BEHIND THE SCENES: LANDING A 727 DOWNTOWN

This entry was posted on 4/6/2007 1:10 PM and is filed under production

Since we didn't have the wherewithall to land a Boeing 727 airliner in downtown Tucson, we had to apply some digital visual effects techniques to get our shots. This is a particularly interesting shot because of the technique I used to create the illusion that I handheld the shot right there on the street with the aircraft hurtling past me.

To set up a shot this complex, I needed a 3D model of the aircraft and the background plate shots. To accomplish that, I used Newtek's Lightwave 3D animation software to get the job done. Below, you'll see the wirerframe animation of the aircraft whizzing past my camera. Once I had textured the model, I animated the movement to precisely match the perspective of my background plate shots.

Rather than animating the aircraft, I chose to animate the camera passing the plane. Since the passing speed is relative, and I'm only rendering the aircraft and front projected drop shadow, it didn't matter which of the two was moving because it produces the same result.

One of the big problems filming a post apocalyptic movie downtown is the background car and foot traffic that kills the illusion of a dead, deserted city. Sure, I could digitally paint out things one frame at a time but not if I expected to complete this feature this year. That's why I chose to use still photography plates, and paint out just those single unwanted instances, then stitch the images together in a one hundred and eighty degree panorama background image.

Below, you can see that I took six high definition digital stills, each taken at thirty degree intervals, around a center pivot point where I was standing.

Below, you can see how I stitched the images together, correcting lens distortions at the edges so I could create a seamless panorama for the background plate.

Using Lightwave 3D, I animated and composited the background image behind the aircraft using it as a front projection image, projected onto a ground plane to create the drop shadow on the street, under the aircraft. I also used the background plate for the reflection map gleaming from the aircraft.

The final effect is perfectly composited by Lightwave and in high definition. Later, I added the handheld camera shake by punching in from high definition resolution, down to an NTSC size image area to complete the shot.

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