Luma Pictures Powers "Zoom"
Studio Creates VFX for Sony Pictures Release
LOS ANGELES - Luma Pictures brought a snow storm to the Windy City in producing visual effects for the current Lakeshore Entertainment release Wicker Park. As lead visual effects provider on the film, Luma completed some 84 shots, in a package that included 3D matte paintings of Chicago as well as set extensions and a variety of detailed compositing work. In its most challenging task, the studio's visual effects team altered the film's climactic sequence to make it appear as though Chicago's famous Loop is covered in snow.
Directed by Paul McGuigan (Gangster No. 1) and starring Josh Hartnett, Dianne Kruger and Rose Byrne, Wicker Park is story of a young investment banker struggling to reunite with a lost love.
Visual effects supervisor Payam Shohadai headed Luma's team in creating a series of highly realistic 3D environments for the film. Typical of the studio's work is a scene set inside Matthew's (Hartnett) apartment where they created the city view outside the windows. Artists replaced the blue screen that appears in the production footage with a 3D matte painting representing a cluster of nearby buildings.
In order to make the matte painting believable, animators created buildings in several layers (to accurately represent the parallax shift when the camera moved), and added subtle moving background elements. The latter included steam rising from a rooftop and artificial reflections to create the illusion of window glass.
"An editorial change required that the scene reflect an overcast day, however the interiors with Hartnett were shot with a strong key light coming through the window as if it were sunny," Shohadai explained. "To make everything integrate well, the shot required some tricky masks to tone down the existing lighting of the footage and create the overcast look needed in the CG."
Luma created similar background elements for a scene where Matthew and Lisa (Kruger) are riding in the back seat of a car. As no appropriate live backgrounds were filmed for the shots, artists created the necessary elements in 3D. The team produced a 3D set extension for another shot where Lisa is standing over the ledge of her apartment.
The film's climatic scene with Matthew running through downtown Chicago was shot by a cameraman chasing Hartnett with a hand-held camera. Although the scene was intended to occur in the midst of a heavy snowfall, it was shot on a day with no snow on streets filled with car and pedestrian traffic.
Luma artists created large 3D matte paintings to show snow accumulating on buildings, streets and sidewalks and used particle effects for falling snow. "The extremely challenging part of the shots was tracking the effects elements to the movement of the hand-held camera," Shohadai recalled. "We also had to create numerous masks to properly position the digital elements in the Z depth of the scene. Because of all of the people and cars, it at first seemed impossible to accomplish in a reasonable time frame, but we were up for the challenge. The results are amazing."
Next up for Luma is another Lakeshore Entertainment film, Cave, about gruesome creatures that attack divers in a network of underground caves. Again, Luma will be lead effects provider, including creating the film's 3D creatures. Luma recently completed work on A Lot Like Love for Touchstone Pictures. Starring Ashton Kutcher and Amanda Peet, it is also set for a 2005 release, and Crash, starring Sandra Bullock and Matt Dillon, for Bull's Eye Entertainment.