by
emulating a
sequence from
Singin' in the
Rain. Below: Day

often, part-time jobs. "I got the project
almost ready to go by doing a sort of
mini

preproduction between

semes¬

ters," explains Mitchell. "Then the first
third of the semester was spent ironing
out exactly what the video was going to
be in terms of shots, which we did with

rehearses for the
shot while
assistant visual-

storyboards and that sort of thing."
When it came time to crew up, Mitchell
"played the students to their strengths.
For example, I wanted the motionpicture students, not the visual-effects
students, to be in the camera depart¬
ment. But at the same

time, I

effects

supervisor

Russ T. Gee takes
a

measurement

for Match Move
survey

data.

encour¬

aged them to mingle and show each
other what they were doing." Fie also
brought in a director, Chris Lawing, to
take some of the pressure off of himself
he was already acting as producer,
cinematographer and visual-effects
supervisor.
Naturally, part of the preproduc¬
tion process was deciding which shots

-

to

re-create

from the movies the

students wanted to showcase. For the

Citizen Kane sequence, the class
decided to re-create Kane's political

speech, placing Day behind the podium
Kane commanded in the film. "We
able to get Pete Wheelan, our still
photographer, to shoot Spencer looking
very Kane-like in that awkward pose he
has on the poster you see onstage,"
says Mitchell. Eric Bouffard then used
that still to create a matte painting,
were

which in turn

was

handed

over

to

compositor Jaymie Lam. Lam then
combined the matte painting with a
live-action shot of Day taken on the
school's greenscreen stage, manipulat¬
ing the two images to create what
appears to be a push-in on a dolly. "I
didn't want to do the shot with

a

All of the 25 effects shots in the

music video

presented challenges, but a
shot borrowed from the original War of
the Worlds called for an array of tech¬
niques, including rotoscoping, keying
and miniature photography. In the shot,
Day and the movie's heroine (played by
Nicole Gonzales) flee as alien spacecraft
destroy a house in the background.
"Darryl Lee, our special-effects supervi¬
sor and storyboard artist, ended up
building a model of the house that we
shot at 96 frames per second, the fastest
the school's Arri 35-111 could go, to

the smoke effect," says
was also responsible for
constructing the models of the space¬
ships, which Mitchell "lit and shot as
lock-offs so [the students] would be able
to key out the background and again,
with a 2-D X-Y manipulation, bring those
ships in and add a laser blast."
Tying this shot together was
compositor Adam Hazard, and Mitchell

a lot of work, and in
it's faster, easier and looks
better to combine [physical effects with

digital effects]."
After
completing principal
photography, the class went to local
post house Spy Post to do what Mitchell
calls "a poor man's digital intermedi¬
ate." Spy Post transferred the original
35mm footage (Kodak Vision2 500T
5218) to HDCam, and the footage was
then taken into Final Cut

as

1440x1080

QuickTime files. Notes Mitchell, "Targa
files were used for their bulletproof abil¬

ity to

Mitchell. Lee

lems; they're also safer, because each
frame is an uncompressed, separate
'file.' Almost every type of graphics

cites the result

moving on the project as a whole,
which adds to the postproduction

tures for what works best for miniatures

schedule," notes Mitchell. "So

shot

best

using digital tools for what works
digitally, and combining all of that

it as a lock-off and then put that matte
painting behind Spencer and actually
moved the matte painting down as we
zoomed in digitally, so it looks like it's
not a 2-D move. It actually looks as
though the perspective is changing and
the camera is dollying in."

into

one

we

right takes

capture

camera because we would
have had to do a little too much match-

moving

look

some cases

as

go

cross-platform without prob¬

effects software

we

used

supported

Targas. However,

we had to convert to
QuickTime to edit in Final Cut Pro

because it did not support the

Targa file

"one of the greatest

examples in this piece of using minia¬
and

cohesive shot.

"One of the things I really wanted
students in both departments to under¬

stand," he continues, "is that not all
great effects are CG, not everything is
built in Maya. Getting the modeling,
texturing, lighting and rendering to all
American

Cinematographer 83
American Cinematographer - May 2006

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - May 2006
