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VFX Pro
Digital Dimension continues to help set the pace for seamlessly believable Hollywood visual effects as the lead visual effects studio on the new NASCAR-themed motion picture "Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby." Following on such collaborations as "Zathura: A Space Adventure" and "Blade: Trinity," Visual Effects Supervisor Joe Conmy entrusted the award-winning company with the movie's three large NASCAR race sequences, as well as other select scenes, for a total of 267 shots.
"Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby," directed by Adam McKay and released by Columbia Pictures, stars Will Farrell as a racecar driver trying to get his career on track. Digital Dimension's extensive contribution consisted of 2D, CG race cars and greenscreen composites, CG crowd creation, shot tracking, image replacement, detailed rotoscoping and digital reflections.
Digital Dimension's Visual Effects Producer Chris Del Conte notes that because almost all of the racing shots were filmed in empty stadiums, populating the grandstands and "recreating" many of the infields posed two of the project's biggest challenges. The infields were accomplished by leveraging footage captured with a high-speed moving camera car where possible. Digital Dimension compositors tracked, retimed and color corrected this production footage to create infield splits that perfectly matched the target plates.
The crowd effects (approximately 60 shots) included working in 2D to match crowd plates to the angles and quick maneuvers of the camera, tiling 2D crowd footage or, in some cases, tracking in an entire sea of spectators behind the small group of actors filmed live on set. On shots for which there were no filmed crowd elements that matched the angle and perspective of the camera move, Digital Dimension used Massive Software's 3D crowd animation system, which allowed thousands of realistically responding, completely digital race fans to be populated in the shot.
"Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby" also included around 100 visual effects shots completed at Digital Dimension to enhance the realism of scenes that were filmed with the movie's principal players in cars on greenscreen. Digital Dimension added a variety of subtle touches and details to these sequences, including moving backgrounds, "grime passes," visor reflections and artificial camera shake, to make it feel as if the actors were really in the race.
Certain shots and camera fly-throughs were done fully in CG by the company, with 3D digital elements ranging from the stadium, track and infield to crowds, hero race cars, and even grass. An extensive amount of removals, which saw Digital Dimension eliminating everything from film cameras to cylinders used for spectacular stunt car pyrotechnics, rounded out work.
Software used on the production at Digital Dimension ranged from Eyeon's Digital Fusion for compositing to The Foundry's Kronos software. 3D elements were modeled, animated and rendered in Autodesk 3ds Max with mental images' Mental Ray. 3D tracking solutions were applied to shots using Andersson Technologies' SynthEyes software, while completely digital 3D crowd scenes were produced with Massive from Massive Software.
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