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Digital Neural Axis Completes 68 VFX Shots for ‘The Aviator’

San Francisco, CA, February 2, 2005 – Red Giant Software today announced that Digital Neural Axis, used Primatte Keyer and Composite Wizard to complete more than 68 VFX shots on Martin Scorsese’s film ‘The Aviator’ nominated for 11 Academy Awards. With Red Giant Software’s tools, Digital Neural Axis (DNA) keyed and composited all interior shots used to recreate the flight of Howard Hughes’ innovative aircraft, The H-4 Hercules, commonly called The Spruce Goose.

Challenges

All footage of The Spruce Goose’s interior had been shot on 35mm against greenscreen. The first great technical challenge was to quickly and efficiently pull procedural keys on thousands of Cineon frames—while preserving as much detail as possible for seamless compositing results.

Another major challenge came up late in the project that was described as “improbable” to execute. Rob Legato, the film’s VFX Supervisor, asked DNA to remove Cate Blanchett (playing Katharine Hepburn) from non-greenscreen footage, showing the actress with backlit hair, at a movie premier surrounded by camera flashes, and put her into a new background where the lighting setup was not the same and had a completely different sequence of camera flashes. This change was necessary because in editing the film, two shots were selected to be used in succession, which happened to include the same very noticeable “extra” passing behind the principle actors.

Solutions

DNA used Primatte Keyer in After Effects to build procedural mattes of all the interior Spruce Goose scenes. Together with tracking and rotoscoping in After Effects, they used Primatte Keyer to create inner and outer mattes and then combined them to preserve the fine details of hair and window reflections. DNA also experimented with a beta version of Primatte Keyer, called Key Correct. This future version of the software includes popular features for managing spill, edge softening, light wrap, color matching, and other composite enhancing operations.

Key Correct’s Color Matcher feature played an important role in matching the background footage with its own pattern of camera flashes and lighting to rotoscoped foreground elements, including Cate, which had a very different lighting setup and camera flashes. Composite Wizard’s standard Edge Blur and Edge Feather were used to make the edges look more organic and photo-realistic.

“At DNA we believe in taking full advantage of on-going advances in digital technology—and Red Giant Software gave us tools to ensure we met all the challenges requested of us by The Aviator’s visual effects team. We felt a great sense of pride in receiving Rob Legatos’s near-immediate sign off on our first pass of the Cate Blanchett “improbable” composite shot. In fact, this shot, once thought impossible, has been cited several times by the film’s editor, Thelma Schoonmaker, as an example of how she has come to believe, after working on ‘The Aviator’, that almost anything is now possible in digital post production,” said Darius Fisher, President at Digital Neural Axis.

Pricing and Availability

• Primatte Keyer 1.5 for After Effects (Macintosh and Windows) is available now for $495 USD.
• Composite Wizard (Macintosh and Windows) is available now for $295 USD.

About Red Giant Software

Red Giant Software LLC (www.redgiantsoftware.com) is a San Francisco-based company that develops professional tools for digital video production. Products are available as plug-ins for popular video editing and effects applications including After Effects, Final Cut Pro, Motion, Premiere Pro, and Avid. All tools are based on production-proven technology developed by visual effects veterans.

All product and company names herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.