You wouldn’t think a movie like “Julie & Julia” would be very VFX heavy, but a new press release from Brainstorm Digital reveals their use of Nuke, Photoshop, and Maya to reconstruct the “Ground Zero” environment used in the film.
The painters worked in a 16-bit half-float linear workflow within Photoshop with help from Fnordware’s ProEXR which helped them merge seamlessly into Brainstorm’s internal linear color pipeline. This enabled them to output multi-layer OpenEXRs for the compositing team who then went straight into the 2.5D camera projection workflow inside Nuke rather than rendering out passes out of 3D. “The process saved both time and money by enabling us to have a smaller team perform much more efficiently,” said Ball.
Read the full press release after the break.
(Brooklyn, NY)–In the hit movie, “Julie & Julia,” written and directed by Nora Ephron, Brainstorm Digital provided the movie’s visual effects, bringing to life both the cityscapes of Paris in 1949 for Julia Child’s (Meryl Streep) early scenes, as well as downtown New York in 2002. But it was a shot of New York City’s Ground Zero–a key visual to establish Julie Powell’s (Amy Adams) work for the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation in a post 9/11 world–that gave the Brainstorm team an opportunity to test their newly streamlined 2.5D production environment.
The original shot of Ground Zero was filmed in 2008 from about a block away on a Panavision Technocrane with a very long lens. Tree branches and leaves obscured the frame in the foreground which contributed to an extremely difficult tracking situation. Because it was Brainstorm’s job to render the site as it looked in 2002, other than being able to use the angle of the shot as a reference point, little of the original plate photography was contemporaneous to 2002.
“After reviewing the shot we decided that matte painting would be our best course of action,” said Justin Ball, VFX Supervisor. “But rather than using our traditional matte painting workflow, we used Nuke and its 2.5D tool set.”
While the tracking team worked on the shot, matte painters Matthew Conner and Garrett Eaton began designing the painting of the final frame as this was the most expansive point in the parallax shift between foreground and the deep background. All the work performed on the last frame would be applicable to all the previous frames in the shot.
The painters worked in a 16-bit half-float linear workflow within Photoshop with help from Fnordware’s ProEXR which helped them merge seamlessly into Brainstorm’s internal linear color pipeline. This enabled them to output multi-layer OpenEXRs for the compositing team who then went straight into the 2.5D camera projection workflow inside Nuke rather than rendering out passes out of 3D. “The process saved both time and money by enabling us to have a smaller team perform much more efficiently,” said Ball.
Silhouette was used to extract the leaves and branches in the foreground of the original shot. The Roto team was able to track roto shapes over short frame ranges which greatly sped up an otherwise time-consuming task.
With the layering work complete, the shot was brought to life by compositing in green screen elements for people and background animation. Smoke and dust effects were created with the fluids tool in Maya and rendered through AIR to mimic the hazy atmosphere above the pit. The final step was to add live-action foreground elements to further bring the bustling downtown scene to life.
“Each project offers unique technical challenges and time constraints,” said Ball. “When a software is helping solve both of these issues at once, it’s a big plus for the client and the production team as well.”
About Brainstorm Digital VFX
Brooklyn-based Brainstorm Digital has created visual effects and title sequences for award-winning films by the most accomplished directors in the industry. Founded in 2005 by artists Richard Friedlander and Glenn Allen, Brainstorm’s current and completed projects include “Julie and Julia,”
“Did You Hear About the Morgans,” “Angels and Demons,” “Frost/Nixon,” “Synecdoche, New York,” “Going the Distance,” and HBO’s long-anticipated show “Boardwalk Empire.” For more information visit www.brainstorm-digital.com or call 646-330-5245.
