Advanced VFX, in class assignment 1

July 1, 2015 at 2:08 pm (School) (compositing, digital gore, green screen, Nuke, The Foundry, zombie)

One of our first in-class assignments was to take a green-screened actor and remove his arm. The footage was delivered as a TIF sequence, so basically instead of a .mov file, we got a folder of each movie frame as individual images. Like so…

This is actually pretty common and is easier for some programs to handle, especially the one we were using to composite: Nuke.

So here is the first frame up close:

As you can see, the floor was dirty and the green a little uneven. Several key nodes were used to knock out that green and masks, of course, to hide that equipment in the corner and disappear the arm. Now where to put our zombie?

I found this room that could pass as a storage-type space, but most importantly, it was very large and at a good perspective. And the lighting was pretty even so it wouldn’t fight with the zombie footage. Of course it’s awfully bright, but that is what post is for, amiright?

So I comped the zombie and the room together. Did some color grading to give the ambience more of a cold, sickly feel. Added some questionably placed blood splattering (hey this was all in class after all…). And BAM: zombie sequence.