The Spirit of collaboration

Wednesday, 24 December 2008

Tools developed specifically for The Orphanage and included in cineSync Pro proved very effective in the design and review process for the new Frank Miller film The Spirit.

In an interview with Computer Graphics World, visual effects supervisor Stu Maschwitz talks about the various tools and techniques he used to create The Spirit's highly stylised look, including using cineSync Pro for reviews.

From the article:

Maschwitz sat on a black leather couch in front of Rhodes' desk and reviewed shots as they came in. A JVC high-end home theatre system projected the shots onto a wide, flat screen monitor. Rising Sun Research's cineSync review and approval system funneled all the shots in the form of QuickTime files from the 10 studios in Australia, southern California and Mexico to the San Francisco based group. It allowed Machwitz to scribble and draw on the images using a wireless Wacom tablet and keyboard.

"I'd roll in at nine o'clock and leave at five," Maschwitz says, "and every minute of my time was scheduled while I was here. I'd spend half the day sketching on frames and the rest looking at hi-res shots."

When sketching wasn't enough, Maschwitz asked Rising Sun to add a soft airbrush to the cineSync tool kit. He demonstrates how the resulting tool works by blurring out a background in a shot of The Spirit on a rooftop and darkening the fog to focus all the attention on the heroic character in the now starkly graphic image."I could be on the phone with a studio and show them what I wanted [using cineSync]" he says. In addition, Rising Sun also added color correction to the cineSync tool set during The Spirit's post-production.

To see the new tools mentioned by Stu, you can contact Rory McGregor at cineSync to get set up with a cineSync Pro demo account. The cineSync Pro website is here.

To read the full article on the VFX and post-production process for the Spirit, you can check it out here on page 26.