With only three weeks to create the entire 40-second open, Michel decided to used Adobe After Effects as the main workhorse for the project, a decision that was not without some initial trepidation.
“Even though I’ve been using this software for five years I thought it would be very hard to do all of this in After Effects because I had only 3 weeks of compositing to do it all," says Michel."Many people consider After Effects to be not very powerful but whatyou can do is practically unlimited (except for 3D). You just have toknow precisely what you want and imagine the compositing process beforeworking.”
But still time was an issue, especially when it came to producing 2Kimages. “Because I work as a digital artist on films everyday I knew itwould be very difficult to deliver the film on time if I worked at1920x1080 because every second of the film was going to be VFX images,”Michel explains. “So I decided, after making some tests, to work in1280x720 pixels and then resize all the film at the good resolution(with some sharping and graining process) and it worked pretty well. Atthe end nobody can tell if it is truly 1080p images or 720pstreched...It just works. You can see the result on those 2k images.The second reason why I choose this format was to be able to see allthe images in my 4/3 computer screen without zooming/dezooming!Everything is good to save time.”
Step-by-Step with AE and Particular
In addition to After Effects, the other main software app for this project was Particular, which was used for creating the cloud cover in the opening shot, the rain and even the embers in the final shot.
Click here to read the tutorial on how Michel created the cloud carpet in the opening shot.
“The process for the rain drops was not so difficult. I knew that Ineeded a kind of real look for the rain in the film but also it had tobe more than realistic (a little bit designed to fit the spirit of thistrailer). I tried many ways to do it and in the end I used twodifferent approaches. The first way (that is used for all the shotsexcept the last one (with the fire) was to take a real drop filmed inslow motion. I stabilized and rotoscoped it and then used it as a luminance map forthe caustic plugin in After Effects (which creates a water look of apicture based on a luminance of an other image-in this case the realdrop).
"What you get is a very good baseshape because it comes from a realdrop movement and what is inside is made by the distortion added viathe caustic plugin."
"Then I used Trapcode Particular. It is the best particles system I have ever seen in AfterEffects. The benefits of this plug-in is the speed (very quickrender) and the quality of its sliders. It included its own motionblur (not limited at After Effects' 16 samples) and depth of field. Andlast but not least it works within the 3D After Effects space. I used 3particulars (system of particles) for the low-angle shot: one for theside, one very close of the camera and one just near of it so that Ican adjust more precisely all my drops. You just have to find the goodvelocity, gravity, and others parameters like the numbers of the dropsto make it look great.
“The second way was fully 2D and it was for the lastshot. The rain drop was also made with the caustic plug in but there isno real drop used as displaced map, because you can’t have a referenceshot like that and it was exciting to try to make a 2D drop so close ofthe camera and which should looks like the others. The background is amix of 4 floor shots.
"The embers are also made with Particular... All the difficulty was to choose the right images todisplace those embers so that it looks like they are underwater.
You have to mix real shots of water mix with fractal noises so that you can choose thevelocity and the way it moves...
But the result was not good enough. To make the sensation that you arelooking through the water you need to use compound blur (part of theimages are blurred and others not), lensdistortion, little shake cam, vignettage... many little things thatwill make it a little bit real."
www.pierremichel.net
